mutual aid

N.O. Bonzo on Anarchy, Art, and Mutual Aid

N.O. Bonzo on Anarchy, Art, and Mutual Aid

From From Embers

VABF Day 1: Welcome to the Victoria Anarchist Bookfair!

N.O. Bonzo is an anarchist street artist and illustrator whose work is much admired in the activist community. In this interview, Bonzo discusses their beautifully illustrated edition of Peter Kropotkin’s most famous book, Mutual Aid, and the politics of anarchy and art. Check out Bonzo's edition of Mutual Aid:

It Could Happen Here: A Review

Anarchy-ish: comfortably relegated to the realm of the hypothetical, the reassuring plausible deniability of speculative fiction, with a cast of do-gooders to assuage liberal listeners.

from Anathema

While only charlatans confidently predict what will happen, it's always interesting to explore what could happen. This is especially true if the coulds being explored are pertinent to the unfolding of struggles against the State and Capital. In the past couple of years, the podcaster Robert Evans has become known for this kind of exploration in his popular podcast It Could Happen Here. Podcasts, especially non-anarchist podcasts, do not normally get much attention in anarchist newspapers like Anathema. A review of Evans's podcast could seem out of place in these pages.

Direct (In)Action

from Bella Caledonia by Luke Campbell

State Suppression of Community Organising

More than twelve years on from the global economic crash, across nations the world over, the state continues to not only abdicate responsibility for the ongoing social ills and economic hardships so many ensure, but, as witnessed this week, a significant proportion of those in positions of power actively suppress community-driven efforts to support those around them.

Kairos: A Mutual Aid Exodus From Empire

No good deed goes unpunished.

from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Starting in 2019/2020 and now continuing into the summer of 2021, global civil society is witnessing the biggest neoliberal disaster capitalist shock yet: COVID-19. Millions of people have been and continue to be killed by this unprecedented disaster. Like most catastrophes, those historically oppressed and least responsible for this pandemic are nevertheless those most impacted. The death toll is comparable in magnitude of lives lost to another World War.

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Why we’re against “mutual aid”

Anarchists: Bread Santa's good little helpers.

from Mutiny! An anarchist-communist publication by Black Flag Sydney.

Socialism is not charity: why we’re against “mutual aid”

For Kropotkin, the tendency of humans to co-operate also made possible the realisation of anarchist communism. Humanity, from a scientific perspective, did not need armies, policemen and capitalists to organise a functioning, harmonious society; solidarity would come to replace authority as the glue that binds civilisations together.

It’s Time to Help the Lucy Parsons Center

from Center for a Stateless Society

by Eric Fleischmann

The Lucy Parsons Center—originally opened as the Red Book Store in 1969 in Central Square, Cambridge but later renamed after the famed anarcho-communist and labor-organizer—is a non-profit, independent, cooperative radical bookstore and activist community center located in Jamaica Plain, Boston. As they write on their website: for years, the Center…

Towards a New Federationist Federation Front

A hypothetical example of how a federationist federation front organizing committee communalist party union could look like.

from some maintream blog platform self-respecting anarchists wouldn't be caught dead using promptly uploaded to The Anarchist Library

by Marigold June

The current state of organizing within leftist spaces is not federated. Many have tried to federate it, of particular note are the platformists who try to focus intensely on federation. However, to date organizing with the left is not organized. Therefore, a new approach must be taken up to combat the lack of federation and general disorganization found within leftist circles. Federationism provides this level of focus and organization necessary.

Mutual aid: Kropotkin’s theory of human capacity

If humans are so naturally cooperative, how come "The CONQUEST of Bread" became a more popular book than "Mutual Aid" (affectionately known as "not the bread book")? Checkmate, Kropotkin!

from Roar Mag

Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid remains cogent as ever, demonstrating the capacity for revolutionary change even in the harshest, most repressive environments.

This is an abridged version of Ruth Kinna’s foreword to Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution” (PM Press, 2021).

U.K. Anarchist Collective Explains Anti-New Normal Position

Via: The South Essex Heckler

https://thehecklersewca.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/an-explainer-on-our-cha...

We’ve come in for a bit of criticism over the last couple of days for our views on the government response to the COVID-19 crisis. Firstly, we’d like to start off by saying that our position on the response to the crisis has changed since it started to emerge at the end of February. At that point, it felt like a massive unknown and that starting to develop our own response in terms of physical distancing and withdrawing from events we were due to participate in seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

Prioritizing in the face of the social avalanche

via A las barricadas, English translation by Anarchist News

ALB Noticias.- Today the FAGC has briefly reappeared on twitter to summarize its activity during these months of pandemic. We reproduce the tweets that you can see with their interactions here. We are happy to hear from this group which is so combative and indispensable.

Mutual Aid Does Nothing Alone

from The Commoner

Mutual Aid Does Nothing Alone: A Rebuttal to Joanna Wuest

In her article ‘Mutual Aid Can’t Do It Alone,’ The Nation author Joanna Wuest alleges that mutual aid is insufficient to support people in (and out of) crisis. She contends that while mutual aid is a useful tool, its efficacy pales in comparison to state programmes. Yet Wuest fails to engage the arguments of mutual aid’s progenitors and proponents. What results is a confused and potentially harmful perspective on a core anarchist principle that has sustained people for generations.

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