Welcome to the 28th issue of The Funambulist, Our Battles. For it, we commissioned the brilliant Durban-based architecture graduate Roanne Moodley to produce drawings for five of the six “battles” featured in it. These “battles” constitute punctual uprisings in the history of longer political struggles between anticolonial, antiracist, and/or antiauthoritarian movements and the forces of state oppression. This issue gathers only a few of the numerous battles that we would have loved including in it: the 1973 student revolt against the military junta in Athens (Eleni Karanicola & Nikolaos Patsopoulos), the 1976 Soweto uprising against the Apartheid (Terrence Mkhwanazi), the 2011 Egyptian Revolution (Aya Nassar), the 2017 organizing against white supremacy in Charlottesville, VA and Durham, NC (Taryn Fivek & Loan Tran), the 2017 victorious abolition of the colonial Entrada parade in Santa Fe by the Red Nation (Jennifer Marley), and the recent 2019 occupation of the Hong Kong Legislative Council by young protesters (Sampson Wong). As usual, our contributors are not bystanders of these histories of struggles: all of them live with the conditions inherited from the event they describe in the following pages. Four of this issue’s contributors were part of the battles themselves, and one was even the main protagonist.

As usual, our News from the Fronts section that opens each issue and complements the main dossier, includes articles reflecting on ongoing struggles. In this issue, we cover the solidarity actions with the Wet’suwet’en indigenous struggle in Turtle Island (Deborah Cowen), the Lebanese Revolution (Bassem Saad & Edwin Nasr), the fierce fight against the Islamophobic citizenship law in India (Sarover Zaidi), and the Romani struggle in Europe (Sarah Carmona).

 

CONTENTS ///

Cover FuturismsThe Funambulist 28 Index
COVER | 1973 STUDENT REVOLT IN ATHENS
Roanne Moodley

— NEWS FROM THE FRONTS ///
2 | #SHUTCANADADOWN: ANTI-COLONIAL COUNTERLOGISTICS FOR INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY
Deborah Cowen

5 | BECOMING UNGOVERNABLE: STRATEGIES AND MODES OF DISSENT IN LEBANON’S UPRISING
Bassem Saad & Edwin Nasr

8 | A BARRICADE DIARY: THE PROTESTS AGAINST INDIA’S CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT
Sarover Zaidi

11 | GIVE SHADOW TO SPEECH: THE ROMANI STRUGGLE IS ALSO DECOLONIAL
Sarah Carmona

— MAIN /// OUR BATTLES – A COLLABORATION WITH ROANNE MOODLEY

14 | INTRODUCTION
Léopold Lambert

16 | SANTA FE, SEP. 8, 2017: THE RED NATION ABOLISHES THE COLONIAL ENTRADA
Jennifer Marley

24 | CHARLOTTESVILLE, AUG. 12, 2017 / DURHAM, AUG. 14, 2017: THE BATTLE OF THE U.S. SOUTH AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY
Taryn Fivek & Loan Tran

32 | ATHENS, NOV. 14-17, 1973: THE POLYTECHNIC STUDENT REVOLT AGAINST THE JUNTA
Eleni Karanicola & Nikolaos Patsopoulos

40 | CAIRO, JAN. 28, 2011: A VIEW OF THE REVOLUTION FROM THE 6TH OF OCT. BRIDGE
Aya Nassar

48 | HONG KONG, JULY 1ST, 2019: THE OCCUPATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
Sampson Wong

54 | SOWETO, JUNE 16, 1976: BLACK TOWNSHIP PUPILS VS. SETTLER COLONIAL APARTHEID
Terrence Mkhwanazi (text + drawing)

58 | TIMELINE
Roanne Moodley

 

About
The Funambulist is a magazine that engages with the politics of space and bodies. Our hope is to provide a useful platform where activist/academic/practitioner voices can meet and build solidarities across geographical scales. Through articles, interviews, artworks, and design projects, we are assembling an ongoing archive for anticolonial, antiracist, queer, and feminist struggles. The print and online magazine is published every two months and operates in parallel with an open-access podcast and a blog. The Funambulist is founded by trained architect and writer, Léopold Lambert.