Cindy Milstein (they)

Misfit. Wordsmith. Dreamer. Rebel.  Never at home in this world, so always aspiring to make new ones with others.
Labors of love: creating books, doing care + grief care, curating magical do-it-ourselves + ritual spaces, people. 🖤❤️🌿  @cindymilstein on IG cbmilstein.wordpress.com #Anarchism #JewishAnarchism #Mazeldon #QueerAsFuck #AnarchaFeminism #Solidarity #MutualAid #CollectiveCare #ArtOfResistance #PrefigurativePolitics #RebelliousMourning #ACAB #EverythingForEveryone #UntilAllAreFree

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npub1tmggm6ga6w29jfheesnexu4362xpehfjku4td0c3yl7deamykzhq5hl383

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cbmilstein_at_kolektiva.social@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-10-14 00:26:06

A friend gifted me this (belated) Rosh Hashanah honey today for the start of 5785.
It’s not a good new year, especially as tonight I watch—with horror and a deep sense of powerlessness—images on IG of people in tents at Al Aqsa Hospital in Gaza being burned alive by the bombs of Israel and its allied states, by the IOF and its allied military contractors, by the legacy and contemporary manifestations of colonialism, Zionism, and fascism.
May we recommit ourselves to engaging in the sweetness of solidarity and mutual aid,
collective care and widespread resistance,
#UntilAllAreFree.
“May the sound of the shofar be a reminder that our liberation is bound together.”
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
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2024-10-06 03:14:34

Mourning the martyrs, fighting for and with the living.
+ + +
Killed in Gaza / tuées a Gaza
“This dataset provides daily values for those killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7th, 2023. There are currently 362 days of reports from 2023-10-07 to 2024-10-02.”
Source: data.techforpalestine.org
+ + +
Collaboration
@collages_feministes_montreal_
@collages_feminicides_montreal_
+ + +
The unquiet dead. Fresh, lengthy wheatpaste on the busy shopping area of Rue Ste-Catherine O in Montreal, on the stolen lands of Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang, as seen on October 2024.
+ + +
#RebelliousMourning
#ArtOfResistance
#ArtOfRemembrance
#UntilAllAreFree
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2024-10-06 03:10:47

2024-10-06 00:13:58

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2024-10-04 03:32:09

How many yahrzeits can one body absorb?
This October 3 was the first year, ever since I began ritualistically counting eleven years ago, that I forgot my mother’s death anniversary.
I only “remembered” because one of my sisters remembered. And even then, after she texted to say that she’d gone by our mom’s tree—the one that shimmered with surreal autumnal yellows through the windows in the room my mother lay dying in—my brain still wouldn’t click into recalling that October 3. I couldn’t conjure up images of her death, always as vivid as that tree—a death I’d been honored to be present for.
I couldn’t feel it either.
And as today wore on, it kept slipping out of my mind—not only her yahrzeit, but my mom, herself, and all the love that she and I finally solidified as unforgettable bond over the intimacy of thirteen months of (what I know understand as reciprocal) caretaking through her cancer. The enormous loss had, inexplicably, somehow gotten lost too.
As twilight began, without also remembering that it was Rosh Hashanah, I felt the urge to walk. I forgot all about lighting candles, or eating apples and honey, or gathering with anyone. My hands instinctively picked tiny little flowers, until I had a tiny little bouquet. My feet instinctively found a secluded grassy area by water, until I came upon a small tree. My tear ducts instinctively recollected how to cry, until my mom appeared in blessed memory again.
It hit me then that I’ve not cried in a long time. I’ve felt like a sponge, wrung out til its bone dry.
There are too many dead to know how to adequately mourn, adequately remember, as another yahrzeit draws near: October 7—a yahrzeit that isn’t merely about who died on one day, but all the tens of thousands murdered in a short-long 365 days, and all the countless other losses of land and homes, of hopes and dreams.
And soon after October 7, there’s October 27, the yahrzeit for the Tree of Life murders, which recalls yahrzeits for likewise-fascist murders at mosques and Black churches.
One body cannot hold it all. This fucked-up world that we’re tasked with unfucking up, so that never again will we need to absorb so many yahrzeits.
(Photos: two stickers seen in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago—one reading “unfuck the world” and the other “Never again, never again, never again, never again, never again, never again to anyone”; my tiny bouquet cobbled together while walking tonight)
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2024-10-03 02:56:21

My heart is in Asheville and North Carolina as well as other nearby spots devastated by the catastrophic flooding, mudslides, infrastructural collapse, and other systemically manufactured violences dubbed “Hurricane Helene.” This “once-in-a-1,000-years” event is now what’s likely a “normal” climate disaster—in the Appalachian mountains, but also across the globe, knowing no borders.
Which is why borderless, boundless, beautiful on-the-ground mutual aid—solidarity not charity, interrelationality not alienation, commons not capitalism, collective care not colonization—is truly all that we have and need. And as stories emerging from small cities and rural areas across North Carolina attest, it’s what many people are doing, without need for so-called authorities or saviors, but instead voluntarily, imaginatively, and anarchistically (whether they hold to that politics or not), self-organizing neighbor to neighbor, friend+stranger to friend+stranger, community to community.
A crucial part of this social fabric of mutual aid—able to kick into high gear at a moment’s notice and then dive into being there for each other nonstop—is the infrastructure already in place, including from other disasters, but also from engaging in dreamy space-making and world-building. That includes so many scrappy and sweet mutual aid project and collectives, ranging from the @mutualaiddisasterrelief network, to spaces and affinity groups in cities in the surrounding region, to in this case, community hubs (like @firestormcoop) and crews like @pansy.collective and @appalachianmedicalsolidarity that are themselves directly experiencing the NC calamity firsthand, and yet have things like this to say: “I would rather live every day in a crisis than pretend every day is not already a crisis.”
I feel honored to be getting glimpses of so many profound acts of solidarity while doing small acts from afar, such as putting together this infographic and posting resources in my IG stories (you can too!). It’s what’s keeping me going amid the bleakness of disasters on so many fronts—too many for any of our small individual hearts to hold, which is why we need our shared hearts.
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2024-10-03 02:54:08

