Workers Imagining the World After Amazon
Plus: "Workers Speculative Society" podcast, Mobilizing Hearts and Minds workshop, Berlin+ events, revenge as care...
“Amazon Workers’ Sci-Fi Writing Is Imagining a World After Amazon”
Jacobin has published an article by Xenia Benivolski, Sarah Olutola, Graeme Webb and me about our Worker as Futurist project, where we are supporting rank-and-file Amazon workers to write short speculative fiction about “The World After Amazon.”
This article explains how science fiction has moved from the margin to the centre of the capitalist imagination, with cash-engorged villains like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos or archscumbag Elon Musk styling themselves as misunderstood space cowboys boldly going where no plutocrat has gone before. It also shares a history of workers’ writing as a form of labour organizing and situates our own project in a history of proletarian SF.
What do Amazon’s workers imagine, they who are being forced under dystopian conditions to build Jeff’s utopia? We want to find out! Over the past 8 months, the 13 participants in the project have been learning about Amazon, science fiction and writing and have recently turned in drafts of short stories about The World After Amazon. We are now working on editing them and a book with that title will appear in early 2024 in print, ebook and audio format! Stay tuned…
Meanwhile, you can also benefit from the research the workers and our team (me, Xenia Benivolski, Graeme Webb, Sarah Olutula and Stella Lawson) have been doing via The Workers Speculative Society, a podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and other people fighting for different futures. New episodes with writers, experts and activists are being released throughout September and October.
Episodes now online:
Prototyping Ways of Being - Syrus Marcus Ware on sci-fi activism and imagination
Future Books - Léonicka Valcius on the work of the literary agent
Robots+workers+warehouses - Alessandro Delfanti on technology and struggle at Amazon
"We've been through our own apocalypse" - David A. Robertson on Indigenous speculative fiction
Amazon VS the Radical Imagination - Robin DG Kelley on the importance of freedom dreams
Logistics and Labour - Charmaine Chua on Amazon's supply chains and workers' resistance
Empire of Words - Marc McGurl on Amazon and the fate of Literature
You cxan subscribe to the podcast via Soundcloud, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or RSS.
Stay tuned for interviews with Cory Doctorow, Jamie Woodcock, Steven Shaviro, Mark Nowak of the Worker Writers School, Heike Geissler… and more!
Mobilizing Hearts and Minds
This fall, I’m fortunate to be working with my friend Sarah Stein Lubrano on a free 12-week workshop for social movement protagonists and their co-conspirators (artists, intellectuals) “Mobilizing Hearts and Minds: The Arts and Infrastructures of Persuasion.” It runs from every Tuesday, at 12:00 Eastern (6pm CET) September 19 to December 5.
The general idea is that those of us who struggle for collective liberation from capitalism, (neo)colonialism, white-supremacy, patriarchy, etc. need to think carefully and pragmatically about how to change people’s minds. Our theories and practices are due for an upgrade. In this course, we’ll be reading and discussing key texts that help us move beyond our conventional and habitual impressions of what moves people, looking at what we can learn from cognitive sciences, critical theory and activist practices.
You can apply to join the course by September 14 (limited spots available!) here, or, if you’d just like to learn more, come to our open-house on September 12 by registering here.
I know it’s a big commitment, but don’t worry: the results of the course will be released later this year or early next as a well-produced podcast and also a digital toolkit.
Here is a little introductory video we made:
Berlin+ events
On September 11 you can find me at the open plenary of Berlin Versus Amazon, a group I work with. We’re inviting anyone interested to join us to discuss how we can oppose the corporation and the massive tower it wishes to open in Friedrichshain. We’ll be holding the meeting at the protest camp set up to oppose the foolish planned A100 highway that is threatening to crush several of the city’s important independent arts and nightlife institutions.
On September 13 I’ll be speaking alongside Heike Geißler and Anna Lena von Helldorffat at the “Working Writers and Writing Workers” at the LiteraturForum im Brecht-Haus.
On September 27, RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab will help host a talk by participants in the Mexico City collective Crater Invertido at the Hopscotch Reading Room.
From October 5-7, I will be facilitating the “Eco-Internationalism for All?” track of the annual Berliner Gazette conference, this year on the urgent topic Allied Grounds, exploring the confluence of labour and ecological struggles.
From October 27-30 join Common Ecologies for our autumn gathering in Vienna!
Care as Revenge, Revenge as Care: Two Riddles
I recently wrote something short for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Radical Helping about revenge and care.
The gist:
If we want a world that cares, we should not sacrifice a consideration of the complexity of violence and destruction on the altar of our narcissistic allergy to discomfort. Clearing space for, then cultivating, then harvesting the fruits of a world that cares, or a caring world, will require a meaningful engagement with the question of what must be destroyed.
Opioids: Capitalist Murder
I recently saw Laura Poitras’s moving film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed about celebrated photographer Nan Goldin’s life and her activism in response to the opioid crisis. It comes at a time when film and fiction are grappling with the aftermath of the prescription opioid nightmare, which has killed over half-a-million Americans and ruined the lives of countless others. Given that, I wanted to share again the graphic novella, Opioids: Capitalist Murder, which I made along with Hugh Goldring of Petroglyph Studios and beautifully illustrated by Pia Alizé Hazarika.
It is based on a chapter of my 2020 book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts that explores the deeper imperialist roots of the opioid crisis (back to the Opium Wars) and how this drug has long been entangled with racial capitalism.