The Dream Defenders present
Joy James in conversation with Steff Reed
on the publication of Confronting Counterinsurgency
Join us for an evening of radical dialogue and political education with Dr. Joy James and Steff Reed, presented by Dream Defenders. On Friday, August 22 at 7pm; we’ll dive into Dr. James’ new edited book, Confronting Counterinsurgency: Cop Cities and Democracy’s Terrors (Pluto Press). Together, we’ll explore how state repression operates—and how communities resist—through history, theory, and movement experience as well as revolutionary love/agape. Come ready to learn, question, and imagine new strategies for liberation!
Joy James is a political philosopher who works with organizers. Her books include In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner; and Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon. Her edited volumes include Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons and ENGAGE: Indigenous, Black, Afro-Indigenous Futures.
Steff Reed is a Musician, Educator, and Activist. By sharing his story, Reed shows others that they are not alone. He is a Black Man that loves and gives greatly, modeling that emotional sensitivity and compassion can make us stronger as a community.
Dream Defenders is a Black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism. We envision communities where safety is built through solidarity, care, and self-determination rather than through punishment and surveillance. Founded in 2012 in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Dream Defenders has grown into a powerful force advocating for liberation, justice, and dignity for Black and marginalized people across the United States and beyond.
About Confronting Counterinsurgency: As we step into an era of rising fascism and normalized genocide, Confronting Counterinsurgency: Cop Cities and Democracy's Terrorsis an invaluable contribution to the fightback.
Joy James brings together the voices of frontline activists, artists, and organizers from movements against militarism and state violence in the USA, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Palestine, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and within prison walls. The book includes accessible and revealing discussions of the role of institutions, universities and nonprofit organizations in the suppression of radical movements. It introduces and analyzes contemporary militarized policing projects like Cop City, ICE, and the School of the Americas, and links them to historical and contemporary settler colonialism and slavery.
Made as an offering of revolutionary love, Confronting Counterinsurgency will be a crucial tool for deepening and radicalizing our analysis and learning from each other's movements, in order to strengthen our resistance and unite to fight for a better world.