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2024-10-03 02:51:52

Months ago, in the old year of 5784, I heard a rad rabbi being asked, “Which Jewish holiday is holding you best in times such as these?,” and they replied, “None.” Instead, they explained that they crave a small daily ritual done with even one other person; that none of the millennium-old technology of marking the Jewish year—practices and prayers as resistance and resilience to aid us in liberation and life—spoke to them amid genocide and fascism.
There have been times aplenty when humans have had to bear the worst—the worst of the barbarity that humans, and especially their hierarchical structures and ideologies, are capable of perpetrating. And evidence aplenty that Jews around the globe leaned on their holidays during those times—indeed, risked life and limb to celebrate them. Our communal rituals are that sacred.
Yet as this new year crept closer, coming so near to another marker, Oct 7; as genocide and fascism both expanded their reach; as capitalist-fueled climate catastrophe became more catastrophic; as the daily list of atrocities has become so long, it’s impossible to keep up—I couldn’t comprehend being able to go to two nights and days of outdoor, in-person, self-organized Rosh Hashanah services by a canal. I couldn’t follow through on preparing and setting up the ancestor-grief altar I’d promised as my contribution. “None.” None of it felt right.
What’s felt right has been throwing myself into mutual aid tasks, remotely, for North Carolina since the hurricane hit.
So when a Jewish friend texted me yesterday and I shared “I don feel capable of sitting thru RH services,” and they replied, “I feel like you’re [instead] praying with your heart and body in your own way,” I canceled. I thought I’d do nothing—except NC mutual aid.
Ancestors had other ideas. They whispered in my ear, urging me to light candles, taste of apples and honey, and look for little sparks in 5785, however small and fragile and ephemeral, while listening to a pal blow a shofar in a recording they texted a bunch of us on a Jewish anarchist thread, with the words, “Here’s to walls coming down.”
May it be so; may we be those sparks.
(photo: art behind my candles by @_mazatli_)
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2024-09-09 16:26:33

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@npub138a…4vyh I just read it—and love it! And am now sharing it with some other folks I think would love it too. 🖤🩷🙌🏼

2024-09-09 13:55:21

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@npub138a…4vyh yay!! Thx for sharing this with me!

2024-09-02 02:24:32

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2024-04-15 02:52:13

(Pls share) REMINDER!!!
Don’t forget to submit your proposals for tabling, discussions, workshops, or any other ideas of spaces you want to create at the next ACAB! Submissions are due by May 1 and the form is found on the website
ACABookfair.noblogs.org 🏴
The next Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair will be hosted in Asheville, NC on June 28-30!
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2024-03-13 01:46:33

Aaron Bushnell’s act touched me in profound ways as a fellow anarchist. Foremost was the intricate way he self-organized the numerous details to be sure to care for the beloveds he left behind while also assuring his self-immolation was precisely and unequivocally read as care for Palestinians, and how he took a strategic direct action based on a clear-eyed anarchist understanding of hierarchical power and side-by-side solidarity in a time of fascism and its genocidal logic—and it succeeded, perhaps beyond his own hopes.
I needed to process and honor his death, and without thinking it through, called for a vigil by a river, and suddenly it was clear that lots of folks needed it too and were going to show up. I’d done zero planning; I’d only been feeling.
These days, feelings can be plenty—if we listen to them, and let them shape and hold the spaces our bodies communally crave amid this nightmarish era.
My emotions lead me to craft a circle A out of sticks. It lead my friend @shadow_patterns to paint a portrait of Aaron, and with our friend @zoziebee, we made a DIY altar on the grass.
As twilight came, some 75 people appeared from all sides, clustering around the altar, adding flowers, hand-written notes and art, and home-baked cookies. I offered some words, then many hands lit many candles, which punctuated the now-darkness with warmth. Silence fell for some minutes, until one brave person took up my offer to share; they read a poem they’d just written. Their vulnerability encouraged others to speak from the heart. Someone lead us in learning a song to sing aloud. Ducks flew directly past us, adding their voices. A person laid down a Palestinian flag, then created a “river” on it from fabric and a “sea” with shells, lighting candles in them.
Mourning Aaron became inseparable from mourning every destroyed or lost life in Gaza. Aaron’s calculated risk and loving intentionality had woven that tight bond.
Folks lingered after the vigil, solemnly extinguishing the candles. “Hey, why don’t we leave the organic parts of the altar here, for others to see tomorrow?”
Today, Aaron’s portrait found a spot in @npub1zwj…qx3g.
#RebelliousMourning
#UntilAllAreFree
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2024-03-10 03:00:25

Words fail these days.
So today at a Palestinian solidarity fundraiser, I quietly set up a table of some 30+ different titles of zines—a handful of which are pictured here. First I used a banner reading “grief knows no borders” as the tablecloth, then aesthetically arranged piles of each zine on top of it. I added candles in little clusters here and there on the table, and lit them, then sprinkled a few red+black tissue-paper poppies nearby. Hand-lettered “free zines” on cardboard, some “free Gaza” buttons, and a donation jar for @gazasoupkitchen completed the picture.
I stood off to the side of this free lit table as more than a hundred people filtered into the room, letting the zines’ words speak for me, or indeed, rather than me.
And mostly I listened. Or rather, felt a witness to the stories that Hani, the guest speaker, shared with us—hoping that all of our ears and eyes and hearts were expansive enough to hold and honor even a fraction of his and his family in Gaza’s loss, pain, suffering, horror, rage, sorrow, trauma…
Words fail.
Every image I’ve seen from Palestinians reporting their own people’s genocide from Gaza these past 150+ days came to life in this one big room this afternoon through everything Hani’s family has lived through (or in many cases, died from).
There’s nothing to do sometimes but leave one’s own words behind—let them fail—and instead empathetically take another person’s grief into your body and not try to fix it. In a world where too many people still somehow can’t see or say “genocide,” perhaps there is power in a roomful of people who can see and name it, and not turn away from the hardest of tales and truths. Who listen attentively and solemnly. Maybe for a moment, Hani might have felt less alone—their burden made a tiny bit lighter, even if temporarily, by letting us be there with and for them to (re)tell horror stories as an act of processing and mourning. I hope as an “audience” we did that for Hani.
I hope we can all do that for each other. Because this world makes us need that a whole, whole lot.
(If you want a big folder of print-ready Palestinian solidarity zines curated by my anarchist eye, DM me your email)
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2024-03-08 22:20:39

Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, 2024 and Beyond
For well over a quarter century, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair has become a fixture of May--the "month of anarchy"--and indeed anarchism in this city. It's almost hard to remember a time before this enormous gathering! And as a collective, we feel the weight of the expectations that we should forge ahead with a bookfair this spring, whether it seems possible or not.
Yet so much has shifted during these years, not only around the world, but within both Montreal and the bookfair. And this year has been particularly wrenching, from the pandemic dragging on, to the housing crisis, from fascism only worsening, to the genocide in Gaza, all straining our collective capacities and breaking our hearts.
After much deliberation, we've decided to postpone the next Montreal Anarchist Bookfair until May 2025, and instead focus on reimagining and refreshing it. We know this may disappoint, but we hope you'll understand our (and perhaps your) need for a bit of a breather and some reflection time.
Here's to a bigger, better, and more beautiful month of anarchy and bookfair in 2025!
Love+solidarity, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair collective
https://www.anarchistbookfair.ca/
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2024-03-07 21:28:11

Support the “AVL 4” Appalachians against Pipelines!
On March 4, four of our Asheville, NC, friends were arrested along with three other people after being aggressively chased by police through the woods of Poor Mountain in West Virginia. Only one of these seven has been bailed out so far, with others hopefully released soon—but all with hefty bond amounts and legal expenses ahead. That same day on that mountain, two other people locked themselves to an immobilized car and shut down Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) work for eleven hours.
The repression against MVP resistance has continued to escalate of late. In recent months, local and Indigenous pipeline resisters have been charged with felonies, hit with egregious civil lawsuits, and faced months of jail time for protesting the devastation of this delicate ecosystem. If completed, the MVP will contaminate sensitive water sources for poor communities across West Virginia and Virginia, perpetuating a legacy of resource extraction and disregard for human and nonhuman life in Appalachia.
Our AVL buddies need your support! Let’s shower them with love and solidarity!
DONATE to the Appalachian Legal Defense Fund: bit.ly/applegaldefense
#NoMVP #StopMVP #NoPipelines #FTP #SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
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2024-03-01 00:08:42

