TOTW: urban/rural anarchy

Whether you reside in a busting city full of anarchists, a sleepy town well-known for its Veteran’s Day parade, or somewhere in between, your location often influences the type of anarchy you create with others or alone.

Having spent years in both these extremes, I can relate to the cliches of each. One is easier to brazenly shoplift from, while the other lets you shoot guns in your backyard without anyone blinking an eye. An area's population can influence where you find yourself at 2AM, whether that’s an illegal DIY rave or a Walmart parking lot. Big cities can be full of wonderful distractions, fresh faces and enthusiasm, as well as social fatigue, petty drama, and a growing jadedness as people come and go. Small towns can provide time, space and much needed quiet from which to think, as well as a generous serving of mind-numbing monotony. Each place lends itself to certain potentials and demands its own creativity. The grass can always seem greener, too.

What’s your experience with anarchy in urban and/or rural places? Do you prefer one over the other? What does each excel at or suffer from? How do you defy cliches no matter where you are?

Listen to the conversation here!

There are 31 Comments

There is no anarchy in any urban or on-grid rural place. Unless by "anarchy" you mean anarchist bookfairs and post-bookfair moist orgies, then yeah urban environments win (more books and butts).

But why wouldn't YOU want some good ol' geriatric BUTTS and maybe books by Evola in our White ethno-national survivalist enclave in Montana, Hummmms!?

This has got to be written with an Amerikkkan context in mind. As a rural anarchist in Onterrible, Canada. There is two hubs for anarchism (both urban) and both like 2 hour drive from Toronto (Hamilton and kingston) . If you actually live in rural Ontario north of the six6six, these scenes seem just as non-local as say Portland or Eugene.

just squat Drakes mansion

lmao
21 Park Ln Cir toronto, ontario

i know plenty of anarchists in ottawa. just because you can't locate your local underground doesn't mean it isn't there.

North east major city has FAR less petty drama than south west major city. Even PNW major city had less drama and "cancelled" anarchists than south west major city. So even within anarchist spaces, major cities vary massively with how people relate and interact. Popularity of different ideas with anarchism varies greatly between places too, some cities have a large number of anti-civs, others have a large number of vegans, others have a large number of anarcho-leftist / unityists.

Rural areas you'll often find yourself isolated from anarchist "movements" so avoid engaging with projects that are not *your own.* Small cities you'll find yourself with only one or two options for relating to anarchists, which can be good or bad, depending.

I think the best option is either to live in a rural area outside of a major city, to live in a optimal small city, or to live in a rural commune.

I have always been in a small town context, really. I was born and raised in a rural environment, a town of about 1,000 people. Where I'm at now is about 100 times that size but still feels very small relative to the big cities. I live in the fairly concentrated downtown area, and I see familiar faces and neighbors and stop and say hi the way I would in a rural town. Though there's still a fair amount of "move from point A to point B without making eye contact" that I find fundamentally depressing.

Lately I've felt a little envious of the opportunities afforded to the city slickers, the kinds possibilities that easy anonymity provides. Can't really be anonymous in my context unless I'm literally in a costume (which I sometimes am). But deep down I really kind of despise anonymity. Perhaps the alienation of being surrounded by strangers in the big city would be reasonably quelled by the presence of a small group of close friends making it together, a tribe. And perhaps that sort of tribe would be easier to locate in the city. Or perhaps the searcher would simply find already-established cliques.

Trying to think of possibilities offered by a small town that aren't present in big cities. I know that, in this college town, when the students come back there's a spike in the amount of slurs yelled from passing cars. That's how college bros from small towns experiment with the new landscape and their newfound (illusory) freedom. How would anarchists experiment in a similar place? My own activity has centered around a few things: propaganda/literature, visual art/street performance/graffiti, and trying to find lasting relationships that are worth a shit. Seems like pretty standard anarchist responses really, nothing super exciting, but perhaps something meaningful. I have in fact connected with a handful of people who I care about and who care about me. Now, if there were a greater concentration of anarchists here, maybe the possibilities would really start to open up. I still spend a lot of time corresponding with people many states away, and still spend too much time explaining things to people in my area who probably don't care enough to warrant engagement.

I don't know. I know if I was still in my rural hometown, I would probably go completely insane, in the absence of even a single person who understands. That said, if I reach a certain age, and attract a solid group of people, I've always thought I'd go back to the country, since I am, on a fundamental level, simply not a city person. But lately I feel that might be changing. Maybe I'll become acclimated to the things that currently leave me feeling dizzy.

I USE MY ANARCH PSYCHIC POWERS FROM A SMALL INNER-CITY CUBICLE TO PROJECT MY ANARCH PRAXIS INTO THE MINDS OF NORMIES, THUS ATTAINING A BLOODLESS AMIABLE REVOLUTION. I DO NOT NEED A RURAL ENVIRONMENT TO BLOOM!!

Just move around so u can do anarchist stuff that u can do in rural areas in rural areas and urban stuff u can do in urban areas. Being sedentary is really limiting imo.

Also like rural area have almost no law enforcement so u can do a lot of interesting stuff if u don't stick to one spot. Tho ghe big problems are traversing the environment.

MY CUBICLE HAS NO LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND IT IS EASILY TRAVERSED. A TRUE AUTONOMOUS ZONE !

