Thus Anarchism as the praxis of making and offering belonging against the grain of empire is a Liberation Logic aligned lens for looking at and interacting with the world. Anarchism focuses on the relational, understanding that the individual and the collective co-create each other. Anarchism understands passion of the heart and yearning for what Audre Lorde called the erotic- that deeply felt feeling of excellence. It understands the analytical understanding of the inherent inhumane limitations of the logic of capital, the state and all social hierarchies of worth. Anarchism, perhaps more than most political ideologies, understand the need for dramatic change of revolution and the slower deeper change of evolution.
Introducing the Liberation Lens Series
Instead we need a way of navigating this current moment in ways that replace strategies of extraction with strategies of collaboration. This does not mean having a purity politics where we do nothing unless it is without any possible negatives. It means that when we move we hold ourselves responsible for working with people impacted by our solutions to improve them rather than saying they must bear those impacts for the “greater good.” We do not ignore those who say, for instance, that Biden-Harris policies do not serve them. We do not shame people for refusing to accept strategies that leave them without their needs people met. Instead we work with those who are negatively affected to create the conditions in which we could all get our needs met with dignity. Liberation Logic asks us “what steps can we take now to make multiple, better worlds possible?”
The 7 Ways November Can Go
This post is not for people who are organizing right now. This post is for people who are hoping that November will end this nightmare. I need folks to start being prepared now that November will almost certainly make this nightmare much worse at least in the immediate term. Long term, it is unlikely that things will get too much better any time soon no matter what happens. This doesn't mean there is not hope only that we need start building that better future now.
Making Sense of This Moment: What Actually Happened pt 2.1
"Why the Fuck Did You Just Take Me Through A History of Europe Aaron!" This is the question I imagine my sister asking when she finally has time to read this article. To which I will answer if Washington D.C was Paris in 1871 my sister would be Louise Michel. As M4BL is planning a massive protest in D.C on June 19th so too are group of leftist organizations planning something a bit more disruptive. We have a populist leader who thinks he is a Monarch, potentially being manipulated by foreign interests during a pandemic that was led to shortages. Inequality is higher than its been since the guilded age. This is the perfect moment for shit to pop off. And when it does, we will take whatever ideas are lying around and try to hobble them into some solution for the coming crisis.
Making Sense of This Moment: What Actually Happened pt1
So, in general I would say that protests have been massive with some cities having intense protests that shut them down and rocked whole regions but most have been normal protests happening in places where they don't usually happen. Though, with the rabid police response that typified many city's experience we could hardly describe them as "peaceful." As intense of the Uprising in Minneapolis is I do think, though I can't believe I'm saying this, it is dwarf by the massive overreaction of the cops before and after. Many journalist are pointing out that the past two weeks could be best described as a police riot.
Supporting Community Leaders in Louisville
To put it bluntly, we need trusted voices who always keep an eye towards revolution while being willing to meet young people where they are at.
Don’t Work To Save The Master’s House
Because the truth is, there is no going back to before and we should be thankful for that. Whether the path forward is full of destruction and devastation or the ashes of the old system become the fertilizer for a new and better world for Black people rests on whether we respond to what the youth are saying with healing and humble wisdom or condemnation and condescension.
Finding Balance Vs. Metabolizing the Toxins of Empire
So this is my question: What rituals exists for communities to metabolize the toxins that arise when confronting empire and what material conditions support and enable those rituals? How can we normalize those rituals? How can bring those material and social conditions to scale so that whole movements can be built by people with conditions to metabolize empire?
So it begins…
I've really held in my heart the quote form Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs in her short story "Evidence" of "life isn't easy but its life all the time..." That for me, sums up this new path that I am on. It is part of rejecting the idea of work. The idea that there is some meaningful separation between the reproductive work of keeping myself alive and healthy, the subsistence work of cooking and cleaning, the "productive work" out in the world and my leisure time.
Supporting My Next Steps
We are now living in an era of multiple apocalypses. For those of us who are literally post-apocalyptic people, people whose ancestors lived through the apocalypse of colonization, genocide, we know that there will be an after. Yet our response to the now, to the current gut- wrenching reality of worlds ending, shapes that after. … Continue reading Supporting My Next Steps
The Well Examined Life 