D1. Anarchism

Agency speaks with the creators of The Elements of Mutual Aid, a new documentary series. 

The Elements of Mutual Aid is an exciting new docuseries project that received a Jen Angel Anarchist Media Grant from Agency and the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 2023. With the project recently having wrapped up the production stage, we were excited to connect with co-directors, Payton and Leah, to learn more about their inspiration, process, and plans for the upcoming release in 2026. Make sure to follow their work for updates on online availability and screenings in your area – website, instagram, kolektiva, kolektiva.media, youtube.

Agency: What inspired you to produce a 4-part docuseries about mutual aid, and what has the production process looked like?

Elements: The earliest ideas for the film began in 2018 when we facilitated the cross-country Mutual Aid Disaster Relief workshop tour. We got to travel with a group of comrades doing popular education and learning about community disaster responses. This experience deepened our understanding of mutual aid and revealed a lack of accessible multimedia resources on the topic.

With Leah’s journalism background and Payton’s experience in movement media, we felt compelled to create a project that would push the conversation about mutual aid to a deeper level. After considering a single film or several shorts, we decided on a four-part series. This format allowed us to explore different aspects of mutual aid through feature-length episodes, with the natural elements being a powerful container to help translate big themes.

We initially planned to start shooting in 2020, but the pandemic changed our plans. We stayed home, worked in our local mutual aid network, and refined the film’s concept. In 2022, we hit the road in our camper van and wrapped up shooting this year. Along the way, we’ve taken on an animator, a composer, an impact producer, and 18 groups “in association” with the film—including Agency!

Each chapter features 3-4 unique groups and a cast of individual narrators who tie everything together. We connected with most groups through personal relationships or social media, while others came by recommendation. Unfortunately, we couldn’t interview everyone we wanted, and some groups had to drop out. There are gaps in the narrative, as we couldn’t depict every type of mutual aid project from every perspective. However, as a two-person crew, we tried to include as many unique voices as possible.

Agency: You’ve mentioned filming in the “so-called United States,” Tijuana, and Puerto Rico, and even converting a van to contribute personal money to the project. How did this immersive lifestyle impact your understanding of mutual aid, and did it open doors to deeper connections with the communities you profiled?

Elements: It’s been important to us throughout this process to live our values as anarchists and not let film making distort the way we engage with people and their communities. Wherever we could, we spent time getting to know groups by breaking bread or getting our hands dirty alongside them before taking the cameras out. We usually spoke with groups for weeks or months ahead of shooting and tried to make sure that the groups themselves were also living in the values and not just defaulting to the most powerful voices.

When it was time to film, trust was everything. We didn’t want to make people feel like “subjects.” It’s been a big learning process and one that’s opened up some beautiful relationships that will long outlast this project. We’re not just making a film—we’re building family in the struggle.

Agency: Each episode of Elements of Mutual Aid is themed around one of the four elements—fire, earth, water, and air. How do these elements reflect the focus of each episode? What do you hope viewers will take away from each elemental theme?

Elements: The film opens with Fire where we talk about the history and context of the term. We describe its roots in Black and Indigenous communities, but also as a tactic that police and fascists use, too. We’re not the only people that mobilize the term, and it’s important to understand what we mean when we talk about it as anti-authoritarians. We use the phrase “insurrectionary mutual aid” to explicitly describe what we’re talking about—as the Panthers said, “survival pending revolution.”

Earth showcases how people are building infrastructure projects and takes a look at how communities can scale up across large regions to meet each other’s needs. Water goes deep into the wellspring of healing and care work that is required in order to achieve liberation. And Air wraps everything up by offering different perspectives on decision-making, formality, and permanence.

We believe the elements will help viewers connect with these ideas on a more intimate and spiritual level. After watching the full series, we hope that people feel more empowered to take part in mutual aid where they live in ways that are antagonistic toward the state—and not limited in their imagination to build toward liberation.

Agency: Were there specific instances during filming where the resilience or ingenuity of a mutual aid effort offered a particularly powerful counter-narrative?

Elements: In Los Angeles, a group called Reclaiming Our Homes has been locked in a fierce battle against the government and housing authorities since 2020. Inspired by Moms For Housing in Oakland, they used the model of occupying vacant homes to not only secure housing, but make a larger political condemnation of the real estate industry. The Reclaimers coordinated and seized 13 homes that had been sitting empty for decades after the California Transit Authority seized them in a failed highway expansion project. Most of the Reclaimers are elders and single mothers. With their extensive network, they reconnected water lines, set up generators, made repairs, furnished the houses, and organized rotating cop watches to keep them safe. They’ve been supported by dozens of community groups, including the El Sereno Community Land Trust, which has provided a roadmap for cooperative land stewardship and housing as a human right.

We followed them for a couple of weeks and captured powerful testimonies and moments of bravery. One Reclaimer, Benito Flores, tragically passed this year while defending his home. He was issued an eviction order and chose to stand his ground by erecting a tree sit on his property, from which he fell and died. Benito was killed by the callousness of the state, and his fire lives on in us as we continue his fight for dignity.

Agency: How do you think mutual aid can play a role in challenging the growing threats posed by authoritarian states that we are seeing in many parts of the world?

Elements: All states are authoritarian. Some have more power to use violence, but all nation-states are designed to have a monopoly of power to secure their borders, take natural resources, establish rule of law, and force the working class to keep everything afloat. Liberatory mutual aid is the opposite of the state mentality. Where the state tries to create a centralized power above, our understanding of mutual aid leads us to the conclusion that all states must be abolished and replaced by real people power—with decentralized networks of collective governance.

Mutual aid isn’t just about handing out food, medicine, or clothes to “those less fortunate.” It’s about building dual power—survival and community defense on our own terms as we fight to abolish the state. If we can learn to distribute resources at larger scales in ways that don’t rely on coercive labor relationships, are accessible, and decolonial, we can follow in the footsteps of others who have broken from the state like our fighting comrades in Rojava, Chiapas, and elsewhere.

Agency: Elements of Mutual Aid received a Jen Angel Anarchist Media Grant in 2023. How important have grassroots fundraising efforts been for this project, and what would you recommend to others looking to fund radical media projects?

Elements: We did! And we’re very grateful to be connected to Jen’s legacy and spirit. Grassroots fundraising is the only way this docuseries has been possible. The Jen Angel Grant is the only one we’ve ever been awarded since our material and distribution model are too extreme for most granters, which makes this grant all the more precious. Besides the grant, we’ve mostly relied on t-shirt sales and our relationships worldwide to make this possible. We reached out to people we knew, and people we’re inspired by, to establish our list of “in association” partners. We invited each partner to join us in creating this film by contributing things like promo, feedback, merch, connections, or cash. Having a cast of powerful allies who each contribute a little makes the process a lot more powerful.

We also took the time to bust our asses and hustled to self finance much of our work. We’d recommend anyone interested in doing a project like this to not just expect that money will come because you’re on the righteous path, but to get creative and hustle to make it happen—even if that means taking a less ambitious approach to the work. Limitations can actually lead to more creative solutions.

Agency: What are your plans for distributing and screening the docuseries? How can people get involved?

Elements: From the jump, we always agreed that the film would never be sold, we’d never get it trapped in the festival circuit, and we’d never stream it on a capitalist platform. There’s a growing number of awesome streaming sites that share some of our values like Cinema Politica, MeansTV, New Day Films, and Waterbear. But, we’ve ultimately decided to just throw it up on YouTube.

That decision ended up giving us a lot more freedom since we’re not held to the same production standards regarding “fair use” of content. News clips for instance will run upwards of $500 a piece, which we obviously could not afford. So, when we were planning to stream it, we were severely limited by the content we could legally rip from across the internet. Since deciding to demonetize it on YouTube, we’re cutting footage from all over with far less concern. As a backup, we’ll also host it on platforms like PeerTube, Archive.org, and PirateBay with less fear of it being deplatformed. Our goal is for the film to be available for free as fast and accessibly as possible.

Besides digital distribution, we’ll also be touring throughout 2026 taking the film back to many of the places it was shot in and a handful of other communities excited to see it. We’re excited to host events where people can talk and engage with these ideas, and sharpen our collective understanding. We need support with booking and tour management as well as social media. If you feel excited to help us make a powerful impact with the film, please send us an email.

Agency: Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Elements: We keep joking that we’re gonna get a bunch of haters after release because the film doesn’t speak on certain subjects or platform certain expert opinions. But, we’re very confident in what we’ve produced and agree that it is not anywhere near as comprehensive as the moment demands. But, a single film couldn’t possibly be. So, we encourage everyone with an idea and a spirit of curiosity to keep pushing the conversation forward with us. We desperately need more long-form media, like Sub.Media’s InterRebellium series, that examines our situation and maps out pathways forward.

Long-running anarchist radio show and podcast The Final Straw, speaks on international anarchist prisoner solidarity efforts. 

This week, we’re sharing three segments. First up, you’ll hear Yara speaking about Solidarity International, a new initiative to support prisoner support and anti-repression work beyond borders initiated by various anarchist and anti-authoritarian groups networked together, including the International Anarchist Defence Fund and various anarchist black cross groups across the world. Yara’s voice has been re-recorded for anonymity. [ 00:02:19 – 00:29:02 ]

• SolInt Transcript
• SolInt PDF (Unimposed)
• SolInt Zine (Imposed PDF)

We’re releasing this in the run up to the 2025 Week of Solidarity With Anarchist Prisoners (or WOSWOP), August 23-30th, in which people are invited to gather, connect and take action against borders and against prison walls. You can find more about Solidarity International at their website, Solidarity.International, find them on their mastodon, bluesky, telegram or instagram accounts, and see the 2025 WOSWOP call for solidarity on that site or linked in our show notes. We read the statement here as well. [ 00:29:21 – 00:32:37 ]

Then, you’ll hear 2 segments from recent episodes of B(A)D News, a monthly podcast in English from the international A-Radio Network. More audios like these, plus archives, can be found at A-Radio-Network.Org

• The first of these is from the Anarchist Assembly of Biobío near so-called Concepción, Chile from the June 2025 episode of B(A)D News, featuring a chat with the art collective Mesa 8, where they discussed memory, art, and the military dictatorship that began in 1973. [ 00:33:18 – 00:38:23 ]
• Following this, Ausbruch from Freiburg in the German territory spoke with the Red Aid, “der Rote Hilfe” about their work and current challenges from it’s founding over 100 years ago by the German Communist Party (KPD) into it’s current iteration. This segment can be found in our July 2025 episode of B(A)D News. [ 00:39:12 – 00:53:34 ]

Finally, you’ll hear a segment from Sean Swain… [ 00:53:36 – 01:01:50 ]

Some Materials Related To Mentioned Cases:

• Roman Shvedov, fallen comrade
• Antifa OST & Budapest Complex including Maya who just ended a hungerstrike (TFSR ep)
• Moscow ABC and Solidarity Zone supporting Russian dissidents
• Marianna, Dmitra plus their fallen comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, of the so-called Ampelokipoi case in Athens (TFSR ep)
• Women Prisoners of Iran facing death: Sharifeh Mohammadi, Pakhshan Azizi, Verisheh Moradi and Nassim Simiyari
• Stop Cop City 61 RICO defendants

Image via: Indybay.org

The Dugout speaks with former anarchist political prisoner Eric King. 

In this raw, reflective conversation, former political prisoner and anarchist Eric King shares the emotional depth of his journey—through solitary confinement, court battles, and spiritual struggle—to the slow and ongoing work of healing. From tattooing as therapy to fighting patriarchal power in prisons and families, Eric explores how trauma, solidarity, and resistance intersect. We discuss paralegal activism, building an abolitionist legal strategy, the challenges of unity across tactical lines, and the danger of romanticizing suffering.

Whether it’s organizing with inside comrades, challenging the state through lawsuits, or building care-based relationships, this is a vital portrait of survival and struggle in the belly of the beast.

Support anarchist in DFW Texas – Fundraiser and updates

Bread and Roses Law – breadandroseslaw.org/

Eric King instagram.com/supportericking

Chapters 1.18

01:18 What was a young Eric like

03:15 What is you healing journey been like? with a focus on your spiritual health both incarcerated and now on the outs?

04:52 “I am hurting, some one is doing this to me and I don’t deserve this… this is not a choice im making to suffer”

06:52 “getting free had the same disappointment, expectation let down that going in did.”

07:28 Tattooing as apart of the healing journey

08:56 Role of world building

12:52 – What does family mean to you

14:27 Machismo in family dynamics and fighting patriarchy in a family unit

16:20 Being jaded by the world and time incarcerated

19:21 What was the support from other incarcerated folks like during your sentence

21:54 List of People to support

22:48 What has been the importance of traveling around and engaging in critical dialogue

26:43 The TEA pm press book management and Sean Swainn Using the courts for patriarchy and control

37:68 – How are you seeing the carceral state expand under trump and people response to it

41:00 How does organizing by and with incarcerated comrades effect this conversation

42:31 Tactics for change and the sacrifice of the incarcerated bodies with tactical rigidity

43:53 How are we doing on a united front what are some steps you feel can be taken

45:20 How do militants find unity in above and bellow tactics and even strategies

49:14 Eric King’s paralegal work at Bread & Roses

51:15 What other books, people, collectives should people be keeping an eye on?

54:35 What power is there to build as anarchist in the legal arena?

57:30 Fighting to decrease suffering of being incarcerated is not being soft on the state?

59:03 Eric’s Pathway to becoming a paralegal

59:54 Organizing with lawyers

1:02:53 Doing local court support and court watch

1:03:43 Final thoughts

Mentioned Media:

BOOKS 

📚Rattling The Cages Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners – https://bookshop.org/a/109212/9781849355216

📚A Clean Hell by Eric King – https://bookshop.org/a/109212/9798887441597

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In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.

There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!

Arrests Following Anti-ICE Protests in Texas Lead to Targeted State Repression

From the DFW Support Committee:

On the night of July 4th, local police arrested 10 people outside the ICE Prairieland detention facility in Alvarado, Texas after a noise demonstration in solidarity with those being kidnapped and detained by the Trump administration. Since then, 6 more people have been arrested in connection with the case.  We don’t know all of the circumstances leading to the arrests. We do know that popular outrage and resistance to deportations is growing across the country. Organizers, activists, and affected communities have spent the year organizing rallies and protests outside of detention centers just like the one in Alvarado. The 16 people arrested currently face serious charges aimed not only at ruining their lives, but signaling an authoritarian criminalization of dissent and protest against ICE. Local authorities have set bail at $10 million per person.

A website for the DFW Support Committee has now been set up and an Instagram account can be followed here. The Support Committee has organized several phone and email zaps regarding the abusive treatment of the defendants, and report:

We held a call in day on Monday and Tuesday of this week to address the continual violation and denial of the Prairieland Defendants Constitutional rights. The jail is conducting unnecessary and degrading strip searches of defendants multiple times a day even though they are being held in solitary confinement away from others. The jail is blocking defendants’ communication access then lying to defendants and deflecting the blame. None of these defendants have been formally charged with any crimes yet they are being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.

Here is a statement from one of the defendants about their conditions:

“Usually awoken by yelling of my name, I am ordered to strip completely naked. Bleary eyed I am ordered to hand my shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes through the single dirty metal mail slot that passes all of my food, books, trash, broom, toilet plunger. I am ordered to hold my mouth open with my fingers. I am ordered to lift and move my genitals with my hands. Turn around, squat and cough three times, make sure it’s forceful and loud.

Then I quickly dress and am handcuffed and taken out of my cell.

So all of my belongings can be tossed and picked through. Leaving random piles with no declaration or explanation. I can stress and search to find out if anything is taken.

Sometimes it’s all my food. Sometimes it’s my legally protected questions and notes for my attorneys.

Sometimes it’s a random poem or doodle. Sometimes nothing is taken.

This happens at any time, at all hours, without warning. Multiple times a day. Every day. Without reason or ever finding anything like contraband.”

For more information, check out this interview from the Final Straw Radio (also available in printable and screen-reading zine format) and this zine of information.

New statement posted to legal fundraiser for those arrested at #Texas anti-ICE rally: "These criminal charges are a dangerous stunt…the framing of the case by the government should be concerning to all…glaring inconsistencies and alarmist accusations…" www.givesendgo.com/supportdfwpr…

— It's Going Down (@igd.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T19:37:40.560Z

You can donate to their legal costs here. Numerous support events are being organized, such as at Monkeywrench Books in Austin, who are hosting regular letter-writing nights, and another one is planned on August 15th in Portland.

To keep up with the case, you can check the DFW Support Committee, Fire Ant Movement Defense, and Free Des pages, or email dfwsupportcommittee@hacari.com.

Jakhi McCray Issues Statement to Supporters

— Free Jakhi (@freejakhi.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T23:59:05.427Z

In New York, Jakhi McCray has issued a powerful statement (available as a zine here) after turning himself in to the police on charges of allegedly sabotaging 10 NYPD vehicles. From his statement:

Repression is the State trying to call our bluff. It is intense because it shows itself when our potential to disrupt genocides & capital becomes too grand to ignore. Millions of people, whether they consider themselves revolutionaries or not, that participated in the encampments, the anti-ICE street rebellions, & the George Floyd Uprising have helped create a social crisis in the last five years that continues to bring in millions more & fuel the need for liberation.

The constant effort it takes the State to oppress us is not manageable. It is already breaking, with the funding & hiring disasters in federal agencies, the infighting between the Trump administration & his base, & the complete political catastrophe over Israel. The harshness of the State’s eye on our movement is nothing more than a defensive reaction. a mask from their fear. This is as much of a make or break moment for them as it is for us. If we come out of this with our solidarity & our infrastructure intact, it is a monumental win for our communities & a devastation to our enemies.

Our greatest strength is each other-that we are not just coworkers maintaining appearances for the duration of a shift. We are comrades, & with that comes a promise to love, defend, & fight for one another. Because you are my comrades, I hold this promise towards all of you. I don’t know what will happen now, but I do know that I will never stop fighting & I will do my best wherever I find myself to be.

Jakhi has now been released on house arrest following a large demonstration outside of court in solidarity. See Free Jakhi on Bluesky and on Instagram for more information as the story develops.

Anti-ICE Protester Targeted by the FBI in Portland, OR

Surveillance technology is helping criminalize resistance

— Alissa Azar (@alissaazar.bsky.social) 2025-07-31T17:50:38.865Z

In Portland, Jacob Hoopes was arrested on July 25th for alleged participation in an ICE protest, with a mass show of support being organized for his public court hearing on the 28th. Alissa Azar has published an important article looking at how surveillance technology was used to bring the charges against Hoopes, and a post here covers some similar points. Rose City Counter-Info has also published a piece on the dangers of cameras.

From the article by Alissa Azar:

On June 14, 2025, federal authorities claim that someone threw a rock at a federal agent at the Portland ICE field office, where people have been protesting for nearly two months. The feds are calling it “assault on a federal officer.” But what they’re actually doing is criminalizing defiance, a political crackdown dressed in the language of law enforcement.

The FBI affidavit reads like a dystopian surveillance report: Subject 1 (“S1”) wore a long-sleeved black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a gas mask with bright pink filters, a visible tattoo on one forearm, and a bracelet on their left wrist. For the feds, that was enough.

Agents zoomed in on footage to identify tattoos, bracelets, shirt patterns, and even a blue cloth sticking out of a back pocket. No face was needed. Just patterns, posture, and color recognition. “Full-face masks with bright pink filter cups were far less common,” the affidavit states.

That’s not probable cause. That’s pattern-matching turned into criminal evidence. Surveillance enhanced by AI and weaponized by the state.

The affidavit is loaded with language that reads more like a surveillance tech brochure than a legal document: “I enlarged the images… I noted a tattoo… a bracelet… a grid pattern… a blue cloth…”

This is biometric tracking without the biometrics. It’s algorithmic identification based on non-unique visual data: clothing, accessories, posture, movement.

This same playbook was used during the 2020 uprisings, where facial recognition, AI tools, and OSINT (open-source intelligence) were used to identify Black Lives Matter protesters, many of whom were later charged federally for property damage or “civil disorder.”

The tactics being used against anti-ICE protesters today are direct descendants of strategies deployed during the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, particularly in Portland, Oregon, which became a federal testing ground for high-tech repression. Over 100 consecutive nights of protest against police brutality and racial injustice were met not only with tear gas and rubber bullets, but also with a surge of federal agents deployed under Operation Diligent Valor.

This Trump-era initiative blurred the line between local and national policing. Launched by the Department of Homeland Security in July 2020, the operation flooded Portland with agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Marshals Service, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), and even agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). This was on top of the already active and violent presence from local police (State Troopers and the Portland Police Bureau). At the time, many operated out of unmarked vehicles and wore no identifying insignia, abducting protesters off the street without explanation or warrants. Videos showed masked officers dragging individuals blocks away from demonstrations, detaining them without charges, and releasing them hours later without any documentation. These tactics weren’t about public safety. They were about sending a message: We are watching you. We will identify you. And we can disappear you.

A report from a recent banner drop (see photo at the top of this column) in Portland, OR, posted by Alissa Azar stated:

For the last 8 weeks, we have watched violent assault after violent assault, some resulting in emergency hospitalizations and extensive surgeries, at the hands of the federal government, against the people of conscience in this city that have refused to bow down to their fascist reign.

