Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Mack Evasion - Getting Caught

 

at 7/14/25 7:23am

Author: Mack EvasionTitle: Getting CaughtSubtitle: When Bad Things Happen to Good Shoplifters, A MemoirDate: 1994Source: <evasionbook.com> & <amazonaws.com> Before Evasion, There was... ​Evasion, the zine, had its first print run of 10 copies in June of 1999. Like all my bad ideas, it was a refined version of an even worse idea — one that came 5 years before, when I was in high school. ​ You could call it ‘Pre-vasion,’ but then it was just called ‘Suburban Justice.’ It was my first zine. ​ The idea, as I remember it, went like this: Handwrite stories of every illegal thing I’d ever done. Pad with editorials on pressing matters for suburban punk rock high school kids, such as if Thrasher Magazine had totally sold out, and reviews of which bus drivers let you slide with expired transfers pulled from the trash. Pepper with how-to pieces, like the most fun ways to get kicked out of the mall. Photocopy. Pioneer a bold new distribution model where I reach my target market by just leaving copies inside old books on hoboes at the university library and Greyhound station lobbies. ​ I got as far as the Step Three. The unpublished, handwritten first draft of Suburban Justice sat in a box for the next 20 years. ​ In 2014, Suburban Justice was rumbled unnecessarily from it’s comfortable resting place in my Mom’s garage, dusted off, and dragged into the light of public scrutiny — against it’s will, and my better judgment. ​ What follows is an untitled excerpt I am now giving a name: “Getting Caught: When Bad Things Happen to Good Shoplifters, A Memoir.” Getting Caught Consider any form of capture, arrest, confrontation or police record not as a defeat but as a battle scar. Wear it proud. Getting caught stealing will always be looked at as the end of your career at first, but it shouldn’t be. Stand up and keep fighting! The first time I got caught stealing that I can recall was in kindergarden, I was living in California. I was in Payless with my mom and I saw some caps for a cap gun on the ground in the store and I wanted them so I took em. A punk was born! I kne it as rong and I hid the caps under my bed and I ould bring my neighborhood friends over to see them and brag. One day my mom was cleaning my room and she found them and I confessed and it as a big emotional childhood tragedy. I don’t think I was as bold again until the 5th grade and my teacher Mr. Anderson took away my yo-yo for doing tricks to impress girls. I knew he was just jealous cuz I was the mack so when he wasn’t looking I swiped it back from his desk and I got caught. There was a phone call home followed by hard jail time. Then, in [TEXT OBSCURED] grade I began [TEXT OBSCURED] no gasoline so with the spirit of [TEXT OBSCURED] in me I ran next door to the nieghbors [TEXT OBSCURED] of gas out of their garage [TEXT OBSCURED] I was like a junkie, I need gas! I knew they weren’t home so I opened their garage door and grabbed the jug. I was bad. Just as I was closing the garage door they pulled into the driveway and I was busted with the jug in my hand and longtime family friends staring me down. I walked up to the car and said “mind if I borrow this, for our lawn mower?” Slick as a slick slippery frog and free on bail. Then, later that fall I got busted ripping off chemicals from the science room and I got Saturday school. The next month they felt they had reason to search my locker and found jars and jars of chemicals was going to use to throw the communist leadership of [REDACTED] middle school. I got suspended. Then in 9th grade I tried stealing the Poor Man’s James Bond vol. 1 from magazine city and this [REDACTED] dude grabs me and says “take that book out of your jacket and I’ll let you go” So I did and he did. Then one time on the ferry to [REDACTED] I pried open Ms. Pac Man a little and I taped a bunch of spoons together to scoop the quarters out and this guy grabs me before I could get the loot and he say “Boy, I’m takin you to the captain, yous stealin quarters!” I started to hit him and put up a monster of a fight because he was handlon me like a little kid trying to drag me to the captain. I got away with a little struggle and he chased me and grabbed me and this terry employee came over and asked whats up. This old man said “Dis boys stealin quartas!” The lady makes me empty my pockets and asks me why I did it and I said “Well, it wasn’t for the money” HA! I’ve been caught liberating food and battones from Albertsons a hundered times and I still go there and I’m just part of the family at Albertsons. I’ve never been busted for straight up shoplifting but they confront me about eating food in the aisles and opening packages of lightors and battenes and taking too many free samples and I was asked not to photo copy dollar bills there anymore or they would arrest me for counterfitting. Me and Andrew got nailed stealing Air Jordan clothes at the Bon Marde. I had nothing on me but I was an accomplice and we had stolen stuff each of the 3 days prior to our arrest and sold the stuff at school so we had quite a business going for a couple of days. It was a massive cop scene and we got calls home to come pick us up by the cops not long after we excercised our right to silence by not giving our names but they brought out the handcuffs so we relented. That was my first taste of a cop car on that day. ...

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— Michael Coates - To Hell with Architecture

 

at 7/12/25 12:28pm

Author: Michael CoatesTitle: To Hell with ArchitectureSubtitle: An Architecture of AnarchismDate: 2015Source: Retrieved on 12/07/2025 from https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/anarchiststudies/vol-23-issue-2/abstract-9300/ I will argue in this paper that the commodification of art, the production of artists, is just as in evidence, if not more so, in the “art” of architecture. Architecture is perhaps the most obviously commodified and most essential to western capitalism of all the arts. Specifically I will look at architecture through the lens of housing as a form of architecture which Read mentions in his essay and a key area in which can see the rampant monetisation of the art of architecture. Is architecture as we experience it today an art? And can it ever be de-commodified are key questions that I will deal with in the course of this paper. Architecture, famously referred to by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright as the ‘mother art’, it can be argued is the basis of our civilisations, or as Wright continued it’s soul: ‘Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization’. Architecture therefore stands alongside the production of artists per se as a key element of a society’s culture. Like valued art valued architecture is preserved, glorified, and held up as an example of the cultural achievement of a civilisation. Architecture is also a manifestation of society’s politics and, as Bill Risebero explores, the hegemony of a culture: ‘Architecture, like all other elements of the social superstructure, rests on our society’s economic base, that is the capitalist mode of production, which determines its essential nature. […] Conversely, politics depend on culture. What Antonio Gramsci calls ‘hegemony’, that is, the ability of a bourgeois-democratic state like that of Britain to obtain and exercise power, depends not only on the coercive machinery of state itself but also on the participation of the people.’[1] The participation to which Risebero and Gramsci are addressing of course is the same as that which Foucault describes as the invisibility of power. As the state apparatus has taken on new identity in the modern era it has moved from being visible to invisible. As Gordana Fontana-Giusti explains: ‘This model was now reversed: new disciplinary power imposes compulsory visibility upon those whom it subjects to discipline, while those in power remain invisible.’[2] Art and architecture are then both tools of hegemony the latter perhaps more so than the former, as whilst art may attempt to be revolutionary and to ask question of the status quo, architecture is, due to the very nature of its realisation bound to the hegemony of its culture. As Risebero goes on to say: ‘“The ruling ideas of any age”, as Marx and Engels have said, “have ever been the ideas of the ruling class”2 – and these ideas include architectural ones.’[3] <br> The two forms (art and architecture) have become so intertwined that in the contemporary period we often experience them together, that are sold to us as part of the experience of the museum or gallery visits. One only has to consider Herzog and De Meuron’s Tate Modern / Bankside, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou Centre or the Gae Aulenti’s Musée Orsay to see the virtually symbiotic relationship between art and architecture. Visitors may visit these galleries just for the art or just for the architecture but it is the interrelation between the two that has been curated as a tourist attraction. As Hans Ibelings explores this happens not just when we are on holiday, or just at tourist attractions: ‘…tourism has spawned a mind-set whereby buildings, cities and landscapes are consumed in a touristic manner even when people are not on holiday, and the environment, consciously or unconsciously, is increasingly regarded as a décor for the consumption of experiences.’[4] The consumption of experience to which Ibelings here refers is in relation to the post-modern development of architecture where, since the by-and-large abandonment of the Modernist project in architecture in the 1970s, architecture has become yet another vehicle for consumption and consumerism. The value placed on buildings may in some cases be more tangible but can also be just as conceptual as with art. If a building is not valued for its physical properties, its materiality or its use value, it can only be valued for the experience it enables one to consume within its confines. (Vegas) But is architecture art? And if so, has it been commodified in the same way as Read argues in this essay art has? I would answer yes in both cases. To illustrate point, I invoke Read himself: ‘If an object is made of appropriate materials to an appropriate design and perfectly fulfils its function, then we need not worry any more about its aesthetic value: it is automatically a work of art. Fitness for function is the modern definition of the eternal quality we call beauty, and this fitness fir function is the inevitable result of an economy directed to use not to profit.’[5] The example that Read gives in the essay is that of a chair but the analogy can be extended to buildings or entire towns which are in and of themselves objects only differing in scale from the chair. ...

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— Craig Rosebraugh - This Country Must Change

 

at 7/12/25 12:10pm

Author: Craig RosebraughTitle: This Country Must ChangeSubtitle: Essays on the Necessity of Revolution in the USADate: 2009Notes: Ex-MOVE members say they were raised in a ‘cult’ where abuse and homophobia ran rampant.Source: <pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=480> Introduction Craig Rosebraugh I first considered this project after noticing the scarcity of literature and other resources available pertaining to the need for a fundamental social and political revolution in the United States. While there are multitudes of books, pamphlets, magazines, and films dedicated to promoting positive change, they almost entirely fall into a reformist category — attempting to modify one or multiple “issues” within the political system rather than confronting the methodology of governing as an entirety. This lack of resources on the subject of revolution in the United States is problematic, as it reinforces the arbitrary limitations on change that are sanctioned and promoted by the very power structure that is in need of substantial alteration. If the resources are not available to assist in promoting even the discussion of revolution in this country, those desiring change will continue to fall back into the time-tested and failed methods, which have only prolonged the life of a political system that has been unjust since its beginning in 1776. In the United States, we are instilled with the notions from a very early age that it is our responsibility to do what is right, to promote peace and justice, and to act for the good of others and the world. These values are taught to us by our families, peers, educators, coaches, the government, religion and the corporate media. Without exception, these noble teachings come with one major golden rule — those desiring change must adhere specifically to methods prescribed by the government and reinforced by the media and thus, educators, coaches, religion, family, and peers. The one thing that is not taught to those desiring change in this country is that it is literally impossible to create fundamental political and social change by strictly adhering to only those methods approved by the government. The state-sanctioned means of change, the voting, lobbying and legislation, the rallies, protests and pickets, and other activities that demonstrate one’s legal right to object and promote change, have never on their own substantially altered the political structure that has and continues to cause relentless atrocities. The advances in U.S. society that have been gained — the abolition of slavery, the Suffrage victory, the labor advances, the Civil Rights movement in particular — came about through a variety of strategies and tactics including many that did not fit neatly within the politically approved methods outlined by the government. And yet, while some advances have been made using a diversity of approaches, the governing system that lies at the root of significant “issues” has never been seriously addressed. In each of the many social and political issues that largely grew out of the awakening period of the 1960s, millions of dollars continue to be spent each year in the U.S. on lobbying and backing political candidates, voting drives, promoting legislation, legal battles, symbolic rallies and protests, media campaigns, and more. Whether for environmental protection, animal welfare, or human rights campaigns, money coming from grants, memberships, fundraisers, and donations is funneled strictly into campaigns that involve only strategies and tactics approved by the very governing body that continues to cause or allow the overwhelming majority of these “issues” to thrive. Yet, there is little to no effort or resources spent on organizing and acting to fundamentally change the political structure itself. This book is an attempt to assist in enlarging the discussion of the necessity of revolution in the United States. Here, the reader will find essays by twelve prominent activists and authors, all who have demonstrated through their words and actions a commitment to fundamental political and social change within this country. While their backgrounds are diverse, covering a wide range of animal, environmental, and human liberation struggles, they are unified in the realization that what we have done so far as a society has not worked, has not been enough to end the injustice and oppression that is caused by the U.S. government and the corporate/political elite that run the country. They are unified in the understanding that a revolution is needed in the United States and that it is up to all of us to make that occur. In picking up and opening this book, the reader may notice that the essays contained herein are, with the exception of one, all by male authors. I would like to take a moment to address this problem. In organizing and producing this book, a specific list of activists and authors were approached and asked to contribute. Those considered for publication had all shown a dedication in their lives, through their work and/or writings to fundamental change. Owing to the male dominance pervasive through society, including the often misguided prominence of men as key, important figures in political movements while neglecting crucial female roles and leaders, there were more women activists and authors approached for this project than men. The response was less than even and this project was delayed for one year in an attempt to more evenly provide a balanced approach to this topic. A few people who had agreed to the project, were either unable to get their writings out of prison or had them confiscated by prison authorities. Others, once learning more about the project, became uncomfortable with it promoting revolution as opposed to the safer reformist perspective. Whatever the case may have been, we decided to move forward with the project after waiting a year, even without the balance of the female perspective. That being said, Arissa Media Group is planning a follow-up book that will feature prominent women activists and authors discussing the need for revolution in the United States. ...

