This is a very rough start for a guide to getting involved in activist work in your community. Please chime in with ideas! Many people are feeling at a bit of a loss as to how to get meaningfully involved and I wanted to try to offer some help.

The first step to becoming an effective activist is to become part of your community—something you cannot do online or in isolation at home. If you don’t know anyone locally you probably won’t be a helpful part of a network of resistance down the line except perhaps by lending monetary support online occasionally or phone banking for prisoners. In order to protect people in your community you need to establish yourself as a trusted part of it in some way shape or form.

Start small. Get involved in organizations that feed the homeless or provide meal trains for the sick, elderly, overwhelmed, or others that need it. Join a weekly trash cleanup crew in a local park. See if your local womens, lgbt, or homeless shelters need anything you can provide. One or more of these options usually exists even in rural towns.

• Check online for radical bookstores or community centers (some cities have lgbt clubs or community centers too) where you might start exploring local options or making friends with people who share your values. Even the local grassroots punk venue or garage show circuit might be a good avenue towards building community.

• don’t discount religious organizations only qua religion. Not all churchgoers (or church leaders for that matter) believe in god, and not every religious person supports the dark sides of their religion’s history. Often these organizations are the only already organized ways to get involved in very rural areas. Some church or mosque supported soup kitchens try to evangelize their visitors but some do not. Test out a few. Trust your guts. Unitarian, Buddhist, and Jesuit organizations are often among the more secular-friendly side of religious charity work. 

• many religious organizations support/sponsor a number of refugees who may be at risk under the current administration. You can offer to provide rides if you drive (to the grocery, to ESL classes, a carpools to school), prepared meals if you cook, yardwork, woodwork, piano lessons, home repair, english conversation practice, etc.

Join existing activist groups. Join already active resistance groups. In an urban setting there are many to choose from. In a rural setting there will inevitably be less options.

• “Friends of the” river/park/community theatre organizations are one place to seek community connections that can solidify into important networks of solidarity down the line. Ask about volunteer opportunities in your area on nextdoor.

• Even if you are not an environmentalist consider volunteering for local branches of the sierra club or similar to build a network with other activists.

Stay safe

Trust your gut. If you go to the first meeting and they are talking about doing something you totally disagree with don’t feel like you have to go along with it no matter what theory they spout, you can always find something else more in alignment with your morals. If you find yourself doing something to prove authenticity or that feels like initiation/hazing that is probably not a healthy organization. If all decisions are deferred to one person and you are getting a creepy vibe from them that is probably a cult. Use your common sense. Use the buddy system.

• If you involve yourself in anything that might seem remotely sketchy to an ultra conservative government be wary of your online paper trail which could be used against you. Before engaging in online organizing, please learn the ins and outs of online privacy. Do NOT engage on platforms like ig/fb/twitter and other known bad actors. Ensure any platform you do use is encrypted properly. See the thread below by @Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone and the reply by @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net for online safety tips.

etiquette

• Don’t expect people to always be grateful for your offer of food/resources. People are multi-dimensional and have complex histories. If you work with displaced people some of them will be intolerant or sexist. Just be kind, polite, and respectful to each individual’s wishes once they make them clear. If they are abusive towards you exit the situation and let others in your group know. In many cases your group will be able to point out these individuals beforehand to avoid confrontation.

• Don’t try to immediately voice your opinions loudly, feel an organization out by watching and listening to decide if you’d like to be a part of it. How do they deal with internal disagreements?, What are their priorities (as demonstrated by their actions? Their words?), Are they trying to control their membership in a way that comes off like bullying or grooming?

• There will probably be people involved in every activity you check out that you don’t like or don’t understand, or don’t find helpful. Someone who is always virtue signaling or always condescending, or just a huge oddball. This is just part of being involved in these spaces, it’s okay if you don’t get along with or like everyone.

• If you attend protests but didn’t organize the event don’t talk to journalists. They are likely to misquote, twist, and misrepresent your words.

The fantasy-story of right-wing anarchy is creating misinformation, someone thinks that something like "anarcho-capitalism" is real philosophy, instead of the linguistic distortion of fascist-capitalism that it is.