Oh wow nice to hear from a purist anarch individualist. Luv U!

It would be autonomous zone if u would sleep in ur cubicle overnight and have the big city anarchy orgies the anews commenters keep talking abt

Noop yuis fiockoing wriongh, I m asm niot fyuvking limiterd bhy fuixkijng isolatiopn I idenmtufy asd a fyuckinbg loine weolf huillbuilly fuivking nihiolisdt, NOIT a fyuxkimg yurban sdheep !, I anm NIOT A FYUCKOING CUITY SKLICKERT FUICKUNG UYRBANIOD!.,? ,imnma ryural hillbikl.y nihiolidst, a a pre-Marxcisdt fyucjkinf nuianced sedentitry ryreal fyuvkong rebekl niohiloist anarcgh mmjk?!.,!

Anonymity is lost in the rural areas tho, it doesn't take a lot to notice someone new and take note that they showed up right when some weird shit started happening. The cops in rural areas are the ones not wearing uniforms and looking out from their porches and blinds

Universal big truth, yes. Worst cops are those who ain't got nothing better to do.

If u live in the rural area. But randos drive through towns all the time. It's very easy to just drive through do stuff then leave. Hence why mink farm raids are nearly impossible to police. Bc there is no one arround to see the crime.

I have experienced both and am currently situated in the dreaded suburbs, so I am currently experiencing neither.

Urban anarchy is too much for me. I don't enjoy the changing faces, I don't enjoy the interpersonal violence and intoxication, and I really really really don't enjoy the pace. It's all too fast for its own good. Everything that happens needs an Anarchist Response, and in a place where everything is constantly happening (city council votes on this, mayor does that, police kill so-and-so, 2/3rds of your friends are being evicted, a racist band is playing across town, and that's just Thursday) most anarchist projects are so sidetracked by constantly responding that they never really get around to doing the thing they initially set out to do. The ones that don't get sidetracked by constantly squabbling with their environment are dismissed by everyone else as not caring about their environment. It's all so fucking exhausting.

Rural anarchy is not enough for me. While it's got so much room to be creative in place of the city's reactive, any given project is so severely limited that it's got to become an individual/small group passion that amounts to a job or it dies as a wonderful idea that would have been really cool if it worked out. Unless you're personally taking something from concept to reality, it's just not gonna get done. And that's refreshing in some ways - who doesn't love to see the fruits of their labor and all that - it's just SO much to carry.

Suburbia isn't the goldilocks zone by any stretch, but at least there are some resources that don't require a 45 minute drive to get to and aren't so overburdened by the sheer number of people who are relying on them that they're functionally inaccessible anyway. The suburban comforts we all rally against as creating complacency in a sick society and all that? They're actually pretty nice to have if you don't want to slowly kill yourself just to make zines for 20 year olds who are gonna tell everyone about how oppressive you were for printing them on paper. Underutilized demographic for the past 20 years. We should fully invade every suburb.

I'm against it!

lots of generalizing talk here, ofc, but it seems to me there're other variables to fold in as well--you got your yuppie gentrified touristy mini cities--a few suburbs squeezed in between ranch after ranch of old barbed wire fences, plus an insatiable "outdoor recreation" liberal-free market privilege-blind crowd.
tha kids here know gender is made up, they know tha bosses are drinking their blood, they know ~~cops kill~~ but few folks are willing to eg expropriate resources from capital, few seem to be in touch with prefiguraron or dual power or abolition strategies...

all too much energy here is wasted, poured into local electoral politics and a toothless, simultaneously soc-dem entryist and too small to be effective tenant's union...

let alone doing the back organizing to facilitate a rent strike, i can't even get folks to pack houses with more than one person per bedroom to drop the rent to 450-350-lower

it seems that the priority for many of my peers is to keep up the wage slavery, keep paying 75%+ of income to rent/food/car/alcohol, just to avoid tha streets or a little poverty. these white kids are so atomized they don't even ever pay each other's rent or temporary bum off of each other. everyone literally is a mini company, jus like we got learned in school... :/

any ideas when kids wanna accept losing their houses to get off wage slavery? tell me if you run into another egoist/nihilist anywhere irl ever...

It’s all about rural anarchy, people.
Why in the People’s Republic of Vermonypt, where St. Bernie has a lake house far from the noise of the F-35s he helped bring to Burlington, there is a Sisters of Anarchy ice cream corporation selling beaucoup loads of ice creams - and they haven’t got a thing to do with anarchism. They sell ice cream. And they are a corporation.
They just like the name Sisters of Anarchy, and that name gets them more sales.
They even use your A brand logo for their logo as a cone.
Way to go, rural anarchy.

VT rural anarchy is like the odd rando living out in god-knows-where in the towns without zoning laws so they can build their cob and cord wood houses and farm and get their energy from their solar panels to power the fridge, the lights, and a chest freezer. That or like the odd commune I suppose?

Liked your point about the sisters of anarchy ice cream, I always get a weird feeling in my guts when I see it being sold somewhere.

And let's not forget the convenience of being a 1-2 days bike ride away from magic Dumspter Poutineland that is really the epicenter of anarchy next to the Bay Area!

Rural anarchy win!!!!1!!

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