Greg (1991-2022)

RIP Greg

Greg was a long time member of thecollective and co-host of the anarchist news podcast. His death on January 28, 2022 caught us by surprise. We give this space to remember him fondly and mourn his loss.

He wrote and read many editorials over the years, and helped write many of the What's New segments with chisel. Below are links to all the anews podcast episodes that feature editorials by him.

Selected editorial transcriptions

A short editorial

from Anews Podcast 126 – 8.2.19 (editorial begins at 0:36)

“People cannot resume, they have to start over again. We should not assume that the ways--what we would call culture--nurtured and cultivated over thousands of generations, can be regenerated overnight. It may well be that such ways require the cultivation of many generations...” - Fredy Perlman, “Against History, Against Leviathan”

Early in my contact with radical politics I had this recurring guilt that I wasn’t doing enough, that I wasn’t doing as much as I hoped to. Before those nascent politics started to change and take a different form, and seeing that this guilt might last forever as I wasn’t exactly doing much of anything. My politics changed further and this guilt eventually melted away, but the question of what exactly I hoped to be doing, remained.

Not being a particularly bold person/personality, a flash of action and bravery in the face of authority probably wasn’t going to be it, but surely there were more options.

One of the most appealing, to me, is the idea of weaving oneself into the story of anarchy. Looking at anarchy as a story unfolding over centuries and seeing myself as a small thread in that story, as small as any other person, gives me a strange sense of not really hope, but purpose. It changes the focus from what’s to be done today, towards what can I find, preserve, or maybe create that could be useful to future anarchists, even if they’re the anarchists moving in the ashes of this world.

This is partly what excites me about anarchy, in creating the stories of anarchy: that part of this task involves finding new language and ideas that are perhaps completely illegible today, but which might with time and care concentrate into a weapon.

But to finish up that Fredy Perlman quote “...but the people struggling to launch a new beginning don’t have an age in which to do it. They’re camped in the midst of leviathanic segments, machines which any good mechanic can reactivate and use to put a whole generation’s efforts to naught in single campaign."

So there’s another task for me/us, and that is to survive. As Octavia Butler put it, quote “to learn and run”.


On Rootedness (or something)

from Anews Podcast 135 – 10.11.19 (editorial begins at 0:34)

For the last couple of months I’ve been on twitter, which is an extremely strange place to say the least. Inhabiting this strange space are people constantly in the process of making and consuming identities or, really, personal brands. Based on being a partisan of increasingly niche philosophy, politics, and/or styles of humor.

If I view this in the most delusionally positive light imaginable, it would seem that people are becoming agents in subcultural or identity creation. However, when you zoom a few clicks...like...one click, out from that sunny view, the image of consumption appears, with ourselves as product and consumer.

This makes total sense as we live in a consumer’s world, we’re taught to view politics, identities, culture, etc, as consumable material. You know, critical theory 101. But even while fulfilling this role of digital consumer and consumed, no one seems particularly happy. Instead, it mostly feels like we’re scare quotes “CONNECTED” to a bunch of people drifting not only through cyberspace, but meatspace as well.

In my head, I imagine that all the ways in which people aren’t in control of their lives because of capitalism, the state, etc., might be crystallized in the feeling of only temporarily being stuck in any physical location due to constraint or desperation. This feeling is something I’ve resonated with a lot recently for a number of reasons. But I’m sure the foundation of those feelings is mostly whiteness; being a part of that group which is everywhere but supposedly comes from nowhere. And I’m sure a similar drifting is felt by a vast number of people with different backgrounds, but I of course can only speak for my own.

So, how could things be different? How can I cope with drift? How can I create, synthesize, revive, or what have you, a feeling of rootedness in the world? In my case, knowing that the reason that my feet touch this earth is because of horrors.

It’s a process that, if it can happen at all, will take generations and cycles upon cycles upon cycles of decay and growth, of my matter becoming a part of the dirt I live on and perhaps somehow part of a legacy in some shape or form. For me I hope that legacy is anarchy and the people I know as anarchists, and as for the place, I hope is where I am now, but really who knows.

What seems clearest to me is that this process will not only be one of learning to live with others in a way that is good for me and them, but also learning how, and preparing to die around others and how that can act maybe as the start of becoming rooted.

Editorials written and read by Greg

Anews Podcast 168 – 6.19.20
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2020/06/anews-podcast-168-6-19-20/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:35

Anews Podcast 162 – 5.8.20
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2020/05/anews-podcast-162-5-8-20/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:38

Anews Podcast 156 – 3.13.20
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2020/03/anews-podcast-153-3-13-20/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:36

Anews Podcast 151 – 2.07.20
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2020/02/anews-podcast-151-2-07-20/
editorial by Greg: Theory, Public, and Private (note correct use of the oxford comma here!) begins at 0:36

Anews Podcast 147 – 1.10.20
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2020/01/anews-podcast-147-1-10-20/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:49

Anews Podcast 139 – 11.8.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/11/anews-podcast-139-11-8-19/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:39
TOTW discussion with Greg begins at 22:35

Anews Podcast 135 – 10.11.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/10/anews-podcast-135-10-11-19/
editorial by Greg: Rootedness begins at 0:34 (also transcribed above)

Anews Podcast 130- 9.6.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/09/anews-podcast-130-9-6-19/
editorial by Greg: On spirituality? begins at 0:40

Anews Podcast 126 – 8.2.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/08/anews-podcast-126-8-2-19/
editorial by Greg begins at 0:36 (also transcribed above)