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— Sunspots Distro - Moving Targets

 

at 7/11/25 6:00pm

Author: Sunspots DistroTitle: Moving TargetsSubtitle: Towards a Mobile DistroismDate: 07/11/25Source: Retrieved on 2025-07-12 from <saguaros.noblogs.org/post/2025/07/11/moving-targets-towards-a-mobile-distroism-zine> A common hatred and disgust for poverty and homelessness is pervasive throughout these occupied lands. The unsheltered are left to die in the streets, viewed as an inconvenience, as self made tragedies beyond saving. Society has hardened its heart to the suffering of its least fortunate. Still, they persist, in the cracks of the concrete, in the corners behind stripmalls and under the bridges, by the shore of lakes and along the canals. The cruelty of the society we inhabit consistently manifests itself through the constant legislation of new forms of social murder. The state routinely prohibits vagrancy, panhandling, loitering, and trespassing. In 2024, the supreme court ruled in favor of the “right” of cities to ban sleeping in outdoor spaces even when no other shelter is available, effectively criminalizing homelessness. Yet another way this full frontal assault on some of the most vulnerable members of society advances is an outright ban on or requirement of permission to feed those who need it in public spaces. City councils will cite health and safety concerns and complaints from community busybodies to justify this direct attack on mutual aid efforts. Just this year in 2025, Tempe became the latest city in the valley to criminalize public food distribution without a permit, a move that will hinder the ability of organizations and individuals to provide this critical assistance to those who need it, and creates a pretext to wield greater state violence against those who take direct action. The resultant chilling effect will cost people their lives. These developments have created a new challenge for us to work around, but also have created an opportunity for us to innovate new ways of directly meeting the needs of our neighbors. If an action has become vulnerable by nature of its static location, why not become a moving target? Local radicals may be aware of the push by Phoenix anarchist collective Make Total Destroy to reestablish an anarchist space here in the valley, following the loss of their previous location in 2024. Recently, these plans have evolved from securing a physical stationary location to purchasing a bus. “In an effort to try and subvert existing structures, the homies in Phoenix have been trying to buy a bus. This bang bus will be used as a way to create, destroy, learn, unlearn, play, anti-work, and explore with one another. Phoenix lacks the kind of meaningful radical distribution that we envision and, rather than whining continually about the declining Cool People scene in the area, we’re just gonna do it ourselves. The eventually modified bus will serve as a mobile infoshop, food distribution for the unhoused, and possibly a small and mobile print shop.” An idea originally stemming from the financial infeasibility of meeting the ridiculous cost of rent, this proposal steps up to the challenges of a sprawling car centric city, and the criminalization of unpermitted food distribution. Distro on wheels mitigates the need for unhoused people to travel long distances to reach one of sites of distribution, and expands the reach of anarchy to the far edges of the valley. It allows for the outside agitators to sow the seeds of rebellion and mutuality across communities. It enables the ability to pop up, act quickly, and pack up before the pigs show up. It draws less unwanted attention and allows for adaptability as situations evolve. The potential of this method is further highlighted by the fact that non-anarchist organizations and nonprofits already host mobile foodbank pop ups across the country with regular success. It is clear then, that there is plenty of room for an explicitly anarchist project in this vein, combining this method with our strengths and our aims. With a bit of concentrated effort, we could have our very own roaming autonomous zone, reclaiming freedom in brief spaces of our own improvisation, as well as in the joy of being in motion, journeying to new places. At the local level, a mobile distroism also leaves room for bicycle based actions, for our comrades who either can’t or won’t drive a car. The bicycle itself is a subversive and versatile form of transport, allowing for quick transport to and through spaces both accessible and inaccessible to cars. A bicycle can slip through the cracks of the city and through the fingers of the cops. It requires less maintenance and money. It is ecologically friendly and energy efficient. There are already examples of mutual aid on the back of a bicycle. On the occupied indigenous lands also known as Toronto, a group known as the bike brigade consisting of 1500+ cyclists formed during the height of the pandemic to deliver food from local organizations and food banks to those in need. The bike brigade has continued to operate even as the pandemic restrictions have been lifted, and they provide a critical lifeline of support to those who are food insecure, low income, and living in food deserts. Such organization and direct action could be recreated across this continent, creating new networks of solidarity and drawing more people into mutual aid and community support. ...

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— Paul Raekstad & Sofa Saio Gradin - Prefigurative Politics

 

at 7/11/25 9:14am

Author: Paul Raekstad & Sofa Saio GradinTitle: Prefigurative PoliticsSubtitle: Building Tomorrow TodayDate: 2020 Acknowledgements Paul would like to thank: my mother and my friends for their love and support throughout this process. Also (all names from here on in alphabetical order) Eivind Dahl, Enzo Rossi, Mathijs van de Sande, and Zoe Addis for reading over the manuscript and offering us their very valuable advice, and the members of the Cambridge Heterodox Philosophy Colloquium and The Aurora Circle for discussions on the ideas that have fed into this book. Part of Paul’s work on this book has previously appeared as ‘Revolutionary Practice and Prefigurative Politics: A Clarification and Defence’, Constellations 25(3), 2018, pp. 359–72. Paul would like to thank the editor of Constellations and two anonymous referees for their insightful feedback and help with improving the article. That article was in turn the result of a bunch of work that Paul started doing as a side project to their PhD, and has benefited from lots of feedback from many different people, in particular Ammar Ali Jan, Dan Swain, Lorna Finlayson Wheeler, Mahvish Ahmad, Raymond Geuss, Tabitha Spence, and Zoe Addis. All deserve thanks for their very helpful discussions on these topics and comments on the drafts and papers that this article and significant parts of this book are based on. Those papers have been presented at the Historical Materialism Conference at the University of York, Toronto in 2014, the Political Studies Annual Conference in both 2015 and 2017, the International Workshop on Emancipatory Theory in 2016, the Association for Social and Political Philosophy Annual Conference in 2016, the Marx 2016 Conference in Stockholm 2016, and the Loughborough University Anarchism Research Group’s Speaker-Series in 2018. Paul would like to thank the participants at all these conferences and workshops for their input and feedback – in particular Ali Yalçın Göymen, David Berry, Ruth Kinna, Thomas Swann, and Uri Gordon. Saio would like to thank: my sister Emma Gradin for lifelong discussions and for the emotional and intellectual support you’ve given me while writing this book. Xan Randall for discussing thoughts and ideas, reading drafts of chapters and giving wise advice. Grietje Baars for the many and long discussions, the support, and the invaluable advice on writing and publishing. Katherine McMahon and Jo Chattoo for reading and commenting on drafts of some of my chapters in this book. Thank you also to my PhD supervisors Ray Kiely and Robbie Shilliam who gave me huge amounts of feedback and guidance when I was first developing these ideas as a research student at Queen Mary, University of London. So did Jenna Marshall – thank you for our discussions and your insights. The ideas I’ve put into this book have also been shaped by the activities and discussions with countless activists and friends, including my best comrades in the International Organisation for a Participatory Society, Harpreet Kaur Paul, David Dominic, and Robert Bennie, and the folks of Queer Mutiny Bristol many years ago. I’ve also learned so incredibly much from running workshops and making sense of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism together with Leonie Blacknell-Taylor. Thanks also to Claire from Plan C and Fanny from Research For Action for checking some of my facts on British prefigurative movements. The authors would also like to thank the four reviewers and George Owers, editor at Polity Books, for their valuable input and suggestions. 1. Introduction Ours is an age of crisis and struggle. After the 2008 financial crisis, the banks were bailed out while the people were sold out. Wealth and power are controlled by a tiny minority. The media, telling us things are OK, are in the hands of a tiny oligarchy serving the needs of their corporate advertisers. Real wages are falling while the richest of the world line their pockets. Unemployment and precarity rise along with the misery and desperation they cause. Most people can’t even get an education without consigning themselves to a lifetime of debt. Far right movements aren’t just organising, they’re getting presidents elected to the applause of their corporate backers. Climate change is advancing at breakneck speed, and an estimated 150–200 species go extinct every 24 hours. Yet some people wonder why so many are rejecting capitalism… At the same time, we’re seeing the rebirth and rise of radical movements fighting for a better tomorrow. The best description that many liberal pundits and academics – from supporters of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid to philosophers and sociologists – can come up with when trying to make sense of these movements is ‘resistance’. In fact, today’s social movements go far beyond mere ‘resistance’. ‘Resistance’ implies taking for granted the basic institutions that have led to our present problems. It offers no real alternative to the status quo. It implies a servile expression of the vain hope that making a fuss will convince the powers-that-be to go back to the way things were – to stop the current wave of welfare cuts and deregulation and return to the so-called golden age of welfare capitalism of the 1960s and ’70s. But that’s what gave us what we have now. The way things were was also deeply unfree, unequal, and undemocratic. The way things were was built on the back of worldwide imperial and colonial tyranny. The way things were also had major inequalities between rich and poor, a majority of the world impoverished and powerless, rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and more. That’s not something we should hope to get back to. ...

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— Stuart Schrader - Against the Romance of Community Policing

 

at 7/11/25 2:49am

Author: Stuart SchraderTitle: Against the Romance of Community PolicingDate: September 7, 2016Source: Retrieved on 2017-02-22 from <aworldwithoutpolice.org/2016/09/07/against-the-romance-of-community-policing> Community policing is a confusing term. It joins together two of the most ambiguous words in the English language. Despite this ambiguity, its power resides not in what it purports to mean—a partnership of the police agencies and the people they protect forged through the fluid exchange of intelligence from the latter to the former—but in what it reveals about the purpose and mechanism of the police-led fabrication of social order. Here are some thoughts about why we should be wary not simply of community policing but of community itself. Police is the form of governance, the exercise of coercive power and authority, defined by its undefinability. The police power concerns a limitless and ever-growing set of objects because it takes as its task the prudential identification of threats to public safety in advance of their occurrence. In everyday usage, community is taken to be an inert, or perhaps warm and fuzzy, collection of people gathered together according to some form of spatial, ethno-racial, or other propinquity. In contrast, I would define community as a technology of social reconfiguration and manipulation. How community creates adhesion among people is hidden by the embedded assumptions of boundedness, cohesiveness, and harmony in typical usage. The very working of the technology itself erases politics. It erases the vast inequalities in access to power and resources that structure and striate this gathered-together confraternity called community. Although there is much more to be said on the topic, one chief means of this gathering together is the police power. Policing leverages social inequalities to further empower leaders to marshal the apparent consensus community represents. Dissensus becomes scripted as crime. Policing links the governance of the past with the governance of the future: catching offenders to keep them from offending again. Community is the stake, medium, and outcome of this action. To police is to define the boundaries of community through exclusion and punishment and to realize capitalist economic interests within those boundaries.[1] Community is the terrain of intervention for police, shaped by police. It does not preexist police and it does not provide a bulwark against police power. It cannot achieve its apparent cohesiveness without the police power. It cannot be joined to police to moderate the negative effects of policing. In the unending media coverage of policing today, community policing continues to be held out as an antidote both to the injustice, violence, and racism of the institutions of US policing and to the supposed scourge of crime. Critics abound, of course. But more popular are the true believers, the voices who tell us that if the police just get to know the community, crime will go down and police racism will dwindle. In response, my argument is simple: community is the terrain of intervention for police, shaped by police. It does not preexist police and it does not provide a bulwark against police power. It cannot achieve its apparent cohesiveness without the police power. It cannot be joined to police to moderate the negative effects of policing. Nor can it be joined to police to stimulate the repression of crime that the community members are otherwise incapable of achieving without enhancing the power of police. To commit a crime is to evidence one’s ineligibility for community membership. That is its inherent logic. Community and police double-back on each other under present social arrangements, to maintain and reproduce present social arrangements. In this sense, the term is redundant. A new Department of Justice (DOJ) analysis of the Baltimore police department (BPD) contains what some have found to be a shocking revelation (shocking only if you live under a rock). The DOJ, a firm advocate of community policing, found: “Finally, BPD’s policies and training do not consistently embrace community policing principles. BPD’s community policing strategy involves few training modules on community policing and communication. We attended one of these in-service trainings, which focused on community policing and foot patrol. The segment on officers’ role as ‘warriors versus guardians’ focused primarily on the benefits of being a warrior. Indeed, it seemed that principles of community policing and the role of a police officer as a ‘guardian’ is not yet well understood by the instructors, who emphasized the drawbacks of this approach, making it unlikely that officers will understand how to embrace such principles in their interactions” (161). The shock is that training in community policing emphasized acting like warriors. The DOJ believes there is another way to train police, which is more appropriate. Warrior training is an increasingly common form of in-service police training.[2] It is designed to get cops to kill people with alacrity. It is wrought from pop psychology, machismo, and racism. There is no evidence behind it other than the power of gut feeling it self-referentially lauds. A great new documentary called Do Not Resist depicts some of this warrior training, led by the quack cop guru Dave Grossman, who tries to convince officers that they are the only barrier to total chaos, while hyping the sadistic and erotic pleasure of violence. This way of policing sounds very different from the relatively benign notion of community policing. ...

