"A Story in Eight Objects: A Study of the Material Culture of the 2020 Uprisings" , How We Stay Free.
(February 2022).
Underscoring ‘how we remember’ historical events, in particular the uprisings, I held a call for submissions of objects related to those events that occurred following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. I asked for descriptions of the objects, their stories, their meaning for the contributor, etc. There is a spreadsheet with nearly 30 contributions. I narrowed it down to 8 in the chapter to focus the reflection on specifically on the end of May and first days of June, with an assortment I felt represented a wide range of participation. Collectives, organizations, individuals both named and anonymous, it’s intergenerational, it’s happening during a pandemic, etc. I supplemented these findings and contributor’s stories with my own observations where I thought they fit, and included supplementary research to build context. Thinking about “how or why we remember the uprisings”, I looked to community archaeology as a method which we can analyze a situation in a movement, then apply that data, and subsequent reflections on the data, to future movement work.