Everything for Everyone - An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072

Joining a long line of speculative writing that helps us to understand worlds not yet existing An Oral History of the New York Commune will appeal to readers of Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ian M. Banks, Samuel Delaney, and China Mieville among others.

List of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: Introduction: On Oral History and Insurrection, reflecting from the 20th Anniversary of the New York Commune (co-written by O’Brien and Abdelhadi)

An “academic” introduction reflecting on the value of oral history to make sense of the transformative experience of participation in revolutionary social change. It will outline the events of the 2040s that led to the revolutionary outbreak in the New York City region, including the defeat of the United States in a protracted war in Iran, the secessionist outbreaks across multiple rural regions of the US, the broader context of global rebellion and the formation of the Communes of the Andes, of Guangdong, of the Maghreb, of the Levant and of the Mississippi River Delta.

2: Miss Kelley on the Insurrection of Hunts Point (O’Brien)

A sex work activist describing the events of 2052, when mass hunger riots in the South Bronx led to the direct seizure of the Hunts Point Produce Market, and the establishment of the regional food distribution networks that fed the coming decade of urban civil war. 

3: Kawkab Hassan on Liberating the Levant (Abdelhadi)

A transnational activist and freedom fighter, Kawkab Hassan recounts her life of struggle across the globe. She grew up amidst the Palestinian community of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and migrated to her grandparents’ native Palestine in the mid-20s to join the Gaza Rebellion. Designated a terrorist and stripped of her American citizenship, she was unable to return to the United States for decades and instead dedicated her life to resistance movements in the Arab world. 

4: Tanya John on the Free Assembly of Barretto Park (O’Brien)

Tanya had led the logistics and planning for the Free Assembly of Barretto Park, a convening in 2055 that is widely regarded as a turning point in the revolutionary struggle in NYC. 

5: Belquees Chowdhury on Lower Manhattan (Abdelhadi)
Lower Manhattan remained relatively immune to the broader insurrection engulfing NYC until an occupation of the Borough of Manhattan Community College in early 2056, where Belquees was a student. She describes growing up in an immigrant Bengali family in Queens, becoming a taxi driver and student. At BMCC, she became active in CUNY Against the War, the leading group in the 2056 occupation. 

6: Quinn Liu on Internment, Guangxi and Flushing (Abdelhadi)
Quinn Liu was born in 2025 in an immigrant internment camp in Northern California, set up in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. Her parents were Chinese immigrants who lost their jobs and legal status after the 2020 immigration ban. Living without documentation for a couple of years, they were eventually captured and placed in a camp. 

7: S. Addams on the Church Fathers of Staten Island (O’Brien)
S. describes growing up in the fascist, Christian cult that eventually came to run Staten Island from 2053 to 2058. They describe the isolation and brutality women faced under the Church Fathers, indicating that they were considered a young girl and teenage woman in the Church.

8: Aniyah Reeds on Sex Work in Uptown (Abdelhadi)

Aniyah Reeds describes her evolving relationships with sex work and sex education throughout the revolutionary decades leading up to the New York Commune’s 20th Anniversary. Over the course of two decades in the trade, she becomes the de facto leader of an informal sex worker collective. 

9: Connor Stephens on the Fall of Colorado Springs (O’Brien)

Connor recounts being born on the Wind River Reservation, and was attending highschool in Riverton when the civil war began. After a decade of participating in guerilla war across the Rocky Mountain States, he became a commander in the North American Liberation Front. 

10: Latif Timbers on Gestation Work (Abdelhadi)

Latif Timbers speaks about his work as a counselor in his commune’s gestation center in Flatbush, Brooklyn. As the interview goes on, he reveals the traumatic events of his childhood. 

11: Kayla Puan on the North Ironbound Commune (O’Brien)

A 2069 interview with a young trans artist planning a major ‘sojourn’, a coming of age trip, and her understanding of her family’s role in establishing the residential communes of Newark. 

12: Alkasi Sanchez on the Mid-Atlantic Free Assembly (O’Brien)

The Mid-Atlantic Free Assembly in 2072 both celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the New York Commune, and was the closest to a formal codification of the major social institutions that constituted the new communist society. Alkasi, a social planner and militant theorist invited to give an opening speech to the Assembly, reflects on the peculiarities of how gender, subjectivity and geography have changed over the course of their life.

About the author

M. E. O'Brien writes at the intersection of communist theory, trans liberation, LGBTQ social-movement studies, and feminism. A co-editor of Pinko, a magazine of gay communism, O'Brien's writing has appeared in Social Movement Studies, Work, Employment & Society, Commune, Homintern, Endnotes, and Invert. She worked with the NYC Trans Oral History Project and completed her PhD at NYU where her research considered how capitalism shaped NYC LGBTQ social movements. She currently works as a psychotherapist.

Summary

By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism—New York City. This book, a collection of interviews with the people who made the revolution, was published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the New York Commune, a radically new social order forged in the ashes of capitalist collapse.
Here is the insurrection in the words of the people who made it, a cast as diverse as the city itself. Nurses, sex workers, antifascist militants, and survivors of all stripes recall the collapse of life as they knew it and the emergence of a collective alternative. Their stories, delivered in deeply human fashion, together outline how ordinary people's efforts to survive in the face of crisis contain the seeds of a new world.

Foreword

• Trade coverage in main industry publications(Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal, Choice)


• Review coverage in relevant outlets (In These Times, n+1, Teen Vogue, Democratic Left, Jacobin, etc)


• Online and Zoom events around the world


• Postcard direct mailing to anchor bookstores


• Emails to Common Notions email list, relevant newsletters and listservs


• Galleys available 


• Targeting progressive scifi community (advance copies to key members, goodreads, blogs, etc.)


• TicToc interview samples 


• Online/social media campaign including giveaways 


• Promotion through the author’s social media


• Bookseller/Library mailing and promotions, including conference giveaways 


• Reading group guide 


• Promotion through activist newsletters and social media 

Product details

• Authors: Eman Abdelhadi, Eman Abdelhai, M. E. O'Brien, ME O'Brien
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.08.2022
• EAN: 9781942173588
• ISBN: 978-1-942173-58-8
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 204 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 264 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Utopias, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Transgender