This one goes to eleven! We are pleased to inaugurate the second series of Rolling Thunder, our anarchist journal of dangerous living, with a new issue full of adventure and analysis. Whether you’re a committed revolutionary looking for the latest strategic reflections from the front lines, or you simply enjoy the gripping tales of suspense and subversion, you can’t get this stuff anywhere else.

The issue opens with an epic account of prisoner resistance from anarchist Sean Swain, who met the dreaded Extraction Team of Mansfield Correctional Institution in open battle and lived to tell. Our central feature, “After the Crest,” analyzes the opportunities and risks in the waning phase of social movements, including case studies of Occupy Oakland and the 2012 student strike in Québec. We also present a narrative direct from the tear gas in Taksim Square, the epicenter of the uprising that rocked Turkey in June 2013.

Another feature tackles gentrification, recounting one neighborhood’s fierce struggle against development from multiple perspectives to pose questions about what we can hope to accomplish in such fights. Elsewhere, in a fascinating interview, a longtime Israeli anarchist reviews the history of anarchism in his region, from the Kibbutzim through punk and the animal rights movement to Anarchists Against the Wall, closing with some straight talk about nonviolence rhetoric in the Palestinian resistance.

In the theory department, we offer devastating critiques of ally politics and of the ideology coded into digital technology. The issue concludes with a discussion of Eternity by the Stars, the book by the notorious insurrectionist jailbird Auguste Blanqui that became so influential on Nietzsche, Borges, and Walter Benjamin. Francophiles and other bookish types will also enjoy some scathing gossip about Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire.

All this, plus the regular features, gorgeous artwork, and 16 pages in full color. At 128 pages, this is our thickest issue yet. Order your copy here, or better yet, subscribe, starting with this issue.

This issue of RT boasts a new format, implementing some of the ideas behind our redesign of Recipes for Disaster, as well as production changes lowering costs without sacrificing print quality, towards meeting our goal of making the magazine financially sustainable: we’ve reduced the size to 7” x 10” and added more pages, discarded the spot-gloss-on-top-of-matte-lamination treatment on the cover, and switched to a slightly thicker, but also lighter, 100% post-consumer recycled paper stock.

Using a smaller, taller-proportioned page, we were able to ditch most of the whitespace that had previously been necessary to make the larger pages more palatable and less intimidating. Needing less whitespace allowed us to more efficiently use the new, smaller space we were working with to create a denser but still visually comfortable reading experience. At the same time, the new page size was still large enough to maintain the grandeur of a full-page photo or the dynamism of a blown-out two-page spread.

And the results are in: RT#11 has the same number of words as the longest previous RT (#10 at 66,000 words) and even more photos and illustrations (97 in RT#11 vs 92 RT#10), while also using less paper and weighing 1.6 ounces less, a 15% reduction. That adds up to a 10% reduction in cost per issue while not reducing the amount of content, and though we’ll still be in the red with this issue, we’ll certainly be less in the red. Thank you, and we hope y’all enjoy it.

Eternal Subscription Mailing

All you subscribers should have your copies in hand by now—we hope you enjoyed experiencing the new format without being spoiled by pixely photos on the internet (a rare thing these days). Thanks again for subscribing, y’all make RT possible!