Should people even specify that they are left-wing anarchists now? Do we really want to put a stop to this propagandistic joke? Anarchy will always be the extreme left into the political pendulum.

And I will tell you more: anarchism is by its nature also pacifism, as it aims to prevent any form of uncontrolled power on others. This is to silence even centrists: another fake group, people who think that it's not "extremist" in its own abstinence, in delegating violence.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24255628

Murray Bookchin (1921 - 2006)

Fri Jan 14, 1921

Murray Bookchin, born on this day in 1921, was a libertarian socialist political philosopher whose thought is associated with the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

Bookchin was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban planning, and social ecology. Some notable titles include "Our Synthetic Environment", "Post-Scarcity Anarchism", and "The Ecology of Freedom". In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement and stopped referring to himself as an anarchist.

Bookchin's ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and, most notably, Abdullah Öcalan's concept of democratic confederalism and its application in Rojava.

"If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable."

- Murray Bookchin

• Date: 1921-01-14
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, theanarchistlibrary.org, reason.com.
• Tags: #Birthdays, #Anarchism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20394252

It’s about the anarchistish commune in Copenhagen Denmark.

I’m wondering if it’s worth the watch, or if it feels too Bourgeois biased?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16040607

"Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare since 2021, was shot and killed outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. He was in the city to attend an annual investors meeting for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare. Authorities believe the attack was not random. Thompson had been criticized for UnitedHealthcare's rejection of insurance claims, and his family reported that he had received death threats in the past. The shooting occurred early in the morning, and the suspect, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson

(edit) I would like to point out that Luigi Mangione is only a suspect and there are currently doubts about the integrity of the evidence.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16000164

Abstract

During the fourth millennium BC, public institutions developed at several large settlements across greater Mesopotamia. These are widely acknowledged as the first cities and states, yet surprisingly little is known about their emergence, functioning and demise. Here, the authors present new evidence of public institutions at the site of Shakhi Kora in the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq. A sequence of four Late Chalcolithic institutional households precedes population dispersal and the apparent regional rejection of centralised social forms of organisation that were not then revisited for almost 1500 years.

The history of capitalism and the state is the history of attempts to abolish them and establish a free society without domination and exploitation. Revolutionary workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed that another world was possible. It is still possible today. One of the main social movements that attempted to overthrow capitalism and the state during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was anarchism. Members of the historical anarchist movement not only attempted to change the world but also produced an elaborate body of ideas that guided their actions. This book is concerned with explaining what their ideas were. Historians sometimes unearth old ideas from the past because they are an interesting way of gaining insight into a different time and place. This is not my principal motivation. I wrote this book because I want to live in a society in which everyone is free. I am convinced that, if we are to achieve this goal, it is important to know the history of previous attempts to do so. My hope is that, through learning about how workers in the past sought to emancipate themselves, workers alive today can learn valuable lessons and develop new ideas that build on the ideas of previous generations.

How to define anarchism is a contentious topic and will be discussed in depth in chapter 1. For the purposes of this book, it will be understood as a form of revolutionary antistate socialism that first emerged as a social movement in late nineteenth-century Europe within the International Workingmen’s Association between 1864 and 1872 and the subsequent Saint-Imier International between 1872 and 1878. During and after its birth as a social movement, it spread rapidly to North America, South America, Asia, Oceania, and parts of Africa through transnational networks, print media, and migration flows. I will focus exclusively on anarchist collectivists, anarchist communists, and anarchists without adjectives who were agnostic about the nature of the future society but advocated the same strategy as anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists. I do not claim that this is the one true form of anarchism. It is only the kind of anarchism I am focusing on.

These thoughts of acute grief inevitably give way to the broad and impersonal grief that is existing with any intentionality/awareness in this world of death machines. Every manifestation of genocide, every act of police brutality, every eviction, every encampment sweep, every person denied medical care, every hour of life sacrificed to work builds the grief in my blood towards toxicity. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. I try to go through the motions of my day, but my brain is molten and leaking from my nose. I try to swallow the grief until it all but chokes me, threatens to burn me up from the inside out. I am afraid. I thrash against the waves until I am exhausted and I begin to drown.

