Violence and radical social change

I11

I like expressions of violence. Expressions of violence inspire me and feel sincere to me where other expressions of anger don't, they lack something. So I like to see places get windows broken and fires...started but [they’re] mostly...an expression of anger…[they’re] not...the violence that is going to bring down the state.

Spiraling crises

I31

It's well within the realm of possibility that we will see...increasing...violence and warfare precipitated by [climate change]....Sociological instability will continue along with ecological change.

Radical values

I6

I don't want to point to a specific example of an activist initiative and say that this is the guide to the future. My own feeling is that there are values that I think I'd like to see broadened to be values that people can work with. Things like solidarity, affinity, autonomy, cooperation over competition, these sorts of vague themes. And then there are various experiments with those which are sometimes inspiring, like cooperatives. Those sorts of things have those values in them.

Vision

I24

I think that the communist movement in the early part of the twentieth century did have a vision, I'm not sure that it was the right vision, but they had a vision. They did believe that somehow or other they were going to take over the state and institute a social society. I think that was the wrong vision but it was a vision, and one of the things that you find from reading some of the historical stuff is that they saw themselves as separate from the system, they saw themselves as outside the system, they saw themselves as creating a new society. The history and practice of state control as it got exercised in the Soviet Union and [elsewhere] shows that at least [that] way of achieving that vision proved to be wrong, but at least they had a vision. The problem today is that we don't have a vision outside of the system.

Asserting ourselves effectively

I22

We had massive demonstrations, for example, against the war in Iraq, massive protests all over the world. Massive protest, [a] vast [number] of people...against the war and yet...the invasion of Iraq [happened anyway]. So there's this institutionalization of protest, so people sit back and say, ‘okay, I get all this anger, and yet I have no power, I'm impotent in terms of affecting policy.’ So once again this raises the issue of how [do we] effectively assert [ourselves?]

Plugging into radical politics

I15

Discussion often degenerates very quickly and is not about trying to find...strategic solutions to problems but rather is about getting defensive and wanting to yell about why your strategy is the best and I don't want to engage in that kind of debate. I don't really have any time for it because I think that our strategy right now should be to be talking to people about what's fucked about the system that we live in….[How] are you going to plug people into radical political movements? We're at a point where there's not a lot to plug people into...that's meaningful, that's consistent, that's going to enact actual social change. What we need to be doing is building people’s understanding of why the system that we're living under is the root of the problems that we're facing.

A liberated society

I12

I guess an anarchist society would be a society with the ability to choose your own options, and your own freedoms, and your own lifestyle without having to basically grow up with a set of options that are provided for you...by society. You have very few avenues to go [down] right now. You can either go to school, you can go to trades, you can be homeless, there are very rigid options that we're provided [with] and if you don't conform...it's a struggle.

Dystopia, narcissism, and control mythologies

I5

Dystopia is a control mythology, that's what it is, and it is the mark of a society that is completely narcissistic that imagines that its own ending is equivalent to the ending of the world... Will we face resource shortage? Unquestionably. Will there be difficult choices to be made? Absolutely. Will there be fascism? Yes, almost certainly. Do we maybe need some of that crisis in order to actually generate movement forward? Unfortunately, probably yes.

Denigrating youth

I22

You always have the obligatory paragraph or two paragraphs about these youth who we want to disassociate from because we have no problem with the police. So [the 2010] G20 [meetings in Toronto] was an eye opener because the police deliberately attacked people. The police deliberately threatened people in the prisons and people who would normally say, ‘well, it's these youth who bring on the violence of the state because we're decent, orderly people who participate,’ were stunned when they were there. They saw the state attacking people willy-nilly. So I think that was an eye opener and I think that provides the context we consider this in. We have our differences but we can have political unity and we can have discussion about tactics but…[it doesn’t] because [some people] have a denigrating concept of youth.

Connecting struggles

I12

[I spend] a lot of time networking with people and trying to be inspired by others and also trying to have conversations with people to...share some of my experiences and knowledge...with them and...be an active part of the resistance against capitalism, against the state, against prisons, and to support people who have had…[their] freedom taken away from them by [the] prison society that we live in.