Vigil for Aaron Bushnell
and the 30,000+ People Killed in Gaza
Sunday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.
Gather by the Craven Street Bridge on the Wilma Dykeman Greenway by the river in Asheville to share words and silence in remembrance. That’s the same, now-sacred spot that we held a Public Mourner’s Kaddish in the early days of the genocide against Palestinians, and more recently, a remembrance for Tortuguita on the one-year anniversary of their murder-by-cops in Weelaunee Forest.
We’ll set up a DIY altar and gather around it. Bring flowers, candles, art, banners, and other mementoes to add to it.
We’ll have a few printouts on hand of “Memories of Aaron Bushnell as Recounted by His Friends” for folks to read excerpts aloud, and hold space for sharing thoughts and feelings, other readings, and/or songs/music.
Come as you are; bring your full self. And wear a mask for the collective care of all.
— self-organized by some AVL anarchists,
in love and rage 🖤💔🪬🍉🔥
#ArtOfRemembrance
#ArtOfResistance
#MourningOurDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#UntilAllAreFree
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2024-01-29 04:20:14

The last piece in “Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice” (Pluto Press, April 2024)—or “part 2” of extending (my) solidarity and love beyond borders—was the first contribution I got for this project. Its author, in Helsinki, has been incredibly patient for some two years waiting to see their rebellious “love letter” come out in print. I’ve read it dozens of times in prepping this book and it still makes me teary-eyed in the best of tender ways.
“Do You Feel the Same?” by Vilja Saarinen
“As friends have pointed out, we’re like a mix of magnificent things that those working against us have difficulty understanding. They can’t imagine fierceness and care inhabiting the same person, much less a social body that fights to dismantle hierarchies according to ethical principles of shared power. Love is not keeping your hands clean; love is courage.
“When an event with people with strollers and walkers gets attacked, anyone who rushes to absorb the first blows and actively defend them, despite the consequences that might continue for one, two, four, seven, or even ten years, is defending love.
“Anyone who dances Kurdish halay to keep up spirits and calm their friends while the police search their bus, home, or squat do so with an air of elegant resistance. Zap, zap, zapê!
“I am secretly impressed by the determination of the schoolgirl who sat alone in front of the Parliament to protest climate change until she wasn’t alone anymore, and hundreds of thousands of kids and teenagers all around the world joined her. I love all the kids who got inspired, especially the five-year-olds in Tampere, carrying picket signs of animals facing extinction, depicting animals the same size as them. I love each and every one of you!
“And I get a warm feeling thinking of Nelli throwing the ripe tomato—with the proficiency of someone who has done nothing but throw tomatoes all of her life—that hit the Nazi leader on the head at the perfect second in front of a big crowd in Turku.
“That is why I am writing to you, from the many places where I know it to be true. From the moments and movements where I have experienced and felt it to be true. Love as a constant practice.“
For more info on this book or to preorder it, see:
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349954/constellationsofcare
#ConstellationsOfCare
#AnarchaFeminismInPractice
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2024-01-28 05:47:59

Solidarity with Appalachians against Pipelines during the #BlockEveryPath Days of Action
Three Short Films:
* Stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline
* Protect What You Love
* People over Pipelines
6:00 p.m. on Wed, Jan 31
at Firestorm Books, AVL
(Masks required)
Benefit for App Legal Defense
www.aapsolidarity.org
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2024-01-19 03:10:18

We make our own sacred spaces—spaces on no maps—through repeated rituals of resistance whose meanings stretch beyond borders. Because our grief knows no borders.
Neither does our love.
So from some leftover paint and fabric that are transformed into banners, some old newspapers mixed with flour and water to be reshaped into a turtle, some heartfelt words turned into zines, and some odds and ends like blankets, candles, stones, and flowers, an altar sprang up tonight in the same riverside spot used a few months ago for a public Mourner’s Kaddish. You can still see the self-composting, pale-orange husk of a pumpkin that read “Free Palestine” and was left as our people’s memorial to honor the dead in Gaza. When this evening’s remembrance ended, we surrounded the pumpkin with the ecological remnants of our temporary autonomous altar honoring Tortuguita on this yahrzeit, this one-year anniversary, of murder-by-police in Atlanta.
For some two hours, starting just after a fiery sunset faded into dusk and then dark, people shared poems, blessings, and music; people lit candles, ate homemade food, and sipped hot tea; people formed wet soil into seed bombs and hurled them to new homes (because the cops and state may be able to cut down certain flowers, but they can’t keep the spring from coming); people spoke in low tones, passing along warmth through hugs, and here and there, taught each other songs like a Weelaunee version of “Bella Ciao” and sang aloud to the night sky and each other. There were silences too—not planned, not awkward, just right, as if we were hearing the old souls that are trees communing tenderly with the relatively new souls like Tort whom they are welcoming into their forest. Trees of life, trees as life, for even if the winter branches looked bare, the sap of life flows through them.
Then we walked in a small procession, guided by candles til the wind hushed them, down to the river’s edge, and to repeated shouts of #VivaTortuguita! someone set free the paper-mache tortoise into the water, and we watched it seem to swim away in harmony with the currents.
We make sacred against the profane of this world.
@stopcopcity @defendatlantaforest
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2024-01-14 16:35:32

100 days of genocide.
100 days and 75 years of Nakba.
100 days and 75 years of who counts and who doesn’t.
May the memory of each and every martyr be a blessing.
May their memory spark blessed liberation.
From the river to the sea, beyond borders and states.
Beyond colonialism and capitalism.
Beyond Islamophobia, antisemitism, and racism.
Beyond walls and militaries, police and prisons.
Beyond genocide.
#UntilAllAreFree.
To move, return, or stay.
To self-determine.
To self-organize.
To self-govern.
To live.
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2024-01-14 04:09:18