Throughout the country, the masses rising up to defend their communities and protect their neighbors face a similar violent reality. In Los Angeles, federal prosecutors have filed a plethora of charges against protestors that they have labeled “violent,” because federal agents in military tactical gear have lied about assaults at the hands of protestors wearing hoodies and sunglasses.

An overwhelming number of these false charges have later gone on to be dismissed, after folks have already been dragged through a traumatic judicial system and been tormented by an authoritarian society that does *not* persume innocence before being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

For this reason, amongst many, we are fundamentally uninterested in questions of guilt or innocence in regards to our comrades facing state repression.

Since July 4th, 16 of our comrades from Dallas-Fort Worth have also faced inhumane treatment while being incarcerated, without so much as charges even being filed against them. The police are allowed to deprive these human beings of their basic “legal rights” because they know all they need to do is label people as “violent,” in order to justify their dehumanization.

Jacob Hoopes’ case marks a similar escalation by the fascist police state to squash repression here at home using similar tactics and rhetoric.

Read the full statement here.

Defend, Xóchitl, DACA Recipient Detained by ICE

A new campaign has been launched to free:

…Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a beloved community member, DACA recipient and long-time community organizer, was detained by Border Patrol on Sunday August 3, 2025 at an airport in El Paso, TX. As political repression increases across the country we must remember defending one person means defending all those facing repression!!!

Xóchitl was accosted by two Border Patrol agents around 4:00 AM MST as she was about to board a domestic flight for work. Despite presenting a valid DACA work authorization card offering proof of her protection from deportation in the U.S., Border Patrol abducted and detained her without warrant or cause.

From the crowdfunding campaign:

Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a beloved community member, DACA recipient and long-time community organizer, was detained by Border Patrol on Sunday August 3, 2025 at an airport in El Paso, TX.

Xóchitl was accosted by two Border Patrol agents around 4:00 AM MST as she was about to board a domestic flight for work. Despite presenting a valid DACA work authorization card offering proof of her protection from deportation in the U.S., Border Patrol abducted and detained her without warrant or cause.

She has been transferred to a processing facility in El Paso, and these funds will help to support her as we coordinate with her legal representation. We will share more updates soon on how to show your support and demand her immediate release.

We know that Xóchitl has made such a profound and powerful impact on so many loved friends and community members from Florida to Texas and beyond. Xotchitl has been working for over a decade for the dignity and respect of the immigrant community. She was a long-time volunteer organizer with Movimiento Cosecha and currently works supporting families in El Paso.

Now, we need to show up for her. Immigrant communities have been targeted for decades, and the Trump Administration is taking these fascist tactics to unprecedented levels.

This unexpected and cruel detainment will likely result in high legal fees alongside immeasurable emotional impact on her and her family. We are asking for support for her legal funds and post-release care and healing. Please give what you can to ensure that Xotchil has the resources needed to fight for her case, her ability to stay in the US with her family and community, and can take the time needed to recover from this traumatic experience after she is released. Thank you for your support!

Support and share the campaign here.

Political Prisoner News 

Former long-term Black Liberation prisoner Zolo Azania has launched a patreon. He writes:

On 06 February 2017, i was “FREED” (Released) from prison after 35 and a half years of captivity; more than 27 of those years were spent on Indiana’s death row. i use the word “freed” because it was beautiful people like you who supported me in my struggles and determination not to be murdered by the State or having to spend the rest of my life withering away in prison. i was (and still am) happy and grateful. Thank you for being you. But since i’ve been home i have not made or painted one picture; and since my release i have written only three (3) essays. i began to write a couple of books, one of them is my autobiography. While in prison i produced more work than that in a week. But after nearly 10 years of freedom on the outside of the cyclone fences, constantine wires and concrete walls i’ve done little of nothing but worked like a slave for someone else’s warehouses and other businesses like the railroad.

There is a popular rhythm and blues song titled, “Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay” written and sung by the late great Otis Redding. It is an emotional heartfelt song about introspection, reflection, and longing. Otis Redding used to sit quietly watching the various ships floating on the water and plowing through the waves in and out of the San Francisco Bay. He had come to a crossroads–reminiscing about his lowly humble beginnings to the meteoric rise in his life as a singer and a successful entertainer–and he put into words the feelings he felt what this picturesque metaphor must have meant to him. i, too, am at a “crossroads” in my life. And it doesn’t seem that i will be able to retire from working for the imperialists increasing their already bloated, exploitative, blood-sucking profits. i need people to support my artistic endeavors. i need support so that i may pursue my paralegal work helping people in prison, especially others facing death penalty cases. Moreover, my dilemma was compounded by the fact that on June 05, 2025 i got fired from my job at Remprex, an intermodal transportation subcontractor company.

A Curbfest event in support of political prisoners is being held in Washington DC on August 31st.

Long-term Black Liberation prisoner Kojo Bomani Sababu has made a call for people to contact FMC Butner to help him get medical care. From the Jericho Movement:

We are asking people to email, fax and call Butner FMC to inquire as to why they are not giving this serious medical situation the attention required to ascertain what exactly is causing this alarming problem. You can request to speak with his counselor. If that is not possible, please state your concern regarding this recurring medical problem. Be polite but firm in demanding that proper medical attention be provided to Kojo.

Kojo is 72 years old and has been in prison since 1975. He was originally transferred to Butner for a hip replacement, which was successful. Now we need to support our elder and ensure he gets the medical attention he needs.

You must refer to Kojo as Grailing Brown #39384-066.

Let us know what response you receive: nycjericho@gmail.com.

Email: BUX-ExecAssistant-S@bop.gov
Phone: 919-575-3900
Fax: 919-575-4801

NYC ABC have produced the latest edition of their regular political prisoner listings guide.

July 25th Marks Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners As Jesse “Tall Can” Comes Home

Today (Friday, July 25th) = The Int'l. Day of Solidarity w/ Antifa Prisoners. Proceeds from these SUPPORT ANTIFA PRISONERS shirts & hoodies (designed by former antifa prisoner) go to support our imprisoned friends & their families.Order here: bonfire.com/j25antifa#j25antifa, #freeallantifas

— Antifa International (@antifaintl.bsky.social) 2025-07-25T16:55:00.848Z

Antifa International and people across the world marked July 25th as an international day of solidarity with antifascist prisoners. Events and letter-writing nights were held in various cities, and Antifa International has posted up information on international prisoners to support, along with how to grab an amazing benefit t-shirt.

Also in some good news, antifascist prisoner Jesse “Tall Can” Cannon is now coming home! Supporters have set up a campaign to help him transition to life on the outside. They write:

Jesse WAS an antifascist political prisoner who was incarcerated for allegedly participating in militant community defense against American Guard, Proud Boys, and assorted right-wingers who descended upon the Pacific Beach are of San Diego, Kumeyaay land, for a day-long fascist rally on January 9, 2021.

Along with being an unapologetic defender of his community, TC is a nature enthusiast, father, and artist who needs our support after spending nearly two years risking his life fighting fires in so-called LA and throughout so-called California. Despite the SD DA’s best efforts to keep him caged for his convictions and his refusal to cooperate, TC has been released!

Support for our comrades inside doesn’t end when they’re out—and he needs our solidarity now more than ever as he settles back into his city, finds work, and helps raise his kid. Let’s show him some love and remind him how much he means to us. Please donate and share widely.

Venmo: pushingdownthewalls
Cashapp: $pushingdownthewalls
Include “TC” in the notes.

View more info here.

Running Down the Walls Events Announced for 2025

Running Down the Walls events are coming up soon in September! In 2024, the Anarchist Black Cross marked 25 years of the event taking place on both sides of the prison walls, writing:

2024 marks twenty-five-years in a row that political prisoners and supporters are participating in the annual event known as Running Down the Walls (RDTW), often running or walking simultaneously in many cities and prisons at once.

Running Down the Walls is a non-competitive 5K run/jog/walk/roll to raise awareness and funds for political prisoners as the primary fundraiser for the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF) Warchest Program with a portion of funds raised also supporting local groups of the organizers’ choosing.

Over the years, the event has raised *tens of thousands* of dollars and lots of awareness around the struggle to free political prisoners in the U.S. We encourage you to attend a local event or participate remotely and ask your comrades, family, and friends to sponsor you to make the positive impact of the 25th anniversary bigger than ever!

Currently, Running Down the Walls events are taking place in various cities including:

• Eugene, OR
• Los Angeles, CA
• Chicago, IL
• Bloomington, IN
• Miami, FL
• Lowell, MA

Be sure to check the upcoming events tab on IGD for future updates.

Stop Cop City and Other Ongoing Cases

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied: Ayla King's "speedy" trial postponed again

— (@fireantmovement.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T00:46:14.231Z

The Cop City RICO trials have begun in Atlanta, with Jamie Marsicano appearing before a hearing and Ayla King’s case being declared a mistrial. The state is looking to set new dates for Ayla’s trial in the fall, while the defense is arguing that the case should be dropped. A recent article from the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported:

The speedy trial of “Cop City” racketeering defendant Ayla King resumed Monday after 18 months of delays, but after Judge Kevin Farmer declared a mistrial, the case was promptly put back on hold as the Georgia Court of Appeals rules on whether King faces double jeopardy.

“What I’m appealing right now is that my client has already been placed in jeopardy once,“ said King’s attorney, Surinder K. Chadha Jimenez, following Monday’s hearing. “And the Constitution guarantees that you cannot be placed in jeopardy twice.”

The Georgia State Constitution also provides additional protections against double jeopardy, Chadha Jimenez said.

There are exceptions to the double jeopardy clause, said Deputy Georgia Attorney General John Fowler, the lead prosecutor in the trial. “The Constitutional provision that precludes double jeopardy carves out an exception in the event of a mistrial.”

The Court of Appeals must now rule on the issue. The earliest that the trial would recommence is September or October, two years after the indictment against King and their codefendants.

If the defense is successful in its appeal, it will result in King’s acquittal.

Judge Farmer said he would move on to trials for the codefendants while the appeal is still pending.

Over the past several months, four other defendants—Jamie Marsicano, Spencer Liberto, Francis Carroll and Alex Papali—filed motions for speedy trials. One or some combination of those defendants will be the next to be tried, according to an order of trials submitted by the prosecution.

The next trial is not yet scheduled, as of the time of publishing.

Stop Cop City defendant Priscilla Grim is selling copies of a new book, No Cop City, No Cop World to raise money for her legal funds.

Casey Goonan’s sentencing is now scheduled for September 23rd. You can write to Casey at:

Casey Goonan #UMF227
Santa Rita Jail
5325 Border Blvd.
Dublin CA 94568

In the Pacific Northwest, Puget Sound Prisoner Support report that a Seattle activist was visited at home by DHS, while federal agents have arrested at least 9 people alleged to have taken part in a protest against ICE activity in Spokane, Washington. The Philadelphia Inquirer has more commentary on the Spokane arrests.

Free the Spokane 9Largely ignored in a small market, this week's federal indictment of 9 anti-ICE protesters in Washington state, including a former council president, shows how far the Trump regime will go to crush dissentThis was always the plan. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-…

— Will Bunch (@willbunch.bsky.social) 2025-07-17T16:08:05.955Z

In LA, following the mass resistance against ICE raids, Alejandro Orellana was facing conspiracy charges for distributing face shields, but the charges have now been dropped. Reports suggest that grand juries are refusing to move forward with cases against those involved in the resistance. An article in El Pais gives further information on the difficulties the prosecution are encountering when attempting to charge people.

The support page for Peppy and Krystal has been posting new updates on other prisoners that need support, including “Jaia Cruz, the 24-year–old transgender woman convicted of second-degree murder charges for defending herself against a transphobic attack..” Get more info here.

15 people are facing felony charges in Ohio after a protest against ICE in Cincinnati, where police violently beat people on a bridge.

Four people facing charges from a May Day protest in Frederick, MD, had a court date on July 3rd, with strong community support present in court. Further court dates are set to continue throughout August, on the 5th, 4th, 19th and 20th.

The Northumberland County DA quietly dropped the RICO charge against Celeste Legere & Cara Mitrano but both still face rarely-used charges of 'ecoterrorism' & face decades in prison after being accused of setting mink free at Pennsylvania's last fur farm: unicornriot.ninja/2025/rico-ch…

— Unicorn Riot (@unicornriot.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T18:59:16.046Z

The “Northumberland 2”, Cara and Celeste, have now had the RICO charge dropped from their case, which relates to an alleged animal liberation action against a mink farm in Pennsylvania. Unicorn Riot has a new article with updates:

Two women from Massachusetts and several dozen supporters from around the country traveled to a small central Pennsylvania town for the first major hearing in a felony case stemming from their arrest last November. The ‘Northumberland 2’ – Celeste Legere and Cara Mitrano – face a litany of PA state charges after being accused of an October 18-19, 2024 break-in at the Richard H. Stahl & Sons, Inc. fur farm in which 683 mink were released from their pens and breeding records were destroyed.

Monday’s hearing saw prosecutors drop the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charge leveled against both activists from Massachusetts. While each still face over a dozen counts and possibly decades in prison, their attorneys and supporters appeared cautiously optimistic as the state appeared to be holding a very weak hand when forced to show its cards.

“We hope the court sees through the prosecution’s gross overcharging of defendants accused of releasing animals who, with absolute certainty, would have suffered extreme torture and unconscionable death,” said Chris Carraway, a staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, which represents defendant Cara Mitrano. Mitrano is also being represented by Harrisburg attorney Natalie Burston; Celeste Legere is represented by Sunbury criminal defense lawyer Jim Best.

Pennsylvania State Police and Northumberland County District Attorney Mike O’Donnell initially charged Legere and Mitrano with RICO, Ecoterrorism, Agricultural Vandalism, Criminal Mischief, Theft, Burglary, Loitering and Prowling at Nighttime, Accidents Involving Damage to Attended Vehicle or Property, Recklessly Endangering Another Person, Cruelty to Animals, Agricultural Trespassing on Posted Land, and Depositing Waste on a Highway — as well as Conspiracy counts related to the Ecoterrorism, Agricultural Vandalism and Burglary charges.

Check out the full report here.

Hunger Strike Breaks Out at “Alligator Alcatraz” as Trump Pushes to Expand Use of Military on US Soil

As of early August, a hunger strike at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida was reported to have been going on for at least 10 days. You can read an interview with hunger striker Pedro Lorenzo Concepción here. A former guard has also come forward to describe the horrific conditions inside.

A hunger strike at a South Florida immigration detention center state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” enters its tenth day, as detainees protest what they call inhumane and dangerous living conditions.

— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2025-08-01T22:20:17Z

Meanwhile, representatives of the Miccosukee tribe have joined a lawsuit against the facility, highlighting its impact on their traditional lands. For more on the struggle against “Alligator Alcatraz,” see this interview with Panagioti Tsolkas from Fight Toxic Prisons, which is also now available as a zine.

Resistance against ICE continues around the country, as highlighted in this IGD piece about an anti-ICE campaign of posters and banner drops coordinated across several states. Living & Fighting recently interviewed the Tucson Rapid Response Network about their work, and local resistance continues in locations such as the Philadelphia courthouse. Protests against airlines doing deportation flights, ICE contracts, and outside of detention facilities also are ongoing.

High-profile detainees such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Rümeysa Öztürk have now been able to submit testimony describing their horrific experiences. A new report from Human Rights Watch has highlighted abuses at detention centres across Florida.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is planning to build a new detention camp in El Paso, Texas, near the Mexican border, which will be able to hold 5,000 people, making the construction site an important target for those hoping to prevent the regime from building up the infrastructure for mass deportations. The Trumpian state is also pushing to expand the use of the National Guard and use Los Angeles as a model for the rest of the country, according to newly leaked DHS memo.

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson and UPROAR

The new prisoner support formation UPROAR is organizing an ongoing phone and email campaign for Kevin “Rashid” Johnson. They report the following as the latest update:

Rashid confirmed the prison threw him back in solitary (RHU) on  Friday 7/18/25 and that he is being held incommunicado — meaning no  access to his messages, calls, mail, or the media. The prison also  confiscated all of Rashid’s legal property (including all writing  supplies and stationery) until one of Rashid’s comrades contacted the  general counsel’s office and got the prison to release it back to him  on 7/24/25. This is clearly all a response to the publicity Rashid  brought to the prison when he was in Virginia.

On Friday 7/18/25, Warden Curtis Earley, Assistant  Warden Joseph Werts, Captain Carter, and Investigator Anderson called  Rashid to the Warden’s office. Rashid was sent to South Carolina under a  settlement agreement (which Rashid didn’t consent to), but one of the  settlement terms says Rashid must be in a single cell in general  population. The Warden said he was not going to honor that, and if  Rashid didn’t like that, the prison would put him back in  solitary. After that, they put him back in solitary for no reason.

The prison’s dentist and nurse practitioner have now refused to  give him more antibiotics since he was returned to solitary  on Friday 7/18/25. His face is still swollen, and he feels pressure in  his eye and ear as well. He still has not received treatment for the  dental abscess. He faced a similar situation when he had cancer — the  prison diagnosed him in 2021 but left him without treatment  for 1.5 years. It feels like they’re trying to let this infection spread  and potentially kill him.

We demand restoration of communication, immediate  medical care, and strict adherence to the settlement’s single‑cell  general‑population clause.

Rashid was recently able to publish an article on the effects of solitary confinement on South Carolina prisoners, and his recent interview on the 2016 prison strikes has now been formatted as a zine.

UPROAR is also organizing campaigns in support of Ekong Eshiet in the Indiana prison system, who’s been given a one-year solitary restriction, Randy Lassiter at Red Onion in Virginia, who launched a hunger strike after being assaulted by staff, Peter “Pitt” Kamau Mukuria at Jessup CI in Virginia, who is facing ongoing retaliation and medical neglect after being assaulted, and Dewaune Lane Jr at Red Onion, who is facing harsh retaliation for whistle-blowing.

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) Conference

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee are fundraising to cover the costs of running their annual conference. They write:

We have many productive virtual meetings throughout the year. Our annual conference is a very meaningful experience for all attendees, but especially those who have suffered at the hands of criminal-legal systems the most. The same depth of meaning, learning, communication, relationship building and camaraderie is simply not possible through virtual events. Many formerly incarcerated members attend, and we typically make time for currently incarcerated members to call in and engage.

Donate to and share the campaign here.

Black August and General Prison News

This month marks the start of Black August, which commemorates Black liberation resistance inside and outside the prison walls. Anarchist and George Floyd uprising prisoner Malik recently wrote of Black August:

Black August starts soon. Usually I have others to participate with me, but since I don’t, I’m calling on those of you out there to get together in your cohorts, do 100 of something everyday with me for the month of August, and tell me how its going for you. Burpees, push-ups, sit-ups, a mile run/walk, 100 of some exercise for 31 days with me, that’d be rad! The key is unity, solidarity, so try to do them at least with one other person. You can split things up and make 100 squats into 50, plus its more fun together, and that’s what its about, what we can do together!

You can write to Malik here:

Malik Muhammad #23935744
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Blvd
Ontario, OR 97914-8335

Black August is also being observed in prisons, upcoming film showings in Philadelphia, and an abolitionist block party is being held in NYC on August 10th.

Chicago Anti-Report have published an important update on prison censorship and mail scanning in the Illinois prison system.

On the subject of mail digitization, Bloomington ABC have shared an update that Sean Swain’s mailing address is changing from August as part of ongoing mail digitization projects in the Ohio prison system. You can see the official ODRC guideline page for more information on this subject. Write to Sean at:

Sean Swain A243-205
Mail Processing Center
884 Coitsville Hubbard Road
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

Prisoners Justice Day is observed, mainly in Canada on August 10th, and an event is being organized in Vancouver to mark 50 years of the tradition.

A fundraiser for the Greg Curry freedom campaign is being organized for August 24th in Detroit.

In August, there will be a support rally in Portland, OR for Brian “Hakiym” Simpson, who “was attacked by a coworker while working wildfire season in Oregon. He now faces years in prison after defending himself.” For more info on the rally on August 9th, go here.

Former anarchist political prisoner Eric King continues to do ongoing speaking events promoting his new book, A Clean Hell. Catch him in Reno, NV and at the upcoming Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair in October.

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak are helping to organize a parole campaign for Gene “Khalil” Scott, a prisoner being held in South Carolina under the interstate compact system who will not be allowed to speak at his own parole hearing.

A new report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has highlighted the brutal effects of shackles being used in the Federal prison system.

Oakland Abolition & Solidarity report that the California system lockdown has been lifted. They write:

As we reported in our last newsletter, CDCr had imposed a statewide lockdown on all Level III and IV yards citing an uptick in violence. Ever the opaque agency speaking in empty public relations code, CDCr of course didn’t bother substantiating or contextualizing that claim let alone explain how group punishment addresses the particularities of these violent incidents. In response to the blunt, statewide punishment, two yards at Salinas Valley State Prison initiated a mass hungerstrike within a day of the lockdown announcement.  (See their powerful demands and statement republished below). After three weeks of lockdown and flipping peoples cells en masse, CDCr reinstated normal programming across all effected yards.

Lockdowns and group punishments are a common tactic of CDCr and we can expect more in the future. In the meantime we need to stay tuned to help fight retaliations against those who resist. Retaliation is also a well worn piece of CDCr’s vile repertoire. As an ex-incarcerated compa quite familiar with CA’s prison regime said, “They usually wait for some time to let the dust settle. Retaliations will for sure come.”

We will update you all here with any information or calls to support as they arise.

Oakland A&S also highlight that the city of Oakland is planning to grow its police surveillance camera network.

