WE GO WHERE THEY GO: An Evening of Radical History with SHANNON CLAY
A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Shannon Clay for a reading and conversation on his new co-authored book We Go Where They Go: the Story of Anti-Racist Action.
This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own.
About the book
We Go Where They Go: the Story of Anti-Racist Action re-captures the story of a massive forgotten youth movement that set the stage for today's anti-fascist organizing in North America. When Canadian and US skinheads and punks in the 1980s found their communities invaded by white supremacists and neo-nazis, they fought back. Influenced by anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty, they created Anti-Racist Action. At ARA’s height in the 1990s, thousands of dedicated activists in hundreds of chapters joined the fights—political and sometimes physical—against nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-abortion fundamentalists, and racist police. Before media pundits, cynical politicians, and your uncle discovered “antifa,” Anti-Racist Action was bringing it to the streets.
Co-author Shannon Clay will present a brief overview of ARA’s history, focusing on lessons for ongoing struggles for a better world, and dedicate time for Q&A. We will dive into themes including but not limited to political organizing in cultural scenes, movement building, aboveground organizing and internal security, and throwing rocks at Klansmen.
“We go where they go. Whenever fascists are organizing or active in public, we’re there. We don’t believe in ignoring them or staying away from them. Never let the nazis have the streets!”
Shannon Clay is a historian and community activist from the Mountain West of the so-called USA. Coming up after ARA had largely declined, he learned of its little-known history through anarchist networks and saw the need to document and publicize its history for a new generation of activists. He has been involved in student organizing and in prison solidarity and abolition work.
