11 Books Published by South End Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world’s seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.
 
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt politi-cal movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “nonprofit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

?[Frank B.] Wilderson [will] become a major American writer. Mark my word.”?Ishmael ReedIn 1995, a South African journalist informed Frank B. Wilderson, one of only two American members of the African National Congress (ANC), that President Nelson Mandela considered him ?a threat to national security.” Wilderson was asked to comment. Incognegro is that ?comment.” It is also his response to a question posed five years later by a student in a California university classroom: ?How come you came back?”Although Wilderson recollects his turbulent life as an expatriate in South Africa during the furious last gasps of apartheid, Incognegro is at heart a quintessentially American story. During South Africa’s transition, Wilderson taught at universities in Johannesburg and Soweto by day. By night, he helped the ANC coordinate clandestine propaganda, launch psychological warfare, and more. In his mesmerizing political memoir, Wilderson’s lyrical prose flows from his childhood in the white Minneapolis enclave ?integrated” by his family to a rebellious adolescence at the student barricades in Berkeley and under tutelage of the Black Panther Party; from unspeakable dilemmas in the red dust and ruin of South Africa to his return to political battles raging quietly on US campuses and in his intimate life. Readers will find themselves suddenly overtaken by the subtle but resolute force of Wilderson’s biting wit, rare vulnerability, and insistence on bearing witness to history no matter the cost.A literary tour de force sure to spark fierce debate in both America and South Africa, Incognegro retells a story most Americans assume we already know, with a sometimes awful, but ultimately essential clarity about racial politics and our own lives.Frank B. Wilderson, III is the award-winning author of Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Duke UP) and the director of Reparations … Now.

In Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s best known political prisoner, offers poetic observations and reflections on life on this planet and on death row. In this collection of short essays and personal vignettes, which take on everything from spirituality and religion to capitalism and the prison-industrial complex, Mumia examines the deeper dimensions of existence.Mumia’s ability to celebrate life and advocate for revolutionary change while being held, at the state’s convenience, at death’s door, imbues his thoughts and words with power and passion. "Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to," he writes in "Politics." In "God-Talk on Phase II" he writes, "On death’s brink, men begin to see things they’ve perhaps never seen before. Like those around them, and especially those who share their fate…men whose death warrants have been signed, men with a date to die—live each day with a clarity and a vibrancy they might have lacked in less pressured times."Mumia turns this clarity towards his quest for spiritual and social fulfillment drawing connections between religion and race politics. He embraces spirituality while exploring the true nature of the institutions that have sentenced him to die."Crucial reading for all opponents of the death penalty—and for those who support it, too."—Katha Pollitt, The Nation"A brilliant, lucid meditation on the moral obligation of political commitment by a deeply ethical—and deeply wronged—human being. Mumia should be freed, now."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr."If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to kill him and shut him up? Read him."—John Edgar WidemanMumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist and former Black Panther Party member, has been living on death row in a Pennsylvania prison since 1982.

Howard Zinn’s book on the way justice really works in the U.S. The book explores the reality of justice, which has always stood in contrast to the rhetoric about equal rights under the law. With sections on the police, the courts, prisons, housing, work, health, schools, and popular struggle, Justice in Everyday Life features classic essays by a diverse group of authors, including Jonathan Kozol.

ContentsPreface
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America A Critical Assessment
Introduction to the First Edition
Part 1 The Black Majority
Chapter 1 The Crisis of the Black Working Class
Chapter 2 The Black Poor
Chapter 3 Grounding with My Sisters
Chapter 4 Black Prisoners and Punishment in a Racist/Capitalist State
Part 2 The Black Elite
Chapter 5 Black Capitalism
Chapter 6 Black Brahmins
Chapter 7 The Ambiguous Politics of the Black Church
Chapter 8 The Destruction of Black Education
Part 3 A Question of Genocide
Chapter 9 The Meaning of Racist Violence in Late Capitalism
Chapter 10 Conclusion: Towards a Socialist AmericaReviews"Manning Marable examines developments in the political economy of racism in the United States and assesses shifts in the American Political terrain since the first edition….He is one of the most widely read Black progressive authors in the country."-Black Employment Journal"The reissue of Manning Marable’s How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America confirms that this is a classic work of political history and social criticism. Unfortunately, Marable’s blistering insights into racial injustice and economic inequality remain depressingly relevant. But the good news is that Marable’s prescient analysis-and his eloquent and self-critical preface to this new edition-will prove critical in helping us to think through and conquer the oppressive forces that remain."-Michael Eric Dyson, author of I May Not Get Therewith You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr."For those of us who came of political age in the 1980s, Manning Marable’s How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America was one of our bibles. Published during the cold winter of Reaganism, he introduced a new generation of Black activists/thinkers to class and gender struggles within Black communities, the political economy of incarceration, the limitations of Black capitalism, and the nearly forgotten vision of what a socialist future might look like. Two decades later, Marable’s urgent and hopeful voice is as relevant as ever."-Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!:

Lusane argues that "the federal drug war being waged in the nation’s capital is parallel to that waged against other communities nationwide and worldwide."—SF Bay Guardian

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship?in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film?and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert." As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that’s exactly what these pieces do.

Lusane uses the 1992 elections as a prism to explore Black community leadership and offers a long-term vision of Black empowerment and resistance, inside and outside the electoral arena.

From Civil Rights to Black Liberation is one of the few books that offers historical research about the OAAU, a revolutionary organization founded by Malcolm X and rooted in traditions of Black nationalism, self-determination, and human rights. The author establishes the relevance of Malcolm’s political legacy for the task of rebuilding the movement for Black liberation almost thirty years after his assassination.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was created by Malcolm X in the last 11 months of his life. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation is based on interviews with OAAU members, FBI surveillance files, previously published accounts, and OAAU documents.

A bold new collection of essays by one of America’s most prominent scholar/activists, Black Liberation in Conservative America defines the crises and challenges confronting black America on the eve of the 21st century.

A provocative, accsesible collection that examines U.S. racial barriers, boundaries, and identities through critiques of constructed, marketed, and consumed images.