movement

For Steve Paxton (1939-2024)

From Autonomies

Five years ago, we wrote a short piece lauding Steve Paxton’s work as a dancer and his vision of dance, which we entitled: “Anarchic movement: Ambulations in thought after Steve Paxton”. This week (21/02/2024), we learned of his death. In sadness and celebration, we share our modest thoughts anew.

A response to the note on rats by subMedia

A response to the note on rats by subMedia

From Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

We are writing this statement in response to two pieces recently published on the Scenes from Atlanta Forest counter-info site, one of which, “A Few More Words About Rats”, named us (subMedia) directly.

Sri Lanka: It Takes a Whole Village!

From CrimethInc.

Gota Go Gama—What We Learned in the Occupation Movement

In the following text, a Sri Lankan anarchist who participated in the protest movement that toppled president Gotabaya Rajapaksa reflects on Gota Go Gama (“Gota Go Home”), the occupation at the heart of the movement. Gama is Sinhala for “village”; the Tamil equivalent is Gramam. Starting on April 9, protesters established a permanent occupation at Galle Face, the half-kilometer-long oceanside park in downtown Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. On July 9, a combative crowd stormed the Presidential Palace, the Presidential Secretariat, and the residence of the Prime Minister, forcing Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

How a Married Undercover Cop Having Sex With Activists Killed a Climate Movement

How a Married Undercover Cop Having Sex With Activists Killed a Climate Movement

From Vice by Geoff Dembicki

Mark Kennedy spent seven years pretending to be a climate activist. People he deceived are still rebuilding their lives.

When Kate Wilson was 23, she got deceived into having sex with an older guy who wasn’t what he appeared to be. To her, he was Mark Stone, a radical environmental activist who shared her taste in country music and her belief that capitalism is destroying the planet. He wrote poetry for her, went to her grandmother’s 90th birthday party, and helped her organize a massive protest against the G-8 summit in Scotland. They lived together nearly two years as lovers and stayed close friends for years after.

Does one have to be a perfect person to be an anarchist?

from Pensar en el margen via El Libertario, English translation by Anarchist News,

What is being anarchist?

by Laura Vicente

I would like to dismantle that idea that many people repeat that you cannot be an anarchist because that implies almost perfection in terms of the way of living and being. I am in favor of denying any transcendence to the term "anarchism" since it is the work of human beings. Anarchism is creation, or rather self-creation. The idealization of the term is always denied by reality since the human being is imperfect and contradictory.

Preparing for Electoral Unrest and a Right-Wing Power Grab

from CrimethInc.

In the following analysis, Peter Gelderloos explores the motivations and capabilities of the various factions that are likely to participate in the forthcoming conflict over the outcome of the 2020 election—describes how this figures in right-wing efforts to establish a revamped white supremacy in the context of the existing democratic system—and reviews what we can hope to accomplish by resisting.

De/centralization, Discretion, and the Anarchist Movement

De/centralizx this!

From C4SS by M Black | July 27th, 2020

Anarchists have long made decentralization a core demand for the structure of our organizations and have placed tremendous faith in the decentralization of our organizations as a means by which to prevent the generation of hierarchies and abuses of power, among other issues. However, this faith is based on very little, and anarchists can stand to benefit by rejecting it as an all-or-nothing principle alongside the concomitant Manichean dichotomy between decentralization, representing the Good, and centralization, representing the Bad. It is, in fact, imperative that we do if we aim to build a movement capable of self-defense and growth in the face of growing authoritarian power.

Transnational Decolonization Is the Solution, Not Movements as Bernie Sanders’ & the Women’s March

by Mohamed Jean Veneuse

To be clear, valorized figures like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and social movements like that of Bernie Sanders and the Women’s March are - in fact - not decolonial at all. Their sole strategy depends on voting, reforming laws, protests of equality, and a national assimilationist politics of citizen rights. In adopting the former strategy they constantly evoke two central pillars of representative-democracy: (neo)liberal humanism and multicultural identity politics, both which are founded on supremacist Enlightenment values. In relying on these colonial/imperial ideals and this approach these movements are ultimately – whether they recognize or not – re–entrenching Euro-American white ascendance and individualism. Till the historical present, these human rights paradigms and identitarian reference points continue to structurally and symbolically humanize white bodies and contribute to the reified dehumanization of people who are Indigenous, Black and People of Color. Contrary to the popular belief that this strategy can usher cataclysmic change – numerous radical Indigenous, Black, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, as well as a minority Arab and Muslim knowledge keepers and movement organizers – have exposed and continue to tirelessly argue against the destructive implications of this strategy that – again – is not decolonial at all.

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