Local author and cooperative activist Bobby Sullivan will read from and discuss his debut, Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative Economics. Join him in conversation with Orus Barker, a local farmer, activist, and former religious studies professor at the University of Oxford in Lagos, Nigeria.

Revolutionary Threads is an American Rasta’s retelling of episodes in American history with an anti-colonial thrust and a view toward charting a brighter future. Author Bobby Sullivan, who lives in Asheville with his family, grew up in the Washington, DC, punk scene, fueled by Rasta rockers Bad Brains and the foundational Minor Threat. His most notable band continues to be Soulside (of which he is the singer), which had multiple releases on Dischord Records. Along the way, Sullivan became an activist, working with Food Not Bombs, the Anarchist Black Cross political prisoner support network, and a Rasta prison ministry. He currently manages The French Broad Food Co-op and sits on the board of the National Co+op Grocers.

At this event, Sullivan will read from and discuss his debut work, which ties together various subjects while returning each time to the culture of Rastafari, social justice movements, and cooperative economics. Sullivan aims to dispel the oversimplification of our perceptions of Rastafari, as well as other cultures, in the age of the Internet, where the loudest voices are often the most extreme and divisive. Revolutionary Threads hopes to serve as a unifying agent for our all-too-connected global village, and for the resistance to the consolidation of global capital and all its excesses.