Our centre-spread comprises a series of sketched maps, made by Škart’, scribbled down during encounters as their creators spoke to people in an asylum centre in Serbia. Each map traces perilous journeys from Syria, Somalia, Pakistan and Sierra Leone to the outer borders of Fortress Europe.
We have essays from Alana Lentin and Frank Wilderson exploring the enduring hold relations of “race”, both structural and ideological, have over contemporary politics. Lentin’s focus is the prevailing school of thought that traces racism back only as far as Nazi Germany, which both ignores the preceding 500 years of colonialism and allows continuing oppression to be denied, leaving ideas around racism “frozen”. Wilderson, a foundational thinker of the Afro-Pessimist tradition, suggests that the role of Blackness within Humanity is unique, that Blackness entails Social Death and is inseparable from an ongoing slave relation.
Off theme, Morgan Potts offers a piece which riffs on the everyday antagonisms which face people presenting and living in ways that refuse to conform to existing dominant logics of gender. Meanwhile, Rosa Gilbert speaks with Communist ex-prisoner Mario Rossi (an alias) about the current conditions of anti-fascism and the Left in his home town of Florence, and in Italy more broadly.
This issue also sees the continuation of our visual “How-to” guides, this time the subject is evictions and bailiffs – with legal information and tips on how to resist the record levels of evictions taking place, whilst attempting to place eviction resistance within the broader context of organising aiming to secure access to housing.
This issue also sees us launch a round of fundraising – this being the last print issue we can publish with current funding. A short piece by the OT collective outlines the condition we find the publication in and the directions we hope, with your help, to be able to take our production in.
Copies of OT29 will be distributed at events and within communities throughout the coming months. You can also find us on the shelves of various outlets across the capital, including Housmans, Black Gull Books, Banner Repeater, 56a & Freedom Bookshop. The full list of stockists can be found on the OT Stockists Map on our website.
Follow the OT on Twitter at @OccupiedTimes, Facebook at The Occupied Times, or visit our website at TheOccupiedTimes.org