Aug
31
11:00pm
In Conversation: Vicky Osterweil and Zoé Samudzi
By Bold Type Books
Celebrate the release of Vicky Osterweil's new book, In Defense of Looting, in conversation with writer Zoé Samudzi! Get your copy from Bookshop and support independent booksellers.
Looting–a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods–is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class–not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police and the state. All our beliefs about the innate righteousness of property and ownership, Osterweil explains, are built on the history of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous oppression.
From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized. In Defense of Looting is a history of violent protest sparking social change, a compelling reframing of revolutionary activism, and a practical vision for a dramatically restructured society.
Vicky Osterweil is a writer, editor, and agitator and a regular contributor to The New Inquiry. Her writing has also appeared in The Baffler, The Nation, The Rumpus, Real Life, and Al Jazeera America. She lives in Philadelphia.
Zoé Samudzi is a writer and PhD candidate in Medical Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is co-author of As Black as Resistance (AK Press 2018) and a research fellow with Political Research Associates.
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