I went for a late evening walk under a winter sky, when the crisp air makes the stars extra visible and thus extra expansive. My next edited anthology “Constellations of Care” (Pluto Press, April 2024) speaks in part to how “anarcha-feminism in practice” does the same for those often excluded from the universe of liberation. Here are two more excerpts as I work my way through proofing the book.
“Colectiva Mujeres Subversivas: In Solidarity and Friendship” by Lora Galora:
“Polilla taught us how to use stencils. We threw all of our ideas together. To start, we wanted to demonstrate freedom and autonomy, so we used a drawing of a bicycle to represent that. We wanted to be inclusive for all kinds of women, so we made the bike long with multiple seats to include a woman with a prosthetic leg. There was one person in high heels and another in boots to portray the spectrum of femininity. We also added a child to represent motherhood. The bicycle was shooting flames to represent the internal fire we all carry, and in the flames we’d written ‘Existe Resiste’ (Exist! Resist!).”
“Pink Peacock: Lavishly Accessible,” Misha Holleb in convo with Alice Ross:
“We had the desire to be in and provide an accessible space, and the knowledge that disabled people are disproportionately likely to be poor and hungry, and that queers are disproportionately likely to be disabled, and so on. It was just knowing that people need a thing and so we try to make the thing happen. …
“Money is an access issue, and that’s always been one of the fundamental principles of the café: that it’s free. … And then there are mental and social access needs. Things like you don’t have to look a certain way, or be between eighteen and thirty-four, to be treated with dignity as a queer person, … or know all about gender theory and what your own gender stuff is in order to come talk to us about trans stuff.”
“There are a lot of examples around neurodivergence too. We decided early to have autism-friendly days—low-sensory days where we wouldn’t play music—but we changed from playing white noise to things that are less harsh like birdsong because of the collective’s feedback.”
For more on the book or to preorder:
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349954/constellationsofcare
#ConstellationsOfCare
#AnarchaFeminismInPractice
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2024-01-13 02:54:06

In proofing my way through my next anthology, “Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice” (Pluto Press, April 2024), while the powers-that-be so uncaringly go about the business-as-usual of genocide, I’m trying hard(er) to listen to the big, little ways that the contributors speak to what it looks like to make feministic space to humanize each other, in a world that sees most of us as disposable.
In “Tarps and Gossip: Existing as Resisting,”
@raanibegum notes,
“I wanted to extract some deeper organizing wisdom gained from our gatherings on a poly tarp in our designated spot in a park. The truth of the matter is, we are just some whores stubbornly carving out something in a space wrecked by unimaginable hostility. As sex workers and drug users, we are not seen as people able to manage ourselves and our lives. Institutional violence deems us as ‘not human,’ and this translates palpably in the ways we are treated. Rather than being stymied by it, it gives our organizing more freedom. … [We are] not goal oriented [but] instead oriented toward friendship and rest. Some of my favorite Nightshade memories are of people coming to nap. Not only do we build relational trust that allows napping to happen, but we model community naps and community rest.”
In “Brown Girl Rise: How We Take Care of Our Own,” @tlalcihuatlx describes an organizational “emphasis on the fierceness of our love for each other … a militant resistance to the ways that the culture of white supremacy constantly tries to worm its way into our work and relationships. As Dani [in BGR] defines it, ‘Fierce love is loving people authentically and as they show up, and really loving people to the point where you allow them to be their full self around you and make that love a priority over everything else. I think in our work we are constantly dealing with deadlines and having to present to the world in a certain way to make the work that we’re doing seem legitimate. And I think the way that we really fight against that is with fierce love. No deadline matters as much as the needs of people within this collective.’”
For more on the book or to preorder, see:
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349954/constellationsofcare/
#ConstellationsOfCare
#AnarchaFeminismInPractice
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2024-01-01 23:20:19

May we still see other possible worlds through the rubble.
May we continuously find seeds of other possible worlds in the here and now of diaspora.
May we always fight and love and live for glimpses of other possible worlds.
May we remember all the dreamscapes we’ve wandered through, cultivated, and sparkled within.
May those memories catalyze blessed uprisings and social transformations, dignity and experimentation, autonomous communities and collective care, the juiciness of solidarity and bittersweetness of rebellious mourning.
Their world is one of nightmares: policing and punishing, walling in and dividing, dispossessing and disappearing.
Our worlds are the stuff of dreamscapes, even when clouds seem to blot out the stars and moon:
“These are difficult times, I know, but don’t fall into resignation, don’t abandon hope; never! Not for one moment. Even if everything seems lost, and the bad things that afflict humans and the earth seem unbearable, keep on finding strength and inspire it in your comrades. It is exactly in those darkest moments that your light helps. And always remember: ‘Every storm starts with a single drop. Try to be that drop.’”
—last letter of Lorenzo Orsetti, anarchist from Florence, Italy who fought and died in and for Rojava
On this thirtieth anniversary of the Zapatistas’ other possible world, a piece of a world in which other worlds fit, may we take the side of liberatory dreamscapes:
“Our choice is not between war and peace but between life with dignity or without.”
—Subcomandante Galeano
#OtherWorldsArePossible
#TryAnarchismForLife
#UntilAllAreFree
(photos, all from Nov-Dec 2019 in either Athens or Crete)
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2024-01-01 04:16:40

I went to a noise demo on this #NotMyNewYear, #NotOurWorld evening, and felt profound love for how anarchists make time and space, day in and day out, for solidarity, deep and reciprocal.
I went to a noise demo that took pauses in the cacophony of @brassyourheart marching band, amplified music by the @pansy.collective, and the banging of pots and pans to give voice to how our solidarity sees intimate kinship between struggles—naming political prisoners and those politically imprisoned because of things like racism and classism; naming criminalization against anarchistic movements both local like @parksareforeveryone and further afield such as @stopcopcity; naming the open-air prison and now genocide in Gaza; naming the injustice system’s logic and our abolitionist ways of troubling it.
I went to a noise demo where DIY solidarity looked like warm pizza and fresh flowers and zines and handcrafted stickers, freely gifted, and the @certaindayscalendar offered as a fundraiser for @avlbail.
I went to a noise demo on stolen Cherokee lands, walking to and from it past capitalist excess drunk on its own delusions and power, and I cried both ways. I wiped tears away during the demo. My body was there, seeing those in the jail flash lights back at us, wanting them to all be free, and prisons and police to be abolished, and a wholly new world take their place. But my heart was far, far away, with the dead. The dead who should still be here were it not for thefts of lands and all that’s sacred, including life.
I went to a noise demo, yet this #NotMyNewYear, #FuckThisWorld, I heard and felt the quiet of absences: three months of tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered or still “missing” under the rubble, and today, one sudden and still incomprehensible death that’s hitting hard for me and many others, @kleebenally. May their blessed memories—each and every of our dead—topple walls and empires, colonialism and fascism, and all that keeps us from being free, from living lives worth living and dying in our own good time, not killed off early by this sick, sick social order.
#AllComradesAreBeautiful
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
#UntilAllAreFree
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2023-12-31 03:21:12