Julio “Comrade Z” Zuniga has published a new article on the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in the Texas prison system at Mongoose Distro. Mongoose has also recently published new art by Federal prisoner Kit Brixton and an article by California prisoner Joadanus Olivas on his wrongful conviction.

International

Long-term Lebanese political prisoner Georges Abdallah has been released after having been held in the French prison system since 1982. The Samidoun network has published a statement on his release and reported on his return to Lebanon, and With Whatever Weapons has formatted his original trial statement from 1987 as a zine.

International repression against the Palestine solidarity movement continues, with Belgium now making moves to ban several climate action and Palestine solidarity groups, while Freedom has a report on the heavy repression ongoing in Germany. In the UK, the ban on Palestine Action as a terror group is now in effect, and July has seen a steady stream of people being arrested for publicly supporting the group. The courts have now given permission for a legal challenge against the ban to be heard, meaning that the ban could be overturned by November.

The Koukaki squat community in Athens are fundraising for legal costs, as three squatters are facing 6.5 years in prison on charges relating to a squat eviction in 2020. The final appeal hearing in the case will be heard on December 2, and there’s a call to the international squatting and anarchist movement for solidarity as that date approaches.

Greek anarchist prisoner Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis written a new article on the anniversaries of the deaths of Greek revolutionaries Christoforos Marinos and Vasos Tsironis and of Willem van Spronsen in the US.

The six, bakery workers in Gijón in Asturias and members of the CNT syndicalist union, were sentenced to three and a half years in prison after an extended legal campaign by the owner of La Suiza bakery, whom a worker accused of harassmentfreedomnews.org.uk/2025/07/11/s…

— Freedom Press (@freedompress.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T14:45:18.533Z

An international solidarity campaign is being launched for two Ukranian antifascists, Denys Matsola and Vladyslav Zhuravlyov, who have been held in Russian captivity for three years.  The Russian state has now banned all ABC groups, but the exiled ABC Moscow group continue their work, posting about the birthdays of political prisoners Lyubov Lizunova and Savely Frolov, and helping to fundraise for the legal defences of antifascist/antiwar prisoner Yuri Mikheev and the anarchist and antifascist defendants in the Tyumen case.

Italian anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito is reportedly facing a total mail ban, while Paolo Todde has now ended his hunger strike.

In Chile, the trial of Aldo and Lucas Hernandez has begun, and a number of other anarchist prisoners have made statements in solidarity with them.

In Spain, six bakery workers and members of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union have now begun their prison sentences, having been sentenced to three and a half years for their participation in a union campaign.

Police in Austria have carried out a raid against an antifascist youth camp.

Uprising Defendants

See Uprising Support for more info, and check out the Antirepression PDX site for updates from Portland cases. You can also check With Whatever Weapons for regularly-updated zines listing current prisoners. To the best of our knowledge they currently include:

Tyre Means 49981-086
USP Victorville
US Penitentiary
P.O. Box 3900
Adelanto, CA 92301

Margaret Channon 49955-086
FCI Tallahassee
P.O. Box 5000
Tallahassee, FL 32314

Malik Muhammad #23935744
Snake River Correctional
777 Stanton Blvd
Ontario, OR 97914

Montez Lee 22429-041
FCI Petersburg Medium
Federal Correctional Institution
PO Box 1000
Petersburg, VA 23804

Matthew Rupert #55013-424
USP Big Sandy
US Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

José Felan #54146-380
FCI Terre Haute
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 33
Terre Haute, IN 47808

David Elmakayes 77782-066
FCI McKean
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

Khalif Miller #QQ9287
Camp Hill
PO Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733

Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho #08572-509
08572-509
FCI Beaumont Medium
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. Box 26040
Beaumont, TX 77720

Christopher Tindal 04392-509
FCI Cumberland
PO Box 1000
Cumberland, MD 21501

Upcoming Birthdays

The Political Prisoner Birthday Calendar project has been revived, and you can find the August calendar here.

Margaret Channon

Margaret was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to setting 5 cop cars on fire during the large protests in Downtown Seattle on May 29th, 2020.

The Federal system uses Corrlinks, a system where a prisoner must send a request to connect to someone on the outside before they can exchange emails, so if you’re not already connected to Margaret then you’re best off just sending her a card or a letter.

Birthday: August 1

Address:

Margaret Channon 49955-086
FCI Tallahassee
Federal Correctional Institution
PO Box 5000
Tallahassee, FL 32314

Bill Dunne

Long-term anarchist prisoner held since 1979 for attempting to free another comrade from imprisonment. Through the years Bill has also taught GED classes at almost every prison he has found himself at, helping many prisoners get their GED. Bill is generous, principled, full of integrity and has never wavered from his politics or convictions. Bill continues to stay active politically, helping edit and write 4Struggle Magazine, organizing the yearly Running Down the Walls 5K for political prisoners, and serves on the ABCF Prisoner Committee. You can read some of his writings here.

The Federal system uses Corrlinks, a system where a prisoner must send a request to connect to someone on the outside before they can exchange emails, so if you’re not already connected to Bill then you’re best off just sending him a card or a letter.

Birthday: August 3

Address:

Bill Dunne #10916-086
FMC Butner Medium II
PO Box 1600
Butner, North Carolina 27509

Hanif Shabazz Bey (Beaumont Gereau)

One of the Virgin Island 3, serving 8 consecutive life sentences after being tortured into a false confession then wrongly imprisoned since 2001 when his sentence was vacated.

Hanif is in an institution run by CoreCivic, and it appears that you can email him here.

Birthday: August 16

Address:

Beaumont Gereau #19-1952
Citrus County Detention Facility
c/o Securus Digital Mail Center
Post Office Box 20187
Tampa, Florida 33622

Christopher L Young

Queer anarchist prisoner/jailhouse lawyer in Kentucky wishing to start an anarchist book club and get more involved in organizing.

Kentucky uses Securus, so you can send him a message by creating an account at securustech.online, clicking “emessaging – launch account,” then searching his name while selecting “State: Kentucky, Inmate ID: 136515.”

Birthday: August 17

Address:

Christopher L Young #136515
Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex
200 Road to Justice
West Liberty, KY 41472

Ronald Reed

Black Liberation prisoner, convicted in 1995 for allegedly shooting a police officer in 1970.

Minnesota uses Jpay, so you can send him a message by going to jpay.com, clicking “inmate search,” then selecting “State: Minnesota, Inmate ID: 219531.”

Birthday: August 31

Address:

Ronald Reed #219531
Minnesota Correctional Facility-Lino Lakes, Minnesota
PO Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131

Announcement for crowd-funding campaign to help support west coast speaking tour for Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin. Donate and view here.

“Where there is repression, there is resistance…period.” – Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
“You still have to get out in the streets and do it.” – JoNina Abron-Ervin

It’s no secret our communities and the movements to defend them are under attack. Fascists relentlessly heighten political repression, using despair to overwhelm and immobilize us. Movement veterans who survived great sacrifices in their struggles against racist state oppression remind us that we have been here before—and that we can withstand it again. Now, more than ever, we must learn from them how to organize under dire circumstances.

We are raising $6,000 to transport, room, board, and support movement veterans Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and JoNina Abron-Ervin for a speaking tour in California:

• Saturday, October 4: Black Lantern Books (6533 West Blvd, Inglewood)
• Tuesday, October 7: West Oakland Library (1801 Adeline St, Oakland)
• Thursday, October 9: Black Panther Party Museum (1427 Broadway, Oakland)
• Saturday, October 11: Sacramento Anarchist Book Fair (1819 E St, Sacramento)

Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and then shortly after, the Chattanooga branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). While incarcerated for his contributions to the revolutionary struggle, Lorenzo connected Black liberation struggles to anarchist theory through writing, foremost of which is the contemporary classic Anarchism and the Black Revolution.

JoNina Abron-Ervin transferred from the BPP’s Detroit branch to the Oakland headquarters in the early 1970s, where she became the editor of the Party’s newspaper. JoNina was a key organizer in the BPP’s survival programs, participating in the free breakfast, prison visit transportation, and education programs.  Accounts of these experiences can be read in her forthcoming book from AK Press, Driven by the Movement: Reports from the Black Power Era.

Since these formative experiences, Lorenzo and JoNina have continued to explore the connections between contemporary organizing, social movements, Black Liberation, and anarchism. Bringing them to California will strengthen cross-regional and intergenerational ties to powerfully meet this critical moment.

Only our movements’ collective efforts can make this possible. Thank you for donating what you can; we look forward to forging connections with you in October!

Brought to you by Black Lantern Books (@blacklanterncoop), Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation – Bay Area (@blackrosebayarea) | @blackrose_rosanegra), NorCal Resist (@norcal_resist), and the Sacramento Anarchist Book Fair (@sacramentoanarchistbookfair).

On July 31, 2015, Alejandra Negrete, Mile Martín, Nadia Vera, Rubén Espinosa and Yesenia Quiroz were murdered in an apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood of Mexico City. In the ten years since, their family members, friends, and comrades have been demanding justice and struggling to keep their memories alive. While three people have been detained for the killings, evidence ignored by the Mexico City prosecutor’s office implicates former officials of that office in the killings. It has also refused to investigate the role of the administration of Javier Duarte, former governor of Veracruz, from where Nadia, a radical activist, and Rubén, a journalist, fled fearing for their safety after receiving threats. To mark ten years, those accompanying the families in their search for truth and justice have created a digital common archive: Memorial Narvarte. Below is a text announcing the archive along with a piece by Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo, the mother of Nadia Vera. Both were translated by Scott Campbell.

Memorial Narvarte: An Archive for the Future

Ten years after Alejandra Negrete, Mile Martín, Nadia Vera, Rubén Espinosa and Yesenia Quiroz were taken from us, we continue putting faith in collective memory.

After the multi-femicide and homicide that occurred on July 31, 2015, in an apartment at 1909 Luz Saviñón Street in the Narvarte neighborhood of Mexico City, authorities tried to create a “historical truth,” to shelve the case without considering that Nadia and Rubén fled from threats in Veracruz, and without following the different lines of investigation linked to Nadia’s activism and Rubén’s journalism. What followed would be a demand for justice in the face of criminalization, revictimization, xenophobia, and discrimination against the 5; as well as a collective demonstration of resistance and living memory.

Over the course of this decade, together with their families and allied organizations, we made space amid State neglect and abandonment. We want to continue building a dissident common sense to the hegemonic narratives regarding the recent history of our country and the acts that mark us. That is why we are building a common archive, a space of digital memory to remember them: memorialnarvarte.org.

This collective archive compiles statements, photographs, videos, texts, audios, artistic pieces, along with other elements that mark a decade of struggle, memory, and resistance for the 5, as well as collective expressions in homage to the victims. It is a self-managed initiative born of the accompaniment group Memorial Narvarte, which also organizes the Festival Arte Para No Olvidarte (Art to Not Forget You Festival).

What do we honor when we create a space of memory? How do we care for those who were taken from us? What communities are created out of grief? How do we confront the paralyzing horror? How do we nurture and sustain a memorial, in person or virtually, over time? These are questions that accompany us and that we have woven collectively with others.

Creating a memorial is not just a symbolic act: it is a form of inhabiting the present with dignity. It is to reclaim our history and our future. It is to say that in this country, where justice is feigned, there are those who do not surrender. There are those who, with each act of memory, continue making visible what they wanted to erase.

We thank all those people who, with their words, presence, images, and accompaniment, form part of this archive. If you want to collaborate, you can email your contributions to festival.narvarte@gmail.com and find us on social networks as @memorial.narvarte.

We will continue to name Nadia, Rubén, Mile, Yesenia and Alejandra. We will continue to demand justice. Because there are dead who will never be silenced. Because memory is also an act of the future. Because as Mirtha, Nadia’s mother, says, the word heals and repairs, it is the only thing they cannot take from us, the power of our words.

https://memorialnarvarte.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Caso-Narvarte_-Una-decada-de-impunidad.mp4

“What I cannot say: A decade of impunity”

by Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo, mother of Nadia Vera

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice. – Plato

For 10 years we have had a feeling of impunity, complicity, and cover-up because the ineptitude of the Mexico City prosecutor’s office has nothing to do, as we originally thought at the beginning, with distraction and the lack of willingness, but with a manner of operating that is systematic: regardless of what political party they belong to, elected or not, they behave like dominoes, they are moved by inertia, and they do not go or see beyond their interests.

The echo of my scream arrives muffled, distorted, and dies in the penumbra where bureaucrats write the rules of the game that we will never be able to change.

A decade after the Narvarte murders, which occurred on July 31, 2015, where the life of my daughter, Nadia Dominique Vera Pérez, the journalist Rubén Espinosa, and three other people were taken, we still do not know where the weapon is, nor what the motive was, and what we know from independent investigations has taken years for the prosecutor to accept: that there were more than three murderers.

We cannot name names as they hold us responsible and lower us to the level of a criminal, while defending the rights of criminals and even more so if they are employees of that institution.

Here the word returns, to be spoken alongside Bachmann, to say dark things.

Wanting to say does not make us say, wanting to say does not allow us to say what we want to say.

That is why I write, to be able to get out of this experience of grief; the word, these words, give me freedom and I am not strong like the world asks of me but, thus, I dignify my fragility.

I try to speak because to remain silent before an institution that lies would be an anti-life position.

Resorting to language to try to name the unnamable, to make myself heard, to unravel the lie, to condemn inaction.

To speak to demand the truth.

“Because the true opens cracks in the wall, the true separates the headstone from your tomb”

The demand for truth is perhaps the only effective means to undermine that wall of silence that the real powers have tried to impose on us.

So here, I say what I cannot say and not only because language is arbitrary. I cannot speak because they won’t let me tell the truth, because there is not one truth, there are many truths that hide the true truth.

I say that I cannot speak because the language of the justice system excludes me and makes me a vassal of imposed language, which if I dare to break could set free not one, but three murderers.

I say that I cannot speak because the lawyers’ strategy does not allow me to speak: subtleties in the interest of achieving minimum justice.

I say that I cannot speak because the operating system of the justice system will not allow me to speak, that which coopts the operators of the same system who carry out poor investigations and cover up for criminals. This system puts the victims in a cell that, in its infinity, reflects the constant state of uneasiness, the incessant search for meaning that is not found, just as the imparting of justice is not found and the truth is not found. The system has a deaf muttering that interweaves unfulfilled promises and failed hopes.

Those who say they impart justice, those who investigate, are those who lie and pretend to do something but do nothing and allow time to pass. They promise meetings and when there are, they arrive late and leave quickly and lose files and confuse the telephone numbers of predators but expose the victims and revictimize them. It is a constant, permanent institutional violence that is backed by another institution, which says that it protects human rights, but they are a conclave, a sect, and a society that covers up and only protects their interests. And if you dare to speak, to say what you know, then they gather the media and give free rein to their lies and the entire media, with honorable exceptions, repeats what they have been given to repeat.

I say that I cannot speak. Whoever has eyes let them see, and whoever has ears let them hear, and whoever wants to understand let them understand.

Mirtha Luz Pérez Robledo

The mother, the woman, the citizen.

They can kill us, but they can never destroy us.

July 2025

Announcing the third annual Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday, October 11th. For more updates, go here.

On occupied Miwok and Nisenan territory, we invite you to join us in so-called Sacramento on Saturday, October 11th, for the 3rd annual Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair. The event will feature tabling by publishers, projects, organizations, and distros along with panels, discussions, and hands on workshops. Doors will open at 10 AM and the event will go until around 7 PM.

The event will take place this year at the Flower Fist Art Market, located at 1819 E st, in Downtown Sacramento.

Panels, Workshops and Keynote Speakers

The bookfair this year will feature:

• Hands on skillshares.
• A community discussion on mutual aid organizing in the face of rising fascism and capitalist crisis.
• Workshops and presentations from a range of organizers, presenters, and authors on a variety of topics. Stay tuned for a full schedule and be sure to follow the Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair for updates.
• Panel discussions on anti-ICE organizing, sustaining autonomous projects, and more.

The bookfair will also feature several talks by published authors including:

• Former political prisoner Eric King, who will be returning to the Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair to discuss his new book, A Clean Hell: Anarchy and Abolition in America’s Most Notorious Dungeon, about his fight for survival inside the notorious ADX “super-max” prison and how this experience can inform abolitionist organizing in a period of escalating repression.

 

• Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia Garcia, editors of the new book Red Flag Warning Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country, will discuss mutual aid and community care from a grassroots perspective, highlighting organizing projects related to climate catastrophes primarily in rural Northern California.

• Our keynote speakers, JoNina and Lorenzo Ervin, are both long-time revolutionary organizers, former members of the Black Panther party, and co-founders of the Black Autonomy Federation. JoNina Ervin is a former editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper and is the author of the new book, Driven by the Movement: Reports from the Black Power Era. Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is a former political prisoner and is the author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution. JoNina and Lorenzo will speak about lessons from liberatory social movements of the past and how they can inform our struggles for freedom and autonomy today.

Looking to Table?

Looking to table at the Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair? We invite anarchist and autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial projects, organizations, publishers, and distros to email us at: sacabf@proton.me. We are asking that tablers help out with a donation to help pay for the space, but no project will be turned away for lack of funds.

Space may be limited – so contact us as soon as possible!

About the Space: Accessibility, Masking & Beyond

The event will take place at the Flower Fist Art Market, located at 1819 E st, and which has just moved into a new space in Downtown Sacramento.

Like previous years, masking at the bookfair is mandatory. Upon entry, we will have free N95 masks, COVID tests, and hand sanitizer, with air purifiers and fans running throughout the venue.

We will also have a chill outdoor area to rest and hydrate, along with a space for children and parents. Both inside and outside spaces are wheelchair accessible. Food trucks will available for those looking for food. Gender neutral bathrooms are also at the space. Free parking is available around Flower Fist.

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Get in Touch!

Have questions or concerns, want to get involved, help promote, or donate to help cover costs? Email us here: sacabf@proton.me

See you in October!

Amplifier Films reports on their recent coverage on indigenous struggles against logging and their new film project, Defenders of the Forest. 

It’s no secret that Indigenous people are on the front lines of the fight against environmental destruction and climate change. This is why I’ve dedicated so much of my time to amplifying their struggles—because, beyond the efforts of NGOs (most NGOs, in my experience, are fairly ineffective at stopping the destruction), Indigenous land defenders have the deepest stake in this fight. They know exactly why they’re resisting: for the land, for future generations, for their children and grandchildren. This vision, rooted in long-term care and connection to the land, is what drives them to fight like hell.

This summer has taken us across territories, from the legendary site of resistance at Kanehsatake, to the newly christened Camp Sovereignty at kilometre 133 on the Chemin Parent. There, Nehirowisiw territory chief Robert Echaquan, alongside his family and supporters, has stopped logging operations. They’re now preparing a second blockade to pressure the Quebec government to recognize their sovereignty and reach a just agreement over forest management.

We also visited powerful train blockades in Wemotaci and Mashteuiatsh, where defenders stopped forest products and raw logs from moving through their territories—part of the growing resistance to Bill 97 and the wider colonial forestry regime in so-called Quebec.

From this frontline work, we’re creating a new film: Defenders of the Forest (https://amplifierfilms.ca/forest), a grassroots documentary five years in the making. We began filming in the winter of 2021, as this movement was being born—right in the middle of the pandemic—and while I was also working on Yintah. Now, we’re in the final push. The film is being made in close collaboration with Nehirowisiw (Atikamekw) and Innu land defenders, and will be released freely online between mid-September and early October to support organizing, screenings, and community-led fundraising.

We’ve also documented a powerful conversation for our upcoming project A Red Road to the West Bank. Rehab Nazzal, a Palestinian artist who hosted Clifton during his 2016 visit to the West Bank, was able to leave Palestine during a rare window when airspace opened. We brought her to Kanehsatake, where she met with Clifton and Mohawk land defender Ellen Gabriel for an interwoven, anti-colonial dialogue linking struggles from Turtle Island to Palestine.

We’re now urgently seeking $5,000 USD to complete post-production on Defenders of the Forest: editing, sound, color, and fuel for travel. Thanks to a U.S.-based fiscal sponsor, tax-deductible donations of $5,000 or more are now possible. If you or someone you know can give at that level, please contact us directly—it would allow us to focus on the essential filmmaking, rather than constantly chasing $20 here and $30 there (though we’re grateful for those too!).

Long-running anarchist radio show and podcast The Final Straw speaks with Dani Burlison, one of the editors behind Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country.

This week, we’re sharing this a chat with my friend, Dani Burlison on her recent book, Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country! We speak about fire ecology, housing pressures and mutual aid in the wake of natural (and human caused) disaster. Check the show notes for links to a few projects mentioned. You can find more of Dani’s writings at DaniBurlison.com/, books listed here, and more by Caw at CawShinyThings.com

• Transcript
• PDF (Unimposed)
• Zine (Imposed PDF)

Northern CA projects mentioned:

• Undocufund
• North Bay Jobs With Justice
• North Bay Organizing Project
• North Bay Rapid Response
• Legal Aid of Sonoma County
• Forestry and Fire Recruitment program

Southern CA projects mentioned:

• Pasadena Community Job Center
• Los Angeles Mask Bloc

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

As we speak, up to two million people in Gaza are being threatened with starvation, as the state of Israel, backed by the US government, continues to blockade humanitarian aid into Gaza, attack basic infrastructure, and brutally murder Palestinians at aid distribution sites. Moreover, Israeli officials continue to push for open ethnic-cleansing of Palestine, all with continued military support from the United States.

