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.
Essays and Creative Non-Fiction
Wu Wei or What If Our Movements Were Like Water
It has been so long since I sat down and wrote something for this website. My world has been so consumed with work, with relationships and self-examination that I lost the habit of writing here. In some ways, not needing to have my thoughts be profound enough to be shared with the world was a … Continue reading Wu Wei or What If Our Movements Were Like Water
Black Men Are Only Good When We Are Exceptional…Or Dead.
Black Women's Silence Has Never Gotten Us Free, Love. All of this talk about Jay-Z has, not surprisingly, made me feel some kind of way. I remember getting a call from my friend a few months ago, a Black woman, who lived in the New York at the time. She had been on my … Continue reading Black Men Are Only Good When We Are Exceptional…Or Dead.
The Enlightened Retreat: U.S Social Movements from 2018-2025
*this is the second piece of speculation political fiction written with just a hint of satire written in the form of a Wikipedia article form the future. You can see the first piece here. The purpose is imagine what all this craziness from the white house might be building to while envision how peace might … Continue reading The Enlightened Retreat: U.S Social Movements from 2018-2025
Shadowboxing My Pain
Our shadows are powerful things. Our shadows can guide our actions if we allow ourselves to chase them or we can reckon with them. Our shadows can be reminders of what we are afraid to feel and what we need to forgive ourselves for in order to stretch and grow. As my friend Rebecca taught … Continue reading Shadowboxing My Pain
On Autonomy: Building Transformative Engines for [R]Evolution pt 3
The goal of DAT autonomy is to name this dynamic and increase the amount and variety of resources that are held in common while also increasing accessibility to the commons. What if artist allowed their stencils and graphics to used by anyone under creative commons? What if one group decided its role was to create an online curriculum for people who are eager to get involved to start educating themselves? We would we a larger pool of activated folks for other groups to organize. Similarly one group could offer healing to the ecosystem of organizers so that the work is sustainable. One group might launch social events that keep the spirit up while also building relationships between different organizers and acculturating new organizers into the politics and revolutionary social relationships of the movement. I think most local movements could be supported by a logistics team who helps coordinate food, locations, equipment and volunteers for events.
If we can bring all of these different activities and roles together we can free each collective or organization from belief that they have to do everything. We can also open up the movement to variety of different roles and move away from the current hierarchy of privileging activism and organizing over support roles, fundraising, culture building, childcare, logistics, education, healing etc. It would also bring all the work that makes “movement moments” possible into the foreground. This would in turn help in removing the mystique of organizing that causes some people to defer to visible leaders and set them on pedestal forgetting that they are all too human.
With autonomous spaces, we have the potential of creating a shared vision at the intersection of so many movements that no capitalist state solution could possibly satisfy the people fervor for change. This to me, is the radical possibility of DAT autonomy and why we should treat it as much as an end in and of itself as means to liberation. In short, our counter hegemony [alternative status quo] must use bits of the old world as protection until it is strong enough to rival aspects of the state. We will gain legitimacy not only by challenging the legitimacy of Empire in dramatic moments but also by providing for our broader communities in times of crises. Like the Brazilian slaves who created Capoeira, we might need to make ourselves ungovernable while hiding in public and preparing for the final escalation in tactics which may or may not mean self-defense.
Reflections on Korryn Gaines
We must ask ourselves, in what ways does our relative silence assert consensus with the state over what bodies and lives are disposable? Why are we still holding on to the hope that there is enough justice in this system for it to absolve itself of the blood of the most marginalized among us? Why are we so hesitant to admit that we are in a deadly struggle for the very soul of humanity in which the slow, obscured genocide of Black people by the state is merely one devastating front.
A Brief Defense of Identity Politics and Intersectionality
“Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the interest and perspectives of groups with which people identify. Identity politics includes the ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through loosely correlated social organizations. Examples include social organizations based on race, class, religion, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, ideology, nationality, … Continue reading A Brief Defense of Identity Politics and Intersectionality
What Black Queer Feminism Has Taught Me: Intersectionality, Nurturance Culture and Transformative Relationships
To get free we need more power, not less. We need more leaders not enfeebled followers.
This idea that white people must give up their power is based on a white middle class and masculine limiting belief in scarcity. It presumes that either power is inherently bad [or at least bad in white people’s hands] or that it is a zero sum game. Intersectional transformative relationships teach us that power works in abundance. Just as standing in solidarity with my Black Trans siblings requires me to stand in my own transformative non-binary masculine power, not abdicate it, so too must non-Black people stand in their own transformative power. Yet in order for them to do it, they must first discover it and re-imagine their identities is a way that accepts my existence and my inherent humanity.
Preliminary Observations on the Analysis of the Movement
As proponents of identity politics we readily admit that often times identity politics adherents dismiss individuals based on the groups they are perceived to be a part of. We see this as a counterproductive strategy that is often the result of unprocessed trauma or immature political awareness. We do not believe that identities determine the inherent worth of people nor the validity of their ideas. Likewise, we reject the identity determinism present in much of current Marxism that has a pre-occupation with the proletariat as the only “legitimate” revolutionary class.
The Well Examined Life 