part one: the doom
Begins by outlining how terrible things are rn, but in a brief-non-specific way that doesn’t make the reader feel terrible! That’s a good skill for this sort of essay. Things are really bad rn…
part two: communities
It then discusses about calls to “organize!” but how too often this just means join a union, political party or whatever. these are not the answer, it argues, because the true heart of any movement/revolution/community is the people keeping it alive from behind the frontlines.
there’s a role back there for everyone! cooks, medics, documentarians, journalists, party (untz untz)-organisers, musicians, &c..
any sort of community can enact change: the right know this, it’s how they’ve used homeowners associations and groups of “concerned parents” to enact reactionary politics for decades!
communities show us what we’ll have after the current system is destroyed.
we each have many overlapping communities: scenes, clubs, groups of friends, protest blocs &c.
communities that have exclusively political goals, like traditional unions or political parties, only have that holding them together. you can’t just fight; we have to live to be able to fight. we also need to come together after to have fun and laugh together, even if only for a bit.
part three: the hope
crises, however terrible, afford some opportunities. as we all know, anarchism is constantly going on around us: autonomous regions, small-scale occupations and squats, DIY venues &c..
we can’t just be content with mass actions, on the street or online. we also need to create community. ways you can do this: make friends at protests. turn shared anger at this moment into a shared love for each other.
“hope alone obviously doesn’t lead us to this future, but without it we have no reason to raise our arms, to rebel and tear down the systems holding us back. it is this hope in a world full of doom that creates solidarity in cris, this hope that organically leads to mutual aid in natural disasters, this hope that leads people to pick up guns and fight for their community when an army tries to tear their world apart. why fight to survice if we don’t allow ourselves to truly live until our very last breath?”
good piece. my takeaways will dox me, lol, so i will not leave them here…