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scott crow (b. Feb. 18, 1967) is a community organizer, writer, strategist and speaker who advocates the philosophy and practices of anarchism for social, environmental, and economic aims.

He is the only son of a working class mother who started his political journey in the anti-apartheid, political prisoner and animals rights movements during the Reagan years. In the late 80s he fronted two political electronic industrial bands and through the 90s ran a successful antique/art cooperative business.

For almost two decades he has continued to use his experience and ideas in co-founding and co-organizing numerous radical grassroots projects in Texas, including Treasure City Thrift, Radical Encuentro Camp, UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism), Dirty South Earth First! and the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist influenced organization in modern U.S. history to date.

In addition to grassroots organizing, he has worked for regional and national organizations, including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus Society and A.C.O.R.N. With his partner, he produced the documentary film Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation. These political activities lead to him being labeled a “domestic terrorist” by the FBI beginning in the late 90s with investigations that continued for almost a decade.

He has appeared in various media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, Democracy Now!, Texas Observer, Infoshop, Anarchist News, Z Magazine, Austin Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Pacifica Radio and AlterNet as well as the documentaries Welcome To New Orleans, Better this World, and Informant. Public Radio’s This American Life called him “a living legend among anarchists” and the New York Times characterized him as “anarchist and veteran organizer . . . that comes across as more amiable than combative.”

His writings have appeared in the anthology What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation (South End Press: 2006) as well as various radical print magazines and online sites over the last decade.

From his home in Austin, scott currently works at an anarchist worker-run recycling center cooperative, consults in building worker cooperatives, travels for speaking, and organizes projects.

Purchasing Links

Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective
By scott crow, with a foreword by Kathleen Cleaver
Published: October 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60486-077-1
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 256
Dimensions: 9 by 6
Subjects: Politics, Current Events
$20.00

When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans in the Fall of 2005, scott crow headed into the political storm, co-founding a relief effort called the Common Ground Collective. In the absence of local government, FEMA, and the Red Cross, this unusual volunteer organization, based on ‘solidarity not charity,’ built medical clinics, set up food and water distribution, and created community gardens. They also resisted home demolitions, white militias, police brutality and FEMA incompetence side by side with the people of New Orleans.

Crow’s vivid memoir maps the intertwining of his radical experience and ideas with Katrina’s reality, and community efforts to translate ideals into action. It is a story of resisting indifference, rebuilding hope amidst collapse, and struggling against the grain. Black Flags and Windmills invites and challenges all of us to learn from our histories, and dream of better worlds. And gives us some of the tools to do so.

Praise

“It is a brilliant, detailed, and humble book written with total frankness and at the same time a revolutionary poet’s passion. It makes the reader feel that we too, with our emergency heart as our guide, can do anything; we only need to begin.” —Marina Sitrin, author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

“This is a compelling tale for our times.” —Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days

“ … crow is a puppetmaster...”  —Federal Bureau of Investigation

“For decades scott crow has approached his political organizing with humility, resilience, and honesty, and he continues to do so in Black Flags and Windmills.”  —Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

Read advance lookout for Blag Flags and Windmills

The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation
Produced by scott crow and Ann Harkness
Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Released September 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60486-020-7
UPC: 022891476399
Format: DVD (NTSC)
Language: English
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Length: 109 Minutes
Subject: Documentary, Prison Abolition
$19.95

The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation tells the gripping story of Robert King, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, men who have endured solitary confinement longer than any known living prisoner in the United States. Politicized through contact with the Black Panther Party while inside Louisiana’s prisons, they formed one of the only prison Panther chapters in history and worked to organize other prisoners into a movement for the right to live like human beings. This feature length movie explores their extraordinary struggle for justice while incarcerated in Angola, a former slave plantation where institutionalized rape and murder made it known as one of the most brutal and racist prisons in the United States. The analysis of the Angola 3’s political work, and the criminal cases used to isolate and silence them, occurs within the context of the widespread COINTELPRO being carried out in the 1960’s and 70’s by the FBI and state law enforcement against militant voices for change.

In a partial victory, the courts exonerated Robert King of the original charges and released him in 2001; he continues the fight for the freedom of his two brothers. The ongoing campaign, which includes a civil case soon to come before the Supreme Court, is supported by people and organizations such as Amnesty International, the A.C.L.U., Harry Belafonte, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, Ramsey Clark, Sen. John Conyers, Sister Helen Prejean, (the late) Anita Roddick, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the ANC. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have now endured as political prisoners in solitary confinement for over thirty-five years.

Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal, The Angola 3 features interviews with former Panthers, political prisoners and revolutionaries, including the Angola 3 themselves, and Bo Brown, Geronimo (ji Jaga) Pratt, Malik Rahim, Yuri Kochiyama, David Hilliard, Rod Coronado, Noelle Hanrahan, Kiilu Nyasha, Marion Brown, Luis Talamantez, Gail Shaw and many others. Portions of the proceeds go to support the Angola 3. Features the music of Truth Universal written by Tajiri Kamau.

Extras include: "Angola 3" music video for a song written and produced by Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) in support of the A3 featuring Saul Williams, Nadirah X, Asdru Sierra, Dana Glover, Tina Schlieske and Derrick Ashong. Directed by Robin Davey. Plus a trailer for the film which features outtakes not in the feature.

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Latest Blog Entries

Black Flags & Windmills: Climate Justice in Action
"Black Flags and Windmills: Climate Justice in Action"By Scott Parkin Its a preview story on my upcoming book from PM Press. Originally appeared on Rainforest Action Network blog: The Understory

To catch a terrorist: The FBI hunts for the enemy within
This is a compelling story in the recent issue of Harper's magazine about the targeting of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent, and the use of informants who do more than gather information in the ludicrous 'War on Terror'. I am quo...

scott crow: Interview on KOOP radio
This is a recent interview w/ scott crow on Rag Radio with host Thorne Dreyer on Austin, Texas' KOOP 91.7. The interview is from Aug. 8th, 2011.

FBI to Expand Domestic Surveillance Powers as Details Emerge of Its Spy Campaign Targeting Activists: An interview w/ scott crow
DEMOCRACY NOW!FBI to Expand Domestic Surveillance Powers as Details Emerge of Its Spy Campaign Targeting Activists: An interview w/ scott crow and Mike German

Journal: Left Eye on Books highlights 'Black Flags and Windmills'
My upcoming book 'Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective' was highlighted as todays pick by the journal Left Eye on Books

From the NY Times: "For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target"
Here is a recent profile piece on my life and the long term government/ corporate spying on my life over the last 10 years. It misses many details, but touches on the absurdity and depth to which the state will go to label people as 'domesti...

INTERVIEW with scott crow in December 2010 Z Magazine
Darwin Bond-Graham interviews PM Press author scott crow in the December issue of Zmagazine .

Ghosts, Warriors and those the state tries to bury alive
Some of these warriors fell in battles, but some of these warriors were locked far away and forgotten by those who assume to hold power over the rest of us. Put into living coffins to finish their lives, and to their keepers dismay they co...

A letter for Gene Akins 1937-2010: A Lifelong Wobbly and anarchist
This is a letter of remembrances in memoriam for my friend Gene Akins who passed away recently. Gene was a lifelong bonafide card carrying Industrial Workers of the World ‘Wobbly’ since the early 1960’s. He was also a lifelong ...

NOT GUILTY: Twelve reasonable people, and how the state tried to �Aunt Sally� Kate Kibby
This is my personal report of the Federal trial--and tribulations--of a woman, Kate Kibby, who was recently found NOT GUILTY for an alleged threat against paid FBI informant, mole, and provocateur Brandon Darby

What Others Are Saying...

Interview

scott crow on Left Eye on Books
scott crow on KZFR radio's 'The Point' hosted by Sue Hilderbrand
scott crow on Diebenow.com
scott crow on Mother Jones

Reviews

Black Flags and Windmills: 1 of top 5 books of 2011: Progressive Magazine
Black Flags and Windmills: The Rag Blog
Black Flags and Windmills: Texas Observer
Advance Lookout for Blag Flags and Windmills
The Angola 3: Political Media Review
The Angola 3: Abort Magazine

Black Flags and Windmills: One of top 5 Reads for 2011
by Elizabeth DiNovella
The Progressive Magazine
December 21st, 2011

crow says the surveillance and ongoing criminalization of dissent is “an absolute farce. People like me are paper tigers. If you are going to have a war on terrorism, you need terrorists. Who are easy to find? Social activists.”

He knows that the FBI uses surveillance as a way to intimidate activists. “What everyone fears about surveillance, it’s happened to me, and I’m OK,” he says. “It hasn’t been pleasant. But I’m OK.”

Black Flags and Windmills: A Review
by Mariann G. Wizard
The Rag Blog
December 13, 2011

Black Flags and Windmills, crow's first book, focuses on Common Ground Collective, an anarchist-based relief organization he helped found when official disaster relief efforts not only failed to meet the needs of affected residents along the Gulf Coast, but seemed intent upon criminalizing them.

