Resist(ance): A Collective Read
Reading is political and this read is an act of protest.
Protest works, even in authoritarian regimes, but those with power and wealth and newspapers don’t necessarily want us to know this. They’d rather we learned about Kings and Queens, Lords and their lands. If you can recite the six wives of Henry VIII but not what happened at Peterloo, Tolpuddle, or Notting Hill, you need to join this collective read.
Resist is a short story collection — some are only three pages long — designed to teach us our history. For each story, Resist provides a historical commentary, explaining the uprising and its very real impact on British policy. Because protest works, even when criminalised, repressed, and nearly forgotten.
Because Englishmen aren’t savage… When the Cavalry massacred Englishmen and women gathered peaceably in a field to hear a speech, that wasn’t savagery. When the government said they had done nothing wrong, even though they hadn’t read the Riot Act first, that wasn’t savagery. When the rich live in gilded palaces and the poor die of starvation, that isn’t savagery. When Parliament is corrupt and resists reform, that isn’t savagery…