“Happy New Year!,” the lifeguard yelled across the pool at me with chirpy enthusiasm after I’d finished swimming laps—at the precise instant when the endorphins had kicked in to offer me a momentary reprieve from the pain of these times. His optimism shattered that.
If you know me, you know I’m not good at hiding my feelings, with my facial reactions always betraying my inner emotions even if I say nothing.
I looked thoroughly annoyed; he looked bewildered.
The stakes feel starker than ever, and so do the contrasts: between those who see and those who choose not to.
Maybe it’s only us rebels who are having debates as this Gregorian new year approaches like, “Will 2024 be worse than 2023?” “Hasn’t every year of late been worse than the previous one?” “Does 2020 now feel good in comparison?” or asserting predictions for 2024 such as “it’s bad,” even before it starts.
Instead of “happy,” the words I’ve been hearing from friends recently are terms like “rage,” “grief,” “depressed,” or “broken.” These seem perfectly sensible and healthy responses to what’s ailing humanity. Yet most prominently of late, I’ve heard utterances of “despair.” Even the most prefigurative of us anarchists (aka me) find “despair” dogging their heels.
Despair clouded my walk home from the pool, and even though the twilight sky stretched out in magnificent expansiveness, I felt the lack of any horizons. I felt empty.
Each morning for nearly 3 months on waking, I immediately search for all the reports from the Palestinian press on the ground in Gaza. Usually, one or more have been murdered. Always, they show tragedies and horrors—the wanton brutality of colonization, occupation, states and their military complexes. Always, I bear witness; I cry. And maybe like you, I try to do what little I can.
Yet I realized I didn’t cry this morning. And I realized numerous of the press said they want to cry but can’t anymore. Some graffiti noted, “If it were a matter of crying, we would cry, but it’s beyond that.”
Hence despair.
Yet an hour ago, a friend reminded me that despair is a healthy response—an emotion “filled with embers,” inklings we still have a fire in our hearts. And hearts.
#UntilAllAreFree
(photo: spray-painted tag seen several days ago on a white-painted brick wall in so-called Asheville reading “no genocide” in red and “free Palestine” in black)
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2023-12-29 03:27:24

A small reminder (that should go without saying) to non-Jewish and/or non-Muslim anarchists out there, via a fragment of a wheat-pasted poster I saw recently: our fights are intertwined; so is our liberation. Solidarity is our best weapon. And that solidarity should extend, as anarchists, to fighting all forms of deadly -isms and hierarchies—not just select ones.
I’m seeing more and more “sloppy” positions among non-Jewish anarchists who were raised within some form of Christianity—positions that inadvertently (or not) aren’t at all sensitive to their Jewish anarchist friends and all the awfulness, conundrums, and feelings we’re grappling with these days, never mind all the numerous fronts we Jewish anarchists are having to fight on that you might not even see or be aware of. Or sadly, painfully, inadvertently (or not) are replicating bad/old/tired antisemitic tropes. Or sadly, painfully, inadvertently (or not) are throwing their Jewish anarchist friends under the bus—or seemingly advocating our death along with all Jews, or at least a hefty amount of bloodlust against most of the world’s Jews.
My heart feels more broken then ever by the genocide against Palestinians, and as an anarchist, by knowing we can’t rely on any state, international body like the United Nations, or NGO to stop it. (Progressives and liberals can at least comfort themselves with such delusions.) All we can rely on is each other, as bleak and horrific and powerless as that feels when Palestinians are being massacred by the hour. Yet we only keep our hearts—broken, yes, precisely because they are fiercely and rebelliously loving—if we keep steadfast to liberatory forms of solidarity, liberatory forms of collective care, including taking care not to do (further) harm to each other.
Because fascism and colonialism, racism and heteropatriarchy, states and cops, antisemitism and Islamophobia are damned good at harming us without anarchists offering a helping hand. Without us, inadvertently (or not) becoming as bloodthirsty as them.
What we have that they never will is our ability to gift each other as much life and empathy, love and solidarity as possible.
(photo: bottom half of an 8.5x11 white piece of paper wheat pasted to a wall in so-called Asheville, NC, as seen on a walk; the words on the paper, in black ink, read: “Fight for Palestine! Fight for humanity! Fight racism! Fight Islamophobia! Fight antisemitism! Fight colonialism!,” signed by “Eve Adams sisters in arms / Jewish voice for anarchy,” with three little symbols: a Star of David, dove with olive branch, and circle alef [jewish anarchist version of a circle A])
#JewishVoicesForAnarchism
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
#UntilAllAreFree
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2023-12-27 02:40:31

In this dumpster fire of a world, it feels especially sweet to share some heartwarming news!
Today, a project I’ve been collaborating on behind the scenes with @firestormcoop for the past couple months is ready to go public: Banned Books Back! And I get to unveil its adorable A-team mascot: our “Trash Fascism, Not Books” possum (lovingly created by my talented friend @des.tattooart).
What makes Banned Books Back such good news is that your friendly anarchist bookshop—Firestorm—gets to take 22,500 brand-new children’s books that were about to be “trashed” by a narrow-minded Florida school district and gift them back to kiddos, starting with young folks in Florida!
This isn’t simply poetic justice—though it’s that too. We see this act of solidarity as a form of resistance against fascism, which seeks to erase ideas as a precursor to erasing people.
It’s no coincidence that Florida, which leads the United States in book bans, decided to dump lots of LGBTQ titles and is equally at the forefront of violent attacks on queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people. Or that these kids books—exploring topics ranging from racism and colonialism to radical history and visionary organizing—were banished from one of Florida’s most racially diverse counties.
As Banned Books Back unfolds, we’ll share other ways that our fight against fascism—as anarchistic folks—weaves its way into this whole project. For now, here’s an example. In each free package of 5-6 kids books we send out, we’ll include a sticker version of our playful possum printed by the good folks at @offcolordecals, which self-describes as “fuck fash, ACAB, love your comrades, … support direct action and mutual aid efforts,” and a copy of the fabulously cute and fiesty zine “I Am a Unicorn and I Like to Fight: A Kid’s Guide to Standing Up to Fascism and Bullies,” thanks to @eterniapress letting us borrow the PDF.
Alas, shipping free books is expensive! We need your generous help!
Donate to and share our fundraiser: https://givebutter.com/bannedbooksback (& read our fun FAQ there)!
Share our “book request” form with Florida kids and others: https://firestorm.coop/bannedbooks.html
#TrashFascismNotBooks
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2023-12-15 04:42:37

Hanukkah 5784: Flames of Resistance (Night 8)
Over 8 nights, beyond borders, around the globe, Jews and our accomplices have lit millions of candles as part of rituals of resistance against genocide—and this evening, Jewish direct actions shut down 8 bridges in 8 US cities, including with enormous “candles” lined up like on a Hanukkah menorah as blockade material. We wanted so to believe that somehow the collective power of our sacred flames would enact a miracle—the heart of our diasporic Hanukkah story—stretching from not just one short ceasefire, but an end to all bombing, displacement, dispossession, siege, occupation, apartheid, Zionism, and fascism, toward the real miracle of freedom, dignity, and life.
As we Jews like to say, “May it be so.”
But it isn’t yet so.
All of our rededication feels for naught.
Yet as the days wear on—with Hannukah night 8 reflecting Gaza day 69 or even 70 depending on moon zones—as the last of our candles flicker out, we cannot “go gentle into the night,” as antifascist poet Dylan Thomas penned. Even if all of our brilliant diversity of tactics have not been enough these past 8 days, 70 days, 75 years, back further to well over 500 years of colonizers and capitalists and nation-states; even if despair now wraps its icy hands around us and the cold brutality of this world steals our fire, Hanukkah reminds us that liberation will always be a struggle, a journey, a task we can never abandon.
We must rage, rage against the genocide.
We must rage, rage against white Christo-fascist supremacy.
We must rage, rage against all states, all nationalisms, all of their prisons, militaries, cops, courts, and borders.
We must rage, rage against Islamophobia and antisemitism.
We must rage, rage for solidarity, mutual aid, and fierce love among us.
Our flames of resistance can never go out.
Mon amour—from the rivers to the seas, may Palestinians and Jews, may everyone, be free.
(photos: my candles and Alfredo M. Bonanno’s “Palestine, Mon Amour” as zine [DM me your email for PDF]; sticker spotted on stolen Cherokee land: “free Palestine, fuck the police, from Turtle Island to Gaza, no borders, no states, #ACABeverywhere”)
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2023-10-31 04:11:21

