Josh Macphee – författare

“Every entry opens a window onto a different story of creativity and resistance and I couldn’t stop hopscotching around from page to page, each one sparking off vectors for further thought and exploration. A totally mind-blowing accomplishment.”—Guy Picciotto, Fugazi

An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels is a compendium of information about political music and radical cultural production. Focusing on vinyl records and the labels that released them, this groundbreaking book traces the parallel rise of social movements in the second half of the twentieth century and the vinyl record as the dominant form of music distribution.

Just as the Civil Rights Movement leaps onto mainstream headlines in the early 1960s, the 33rpm “Long Player” and 45rpm single invade people’s stereos. All the major Civil Rights organizations release vinyl records of speeches, movement songs, and field recordings—setting the pace for the intertwining of social movements and easily distributed sound recordings. This relationship continues through the end of the twentieth century, which marked both the end of apartheid in South Africa and the dominance of the vinyl format.

From A-Disc (the record label of the Swedish Labor Movement) to Zulu Records (the label of free jazz pioneer Phil Choran), An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels is a compelling panorama of political sound and action, including over 750 record labels that produced political music. Each entry features the logo of the label, a brief synopsis of its history, and additional interesting information. Truly international in scope, over two dozen countries and territories are represented, as well as a myriad of musical styles and forms.

A sweeping and poignant history of community response to the violence of white supremacy and carceral systems in the US, told through interviews, archival reproductions, and narrative.

In the summer of 2020, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade ignited a movement that led to the largest street protests in American history. Abolitionist grassroots organizers around the country unified around a clear demand: defund the police and refund our communities. While the majority of the country supported the call to reform the police, what followed was a backlash from mainstream politicians and the press, all but defeating the movement to end the continued violence against Black Americans. 

Defend / Defund examines the history of how communities have responded to the violence of white supremacy and carceral systems in the United States and asks what lessons the modern abolitionist movement can draw from this past. Organized in a series of thematic sections from the use of self-defense by Black organizers, to queer resistance in urban spaces, the narrative is accompanied by over one hundred full-color images including archival materials produced by Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Young Lords in the 1960s and 70s, CopWatch and the Stolen Lives Project in the 1980s and 1990s, and contemporary material from the Movement for Black Lives, Project NIA, and INCITE!, Defend / Defund shows how deep the struggles for abolition go and how urgent they remain.  

In addition to full-color reproduction of archival materials, the narrative includes transcripts of interviews with activists, scholars, and artists such as Mariame Kaba, Dread Scott, Dennis Flores, Dr. Joshua Myers, Jawanza Williams (VOCAL-NY and Free Black Radicals), Cheryl Rivera (NYC-DSA Racial Justice Working Group and Abolition Action), and Bianca Cunningham (Free Black Radicals). Each conversation dives into the history of specific struggles with, and organizing against, police and police brutality. 

In total, the publication shows how the modern Defund movement builds on powerful Black feminist and abolitionist movements past and imagines alternatives to policing for community safety for our present.

From the fight against the AIDS crisis to the struggle for Black liberation and international solidarity, Graphic Liberation! digs deep into the history, present, and future of revolutionary political image making.

What is the role of image and aesthetic in revolution? Through a series of interviews with some of the most accomplished designers, Josh MacPhee charts the importance of revolutionary aesthetics from the struggle for abolition by Black Panthers, the agitation during the AIDS crisis from ACT-UP, the fight against apartheid in South Africa and Palestine, as well as everyday organizing against nuclear power, for housing, and international solidarity in Germany, Japan, China, and beyond.

In ten interviews, political designer and street artist Josh MacPhee talks to decorated graphic designers such as Avram Finkelstein, Emory Douglas, and more, focussing on each of their contributions to the field of political graphics, their relationships to social movements and political organizing, the history of political image making, and issues arising from reproduction and copyright.