As Al-Jazeera reported:

Tonnes of food, clean water, medical supplies and other items sit untouched just outside Gaza as humanitarian organisations are blocked from accessing or delivering them by Israel.

Ten new deaths linked to famine and malnutrition have been recorded during the past 24 hours by hospitals in the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health. The grim count brings the total number of people starved to death in the territory to 111, the ministry’s statement said.

In recent weeks, more than 1,000 desperate people have been killed trying to reach food, mostly in mass shootings by Israeli soldiers posted near GHF distribution centres, according to the United Nations…Israel, which controls all supplies, food, medicine and fuel entering Gaza, has imposed a punishing blockade for months…Medical personnel and journalists continue to work under intensive duress, worsened by their own hunger.

Genocide and forced starvation of Palestinians is happening right before our eyes. As Mondoweiss recently reported, “Among the most affected are newborn children who have no means of feeding. Mothers are unable to breastfeed due to malnutrition, which makes it difficult to produce milk.” The Guardian also noted, “Rates of severe malnutrition among children aged under five at Médecins Sans Frontières’ Gaza City clinic have tripled in the last two weeks, the charity has said, as starvation in the Israeli-besieged strip worsens.”

Watching the news coming out of Gaza can make many feel powerless, but we all can help rally in solidarity with groups on the ground who are working non-stop to create life-lines with those living through the brutal occupation. Listed below, are direct ways that people can help mutual aid groups on the ground – both by donating to them and spreading the word about the work that they are doing. Donations and support are direct ways we can help those attempting to survive an active genocide. Mutual aid groups listed below also are posting constant updates about their work, showcasing how solidarity from across the world manifests in the creation of life-saving infrastructure and the meeting of direct needs.

Our hope is that people will take the initiative and organize benefit events and show solidarity with these mutual aid projects. By building up our capacity to extent material solidarity, we can all help those directly impacted.

The Sanabel Team

The Sanabel Team is “a Palestinian-led mutual aid team providing support in Gaza since 2018.” The group distributes cash aid, cooks hot meals which they distribute daily, brings in water trucks, distributes basic necessities like diapers and formula for infants, and works to provide items like tents and tarps to those displaced by the ongoing occupation. They post constant updates on their work on Instagram and are involved in a wide variety of projects in multiple areas. 

SOURCE: The Sanabel Team

About:

This team all started with Osama; an activist from Gaza that began in his small city of Khan Younis, helping families in need. These community-based efforts has expanded since 2018, serving thousands of Palestinians from funding education, feeding many families, and proving necessities over the years.

Our mission is to continue providing direct aid that’s available on the ground, to families during this time. Funds will go towards necessities like food, water, and building materials for shelter when available. Life rebuilding will be in the next phase. We thank you for your ongoing support friends!

Every day we remain steadfast, every action we take is a step towards a brighter future for the families we have been supporting in Gaza since 2018. Together, we create a ripple effect that nourishes not just bodies, but souls. Our commitment to making a difference in our community is unwavering.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thesanabelteam/

Web: https://www.thesanabelteam.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SanabelTeam/

The Sadaqah Team

A mutual aid initiative on the ground in Gaza and Lebanon.

SOURCE: The Sadaqah Team

About:

Our initiative depends completely on the generosity of people like you. Every donation we receive helps us reach more communities who urgently need support. The situation in Gaza and Lebanon is heartbreaking. With so little international aid getting through, people are struggling for even the basics. Together, though, we can make a difference, providing some relief and hope in these devastating times.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/the.sadaqah.team/

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/TharcisZaaruolo

Gaza Food Relief Project

Mutual aid project organized by two-brothers on the ground in Gaza.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/gazafoodreliefproject/

Chuffed: https://chuffed.org/project/4444-gaza-food-relief-project-by-mohammed-ayyad

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/Gaza-Food-Relief-Project-By-Mohammed-Ayyad

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=5UM6RDCWQPB44&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAae0TC6e9cbnonOwV8Hlrq4441-6SWyX7CsImxbQxcoQhv2KQiRR2tSgDCOIsw_aem_zoYSPHJA-GI4UZ8JQ-lSDw

Operation Olive Branch

Mutual aid initiative supporting communities on the ground.

About:

Operation Olive Branch is a volunteer-powered grassroots collective effort to connect with and amplify Palestinian voices in an effort to support their critical needs, which include but are not limited to their mutual aid requests. Our solidarity initiative is steered by a diverse core council of global advocates including Palestinian and Jewish voices.

We strive to verify the fundraising efforts of families, as well as our medical partners, to best support them to navigate the challenges of social media and fundraising.

Please find a list of our “verified” families and medical aid partners here: Verified Families & Mutual Aid

We quickly identified over a hundred families who required urgent perinatal care and support during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Faced with malnutrition, lack of food, clean water and limited access to medical support, families are experiencing severe perinatal medical complications.

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/operationolivebranch

Gaza Mutual Aid Collective

Mutual aid group providing on the ground support in Gaza through hot meals and direct support.

SOURCE: GMAC

About:

GMAC is a grassroots collective committed to monetarily helping the people of Gaza, whose quality of life has been progressively deteriorating for almost two decades by the colonial air, land, and sea blockade and siege by the Zionist occupation.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gazamutualaid/

Web: https://gazamutualaid.substack.com/

Venmo: @/amirqudaih

PayPal: amirqudaih@gmail.com

Thamra

Group in Palestine promoting food sovereignty, food distribution, and restoration of the land.

About:

A Palestinian organization fostering food sovereignty. Working to achieve self-sufficiency and restore our land. We invite you to support a vital agricultural project that is bringing life back to the land, following the destruction of the occupation and the famine its people are enduring.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thamra_org

GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/771b0495

The Sameer Project

Mutual aid project running various campaigns to provide direct support and aid in Gaza.

SOURCE: The Sameer Project

About:

Donations based initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/thesameerproject

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject

Butterfly Effect Project

Group that verifies mutual aid requests on the ground in Gaza, and links those hoping to donate to those in need of support.

About:

We are an international team of dedicated volunteers united by a common mission: to amplify the voices of the oppressed and support war victims, with a particular focus on the people of Palestine – Gaza. Our primary mission is to share their stories on social media, ensuring their experiences and struggles reach a global audience.

In addition to amplifying voices, we provide immediate on-the-ground relief, meeting the urgent needs of countless families affected by conflict. Our long-term commitment extends to advocacy and campaigning, where we work tirelessly to raise awareness and drive meaningful change.

Through our efforts, we aim to foster a more just and equitable world, giving a platform to those who have been marginalised and silenced.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/butterflyeffect.project/

Web: https://www.thebutterflyeffectproject.org/

List of Verified Campaigns: https://www.thebutterflyeffectproject.org/verified-campaigns2

On this episode of The Beautiful Idea, we speak with several authors and organizers, marking six months into the second Trump administration coming to power. During our multiple discussions, we look at the recent deployment of the military into Los Angeles, CA, the ramping up of ICE raids and arrests across the US, and the passing of the Republican so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which ear-marks billions for war and the deportation machine, while cutting taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations, and slashing social services, health-care, and food assistance for the poor. Already, which has lead to rural hospitals being threatened with closure as food banks struggle to keep up with demand.

In this episode you will hear from:

• Silky Shaw, the executive director of the Detention Watch Network, and author of Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition, from Haymarket Books. Shaw talks about the rapid acceleration of deportations under Trump and the construction of new detention facilities, such as the newly built concentration camp, Alligator Alcatraz.
• Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, breaks down the interplay between police and ICE, as well as the brutal violence deployed by law enforcement during recent demonstrations in Los Angeles.
• Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies and Blue: Police and Power in America, takes on the role of counter-insurgency in the Trump administration, the weaponization of fascist spectacle, and the growth of conspiracy theories within protest movements.
• Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting and a member of Collective of Anarchist Writers (CAW), breaks down the recently passed Republican budget bill, and talks about its potential impact in our communities and ways in which we can push back.

As anger continues to build in the streets, we hope this discussion shines a light on the contours and context of the building social war being waged against poor and working people across the US.

MUSIC: 

Intro music by Breakaway and Seaside Tryst

Filastine & Nova – Requiem 432

Neurosis – The Doorway

Photo by Dan Seddon on Unsplash

Report back on community mobilization in support of the ‘Frederick Four,’ who were violently arrested on May Day. For more information, go here.

After two months of fundraising and general outreach by the Frederick After Party Care team, the time had come for the Frederick Four to make their first court appearance. The court hearing was set for July 3rd at 8:30am and supporters began to gather out front of Frederick Social around 7:30. Supporters wore black and passed around red flowers on hair clips and pins to add to their outfits. By 7:50, around fifty people slowly entered the Frederick courthouse. Once everyone was through security, they started to ascend to the building’s third floor.

When everyone was finally gathered outside of the courtroom and the last latecomers arrived, the crowd numbered about 65 people strong. It was hard to miss the amount of Frederick Police that also inhabited the semi-crowded space as they brushed by supporters. Someone told me they overheard a conversation between two cops mumbling, “This is our space…,” seemingly disapproving of the mass show of support.

The crowd waited now past 8:30, as people and police shuffled in and out of the courtroom. I had to turn my phone off before entering, but if I had to guess, everyone was allowed to enter at around 9am. Some were seated in the very limited bench seats, while the rest lined the perimeter of the room. The presiding Judge was Judge Dino E. Flores, who didn’t seem moved by the packing, from what I could tell.

Those who were visibly affected by the group were the Frederick police, who stood at the sides and the entrance of the room, as if anticipating some sort of outburst or protest. This, however, never happened, as the purpose of packing the court is to show support for the Frederick Four. That support was overwhelmingly clear. When court finally started, each defendant was called up with their lawyer, and each time the prosecutor just copied and pasted her words, which were that “13.8 gigabytes of drone footage” was sent to the defendants that morning and it was yet to be reviewed.

After that back-and-forth, the judge would postpone each case until the defense had a chance to view this evidence. Everyone is eagerly awaiting a new court date now. It’s important to note that one of the Frederick Four had to reschedule their court date due to their lawyer being out of the country and that new date is August 5th at Frederick courthouse at 8am.

Despite only being in the court room for about 10 minutes, the large community response seemed effective and was a great way to show support. When court let out everyone gathered at Mullinix Park for a community cook out which was attended by supporters and park-goers. The Frederick After Party Care team has an update on their fundraising site thanking everyone and emphasizing that this is just the beginning and how invaluable the community support continues to be.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

A new essay and zine from Blackbird Publishing revisiting how our movements define and think through problems of leadership, organization, and spontaneity.

Zine PDF for Printing (B&W) HERE
Zine PDF for Printing (Color) HERE

“You cannot revolt against a people whose values you share.”

– Amos Wilson

“Organization” and “Leadership” can work like sacred terms on the American Left. They are often overused to the point of exhaustion and virtual meaninglessness. For many, the hollow use of these terms bounces harmlessly off of our ears, sounding too close to the language of marketing execs or bureaucrats to interest us.

These terms are used less like a soft reading lamp and more like a harsh strobe light, synchronized for distraction and spectacle rather than illumination. Go to a “march” (read: permitted parade) put on by one of these groups, and you’ll hear hours of forgettable speakers drone on with some of these key words: “What we need now is to finally get Organized, under good Leadership.” “The masses need Organization, not spontaneous adventurism.” “Follow [insert oppressed group] Leadership.” “Our non-profit is helping develop the next generation of youth Leaders.” It is a conglomeration of fluff, specific enough to sound like it’s saying something, vague enough to mean almost anything, and therefore actually meaning nothing. One could be forgiven for thinking that these words had in fact no meaning at all.

revisiting how our movements define and think through problems of leadership, organization, and spontaneity.

Our society, ruled by a certain kind of modern nation-state, drives us to use these terms in certain ways that are narrow and limiting. It takes a very small meaning for these concepts, and substitutes that for the whole range of possibilities, erasing any alternatives. Not unlike its monopoly on violence, states seek to monopolize these terms for those who live under these structures. Our imagination is captured and colonized. Unfortunately, this even (and especially) applies to the Left, frankly to the point of parody.

This is a problem. The Pan-African Marxist Amilcar Cabral once said, “You measure a people’s potential for liberation based on how different their culture is from their oppressors.” This astute observation is sometimes read in a moralist or performative way, i.e. that it is morally “wrong” to talk or look like our oppressors. But it is really a strategic and political rather than moral or aesthetic observation. Our power and advantage, as much as in numbers and labor, lies in our ability to creatively think through problems, to “organize” and “lead” ourselves in ways that are fundamentally different from and illegible to states and capitalists.[1][2]

This piece aims to refresh and refine our thinking around the concepts of Leadership, Organization, and Spontaneity, and in particular examine the actual relationship between these very real phenomena in on-the-ground, combative struggles versus how they are conceived of in the largely stale imagination of the American Left. While the Leninist and nonprofit Left(s) probably deserve the most scrutiny here, it must be said that much of anarchism has done us no favors in clarifying the mess either, and often makes the confusion even worse. Ultimately, the radical philosophies from the European tradition carry some value but also immense colonial and Enlightenment-era baggage.

None of the discussion in this piece is particularly new, but there feels to me a renewed urgency and value in revisiting these concepts now. The number of new people who have entered into our movements during and since the 2020 uprising, alongside the struggle against Cop City and Palestinian solidarity struggle, has been staggering. Predictably, with new energy comes old questions about how we structure our movements. We naturally enter revolutionary struggle with a range of assumptions we inherit from the society we live under. Some of these assumptions will derive from our own unique experiences of culture, identity, exploitation, and oppression, but many derive from more broadly ideological presumptions that drape across our society almost universally.

In a society like ours, this means that many people, of all kinds of class and racial backgrounds, enter our movements understanding terms like leadership, organization, and spontaneity in ways that are familiar to and encouraged by states and capitalism. For this reason, a huge number of brilliant, beautiful people have entered into our movements in the past few years with a deep desire to contribute, only to find that the actions and campaigns that feel the most alive and relevant, that grow the largest, seize the streets and the buildings the quickest, and articulate the most radical vision of a future society, almost invariably look very different from their initial assumptions. Sometimes these assumptions are so strong that participants simply cannot see the deep, beautiful ruptures occurring before their own eyes. Despite these radical shifts carried to fruition by the supposedly “unorganized,” there persists a strange cognitive dissonance that argues being “serious” about “escalation” requires forms of organization that look like States, that this is what’s “effective” and required for a movement to grow to any real size.

We’ve been told our whole lives that to get something done, you’ve got to be organized, and that organization looks like just one thing. But when “the masses” actually start to make shit happen, sometimes with very little help from the feckless Left, it turns out it often looks very different. The ensuing confusion is understandable, and a lot of well-intentioned activists react to this confusion with an anxiety that has them trying to stop the revolt from happening at all.  Rather than study and learn from the dissonance between its theories of organization and the choices of many proletarians-in-motion, the Left chooses to either police that motion, or stick its head in the sand. In light of this failure, as well as the unwillingness or inadequacy of anarchism to properly address these concepts, this piece attempts to clarify and re-articulate an alternative understanding of these terms.

Most of my points in this piece draw from revolutionary writing and struggle that has existed for many decades. Though I am not black, in particular my thinking around this has been influenced the currents of the Black Radical Tradition that partly come out of Marxism but ultimately end up rejecting the hubristic approach of Leninist vanguards, in particular among the circle of revolutionaries active in Detroit in the late 60’s and early 70’s and the Afro-Carribean revolutionary thought of people like CLR James. My own involvement in labor, land defense, queer, anti-fascist, anti-prison, and anti-cop struggles since the late 1990s, and ongoing conversations with my own comrades about how best to participate in ongoing struggles, especially the uprising of 2020, obviously have influenced this discussion as well.

In terms of texts, my thinking draws especially from[3]:

• The Black Jacobins, by CLR James, on the successes and failures of Toussaint L’Overture’s leadership in the Haitian Revolution, as well as the former Black Panther and political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz’ reading of CLR James’ work;
• Organization and Spontaneity: The Theory of the Vanguard Party and its Application to the Black Movement in the US Today, written in 1974 by Kimathi Muhammad, a member of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement who participated in the Detroit riots of that era
• The scholarship of Modibo Kadalie, who was a comrade of Kimathi a and CLR James and continues to write to this day
• The writings of the late anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, in particular his focus on how certain stateless societies develop cultural strategies to prevent permanent status accumulation
• A piece from the anti-state communist journal Endnotes called “Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture”
• Several different pieces exploring autonomous self-organization by the Italian insurrectionary anarchist and bankrobber Alfredo Bonanno, whose unflinching courage and belief changed so many of us.

I hope that this piece can be grounding for some folks starting to ask these questions for the first time, as well as for more experienced comrades who find themselves frustrated by the stale simplicities offered them by their ideological peers. Like so many of us, I am tired of having the contours of our movements demarcated by the presumptions of dead men from another continent. I am tired of being told by some dork with a clipboard to “get organized” when I already am. If I have to witness another non-profit volunteer in a neon vest protecting private property tell a group of black youth leading an actual fucking revolt to calm down and “listen to leadership,” I may lose my shit.

Across our ecosystem of rebellion, the norms, cultural logics, and political definitions of Enlightenment-era European statecraft trouble our movements like the dead haunt the living. It’s time to stop viewing the movements we are part of like a state views the society it seeks to rule.

On Leadership

It was magnificent diplomacy but ruinous as revolutionary policy. The slopes to treachery from the dizzy heights of revolutionary leadership are always so steep and slippery that leaders, however well-intentioned, can never build their fences too high.

– CLR James, on Toussaint L’Overture’s negotiations with Bonaparte during the Haitian Revolution

It is totally incorrect to say implicitly that leadership only emerges from the creation of a political party.

– Kimathi Muhammad, “Organization and Spontaneity”

Snapshots:

It is 2015, in a mid-size Southern city. A multiracial local non-profit, which calls itself abolitionist, has called for a permitted “protest” in front of the police headquarters following a mass arrest of anti-police demonstrators who had taken over a highway a few days prior. Two friends, one black and one white and both formerly incarcerated, who organize with current and former inmates at the downtown jail, arrive carrying a banner declaring, “Burn Down Your Local Jail.” An earnest young white woman in a neon vest approaches, clearly upset by the banner’s message, and asks a rehearsed line, “Was this banner approved by black leadership?” Both of the friends barely know how to respond, trying not to laugh. “Which leaders?” they eventually reply.

Several days later, we learn that one of those permitted protest “leaders” secretly met with the police chief, without telling others in the movement, appointing herself a mediator and attempting to negotiate on the movement’s behalf.

It is November 5th, 2023, in San Carlos, CA, and a Zionist group called “Friends of the IDF” is hosting a fundraiser. A protest was organized by a local Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, which brought out large attendance. Protest marshals brought by JVP physically attempt to prevent any efforts to disrupt the event, however, and eventually corral the protesters far away from the building such that the event’s attendees could enter. When asked why they were doing this, one marshal said, “I’m just following orders.”

Shortly before the event, however, an affinity group separate from the protest succeeds in sabotaging the water main of the building with some tools and quick-drying concrete. As the bathrooms and other facilities ceased to work, the event is stopped in just 40 minutes, and the attendees are escorted out of the back of the building. Three days later the saboteurs release a small statement explaining their logic and what tools they used.

What is leadership? What does it mean to lead? Is it a permanent or temporary role? Is it chosen, given, or forced upon one by circumstance? Is it a “status” or is it bounded by a specific subject matter or specific proposal for how to solve a unique problem? What is the relationship between someone filling a “leadership” role and the rest of the room, march, neighborhood, union, or community? Should revolutionaries accept how leadership has been prescribed to us by the dominant society? Is it better to reject the notion of leadership altogether, as some have tried to do, or to redefine it to suit anarchist, communist, and anti-colonial aims?

Overwhelmingly the Left has defined leadership in terms that feel “familiar” to those who grew up living under states. Leadership for the Left has usually meant identifiable personas, placed at the top of vertically structured organizations that mimic state structures of administrative power. It implies, typically without even considering other options, a permanent rather than temporary kind of authority. This form of leadership carries a gendered logic, and often mimics the kinds of authority that appear in patriarchal social structures, regardless of the actual gender of the leader who occupies it.

To name its relational patterns more systematically, this kind of leadership tends to:

1. Conglomerate resources and power at the top of pyramids
2. Ignore abuse perpetuated by those with power and influence
3. Understand leaders in terms of status that are permanent, legible to the current ruling class, and bureaucratically coded[4]
4. Reproduce careerist professionalism and technocratic forms of expertise
5. Replicate the logic of economic and political models that found their home on both sides of the Cold War in the industrial fervor of the 20th century
6. View problems from a thousand feet above. It tends to diminish, ignore, or punish the creativity of those who solve problems at the ground level, especially when those at the ground level employ models that are inconvenient to the career aspirations or long-term blueprints of middle-class intelligentsia

The Distance of this Leadership™ from Cultures of Militancy

Thinking on point number three, this leadership has no problem correctly answering the cliché question of the nosy beat cop, “Who’s in charge here?,” and is often happy to answer. It delights in its own legibility to those in power, and carries this legibility as a badge representing its own revolutionary “seriousness.”  For this reason this kind of leadership tends to be extremely vulnerable to state repression and to both soft and hard forms of counter-insurgency. As we’ve seen in the 2020 uprising, the visibility to police and power structures of this kind of leadership makes it maladaptive at contributing to confrontational or illegal aspects of struggle. Due to its visibility this Leadership™ is forced to protect itself by cutting itself off from the most advanced, creative, and militant aspects of popular rebellion.