There’s nothing quite so inspiring as seeing the smallest kernel of an idea—last night—turn into a large, self-organized collective effort to create space for love and rage, connection and solidarity, and mourning and resisting … and in a few days from now. What an honor, including getting to end the second organizing meeting (two evenings in a row) by looking up to see the light of the moon—always a reminder to me of the sacredness of life and a guide to continually reach for the stars, even if everything on this earth seems to defy that kind of dreamy beauty.
This offering is, of course, one small piece of the tens of thousand and perhaps millions of displays of solidarity, imaginative organizing, and direct actions. Yet may they all add up to a force that can stop the bombs, halt the military incursion, and end the genocide as well as occupation, toward collective freedom.
Feel free to share these two infographics and the text version below far and wide, on and off social media. And hopefully see you in the streets this Saturday.
+ + +
Speak-out and March
in Solidarity with Palestinians
Saturday, November 4
2 to 5 pm
Meet at Federal Bldg,
151 Patton, Asheville
Speak-out, esp. for Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs & anti-Zionist Jews
Poetry, music & art
Grief altar
March highlighting US & global complicity with Israel & the IDF
End the genocide + end the occupation
Mourning the dead, fighting for the living
Free Palestine فلسطين حرة
Until all are free
(Please wear N95/KN95 masks)
#ACABmeansIDF
#SolidarityNotStates
#FreedomNotFascism
#UntilAllAreFree
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2023-10-25 02:34:48

Ephemera like zines, posters, stickers, murals, stencils, banners, and the like might seem extraneous in a time of genocide.
Yet I often return to the Zapatistas’ assertion that “Our word is our weapon.”
Or the fact that fascism, in whatever guise it takes, seeks the total annihilation not *just* of a people but also their entire culture. It burns books, prohibits “degenerate” art, smashes sacred artifacts to bits, and on and on, in an effort to erase the land of even any memory of a culture. Even any memory of possibility. Of alternatives. Of whole lifeways and millennia-old wisdoms.
When we don’t see a landscape—from words to images—around us that speaks in the language of dreams and aspirations, that cries out our sorrow and rage, that mourns our dead and fights for the living, we bury the roots and seeds and branches of all we could and should be. We forget that “It didn’t have to be this way.”
And “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
And “It isn’t their way, not completely. Not yet. We will outlive them” and their monstrous world.
It’s why people write their names on their bodies, as kids and/or their parents on their behalf are doing in Gaza, or why one of the Jews who helped sabotage the crematoria in Auschwitz used to bury slips of paper with names of his family, friends, and community in the ground of the death camp.
I know that paper and other aesthetic forms seem impossibly ineffectual to stop what’s happening in Gaza. Paper thin, or worse, like our hearts right now.
Yet every scrap of ephemera we put out into the world is a monument to life, a testament to life, a resistance to death, a rebellion against fascism and genocide, occupations and colonialism, and a love letter on wings that we hope might reach those in Gaza, as if all the millions of Palestinian flags being raised into the air around the globe right now at demos could form a murmuration of solidarity on our behalf to disrupt and destroy the war machine.
May it be so.
So here’s one little offering: an interview by @161.crew with an Israeli anarchist, beautifully turned into a zine by my friend @chava_lah (available soon as a downloadable PDF; for now, DM me for it).
Original interview: https://161crew.bzzz.net/interview-with-an-israeli-anarchist
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2023-10-19 02:06:39

More tmrw on our Public Mourner’s Kaddish in so-called Asheville, NC, today. For now, a photo of our banner+altar, plus the “grounding” statement our little rad Jewish crew read out loud to the 200+ people who came.
“We are here, together, to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Palestine and across the diaspora. It was enough at the first utterance of establishing the settler colonial nation-state of israel in Palestine. It was enough the first hour of the Nakba in 1948 when thousands of Palestinians were forcefully and violently displaced from their indigenous lands by zionist militia. For over 75 years, Palestinians have endured abhorrent atrocity under occupation. Resources from Gaza to the West Bank to Hebron have been systematically stripped to inhumane levels of access. Water, electricity, movement, food, and housing for Palestinian people have been constricted by the israeli occupying forces for decades. What we are seeing in our time, what the people of Palestine are living through at this very moment, is genocide.
“We as Jews KNOW the horror of genocide, we have succumbed and suffered throughout the long arc of time, and so we say to the israeli state: Not. In. Our. Names.
“We will not stand by and be witness as the United States wholly backs the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), sending bombs with the intention of extinction into Palestine. In the past week alone, we have seen entire lineages of Palestinian families wiped off the registry; this is genocide. We have seen whole neighborhoods in Gaza where people lived full, wondrous, and loving lives, leveled to the ground; this is genocide. We have seen the sickening horror of israel bombing a hospital—killing hundreds of children, families, and doctors, and destroying crucial aid on the ground. Cumulatively, by definition, THIS is genocide.
“We are calling for an immediate ceasefire.
“We are calling for all military aid to israel provided by the United States and the West to end.
“We are calling for the total and complete end to the occupation.
“We are calling for the beauty of Judaism to rid itself of zionism.
“We are calling for collective liberation for all.
“The people of the world are our responsibility. We must love and protect one another—against colonialism, against statehood, against war, against occupation, against violence. We are each others flesh and bone, and each of us holds the miracle of existing, the right to flourish—to feel the full beauty of our being, our potential, and our love.
“Thank you for being here today and holding space as we mourn all the deaths, as we rage, as we see a different world cresting on the horizon.”
🖤❤️🪬🔥
(Banner with the words “Never again means never again for any people,” with intricate, luscious painted images of a pomegranate and olives with leaves, and glimpse of altar on the ground in front.)
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2023-10-12 19:36:54