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— Audre Lorde - Sister Outsider

 

at 7/10/25 2:33pm

Author: Audre LordeTitle: Sister OutsiderSubtitle: Essays and SpeechesDate: 1984Source: Retrieved on 7/10/2025 from https://rhinehartibenglish.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/1/0/22108252/sister_outsider_audrey_lorde_ib_pdf_packet.pdf Introduction WHEN WE BEGAN EDITING Sister Outsider—long after the book had been conceptualized, a contract signed, and new material written—Audre Lorde informed me, as we were working one afternoon, that she doesn’t write theory. “I am a poet,” she said. Lorde’s stature as a poet is undeniable. And yet there can be no doubt that Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches drawn from the past eight years of this Black lesbian feminist’s nonfiction prose, makes absolutely clear to many what some already knew: Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness. The fifteen selections included here, several of them published for the first time, are essential reading. Whether it is the by now familiar “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” opening us up to the potential power in all aspects of our lives implicit in the erotic, When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life-force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives[1] or the recently authored “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” probing the white racist roots of hostility between Black women, We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred[2] Lorde’s work expands, deepens, and enriches all of our understandings of what feminism can be. But what about the “conflict” between poetry and theory, between their separate and seemingly incompatible spheres? We have been told that poetry expresses what we feel, and theory states what we know; that the poet creates out of the heat of the moment, while the theorist’s mode is, of necessity, cool and reasoned; that one is art and therefore experienced “subjectively,” and the other is scholarship, held accountable in the “objective” world of ideas. We have been told that poetry has a soul and theory has a mind and that we have to choose between them. The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think—between poetry and theory. We are easier to control when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off balance. There are other configurations, however, other ways of experiencing the world, though they are often difficult to name. We can sense them and seek their articulation. Because it is the work of feminism to make connections, to heal unnecessary divisions, Sister Outsider is a reason for hope. Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help shape ours. Out of her desire for wholeness, her need to encompass and address all the parts of herself, she teaches us about the significance of difference—“that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.”[3] A white Jewish lesbian mother, I first read “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response” several years ago as I was struggling to accept the inevitability of my prepubescent son’s eventual manhood. Not only would this boy of mine become a man physically, but he might act like one. This awareness turned into a major crisis for me at a time and place when virtually all the lesbian mothers I knew (who I realized, with hindsight, were also white) either insisted that their “androgynous” male children would stay that way, would not grow up to be sexist/misogynist men, or were pressured to choose between a separatist vision of community and their sons. I felt trapped by a narrow range of options. Lorde, however, had wider vision. She started with the reality of her child’s approaching manhood (“Our sons will not grown into women”[4]) and then asked what kind of man he would become. She saw clearly that she could both love her son fiercely and let him go. In fact, for their mutual survival, she had no choice but to let him go, to teach him that she “did not exist to do his feeling for him.”[5] Lorde and I are both lesbian mothers who have had to teach our boys to do their own emotional work. But her son Jonathan is Black and my son Joshua is white and that is not a trivial difference in a racist society, despite their common manhood. As Lorde has written elsewhere: Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.[6] I read “Man Child,” and it was one of those occasions when I can remember something major shifting inside me. ...

[Link to media]

— Joseph A. Labadie & Winfield Lionel Scott - Off the Beaten Track

 

at 7/10/25 2:15pm

Author: Joseph A. Labadie & Winfield Lionel ScottTitle: Off the Beaten TrackDate: 1906Source: <https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002917770> VERSES by Win Scott and Jo Labadie A JAUNT ALONG THE RIVER ROUGE. BACK TO NATURE. “BACK to nature,” we smiling said, we two Who lazed and loitered all that autumn day In full content along the river’s edge, Whose waters rippled silver ‘neath the boughs, With just the faintest murmur in their flow. We plucked the purple lobes from wreathing vines, In tangles wild the regal asters grew, And o’er the marsh the mallows spilled their gold. A calm, still day, with softest veiling haze, The toilers busy midst the rustling corn, That gleamed like wigwams along the rounded hills, Where chirped the lazy crickets in the sun. The silent leaf that left the crimson thorn, The traces still of blooms we dearly loved, With miles on miles in banks of yellowing ferns In woodland glades, where soft sun harmonies Made all that care-free day most beautiful. So slipped the rosary of joyous hours Till sunset spread a cloth of shining gold Across the shoulders of the drowsy hills And touched the placid stream with level rays. Soft-purple shadows trod the heels of day; Night settled down and showed the steadfast stars. We then the drift-wood heaped and lit the flame, And feasted then on maize and luscious fruits, A frugal meal partaken of with zest. Then laid us down upon the soft, warm earth; The night made vocal with the insects’ call; And thru it all anon came tinkles faint Of far-off bells to us at peace beneath the stars. WINFIELD L. SCOTT. October, 1906. THE JAUNT. THE mellow wail of the wildwood whim For absent souls was tuned in our ears, And the music lured like a siren’s song. Friend Scott and I, with anxious hearts And ears like Indians’, close to the sounding ground, To catch the mossy-cushioned tread of the unrestrained, Heard freedom’s far-off hallooing, And so one golden day in autum’s glow We left the dust and noise of the reckless town, Where life and limb become the daily prey Of modern Juggernauts, whose rubber wheels, Silent as a panther’s tread and hungry eyes agleam, Creep cruelly a-swift upon their unsuspecting victims with honk and screech And crunch their brittle bones and scatter sacred flesh alongthe painful pave; Where ignorant poverty bows its fawning face To ignorant power; where business makes believe that plunder-profit wisdom proves; And toil, with aching, breaking back, loaded With parasites, groans in the noisome shadows Of its own foolish folly of living in piled-up boxes, small and mean, When the beckoning land cries full-throated for fellowship, Where helping hands may yield a worthy life, Tho the law has usurious hands about its struggling neck. Ere long we leave the scooting car, With its clang and clatter, its roar and racket, Its twang and tintinnabulations, Like an orchestra of hell, and its fetid fumes And noisome smells, we come into a peaceful vale, Its sides aslope with variegated reds and greens and browns, nature’s kaleidoscope, Frank autumn hues put on with nature’s stintless brush, Where sylvan silence softly soothes contentment in embrace. In a shady nook, close to the rippling water’s glint, we sit. Within an ell a serpent slyly slides Into the stream and sends a shuddering chill Adown my spinal nerves, for never yet Have I o’ercome the childish dread that Satan’s Form is serpentine, and mortal enmity to man his never-ending mission; And a sassy chipmunk spouts his brazen protest At intrusion unintentional. Along the Rouge’s sinuous banks Our faithful feet cross fallow fields, And fields replete with foods for man and beast; Lactiferous lowlands purveying munching cows; Saintly-visaged ewes and lambs with lovely eyes That look like candid moons in full, So tender, good and free from guile, Almost to prompt the kindly wish to plant anew Their lusterous kindliness ‘neath human brows Swe wot well of; And stern-eyed rams, whose threatening horns And stamping hoofs give evidence of fight potential; And a gentle mother horse with generations three, Who follow close for friendship’s sake; And rugged ridges bristling with brambles thick, Whose prickly points resent the ruthless ways Of urbanites on idle pleasures bent, If joy-producing things can useless be. Ah! what relief from narrow walls That hem within the city’s heat and grime And irk with work unnatural and vain, And shut without the godly good of sun and air and liberty! Upon the Rouge’s balmy banks, Where once the red man, unsullied by the white man’s guile and civil plunderings, Lit his wigwam fires and wooed his wildwood bride, We lay our listless lengths along, Flat on our backs, and thru the leafy tracery Against the lucid sky we gaze and dream. We watch the wooly clouds move mopingly, Like tired sheep upon a sultry day, And when the jading journey’s sweat runs rivulets Adown the heated spine we plunge Into the tinted flood that gives the stream its reddish name And fresh the thews for further jaunt. The while I lie upon my naked back in sunny sand, Like infant innocence on mother’s breast, My jocund friend in artless fun Shoots shots of shadows of my Apollo form Upon tell-tale films, from which to ornament his wicked den, As with grim trophies of the chase, And shock the Grundys into feinting faints. At Duboisville, a drowsy hamlet near the streamlet’s side, We while a word with Farrington, A rugged habitant of this hoary-headed town, A cross-roads sage full of cornstalk filosofy, Who smooths the way with unctious words. And then we lounge upon a modern bridge below the crooning mill That sings its madrigals in plaintive tones, As an aged bard of ancient days, Bewailing the dizzyness of modern ways; And village maidens pass with smiles and greetings filled with rural fellowship. Tho new to us, no strangers they, As strangers have no welcome in their souls And pass one by as floating icebergs in northern seas. The moistening mouth, nature’s unerring regulator, Tells us ‘tis time to break our hungry fast, And so beneath a friendly willow’s languid limbs We sit upon the sod and jaw our frugal fare. And then again we jog along, in God’s own freedom, O’er bog and hummocked fields, thru brake, Amid the crackling corn that wage the workers well And wave their yellow flags at us, And in the dusty road that winds and weaves Along the most inviting ways with serpent sinuosity, And guides our feet to where a feeder of the nation whiles his life in humble toil And simple motherhood breeds a moilsome race. We here enjoy the wheezy pump’s refreshing tin, And rural hospitality fills full our bags with fruit. We leave a pleasing word for family and dog And follow whimsey’s random way. Up the tiring hill we go, and down the pushing summit’s si de, And in atween the wire fences’ stabbing barbs, And over fences green with age and weak with weather-wasted stamina, Whose builders long ago have paid in productive mold, pound for pound, The debt which nature laid upon their lives. A lonely lane, as silently as Chimborazo’s topmost peak, Leads up to Boden’s well-kept yard, Where, in social nearness, chum abodes for man and beastAn old brick home, cozy, low and rambling, neatly care in every nook, And bursting barns, and stables trim and clean. Here kingly cocks aplume their sway, And swine and kine commune in peaceful comradeship, A lesson learning the human crowd, Who grab and hoard in greediness, when plenty’s hands, In drunken generosity, keep doling out with never-ending stintlessness. Across the rolling stubble field we gain the wood. With admiration nigh unto cupidity we gaze With artist eyes at fairy landscapes toil and nature wrought. Low in the teeming vale winds like a wriggling worm The pregnant stream we left a meager while ago, Where lazy kine knee deep into its limpid luxury Demonstrate wisdom over man by Fletcherizeing long their noonday meal, Busy hurry being stranger to their polity. Dotting the hillside sward lie cozy cottages in restful ease, Like Easter lilies fair upon a leisure-billowed sea, And round about big-bellied barns of red, With forked rods to keep the lightning off, Tell the story of willing work and skilful management. The fleecy flocks with fearless feet here frisk, Great orchards burdened joyously with succulent abundance, Undulating fields full of golden promises, And blotchy foliage of colors bold and masterful Fringe the horizon along the purpling sky. Awhile we swim entranced this sea of sensual luxury, And leave reluctantly these servants of our joy. We stumble thru like drunken men The jungle’s undergrowth in sweet pursuit of tales to tell the credulous in coming days. Buttermilk is scarce in these suburban latitudes, As unpoetic enterprise has robbed the milkmaid of her job, And senseless wheels and cranks in urban factories Now do the work she used to do and ape the songs she used to sing. The golden butter made within the sound of bossy’s moo No longer spreads the noonday lunch. But once along the joyous route do we appease Our thirst with buttermilk, and then the drink Is sweeter than the acrid face that serves our wish so grudgingly. And now the shadows towards the east fast longer grow. The reins upon our feet we gently draw And cast about for where to mend our waning strengthSome inviting stack of straw or fragrant hay, A shock of yellow corn or mow anear an ample roof, where pattering rain may sing our eyes asleep, Or mayhap a farmer’s homespun hospitality. But Fate is stingy of her weal, and so we Ramble on, as eveningtide, mother of night, Leads further from our hope. With golden Snuffers the light of day’s put out and we are in a blackened maze. My early woodman ways come handy to me now. Soon a crackling fire blazes cheerily And roasts the milky corn that Winfield L. Had borrowed from a wavy field with firm intent Of bringing back some rectifying day. Experiences in early youth with Indian tribes, When Potowattomies had simpler ways Of satisfying simple needs than with utensil Artfulness—ere Michigan was robbed of nature’s Ample store for nature’s nearest relatives— Help in emergencies like this, and so we fare As guileless children of the wooded wilds, Squatting on the sands beside the gabbling brook. Weariness soon lays us down upon the clean, Warm bank, and sleep unwooed comes with Its tools to deftly mend our elemental wastes. No coverlets besides the spangled blue, No mattresses besides the plastic sand, No pillows save some flotsam blocks of maple soft Make our welcome bed or soothe us to our rest. We early rise, in company of a manly day— Red-haired, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, Smiling-faced and supple-limbed-and make our way To Woodward Avenue, whence we swiftly homeward glide In a modern car pulled and pushed by God’s electric hands, BIaggaged with pleasant memories of a Delightful jaunt along the River Rouge! ...

