Book signing this Friday for Radical Grand Rapids: Places, dates, actions and people

Join me this Friday, September 6th, between 5pm and 8pm, at the 28th Street location of Schuler Books, where I will be signing copies of my latest book, Radical Grand Rapids: Places, dates, actions and people.

This new book is a companion to the book I wrote last year, A People’s History of Grand Rapids. The new book consists of 40 short chapters that focus on: 1) significant places in Grand Rapids where a specific event took place; 2) dates of important events and various campaigns for social justice in Grand Rapids; 3) actions, which cover over a 100 year period and were part of larger social movement work; and 4) specific people in Grand Rapids history that I believe need to be honored, celebrated or shown contempt.

This past week, while at a conference, I had the opportunity to hear the amazing Ruth Wilson Gilmore speak. I say this, because I cite her in the introduction to Radical Grand Rapids: Places, dates, actions and people. 

“In her book, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, “Abolition geography starts from the homely premise that freedom is a place.” Building on Wilson’s notion of abolition geographies, we can then understand the importance of mapping the political, social, and economic terrain of Grand Rapids. Therefore, I am arguing that freedom and liberation can be a place, but it can also be about dates, actions, and people.

I am only including forty places, dates, actions and people in this short book, since many more stories of the powerful and radically imaginative actions that people have taken in Grand Rapids over the past two centuries are explored in my book, A People’s History of Grand Rapids. I want show people, especially young people, that when we take radical actions, we open spaces for people, and we allow them to radically imagine that another world is possible.”

Please come and join me, pick up a copy of my book, tell me some stories or just give me a hard time. You can check out the Facebook event page that Schuler Books created for the book signing. Hope to see you there!