But that wasn't what he set out to do. While millions sat stunned, weeping at televised images of a drowned metropolis, as mythic to the American psyche as Atlantis to the Greeks', scott crow drove from Austin, Texas, to New Orleans to look for a stranded friend.

Black Panther Party matriarch Kathleen Cleaver's insightful introduction sees this as the fulcrum, asking, "What deep motivation drives anyone to travel by boat across an unfamiliar flooded city looking for a friend under life-threatening circumstances?"

The answer comes from another BPP icon, Geronimo ji Jaga: "Revolutionaries are motivated by great love for another world."

Founding Common Ground
by Blair Parsons
Texas Observer
September 16th, 2011

While Common Ground took shape the vacuum began to fill with a volatile cocktail of greed, racism, and fear. Some members of Common Ground took up arms to protect themselves and their community, knowing their work could not flourish without security. I have never brandished a weapon, but neither have I had one pointed at me. Right or wrong, Common Ground decided guns were a necessary response. Throughout this tenuous time, Common Ground’s commitment and work remained unshaken. Undaunted by constant security threats, the collective remained steadfast. Crow writes “we would not let Power deny dignity and self-determination to anyone.”

Black Flags and Radical Relief Efforts in New Orleans: An Interview with scott crow
by Stevie Peace & Kevin Van Meter
Left Eye On Books
November 13, 2011

On a personal level it was healing to write: I came back with post-traumatic stress, couldn’t function in society and felt like the ghost in the machine a lot. The writing actually helped me to relive those traumas in a different way, to really dissect them. It was almost a five-year process; I feel so much better now than I did when I started the book. This is not to say that Black Flags and Windmills is a sorrow-filled book. There are lots of beautiful stories along the way and lots of really engaging organizing that was going on. The book describes the anarchist heyday of Common Ground, when the most self-identified anarchists came; this was early September 2005 until 2008. Afterward, the organization became much more structured in a traditional nonprofit way. This is not to denigrate it—just to say that the book focuses on this initial period of “black flags” at Common Ground.

The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation
By William T. Armaline (Ph.D.) and Damian Bramlett
Political Media Review

It is no secret that the United States does not hesitate to incarcerate. While the US only represents 5% of the global population, it cages nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners-approximately 2.3 million people. Of these 2.3 million people, approximately half are African American (13% of US population). Of course, the vastly disproportionate caging and state coercion of African Americans in the US has a long and brutal history. This bloody legacy is made manifest in prisons like Angola, named for the country from which many southern plantation slaves were abducted. The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation details the history of not only Angola prison, but the broader struggle between the US police state and organizations like the Black Panthers over the rights and quality of life of African Americans in the US...

DVD Review: The Angola 3
Abort Magazine

Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is the story of Robert King Wilkerson, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox - men who have endured solitary confinement longer than any known prisoner in the US, and who formed one of the only prison chapters of the Black Panthers. Inside the notorious Angola prison - a former slave plantation where the only change since slavery is it’s classification, prisoners work under much the same conditions as the 1800’s, watched by mounted overseers with shotguns.

It is these images of a modern day plantation that hit the hardest, combined with first hand accounts of institutionalized rape and murder that keep the population in physical and psychological chains. The Angola 3’s victory is that in this environment of total oppression, they organized fellow prisoners into a movement for the right to live as human beings. Within the context of the COINTELPRO operations being carried out by the FBI in the 60’s and 70’s to silence radical voices, this achievement is nothing short of a miracle.

Through interviews with the 3, as well as original Black Panthers Geronimo Pratt, David Hilliard and others, the nature and scale of this struggle is revealed, and the down to earth humanity of all the members of the movement shines through. Although occasionally very dry in presentation - many of the interviews are on scratchy, penitentiary intercoms with only a photograph to accompany them - patience is rewarded with gems of wisdom and the indomitable spirit of true freedom fighters.

For those that don’t know, this film is an excellent introduction to one of the greatest social movements of the 20th century - The Black Panther party, an organization that had the American power structure shaking in it’s goose-stepping boots for over a decade until it was mercilessly crushed and nearly destoyed, it’s leaders assasinated and imprisoned, its true political aims obscured. Time to watch Huey P’s speeches on YouTube again kids.

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Author Portfolio

South End Press and Joy James, eds. contributor to What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation. Cambridge: South End Press, 2007.