Prefiguring alternatives, resisting the status quo

I3

We need to organize outside of the current mainstream political structures and create, pre-emptively, alternative ways of organizing and living and generating living, breathing examples of other ways of living. One strategy can't really exist without the other. I think if we organize, if we do our own thing, and yet we completely ignore the mainstream political system and let it turn to fascism then whatever alternative pockets exist might get screwed in the long run and, at the same time, if we just depend on asking [for] reforms of the political system then all we're going to get are scraps all the time and never have any kind of real change before it's too late.

Putting people and revolution in front

I22

I don't believe in models...but there are examples and when one stands up and fights for principle, when one puts a revolutionary interest, when one puts the interests of the people in the forefront you can accomplish...tremendous...things. What Cuba is about is not a question of whether Cuba is better or worse than any other country, the question is that Cubans are asserting their right of self-determination and sovereignty to solve their own problems themselves. The same thing with the Venezuelans, the Bolivians, what's going in Ecuador, what's going on in a number of other countries. So they are an example that when you struggle, you can achieve certain things - that it's not futile to struggle, and that one can put the interests, revolutionary interests and the interests of the people in the forefront.

Crisis and opportunity

I12

I think along with the situation looking grim it's also maybe inspiring for some people who have already become politicized through some sort of radical resistance. I've often had the conversation with people who will say that they can't wait for the situation to get worse. As things become more desperate more people tend to seek other options for change and maybe they're seeing current vehicles for change as just not even an option anymore. Seeing other places in the world like Italy, the UK, Tunisia, Nigeria having large...uprising[s is]...inspiring.

Bunker mentalities

I24

I'm always quite surprised at the number of people that agree with you when you talk about how the system is not serving our interests and isn't really meeting the needs that we need to be met. I don't think that's the problem among the masses of people, I think the problem is that nobody is able to give them any direction to do anything about it. So people have this sort of bunker mentality, I look after myself, I'll do what I can for me and my family.

Taking a stand

I8

That's where I feel the stand is at. I think the more people that we can have engaged in demanding and effectively achieving their rights, that is a great way to begin, like little mice gnawing at the base of the machine which is government and big business in my mind.

Building autonomous networks

I28

The state is using...these new innovations and technology to encroach upon us and I believe the potential of technology to undermine that and to pose real threats to state and capital are quite acute and I'm interested in building anti-surveillance and anonymity structures online. Housing the technology so that it's not dependent on the structures [that seek to]...capitalize...on those communications technologies....How can we build networks and systems that are completely autonomous that don't rely on those things? But...I'm also constantly questioning these sorts of pursuits...in relation to...climate chaos and the end of energy and so [also] thinking about how technology has a horizon.

Crisis and collective action

I10

I feel like there's going to be some sort of big shift, something's going to happen, maybe all the ice is going to melt in the Arctic and its going to finally make people, I hope, wake up. I think that it's sad that this is the way it is but I feel like people won't unite as a whole until something cataclysmic happens. I feel like that might be the kick in the pants our species needs.

Imagining the future together

I21

I'm sitting on this side of the river saying ‘I'm happy to cross over with you,’ I don't know what the bridge looks like, but I think we have to sustain this bank of the river so that it doesn't collapse on our way to that one. Because I do not have sufficient radical imagination to know how we're going to get from here to what I imagine for the future, I don't have that. I don't think that gives me an excuse not to keep on keeping on because I think the struggle against slavery in the United States took four hundred years. I've been working for about forty and not consistently….I'm saddened that I don't have the imagination to understand [how] we're going to get from a and b but I think we need to discuss how we're going to get from a to b together because there are smarter people than me.

Outrage, movements, and institutionalization

I17

Protests, they get a lot of attention, but unless you have millions of people it's not going to amount to anything and one of the things governments have learned is that volunteers wear out eventually. You can't sustain a white-hot movement indefinitely without becoming an institution. So as soon as that happens you've lost the white-hot outrage that got you started….In order to have the kind of impact [you] want, [you] have to become something different then [you]...started out to be.

The fetish of the local

I5

I don't want to be programmatic about it but I certainly think there's something to the anarchist vision of free federated collectivities that makes a lot of sense to me. But I also agree that that's utopian in some ways, in the sense that I think that we will not solve the crises we currently face by retreating to the local, and imagining the local as a space that we can create a little life boat, and by growing our food locally, and by having very nice community assemblies, and by trying to just retreat to this imagined space of hearth and home that we'll somehow escape what's coming because it's only in building lines of communication and solidarity that we'll do that. I think that that's part of what it would mean to win to me. I'm not interested in creating a world or being part of a project that creates a world that revels in parochialism.