How many times have we seen these “leaders” and their Organizations™ shepherd their flock home when their permit expires at dusk, leaving the bravest, the poorest, and those with the least to lose to hold the streets on their own?  From Ferguson in 2014 to nationwide in 2020: when the daytime permitted rallies took place, the alphabet soup parties and non-profits swarmed like drunken bees looking for recruits, but when the people were building barricades and smashing jails and taking over buildings and fighting cops, when we were finally making the local ruling class pay a very real financial cost for its racist sins, all those professional Leaders™ disappeared into thin air. And when our comrades catch charges, these groups with all their resources are shamefully silent.

The real tragedy here is not the cowardice of the retreating “vanguards” leaving “the masses” more exposed to the violence of the police—the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s clipboards are hardly big enough to stop a rubber bullet or a fascist’s stick anyway. The real tragedy is in how it robs many young well-intentioned activists of the opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of practical revolt and proletarian innovation.

It is not enough to sit on the sidelines of history holding a badly designed newspaper (or zine), pointing to the riots and saying to the world, “See, we told you that capitalism creates crisis! Now join our party!” We learn the contours of our historical moment, of our own time period’s limitations and possibilities, through participating, and specifically, in participating in the risky, the dangerous, and the experimental. This is often where the poorest and most angry find their political home, and, importantly, it is the home of those who have been marginalized by the counter-insurgent role of non-profits. Conflict with the state—in the streets, on the picket line, in an occupied building—is where we build and exert power, and it is also our laboratory and our classroom. This means picking up the brick, helping set the fires, physically holding the line of shields, fighting the scabs on the picket line, helping young kids with their masks, blocking the doors of the school building with every chair you can find, carrying the wounded and stopping their bleeding at the back of the line.[5]

If and when our bodies or minds can no longer play these roles, it means not just refusing to condemn those who do, but celebrating them, bailing them out, cheering for them, housing them, helping them to a safe house, feeding them, and passing their courage on to a new generation. It means finding new terrains—new physical or social sites of conflict—to spread a current struggle to, in order to keep the state on its back foot and help the movement identify and expand beyond its own limitations and contradictions.

The professional and careerist notions of leadership™ that predominate the North American Left, which evolved to dialogue with and be legible to Power, are intentionally kept distant from this role. Their visibility to Power renders them a poor fit for learning from or aiding the most militant sector of struggle, and their outlook is often characterized by a barely concealed scorn for that sector.

The Tendency of Leadership™ to Treat Movements as their Own Private Property

Of course, this tension between “the masses” leading and organizing ourselves in revolt versus those professional activists who believe they are the Leadership™ is not a new one. Reflecting on the impotence of black “leadership” and the riots in Detroit in the late 1960’s, Kimathi Muhammad named this same tension:

It is somewhat disgusting to hear self-styled black leaders talk about leading the “unorganized” masses. It was the ‘unorganized’ masses who congregated in the streets, defied curfews, engage in direct physical confrontation with the police and military apparatus of the United States government, and unleashed a burning assault upon the property of their oppressors. If the black masses were unorganized, it definitely didn’t appear that they were.

Muhammad was not opposed to organizing, organization, or leadership perse; he puts unorganized in quotes here precisely because he rightly questions the political logic of the black Left that saw proletarian spontaneity and therefore assumed a lack of organization, leadership, and intelligence. In the same sense I would argue that just because the Left often did not “see” leadership in the riots and street-fighting that took hold of dozens of cities and towns in 2020, does not mean there were no leaders.

The Left is making this crucial analytical (and strategic) mistake partly due to its own cowardice and timidity, but also because it understands leadership in the way we are taught to understand it by states and economists, laid out at the beginning of this section. This state-derived notion of leadership carries with it its own internal logic that obscures other kinds of leadership available to us. Just like the modern state and capitalism, this understanding of leadership is not “neutral” on questions of who has power and wealth, on who makes decisions and how those decisions are made.

This form of leadership sees the world as a state views the society it rules over, and by no coincidence it leads to self-appointed “leaders” who view movements and social issues as their own private fiefdoms in which to exercise their own personal visions for change, often at the expense of more experimental or collaborative (and sometimes chaotic!) forms of organizing that oppressed communities may choose when left to their own devices. Sometimes these leaders will get angry if a group of people autonomously take action on some broad social issue without asking their permission—essentially, without paying homage to their “ownership” of that issue. Not by coincidence, maintaining rule of their private movement fiefdoms is also part of the career strategy of non-profit activists, who rely on a certain state-like vision of leadership to keep their grant money flowing, their 501c3 status legal, and their boards of directors happy. In this way, while Leninist organizations and non-profits may differ on political analysis, they tend to speak each other’s language, and often share members and strategies, as is the case in my town.

Anyone who has participated in American social movements long enough, and dared to buck the Party line or propose with your actions an alternative strategy has witnessed firsthand these dynamics. If you are new to things, try pushing back and keeping your eyes open, and you’ll see exactly what most of the Left means when it says “leadership.” As you push back against this Leadership™, you will begin to notice how genuinely conservative—politically, but also temperamentally, culturally, and tactically—most Leadership™ in the American Left is.

Rethinking Leadership

Many feminist theorists have proposed a model of power that identifies both a domination obsessed “power-over” but also a collective, liberating “power-to.” In the same sense, there is both a leadership that centralizes power and bottlenecks access to information and resources, and a leadership that decentralizes power and widens access to information and resources.

How might we start to think of this different kind of leadership, one that does not mimic the colonial logic of statecraft? How do these alternative forms of leadership behave in social movements, and what are some examples?

Forms of leadership that do not mimic states tend to:

1. Spread resources and information broadly and horizontally, in a non-transactional manner. One might call this an “open-source” model. We can think through this dynamic with the example of monitoring police movement during a protest. Those stepping into and out of leadership roles at such a demonstration work to spread information from bike scouts about police movement as broadly as possible throughout the crowd. Rather than gatekeep that information from the crowd, and decide for everyone the correct route or tactics for the situation, they share that information in a calm and non-panicky manner. This gives the group as a whole the ability to make tactical (and personal) decisions about how to proceed, rather than having their movements prescribed to them by a small clique that controls crowd movements for its own unspoken internal interests.

This leadership is also contingent on forms of organization within the crowd that facilitate ground-level decision-making. A crowd that has organized itself into small units of affinity group is well-positioned to make proactive use of these leaders’ information, while a crowd that sees itself as sheep waiting to be herded around will be incapable of acting with agency, no matter the intentions of those sharing the information. In this sense, movement culture matters deeply. Every demonstration is an opportunity to grow and practice these forms of leadership and organization, and spread them to those who are new.

By contrast, a state-form of leadership does the opposite in this situation. In my town, it’s not uncommon for non-profit affiliated activists to share information with crowds about police movement or communications, but only in ways that exaggerate or mischaracterize the omnipotence of the police, in order to scare off or suppress any possible kinds of popular initiative or direct action. In this way, such activists essentially act as arms of the state, “pre-policing” the crowd by manipulating or gatekeeping information and spreading panic.[6] The act of sharing information at a protest is itself a source of power, that can either reinforce movement hierarchies and suppress popular initiative, or undermine those hierarchies by enabling spontaneity and self-organization. The politics, goals, and culture of those sharing the information matters deeply.

2. Understand leadership as temporary and untethered from bourgeois and bureaucratic notions of careerism and professionalism. As an example, we could imagine a leader as someone with a specific set of skills—perhaps construction skills, medical experience, combat training, or another kind of technical expertise—that offers to teach a series of classes at a local social center. In this sense, they are acting in a leadership role by proactively identifying a community need and taking initiative to help solve that problem. While teaching this series of classes they have a circumscribed kind of authority, limited by time and subject matter and interacted with voluntarily by others. Their “leadership” is a voluntary and temporary gift to the community around them. Borrowing from a concept explored by several anarchist anthropologists, this temporary authority is non-transferrable: in contrast with the state-like view of Leaderhip™, it does not easily exchange into a permanently marked position, status, or wealth, and is clearly bounded by context.[7] This leadership also acts to directly disperse knowledge horizontally to those who take the class, rather than gatekeeping that knowledge at the top of a permanent pyramid.

3. Allow the movement to survive and persist despite when abuse is done by those in positions of influence. This kind of leadership does not mean that abuse and harm will never occur, but rather that those in positions of influence are less able to trade in that leadership for permanent status and thus stay in positions they can easily abuse. Because this kind of leadership is often rotating, temporary, and more likely to be specific to a certain situation, movements are partly inoculated against abusive and power-hungry leaders by being less dependent upon them. A movement being less dependent on these leaders can also make holding them to account easier.

Again, this does not mean that some people will not cause harm or even betray their comrades and loved ones, but it does mean that an entire movement or organization is less likely to fall apart when that leader lets down their people. This also allows our movements to avoid the disturbing cults of personality that often characterize State Socialism. In the words of Russell Maroon Shoatz, we are a many-headed hydra, not a dragon.

4. Appear illegible to the ruling class, and therefore difficult to co-opt or repress. Because it operates on a truly alien logic, politicians, police, capitalists, thinktanks, journalists, academics, and the like have a harder time identifying this kind of leadership, and a difficult time understanding its relationship with the broader movement. This is sometimes referred to as opacity, and it is a tremendous strategic strength. The redundancy built into this model also means that when police do press charges upon these leaders, those charges often fail to undermine the movement as a whole.

A brief example: From 2007-2008, a massive series of demonstrations and blockades were organized to confront the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN. The organizing occurred nationally for over a year and a half, with multiple spokes-councils inviting delegates from dozens of organizations and affinity groups from around the country to develop a plan for coordinated blockades at intersections in downtown St. Paul, that would effectively shut the city down and prevent the convention from taking place. Local anarchists took the lead in organizing and facilitating these spokescouncils.

These meetings were unfortunately infiltrated by informants on more than one occasion, and at least one informant was present in local organizing. A day before the convention, the FBI and local police raided multiple public organizers’ houses around the Twin Cities, ultimately arresting eight people who they believed to be indispensable “ringleaders” and charging them with intense felony conspiracy charges.

In spite of the local organizing body being seriously disrupted by the raids and charges, and in spite of police being vaguely aware of the overall strategy, the blockades outmaneuvered riot police and happened anyway. Though the RNC still took place, the city was largely shut down, and a new wave of anarchist organizing and action came out of that weekend of blockades, sabotage, and organizing. And, eventually, the RNC 8 beat their charges and went free.

Because initiative and decision-making was located at the base level of affinity groups and participating orgs, the repression of local leadership did not disable the action. Despite not facing anywhere near the same level of repression, state socialist and liberal groups organizing around the RNC achieved nothing close to this level of planning or disruption. A dragon would have been beheaded and the entire weekend would have been a complete failure, with crowds waiting on orders that never came. Instead, the hydra was able to persist minus one head, and outmaneuver a police force that had two years of prep and a special 40 million dollar budget all dedicated to stopping it. This was thanks to the leadership of the local organizers prioritizinga structure that facilitated self-organization and ultimately planning for their own redundancy.

5. Expand rather than contract or curtail revolutionary activity. Broadly speaking, leadership-by-expansion can happen in three ways: by social group, by subject, or by geography. We can imagine a small conflict with the local ruling class in the town we live in: say, a group of tenants going on rent strike in one particular building. That conflict could be expanded by low-income homeowners (a new social group) organizing a mass-deferral on their mortgage in solidarity with the tenants; or by an affinity group taking action against police infrastructure and declaring in a public statement that the struggle against the police (a new subject) is also a struggle against landlords, and that the police will face further resistance if they suppress the strike; or by tenants in a different part of town organizing a neighborhood assembly to spread the strike to their block (a new geography).

All of these actions offer a kind of leadership that expands the struggle from its initial point of rupture—a tenant strike in one building—to a broader terrain in which more and more groups of people can add their own energy, input, and character, all while confusing our enemies and destabilizing their strategies of repression. This leadership-by-expansion occurs by proposal, initiative, creativity, coordination, and solidarity. It acts as a gift. It uses coordination but requires neither consensus nor a singular command structure. The homeowners joining the strike, for example, may or may not “agree” with autonomous actions taken in solidarity or in confrontation with the police, but their agreement is not necessary for the actions of both to interact synergistically and push forward the struggle.

Likewise, the original group of striking tenants are supported with mutual aid and acts of solidarity, but they are also not centered in a solitary way that presumes they are the only ones in town who should decide how the broader struggle against landlords moves forward. Nor are whatever institutions that say they are in solidarity with or “represent” those tenants—perhaps a union or non-profit—centered in such a way as to give them control over how the entire movement should expand.

It is easy to contrast this with how we know Leadership™ in much of the American Left would behave in this situation. Their party or non-profit bureaucracies would be unlikely to show the initiative required to spread the strike to a different part of town or amongst low-income homeowners, and would consider such expansion by others a threat upon their own control over the movement. They would most certainly condemn or at least distance themselves from physical confrontations or sabotage, considering the mere stain-by-association and threat that illegal activity might pose to their own position, funding sources, and comfort. They definitely would not carry out autonomous action themselves. At local demonstrations organized in solidarity with the tenant strike, they would show up with uniformed peace police, hired by a local non-profit to prevent others from acting in any kind of escalation or expansion unapproved by Leadership™.

The role of their kind of Leadership™ is not expansion, but contraction and suffocation. It is to suppress any acts of solidarity that do not occur within the bounds of legal and non-profit bureaucracy, which is to say, most actual acts of everyday working-class solidarity. At its core, this kind of Leadership™ cosplays as a mini-state, treating the larger movement like a society it wishes to rule, and so, whether intentionally or not, its function is to do what all states exist to do: prevent insurgency.

The Failure of Anarchism to Clarify the Conversation Around Leadership

Many of these points are common in anarchist circles, but anarchists have often done themselves no favors in discussions around leadership. Occupying a kind of performative posture of reactionary (albeit understandable) defiance to the counter-insurgent farce that passes for much “leadership” among the Left, many anarchists have introduced confusion rather than clarity here.  They scream out “A strong community needs no leaders!” among a thousand other silly gestures.

These gestures do not and cannot actually accomplish the elimination of leadership—non-state-like forms of leadership like those mentioned above will inevitably still occur, because they form part of the basis of everyday social life and are fundamental to the creative forms of self-organization of the dispossessed everywhere. Rather, (some) anarchists simply try to define these kinds of leadership out of existence. The ensuing confusion is inevitable.

Ironically, the kinds of horizontal leadership being discussed in this piece are often carried out by anarchist militants themselves. During the onset of the Spanish Civil War, when Abel Paz and his other fifteen-year old friends raided an armory in Barcelona so people would have the means to initially repel Franco’s fascist invasion, they were most certainly taking on a temporary role of leadership, one which was made possible by months of scouting and planning. The brave umbrella-wielding affinity groups who led the (partial) escape from the kettle on January 20th at Trump’s first inauguration protests may think they’re “against leaders,” but they most certainly were acting in a leadership role.

One could argue this is merely a semantic distinction, but its actually a real problem. The position of “no leadership” ends up preemptively cutting off any substantive discussion on what it means to develop practices of autonomous initiative, mentorship, and experimentation—all of which are intrinsically necessary to revolutionary struggle and all of which involve individuals or groups leading by example. If we cannot elaborate upon what these alternative forms of leadership look and feel like, on what their role in our movements should and should not be, then we’re stuck in a reactive place.

How often have we seen people shirk away from roles of temporary leadership, whether it’s not standing on a car-hood to propose a new tactic to the crowd, or not choosing a new set of targets in the struggle rather than just “follow the riot,” or not teaching a skill to our community in fear of being seen as some kind of “authority?”[8] This problem is distinct from the anarchist emphasis on anonymity, which has a valuable logic rooted in some very hard lessons learned about security culture and repression. The lack of clarity around leadership has resulted in a movement that often lacks the confidence to share useful lessons around tactics, strategy, and vision. There are ways to navigate and balance these needs, but treating the concept of leadership itself like a taboo subject prevents us from finding them.

Another problem of this (supposedly) anarchist position on leadership is the very real confusion it introduces into conversations with new militants trying out these concepts of autonomous initiative for the first time. With no real sustained discussion of which kinds of leadership contribute to liberation versus which kinds function as counter-insurgency, new folks are often left on their own to suss out the incoherent cultural norms of a political scene that simultaneously eschews certain optics of leadership while also demonstrating in practice a wide variety of leadership-by-example. The confusion is made even worse by the ways that many anarchists, in not wanting to appear like an expert or “authority,” instinctually avoid roles of mentorship to new radicals. For self-evident reasons this is a particular problem in political communities that struggle with inter-generationality, whiteness, and social segregation.

Sometimes, if we can’t name something, we can’t see it.  The position of “No Leaders!” held by some anarchists can prevent them from seeing the very real forms of liberating, non-state-like leadership already happening every day in oppressed communities. Ironically, while it occupies a posture of defiance, their position actually accepts the terms of the debate set by the statist Left—that leadership is only possible or desirable in forms that mimic the colonial logic of statecraft. This allows Leadership™ to argue the falsehood that they’re the only ones seriously interested in the very real questions of how to generate revolutionary activity and assert power.

We need out of this trap. We need to stop looking at our movements like a state views the society it seeks to dominate. We need to stop fetishizing the leadership-form of the colonial structures that evolved to manage administrative bureaucracies—political parties, non-profits, industrial technocrats, universities, militaries–and start seeing and trusting the creative, problem-solving genius and liberatory desires of normal ass people. This means naming these autonomous and liberatory forms of leadership explicitly as such, and refusing to cede that discourse to the self-styled Leadership™ that would render our struggles tame and toothless.

On Spontaneity and Organization

“Keep the focus on the action not the institution; don’t confuse the vehicle with the objective; all cocoons are temporary and disappear.”

Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

“Picture this: Earth has made its first contact with an extraterrestrial species, and, as to be expected, their anatomy and nervous system are entirely different from our own. Rather than having a single brain where all sensory information and motor controls are processed, they have nine brains. Rather than having a rigid skeleton, they have compact arrays of muscle tissue that stiffen and soften when they move, and their many limbs have an infinite number of degrees of freedom. Oh, and they can only breath underwater, too.” 

Maggie Stephen, “Nine Brains are Better Than One: An Octopus’ Nervous System”

A snapshot:

Part of history forgets, that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. “Here’s your payoff, you pigs! You fucking pigs! Get out of our faces. ” This was started by the street queens of that era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here…

One thing led to another. The confrontation got so hot, that Inspector [Seymour] Pine, who headed this raid, him and his men had to barricade themselves in our bar, because they could not get out…. The cops were actually so afraid of us that night that if we had busted through that bar’s door, they were gonna shoot. They were ordered to shoot if that door busted open. Someone yanked a parking meter out the floor, which was loose, because it’s very hard to get a parking meter out of the ground (laughter). It was loose, you know, I don’t know how it got loose. But that was being rammed into the door.

People have also asked me, “Was it a pre-planned riot?,” because out of nowhere, Molotov cocktails showed up. I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it; I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one! [laughter] And I didn’t even know what a Molotov cocktail was; I’m holding this thing that’s lit and I’m like “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” “Throw it before it blows!” “OK!” [9] 

What is organization? On the surface the word should simply and broadly refer to a group of people working together with a shared purpose, but much like “leadership,” the term has been beaten to death by the Left in such a way as to suggest something politically much more narrow.

How often do we hear the refrain from some earnest and probably well-meaning activist, while gesturing at a revolt of some kind with detached apprehension, “What we need is to get organized!” On its surface such vagueness is difficult to dispute: sure, let’s be organized. But the weight of the statement is in the implication that goes unspoken, that organization is not yet present. This suggests that it is something that must be imposed from outside upon the masses, that organization cannot emerge nascently from revolt without outside intervention, nor can organization preempt that revolt in a form that appears alien to those who claim to desire it.

The fact that this statement can be uttered at all, with so few objecting to its many unspoken assumptions, suggests that it is operating on a logic inherited without question from the society it supposedly seeks to change. As in the earlier discussion of leadership, most of what qualifies as the Left in North America wields this word in a way that feels familiar and comfortable to those who live under states and capitalism. Like their particular, colonial notion of leadership, their understanding of Organization™ assumes a range of things that start to look and sound exactly how a state forces newly colonized peoples to “organize” themselves.[10] These include:

1. A hierarchical chain of command
2. A set of decision-makers identifiable not just to themselves but who are also legible to enemy structures of Power
3. A centralized body with a singular and unified mechanism of enforcement
4.  A permanence that suggests the Organization is more important than the tasks it was initially formed to accomplish
5. A bureaucratic manner of administration
6. a body of officers driven by bourgeois notions of professionalism

Put more succinctly and eloquently by Kimathi Muhammad:

During crisis situations, professionals have nothing to say except that we must approach our problems systematically. The type of organization most professionals see as necessary is a small group of highly educated people meeting behind closed doors in a mahogany-furnished room, deciding the fate of the movement on paper. But what the professionals attempt to organize on paper, poor people are busy organizing daily on their jobs, in their homes and communities.

