Abstract
In the years 1967 and 1968 the city of Detroit was the site of two waves of rebellion. The riot of 1967 was one of the largest and most costly urban rebellions in U.S. history. And in the ashes of the ‘67 insurrection a wave of strikes began shutting down the sprawling factories of the auto industry. These strikes were organized by militant Black workers who later founded the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, an organization that characterized itself as the “ideological inheritor” of the riot. This article situates the League within the global moment of 1968, discusses the relationship of work stoppages to circulation struggles, and examines how the participants’ experience in riots, both on the streets of Detroit and in the prisons around the state, informed the praxis and politics of the League.
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