Tag: Irruptions

All that’s left is this strange, middling part of the population, the curious and powerless aggregate of those who take no sides: the petty bourgeoisie. They have always pretended to believe that the economy is a reality–because their neutrality is safe there. Small business owners, small bosses, minor bureaucrats, professors, journalists, middlemen of every sort make up this non-class…this social gelatin composed of the mass of all those who just want to live their little private lives at a distance from history and its tumults.

–The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection 

Continue reading Where Movements Go to Die: An Analysis of Middle-Class Counterinsurgency in Lincoln, Nebraska [Part 2]

Content Warning: This essay focuses on a social justice movement and therefore discusses police violence against black people, sexual assault, and self-defense against the police in the context of protests.

This essay is part one of two pieces Irruptions will be releasing regarding the Fall 2021 anti-FIJI protests in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is a continuation of our work from the Summer of 2020, in which we examined the correlation between the arrival of activist leadership onto protest scenes and the subsequent dissipation of political energy within those protests. This pattern has now repeated itself on UNL’s campus in the wake of what appears to be another successfully defeated movement. Emphasizing the importance of study for those engaged in political action, we aim to offer a lens by which to understand this cycle of defeat in which people in Lincoln are trapped.

Continue reading Where Movements Go to Die: An Analysis of Middle-Class Counterinsurgency in Lincoln, Nebraska [Part 1]