It would be easy to contrast this notion of Organization™ with an alternative “theory” of organization. There are infinite examples of how everyday people coordinate and plan with each other to accomplish the tasks of care, survival, and revolt in ways that fundamentally contradict the logic of statecraft, from which such a theory could be built. The earlier conversation about leadership points in this direction quite clearly, as do decades and decades of reflections on the theory and practice of movements that reject the state, from the many examples of South American horizontalisms, to a variety of anti-colonial struggles, to new historical understandings of marronage by former Panthers, to so many others. There is no shortage of examples and theories; what matters is that this “theory” must emerge organically from the most everyday sites of struggle and survival, not from a singular notion of “correct” structure fixed in idealized concrete.[11]

The New World We Inhabit

Despite a resurgence among small corners of the internet for the distant, fetishized iconography of the Old Left, mostly among those who are too young to have seen the behavior of that Left in real time, the most militant and broadly participatory struggles of the last three decades in North America have largely rejected the assumptions implied in its style of Organization™. First and foremost this has been done in practice, in response to the material realities of late Capitalism structuring our lives very differently than they did in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Dozens of factors are at play here: the shift from economies built around manufacturing to those built on circulation and financial speculation; the corresponding decline of the labor movement and social democratic parties; the collapse of the USSR and the hollowing out of its geopolitical coalition; the increase of more precarious and feminized forms of labor; the politics of migration and changing technologies around border enforcement; the massive rise of the prison-industrial complex and increased militarization of racialized policing; the existential threat presented by industrial economies via climate change; and the renewed influence of indigenous struggles against extractive industries, among many others.

All of these conditions cause revolt and its accompanying forms of organization to look differently out of material necessity, rather than (at least at first) out of a purely ideological position. To summarize in too few words the ways these material shifts have caused revolt to “choose” new kinds of organization, we are no longer living in a time when speaking truth to or making demands upon Power appears pragmatic. Functionally speaking, the shifts in neoliberal capitalism of the past 50 years mean that in practical terms there is no longer a center-left to make demands of. This isn’t simply because what remains of the center-left and centrist parties are too “corrupt” or ideologically co-opted to listen, as the progressives like to claim. That claim is true to a point, but mistakes a symptom for the cause, making all their efforts to “elect more progressive candidates” merely Sisyphus inching up the hill.

Fascist and ethno-nationalist parties are on the rise because they are useful to states and economies in ways that the center no longer is, because the nature of global capital has irreversibly changed. And, importantly, what remains of the centrist parties, who alongside fascists increasingly preside over economies of financial speculation and circulation, no longer has a reason to pretend to listen to social movements.

The intensely brutal, naked repression that the Stop Cop City struggle in Atlanta has experienced, delivered by a coalition of local Democrats and state Republicans with absolutely zero desire to negotiate, demonstrates this with perfect clarity. A century ago, a popular, diverse, and physically combative movement like Stop Cop City—which cost the city of Atlanta tens of millions of dollars, used direct action to physically delay the project for over two years, and radically shifted public opinion—could opt to make radical demands of the center-left and predictably receive reformist results in return. In the early 20th century, this strategy was repeatedly a Faustian bargain, to be sure. It usually left black workers, migrant workers, domestic, and female workers out in the cold, while it repeatedly privileged a segment of white male workers, who could then be relied upon to reaffirm that bargain with Capital for generations to come.[12] It was a long-term betrayal for limited short-term gains, but it was an approach that achieved reliable, reformist results for at least a privileged sector of the working class for some time. This stabilized economies in a certain stage of growth, and was an implied precondition for the Keynesian economic framework at the core of industrial economies in the mid-20th century.

Stop Cop City was offered no such bargain. Capital and states have realized that they no longer need to secure that deal with (sectors of) the working class and dispossessed, meaning they no longer really need these centrist and center-left parties either. The services of these negotiators are no longer required; those parties served their purpose, and now they are being set aside. This is a dangerous strategic gamble on the part of states, to be sure, but it is clearly the move they have chosen. Capital is removing its mask, and the demands of popular revolts are now primarily met with silence, or an empty façade of negotiations made in transparently poor faith that serve only to allow the forces of hard repression time to better arrange their pieces on the chessboard.

This is the world we live in now. This is our unsettling reality. Popular uprisings of the 21st century, marked by a spontaneous, on the ground wisdom that catches up to and then pushes history forward, have learned this lesson the hard way. They don’t shy away from making demands upon Power due to a lack of the proper Leadership™, as suggested by some. In many cases, at least some sectors of social movements do still make demands upon power in a traditional sense. But, intelligently, most participants seem to act with fewer expectations that these demands would or could ever be met. It is no longer their central strategy.

These movements, and in particular those elements of spontaneous revolt, have learned a materialist lesson about the reality we live in and adjusted their approach accordingly. They have increasingly rejected or deprioritized organizing in ways that center the making of demands and communicating in dialogue with Power. As is typical, on-the-ground revolt has digested lessons of the recent past more quickly than the professional activists who would seek to guide it. The spontaneity of revolt as it emerges in real time in the 21st century organizes our movements in new ways that correspond with this new material reality. Unless we want to continue to force the square peg of the present into the round hole of a historical fetish for state mimicry, then, it is necessary to reconsider the relationship between spontaneity and organization.

“Spontaneity Organizes”

To those of us on the surface, the underground growth and development of a cicada is a thing unknown and unknowable. When billions of cicadas emerge into our aboveground world simultaneously, were it not for the reminders of biologists it would feel impromptu and miraculous.

To those in positions of power and comfort, an uprising may feel like it sprang up out of thin air, like a “natural” and “immediate” eruption. Undoubtedly the monied white men in Richmond experienced Gabriel Prosser’s march on their city as a terrifying explosion of thoughtless, unbidden barbarity. But that feeling is not fact. To impose this derivative understanding of spontaneity upon revolt is to remain oblivious to the thousands of networks, friendships, meetings, songs, gangs, and whispers—to the beautiful social organization—that make an uprising possible. This is a false understanding of spontaneity that speaks with the mouth of our enemies.

In their article Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture, the authors of the journal Endnotes write:

Spontaneity is usually understood as an absence of organization. Something spontaneous arises from a momentary impulse, as if occurring naturally. Second International Marxists believed that workers’ revolt was spontaneous, in this sense: it was a natural reaction to capitalist domination, which must be given shape by the party. This notion relies on what might be called a derivative meaning of the term spontaneity. In the 18th century, when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception—the fact that I am aware of myself as having my own experiences—he called this a spontaneous act. Kant meant the opposite of something natural. A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken. [my italics]

The Left’s derivative use of spontaneity here, and its presumed contrast with organization, resides in 19th century bourgeois (and highly racialized) assumptions about the poor and oppressed: that on their own they are animal-like, acting out of pure natural and base instinct and incapable of planning or organization. This false understanding of spontaneity easily takes hold in a racist and capitalist society where these assumptions are common, even among the oppressed themselves.

In fact, the word “spontaneous” is derived from the Latin root sponte, meaning “of one’s own accord, freely and willingly.” Despite its common, derivative use, at its root “spontaneity” does not mean to act compulsively, immediately, or without thought or planning, but rather to act freely and creatively.  

It is not just old-school state socialists at risk of making this mistake. Perhaps in anticipation of a Leninist regression, States of Siege, a widely circulated Tiqqunist text, states:

Spontaneous, disorganized, leaderless, mass resistance movements, whether armed or unarmed, cannot both topple an entrenched ruling clique and reorganize the economic reality of a society. Without specialized detachments of intellectuals and creative thinkers, popular movements do not generate transformative slogans and theories.

This is a jumbled, historically inaccurate mess: First, “spontaneous” movements are not inherently disorganized or leaderless; second, they have demonstrably toppled many, many ruling classes throughout history and have repeatedly demonstrated an ingenious ability to reorganize their economic reality; and third, they obviously don’t need “specialized intellectuals” to generate their slogans. This kind of confused nonsense is useless as revolutionary analysis, except to reinforce a kind of elitist self-importance that is better left to the Bob Avakians of the world.

The activities of revolt—a land occupation, a prison takeover, a wildcat strike, a street rebellion against the police—are spontaneous in that they are freely and creatively undertaken, and in that they disrupt the “continuous flow” of capitalist time, not in the derivative sense that they involve no planning or social organization. In fact, it is precisely these activities that typically generate new forms of organization which respond to the new needs of the people in revolt against a society whose material conditions have changed. In fact, reorganizing their economic reality is often the first task they undertake as territory is seized.

Rather than understand spontaneity and organization to be in fundamental conflict or contradiction, we should see them as existing within a generative tension. To quote Kimathi Muhammad again:

People who rebel, resist, and enter into life and death struggles never act without a sense of direction. They know what they want and they organize themselves to get what they want. Contained within that, spontaneity has a phenomenal capacity for organization. Both develop out of each other.

Thinking of these two concepts in generative tension, I would propose that a useful metric for revolutionary organization is whether or not that organization helps to generate the conditions for spontaneous revolt. In turn, a useful question for revolutionaries trying to understand revolt is: What kind of new organizational forms are being generated by this spontaneity? Reflecting on my own groups’ contributions during periods of revolt, I think we have often successfully engaged with this first question, but have consistently failed at considering the second.

Going back to the earlier discussion of leadership, I propose we again imagine a demonstration as a microcosm for this larger dynamic. A protest might be organized by a coalition of groups in such a way as to preemptively snuff out any possible actions carried out freely and willingly by those who show up, or it might be organized in such a way as to enable those actions, with the initial organizing framework serving as a vehicle to share relevant information, protect those in the crowd likely to face repression, and coordinate said efforts by otherwise disparate elements in the crowd. Both of these are “organization,” perse, but the former orients towards proletarian spontaneity as an enemy or at best as something to treat with caution and skepticism, while the other embraces it, acting as a vehicle with which to enable and expand that spontaneous activity, acknowledging that if such activity goes far enough, it will likely create new forms of organization that render the old irrelevant. All cocoons are temporary and disappear.

This last bit helps to explain why Organizations™ that place their own existence above the tasks they purport to exist to carry out—which is a defining feature of states and the organizational forms that imitate them—are so reticent to enable proletarian spontaneity: they know that it threatens to render them irrelevant. By contrast, an anti-state organizational form relishes this fact, understanding that in the dialectic between spontaneity and organization, it is a necessary revolutionary step for older organizational forms to be replaced by the new. “History bears witness to this fact, again and again: newly emergent struggles disdain existing forms. Instead, they generate their own forms, which are then disdained, in turn, in future waves of revolt.”[13]

By contrast, the Leninist and non-profit models attempt to freeze history, to stop the generation of new forms in preference for a state-sponsored model that allows only one. The Party becomes the State, forever more.

These Organizations™ have a complicated relationship with revolt. They need the spectre of such spontaneity to exist—the social contradictions exposed by revolt justify these organizations’ meager existence, and offers them a prime recruitment opportunity. But at the same time, this revolt must be kept distant, and above all prevented from generating its own  forms of struggle that would render these Organizations™ irrelevant. Once their Revolution™ takes place, this revolt is no longer useful even as spectre, which helps explain why “socialist” states have so brutally criminalized strikes, riots, and protests, even and especially when organized by revolutionary workers.

A Brief Detour with Karl Marx and his Walking Dead

Marx once defined communism as “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.” Sometimes this is lazily read to mean, “Communism is what people who call themselves communists are doing”, which explains why it is oft-quoted by apologists for the atrocities of governments that call themselves “communist.”  This is transparently circular reasoning that leads those of us who want actual, lived communism absolutely nowhere. If “communism” is just whatever people (or states) who call themselves communist are doing, we have no metric to actually judge our efforts. If the communists all decide its revolutionary to, say, take up hoola-hooping or assassinate the leaders of a rival radical trade union that insists on expropriating capitalist industry against the wishes of a conservative bureaucrat in Moscow, well, then hoola-hooping is now revolutionary, and anyone who says otherwise must be working for the CIA.

While of course we desire to “abolish the present state of things,” I propose we set this derivative definition of communism aside, and opt for a different goalpost which reattaches our understanding to the actual society we’re trying to create. For the topic at hand, I propose a metric that asks the question: Does this form of leadership and organization increase oppressed peoples’ abilities to collectively self-organize and self-manage their own economic and political affairs, or does it suppress them?[14]

This metric draws on Marx’ own limited descriptions of what a communist society would (or does) look like: stateless and self-managed directly by the dispossessed themselves. In this description, Marx was not talking about a society ruled by a state controlled by a political party calling itself “Communist,” but rather a communist society. “Communist” here is not describing the political tradition or iconography of a political party, but the nature of the social relations themselves.

This is where communism—the daily lived reality of the thing rather than its spectacle in the form of flags and icons[15]—actually comes from: the creative, collective problem-solving and fierce rebellion of the dispossessed and oppressed. As CLR James declared, “Every cook can govern.” All revolutionary struggles tethered to this belief have at least some promise, regardless of their labels or iconography. Conversely, revolutionaries who have lost this belief are truly rudderless. Working backward from this observation, as well as from the lessons of anti-colonial and indigenous rebels who have fought to preserve stateless autonomous sovereignties in a wide variety of contexts for millenia, we can pretty quickly come to a very different set of conclusions about what kinds of leadership and organization are valuable, about which kinds develop the cultural capacity for self-governance, self-organization, and a truly communal distribution of not just resources but also power.

In Conclusion

This piece began as an attempt to work through the many confusions that arise when considering questions of leadership, organization, and spontaneity for revolutionary struggle. The simplistic and pat answers offered by most of the Left are useless. We are either given a flattened regurgitation of century-old bourgeois presumptions, wrapped in a synthetic, bright new red flag, or a kneejerk, reactionary rejection of the very questions themselves. The former is a tired, dead road, vomiting up failed 100-year-old platitudes of a bygone age. The latter valorizes a limited understanding of spontaneity, perhaps even fetishizes it, but risks cutting off our ability to critically consider what organizational forms might actually enable the creativity and adaptation that revolt requires. Once again, we need out of this trap.

On all sides we find ourselves in the well-traveled paradox of attempting to use capitalist-and state-ruled societies’ definitions to structure our thinking on how to struggle against those very societies. To give another example of this paradox, in an understandable if not overly moralist attempt to project “being serious,” a number of leftists have recently suggested more hierarchical, party-like structures as necessary to facilitate an escalation of confrontation on behalf of the western Palestine solidarity movement.

This can only be understood as a willful effort to not learn the repeated lessons of the encampments. Almost every report-back from both campus and non-student protests which escalated beyond symbolic protest, especially those that successfully seized buildings and held off police raids, reported that professional non-profits, sanctioned student orgs, and vanguardist orgs were more often an obstacle to such escalation. This observation was most certainly also true at the college in my town. More to the point, I am aware of zero acts of escalatory direct action or building occupations in North America in the months since the student encampments—and there have been many such acts—that have been claimed by the kinds of “serious” party-style Organizations™ that this position craves. So much for the Party being the vehicle of escalation.

This way of thinking starts with an unexamied acceptance of bourgeois norms regarding what counts as “real” organization. It then substitutes spectacle and optics, of what one thinks others will see as “serious,” for actual substance. Rather than consider the new organizational forms emerging from the generative conflicts between encampment militants and the student orgs that typically sought to contain them, certain leftists seek to impose an old organizational form more resembling of the State, which to them connotes a “serious militant” or “guerilla” aesthetic. The irony is that, in doing so, they end up distancing themselves from the revolutionaries that actually are carrying out sabotage right now in North America against the US-Israeli war machine. This leads us to the sad performance of the Leninists in my own backyard, who scream out their support for “the resistance” in distant Palestine, but refuse to even mention the names of comrades we have facing time for taking action right here.[16]

The desires to take our participation in struggles more seriously, to grow our capacity for self-discipline and coordination, to set aside the subcultural self-image of the “beautiful loser,” are admirable and correct. The unspoken conclusion that this equates to structuring our movements like states is a clumsy and tragic mistake, at odds with our own lived experience of which sectors have had the most success in the kinds of escalation a participatory social revolt requires.

Back to Basics

To restate from earlier, the central questions we should be considering are whether or not a form of leadership or organization helps to generate the conditions for spontaneous revolt, and in turn, what kind of new organizational forms are being generated by this revolt. This set of questions can work at the micro- and macro- level; it can be used just as much to consider how we want to coordinate ground-level tactical decisions during a protest as to consider huge questions concerning production and culture after a social revolution. These questions imply that, in contrast with a colonial logic that locates only one kind of valid organization, there are actually many kinds of leadership and organization. The culture and social reproductive qualities of these can differ in marked ways, and accordingly they may either reinforce social hierarchies, break them down, or do both in unexpected and complicated ways.

Also implied with these questions is the analytical primacy that should be given to spontaneity itself, and to new organizational forms that arise from those acts. A final example of this: When a group of black activists in Houston successfully took over a highway in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising in 2014, they were engaged in an unusual experiment. Sometimes a tactical risk like this fails or is forgotten, but in this case that experiment began to slowly echo. At solidarity protests later that year in the Bay Area and Durham, NC, and during the proceeding uprisings in Baltimore in 2015 and Charlotte in 2016, that tactical experiment was repeated successfully, often with a high degree of self-organization and coordination to allow for the safe entry of a large number of people onto a busy interstate.[17] By the time the 2020 uprising took hold nationwide, this tactic had become almost second nature to many crowds, offering a (relatively) low-risk way for medium to large numbers of people to cost cities that primarily rely on the circulation of goods and services huge amounts of money. Just a few weeks ago, protesters used it again to block multiple highways in LA during that city’s rebellion against ICE raids. A tactic improvised in 2014 in one city took on a life of its own, generating new organizational forms across different terrains of struggle.

A stale view dead-set upon one organizational (state-like) form probably would dismiss that small highway takeover in 2014 as a silly gesture compared to the strikes and unions of old, and refuse to learn anything. As Walter Benjamin wrote, “To historians who wish to relive an era, Fustel de Coulanges recommends that they blot out everything they know about the later course of history. There is no better way of characterizing the method by which historical materialism has broken.”[18]

A more discerning eye might see the highway takeovers’ remarkable similarity to the piqueteros demonstrations of 2001 Argentina, when thousands of recently unemployed workers joined a country-wide revolt by taking over and setting up communal kitchens on highways surrounding cities. One might then ask the next question at hand: What does the resonance of this tactic with so many people tell us about the economies built upon financial speculation and commodity circulation we now live in? Where does it tell us our power is located? And in turn, what other new tactics and strategies, and accompanying organizational forms, will derive from this new circumstance? What will be those forms’ contributions and what will be their limitations?[19]

To give analytical primacy to the role of spontaneity, and its accompanying new organizational forms, is not to fetishize or valorize such acts uncritically. That an act of communal revolt is engaged in freely and creatively does not mean it doesn’t have reactionary elements deserving of criticism, or that it doesn’t have certain limitations that need to be transcended. But revolutionaries can only contribute to that transcendence if we accept that our own assumptions and organizational forms will themselves ultimately be set aside. Our seriousness and self-discipline can be a virtue; our self-importance cannot.

This requires new ways of understanding leadership within revolutionary political cultures, alongside a fundamentally different way of understanding the relationship between organization and spontaneity, that resists the definitions and methods given to us by politicians, political parties, corporate executives, technocrats, non-profit activists, and academics. These new ways already exist, and more are coming. They are constantly appearing and disappearing. They may flare up briefly at a “moment of danger,” or secretly persist in the shadows of daily survival, but they are always there.

The cocoon of our current revolutionary form is always temporary.

Freedom is always imminent.

NOTES:

[1]  It should also be apparent that to adopt the worldview of the oppressor does deep psychological damage to the oppressed. No shortage of radicals have pointed this out, from the radical pedagogy of Paolo Freire to the searing insights of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Frantz Fanon. This should be understood to include organizing ourselves in ways that mimic colonial statecraft.

[2]  I think it will become clear throughout this piece that I am distinctly not proposing a prefigurative politics, whereby the current organizational forms we use become the forms of the new society.

[3]  While I’m not drawing on it much in this piece, there is, obviously a massive amount of writing and thinking from indigenous perspectives that also makes many of the same points in this article. In particular I would encourage folks to check out the late Klee Benally’s writings on autonomous organization and indigeneity. There is simultaneously a huge amount of writing from Central and South American autonomous movements dealing with horizontalismo, that, while I don’t use much here, is highly relevant to understanding the dialectical relationship between organization and spontaneity, as we come to reframe both of these concepts. The new social forms and tactical innovations which occurred during the 2001 uprising in Argentina are relevant as well.

[4]  When I am contrasting “permanent” with “temporary” kinds of authority, “permanent” would usually include the kinds of formal, state-like authority implied by elected officers and such. The individuals who fill those roles may only be in them for set amounts of time, but much like bourgeois democracy replaced the divine right of kings, the authority of the position itself transcends their individual replacement. If an organization’s form mimics the state in this way, it is likely that power remains at the top of the pyramid regardless of how the deck is shuffled.

[5]  “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” – Walter Benjamin

[6]  A number of reportbacks from Palestine solidarity actions in 2024, from different cities, all reported on this phenomenon.

[7]  Some would point out that problems of certain high-profile activists turning their skills into a kind of social capital still persist in this model of leadership, and that is absolutely true. But I believe we’re better positioned to limit that problem when notions of leadership are non-careerist, temporary, and characterized by a kind of “role reduncancy,” rather permanently institutionalized via bourgeois careerism.

[8]  My own discussions with my long-term comrades on our successes and failures during the 2020 uprising locally have repeatedly returned to this notion of our own failure to lead-by-expansion, and instead opt for the “easier” path of simply “following the riot.” In those mass street conflicts we played useful roles, but it was nevertheless a reactive posture. We’ve often reflected that the most powerful and useful we felt in that summer and fall, in addition to helping crowds resist the police, was when we were attempting to aid the movement through the occupations of physical space like buildings or parks.

