Community Safety in the Fourth World War: Notes on Insurgent Conviviality

We are living through what the Zapatistas call the "Fourth World War"--a war waged by the forces of colonialism and racial patriarchal capitalism--that insists we forget our victories, relinquish our practices of care, and abandon our struggle. For communities targeted and ravaged by policing and militarization, safety is a paramount concern. But where do we turn? To the state, with its warped ideas of security and all its attendant violences?

Drawing on more than a decade of "convivial research and insurgent learning," alongside struggles across the San Francisco Bay Area, and in dialogue with struggles across the Global South, the authors argue for self-organized, locally rooted insurgent conviviality. This book aims to re-enchant the world by focusing on life; to share and generate tools, strategies, and theorizations that build from below to cross-pollinate struggles everywhere.

Manuel Callahan and Annie Paradise are part of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a small transterritorial collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. CCRA also facilitates Universidad de la Tierra, Califas.