Author ● Speaker ● Organizer
A VISION
“I envision a world where we, as individuals and communities, are free to determine our own futures beyond capitalism . Where we can create shared power from below without exploitation or oppression and where collective liberation and sustainability are more than just desires. ”
Get In Touch
CONTACT
Personal or Media inquires: wordsfirst@gmail.com
Twitter: @scott_crow
Facebook: wordsfirst
BOOKING
For Presentations, Workshops or Film Screening Inquiries:
Jared Paul with Strength Of Doves Booking
Jared@strengthofdoves.com 401.345.7705
About scott
scott crow is an international speaker, author and story teller who is proudly from a working class background . He has engaged his varied life as a coop business co-owner, political organizer, educator and strategist, activist, filmmaker, dad and musician. For over two decades he has focused on diverse socio-political issues and the explorations of creating and exercising counter-power to capitalism, Power and unsustainable civilization.
“Crow is an anarchist, veteran organizer and an aficionado of civil disobedience”
His first book was the critically acclaimed Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective, which was named as NPR's 'Top Summer Reads 2015' and Progressive Magazine's 'Top Books 2011'. Black Flags and Windmills has been translated into Spanish and Russian editions. crow is also the author and editor of two book anthologies Setting Sights: Histories and Reflection on Community Armed Self Defense and Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams: A scott crow Reader. He contributed to the seminal books Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab, Witness To Betrayal, Black Bloc Papers and What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation and he was a featured subject in the books The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement by David Naguib Pellow, and Surveillance in America: Critical Analysis of the FBI, 1920 to the Present by Ivan Greenberg. scott's essays have also appeared widely within international radical publications.
“crow is a passionate anarchist community organizer behind a host of organizations”
Beginning in the mid 1990s scott co-founded a number of diverse projects, businesses and organizations rooted in cooperative power sharing models including the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist inspired organization in modern US history, that formed after Hurricane Katrina, Treasure City Thrift, an anarchist worker coop, Red Square, an art coop, Century Modern, an antique coop and UPROAR, a community based organization, Dirty South Earth First!, Radical Encuentro Camp, . Additionally he worked for a number of national environmental, animal rights and social justice organizations creating and implementing direct actions, protests and mobilizations including Greenpeace, A.C.O.R.N., Rainforest Action Network, Ecology Action of Texas, Ruckus Society and P.E.T.A. as well as many grassroots regional and national volunteer groups on campaigns and education efforts including Earth First!, Anti Racist Action, Houston Global Awareness, Industrial Workers of the World, and Animal Liberation of Texas and the seminal short lived networks Continental Direct Action Network, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, and Mobilization For Global Justice.
“crow is part of Austin’s activists that devote much of their lives working to find grassroots solutions to community problems ”
During the late 80's and early 90's scott was a singer in the underground and influential political industrial dance bands Lesson Seven and Audio Assault. Lesson Seven had a minor 12" dance club hit 'Radiation' on Oak Lawn Records that charted on College Music Journal and US and European dance club lists. Their song 'Arise' was produced by Kurt Harland of Information Society. Lesson Seven toured with Skinny Puppy on their 1988 VIVI Sect VI tour, and with Nine Inch Nails in 1990 and 1991 on their Hate tours as well as performed with Ministry, Swans, Clan of Xymox, Laibach, Meat Beat Manifesto, Weathermen, Front Line Assembly, Revolting Cocks, Psychic TV, Die Warzau, Information Society, Consolidated and many other seminal industrial and electronic bands. Audio Assault had tracks produced by MC 900 ft. Jesus. Both bands appeared on the Dallas radio station KDGE's Tales From the Edge compilations.
His public speaking has brought him to over 200 universities, public forums,community centers and conferences and to international media attention, as commentator and subject. scott has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, Der Spiegel, CNN, RT News, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Democracy Now! and VICE as well as the documentary films Informant, Better this World and the Danish production Welcome To New Orleans. In 2004 he co-produced, with his partner Ann Harkness, a documentary film Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation (PM Press).
From the late 1990s until at least 2010, scott was under intense investigation and surveillance for his political activity by the FBI in nine states related to animal rights and radical environmental issues. Labeled as an alleged "domestic terrorist" for political activities, no charges were brought. In 2011 his case became international front page news, becoming a precursor to the wider unveiling of the US governments spying on political activists and citizens which was later revealed in 2013.
“...crow is a puppet master involved in direct action. He goes to events to instigate trouble; he’s the one who will throw throw rocks as opposed opposed to the person who hold the poster.”
Today he works with the anarchist collective PR firm Agency on media issues and is completing his forthcoming books Paper Tigers: Memoir of a Target under the War on Terror, Setting Sights: Histories, Praxis, and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Reliance, Insurgent Utopias, and Towards Politics and Engagements of Possibilities. When not a home in Austin, Texas he can be found on the road speaking.