peter kropotkin, in his mid-seventies, moved back to Russia during the early days of the revolution, when there was hope in the air. He watched as the anarchist movement was crushed by the Bolsheviks, leveraging whatever prestige he had to try to preserve free press. the Bolsheviks, despite pretending to respect him, requisitioned his apartments two different times, and at last he moved to a small town, where he kept counsel for the workers and peasants, offering what advice he could.

hey so like

we should actually be worried

and working together with our friends and communities to figure out what risks we want to take to address these problems, and how we want to work together to face what is absolutely coming (and already here).

https://twitter.com/think_or_swim/status/1683556231481286656

if you want to know what I think, I think that we should be building resilient communities that focus on inclusion instead of gatekeeping, that value conflict resolution and disaster preparedness, that support a diversity of tactics against climate change.

"but in anarchism how would people's needs be met?"

you know me, I don't want to add to the discourse I wanna comment on the discourse itself.

The people who think they have a "gotcha" on anarchism are arguing against the "anarchy" they grew up being told about. so the anarchists respond "well, we have quite a bit of both theory and practice that shows us how we would meet any given need in an anarchist society"

but both sides are arguing across one another. The anarchist understands anarchism. The other person has the wrong basic idea.

i’m not a labor historian, but i read history books about social struggle for a living.

my takeaway so far?

unions and strikes are pretty much how we’ve gotten anything nice in this world, for anyone who wasn’t born into fuck-off wealth. unions one of the most effective strategies for the sorts of reforms that make our lives bearable. they’ve gotten us to the point where fewer people have to work 14 hour days 6-7 days a week.

they’ve done more than that.

now more than ever, we need to break the stigma around "prepping" and preparedness. Individual and community preparedness go hand-in-hand. By being prepared as individuals, we are better positioned to help our community. By preparing as a community, we are stronger as individuals It's the time to talk to your friends and family about what they're doing to get ready for various service interruptions and disasters. It's time to do threat analysis--what crises are likely? How might we be better prepared to face those crises?

this is a thread compiling information about dealing with smoke from someone from a lefty prepper discord I'm on, mostly written by an australian:

Stay inside as much as possible and seal doors and windows. Any animals you care for should also be inside as much as possible. If you're outside, plan for things to take more time. People may get out of breath way quicker than they're used to and your regular day to day activity levels may become difficult.

a friend asked me how i keep up hope while everything is going so badly. it's something I think about a lot.

first and foremost: you can't win a game unless you're playing to win. no matter how stacked the odds are against you, you play until the end. we're not at the end. since this struggle is bigger than ourselves, there IS no end. the struggle for a society without oppression (which I call the anarchist struggle, and other people have other names for) is a struggle that cannot be lost.

if they mean what they say, here's a thread of ideas about how to stand up for yourself or your trans loved ones (or just be a decent human) during this time of escalating legislative and extralegal threats and violence against LGBT people first and foremost: focus on what unites us, not what divides us. focus on deescalating all conflict that isn't with the enemy. This doesn't mean we all have to agree about everything, but it does mean we have bigger problems right now.

too many preppers focusing on FAFO not enough focusing on FIFO (first in, first out, the proper way to store canned goods)

West Virginia is proposing a law to ban "adult businesses." Similar laws and anti-porn laws are cropping up around the country after Louisiana's anti-porn law passed. This is vile on its own. It also could easily impact more people than is immediately obvious. Some of these new laws make it so anywhere anyone is publicly performing in clothes not suited to their sex-assigned-at-birth becomes an "adult business." If I give a talk or play a show in a state that passes that bill, that venue would become classified as an adult business.

if someone is beating you with a stick and you say “stop please” and people are like “please articulate the details exactly how you want society to function without that guy beating you with a stick” you are under no obligation to answer. while the work of envisioning society without police is worthwhile, it is not necessary that each of us have it on the tip of our tongues. it is enough to say “not this.”