[Link to media]

— Joseph A. Labadie & Winfield Lionel Scott - Off The Beaten Track

 

at 7/10/25 2:15pm

Author: Joseph A. Labadie & Winfield Lionel ScottTitle: Off The Beaten TrackDate: 1906Source: <hdl.handle.net/2027/miua.2917770.0001.001> VERSES by Win Scott and Jo Labadie A JAUNT ALONG THE RIVER ROUGE. BACK TO NATURE. “BACK to nature,” we smiling said, we two Who lazed and loitered all that autumn day In full content along the river’s edge, Whose waters rippled silver ‘neath the boughs, With just the faintest murmur in their flow. We plucked the purple lobes from wreathing vines, In tangles wild the regal asters grew, And o’er the marsh the mallows spilled their gold. A calm, still day, with softest veiling haze, The toilers busy midst the rustling corn, That gleamed like wigwams along the rounded hills, Where chirped the lazy crickets in the sun. The silent leaf that left the crimson thorn, The traces still of blooms we dearly loved, With miles on miles in banks of yellowing ferns In woodland glades, where soft sun harmonies Made all that care-free day most beautiful. So slipped the rosary of joyous hours Till sunset spread a cloth of shining gold Across the shoulders of the drowsy hills And touched the placid stream with level rays. Soft-purple shadows trod the heels of day; Night settled down and showed the steadfast stars. We then the drift-wood heaped and lit the flame, And feasted then on maize and luscious fruits, A frugal meal partaken of with zest. Then laid us down upon the soft, warm earth; The night made vocal with the insects’ call; And thru it all anon came tinkles faint Of far-off bells to us at peace beneath the stars. WINFIELD L. SCOTT. October, 1906. THE JAUNT. THE mellow wail of the wildwood whim For absent souls was tuned in our ears, And the music lured like a siren’s song. Friend Scott and I, with anxious hearts And ears like Indians’, close to the sounding ground, To catch the mossy-cushioned tread of the unrestrained, Heard freedom’s far-off hallooing, And so one golden day in autum’s glow We left the dust and noise of the reckless town, Where life and limb become the daily prey Of modern Juggernauts, whose rubber wheels, Silent as a panther’s tread and hungry eyes agleam, Creep cruelly a-swift upon their unsuspecting victims with honk and screech And crunch their brittle bones and scatter sacred flesh alongthe painful pave; Where ignorant poverty bows its fawning face To ignorant power; where business makes believe that plunder-profit wisdom proves; And toil, with aching, breaking back, loaded With parasites, groans in the noisome shadows Of its own foolish folly of living in piled-up boxes, small and mean, When the beckoning land cries full-throated for fellowship, Where helping hands may yield a worthy life, Tho the law has usurious hands about its struggling neck. Ere long we leave the scooting car, With its clang and clatter, its roar and racket, Its twang and tintinnabulations, Like an orchestra of hell, and its fetid fumes And noisome smells, we come into a peaceful vale, Its sides aslope with variegated reds and greens and browns, nature’s kaleidoscope, Frank autumn hues put on with nature’s stintless brush, Where sylvan silence softly soothes contentment in embrace. In a shady nook, close to the rippling water’s glint, we sit. Within an ell a serpent slyly slides Into the stream and sends a shuddering chill Adown my spinal nerves, for never yet Have I o’ercome the childish dread that Satan’s Form is serpentine, and mortal enmity to man his never-ending mission; And a sassy chipmunk spouts his brazen protest At intrusion unintentional. Along the Rouge’s sinuous banks Our faithful feet cross fallow fields, And fields replete with foods for man and beast; Lactiferous lowlands purveying munching cows; Saintly-visaged ewes and lambs with lovely eyes That look like candid moons in full, So tender, good and free from guile, Almost to prompt the kindly wish to plant anew Their lusterous kindliness ‘neath human brows Swe wot well of; And stern-eyed rams, whose threatening horns And stamping hoofs give evidence of fight potential; And a gentle mother horse with generations three, Who follow close for friendship’s sake; And rugged ridges bristling with brambles thick, Whose prickly points resent the ruthless ways Of urbanites on idle pleasures bent, If joy-producing things can useless be. Ah! what relief from narrow walls That hem within the city’s heat and grime And irk with work unnatural and vain, And shut without the godly good of sun and air and liberty! Upon the Rouge’s balmy banks, Where once the red man, unsullied by the white man’s guile and civil plunderings, Lit his wigwam fires and wooed his wildwood bride, We lay our listless lengths along, Flat on our backs, and thru the leafy tracery Against the lucid sky we gaze and dream. We watch the wooly clouds move mopingly, Like tired sheep upon a sultry day, And when the jading journey’s sweat runs rivulets Adown the heated spine we plunge Into the tinted flood that gives the stream its reddish name And fresh the thews for further jaunt. The while I lie upon my naked back in sunny sand, Like infant innocence on mother’s breast, My jocund friend in artless fun Shoots shots of shadows of my Apollo form Upon tell-tale films, from which to ornament his wicked den, As with grim trophies of the chase, And shock the Grundys into feinting faints. At Duboisville, a drowsy hamlet near the streamlet’s side, We while a word with Farrington, A rugged habitant of this hoary-headed town, A cross-roads sage full of cornstalk filosofy, Who smooths the way with unctious words. And then we lounge upon a modern bridge below the crooning mill That sings its madrigals in plaintive tones, As an aged bard of ancient days, Bewailing the dizzyness of modern ways; And village maidens pass with smiles and greetings filled with rural fellowship. Tho new to us, no strangers they, As strangers have no welcome in their souls And pass one by as floating icebergs in northern seas. The moistening mouth, nature’s unerring regulator, Tells us ‘tis time to break our hungry fast, And so beneath a friendly willow’s languid limbs We sit upon the sod and jaw our frugal fare. And then again we jog along, in God’s own freedom, O’er bog and hummocked fields, thru brake, Amid the crackling corn that wage the workers well And wave their yellow flags at us, And in the dusty road that winds and weaves Along the most inviting ways with serpent sinuosity, And guides our feet to where a feeder of the nation whiles his life in humble toil And simple motherhood breeds a moilsome race. We here enjoy the wheezy pump’s refreshing tin, And rural hospitality fills full our bags with fruit. We leave a pleasing word for family and dog And follow whimsey’s random way. Up the tiring hill we go, and down the pushing summit’s si de, And in atween the wire fences’ stabbing barbs, And over fences green with age and weak with weather-wasted stamina, Whose builders long ago have paid in productive mold, pound for pound, The debt which nature laid upon their lives. A lonely lane, as silently as Chimborazo’s topmost peak, Leads up to Boden’s well-kept yard, Where, in social nearness, chum abodes for man and beastAn old brick home, cozy, low and rambling, neatly care in every nook, And bursting barns, and stables trim and clean. Here kingly cocks aplume their sway, And swine and kine commune in peaceful comradeship, A lesson learning the human crowd, Who grab and hoard in greediness, when plenty’s hands, In drunken generosity, keep doling out with never-ending stintlessness. Across the rolling stubble field we gain the wood. With admiration nigh unto cupidity we gaze With artist eyes at fairy landscapes toil and nature wrought. Low in the teeming vale winds like a wriggling worm The pregnant stream we left a meager while ago, Where lazy kine knee deep into its limpid luxury Demonstrate wisdom over man by Fletcherizeing long their noonday meal, Busy hurry being stranger to their polity. Dotting the hillside sward lie cozy cottages in restful ease, Like Easter lilies fair upon a leisure-billowed sea, And round about big-bellied barns of red, With forked rods to keep the lightning off, Tell the story of willing work and skilful management. The fleecy flocks with fearless feet here frisk, Great orchards burdened joyously with succulent abundance, Undulating fields full of golden promises, And blotchy foliage of colors bold and masterful Fringe the horizon along the purpling sky. Awhile we swim entranced this sea of sensual luxury, And leave reluctantly these servants of our joy. We stumble thru like drunken men The jungle’s undergrowth in sweet pursuit of tales to tell the credulous in coming days. Buttermilk is scarce in these suburban latitudes, As unpoetic enterprise has robbed the milkmaid of her job, And senseless wheels and cranks in urban factories Now do the work she used to do and ape the songs she used to sing. The golden butter made within the sound of bossy’s moo No longer spreads the noonday lunch. But once along the joyous route do we appease Our thirst with buttermilk, and then the drink Is sweeter than the acrid face that serves our wish so grudgingly. And now the shadows towards the east fast longer grow. The reins upon our feet we gently draw And cast about for where to mend our waning strengthSome inviting stack of straw or fragrant hay, A shock of yellow corn or mow anear an ample roof, where pattering rain may sing our eyes asleep, Or mayhap a farmer’s homespun hospitality. But Fate is stingy of her weal, and so we Ramble on, as eveningtide, mother of night, Leads further from our hope. With golden Snuffers the light of day’s put out and we are in a blackened maze. My early woodman ways come handy to me now. Soon a crackling fire blazes cheerily And roasts the milky corn that Winfield L. Had borrowed from a wavy field with firm intent Of bringing back some rectifying day. Experiences in early youth with Indian tribes, When Potowattomies had simpler ways Of satisfying simple needs than with utensil Artfulness—ere Michigan was robbed of nature’s Ample store for nature’s nearest relatives— Help in emergencies like this, and so we fare As guileless children of the wooded wilds, Squatting on the sands beside the gabbling brook. Weariness soon lays us down upon the clean, Warm bank, and sleep unwooed comes with Its tools to deftly mend our elemental wastes. No coverlets besides the spangled blue, No mattresses besides the plastic sand, No pillows save some flotsam blocks of maple soft Make our welcome bed or soothe us to our rest. We early rise, in company of a manly day— Red-haired, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, Smiling-faced and supple-limbed-and make our way To Woodward Avenue, whence we swiftly homeward glide In a modern car pulled and pushed by God’s electric hands, BIaggaged with pleasant memories of a Delightful jaunt along the River Rouge! ...

[Link to media]

— David S. D’Amato - Federalism and the Left

 

at 7/10/25 8:30am

Author: David S. D’AmatoTitle: Federalism and the LeftSubtitle: Toward Community PowerDate: July 10, 2025Source: Retrieved on July 10, 2025 from https://dsdamato.substack.com/p/federalism-and-the-left When a president so openly and unapologetically embraces fascism and white supremacy, it can be easy to get distracted, to focus on the man rather than the edifices of power. It can be tempting to mistake age-old features of the state’s personality for attributes unique to certain rulers. One of the dangers of the Trump personality cult, which exists within both parties, is that it has made us miss the forest for the trees. We have been unable or unwilling to address the structural problems with our system of politics and economics. Understanding the historical role and purpose of the state demands that we step back from the personalities of the moment. Centralized political power exists to inaugurate inequality. Its purpose is to create categories of special rights and privileges that only a small group can enjoy or access. The ruling class holds the lands, the weapons, etc., and from this position comes permanent economic class subjugation. We cannot move into the future under the false impression that all that is necessary is to get rid of Donald Trump or even the GOP; while these are important and necessary steps, they are very small ones in a much larger process. Many of the problems that present themselves through Donald Trump today are best understood as upshots of the structure of the country’s political-economic system itself. As a recent article in Foreign Affairs notes, Donald Trump “inherited an ever-expanding national security apparatus that operates with little oversight.” The president can act almost without limits on “anything even glancingly related to foreign policy or national security.” As a society, we seem terrified to admit that these are symptoms of the inequalities associated with large and highly centralized institutions. We have a historically dominant government that places an enormous, almost inconceivable amount of power in the executive branch; as within this hierarchical structure, a microscopically small group makes life-or-death decisions for hundreds of millions of people—in the case of the United States, for much of the world. We are clearly not in a position of real-world equality with our rulers. As the very small class wielding the state, they want to increase its power and scope, and to centralize this power in a small clique. This desire has always fallen into place within a broader positive-feedback process whereby capital and the state consolidate their power together. What is needed are new and different tools to analyze and explain political outcomes, tools that deal directly with the attributes of the state that make it different and unique. The state is the site of intersection between three important historical trends that come to define it: (1) origination in war and conquest, (2) steady centralization of power, and (3) expanding size and scale. Until we understand this interplay and its dynamics, we will be stuck with a politics that is fundamentally authoritarian, corrupt, and disconnected from real popular sovereignty. Each intervention and act of struggle must be situated within a broader framework. The dominant refrains of the mainstream political conversation have done a serious disservice to our ability to understand real differences in political values and forms. The accepted framework tends to collapse a host of complex and varied philosophical positions into a fundamentally incoherent, self-contradictory, and confusing left-right political spectrum, equating “the left” with centralized state power and control, and “the right” with decentralization, federalism, or local autonomy. This framework falls well short of describing or explaining the real-world discourses in a number of critical ways. Its shallow binary obscures the rich and varied historical traditions of anarchism and libertarian socialism, which stand for both economic equality and radical political decentralization. Libertarians who are at once anti-capitalist and anti-statist fall into a space on the left that is almost always ignored by mainstream commentators and political candidates. Within the historical record, particularly during the twentieth century, the visible public profile of the socialist movement came to be dominated by Leninist parties or social-democratic parties, both of which deployed highly centralized and authoritarian approaches to politics and economics. Though you wouldn’t know it from the popular discourse, many major thinkers of the political left have advocated small-scale, decentralized social organization. Corners of the left have always expressed criticism of the state and of large and centralized institutional forms. In the history of political thought, we find several related strands of socialist (and proto-socialist) thought that turned sharply against the state. There had been pronounced anti-statist and libertarian features of many socialist forerunners. From the times of John Lilburne and Gerrard Winstanley to those of Thomas Paine and William Godwin, hints of the socialist movement to come later abounded. Much of the thought and action of various peasant uprisings had also naturally articulated a sensibility that was both egalitarian and strongly anti-state, both socialist and libertarian. What is remarkable, perhaps, is the endurance and reemergence of the fundamental distinction between cooperative and coercive social relations, moving across time and across ideological boundaries, influencing liberals, socialists, anarchists, and others who resist ready categorization. There was and remains a shared recognition of something essential, preceding and transcending emerging political dichotomies.​​​​​​​​​ There is a recognition of the difference between society and the state. ...

