Community Safety in the Fourth World War: Notes on Insurgent Conviviality (Vagabonds) - Softcover

Manuel Callahan; Annie Paradise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745351514 ISBN 13: 9780745351513

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2026

Synopsis

We are living through what the Zapatistas call the 'Fourth World War'—a war waged by the forces of colonial and racial capitalism, that insists we forget our victories, relinquish our practices of care, and abandon our struggle. For communities targeted and ravaged by policing and militarization, safety is a paramount concern. But where do we turn? To the state, with its warped ideas of security and all its attendant violences?

Drawing on more than a decade of 'convivial research' and 'insurgent learning', alongside struggles across the San Francisco Bay Area, and in dialogue with Indigenous and non-Indigenous struggles from southern Mexico, the authors argue for self-organized, locally rooted community safety. This, they claim, can be observed through five critical elements: community self-defense; fierce care; assembly; knowledge production and self-representation; and autonomous justice.

Advancing conviviality as a praxis, as a counterforce to the death machine of racial patriarchal capital, this book aims to re-enchant the world through a focus on life; to provide tools, strategies, and theorizations that build from below in order to cross-pollinate struggles everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Manuel Callahan is the co-founder of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area with connections to struggles in Southern Mexico. Since 2003, he has been a participant in the Universidad de la Tierra Califas. Callahan is currently the Latinx Studies Collection editor for Lived Places Publishing.

Annie Paradise is a member of the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy (CCRA), a transterritorial research collective, and a collaborator with the Universidad de la Tierra Califas, an autonomous learning initiative, both based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also a researcher with the Counter Counterinsurgency Lab.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745351514
• ISBN 13: 9780745351513
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176