The seventh issue of Rolling Thunder is back from the presses—a mere five months after the previous issue, which is a record for us! We lost a lot of sleep working on this one; it’s definitely our best effort yet. We’ll also be losing money on it, but there was no way around it—so much happened in the second half of 2008 that we had to put off all our other content and add an extra 8 pages to cover it all.

Rolling Thunder #7 examines the events of those busy months in careful detail. Anarchists coordinated mass mobilizations against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, provoking major clashes at the latter; the global economy collapsed, and radicals are still scrambling to find appropriate responses; Greece experienced an anarchist-organized insurrection in response to a police murder; and at the beginning of 2009, Oakland, California was shaken by similar unrest in response to a similar killing. Our coverage pushes beyond the surface of events to offer insight into the organizing structures and historical background, fleshing out timelines and analyses with personal narratives and cutting-edge cartography, and drawing on this material to pose questions about long-term strategy. In addition to all this, the issue includes an exploration of the relationship between the punk subculture and the anarchist movement, complemented by interviews with bands and collectives from beyond the white punk ghetto, and ends with a primer on small-town organizing using Winona, Minnesota as a case study. No advertisements or pleas for funding; an unprecedented 24 pages in full color; 114 pages, altogether.