Winning is a collective process

I27

Winning is the ability to develop a collective process in which we're destroying the things that are unjust in this world. I have my particular perspectives of what that world should look like but my overall perspective is that that perspective should change as that's happening, especially since it's a collective process….I can't [inscribe] an individual viewpoint onto a collective future, it should be a collective viewpoint onto a collective future. I think then that what a post-capitalist society would look like [is] hard to exactly imagine...because it would still be a place of constant struggle. There's no ideal way of being.

Anarchism and radical social change

I12

Eventually I came to [anarchism]... and a complete rejection of the entire system and seeing its destruction as the only possible solution. It didn't seem like it was hierarchical in any way. It didn't seem to be intimidating in the sense that you had to prove yourself to be a part of it or climb any kind of ranks or whatever, or find a place to be. You were just an individual making your own decisions and individual actions for what you saw as a potential for change.

Activist scenes

I27

One of the things we do a really bad job of is fostering a sense of hope. I know that's kind of cheesy but people come to radical politics because they think it's going to do something and be a legitimate option and we don't make it that. We make it seem like a club, we make it seem like something that people of only a certain ilk can engage in….It should be a part of everyone's day to day experience.

Imperfect victories

I19

I was recently watching a video of people trying to block a deportation at an airport and I think that's a win…..We’re actually physically going to try and block you from deporting this person so that you actually cannot. I think that's a win and more of a win than a policy concession....The problem is that those kinds of wins are always so finite in time and they're not perfect, right? They're by no means perfect in that maybe not every form of domination is rejected in that moment but some form of it is and I think that's fairly rare.

A world without rape culture

I11

I try and imagine a world without rape culture sometimes and it's pretty exciting.

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.

Popular education and action

I10

Before getting people to act you need to educate them and then you need to incite some sort of emotion in them. Those are vague but that happens just with grunt work like posters, discussion nights, talk nights, showing movies, making it on people's radar...people need to be reminded of issues of social and environmental justice as much as we're being reminded that we need to buy Blackberry.

Radical fetishes

I5

I think systemic mass movements are absolutely a priority if we want to change the world. I think political party activism, in the way that it exists in places like the global North, but I'd say also in the global South in many places, is a red herring that should be avoided. But I'd also say that about supposed forms of radicalism like primitivism, like deep ecology to a certain degree, like the idea that there's certain forms of radicality that are fetishes in and of themselves. Insurrectionists would do well, I think, to look back to the history of anarchism's propaganda of the deed which was very brief, and short lived, and bloody, and totally ineffective. You want to create an insurrectionary movement? Build a base and defend communities and move from there but you're not going to create revolution by throwing a firebomb.

Winning, solidarity, and common sense

I3

I guess in a grander way, I'm thinking of a quote...by Zygmunt Bauman who is a post-modern theorist. I remember reading an article of his and he ended by saying something along the lines of: the day you don't have to justify yourselves for being in solidarity with everybody else is the day that that's achieved. It's an abstract thought but in a way if you don't have to defend your decision about entering [into a relationship of] solidarity with someone, if you don't have to justify that, then it means that it's understood in common sense and therefore, if you don't have to explain that or justify that to anybody, then that means that you've won...in a way.

Climate crisis and fascism

I3

From what I can tell the environmental changes that we're going through at a global scale are really concretely affecting a lot of people and the way that they can survive. Especially people who live or are more directly dependent [on] direct production [on] the land,….people who live in areas where climate already generates conditions of precarity, and that's exacerbated and we can see shifts [in] accessibility [of] resources, [of] food, already happening. I fear that those who have access right now will increasingly follow a trend...towards fascism in terms of claiming and enclosing access, in very rigid and violent ways, excluding [others from being able to] access...resources and food.