Originally published in 1972, Eusi Kwayana's The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics, offered profound lessons for class struggle in a multiracial society. Many decades later, Kwayana's work remains urgently relevant. 
 A product of Guyana, and a classic of Caribbean radical history, The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics examines the struggle of Afro-Guyanese mine workers in what was the soon-to-be nationalized bauxite industry, as they faced off against the racism and sexism of the Canadian-owned aluminum firm, ALCAN, the class collaboration of the Guyana Mine Workers Union (GMWU), and the hostility of Forbes Burnham's government toward their self-organization and self-emancipation. Through these events, Burnham's regime -- which initially claimed to be a patron of global African solidarity, cultural renewal, and a cooperative society -- began to reveal itself as a collaborator with the empire of capital, an oppressor of Black workers, and a promoter of racial insecurity in Guyana. 
 Kwayana's work leads us to reconsider the nature of representative government and electoral politics. Black power, for Kwayana, began to transcend the notion of a Black ruling elite s equal opportunity to enter the rules of hierarchy. Through engagement with Guyana s bauxite workers, Black Power became synonymous with Black workers control. This new edition includes an introduction by Matthew Quest, and an appendix of rare ASCRIA (African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa) documents and writings by Kwayana, spanning this period of Guyanese history from 1972 to 1974. This new material documents Kwayana's fight against government corruption, his participation in Guyana s cooperative movement, and his facilitation, in 1973, of a multiracial rebellion of landless sugar workers.

The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics

Business & Money

Eusi Kwayana

Matthew Quest

Economics

On Our Own Authority! Publishing

Kimathi Mohammed, a Michigan based activist who was a native of Savannah, Georgia deserves to be recognized as among the most original political theorists of the Black Power movement in the United States. "Organization & Spontaneity," originally published in 1974, was a response to key contradictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s Black freedom movement, manifested in the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In contrast to many political thinkers of the Civil Rights and Black Power era, Mohammed's work emphasized the self-organization of ordinary African Americans and their liberating, self-directed activism. Mohammed placed forward his critique of would-be Black vanguards at a time when most prominent Black Power activists--even the socialist advocates among them--were beginning to embrace electoral politics and systems of patronage which would ultimately suppress any independent Black political power. "Organization & Spontaneity" anticipated new obsta

Organization and Spontaneity: The Theory of the Vanguard Party and its Application to the Black Movement in the US Today

Politics & Social Sciences

Patricia West

Kimathi Mohammed

Modibo Kadalie

Social Sciences

Ida B. Wells was a teacher, journalist, and newspaper editor who led the most dynamic anti-lynching campaign in American History. Wells’s work exposes how the public murder and mutilation of Black bodies by mob justice stood side by side with a degrading culture based on racial stereotypes and strict gender roles that institutionalised fear in everyday life. In doing so, Wells challenged the intersection of white supremacy, patriarchy, and the meaning of 'civilization' in the early-20th century. Newly edited and introduced by Matthew Quest, Lynch Law in Georgia &amp; Other Writings is a selection of Wells’s anti-lynching pamphlets that shifts how we have come to understand this great activist thus far. These pamphlets reflect a transition from seeing lynching and race riots as responses to Black middle class aspirations toward viewing them as attacks on the potential of insurgent Black workers who defended and organised themselves for emancipation. Published by On Our Own

Lynch Law in Georgia & Other Writings

History

Ida B. Wells

Americas

Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity is a collection of selected essays by Lenni Brenner and Matthew Quest investigating the historical response of African American freedom movements to the colonial settler state of Israel and its role in American imperialism in the Middle East. Through nuanced discussions of racism, capitalism, imperialism, and state power, these writings help to clarify one of the most controversial legacies of Black liberation in the United States. Among other topics and controversies, Brenner and Quest provide independent analysis of Stokely Carmichael, James Forman, the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Harold Cruse, the Nation of Islam, Israel s relationship to Apartheid South Africa, and the recent conflict between Alice Walker and the Anti-Defamation League.

Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity

Lenni Brenner

"Every man is his own leader and we are leaderless" this was the organizational principle voiced by the Afro-Guyanese bauxite mine workers in the democratic councils and mass assemblies that characterized the bauxite strike of April 1970.  Originally published in 1972, Eusi Kwayana's The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics examines the struggle for workers' control in what was Guyana's soon-to-be-nationalized bauxite industry. Kwayana's account of these events underscores the workers' conviction that "nationalization without workers' control and workers' self-management is a fraud."  This revised second edition includes a biographical sketch of Eusi Kwayana, an introduction by Matthew Quest, and an appendix of rare documents published by ASCRIA (African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa). Over thirty leaflets, pamphlets, essays, editorials, and newspaper articles have been reprinted in this volume, documenting the struggle for workers' self-emancipation in Guyana from the bauxite strike of 1970 to the sugar workers' rebellion of 1974.

David Hinds

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Books by Matthew Quest