[Link to media]

— Julian Langer - Plant Absurdity

 

at 7/10/25 2:14am

Author: Julian LangerTitle: Plant AbsurdityDate: 10/7/25Source: https://ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2025/07/10/plant-absurdity/ for Sascha Engel It is unsettling and decolonising from puritanical and reductive ANTHROPOCENTRISM to affirm that within the body of EVERY being we call HUMAN lives a personal gut flora a unique habitat of microbiota wild and uncannily YOU and not you eco-egoist paradox of holism and individuation . flora are the plants present in a habitat gut flora are not plants the word flora comes from the Roman goddess of flowers and springtime fungi, bacteria, protozoa and viruses are what comprises gut flora so say scientists but they don’t really know that there are no flowers growing in my gut all things are possible a springtime of daisies, dandelions and daffodils could be my internal flora they don’t know . Donald Trump received a Nobel Peace Prize from Netanyahu so saith the news as I eat my breakfast and drink my tea this morning feeding my gut flora the daisies, dandelions and daffodils live on this destruction of physical presence and hydration and I read Fondane’s essay on Boredom and a couple Rimbaud poems neither of their microbiomes are surviving their gut flora are extinct habitats unlike Trump’s unlike Netanyahu’s there are no flowers in either poet’s gut today what about these politicians? . one of my favourite palaeontological truths is that moss was responsible for the first mass extinction events on this planet basically – there is undoubtedly more to this story the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event more than 70% of species estimated to have been lost moss feels wonderful to touch I love to place my hand upon it growing on trees or rocks or wherever soft and gentle . how soft is the skin of Netanyahu or Trump? I am glad I will never find out! BUT all things are possible, so perhaps I will . pulling out creeper plants that are making their way under the roof of the outhouse I appreciate the disregard for propertarianism shown by these plants and my mind turns to Sasha Engel and that book they wrote on Plant Anarchy . will to life strength to overcome anarchy primal and egoistic I encounter in plants that never fails to inspire continues as I move through this garden I call “mine” what does that mean though these plants don’t care what the paperwork says . opening the book Plant Anarchy which is not plant-anarchy but Engel’s affirmation of the anarchy of plants smiling when reading “no plant has ever obeyed zoning laws” “every plant is a trickster” “every plant growing in the cracks of our pavements is a site of resistance” every plant yes is anarchy of untamed revolt refusing repression embodied dialogic-revolt articulating self-preservation subservient to no Cause, Reason, Idea . every sapling tree is an absurdity only ending in death and decay yesterday I sat in a copse meditating besides a decaying trunk of wood besides several saplings every snowdrop and foxglove is a Sisyphean hero rising up as far as it might only to return the the soil with the habitual rhythms of seasons – I agree with Engel that there are no real repetitions every plant refuses the denial of its possibility which includes the possibility of it’s impossibility . there are industrial monocultures domesticated plants policed by agriculturalists there are miles and miles and miles of crops for the consumption of domesticated animals for the consumption of domesticated humans and for the consumption of domesticated humans which is nonsense as every plant lives for the sake of its living . speak of plant liberation and laughter follows even from many (sentiocentric) antispeciesists . every flower bomb thrown is an embrace of possibility amidst the bewilderness of uncertainty guerrilla gardening a revolt against reductionism . every plant is an anarchy that is an absurdity every plant is an absurdity that is an anarchy . LONG LIVE THE WEEDS . I eat a vegetarian diet inside of me my microbiome my gut flora this habitat that is and is not me feasts upon the flesh of plants I have ingested turning them into shit that can compost and become new flowers born of seeds dropped by naughty anarchists . soil fertilised by bone and blood are ripe conditions for plant growth and I remember that song The Gardener by The Tallest Man On Earth . lavender and mint are good for calming bay leaf can aid digestion and reduce inflammation garlic helps with blood pressure issues and may even reduce the risk of heart attacks and cancer phytoncides released by trees and other plants can reduce stress, boost natural killer cells and also help lower blood pressure none of these plants live to do this these are not their purposes they do not will their lives for these Reasons They live to be who they are . I can imagine myself becoming an oak roots reaching into the soil touching mycelium branches spreading out touching the branches of other trees in a wild forest home to bear and wolf and deer and badger and buzzard and owl and boar and fox and hedgehog and all manner of plants . and moss was (basically) responsible for the first known mass extinction event and Donald Trump and Netanyahu and the political machine of too-fucking-late-krapitalism are intensifying and worsening this mass extinction event and maybe when Trump dies he will become daisies and Netanyahu windflowers and from the wreckage and ruination of the machine forests and pastures full of flowers will spread all things are possible . the sea slug Elysia chlorotica is a species-queering animal who becomes a plant through kleptoplasty allowing it to photosynthesise and the possibility of Kafkaesque Metamorphosis human-becoming-animal-becoming-plants excites the imagination . Engel differentiates plant-intuition from computer-logic I wonder what the elder tree I see from my window imagines stepping outside my door to ask the tree replies to my questions who are you what are you do you imagine what do you want in wordless gestures . intuition as gut-feeling remembering my microbiome co-existing with Engel’s microbiome co-existing with Trump and Netanyahu’s microbiomes my gut flora as a flowering springtime the gut is the first, primal, brain the enteric nervous system . perhaps intuition is born for a plant in their roots, or their leaves or their phloem or their xylem all things are possible I don’t know this feels stupid it probably is . the strangeness of the world is the absurd and the strangeness of a plant is their absurdity the lived experience of being a plant is strange to me in its unknowable qualities and with this an attraction born of mystery . the plant-philosopher Michael Marder (who might not be a plant and also might be all things are possible I haven’t inspected him to see) affirms that dialogues regarding co-existence ecological healing decolonisation must go beyond romantic-nativism and I am of a similar perspective thoughts of garlic growing here as ecological exiles come to mind and I wonder if Sascha has read Marder if I am a good friend I will remember to recommend . a bee nuzzles into the petals of an orange flower in my garden that I cannot speciate butterflies have been dancing around buddleia and lavender here recently also flowering plants are the most diverse group of land plants there are about 300,000 known species and who can say how many unknown species they share a Carboniferous era common ancestor and explosively diversified during the Cretaceous meaning flowers survived the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event so when a tough guy calls you a “flower” that means that you are a fucking survivor . agriculture is entirely dependent upon flowering plants angiosperma is the technical name angeion the Greek word for container sperma the Greek word for seed all of whom live lives of mutualistic-interdependency with pollinators that agriculture kills off with pesticides and many of these plants will not survive this mass extinction event and new ecological conditions born from global warming so agriculturalists are probably going to struggle to eat . thoughts of lost cities found amidst the Amazon rainforest and Cambodian jungle and deserts along the Silk Road found by grave robbers come to mind . I would rather this global Mesopotamia became lost in forests and pastures than man-made deserts . those jungles and forests that decolonised those cities are under threat from Leviathan still . plants have an intense will to life that continually inspires me plants are revolting anarchies of wild refusal before Leviathan all things are possible their survival and flourishing are possible jungles and flowers are possible and possibility and the extinction of all plants is inevitable death is invariant fuck it though they still will their lives! . Engel’s philosophy of plant anarchy embracing directness as deixis being-before-categorisation pre-Symbolic experiencing deterritorialising encoding in their words “unwriting” and I feel intense appreciation for this affirmation of immediacy and revolt against alienation . Engel is the champion of the Anti-Alphabet which is strange and absurd to me and I love their revolt against Latin tyranny we are different co-existing presences we different perspectives and points of view having different bodies and psychogeographies and educations . I have written this poem for Sascha Engel as a friend to affirm plant anarchy and plant absurdity I am writing this poem for Sascha Engel as a friend to affirm plant anarchy and plant absurdity . their book is in my hand again flicking through pages skimming sentences Sascha Engel is to me is a succulent in a desert of deserting nihilist-anarchists petals black full of psycho-active possibility sharp needles to fend off those who would do harm living in a landscape ravaged by Mesopotamia and I smile imagining them hating and loving my categorising them ambiguity is true and real a tree is a tree and is not a tree a foxglove is a foxglove and is not a foxglove we are living paradoxes and so engaging in mysticism we are both published in a poetry collection titled Flower Bombs this poetry collection is psychic-guerrilla-gardening these poems seeds . you are what you eat the sea slug Elysia chlorotica is a species-queering animal who becomes a plant through kleptoplasty tribal cultures who are the people of the deer salmon, ox, river, forest as they are what they eat queer the species-identity of Human biological classification is less meaningful than direct experience and we breathe air oxygenated through plants photosynthesising we are what we breathe we are the waste of plants this is wonderful and evolution is a process of continuous species-queering changing with habitats becoming different and with mass extinction events dramatic evolutionary changes are likely all things are possible and it is possible that the HUMAN animal will become kleptoplastic become-plant reoxygenated this earth possibly . what a fucking absurd idea! . there is a habitat of gut flora residing within me one within Sascha Engel and that is a strange truth to live with

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— Alejandro de Acosta - The Game That Instructs

 

at 7/8/25 2:20pm

Author: Alejandro de AcostaTitle: The Game That InstructsDate: 2010(?)Notes: The Anvil Review - contestation, transgression, engagement - https://theanvilreview.orgSource: Retrieved on July 8, 2025 from https://theanvilreview.org/print/the-game-that-instructs/ 1 A few years ago, I was asked by some friends to write on play and games for Anarchy. I sent them an essay, entitled “A Funny Thought Concerning a New Way to Play,” in which I insisted above all on a certain attitude: a deep distaste for competition, for the unkind imposition of arbitrary rules and the unthinking acceptance of them. I continue to find that healthy. Beyond that attitude, the interest of the essay is that it maintains: a) that everything we do is in some sense a game, and b) that the apparently discrete and rule-bound activities we usually consider games are for the most part not the kind of game in question. I am also still happy with the conceit I shared in this regard, the idea of a cosmic, chaotic game that bleeds into every discrete, ordinary game. And I am still playing, still dreaming, still trying to forget the game of the thesis. So I review my own writing here to refine that conceit. Illustrating the concept of the cosmic game, I had recourse to a fine chapter in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense, adopting his distinction between Normal Games and the Ideal Game. What I have been calling discrete or ordinary games, Deleuze dubbed Normal Games, suggesting that they are “mixed‚” — they involve chance, of course, but “only at certain points”; the rest of their play (?) “refers to another type of activity, labor, or morality.” We can think of social activities as games … only because we think of games in the restricted, “mixed” economy of Normal Games that involve the acceptance of rules and a possible competition. That is, normal games always refer their play to a norm that is taken to be serious, outside of the play-sphere. The Ideal Game is Deleuze’s name for this funny thought of the cosmic game or the play of the world. It has no rules and is entirely too chaotic to allow for any skillful use of chance (meaning the mechanical consequences of well-executed moves). Every Normal Game flirts with chance to some degree or another, and plays, Deleuze wrote, at mastering it. And if one is serious one might think one has. In adopting this distinction, I made a double objection: My problem with Deleuze’s version of the Ideal Game is that he states, first of all, that it can’t be played “by either man or God.” Worse, “it would amuse no one.” He writes that, ultimately, “it can only be thought as nonsense.” I wonder why this did not suggest another idea of play and of amusement, such that, not negating but simply and nonsensically contradicting the first two claims, the Ideal Game can’t but be played by people and Gods (if any); and it not only amuses everyone but is precisely the Amusing as such! Both aspects of this double ojection now strike me as silly. First, to invert the claim that the Ideal Game can’t be played by either man or God was a clumsy move. It would have been more interesting, and also nonsensical in a more modest, more subtle way, to agree. I now think Deleuze was showing that, from the point of view of the Ideal Game, both humanism and divine anthropomorphism are rendered ultimately impossible. From that perspective, God and Man never really play. They are immediately transformed, cancelled, rendered radically other, so that these words turn out to be signs of stranger, more wonderful processes. Insofar as such mirages have any consistency (I won’t write reality), they name players of normal games (Creation, anyone?): mixtures, as Deleuze wrote, of play and work, chance and rules well followed. Is anyone surprised? God and Man are always primarily at work. That is what History teaches. What about Deleuze’s second statement: ” it would amuse no one”? I held out the possibility that perhaps the Ideal Game “is the Amusing as such.” Now I want to ask: amusing for whom? Not for Man or God, as I think I’ve established – they work and play in their normal games, and work at least cannot be amusing. It is serious, rigorous, painful. (I leave it to you to discern if even the play component of normal games is ever amusing). So who is amused? Personne, as it is said in French: anyone, nobody. But that anonymous person is a mask to be sculpted, not a pre-existent fact. It would have been more interesting to agree, again, and draw this conclusion: if the Ideal Game were the Amusing as such, then some minimum permanent amusement would have to be guaranteed. That is, the Ideal Game would have to be conceived not as the impossible Idea of Play but as the all too possible guarantee of amusement. I think that is also called heaven. Or the dull utopia of our more secular, still silly friends who think that the play of the world is progressive and make plans accordingly. Is anyone surprised? Amusement is not guaranteed. That is what History teaches. How could it be more interesting to agree that the Ideal Game amuses no one? This is what is most difficult. The Ideal Game, if one accepts that its play dissolves God and Man in chaos, is not amusing because it can never be determined ahead of time who is amused or what is amusing. We can go on playing normal games, or attempt to open them up to their Outside, the Ideal Game. Of course, they are already so opened. The question is to know it, to show it, and to play according to this intuition. The success of this operation is no more guaranteed than victory in a normal game, but it is far more desirable. There must be an unevenly distributed virtuosity in the ability to know and show this opening, to act on it. (And this is perhaps the only way that desire and virtue may be related). More straightforwardly I mean that it is not only dull, but impossible, to be God or Man outside of one or more normal games – so the bleed is how we become someone or something else, whoever or whatever is amused. ...

