Rise Up or Die!

Call it “bad manners,” but the militants of Rise Up or Die!—Brazil's radical Black liberation movement—refuse to abide by the rules of a society that is killing Black people. Confronting centuries of hyper-exploitation and dehumanization of Black people in Brazil, Rise Up or Die! invented a new political vocabulary for Black self-determination, introduced sexual health and food justice initiatives, attracted militants and activists from the most marginalized spaces of one of the largest Black nations in the world, and founded an autonomous Pan-Africanist school as part of their broader struggle for collective liberation. As the activists of Rise Up or Die! say, “Creative hatred is what makes you build new things,” and indeed they have relentlessly pursued invention as the necessary alternative to the nation’s genocidal model of racial democracy. Known in Brazil as Reaja ou Será Morto/Reaja ou Será Morta, this is the story of their organization, in their own words, as they resist a culture that simply hates Black people.