Replace the State

"As the United States is being destroyed, millions of spaces are opening up for something new to emerge. Offering urgent lessons and insights, Replace the State explores relational governance as an alternative to systems that no longer serve. Sasha Davis shows how we can move forward to create and claim a truly inclusive, sustainable world."—Lisa Fithian, author of Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance

"This indispensable guide speaks to newly activated organizers, those mobilizing on the ground, and seasoned old-timers alike. By illuminating the liberatory practice of replacing the state, Sasha Davis reveals that abolition is a daily effort—one of making meaningful connections, claiming what our communities deserve, and creating life-affirming ways of organizing ourselves and our relations with the earth."—Laurel Mei-Singh, University of Texas at Austin

A practical call to action against oppression

 

Across the globe, millions of people have participated in protests and marches, donated to political groups, or lobbied their representatives with the aim of creating lasting social change, overturning repressive laws, or limiting environmental destruction. Yet very little seems to improve for those affected by rapacious governments. Replace the State brings new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means.

Sasha Davis, an activist and scholar of radical environmental advocacy, focuses on the strategies of movements, many of them Indigenous, that have occupied contested sites and demonstrated their effectiveness at managing or governing them. Including case studies of resistance to development on Indigenous lands in Hawai‘i, nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, and the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, he offers insight and direction for activists, students, academics, and others dedicated to protecting and improving the well-being of their communities and beyond.

It would be easy to succumb to pessimism and political apathy in the face of governing institutions that are increasingly unresponsive to calls for change and repressive in response to protest, even as they violate human rights, ignore existential climate catastrophes, and concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. Instead, Davis finds inspiration for genuine political change through social movements that are successfully “replacing the state” and taking over the day-to-day governance of threatened places. From contesting environmental abuse to reasserting Indigenous sovereignty, these social movements demonstrate how people can collectively wrest control over their communities from oppressive governments and manage them with a more egalitarian ethics of care.

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Sasha Davis is an activist and professor in the Department of Environmental and Sustainability Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He is author of Islands and Oceans: Reimagining Sovereignty and Social Change and The Empires’ Edge: Militarization, Resistance, and Transcending Hegemony in the Pacific.

Contents

Introduction: Creating Meaningful Social Change from the Ground Up

Part I. Traditional Strategies for Social Change Are Not Enough 

1. The State Won’t Fix Our Problems

2. What Protests Can Do, and What They Can’t

Part II. Creating Responsible Governance (Instead of Asking for It)

3. From Occupation to Replacing the State

4. Replacing the Infinite State with Relational Governance

5. Is the Reactivation of Relational Governance a Project for Everyone?

Part III. Bringing It Home

6. Replacing the State in Our Own Communities: Connect, Claim, and Create

7. Legitimizing Replacing the State and Developing Support

Conclusion: Replacing the State Together

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Replace the State video series:  An eight part video series that examines social issues, economics, environmental sustainability, and politics – as well as what community groups are doing to build better futures.