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— Don Diego de la Vega, Liza — Plataforma Anarquista de Madrid - Forging Commitment and Militant Responsibility

 

at 7/6/25 7:10am

Author: Don Diego de la Vega, Liza — Plataforma Anarquista de MadridTitle: Forging Commitment and Militant ResponsibilitySubtitle: Commitment, Self-Discipline, and Organizational Building in Contemporary AnarchismDate: 2025/06/06Source: https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/06/07/forjar-el-compromiso-y-la-responsabilidad-militante/ The scene is all too familiar: a meeting where tasks are distributed, many hands raised, words flowing with enthusiasm. A week later, several of those tasks remain undone, the commitments made dissolve into personal excuses and awkward silences. The cycle repeats, generating frustration, inefficiency, and, more deeply, a collective burnout that undermines any prospect of lasting transformation. What went wrong? What prevents us from sustaining militant commitment with continuity, coherence, and a sense of responsibility? At a time when the challenges of organized anarchism are as strategic as they are subjective, discussing commitment, responsibility, and discipline can no longer be postponed. It is a political issue of the highest order. Without militant responsibility, there is no political accumulation—and without accumulation, there is no revolution. Commitment as Practice, Not Feeling A harmful confusion still lingers on the margins of anarchism: that militant commitment is an emotional state, a fleeting motivation, a disposition dependent on momentary enthusiasm. In this view, taking on tasks is symbolic, and their completion subject to personal contingencies. But this outlook clashes directly with any serious attempt to build class-based popular power and revolutionary organization. Commitment, on the contrary, is a political, everyday, and deeply ethical act. It is the conscious decision to engage with a collective project aimed at radically transforming the world, and to accept the practical consequences of that decision. It means understanding that tasks are not mere technical duties but expressions of a collective will that only materializes if people take responsibility for it. In organizations such as the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FARJ), commitment is understood as rooted in the militant’s awareness of the aims of the struggle, their engagement in discussions, active participation in deliberative processes, and their readiness to carry out agreed actions. Commitment is, therefore, the living form that political responsibility takes. That form is not imposed, decreed, or expected to appear magically. It is built, nurtured, exercised. Commitment is born from conviction but is sustained through habit: in the conscious practice of being available, fulfilling what one has taken on, not offloading collective agreements onto others. In libertarian militancy, we are talking about a form of engagement that does not require supervision, because it is guided by ethics, not punishment. Because it is autonomous, not indifferent. Because it is free, not capricious. Shared Responsibility as a Principle of Organization One of the most persistent traps in libertarian imaginaries is confusing horizontality with dispersion, or plurality with lack of responsibility. Nothing could be further from the practice of organized anarchism. As many anarchist experiences have shown, an organization without shared responsibility tends to collapse under the weight of its own good intentions. Informality, lack of follow-up, and the absence of clear mechanisms for coordinating tasks do not guarantee freedom—instead, they foster inertia, individualism, and the reproduction of internal inequalities. Responsibility in an anarchist project is not about the imposition of tasks by a superior authority. It is an ethical pact among equals who agree to sustain a shared will. It is a collective understanding that if we do not organize rigorously, others will fill that vacuum: the state, the bureaucracy, the parties. The Geelong Anarchist-Communists, drawing from FARJ’s contributions, put it clearly: the organization cannot act if its members do not act. There is no collective subject without concrete individuals who carry out its work. Libertarian organizational culture needs structures that support and sustain responsibility. This means division of tasks, rotation, follow-up, evaluation spaces, and mutual care mechanisms. It also implies having a clear language to speak about unmet responsibilities—not with guilt, but with firmness. Critique among comrades is not authoritarianism: it is a gesture of political love. Because only through critique, self-critique, and debate can we build organizations that endure over time. The Revolutionary Militant Personality: Between Coherence and Commitment Talking about a revolutionary militant personality may feel uncomfortable to those who fear reproducing idealized or authoritarian figures. But this is not about moral models or ascetic archetypes. It is about recognizing that struggle transforms those who commit to it—and that this transformation involves subjective work as well. Being a revolutionary militant is not just attending meetings or completing technical tasks. It is a way of life: a way of relating to the world based on an ethic of coherence, effort, and sustained commitment. It means learning to prioritize the collective, organize one’s time, study, prepare, step back when needed and step up when necessary. It is a personality forged in practice, in the friction with others, in success and in error, in consistently sustaining a political line. ...

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— Don Diego de la Vega, Liza — Plataforma Anarquista de Madrid - Between Games and Anarchism

 

at 7/6/25 6:56am

Author: Don Diego de la Vega, Liza — Plataforma Anarquista de MadridTitle: Between Games and AnarchismSubtitle: The Strategic Potential of Games in Anarchist OrganizationDate: 2025/04/18Source: https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/04/15/entre-juegos-y-anarquismo/ “Praxis is the reflection and action of human beings upon the world in order to transform it.” —Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed Playful Cartographies in Times of Social War In a world where crisis seems to have become permanent, developing revolutionary strategies is not an option but an urgency. Political action—especially from an anarchist perspective—requires more than just will: it demands a concrete reading of the historical moment, collective education, simulation capacity, ideological debate, and tactical rehearsal. Faced with these needs, an unexpected resource is gaining traction among militant circles: games. Not merely as a pastime or an alternative social space, but as a strategic tool to test ideas, simulate complex situations, and prepare us to face challenges more effectively. This idea came to me after watching the video “Is the US planning for war by… playing games?” by creator Johnny Harris. In it, he shows how the U.S. military and its civilian advisors use war simulations—board games and role-playing games—to think through real strategic scenarios, such as a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The experience, deeply immersive, shows how games activate processes of reflection, analysis, and decision-making under uncertain conditions. It’s not simple entertainment: it’s a school of strategy. If the most powerful military apparatus in the world uses games to prepare for conflict, why shouldn’t we do the same from a revolutionary perspective—to prepare for the defense and radical transformation of our lives? Simulating to Understand: From Role-Play to Ideological Rehearsal Role-playing games, in particular, offer singular power. They are collective exercises of structured imagination, where each participant takes on a role within a narrative governed by rules. In their anarchist version, they become a space for tactical and ideological rehearsal. Imagining conflict scenarios, embodying antagonistic political positions, and defending—or dismantling—them in fictionalized debates is not just a learning practice: it is combat training. For example, you could design role-playing games that simulate neighborhood assemblies where anarchists interact with reformist parties, NGOs, bureaucratic unions, or even state actors. The goal: defend an anarchist position without falling into paralyzing purism or disarming concessions. In this kind of game, errors carry no direct cost—but they teach. And that makes them a powerful pedagogical tool. These experiences resonate with the importance that especifismo places on ideological education within the specific anarchist organization. It’s not just about studying theory, but about knowing how to apply ideas in complex contexts. Role-playing introduces an essential layer: situated ideological rehearsal. Insurgent Boards: Urban Tactics and Embodied Autonomy Games like Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game, Autonomía Zapatista, or La Batalla de Can Vies were designed precisely with this premise in mind: simulating real social struggles to learn from them. In Bloc by Bloc, each player represents a collective participating in an urban insurrection. Cooperation, territorial defense, the construction of popular power, and the constant threat of state repression are core dynamics. These kinds of games allow us to work on defense tactics, understand the importance of territorial control, and debate forms of articulation between different political actors. It’s no coincidence that these games were created or promoted in anti-authoritarian circles. They are tools that condense historical experiences into a playful dynamic loaded with political pedagogy. Autonomía Zapatista, for instance, allows players to go through the processes of building autonomy in Chiapas, challenging them to sustain life under low-intensity warfare, organize assemblies, grow food, defend communities, and educate. La Batalla de Can Vies, inspired by the defense of a self-managed social center in Barcelona, puts the player in the shoes of those making collective decisions during an autonomous urban resistance. These games don’t replace praxis—but they can prepare us for it. And in the framework of a revolutionary strategy, that’s vital. The Art of War Reinvented: Military Games and Libertarian Tactics Libertarian leftists have been rightly skeptical of any approach resembling state or Leninist militarism. But tactical reflection must not be abandoned. As shown by the experiences of the Bulgarian Anarchist Federation, armed struggles in revolutionary Spain, or the FAU in Uruguay, combat does not mean abandoning libertarian ethics. Games that simulate military conflicts—especially those with asymmetric scenarios, like guerrillas versus regular armies—can be used to think through logistics, mobility, fallback points, infrastructure sabotage, and territorial defense. Classic games like Twilight Struggle, or home-brewed anarchist adaptations of wargames, can serve this function if tailored to contexts of popular struggle. This isn’t about glorifying war, but about preparing movements to survive and resist in hostile contexts. ...

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— Carl Eugene Stroud - The Voice of an Especifismo Militant

 

at 7/6/25 6:29am

Author: Carl Eugene StroudTitle: The Voice of an Especifismo MilitantSubtitle: A Response to Daniel Rashid’s “Popular Power or Class Power”Date: July 2025Source: https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/07/03/la-voz-de-un-militante-del-especifismo/ Ideas move, especially influential ones. Translation is part of this movement, as is education. Of course, some ideas end up “lost in translation”. But there’s also something gained from this movement. Militancy is about inserting, defending, and refining certain ideas to ensure their coherence over time. As an especifismo militant, I’m often tasked with moving a specific set of ideas into anarchist, socialist, and activist spaces. This has meant translating between English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. But this isn’t simply translation work; it’s militancy. Militancy is about assuming the responsibility to progress a project into new terrains, but in the recent article “Popular Power or Class Power?” [1], the author, Daniel Rashid, never mentions militancy. This is indicative of a larger problem in the English-language conception of revolutionary politics. Without an understanding of militancy as a fundamental force moving revolutionary ideas around the world, politics seems like it’s just about selecting the best ingredients for the perfect political concoction. This reduces political education to an eclectic, and often personal, conglomeration of references to either be rejected or added to the soup. But who’s articulating the consistent line, the line that goes through study groups, debates, and writings and still comes out the other side? Without militants maintaining these lines over time, there would be no revolutionary corpus to pick and choose from. When it comes to inserting the ideas of especifismo into the Anglosphere, there’s more to it than just putting words from another time or place into 21st century lingo. For example, in the “Anarchist Digest” [2], the Center for Especifismo Studies (CES) gathered notes from seminars with hundreds of participants over multiple years in an annual event called Militant Kindergarten. These documents speak with a collective voice made up of 3 elements: the participants in Militant Kindergarten, the militants of CES, and the international current of especifismo. This means these texts, like everything produced by the organization I’m a part of, are products of our effort to move ideas from an international level, down to an actual group of people in dialogue, and back out again to an expanding international level. These ideas are coming from a variety of sources, both current and historical, and the participants are also coming from different places, geographically and ideologically. I say all of this to point out the organic production of theory involved in the movement of especifismo around the world, but also to make clear that, like Rashid, I’m writing this using my own voice. As a tool, my voice is different from my organization’s voice, but both have in common the undeniable influence of especifismo. For me, this is not about identification; it’s about militant formation and political education. Moving especifismo ideas from one language to another, from one continent to another, has shaped me in such a way that I’m not choosing especifismo and leaving behind platformism or anarchist communism or even Marxism. Rather, it’s from especifismo that I have received a political education which allows me to understand and learn from other currents, whether anarchist, Marxist, or something else. Critiques of especifismo sometimes assume a kind of exoticism related to Latin America, but the boundaries between the different “Americas” aren’t as neatly delineated in practice as they are on maps. In the US, social life happens in Spanish or English depending on your locale, your job, your school, your family, etc., something which is evidenced by Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s bilingual name. In this context, especifismo has become a natural conduit for the arrival of a certain style of revolutionary militancy to North America because Latin America and the Spanish language aren’t exactly foreign. For people like me, it’s through especifismo studies that we come to communism as committed militants, not the other way around. Moving now to the content of the article, it seems to me that critiquing political currents based on the idea that “mass organisations do not have [to have] a specific class basis” can become an excuse for not engaging with working-class movements as they form. Especifismo’s strategy is explicitly to defend a class bias in mass organizations, but to do it as rank-and-file participants, not from positions of leadership. Some organizations have referred to this as “dual militancy” [3]. Social insertion like this is obviously necessary since, today, not even all unions have a working-class bias much less a combative character or a revolutionary program. It’s not the “kind” of organization that determines its position in class struggle or the content of its politics. The same goes for the phrase “actor in struggle” which is meant to refer to people involved in an unfolding conflict. These actors have the potential to organize and order themselves into any number of different configurations. So, like social movements and mass organizations, on their own, there’s nothing about “actors” that makes them revolutionary or working class. ...