It’s with heavy hearts that we’re announcing the cancellation of the Jewish Anarchist Salon with @mesarvot. Our friends at Mesarvot are understandably unable to focus on the salon right now, and we are sending them love and solidarity from afar.
If you want to contribute to their anarchistic work of refusing military service, as part of a bigger network of refusal groups, and joint initiatives of solidarity against the occupation, you can go to Mesarvot’s Instagram page, website at https://linktr.ee/Meaarvot, or use this direct donation link: https://app.moonclerk.com/pay/pe97jlkjood
Other ways to financially contribute, including by holding fundraisers, are:
Medical Aid for Palestinians, https://www.map.org.uk/
Middle East Children's Alliance, https://www.mecaforpeace.org/
Friends of Palestinian Medical Relief, https://friendsofpmrs.org/donate-now-2/
Gaza Mutual Aid, https://instagram.com/gazamutualaid?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Fauda (Palestinian anarchists), https://t.me/fauda_ps
There may be another relevant salon in the future. In the meantime, we remain committed to the work of collective liberation, a free Palestine, and a world without antisemitism and Islamophobia, and grieve the loss of so many lives.
🖤, Cindy Barukh + J, co-organizers
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
#UntilAllAreFree
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2023-09-20 03:26:39

Recorded version of “Solidarity Is Greater Than Fear: Lessons from G20 to Stop Cop City” webinar now available at https://bit.ly/G20Soli
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2023-09-13 02:14:04

“Solidarity is greater than fear”!
And solidarity is also our best weapon, sticking side by side until #AllAreFree, whether of prison, state repression, or charges! Or in the beautiful sense of inhabiting the free and ecological societies and communities of free peoples that we dream of, fight for, and already prefigure in various ways.
Part of that solidarity is coming in the form of yet another webinar for anyone in the @stopcopcity and @defendatlantaforest orbit, but especially those facing the heavy boot of state repression. It’s made possible thanks to my remarkable pals in so-called Canada and their willingness to share their experiences of dealing with conspiracy after the G20 almost 14 years ago, and @firestormcoop, willing to host and share a recording after!
Here are the details! Share widely!
Solidarity Is Greater Than Fear:
Lessons from G20 to Stop Cop City
Monday, September 18
7:00 pm EST
Virtual event!
To watch the webinar:
bit.ly/g20solidarity
Join former G20 codefendants and organizers Cedar, @lawandprotest, Mandy Hiscocks, Syed Hussan, and @harshawalia8 for a roundtable conversation. They will discuss their experiences of how they dealt with the ups and downs of conspiracy charges, state repression, and movement solidarity following the anti-G20 mobilizations in 2010 in Toronto, ranging from coping with emotions to avoiding isolation, to legal and political and strategic lessons for movements, and more.
In collaboration with Firestorm Books, https://firestorm.coop/
#SolidarityNotStates
#CareNotCops
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2023-09-12 03:42:41

Here’s a little glimpse of the Bash Back gathering in Chicago this past weekend, or at least some of its fierce, fabulous, and fiery sentiments as transformed into a red+orange stencil on a wall. The notion of #AbolishPolice felt extra crucial given that 61 people—and by association, anarchism—had just been indicted on RICO conspiracy charges a few days earlier, as the state tries hard to serve and protect its power (and cops) by unleashing more repression against @stopcopcity and @defendatlantaforest.
Happily, there was lots of love and solidarity in evidence at Bash Back for the codefendants, and I hope they all feel it in spirit, given that they’re spread far and wide across this continent. And I know that love and solidarity will not only continue but grow stronger over the coming months, too, as word of this statist backlash spreads.
Because many, many, many people love trees, not cops.
Right now, a big way that you—and your collectives, spaces, distros, bands, art, and so on—can tangibly demonstrate that love and solidarity for these 61 codefendants is by helping to raise oodles and oodles of money for the @atlsolfund, and/or donate some yourself, even if you already have previously. It’s greatly needed to pay the bonds (aka ransom) for those brave and bighearted codefendants stuck in the state’s claws.
Of course, shouting #DropAllCharges and #FreeThemAll from the rooftops wouldn’t hurt either.
But yeah, get busy with those creative fundraisers for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund—fundraisers that can do double-duty as gathering spaces for, say, a game night, community picnic, singalong evening, dance party, etc., nourishing us with joy even as we continue to defend this imperiled earth and each other.
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/contribute-to-the-atlanta-solidarity-fund
#CareNotCops
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2023-08-28 01:12:40

A few mornings ago, while visiting Pittsburgh, text messages began alerting me of an “active shooter” in the neighborhood I was staying—about a block away—even as sirens filled the air. My body reacted intuitively, as if those bullets spelled out “Tree of Life,” reawakening trauma from not that long ago in this same city.
It didn’t take long for friends to text that in fact, the active shooters were heavily armed cops, swarming the streets around one house, with the aim of evicting—by murder, as it turned out—one man from his decreased brother’s home. That man, William Hardison, had his family’s house stolen out from under him because of some tax issue, despite him going to the city to work out a deal to stave off homelessness.
It took hundreds of cops and SWAT teams from many jurisdictions most of the day to assassinate Mr. Hardison, an older Black man in a neighborhood that’s home to many other Black people of modest or low incomes alongside gentrifying forces increasingly edging them out. My body felt more reverberations of trauma, in solidarity with all of those who had to watch an army of police barricade and fully occupy many blocks around them—grime reapers in blue.
Daily life, in a blink of an eye, become thoroughly unsafe and dangerous because of police. Even the simplest things felt unnerving. For instance, the person lending me their guest room—away from home at work—texted me with fear for their cat. Had I let him outside? “My cat is pretty smart,” they wrote, plainly worried, adding that he’d likely “stay away from gunfire.”
That evening, I was scheduled to do a talk at @the.big.idea.412, hosted by @ratzonpgh. We’d been debating all day, as darkening storm clouds blotted out the sun, whether to cancel. We went ahead. On entering the Big Idea, I heard Mr. Hardison had just been killed, as the space filled up with people and heaviness. “I didn’t know what to do,” said one person. “I only knew I had to come here.”
Together, we processed, said Kaddish, and sang, enacting rituals of resistance within beloved community—not enough to save Mr. Hardison, yet essential to build more scar tissue around our wounded hearts so as to keep fighting.
#FTP
(photo: “Police don’t keep us safe” sticker, as seen on the stolen, surveilled, policed streets of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal in June 2023.)
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2023-08-16 02:49:25

There were so many sweet, tender, and moving moments at this past weekend’s @npub1dh3…saec—not to mention silly, inspiring, and connective ones (like the best and most wholesome kind of anarchist family reunions), among so many other dreamy descriptors—that it’s hard to narrow down examples, much less narrow down my gratitude to the organizers, tablers, presenters, and really everyone who converged at this bookfair.
But a highlight for me was the beautiful space made for not only honoring but also remembering and being vulnerably real about our grief—that is, sharing the whole of ourselves and life, with its abundance of joys and sorrows, wins and losses. There were three workshops related to mourning, ritual, dying, and death. There was an altar specifically built for the bookfair by an anarchist gravedigger and casket maker, and people added flowers, notes, art, photos, and herbal grief potions to it over the three days (see pictures 3 and 4).
And there was the friend from Durham, NC, who brought the banner pictured here, which they entrusted to me on the sixth anniversary of Charlottesville on August 12, and which @firestormcoop then let me hang in a prominent place of visibility and honor—over the area in the bookstore used for speakers during the bookfair. Six years ago, the banner was painted soon after Heather Heyer was murdered, and so many others were deeply injured and forever scarred, by fascists during the Unite the Right rally in Cville. It then was originally hung from the stone base of the first Confederate monument that folks tore down in NC, and later, on the one-year anniversary of that monument falling, it was hung up again—this time as part of an altar with names and flowers and candies around it, and folks read the names of people killed by the police in Durham.
The banner now has a home at Firestorm, as daily reminder that “we struggle in memory of all we’ve lost to white supremacy and fascism.” To my mind, all anarchist spaces should routinely make such room for the #ArtOfRemembrance, #RebelliousMourning, and #MendingTheWorld—which is about mending our own rebel hearts too.
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2023-08-12 17:28:57

