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Book Reading: Anti-Hero: Memories of a Black Bloc Anarchist by Aaron Lozier

Category: Literary

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Please join local author A.J. Lozier for a reading and signing of his newly released book, "Anti-Hero: Memories of a Black Bloc Anarchist." Anti-Hero documents Lozier's journey into, and out of, the movement that foreshadowed the modern-day “Antifa.” Between 1999-2005, as the nation convulsed with uncertainty over a contested election and the Sept. 11 attacks, A.J. Lozier attended and helped organize protests across the United States, as an active participant in the anarchist "black bloc," predecessor to the modern-day "Antifa." He was charged, tackled, swung at, shot at with rubber bullets, punched and, once, arrested. He did his fair share of shoving too, all in the name of Anarchy, which he believed to be the only hope for a more peaceful and equitable society, in which capitalism was a thing of the past. This is no "behind the mask" exposé, but nor is it a work of unselfconscious propaganda. It is first and foremost a story, one that charts how a pure-intentioned desire for peace and justice morphed into a mechanism for justifying any behavior. It is a story that foreshadows the Antifa we see today.