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“Penned by #TransRightsReadathon founder Sim Kern! In an alternate 2020, in which Al Gore once won the presidency and Democrats have held court for 20 years…we still live in an economically and racially unjust, imperialist, carceral state (now with more greenwashing!), and teacher and punk band guitarist Maddie Ryan finds herself and her community forever changed when she stands against the building of a new hyperway through the Black 8th Ward she’s inadvertently helped gentrify and gets swept up in a revolution. Achingly real, bitterly funny, and deeply moving, The Free People’s Village is a commentary, both compassionate and cutting, on the woke white activist’s journey and, above all, a full-throated ode to resistance and the found family that fuels it. ”
— Megan • Underground Books
Summary
In an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S. cities into lush paradises (for wealthy, white neighborhoods, at least), and the Bureau of Carbon Regulation levies carbon taxes on every financial transaction.
Maddie Ryan is a 24-year-old English teacher at a predominantly Black high school in Houston. Teaching is just a job for her; it pays the bills, and she lives for band practices with her queer punk band, Bunny Bloodlust.
When Maddie learns that the neighborhood where she teaches and her band plays is to be sacrificed for a new electromagnetic hyperway out to the suburbs, she joins a Black-led organizing movement fighting for the neighborhood. At first, she’s only focused on keeping
her band together and getting closer to the band’s guitarist (and her crush) Red.
But working with Save the Eighth forces Maddie to reckon with the harm she has already done to the neighborhood—both as a resident of the gentrifying Lab and as a white teacher in a predominantly Black school.
When police respond to their protests with violence, the Lab becomes the epicenter of “The Free People’s Village”—an occupation that promises to be the birthplace of an anti-capitalist revolution.
In The Free People’s Village, Sim Kern dares to ask the question that many socialjustice-minded individuals have long grappled with: When justice comes knocking, will you be brave enough to answer?