[9]  Excerpt from Sylvia Rivera’s 2001 talk at the Lesbian And Gay Community Services Center, New York City

[10]  “The notion of the party is a notion imported from the mother country…We have seen that inside the nationalist parties, the will to break colonialism is linked with another quite different will: that of coming to a friendly agreement with it.” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth)

[11]  “For this reason, there can be no fixed theory of struggle. There can only be a phenomenology of the experience of revolt.” “Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture,”Endnotes Vol. 3.

[12]  Looking at who was left out of Capital and Labor’s peace treaty that allowed for the legalization of unions with the Taft-Hartley Act, specifically industries populated by black domestic workers, immigrants, and public workers, demonstrates this easily. So does the racialization of the social safety net matrix established by the New Deal. White supremacy is a feature, not a bug, of social democratic reformism.

[13]  Endnotes 3.0, “Organization, Spontaneity, Rupture.”

[14]  I want to again be clear here: I am not proposing the traditional anarchist concept of prefigurativism. That concept had its uses, but it’s fundamentally at odds with this understanding of organization as transcendental. The social and organizational dynamics of our organization now, as they evolve, dissapear, and re-form anew amids the changing terrain, need to be anti-authoritarian in their practice and ethics in order to resist the counter-insurgency they will encounter and to invite spontaneity and popular initiative, but this does not equate to their form predicting or “prefiguring” whatever organizational structures take root in a distant future society. Even from a classically anarchist perspective, this seems a both unrealistic and undesirable imposition upon the future. It is enough to begin, without being asked to play Nostradamus.

[15]  For a useful discussion about the nature of communist spectacle versus substance, and how it relates to police and prisons, check out the Simoun Magsalin’s Against Carceral Communism, for Abolition Communism!

[16]  Donate to Casey Goonan’s case! https://freecaseynow.noblogs.org/donate/

[17]  This sometimes involves affinity groups bringing road flares and sparklers to hand out, or the picking up of reflective road construction materials as a march passed through town, as well as the use of large reflective banners and loud sound systems. In Charlotte in 2017, rioters who briefly blocked I-77 downtown specifically allowed black drivers in passenger cars to pass through, as well as white drivers who shouted “Fuck the Police” with the crowd, but refused to allow large trucks carrying commodities. Planning enables spontaneity, which enables more planning.

[18]  Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin.

[19]  Joshua Clover, who was an absolute real one, may he rest in peace, considers these questions in great detail in his book Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings.

Photo by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash

Living and Fighting speaks with a member of Tucson Community Rapid Response Network

Over the last seven months, the Trump administration has taken sweeping measures to further detain, deport, and destroy the lives of immigrants. It’s an effort that has resulted not just in the bombastic cruelty of sending hundreds of detainees to a notorious El Salvador prison or building a detention center in the alligator-and python-infested swamplands of Florida, but also in a steep increase in immigrations arrests across the country (in Arizona, they’re up 113% since the inauguration). In June, in response to a government call for and subsequent spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and kidnappings, the people of Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Tucson, and other cities across the country protested and rioted on behalf of themselves and their families, friends, and neighbors. Despite the fierce commitment and bravery of those in the streets, the government’s mass deportation efforts are likely to only accelerate. As we seek ways to respond to these ongoing threats, we can look to—among other examples—rapid response networks, which have long existed in cities across the country, including Tucson.

What follows is an interview conducted by Living & Fighting with a member of the Tucson Community Rapid Response Network. In this interview, they discuss the history the network, what it’s accomplished and the challenges it’s faced, and what principled community response to deportations could look like in the coming months and years.

Living and Fighting: What is the Rapid Response Network? What does the group do?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: The Tucson Community Rapid Response Network is a group of people who meet regularly to maintain a rapid response hotline and recruit people as observers. The hotline is for immigration enforcement activity that is known to be happening in Tucson. And the idea is that if somebody is being targeted by Border Patrol or ICE and they’re worried about being detained, or if somebody witnesses Border Patrol or ICE harassing, detaining, or otherwise doing immigration enforcement in Tucson, they can call the hotline. An alert goes out to a list of trusted, vetted observers and the observers go out to be a supportive presence for whoever is being targeted in the community. And then the person who is being targeted by ICE or Border Patrol can have somebody on their side present with them on what might be a day that is drastically affecting their life. Maybe one of the worst days of their lives if they’re going to be detained or harassed or basically any of the things that Border Patrol and ICE does.

Observers document what Border Patrol and ICE are doing by filming it, taking notes about it, photographing it. They can do a quick exchange of information with the person who is being targeted. That might mean helping them remember or know what some of their legal rights are. It might be trying to connect them with somebody else by asking, “Hey, do you want me to call someone for you? If you are detained, do you want me to take down your name and date of birth so that we can track you once you get inside?”

At the same time, those things do not address the heart of the problem, which is that we don’t want ICE and Border Patrol enforcing immigration law or doing whatever else they do. We don’t just want the people to be detained and deported while knowing their rights or while feeling a supportive community presence, we don’t want them to be detained and deported in the first place.

Rapid Response Tucson also does some other things like Know Your Rights workshops, and we’ve given workshops to talk to people about the network. And we have maintained the hotline even at times when we were not maintaining an active observer list and going out on lots of calls. So we’ve answered many, many phone calls and just ended up giving advice to people who, for example, have a loved one who’s detained, and they need help navigating the system. Or have a loved one who’s gone missing, and they think they might be detained.

Since the beginning, there have also been ancillary projects to rapid response that have formed. Once we saw that this project was bringing us into contact with people who had to navigate the immigration enforcement system, we realized that there was a use for something that we broadly call accompaniment, which is people going along with people to things like court dates or to check-ins at the ICE office if, for example, they have an active case and they’re required to do certain things but they want people with them. When I say helping people navigate the system, examples of that would be: How do you find out which detention facility your loved one is in? How do you request a bail hearing when your loved one is in immigration detention? How do you prepare properly for that hearing? Contact information for search and rescue groups, if someone’s gone missing in the desert. Contact information for the consulates of countries of origin for immigrants that might have more updated information about their country’s citizens who are detained in the US, etcetera.

One approach we are experimenting with doing now is putting together shifts where observers in the network drive around and hang out in areas where a lot of immigration enforcement has been seen in the past and keep an eye out and are ready to respond to anything happening in that area. While they’re doing that, maybe they hand out rapid response cards with the hotline number on it to try to spread the knowledge of the network within the community.

L&F: What are some high points of the Tucson Rapid Response Network’s history or moments you’re particularly proud of and want to point out?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: High points have included catching a Tucson Police Department officer who called Border Patrol on his cell phone. He was investigating some criminal matter at a motel in town and he called Border Patrol, I guess because he had some intel that the person he was about to arrest was undocumented. We filmed that, we kind of pressured him into admitting that on camera, and then later we found out he got disciplined by his department or whatever.

Another big highlight for me, and I guess this will be illustrative of a bigger theme I would like to point out to people about projects like Tucson Rapid Response, which is that there’s always the formal project, and then there’s the systems of connection that emerge as people undertake the formal project. The formal project was maintaining the hotline, going out on calls, but a lot of the times the calls wouldn’t come in through the hotline, they would come in through this informal network, and now there were more people connected to each other, and so people would show up for those things. And similarly, people who were adjacent to rapid response helped put together this ICE Out of the Pima County Jail campaign in 2018. ICE Out of Pima County Jail did this march down to the Pima County Jail and shut down the driveways there at shift change, so that employees were having a really hard time getting in and out of work. People were standing in front of cars and dancing around, and people brought their kids, and there were people of various immigration statuses there, and it was fun and helped us pressure this particular policy point that ICE had a desk in the Pima County Jail, which they then later did revoke, although I think they said they did it for different reasons.

There was only one rapid response call where something conflictual developed in the first three years that we were doing it, in 2018 or 2019. I believe the Department of Public Safety, the troopers who in Tucson mostly patrol the highway, pulled over a family and the pretense was that their windows were too tinted and they called Border Patrol on the family. It was a father, a mother, and a child. This traffic stop happened close to the Southside Presbyterian Church and close to the Southside Worker Center, another organization that has been around for a while that has contributed to the Rapid Response Tucson project and supported it from the beginning. There was a rapid response call about this traffic stop and the presence of Border Patrol there, and people who were around the church heard about it and came out. So for one of the only times in responding to these alerts, there was actually a small crowd of people gathered, and people were yelling at the Border Patrol, people were live streaming what was happening, and there was some back and forth with the family. People seeing this child in the back of the Border Patrol truck were particularly incensed and they asked the family members, “Hey, would you want somebody to climb under the car to try to prevent the detention? and they said, “Well, if it will help our case” and they said to them, “Well, we don’t know if it will help your case,” but it seemed like they were open to it or in support of it. So someone climbed under the Border Patrol vehicle and hung out there for a while. Border Patrol initially thought that they had locked themselves to the bottom of the vehicle, which in retrospect they said they wished they had really played that up to delay them further. They waited for a bunch of other law enforcement agencies to arrive as RR tried to gather as many people as they could to the scene, but Border Patrol and local law enforcement eventually removed the person from under the vehicle and arrested them, and did detain the family and then the father was eventually deported. I don’t remember the family’s overall outcome that came to the awareness of the rapid response network people, but the protestor wasn’t charged with anything because the prosecutor declined to press charges.

It’s something that people have done before in Tucson. I heard about people doing it another time years before, maybe in the SB 1070 era, when there was an arrest of someone at the Southside Presbyterian Church while there was a meeting ongoing and there were a bunch of people that came out and tried to block it. And there was also some kind of direct action at some point where people went to the courthouses and locked themselves to the deportation buses that were part of Operation Streamline, which is this mass sentencing immigration court process that they started in 2005 to increase deportations. So there are these moments of planned intentional obstruction of the physical act of detention, and then less planned but still pretty intentional obstruction by people who expect to be able to get out of jail.

Another high point for the network was seeing how just working together on the project over the years really connected us. Somebody in the network who has been a major contributor to it through the years was detained by immigration. That person spent months in immigration detention. We really showed up for our friend in detention and markedly helped him get out sooner on bail than he otherwise would have, as well as helped him stay connected to his family and stuff like that.

L&F: How does the Rapid Response Network fit into larger struggles against Border Patrol, ICE and the existence of borders?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: By bringing people to the scene of ICE and Border Patrol enforcement, we introduce an element that doesn’t currently exist in our collective consciousness or the public perception of how this battle over immigration can happen, and different things could come from that: People’s attitudes may change as the mechanisms of enforcement become more visible. People may also at some point step in to protect their neighbors directly; they may take someone out of ICE’s hands, and this may lead to conflict in the streets and cycles of repression and greater gatherings of people in resistance.

Even if that doesn’t happen through a dramatic conflict where somebody is physically de-arrested or there’s literal physical opposition to ICE and Border Patrol, there is the idea that there is a coalition of people who represent different sections of Tucson society through their various identities and outlooks, and they’re meeting together regularly to take action on their opposition to borders. So I think that that group of people can become a center of a tendency within Tucson more broadly that imagines and hopes for a life without immigration enforcement. My hope is that Rapid Response Tucson will continue to build those relationships and articulate that vision more and more, which will attract people to that vision and build the movement in the broadest sense.

This is how I see the project, which may be slightly different from others in the group—like I said, it’s very diverse outlooks and anything I say about the goals of the group are filtered through my voice—something I want us to do together is build collective political analysis and come to a point where we can say more clearly and more incisively, “What are the goals of the group?” We have mostly relied in the past on knowing more or less that we were all on the same side. We haven’t had a lot of broader political conversations.

L&F: How did the network get started?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: This rapid response network started in late 2016 or early 2017, and there were two things that led to its formation directly. One was an incident that happened in Tucson where someone plugged into the broad and long-standing network of anti-border activists in Tucson noticed a lot of Border Patrol driving around this one neighborhood, in the area of one of the midtown hospitals. Border Patrol seemed to be conducting a search of that neighborhood, which is quite unusual in a random neighborhood in Tucson, especially in that part of town. So this person sent out a message over a big text thread and a bunch of people showed up, friends, I don’t know, I guess this was like a bunch of punks on a text thread. Maybe people connected to No More Deaths. But people showed up and went to check out what was happening with Border Patrol in this neighborhood and of course hoped that their presence there would somehow discourage Border Patrol’s presence.

It seemed like Border Patrol were staging out of this one small parking lot at the hospital. People went in and asked the hospital employees what they were doing there, and we were able to ascertain that that’s when the hospital realized that it was drawing attention, the fact that Border Patrol was doing some operation from their parking lot. Oh, you know what it was? I think the Tucson Police Department had their own little parking lot outside of the hospital that Border Patrol was using, and then it was the Tucson Police Department officers who were like, “oh people are asking about this,” and they asked the Border Patrol agents to leave because their presence there was drawing a lot of attention in the form of all these punks showing up to the neighborhood and driving around.

That raises one of the key tensions which has contributed to the existence of a rapid response network: the controversial nature of the collaboration between local law enforcement, Tucson Police Department especially, and Border Patrol and ICE agents. One of the predecessors of this rapid response movement is a group called Yo Soy Testigo which, to my knowledge, a couple groups were involved in forming, including the Derechos Humanos, which is still an active group, and a small media company called Pan Left Productions. They were active in 2010, so in a previous era, around the time when the law SB 1070 was passed. People called it the “show me your papers” law, because it was an anti-immigrant law that was in part about enabling local law enforcement to act as border cops, and part of that law was struck down in the courts. But Yo Soy Testigo was a network where people did a similar thing of going out and filming Border Patrol activity in Tucson, and particularly highlighting the collaboration between local police and Border Patrol. I’m not sure whether at the time those police departments, Tucson Police Department, maybe Pima County Sheriff, had committed publicly to not collaborate, and so what the activists were doing was exposing their collaboration, or exposing their non-compliance with their own policies, or maybe it was just that Yo Soy Testigo knew that the people of Tucson didn’t want Border Patrol to be enabled by the police departments. In either case, I think that the people who were involved in that felt it was effective at bringing more public attention to that collaboration and getting stronger commitments from the local police and local officials to avoid that kind of collaboration.

So that incident at the hospital inspired the people who started the rapid response network because they felt like their presence in that neighborhood had frustrated Border Patrol and made it more difficult for them to conduct their operations. I don’t think that the Border Patrol search was successful that night. And the other major factor in the formation of the network was the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and all this conversation happening among anti-border activists in Tucson and the conversation happening in American society more generally about how horrible the prospect of Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement regime was.

I don’t feel like I’m the best person to paint an overall picture of that moment, so I’ll just share my memory of it, which is I remember big meetings happening where hundreds of people showed up all wanting to be part of some kind of resistance, and the sort of phrases of people being rounded up, people being put in camps, mass deportations, that sort of thing we were all fearing, and then one common thing that people were saying was either, “I would put my body on the line to prevent that,” or, “people should put their bodies on the line to prevent that.” Of course, those are very different ideas, but that was the sentiment.

So a coalition formed of various pre-existing groups that created the Tucson Community Rapid Response Network, and those groups included L.U.P.E, Lucha Unida de Padres y Estudiantes—the United Struggle of Parents and Students, which was a mixed status group of young activists—Tucson Showing up for Racial Justice (Tucson SURJ), and a group called Paisanos Unidos, which was present at the beginning and which would become the main partner in the group of organizations that was shepherding rapid response. There was definitely a No More Deaths contingent, and also Scholarships AZ and the Samaritans. They all had different roles in the landscape of anti-border activism, and a lot of the people involved in them had been working in those projects for years in Tucson. Scholarships AZ supports undocumented students. Tucson SURJ is does an allyship and accompliceship thing, and No More Deaths does their direct aid in the desert, as well as putting work into other projects in Tucson. And the Samaritans also do humanitarian aid in the desert, and they tend to be older people connected to churches, like retiree age people. It was a very diverse coalition in terms of political outlook, some anarchists, progressives, socialists. And along with that, people with different interests: people more interested in direct action, or more conflictual struggle, people more interested in documentation or potential legal contests, or publicity and journalism, or people interested in advocating to local politicians. And then also a very diverse group in terms of the demographics: retiree age people, young people, people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, US citizens, undocumented people. I had just moved to Tucson and joined in a, “well, I’m looking for something to plug into in town,” kind of way.

L&F: What are some challenges that the RRN has faced? How has the RRN worked to overcome these challenges?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: There have been so many challenges. One is the logistics of running a hotline where the people answering it have to be bilingual. And do you do shifts? Do you do, like, it rings everybody’s phone at once? And paying for a phone service that will provide you with that kind of system, which is what we ended up doing after originally coming up with some plan to pass a burner phone around. Challenges because we’re trying to do a project that relies on fast communication and technology, and getting people sorted out with the technology that they need to contribute to the project.

We’ve had problems with state surveillance. On our initial text loop, you could become an observer by texting a particular number. We tried to design it in an anonymous way because we’re always aware of the risk of repression or reprisals by law enforcement. But yeah, the initial system had hundreds of observers on there. And then one day somebody was present at a sheriff’s stop and overheard them saying, “Oh, those rapid response people are on their way,” indicating that somebody had infiltrated and was passing along when alerts went out to the Sheriff’s Department. So we ended up burning that whole structure and starting again.

Another important challenge is that the network is structured around this particular pattern of action, of alerts and responses where people are in the group, but they’re not regularly interacting with each other. That creates an issue of alienation, of people not forming relationships and not building political analysis together. And that makes people far less likely to participate or respond to these alerts. So one of the things that we’re trying to do to overcome that is organize gatherings in person, potlucks, or at least trainings where people will be able to come together and do a mixture of socializing and talking about the project. That’s something that we should have done more of and should be doing more of than we are right now.

Another major challenge—which I have come back to many times and has sometimes made me feel like this general project is not a good model, which I continue to go back and forth on—is that it’s really hard to get people to these incidents fast enough to have a significant impact on them, or even to do some of those basic kinds of things like documenting collaboration, documenting how the agents are handling it, as well as offering some kind of concrete help to the person who’s being detained. Part of that is because apparently back in the day these stops used to take a long time, like if law enforcement was gonna call Border Patrol they’d be standing around for a while. Border Patrol would show up, they’re chatting or whatever, or they are taking the time to do whatever paperwork they have to do. Then at some point they realized that observers were showing up and so they started doing things more quickly and streamlined that process, so sometimes it’ll just take ten or fifteen minutes. So how can we either offer help or how can we create a more conflictual situation when it’s happening so fast? Because ideally, there would be twenty people gathered around these agents as they’re trying to get their arrest done. And there would be more potential for things to happen.

L&F: Has the Rapid Response Network’s approach had to change under the current administration/political context? If so, how?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: We were basically doing social work on the hotline from late 2020 through 2024: basically the network started functioning like an advice or social assistance hotline. That could be because of a combination of both reality and perception of immigration enforcement being less intense and also people not having the capacity for it during COVID. We definitely made efforts to keep it going during COVID, especially when it was first beginning, and then those efforts kind of petered out as we ran up against a bunch of things, especially the alienation factor. I think people need to see each other in person and talk to each other regularly to motivate people to show up for pretty much anything, but especially for something that is inherently stressful and scary and most likely just going to expose you to other people’s trauma. Then when Trump was elected again and people got a sense that immigration enforcement was going to be even more intense this time and he was, you know, running even harder on his brand of fascism, then people got active again and the observing, which had pretty much fallen off entirely, sending out alerts and distributing the hotline cards with the number, that all started again. We were able to jump in pretty quickly and get the observer system running again, which hopefully will serve us well in the coming months.

L&F: Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share with folks hoping to start RRN networks in their cities and regions?

Tucson Community Rapid Response Network: For people who are looking to start rapid response networks in their cities and regions, hopefully just sketching out what it is that Rapid Response Tucson has done and does is the most helpful thing. My advice to people is the points that I focused on. Building relationships through the activity, not letting the potentially somewhat alienating form of the activity get in the way of the really valuable aspects of working on something together. I would emphasize the value of working with others across demographic and ideological lines. And that brings us into this whole discourse that all of us on the left, we’ve been driving each other crazy with these discourses of how do we build coalitions across identity. You know, I am white person from a lot of privilege. I’m up there in the privilege-by-identity hierarchy and I just feel like I want people to stay grounded in their best social instincts around developing relationships and working in coalition. Avoid thinking that because of the huge gaps in experience that this segregated and stratified society creates between you, you’re gonna have to construct, through ideology, a way of relating to people that’s so different from whatever your best current way of relating and maintaining working relationships with people is. One approach that works well for me is focusing on the project and really allowing things to develop over time: allowing your actions to speak for you over time can build so much trust, sometimes even across those giant rifts. For me it’s been a process of questioning instincts that tell me, “Oh, maybe I don’t have to be in relationship with these people” when I’m thinking about how different we are.

One strain of this discourse is also about ideology. We classify people and get really intense about people’s ideology. People let their anxiety over how complicated relationships will get speak very loudly to them, and maybe they tell themselves something like, “Oh, these aren’t the people that I need to be in coalition with.” The people around you that you are capable of working on a project with are probably the people that you need to be in coalition with, unless you can think of some other way to meet some other people pretty soon. And so not letting anxiety over how complicated relationships will be steer you away from building relationships with the people at hand.