On this sixth yahrzeit of Charlottesville, I’m borrowing this photo posted by my dear, tender-hearted, brave, and loving friend @scottdanielwilliams as my small #RitualAsResistance.
May Heather’s memory be a blessing and continue to spark blessed transformations that mend this world.
May friends and any of accomplices who were in Charlottesville that day, whether forever scarred physically and/or emotionally by the fascists, or in any way forever changed, find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.
May all of us who felt the impact from afar also find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.
May we all continue to spark blessed transformations to mend this world, as direct actions of the grieving rebelliously and deeply, and caring and loving rebelliously and deeply.
#MourningOurLosses
#FightingForTheDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#ArtOfRembrance
#WeMustOutliveFascism
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2023-08-12 02:38:28

Snapshots of day 1 of the 3-day anarchist holiday called the @npub1dh3…saec
few accompanying words, because I’m tired in that good kind of way where you feel full and nourished from being around so many friendly, unpretentious folks putting their hearts into practicing other possible worlds in the here and now. It’s making me fall in love all over again with what anarchism should and can be, especially in terms of mutual aid, solidarity, and communal care.
Photo 1. The good type of flags flying proudly outside @npub1zwj…qx3g.
Photo 2. The start of an altar to mourn the dead and remember them well so as to better fight for the living (please add to it this weekend), also outside Firestorm Books.
Photos 3-4. Asheville’s own anarchist bingo, times two—apparently already in the works even before my post the other day about bingo at this year’s Salon du livre anarchiste de Montréal | Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, and with its own regional flair.
#AlwaysCarryABook
#TryAnarchismForLife
#BingoNotBorders
https://acabookfair.noblogs.org/
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2023-08-10 02:39:25

For those coming to @npub1dh3…saec, there’s an abundance of remarkable tablers, talks, events, fundraisers, and other life-giving offerings. As anarchists, we’re keenly aware that life is sacred—human and nonhuman life—especially because we experience so much loss, and so much of it unnecessary due to this death machine of a social order. It is life-giving, too, to honor our dead and other losses, to remember them as blessings, as love, as part of why we fight so steadfastly for better, other possible worlds.
We often don’t make space, and as something that should always be available regularly in every anarchist space, for grief, which includes everything from rage and sorrow to joy and intimacy—which is to say, wholeness. So as my offering at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair…
Rebellious Mourning: Grief Circle
Saturday, August 12, 10 am
Field across from @firestormcoop
Due to deadly structures like colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, among others, communal traditions of “mourning our dead” have largely been killed off. Yet as human cultures have wisely understood for millennia, when we share the fullness of our lives, our sorrows and joys, we lessen the power of the forces that destroy us, while cultivating forms of collective care and social solidarity that alleviate unnecessary suffering and accentuate the inherent worth of life. Cindy Barukh Milstein will offer brief ritual(s) and framing thoughts, but mostly hold space for sharing, hearing, and honoring your stories of loss with care and compassion, in all of their messy-vulnerable beauty. You are not alone.
(photo: DIY grief altar at an anarchist picnic+gathering in a park in Tio’tiake/Montreal, September 2021)
https://acabookfair.noblogs.org/
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2023-08-06 16:46:43

The beauty of anarchism comes in the doing of it, as imperfect as that will always be. And we need each other to do anarchism, because it’s nothing if not the ongoing practices of proactively engaging in what it means to be free people in free and ecological collectivities.
We also need each other to bring those experiments to life—and remind each other of the ways we do that.
I’m grateful to @shaneburley not only for asking if he could chat with me for an interview in the lovely @fullstopmag, which uplifts small presses, and not only always being such warm, insightful conversationalist, but also for his observation that “I know you best as a real collaborative writer. … Why do you choose to do your work in such deep collaboration with others?”
I hadn’t really reflected on that impulse—and ever since, I’ve thought about it more deeply, so as to better and more intentionally embrace it, recognizing it (thanks to Shane letting me think out loud) as an anarcha-feminist practice.
For the full interview, see:
https://www.full-stop.net/2023/08/01/interviews/shane-burley/cindy-milstein/
Here’s an excerpt from the section on collaboration:
“[Collaboration] is also why I’m so committed to forms of self-governance, direct democracy, and self-organization. Even if sometimes it is actually much harder, it is more generative when more people try to create something together. People push each other to see things that they couldn’t otherwise see on their own. Collaborative projects challenge one to think differently. They make our creations feel richer, more beautiful, and more expressive, and offer different vantage points that one [person] couldn’t see on their own. In this case, the collaboration is the 26 drawings of Circle As that each try to embody some beautiful element of anarchism. … If I’d had one artist draw all the Circle As, it wouldn’t have resulted in the depth and breadth of anarchism’s beauty that one reads on the pages of ‘Try Anarchism for Life,’ because of 26 artists, two graphic designers [@eff_charm and @house.of.hands], and me—all literally illustrating that anarchism manifests in countless differentiated and beautiful ways.”
(photo by artist-contributor @daisy.lotta; quote from @fullstopmag; book published by @tangled_wilderness)
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2023-07-15 01:22:20

Housing isn’t affordable anywhere. And gentrification and displacement are phenomena everywhere. At least in what’s called North America.
So this graffiti could be anywhere and everywhere.
Yet there’s something particularly heartening when tagging takes on a homespun flair and speaks with a regional vernacular. As if spray paint, in its own humble way, can conjure a sense of place, a sense of home, that can’t be commodified. That in fact, is at cross-purposes with capitalism’s homogenizing logic, where the local vernaculars of how people have built housing for their own use and of their own crafting that fit the social and ecological contexts for millennia get demolished, and in their places rise up profit-based boxes of gray and glass condos.
So this graffiti, with its down-to-earthness, slang, and misspelling, captures something of the Midwest, including the rust-belt rage over the material abandonment and climate devastation that hit here many decades ago now. Rising rents and hipster art galleries and all the other trappings of this contemporary wave of theft and dispossession have come more slowly here in the flyover land. But make no mistake, it is here too—in this place being remade into a brutal copycat of the “property is theft” that is rearing its head anywhere and everywhere.
#MakeArtMakeTrouble
#ReappropriateOurWorld
#LandBack #HousingForAll
#CommonsNotCapitalism
#ArtOfResistance
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2023-04-20 00:32:55

On this day of blessed memory—the 80th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising—let us honor those rebellious Jews who fought back against the Nazis, because “we have always fought back.”
#[0]
#[1]
#[2]
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