Chris Dixon is an activist, writer, and educator with a PhD from the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been involved in transformative social movements for more than two decades. In the foreword to this reconfiguration of radical politics, Angela Davis salutes the author for creating a wide-ranging conversation on the future direction of social justice movements. She is also in sync with Dixon's choice of three main political directions: antiracist feminism, prison abolition, and new anarchist approaches to organizing. They all share the same anti-authoritarian energy and a non-hierarchal approach to leadership that was demonstrated by the Occupy assemblies.
This quest for "another Politics" is based on more than 200 interviews and conversations with those involved in many different kinds of activism including migrant justice, anti-militarism, labor struggles, anti-racism, environmental defense, anti-austerity, economic justice, student democracy, and queer radicalism.
Dixon reminds us that one of the power plays of capitalism and oppression is to erase the memory of the past. He thinks it is important to fight against amnesia by remembering past struggles for freedom, human rights, and justice. In another chapter, Dixon discusses the four "anti's" which form the bedrock of another politics: anti-authoritarianism, anti-capitalism, anti-oppression, and anti-imperialism.
Fighting for justice and dignity is a messy and slow process. That is why there is truth in Jeremy Lazaou's contention that "it is a tremendous challenge to both hold long-term revolutionary vision for our world, and to be daily present within that world." Here Dixon is admonishing the practice of early Christians to be in the world but not of it. And in the concluding chapter, he encourages justice seekers to forget about manifestoes and fixed notions of what the future will be like; instead they should keep in conversations with others about new ideas, programs, and goals that manifest themselves as we improvise together.