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— Spencer Beswick, John Clark, Fabio Carnevali, Maurice Schuhmann - Freedom News Remembers Élisée Reclus

 

at 7/5/25 1:58pm

Author: Spencer Beswick, John Clark, Fabio Carnevali, Maurice SchuhmannTitle: Freedom News Remembers Élisée ReclusSubtitle: Élisée ReclusDate: 2025, JulyNotes: Freedom News UK - https://freedomnews.org.ukSource: Retrieved on July 5, 2025 from https://freedomnews.org.uk/tag/elisee-reclus/ “Let us become beautiful ourselves”: Élisée Reclus on vegetarianism, anarchism, and colonial violence Analysis, Jul 5th by Spencer Beswick The great geographer and theorist of anarchist communism was part of a radical milieu that engaged a wide range of social issues, from capitalism and colonialism to free love and animal rights In his classic essay “On Vegetarianism” (1901), Élisée Reclus wrote a stirring defense of it as an ethical and aesthetic necessity with the potential to end colonial violence by transforming humanity’s relationship with the world. Reclus’s anarchism sought to “mak[e] our existence as beautiful as possible, and in harmony, so far as in us lies, with the aesthetic conditions of our surroundings.” This includes our relationship with animals. Reclus decried abattoirs as well as the display and consumption of dead animals as ugly and violent. These disquieting displays are interwoven into everyday life in a manner which cannot help but deaden our senses and diminish the beauty of our lives. Like the unsightly scar of a concrete dam blocking a river, the slaughter and consumption of animals dams the potential of a life well lived. Reclus called to end violence against animals and instead recognise them as “respected fellow-workers, or simply as companions in the joy of life and friendship.” Violence against animals was intimately connected to the violence of colonialism. The slaughter of colonised people was justified by their dehumanising reduction to the level of animals. Reclus argued that brutal treatment of animals at home thus enabled colonial violence around the globe through “direct relation of cause and effect”, for “the slaughter of the first makes easy the murder of the second” and “harking on dogs to tear a fox to pieces teaches a gentleman how to make his men pursue the fugitive Chinese”. If Europeans could learn to relate ethically to animals at home, he maintained, it would destabilise the practice of colonial violence abroad. Vegetarianism would transform humanity’s relationship with the world in a way that precludes all violence and exploitation directed at both human and non-human animals. While the argument may have appeal, it rings somewhat hollow to our ears today. The Israeli military, for example, uses its self-proclaimed label of “most vegan army in the world” as proof of its ostensible dedication to peace, wielding veganism as a shield to justify its violence against the supposedly “backwards” (in part because non-vegan) Palestinians. Some activists thus add veganwashing to greenwashing and pinkwashing as “progressive” justifications for colonialism. It seems clear from our vantage point in the twenty-first century that Reclus was overly optimistic in his belief that ending animal exploitation would end colonial violence. Yet there is still power in Reclus’s call for an ethical and beautiful life free of exploitation of human and non-human animals alike. He reminds us of the importance of what some veganarchists call total liberation: dismantling all of the interconnected forms of oppression and domination that demean humans, animals, and the natural world. To end with Reclus’s words: “Ugliness in persons, in deeds, in life, in surrounding Nature — this is our worst foe. Let us become beautiful ourselves, and let our life be beautiful”! Elisée Reclus: 5 levels of social-ecological practice Analysis, Jul 5th by John P. Clark His compelling and realistic revolutionary vision shows the preconditions for a liberated world Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) was one of the foremost geographers of his age, a major figure in anarchist political thought, and a lifelong revolutionary who played an active role in the Paris Commune and the First International. He was extraordinary for a nineteenth-century political thinker in having a deep lifelong commitment not only to social revolution, but also to radical ecology, to anti-patriarchy and the equality of women, to anti-racism and anti-colonialism, and to anti-speciesism and animal welfare. Reclus is most famous for his New Universal Geography, a massive twenty-volume, eighteen-thousand-page work that has been called the greatest individual achievement in the history of geography. Reclus is widely recognized as the founder of the field of social geography. His final work, Humanity and the Earth, wasan expansive thirty-five-hundred-page synthesis of geography, history, anthropology, philosophy, and social theory, and is his most enduring contribution to modern thought. Opening with the statement that “Humanity is Nature becoming self-conscious,” it is a sweeping account of the entire history of both humanity and the Earth, and of a common planetary destiny that is revealed through a deep understanding of the great course of geo-history. There are two dimensions to Reclus’ story of humanity and the Earth. One is his depiction of the process of human self-realisation in dialectical interaction with nature. He shows how the natural milieu shapes human development, as humanity simultaneously contributes to the unfolding and flourishing of the natural world. He shows the content of geo-history to be a dialectic between the creative forces of freedom and the constraining forces of domination. His idea that all phenomena of history contain both progressive and regressive aspects, and that each tendency must be analysed carefully, is one of his most influential concepts. ...

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— Torvald Valland Therkildsen - The Red Ego

 

at 7/2/25 5:20am

Author: Torvald Valland TherkildsenTitle: The Red EgoSubtitle: Essays on left-libertarianism, metaphysics, and political philosophyDate: 2024 Preface The term “libertarianism” has become heavily associated with the American conservative movement and the Koch brothers, who have co-opted the term to promote their anti-government, pro-capitalist agenda. This is without a doubt one of the biggest tragedies of left-leaning political theory and philosophy, as a dismissal of the term and associated work is a dismissal of a vast library of innovators and freedom fighters that are willing to take our dissatisfaction with the status quo to its logical conclusion: a radical reorganisation of society. It is important to remember that libertarianism has a rich and diverse history, one that stretches back to the socialist movement of the 19th century. Today, as we face a world in crisis, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian aggression in Europe, the rise of ethno-fascism in India and the dictatorship of China, and the decline of democracies worldwide, it is more important than ever to reclaim ideas that should belong to the masses and not to the few. The principal duality of man is his endeavour to be free while he is trying to be good. A need for ethical guidance is paramount for every morally consciousness, and even more so when moral beings try to create a functioning society together. While one at the one hand wish for complete autonomy over one’s own destiny, there is always the pressing awareness that every one of us influence the diversity of choices available for everyone. The autonomy we seek so with every living breath of our bodies must always couple with the painful realization that the world is intertwined, interlinked, and intercepted by forces well beyond our acceptance and preference. The global population did not sign a social contract that validated the adverse consequences of social media oligopolies, on the cartels of the mobile phone networks, or the widespread discrepancy worldwide on access to welfare, safety, clean water and education. For all its progress, the world remains an economically, politically, culturally and ideologically divided arena where only those with the resources are able to compete. If we wish to counter the rise of autocrats and defeat the evils inherent in the current global production system, we need to embrace ideals better suited to a political economy that is primarily ethical in its structure. If you are anything like me, you are concerned with the development of global power structures. If you are like me, you will look at the world around you and feel urgency concerning the development of ethical political structures that can protect us from the adverse effects of globalism. If you are like me, you wish to see sound institutions that prevent oligarchies from eroding our society with deception. Lies told by Machiavellian leaders thrive in a global age steered by algorithms and codes, and at the centre of it is a flawed approach to free market economies that neglect the fundamental social need every human being face. There is a need for a renewed focus on political and economic philosophy in the contemporary discourse, and a need for empirically based, rational arguments for a global reform that incorporates the integral liberty of each human being with the socialist practices of redistributive welfare regimes. Libertarian socialism offers a possible framework for criticism of the current world order. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep flaws in the capitalist system, with the most vulnerable members of society withstanding the worst of the crisis. The rise of authoritarian regimes around the world, from Russia to China, has also highlighted the need for a political philosophy that values individual freedom and democracy. At the same time, the decline of democracies around the world, from Hungary to Brazil, has shown that we cannot take democracy for granted, and that we need to fight to protect it. In this context, it is important to remember that the true democracy promised by libertarians, which is essentially what socialism and anarchism aims to achieve, has its roots in the socialist movement of the 19th century. The early libertarians were deeply critical of both capitalism and the state, seeing them as two sides of the same oppressive coin. They believed that individual freedom could only be achieved by abolishing both capitalism and the state, and replacing them with a system based on voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. This vision of a free and equal society was deeply influenced by the anarchist movement of the time, which rejected all forms of authority and hierarchy, and sought to create a society based on mutual aid and solidarity. The early libertarians were also influenced by the labour movement, which was fighting for workers’ rights and better working conditions. However, over time, the term “libertarian” was co-opted by right-wing, conservative forces in the United States, who used it to promote their anti-government, pro-capitalist agenda. This has led to a situation where many people associate libertarianism with right-wing politics, and fail to recognize its historical roots in the socialist movement. To reclaim the term “libertarian” and its true meaning, we need to emphasize its historical roots in the socialist movement, and its commitment to individual freedom, democracy, and mutual aid. We need to show that libertarianism is not just about promoting the interests of the rich and powerful, but about creating a society that values individual freedom and equality for all. ...

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— Anark - A Modern Anarchism

 

at 6/30/25 12:35am

Author: AnarkTitle: A Modern AnarchismDate: 2022–2025Notes: Originally published in video format on the YouTube channel Anark, this piece combines the four-part essay A Modern Anarchism by Daniel Baryon into one document.Source: Retrieved on 5/27/2024 from https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-1-anarchist-analysis https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-2-anarchy and https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-3-revolution Part 1: Anarchist Analysis Introduction We stand now at a turning point, wherein many roads sprawl out in front of us. With unprecedented access to information, the atlas seems to lie within our hands. But, at this crossroads, the popularizers of these many paths shout over one another to persuade new travelers, only to find that most travelers now choose tourism rather than migration; exploration rather than arrival. It is hard to blame them. Having seen many return from a path leading to a dead-end, or worse, having lost those they know to a terrible bramble from which they will never escape, these weary travelers are paralyzed by choice. Confused and discouraged, many simply return home where a tormentor awaits, but wherein there is no longer the stress of uncertainty. I would like to tell you of a new path: its extent not yet fully explored, but peering through the forestation beyond, a great light emanates forth. Before we proceed, I would like to pose a question: why has this society accumulated so much power, yet somehow fails to meet the most basic needs of humanity? Why has this hierarchical structure changed hands between so many rulers, yet the peace they have promised never lasts? Their hands bloody, their adherents marching behind, a new society of domination always follows in time. Why? Those intent on creating their own societies of domination will offer all manner of empty excuses. But the true answers lie within an ideology which has been suppressed by the power hoarders: anarchism. This work is not meant to be a brief introduction to the topic. There are plenty of those already in existence. Instead, I want to offer a modern synthesis of anarchist ideas. So, whereas many other books and essays endeavor to give a broad, non-committal overview, here I want to ground you in a particular location within the body of anarchist thought. In doing this, we will not wander down every trail, but we will stop to look at the scenery from time to time. And, for this reason, one might see this work as motivated by the impulse described by Voline in his work On Synthesis : “The anarchist conception must be synthetic: it must seek to become the great living synthesis of the different elements of life, established by scientific analysis and rendered fruitful by the synthesis of our ideas, our aspirations and the bits of truth that we have succeeded in discovering; it must do it if it wishes to be that precursor of truth, that true and undistorted factor, not bankrupting of human liberation and progress, which the dozens of sullen, narrow and fossilized ‘isms’ obviously cannot become.”[1] Such a process is, of course, a lofty goal for any one person to carry out. To do this, I will go beyond the standard list of European thinkers that one is typically introduced to when they begin an inspection of this subject. These names will certainly feature in our narrative, as they were very important figures in the development of anarchism as a revolutionary movement. But the ideas of the anarchists are not only important to some specific geographic region. Now, more than ever before, anarchism has achieved a state of critical insight, especially as it has been informed by the work of Black, queer, indigenous, feminist, decolonial, and other anarchist thinkers. All those people who strive to be free of oppression will find their common struggle within its basis. After all, many of these realizations root to the earliest stages of humanity and will likely be at play in any possible human society. Many other anarchist works have failed to take into account these new developments of anarchist theory, to understand where the original struggles have fallen short, and then cooperate alongside this new coalition of thinkers in bringing anarchist principles to their highest culmination. So let us begin... First Principles Before we set off on this journey to form what I have called a “modern anarchism,” we seem obliged to answer a much simpler question: what is anarchism? Unfortunately, more than any other subject, one is forced to confront the many propaganda campaigns that have been carried out against it. And this is no mistake. As Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin has said in Anarchism and the Black Revolution : “All who strive to oppress and exploit the working class, and gain power for themselves, whether they come from the right or the left, will always be threatened by Anarchism [...] because Anarchists hold that all authority and coercion must be struggled against.”[2] Threatened by its liberatory ideas, the many enemies of anarchism have all spread their own falsehoods. They each have an interest in muddying the waters to obscure its true meaning and to dissuade their followers from considering it. As a result, the layman’s understanding of anarchism is that it represents the rejection of all rules and organization, leading many to envision chaos or power vacuum, to be quickly filled with a new tyrant or a wilderness fought over by atomized humans. But, behind the spectacles of destruction and revolt which the reigning power structures have distributed in deceptively cut video clips and convenient political narratives, there is an entire body of theory and revolutionary history that is hidden. ...