But despite the fear and exhaustion, there is something powerful to be found beneath the waves, as your mouth fills with sand and the water rushes into your lungs. Through the pain and despair there is a clarity that insurmountable grief opens up. Grief is not merely something that happens to us that we must swallow. It offers a framework, a logic against logic that seems to cut the world in two; what matters from what doesn’t, what we desire from what is forced upon us. Grief does not need to be a burden, or at least not only a burden, for us to bear.

Grief can be a weapon for us to wield.

Perhimpunan Merdeka (literally “freedom association”) is a specifically anarchist organisation being formed in Indonesia, the largest archipelagic country in the Global South. The Komite Pembentukan (Starting Committee) of Perhimpunan Merdeka has been organising for some years and is made of some of the most seasoned anarchist organisers in Indonesia.

Admittedly haven't read this yet, but according to Anark, this is one of the best books on the subject of the Anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War, and goes into detail of some missteps and failings they fell into, which we can hopefully learn to avoid.

Apparently, Anarchism and Workers' Self Management in Revolutionary Spain by Frank Mintz is a good companion book as well, and is available on Archive.org!

Perhaps not essential reading, but if you're a history buff and have a particular intrigue in Anarchist Spain, then hopefully you'll find these two books useful and interesting. :)

Rojava’s future depends on navigating regional and international power dynamics while safeguarding its commitment to values such as direct democracy, pluralistic autonomy, libertarian socialism, ecology, and feminism. The project’s survival may hinge on sustained international solidarity in an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape.

Perspectives from both Western and Northeastern Syria on the taking of Aleppo and the renewed prospect of the fall of Assad.

Taken from the telegram linked below.

🔥Greta Thunberg meets with DEM Party co-mayor of Amed, North Kurdistan

Yesterday, climate justice activist Greta Thunberg, known for spearheading the Fridays4Future ecological youth movement, met with Serra Bucak co-mayor for the DEM Party on the city of Amed in North Kurdistan. During the meeting, views on the impact of climate change and global warming on nature were exchanged.

In recent years, Greta Thunberg has combined her ecological activism with the defence of the rights of oppressed peoples, such as Palestinians, Armenians and Kurds. This has cost her the support of most of mainstream media and political institutions, but despite that the young Swedish activist continues her struggle unabated.

❗️For updates follow: t.me/legerinmagazine

“the fascists call us ‘degenerates’, blaming us for all of society's woes, while the liberal ‘left’ throw us under the bus again and again, blaming anyone but themselves for their loss of state power.”

it’s scary but “we slowly build a future for ourselves by fostering communities of all kinds”

I hope this is the appropriate community for this question, if there is a better community for this, I can post it there.

It's been a bit over a week and I've had time to accept what has happened and what will happen as a result of America's recent decision. Even though I am from Canada, the news has many direct and indirect consequences which still has me concerned for the near future.

I feel that right now is the time for me to start and build a local community. I just don't know how to do that or where to begin.

I'm not the most social person so networking and leading will be a huge hurdle for me. I'm not creative enough with drawing or writing so creating flyers or propaganda would also be a challenge for me. I've always been more comfortable working and building things with my hands and have a pretty deep interest in land management and sustainability.

I also have the additional issue of being a person of colour in a mainly white town. Lifted trucks, SUVs, unwelcoming stares and plenty of entitled behaviours. The population in this town is mostly young families with younger children or old white folks which I doubt have any care for the future ahead of us. There's not much in between.

Over the past couple years, I have been buying various types of seeds and collecting seeds from my garden as plants mature. I've been trying to create a seed library for myself. Lately I've been thinking of trying to start a local seed library as a way to start some sort of community. Maybe even use that as a way to teach more local, sustainable habits.

I just don't know where to begin and starting feels quite overwhelming for one person.

I'm hoping to start a discussion or even brainstorm some ideas on what people can do, how to begin and how to follow through with building local communities.

Any idea outside of a seed library is welcome. It would help to have a nice, broad spread of ideas to draw from. I believe that would help keep the progress of the local communities adaptable as time goes on.