lindsi’s Comments (group member since Jan 13, 2021)

lindsi’s comments from the Reading with Comrades group.

For the past year I’ve been working on designing and stocking my dream bookstore, and this coming Tuesday, my team and I finally get to share it!

Offbeat Books specializes in speculative fiction (scifi, fantasy, horror etc), weird litfic, and, of course, “unconventional” (read: politically radical, anti-imperialist) nonfiction. I semi-jokingly describe it as a store for unhinged women and their supporters.

The store is located at a new complex in South Atlanta called Terminal South (address: 1161 Ridge Ave SW, Atlanta, GA 30315). If you’re ever in the area, please come say hi! We’re also on Instagram and Tiktok @offbeatbooks if you wanna follow for updates and more info.

hey y’all! i’m sorry i haven’t had the capacity to keep up with the monthly reading themes this year.

i would still love to hear from everyone what your favorite reads were in 2022 (fiction or nonfiction, doesn’t have to be political!)

that being said, do we want to try it again for 2023, or something different?

and moreover, what are your 2023 reading goals? any new releases you’re really looking forward to?

Hey y’all! Apologies for the delay, it’s been a very busy month in organizing 😅

Our group read theme this month is (anti)racism and white supremacy. What’re y’all reading this month? / What have you read on the topic in the past that you’d recommend?

gotcha! i was referring to your last paragraph abt WW2 :) meaning that i’d love to include history texts about that time but preferably those from third world perspectives rather than europe! apologies if i offended.

i definitely want to add graeber, i’ve just been trying to figure out which shelf to use because his work is so expansive! i don’t love chomsky but i definitely see the value in ‘manufacturing consent.’

thank you so much for all the recommendations!

i’m down to create a history shelf as well but i’d prefer it not to be eurocentric.

Hey y'all! My local organizing group just launched our Bookshop.org affiliate page as part of our political education working group! For those who aren't familiar, Bookshop.org is a site that works with indie bookstores and socializes its profits across all its partners. They also offer "affiliate stores" - where you can curate recommended reads by theme ("shelves") and if someone uses your link, you get 10% of the revenue. I thought this would be a great way for our little nonprofit to both spread socialist literacy and make a little extra money to support our mutual aid and other work.

So if you like to buy physical copies of books and want to support indie bookstores, check it out! I'd also love to hear yall's recs and add them to the shop. And if you're in the Atlanta area and interested in checking out Mosaic (or not in ATL and want to attend one of our virtual political education workshops), I'm happy to answer any questions!

https://bookshop.org/shop/MosaicAtlanta

Hey comrades! This month’s theme is police and prison abolition.

What are you reading/planning to read on this topic?

Some suggestions I have are:
Are Prison Obsolete? by Angela Davis
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Prison Land by Brett Story
We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
The End of Policing by Alex Vitales
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Share your recs & your reading experiences with us here!

just wanted to say that i finished Settlers last week and it was AMAZING. should be required reading for white american organizers 💯💯

since i ended up reading settlers: mythology of the white proletariat last month, i’m gonna finish walter rodney’s how europe underdeveloped africa this month.

how is it march already? 😱

i’m so excited about this month’s theme though! what’re y’all (planning on) reading?

please! i was gonna share it with my local organizing group as well

awesome!! is this open to non-DSA members?

How’s everyone’s reading going? I ended up starting Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat instead and so far it’s excellent 👌🏼

Aime Cesare’s Discourse on Colonialism is another great foundational text that’s super short!

@Justin i’m so glad you’re liking Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle! it’s absolutely amazing.

@Tim i’ve also had Wretched of the Earth on my shelf for months now 😬

but i think i’m gonna finish walter rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa for my monthly read!

Hey comrades! This month’s reading theme is colonialism and decolonization. What are you (planning on) reading? Fiction or nonfiction?

Hey comrades! My local organizing group, Mosaic Atlanta, is hosting a political education workshop on the basics of historical materialism on January 30th at 4pm. We're using Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa as a reference text but you do not need to have read the book at all to fully participate. The workshop is fully virtual and will be hosted on Google Meet.

More info and RSVP at: mosaicatlanta.org/HEUA

Just finished Blackshirts and Reds! I liked it a lot - it was super simple, easy to read, covered a lot of material but all very concisely. I will say the target audience seemed to be the anti-communist left - a lot of it was dedicated to explaining how and why left anticommunism is so harmful - so if you’re already a diehard commie like I am it might seem a little remedial at times. Still highly recommend checking it out, and definitely recommend it to any anticommunist socdems/demsocs in your life 😉

Oh and if you want to go the fiction route, I can’t recommend Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers enough. It’s the most heartwarming, optimistic portrayal of human futures imaginable and explores what a communist human society in space might look like. Definitely not hard theory by any means, but so engaging and imaginative and just nourishing for the soul ❤️

I would actually highly recommend the book I’m reading for this month’s theme - Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti. It’s written in a very easy to understand style, lays out everything step by step in a very logical way, and it’s short! (my copy is ~150 pages with pretty big text)

I also always have to plug the OG, the Communist Manifesto. There’s a gorgeous new Penguin Deluxe print if you want to get fancy, but it’s also free on Marxists.org (which is a great resource in general!).