Anews Podcast 122 – 7.5.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/07/anews-podcast-122-7-5-19/
editorial by Greg as Dim begins at 0:38

Anews Podcast 117 – 5.31.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/06/anews-podcast-117-5-31-19/
editorial by Greg as Dim begins at 0:38

Anews Podcast 113 – 5.3.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/05/anews-podcast-113-5-3-19/
editorial by Greg as Dim: Mutual Immolation Brigade begins at 0:35

Anews podcast 109, 3.29.19
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/04/anews-podcast-109-3-29-19/
editorial by Greg as Dim: Acting begins at 0:38

Anews Podcast 107, 3.15.2019
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/03/anews-podcast-107-3-15-2019/
editorial by Greg as Dim: on hosting AnarchyBang! podcast begins at 0:33

Anews Podcast 99, 1.18.2019
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/01/anews-podcast-99-1-18-2018/
editorial by Greg as Dim begins at 0:40

Anews Podcast 94, 12.14.2018
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2018/12/anews-podcast-94-12-14-2018/
editorial by Greg as Dim begins at 0:36

Anews Podcast 90, 11.16.2018
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2018/11/anews-podcast-90-11-16-2018/
editorial by Greg as Dim: How do you read? begins at 0:40

Anews Episode 80 – September 7, 2018
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2018/09/anews-episode-80-september-7-2...
editorial by Greg as Dim begins at 0:37

There are 10 Comments

This is hard news. Sorry to the anews crew & to all who knew Greg.

You mean the physical living person known as Greg... and was the funniest voice on the podcast, is dead?

Greg Endquote: Funny as hell. Fierce as hell. Impeccable taste in music.

Rest in peace, brother.

Love to the compound gang x

This news was out of the blue, saw this yesterday but had to take some time to sit with it.

Greg was great to hang out & be in a study group with, a nice blend of smart and funny.
His choice of musical cuts for the podcast were always on point. His taste eclectic and hella tight.

Gonna miss you, Greg. <3 <3

I only met Greg once, for lunch and a coffee. He was around the same age as me, had a snickering intelligence and a great sense of humor. It's disconcerting for him to be gone so young. Rest in peace, friend. My thoughts for all his loved ones and the anews gang.

One of Greg's most memorable editorials was in response to this zine:
https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/05/anews-podcast-113-5-3-19/
Here's the transcription down below. I've also linked each page into a zine of sorts.

Mutual Immolation Brigade Editorial by Greg

Recently, Cindy Milstein’s zine, “Mutual Fire Brigade” popped up on anews.

Faced with climate disaster and seemingly inevitable eco-doom, Milstein asks:

“How is any sort of preparation possible in this zombie apocalypse in which it feels as we’re reduced to a choice between fascism or extinction or some macabre survival of the fittest without worry for others? How can we speak of seeds beneath the snow, possibilities in the present-day dystopia, or of a prefigurative politics aspiring toward everything for everyone, when the polar ice caps are quickly melting?”

Their answer is somewhat along the lines of D.I.Y. mutual aid style disaster response and relief efforts that can help to bring radicals together and hold the line against an impending fascistic environmental crisis. [1.]

But I remain unconvinced.

As I sat and choked on smoke at my job
in San Francisco last November,

I’m going to say that mutual aid was probably the furthest thing from my mind.

I wasn’t planning supply runs to aid fire-stricken Californians

but was stuck instead

tapping away at a keyboard
hoping my 5-alarm smog-induced headache
would subside enough for me
to make it through my commute home. [2.]

I wasn’t

“tending to and nurturing those spaces of possibility
and fostering the growth of good lives and good deaths,
all with intentionality, fed with waters of empathy, dignity and love”

I was watching instead
my friends choke and wheeze
in their usually sunlit rooms
now completely shut-in
to protect against the haze.

Perhaps this makes me an egoist
focusing not on faith
in anarchism and good deeds
but on myself and my friends.

Although,
because I haven't read Stirner,
perhaps it just makes me
the same kind of selfish American
liberals like to set up and knock down
when their spirits are feeling low.

However,
what I’d like to think this reflects
is a certain humility
and understanding of scale.

I don’t see myself with the kind of agency that Milstein effuses when they talk of how good works will see us through to the other side of catastrophe.

Nor do I see banning together under the big tent of good intentions as a particularly attractive path to

“mutualistically caring lifeways”. [3.]

Instead, I see myself
forced to get up and go to work
the same as any other day.

Even as drug and hardware stores
where picked clean
of respirators and surgical masks.

I wasn't out there caring for the afflicted,
or battling the kind of blaze
which results from human control
of forest cycles.

I was still looking forward
to the weekend
when I could feel something
like a person,
see my friends, and sleep.[4.]

And if collapse or something like it comes
I think this is what it would look like

something like the secretary still signing papers in the World Trade Center as it burned around her

people going to work
and spending money
until the flesh falls from the bone.

And so,
the most I can really ask for
is to sit in the smoke of hellfire
and sing songs
until my friends and I choke
on the ash of this world.

And maybe,
maybe some of us will crawl
to the new world on the other side
not knowing until that very moment
what it could even look like.[5.]

- Greg

My condolences, I'd have tweeted this but I'm currently banned for a week from the tweet for completely bullshit reasons('hateful conduct')

Really enjoyed Greg's editorials and also really just liked the sound of his voice. Never met him, didn't need to. Sorry you guys are having to feel through another death. -Amor fati-

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