Report on anti-ICE campaign by anarchists in several states. Originally posted to social media here.

The Trump administration has ramped up its campaign of terror against immigrant communities throughout the “United States.” This shattering of the illusion of “checks and balances” has accelerated the turn to blatant authoritarianism in this country. The administration has open white supremacists in its ranks and increased funding to the ICE Budget, which rivals many nation-states’ militaries. It seems almost weekly, there are new accounts of blatant fascist acts committed by ICE. There have been disappearances of student activists, brutalizations of liberal politicians who dare to question ICE’s authority, deportations to prison camps in other countries, and the construction of concentration camps in Louisiana and Florida. Furthermore, ICE agents have shown up in communities in unmarked vehicles, without any identification, and no way to hold them accountable for the violence they have committed against communities across the “United States.”

ICE has only existed for a few decades and solely to commit violence against immigrants. The Trump Administration is intent on using it as a secret police to enforce its violently xenophobic and authoritarian agenda. There is no compromise regarding ICE’s existence; It must be abolished.

Popular outrage and resistance to deportations have only increased since the beginning of the Trump Regime. Millions of ordinary people are taking bold action to protect their communities and affirm their solidarity with immigrants among those persecuted by the administration. This resistance has been met with violent state repression, such as deploying active-duty military in cities and terrorizing the communities and families of those detained for protesting against ICE. ICE and the Trump regime must go!

Over the past year, a few anarchist federations and collectives across the United States have started to build affinity with each other. Most prominently, Space City Anarchist Organization and the Northeast Anarchist Union have networked with each other. A few comrades from both formations met earlier this year and decided to put together a coordinated anti-ICE propaganda campaign, inviting other collectives such as the Boltcutter Collective and the Boston local of the Horizon Federation to participate.

Over the course of a couple months we were able to coordinate a large scale series of drops within our respective regions. Banner drops, wheat pasting, stickers and tagging were the primary means for agitprop. The increased frequency of agitprop allowed messaging to persist and become wider spread than any one group or sub group could have done on their own, insofar as without great effort of the smaller units. Dozens of individuals were able to collaborate with one another across the country and the action served as important experience to up and coming new members of all participating organizations. With each coordinated banner drop, we felt increasingly invigorated knowing that our comrades hundreds or thousands of miles away were doing the same thing, at the same time.

Everyday people are ensnared by the routine of their work. Anarchists have always had the challenge of breaking through the wool which the oligarchs have tightly woven around the eyes of the people. Banner drops serve as a means to communicate a message as it forces every passerby to at least glimpse something beyond the ordinary. People must be reminded of what’s going on and cannot be allowed to recline back into willful ignorance. More than this we Anarchists must show those most at risk we are with them and to those willing to fight there are others taking up with them too.

Banner drop and wheatpasting campaigns are easy to do, and more importantly, fun! A few dedicated comrades can easily drop a banner over a highway and make a message visible to thousands of people. Some of our comrades have gotten creative, stealing banners from fascist groups and repurposing them to be explicitly anti-fascist and anti-state. They are low-risk and a great way to build affinity between you and some friends, and more importantly, make ICE know that they are not welcome in our communities.

Long-time anarchist author and organizer Cindy Milstein presents a collection of stories about everyday resistance to fascism.

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Coincidentally—or sadly—I’m finishing up this zine in the midst of many days of doing intensive support, side by side with some remarkable anarchists, for a beloved friend of ours suddenly kidnapped by various Feds and facing the full brunt of christofascist state repression. It’s “lucky” that I’m writing this on a computer screen, for my tears would be smudging the ink if it were being penned on paper. But I’m reminded that this solidarity effort, in which numerous trusted folks are dropping everything to throw themselves voluntarily into legal, logistic, and emotional care, is precisely the stuff of “everyday fascism,” even if not visible.

And coincidentally now, this isn’t just a zine—although zines, when containers of rebelliousness, are amazing for their own sake. Sadly, the friend we’re lending our hearts to until they are free is charged, in part, with the “crime” of possessing zines. It always bears repeating that, as the Zapatistas maintain, “our word is our weapon.” So, too, is our solidarity, whether in the form of zines to circulate beautiful ideas and sparks of inspiration, or in the varied other forms within these pages—and so many, many more that you and others are dreaming up and putting into lived practice these brutal days.

When I posted the “call for submissions” for this humble project, many folks shared it for me. In doing so, one friend noted that it was another in my series of “hopeful” zines. Just to set the record straight (or queer), I’m not hopeful. This zine does not offer sugarcoated “hope” to somehow smooth over these utterly distasteful times. Yet I believe strongly in cracks in the edifice of hierarchical power and the promise they hold, and that there are always cracks even under the worst conditions. This zine, then, is a small sampler of acts of solidarity that just might keep us safer under fascism in order to get more of us to the other side, toward a world without fascism.

—Cindy Barukh Milstein

1.

Decolonial art is resistance, survival, and testimony. Against the backdrop of ICE terror and systemic violence, we created bracelets embedded with the local rapid response hotline number, a direct tool of protection and solidarity for undocumented farmworkers and their families on California’s coast. These bracelets are wearable shields, reminders of communal care, and messages of defiance in the face of fear.

Crafted by and for the farmworker community, this practice centers art as a collective act of defense, autonomy, and love. In a world that criminalizes migration and extracts labor from bodies deemed disposable, these bracelets assert a right to safety, dignity, and belonging. The creative process becomes a way to hold grief, transform it, and imagine otherwise. Each bead woven is a refusal of erasure; each knot tied affirms “you are not alone.”

—Winsor Kinkade

2.

In the small town I live in, one of the leaders of Unite the Right was outed, and people got super pissed. Rallies happened at the university where the neo-Nazi went to school. There was a march on the city council. People flooded the campus with flyers and wheat-pasted posters on walls. They did a call-in campaign, and banners were dropped. The pressure mounted as the school bent over backward to protect this guy. It got so bad that he dropped out and took online classes. As a community, we literally ran that fucker out of town. Pretty soon after that, he also dropped out of his fascist group.

—a small-town antifascist

3.

My family lives on a small side street in South Brooklyn. Five years ago, with a vision of mutual aid and an intergenerational community of care, I began knocking on doors to initiate summer block parties. I printed hundreds of flyers, went to every house and rang every doorbell, and ended up bringing people of all ages out to a neighborhood BBQ and potluck.

The second year, I raised funds to purchase our first collectivized piece of equipment: a giant bouncy castle. (Why give money to a shitty corporation to rent it when we could have one to share for all?)

By the third year, we had a WhatsApp group for bartering, volunteering to do litter removal, and supporting street animals. Some neighbors started a small tool share, and others offered to help elders who needed groceries carried upstairs.

Now, in our fifth year, folks have begun to reach out directly to each other to share vulnerable, intimate requests for aid, such as immigration assistance or domestic violence support. I believe the fascist state has an insatiable desire for surveillance, and any purported assistance comes with the cost of identity verification and the constant potential of incarceration. We’ve localized many forms of care, and are able to use our relational resources to avoid the state entirely while respecting each other’s need for privacy and anonymity. Every time we solve our community’s challenges and whisper strategies for avoiding the state in person is, in my view, an antifascist win. Whether it is mediation, a place to sleep to cool down from a heated exchange with a partner, or immigration court escorts, we joyfully keep each other safer.

—Carson

4.

Over the past few years, middle-aged fascists and their youth organizations have increasingly started to mobilize against Pride events here in Germany. Here in Leipzig, antifascists are able to block fascists at the train station to keep them from disrupting the inner-city parade and festival. In small towns and rural areas, though, most of the Pride participants are minors with little to no experience in the streets. So radicals living in larger cities began organizing travel groups, bringing not only solidarity but additional expertise to the demonstrations as well. Self-defense groups were formed to protect both the tiny Prides and travel groups. The amount of people coming from bigger cities has made the fascist counterprotests look ridiculously small.

I’m a wheelchair user, so it isn’t always easy to get to these rural areas, where the public transport infrastructure isn’t accessible. But there have always been people willing to carry my chair and help me out. Everyone looks out for each other, and the self-defense groups have been incredibly successful in assuring the safety of both us out-of-towners and the locals (in comparison, in the German tradition, the cops protect the fascists).

Also, while those of us traveling to these smaller places might not usually agree on our ways of organizing, and coalitions within our big-city bubble aren’t common, protecting queer and trans liberation has fostered an incredible sense of unity among us anarchists and the general Red front.

This has all made for the most heartwarming protest experiences I’ve had in my eight years of activism.

—Tea “Kára” Drobniewski

5.

Alongside community defense actions, our collective wanted to do community education on antifascism—in a large, spread-out suburb where isolation is real. Thus Coffeehouse 36 was born—not a coffeehouse at all, but a roving feast of ideas in action.

Rather than host educational events at a single fixed time that folks have to plan for and travel to, we decided to bring them to people where and when they are already. To do that, we drop in at local coffee shops a few times a week (as our energies allow) and have antifascist conversations right there. Anyone in the place is invited to come over and participate—as much or as little as they like. And we, of course, include the café workers.

The first round of coffee and snacks are always on us (through donations from events and zine sales). Printed materials are offered to folks who might want to read them on their own or share them elsewhere. The discussions are conversational—coffee chats—not didactic exercises. There’s no presenter or audience, though someone may kick off a dialogue with a bit of an intro to a specific topic, like current organizing, info on local fascist and fascist-adjacent groups, and historical cases.

Coffeehouse 36 has created space for people to address their feelings of detachment from collective care and raise their personal concerns about fascism in our context—such as fascists waging campaigns against trans people at schools, or targeting unhoused people and migrant groups. From these conversations, other community defense activities have blossomed, and we’re building real connections of solidarity.

—Jeff Shantz

6.

Huutgna, so-called Southeast Los Angeles (SELA), has become an epicenter in the new wave of colonial terror: the enforcement of “immigration laws” on a stolen land built into an ecocidal, death camp settlement. The air is as thick with paranoia and fear as it is with pollutants. ICE is the Trump regime’s federal secret police, and its invasion of Los Angeles is an attempt at displaying its imagined dominance over California’s largest symbol of migrant pride. As for why some areas are being raided harder than others, it’s difficult to pinpoint, but what we do know is: They picked the wrong city (or cities) to fuck with.

On June 19, 2025, ICE attempted another kidnapping at a car wash in the city of Bell, CA—trapping a family inside a car surrounded by agents. Rather than flee immediately after being spotted, ICE agents stayed around long enough for the locals to discover they were there. People from Bell and other SELA neighbors mobilized en masse to let ICE know that it wasn’t welcome in the hood.

Multiple ICE vehicles had their tires slashed and windows broken. The tear gas shot by the SELA police department to protect ICE agents was thrown back. ICE was forced to let the targeted family go, and then the agents left in shame after local police and fire departments bailed them out from the righteous fury of SELA. Direct action taken by brave individuals who illegally risked their health and freedom is what successfully stopped the abduction in this case. ICE left out of fear, not respect.

—Yum Kaax

7.

From our corner of Lake Michigan, Chicago sees around 5 million migratory birds representing an estimated 250 species pass through the city during their long trips between hemispheres every year, making most of our 300 local species not “ours” at all. We share our more-than-human neighbors with communities across Central and South America. Barn swallows, common in the city, migrate as far as Chile. Sandhill cranes, which fill Chicago’s skies twice a year by the thousands, can be found from Siberia to Cuba. Migration is an essential, inherent process for living things.

We put together the Birds Against Borders bird walk as a way of leveraging what we have on hand—an inordinate knowledge of bird facts along with a community ready to come together to care for each other—to mobilize donations for the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund in response to ICE kidnappings in our city. In a moment when power is consolidating around fascism so quickly, we see close observation of our world as a necessary tool to understand what is happening around us. Birding offers a lens for more carefully observing the quiet, everyday ways that our worlds are linked. Borders are fake, and the birds know it. Our shared lives, ecosystems, and futures across the globe are tied together, and nature helps us to see these connections.

—Ren

8.

Greetings from the underground. We are the autonomous insurrectionary network of anticapitalist horticulturists, aka the Anarchist Gardeners Club.

We strike at the heart of technofascist machinery. We make our own food, medicine, and happiness. We grow flowers in the cracks. We seed bomb every desolate corner of the scrubland. We enjoy a brew and a biscuit as we do it.

We take inspiration from the Luddites, Diggers, Zapatistas, Animal Liberation Front, and the little people—those mischievous elves of lore. Authorities can’t see us because they don’t believe in elves. We are practically invisible. We have no command structure, no spokespersons, no office—just many small groups working separately, seeking targets of capital, the state, and fascism, and practicing our craft.

The garden is a self-governing space. A canvas on which we create, grow, and nurture. We see nature and the infinite symbiotic relationships that exist within it as inherently anarchist, based on mutual aid, subterranean networks, and solidarity.

Every garden grown is a strike against the boredom of capital!

If you want to join us, then OK, good, you’re in! If you want to start a new autonomous cell, then OK, good do it! See you on the front lines (probably the veggie patch)!

All empires will rot!

All fascisms will whither!

All cops are brutal!

All cultivators are beautiful!

—Anarchist Gardeners Club

9.

The decision came back in United States v. Skrmetti—the US Supreme Court case saying that it’s fine for states to make it impossible for people under eighteen to access gender-affirming care. I know it’s scary. It feels like something really important is being taken away from us by the government refusing to recognize and protect us.

The terror and dread can obscure something crucial, though: we’ve had a couple years of this lovely reprieve where sometimes, in some places, a person of any age can say, “I’m trans and here’s what I need,” and the care they need is made available. But this reprieve is very recent. Mostly, when we wanted to do stuff, we had to do it ourselves. The memory of when it was hard before is still alive. All the skills and networks, loopholes and intergenerational info sharing, and ways we show up for each other are still here too, already active or being reactivated.

The trans community is creative and resilient and crafty, and if you haven’t already found ways to get what you need, those ways are growing all around as an antifascist response to these times. My therapist just told me that their teenager went to a punk show and came home with a year’s supply of estrogen. I know hundreds of parents who will move heaven and earth to make sure their children can access what they need to access, and I know networks of thousands of queer and trans people all across this continent who are reaching out for your hand to say, “Hey, I love you, and I’m here for you. There’s a story of the future that has you in it.”

—Andy Izenson

10.

My eyes were starting to glaze over when I heard a small crowd forming behind me.

“You see that shit in Paris?” one masked teen asked. “They took potatoes and smashed them into the street so the cops would slip and fall if they tried to rush the crowd.”

“Yeah, so?” retorted another.

The kid dropped down and opened his backpack. “Yeah, well I brought a shit ton of potatoes!”

All it took was for a small black bloc cadre to start smashing unwashed russet potatoes into the driveway of the Portland, Oregon, ICE facility for others to join, creating a slimy, congealing mess on the concrete in front of a fortress already adorned with abolitionist graffiti and surrounded by what had at this point become a permanent encampment.

It delayed ICE as it sent out a heavily armed battalion of Border Patrol and Homeland Security officers, who brought brooms alongside their “less lethal” munitions so they could spend the better part of half an hour cleaning the entrance—after which a new round of mashed potatoes was delivered.

It was a small act, but no one came through the entrance while it happened, and it created a feedback loop: the more the crowd could do, the more likely people were to stay.

This isn’t just here. In Los Angeles, groups have set up community self-defense hubs to maintain a constant presence to challenge ICE, and where people can receive and share mutual aid — like grocery or medication deliveries for those too afraid to leave their homes due to their immigration status. And there are noise demos at hotels where ICE agents are sleeping.

And this isn’t just in LA. In New York City, people are organizing accompaniments for immigrants who have to visit federal court facilities, which are now being regularly swept. They use these same networks to rapidly block ICE arrests, identify officers, and publicly shame them. In Chicago, a recent protest stopped immigration court, stalled ICE operations for the day, and de-arrested dozens of activists while clogging downtown.

Solidarity is a bet — and a long shot at that: that we gain more by relying on our communities than on the established institutions of state and capital. When all of civil society is under attack, solidarity may literally be all we have left. Practicing it together offers clarity: it’s probably all we ever had. And when we do it, we’ll do it with what we have, and what we can.

—Shane Burley

11.

On more than one occasion in occupied Palestine, amid clouds of US-made, Israeli-fired tear gas in an urban center or Israeli forces marauding through a small village, I’ve had to knock in panic on the door of a complete stranger’s home, seeking safety. Invariably that door was opened and a haven was offered, despite the supposed gulfs of nationality or language. We both understood which side we were on, and that was cause enough for complicity. Be they an infirm elderly couple or parents with a house full of young children, they sheltered me, aware of the costs involved if their act was discovered. On the surface, we could exchange nothing more than basic pleasantries and gestures. Beneath that, there was a solidarity that needed no interpretation. In opening that door and letting me in, they risked far more than I did. They taught me we all play a role in the struggle with the tools that we have. Sometimes it’s as simple as opening the door.

—Scott Campbell

12.

Six Gregorian calendar years ago, on October 27, 2018, the antisemitic “great replacement theory,” shaped by fascism, xenophobia, and Xtian white supremacy, led to the murder of eleven Jews belonging to three different shuls in Pittsburgh.

As a friend observed, it’s hard to feel anything but rage on this 2024 yahrzeit. It’s difficult to understand how so much organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid six years ago could bring us to this place, where things are so much worse.

This place, on this anniversary, is a public park. It isn’t the first time many of us have come here to rebelliously mourn. So we gravitated to a familiar corner by what we’ve dubbed the “weeping tree” because of similar rituals here before.

We stretched string between our tree and another, then hung a banner with the words “Kaddish to Counter Fascism” and two poppies painted in red. We torn strips of fabric and wrote the blessed names of our dead on them, tying them on the string. On the ground below, we laid out an altar of tea candles and antifascist zines by Jews and Muslims, using acorns to hold the paper, and sprinkled rose petals. Someone added pieces of a broken plate, and someone else a cake. We sang, communed, and opened up, speaking aloud our grief as the sky darkened.

I learned that this park is a block from where one of the eleven worked as a beloved doctor, and that everyone who came had some relation to these dead — including the medics and security-minded folks who were there “just in case.” After all, things are worse; publicly grieving as antifascists increasingly involves risk and bravery. Our sacred spaces, even if ephemeral, are where we rededicate ourselves to fighting the worsening ugliness and sharing in the beauty of our solidarity.

—Cindy Barukh Milstein

13.

Delaney Hall, located in Newark, New Jersey, is the largest migrant jail on the East Coast. It’s operated by the private prison company Geo Group. Those held inside are constantly abused; the building is physically unsafe; visitors and immigration lawyers have been denied entry for weeks; and meals are served frozen, and sometimes not at all.

On June 13, 2025, after going over twenty hours without food, about fifty incarcerated people banded together to smash through one of the prison walls. The guards fled, and soon, word got out that there was an uprising inside and a handful of detainees were able to escape.

Outside the detention center, crowds of everyday people—sick of seeing neighbors, friends, classmates, and families get kidnapped off the street—began to gather, using their bodies to prevent ICE from entering and exiting the facility. Throughout the evening, ICE vehicles were brought to a complete standstill, vans were forced to retreat back through the gates, and the driveway remained barricaded with roadway dividers and wooden planks. The mobilization—an act of tangible solidarity—diverted ICE personnel and disrupted the search for escaped detainees, if only for that one day.

The ability to show up on that June 13 built on far more “routine” but crucial work, done multiple times a week for months: hitting the streets and conducting outings to talk to people in busy neighborhoods, public parks, encampments of those who are unhoused, and apartment buildings as well as at transit hubs. Bringing along flyers, listening, and most important, forging relationships.

—Lisa

14.

Three days ago, one of my best friends was taken. In the first twenty-four hours, his name disappeared from the jail’s system and didn’t reappear until the next day.

As immigrants, we came here “for a better life,” but really it’s because we have no other choice. Our home countries are destabilized, bled dry by the greed of capitalism. Often I hear people say, “If it’s so hard being an immigrant, why don’t you go home?” but I don’t know if I can or want to.

So what is there to do? I ask my friends who care so much about the land and water. Maybe we create our own worlds. Maybe we build collective homes and share the chores and figure out how to get through conflict together, and love each other so much that it stops mattering who is from here or there or anywhere.

I became a farmer because I wanted to help build these worlds. I love the feeling of dirt between my toes, and my body was built for hot days in the sun.

A friend and I made soup last week. We ate it on my back porch beneath a canopy of trees and rain, and he told me that the Appalachian Mountains are older than Saturn’s rings. I pictured these beautiful ancient mountains gazing at this big ole planet, marveling as it changed shape and form. 

Today I’m going to plant more corn. It will grow so tall that no one will ever be able to find me. The leaves will wrap themselves around my body, and I will live off kernels until I am old. And just as Saturn grew rings, me and my people too will transform and become untraceable. Until this world accepts that the displaced will always find a way to survive.

—Mar

NOTE:

Everyday Antifascism is an act of love and solidarity—intended for everyone on the side of liberatory lives for all. Share this zine widely.

For other zines in this “series,” check out Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism and Anarchist Compass: 29 Offerings for Navigating Christofascism, and most recently, Ritual as Resistance: 18 Stories of Defending the Sacred, all freely available at ItsGoingDown.Org.

I extend my gratitude to printmaker Tara Murino-Brault for the cover artwork, titled “Resistance” and borrowed from the free graphics section on justseeds.org, and Casandra (www.houseofhands.net) for yet again kindly turning my design and layout into PDFs.

July 2025