Community Safety in the Fourth World War Notes on Insurgent Conviviality

“An indispensable handbook for living in the dark times. Study it, engage with it, and most of all, live by it" Nicholas Mirzoeff, author of To See In the Dark

“A combative book aimed at disarming societal violence while weaving new fabrics of life" Ana Esther CeceÒa, Institute for Economic Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico

“A collective ethnography, a workbook, and a toolkit for convivial research that makes us want to study assembly and create the councils of care" Gerald Raunig, Zurich University of the Arts

We are living through what the Zapatistas call the “Fourth World War"—a war waged by the forces of colonialism and racial patriarchal capitalism—that insists we forget our victories, relinquish our practices of care, and abandon our struggle. For communities targeted and ravaged by policing and militarization, safety is a paramount concern. But where do we turn? To the state, with its warped ideas of security and all its attendant violences?

Drawing on more than a decade of “convivial research and insurgent learning," alongside struggles across the San Francisco Bay Area, and in dialogue with struggles across the Global South, the authors argue for self-organized, locally rooted insurgent conviviality. This book aims to re-enchant the world through a focus on life; to share and generate tools, strategies, and theorizations that build from below in order to cross-pollinate struggles everywhere.

Manuel Callahan and Annie Paradise are part of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a small transterritorial collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. CCRA also facilitates Universidad de la Tierra, Califas.

Manuel Callahan is the co-founder of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area with connections to struggles in Southern Mexico. Since 2003, he has been a participant in the Universidad de la Tierra Califas. Callahan is currently the Latinx Studies Collection editor for Lived Places Publishing.

Annie Paradise is a member of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective, and a collaborator with the Universidad de la Tierra Califas, an autonomous learning initiative, both based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also a researcher with the Counter Counterinsurgency Lab.