having a go bag is cool.

the thing to remember about go bags is that "going to my friend's house in another state" or "sleeping in my car for awhile" or "crashing on the floor of the mutual aid space" is far more likely than "living in the woods for weeks." clean socks and underwear are more important than hatchets in most scenarios.

hell i bet you're more likely to use a nintendo switch than an entrenchment tool.

think about what you want on a long car trip. and what you'd grab from your house if your house was on fire.

by popular request, a short thread on ideas for how to prepare for / handle power outages, starting with the newest concern:

- organize against the far right so that they are less capable of shooting up power stations - basic disaster preparedness: several gallons of water per person, some ready to eat food, emergency/windup radio, reasonably expansive first aid kit, extra warm blankets, keep vehicles with at least half a tank of gas

as much as some of us argue for arming the queer community, we argue more for training. some anti-gun advocates have pointed out that it was unarmed patrons who stopped the shooter. but at least one of them had combat training. this matters. whether or not one personally chooses to be armed (a decision that should be considered carefully based on mental health, the people you live with, etc), the training offered by community defense organizations can be invaluable.

I just got asked by an interviewer my advice for aspiring writers, so I'll put it here too:

Store at least 5 gallons of water per person and a week’s worth of food in your pantry. Connect with your local mutual aid organizations, or start your own. Talk seriously about how you and your friends and family will attempt to interfere with the global resurgence of fascism, utilizing the skill sets and resources available to you. You can’t write fiction on a dead planet.

"all you anarchists do is organize book clubs and get into fights with chuds, how are you a proper Leftist movement" was a question I got asked by a pro-state leftist earlier today. so let's talk about the visibility (and invisibility) of anarchist work. first of all, educating ourselves and developing ideas together/collectively (book clubs) and taking direct action against fascism ("fights with chuds") are fucking awesome. If that was "all" we did, I'd be proud to call myself an anarchist.

If I went to an engineer and was like "I want a bridge over the river, I'm on a tight deadline" and he said "how about a bridge that goes halfway over the river" I would go find another engineer. If I was running through an ancient mine with orcs chasing me and there was a ten foot chasm in front of me I wouldn't be like "well I can jump 5 feet, that's a start." I would look for alternatives.

anarcho-capitalists are in the media again, this time with an HBO documentary. and actual-anarchists are all over social media, trying to say "they're not with us." I'll try to explain. anarchism is not just a random word, it is two things: first, a specific political ideological framework developed in 19th century Europe that seeks to destroy hierarchies like the state and capitalism and imperialism and patriarchy.

it's here it's here! Well, the pre-order is here. If you preorder my book from AK Press, Boxcar Books, Firestorm Books, or Red Emma's, you'll get an art print with it.

https://twitter.com/AKPressDistro/status/1547264486578343937

Firestorm Books (@FirestormCoop) is a queer-owned, worker-owned anarchist bookstore and events space in Asheville, North Carolina. I wrote a good chunk of The Barrow Will Send What It May and some of these short stories sitting on their couch.

firestorm.coop/products/18561…

with the help of @SeedCommons, @FirestormCoop has bought its forever home in Asheville, and has committed the land to a trust so that it is forever removed from the speculative market. Fuck yeah infoshops, fuck yeah co-ops, fuck yeah community financing.

givebutter.com/firestorm @SeedCommons @FirestormCoop Seed Commons is a co-op of community groups across the US who pool resources and skills to then finance worker cooperatives. It's a way to allow actual grassroots local community orgs to direct the flow of resources, but share the work of actually gathering those resources.

our history books are propaganda. the US revolution was a bad thing.

more indigenous people and Black people fought against US "independence" than for it, because they knew that the US revolutionists were going to treat them even worse than the English would. they were right. i remember thinking "well, representative democracy is better than monarchy, so at least it was a step in the right direction." But in the US, the revolution cemented settler colonialism and caused a massive westward land rush displacing and murdering as it went.