The broad theme for 2020/2021: Race and Racism in Law with a focus on Black feminist scholarship.
14th October (3-5pm online)
Session 1: Joy, Care, Love and resistance: building the post-COVID recovery with all we’ve got!
Core readings
Nora Samran, Chapter 1, The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture
Nick Montgomery and carla bergman, Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times Chapter 1: Empire, Militancy and Joy
Adrienne Marie Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good Chapter 3: Love as Political Resistance
Dixon and Piepzna-Samarasinha eds, Beyond Survival Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement Chapter 1: Building Community Safety
Emmerich and Adams, care, pleasure and joy: an abolitionist feminist collective recovery (tbc)
4th November (3-5pm online)
Session 2: “Walking While Trans”: Black feminist praxis centring the marginalized
Core readings
German Lopez, Walking while trans: How transgender women of color are profiled
Kai M. Green and Marquis Bey, Where Black Feminist Thought and Trans* Feminism Meet: A Conversation
Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power – Chapter 5: Transmisogyny: Who Wins?
Andrea Ritchie, Policing Gender Lines, Chapter 6 in Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Colour
9th December (3-5pm)
Session 3: Forgotten Voices of “Intersectionality”: Remembering the life and work of Claudia Jones
Core readings
Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman”
Carol Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: the political life of black communist Claudia Jones
Preface and Chapter 1, Women’s Rights/Worker’s Rights/ Anti-imperialism: Challenging the Super-exploitation of Black Working-Class Women
Denise Lyn, Socialist Feminism and Triple Oppression: Claudia Jones and African American Women in American Communism
Jamal Rich, The right to be radical: uplifting the life of Claudia Jones
Additional reading
Claudia Jones: A Right to be Radical
20th January 2021 3-5pm Google Meet
Session 4: Channelling the Erotic: Pleasure as the Guiding Power for 2021
Readings
Audre Lorde, The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power Audio
10th February 2021 3-5pm
Session 5: Black Lives Matter: Abolition Now!
Readings
Reina Sultan and Micah Herskind, What is Abolition, And Why Do We Need it?
Rachel Herzing, Black Liberation and the Abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex
Ameer Hassan Loggins, We’re All Living In A Future Created By Slavery
Bree Newsome Bass, Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti Black
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Breonna Taylor and Bearing Witness to Black Women’s Expendability
17th March 2021 3-5pm
Session 6: Building “Sites of Solidarity”: Fighting Collectively Against the capitalist, colonial, ableist hetero-patriarchy in support of International Women’s Day
ReadingsCinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser, Thesis 11, Feminism for the 99% Pages 54-57
Zoe Williams, Feminist solidarity empowers everyone. The movement must be trans-inclusive
Lola Olufemi, “Solidarity is a Doing Word” Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power Chapter 8
Jo Litler and Catherine Rottenberg, Feminist solidarities: Theoretical and practical complexities
Sara Ahmed, Feminist Attachments P 189
Queer Lonely Diaries, Attachment Femme P 87-230
21st April 2021 3-5pm Google Meet
Session 7: Abolition as Imagination: Yielding Possibility; Crafting Future
Readings
Walidah Imarisha, Introduction in Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha (eds) Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
Adrienne Maree Brown, Introduction Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
Angela Davis, Why Arguments Against Abolition Inevitably Fail
Mariame Kaba, So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist
You can also purchase Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha’s Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements and Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change from AK Press
28th April 2021 5-7pm Google Meet
*SPECIAL EDITION*
Session 7a: Mariame Kaba, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
Readings
Mariame Kaba, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Abolitionist Papers)
You can purchase this text via Haymarket Books (US) or local book stores.
19th May 2021 3-5pm Google Meet
Session 8: Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Readings
Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Dean Spade, Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival
You can also purchase this text via Verso
23rd June 3-5pm Google Meet
Session 9: Tuning in to Activism as Improvisation, Musicality, and Spirituality
Sara Ramshaw, The Creative Life of Law: Improvisation, Between Tradition and Suspicion
Bennett Hogg, Improvisation in process
Daniel Fischlin, “Wild notes” … Improvisioning”
We are keen for grassroots groups and organisations to host a reading group session centring on their central focuses. If you’re interested, or you fancy recommending some readings to us? Drop us a line: ReadandResist20@gmail.com
Read and Resist! 