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— Anonymous - Rethinking the Apocalypse

 

at 6/29/25 8:03pm

Author: AnonymousTitle: Rethinking the ApocalypseSubtitle: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist ManifestoDate: 2020Source: Retrieved on 2025-06-30 from <indigenousaction.org/rethinking-the-apocalypse-an-indigenous-anti-futurist-manifesto> …This is a transmission from a future that will not happen. From a people who do not exist… “The end is near. Or has it come and gone before?” – An ancestor Why can we imagine the ending of the world, yet not the ending of colonialism? We live the future of a past that is not our own. It is a history of utopian fantasies and apocalyptic idealization. It is a pathogenic global social order of imagined futures, built upon genocide, enslavement, ecocide, and total ruination. What conclusions are to be realized in a world constructed of bones and empty metaphors? A world of fetishized endings calculated amidst the collective fiction of virulent specters. From religious tomes to fictionalized scientific entertainment, each imagined timeline constructed so predictably; beginning, middle, and ultimately, The End. Inevitably in this narrative there’s a protagonist fighting an Enemy Other (a generic appropriation of African/Haitian spirituality, a “zombie”?), and spoiler alert: it’s not you or me. So many are eagerly ready to be the lone survivors of the “zombie apocalypse.” But these are interchangeable metaphors, this zombie/Other, this apocalypse. These empty metaphors, this linearity, only exist within the language of nightmares, they are at once part of the apocalyptic imagination and impulse. This way of “living,” or “culture,” is one of domination that consumes all for it’s own benefit. It is an economic and political reordering to fit a reality resting on pillars of competition, ownership, and control in pursuit of profit and permanent exploitation. It professes “freedom” yet its foundation is set on lands stolen while its very structure is built by stolen lives. It is this very “culture” that must always have an Enemy Other, to lay blame, to lay claim, to affront, enslave and murder. A subhuman enemy that any and all forms of extreme violence are not only permitted but expected to be put upon. If it doesn’t have an immediate Other, it meticulously constructs one. This Other is not made from fear but its destruction is compelled by it. This Other is constituted from apocalyptic axioms and permanent misery. This Othering, this weitko disease, is perhaps best symptomatized in its simplest stratagem, in that of our silenced remakening: They are dirty, They are unsuited for life, They are unable, They are incapable, They are disposable, They are non-believers, They are unworthy, They are made to benefit us, They hate our freedom, They are undocumented, They are queer, They are black, They are Indigenous, They are less than, They are against us, until finally, They are no more. In this constant mantra of violence reframed, it’s either You or it’s Them. It is the Other who is sacrificed for an immortal and cancerous continuity. It is the Other who is poisoned, who is bombed, who is left quietly beneath the rubble. This way of unbeing, which has infected all aspects of our lives, which is responsible for the annihilation of entire species, the toxification of oceans, air and earth, the clear-cutting and burning of whole forests, mass incarceration, the technological possibility of world ending warfare, and raising the temperatures on a global scale, this is the deadly politics of capitalism, it’s pandemic. An ending that has come before. The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual invasion of our lands, bodies, and minds to settle and to exploit, is colonialism. Ships sailed on poisoned winds and bloodied tides across oceans pushed with a shallow breath and impulse to bondage, millions upon millions of lives were quietly extinguished before they could name their enemy. 1492. 1918. 2020… Biowarfare blankets, the slaughter of our relative the buffalo, the damming of lifegiving rivers, the scorching of untarnished earth, the forced marches, the treatied imprisonment, coercive education through abuse and violence. The day to day post-war, post-genocide, trading post-colonial humiliation of our slow mass suicide on the altar of capitalism; work, income, pay rent, drink, fuck, breed, retire, die. It’s on the roadside, it’s on sale at Indian markets, serving drinks at the casino, restocking Bashas, it’s nice Indians behind, you. These are the gifts of infesting manifest destinies, this is that futured imaginary our captors would have us perpetuate and be a part. The merciless imposition of this dead world was driven by an idealized utopia as Charnel House, it was “for our own good” an act of “civilization.” Killing the “Indian”; killing our past and with it our future. “Saving the man”; imposing another past and with it another future. These are the apocalyptic ideals of abusers, racists and hetero-patriarchs. The doctrinal blind faith of those who can only see life through a prism, a fractured kaleidoscope of an endless and total war. Its an apocalyptic that colonizes our imaginations and destroys our past and future simultaneously. It is a struggle to dominate human meaning and all existence. This is the futurism of the colonizer, the capitalist. It is at once every future ever stolen by the plunderer, the warmonger and the rapist. ...

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— Horst Stowasser - The Time is Ripe

 

at 6/28/25 9:23pm

Author: Horst StowasserTitle: The Time is RipeSubtitle: Pure Freedom — The Idea of Anarchy, History and Future — Chapter 22Date: 2007Notes: First translation into English by Michael Schreiber, June 2025Source: https://ia804607.us.archive.org/0/items/FreihteiPurPlus/FreiheitPurPlus4-2007.pdf “Communication is the essence of freedom. Coercion cannot convince. Make people wise, and you make them free.” – William Godwin – THE BOOK HAD A DREADFULLY LONG TITLE, and it gave British Prime Minister William Pitt a headache. Not because of the cumbersome heading — that sort of thing was fashionable at the time — but because of its content. The content was as explosive as a load of gunpowder. Pitt considered having the author arrested, but ultimately refrained and consoled himself with the thought that “a book priced at three guineas cannot do much harm among people who don’t have three shillings to spare.” However, the book was soon being sold at half the price, and workers were forming subscription groups to acquire it. In Scotland and Ireland, the first pirated editions were already circulating. The book in question is William Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. The manuscript with the ponderous title had sat in a drawer for nine years. In 1793, four years after the French Revolution, it was finally published and immediately caused a considerable stir. Yet it was far from a justification of the bloody upheaval in France and stood out favorably from the mass of demagogic pamphlets flooding Europe in those years. It was a philosophical work of fundamental principles with shockingly radical conclusions for social life—strictly logical in structure and nearly all-encompassing in content. At the Threshold of Anarchism: William Godwin Indeed, the 37-year-old Godwin—who was eking out a living in London as a hack writer—had, without knowing it, written the first “anarchist classic.” In many ways, it can still be considered a foundational work. Sadly, one must say, many of his criticisms remain all too relevant today. Fittingly, Godwin came from an old family of religious dissenters and received a strict Calvinist upbringing that was as egalitarian as it was critical and rationalist. After a brief theological career, he gradually evolved—under the influence of Rousseau and Swift—into an enlightened, radical atheist who, like few other intellectuals of his time, set about analyzing society free from religious or nationalist prejudices. His Political Justice doesn’t just touch on isolated aspects of libertarian thought like earlier anarchoid predecessors did, but addresses its entire spectrum in a thoroughly considered system. With Godwin, we find a first global and coherent vision of anarchist critique and utopia. (Editor's note: Horst Stowasser here ignores Zenon of Kition and all the other ancient anarchists and proto-anarchists, in the previous chapter of that book, in chapter 21 he himself had mentioned Zenon of Kition, who formed the first global and coherent vision of anarchist thought. Also Stowasser mentions in the source literature Prof. Max Nettlau's: "Geschichte des Anarchismus in 10 Bänden; Band I - Vorfrühling der Anarchie" (1925), Prof. Georg Adler's "Geschichte des antiken Sozialismus und Kommunismus - Band I - Von Platon bis zur Gegenwart" (1899), and Peter Kropotkin's "Ethics" and "Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910, Anarchism". Thus Stowasser must have known about these books and that we did not find " the first global and coherent vision of anarchist critique and utopia with Godwin", we find the first global and coherent vision of anarchist utopia indeed with Zenon of Kition. Also by knowing about these works Horst Stowasser must have known about Adam Weishaupt, his "Anrede an die neu aufzunehmenden Illuminatos dirigentes", (1782) predates Godwin by 12 years. Both Peter Kropotkin as well as Prof. Max Nettlau mentioned Adam Weishaupt as having the same ideas before William Godwin. Horst Stowasser must have known about these facts. With unshakable persistence, he explores how humanity might achieve the greatest possible happiness. Along the way, he rejects patriotism, positive law, and material wealth, as well as religion, oppression, and servility. In the end, he calmly concludes that such happiness could only be realized under one condition: in a society without government. He deals not only with issues of philosophy, human nature, and ethics but also with economics, education, administration, law, punishment, violence, sexuality, and even ecology. Naturally, he also asks by what means this new society should be pursued and established, and under what structures people might live in it. His approach is thoroughly rationalist in the spirit of the Enlightenment: Godwin places great hope in human reason; the capacity for intellectual and moral development, he argues, grows with the freedom of its conditions. To that exact degree, authority—and thus the state—would become obsolete. Even in his own lifetime, Godwin had to revise some of this unwaveringly rational faith in humanity in favor of acknowledging the irrational side of human character, thus anticipating modern anarchism, which no longer bases itself on the expectation of reason either. ...

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— Robert Anton Wilson - Of Transcendental Beauty and Crawling Horror

 

at 6/28/25 6:00pm

Author: Robert Anton WilsonTitle: Of Transcendental Beauty and Crawling HorrorDate: 1964Notes: Of Transcendental Beauty and Crawling Horror by “Ronald Weston” (mosprobably Robert Anton Wilson) appeared in Fact, Volume 1, Issue 1 in January/February 1964.Source: https://rawilsonfans.de/en/transcendental-beauty-crawling-horror/ Four or five years ago I tried marijuana for the first time. I experienced a heightened visual awareness and a sort of nongenital sexuality. Every color I looked at was several degrees brighter than its usual luster, and my entire body had a delightful tingle, as if it were one undifferentiated erogenous zone. In the following months (this was in New York City, where pot is as easy to come by as tobacco if you have the right connections), I took marijuana several times, and once I made love to a girl while under the influence. It was the greatest orgasm I had ever had, and I could have become a confirmed pot-head then and there, except for one thing. A few weeks later I saw a friend go through the “pot horrors” technically known as “hallucinogenic anxiety” or “psychotomimesis” (imitation psychosis). It was a wildly unpretty sight to see. My friend said later that it was the most unpleasant experience of his whole life, and watching it was certainly one of the most unpleasant experiences of mine. A few years later, in California, at a party, I tried pot again. Nothing happened. I concluded later that this absence of reaction was caused by unconscious resistance: I still recalled my friend’s experience and was afraid of repeating it. One or two more years passed and I read a few things about the “hallucinogenic,” or “psychedelic,” drugs. I learned that many people under the influence of these drugs experience truly mystic states, comparable to religious visions, and that sometimes these effects are long-lasting and even permanent. This is especially true of the chemical lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and of peyote, a drug obtained from a small cactus known as mescal; but it has been known to result from marijuana and even belladonna, a drug obtained from the poisonous plant. Many religious groups have used psychedelic drugs to induce visions of their gods. There is a peyote cult among the American Indians, a magic-mushroom cult among the Mexican Indians, a yage cult in South America, a marijuana cult among the Moslems. There was even a belladonna cult in Medieval Europe; its practitioners were burned as witches. Some theorists, notably Robert Graves. and Alan Watts, have suggested that all religions can be traced to some group drug experience. Over a year ago I heard of a place where peyote could be obtained easily. I knew that some people who take peyote have the horrors so bad that they have to be hauled off to a hospital, sometimes to remain for months, sometimes for years. Others have experiences of superhuman joy and blessedness. I am an artist and something of a mystic. I decided to take a chance. I took the dose in the form of capsules. They were prepared in this way: The top of the peyote cactus was heated and dried until the moisture was removed (two complete cycles in a Laundromat drier did it). Then they were ground up into a fine powder by an ordinary wheat-grinding mill. The powder was then put into size 00 capsules. Twelve capsules makes a good dose. Fortunately, it takes a while to down 12 double-0 capsules, and you get a chance to decide whether you want to go through with it or not. I went through with it. Nothing happened for about an hour. Then anxiety began to creep over me. I began trembling and I felt nauseous. The wild idea that I had taken the wrong stuff and that I had been poisoned sent a chill through me. At the time I was in a farmhouse in a Midwestern state, and I walked outside to calm myself and get some fresh air. When I came back inside, a group of faces appeared at the window looking in at me. They were so patently sinister that I laughed at them. The laugh shifted the nature of the experience; the faces disappeared and I had no further anxiety. In a few moments I had my “marijuana symptoms”: bright colors and sexual excitement. For another hour or so these symptoms continued and gradually increased until I was in a state far “higher” than anything I had reached on pot. The beauty of every object I turned to was now so great that I was in a continuous mood of childish awe and joy. I believe that a 2-year-old toddler who comes into a room and smiles softly at everything it sees has the kind of vision I had then. I was smiling and laughing continuously, and could only say, “It’s all so goddam beautiful. … ” A friend who had agreed to stay with me during this experiment says I looked exactly like one of the smiling Buddhas of China. This was just after Christmas, and my friend suggested that, since ordinary objects were giving me such a charge, I ought to try looking at the Christmas tree in the next room. Neither of us had any idea of what that suggestion would produce. I went into the living room and looked at the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen. It was so lustrous, so multitoned, so lovely, that I could not tear my eyes away from it. As I stood, literally stunned on the spot, the beauty began to focus and increase. This is, of course, impossible to verbalize. Crudely, let me say that marijuana-beauty is one foot above earth-level. In the past hour I had moved from that to about 10 feet high. Now, in about 2 or 3 minutes, I shot up dizzily to the height of Mount Everest. To express it another way, the words “transcendental,” “supernatural,” “more than human,” “divine,” “holy,” etc., now have meaning for me. They mean precisely and exactly the millionfold beauty of that Christmas tree during those minutes. ...

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As of 7/14/25 6:55pm. Last new 7/14/25 9:55am.