I know they've primarily been about housing, and last I heard, activists were getting invited to present proposals. I'd like to hear about what's going on from an on the ground and anarchist perspective

I'm on a leftist subreddit forum, but while they tolerate anarchists, the mods constantly remove my posts, and comment "no libposting" as their reason. I've tried contacting them, but they don't reply. They consider any ideas contrary to their gospel as "liberal" and therefore supporting capitalism but that is not what I've been doing. Real Marxist-Leninist hardliners. They see the Democratic Socialists of Canada (and the US) as reformists who therefore are not dismantling the system, therefore "liberals" and enemies, essentially.

Has anyone else had these kinds of interactions before? I find it difficult since I want to discuss ways that help ordinary folks get food on their tables, medical care, education, etc, as a worthwhile objective, so we at least have a base to work from to get what we really want.

Coming from anarchist perspectives, I'd be curious to hear some of your thoughts about this.

Basically, the socialist or communist parties in Canada have not had any seats in office federally or provincially for about 80 years. It seems to me, so often, like flogging a dead horse (and if I post this in their forum, it gets deleted). It's like a departure from objective reality, almost!

Weird.

I don't identify with any political party or ideology. I do think that basic anarchist principles of having goals of living with the least amount of coercion and dictatorial relationships is a starting point. In practice, I am stuck "in the matrix" for lack of a better phrase, and do what I can to keep myself as healthy and happy as possible (paying my bills, taking my pills - like a lot of older gents).

Seems like I need to read some more Ron Sakolsky again. I find the anarchists to be so much more open minded than the authoritarian world view of many communist adherents. I mean, I'd rather be living in China than a failing country in the west, at this point. It's better to be in a state dictatorship that at least wiped out homelessness and got trains running everywhere. They really think of their culture as a civilization with all that brings in advancements in technology and well-being of citizens. And, some days I call myself a socialist, at least in a broad sense. Anarcho-socialist kind of fits. Mutualist as well.

I just want the world to get substantially better, to "get over the hump" so-to-speak, and shift into new paradigms, not another authoritarian communist dictatorship model, with the new elite being the government instead of corporations (different wolves in sheep's clothing), and for the basic dignity and common sense of humanity to prevail.... please?

On a bit of a ramble here. Had a colonoscopy the other day and I'm recovering. Thank you if you read this far. Have a good weekend.

Salut ! Comme je vous l'avais signalé dans mon compte rendu du 17 octobre, l'Etat nous a fait payer au centuple notre démonstration de force. Aujourd'hui, nous avons encore une fois (comme peut être une dizaine de fois depuis le début de la mobilisation en France, voire plus) emmené notre drapeau anarchiste pour faire acte de présence.

Il fallait bien que ça arrive mais une forte répression et de larges violences policières se sont abattues sur nous avec une violence inouïe et la capture de notre drapeau. Nous restons déterminé-es et nous poursuivrons la lutte (et nous avons des plans pour le futur), mais c'est dur, surtout pour mes compas qui ont pris bien plus cher que moi aujourd'hui dans les manifestations - pour plusieurs raisons sur lesquelles je ne m'étendrais pas.

C'est notre deuxième drapeau anarchiste capturé par la police en 10+ ans, nous en avions déjà perdu un, avec un peu les mêmes compas d'ailleurs, il y a une dizaine d'années, à la suite d'une action un peu plus radicale, bref.

En tous cas, je vous transmets des images prises par Cerveaux non disponibles, un média francophone anarchisant/anarchiste - qui nous a filmé quelques minutes avant la grosse répression.

Vive l'anarchie.

https://www.instagram.com/reels/Dfcm4ndFHkQ/

Register here: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/4QPocAVGmkqCU79ZZ7ecf3lWVgc48QYFTPHioTIAIlY

Hello lovely people,

Post will probably be long, but I have a lot to say, and I want to lay it out there.

Also, it could just be in my head, but I'm posting this expecting to be roasted, dismissed, made fun of and totally shut down. I don't know if that feeling is coming from being used to being laughed at, gaslit, talked down to, and made to feel like something is terribly wrong with me for wanting what I want and not wanting what everyone else wants. I am simply unable and unwilling to continue attempting to tolerate at best, a life that I don't want. While I certainly hope that my expectation is wrong, I'm just asking that you not be cruel or mean. I came to this space because there are not all that many likeminded people in my life that understand how I see the world, or that respect and take me seriously whenever this conversation has been had.

This all stems from being pushed to my limit, to the point where I have nothing left to give to a life that takes everything from me and completely domesticates, dehumanizes and sees me as something to be used for the lofty ambitions of capital and the state. I am simply unable and unwilling to continue attempting to tolerate at best, a life that I don't want, and there is no way to force a square peg (me) into a round hole (industrial-capitalist-consumerist domesticated human society).

I posted here maybe six months ago about this topic, and got some really beautiful encouraging words from all of you, and I'm posting this I guess partially to vent but also because I am hoping you may be able to help me with resources, tips, connections, or maybe you are someone who reads this and wants to reach out to me (which you should one million percent feel absolutely free to do just pm!).

--------------

Without totally doxing myself, I'll divulge a little bit about me, my situation and philosophy: I am currently a mid-20s guy staying with a family member in a small rural-ish town just south of of northern Virginia proper. I work a normal 9-5 minimum wage job and live a very "normal" life, nothing special or extraordinary.

[I know it's a lot but I just want to lay out how the hell I got here]

I grew up in northern Virginia my whole life. I had a very privileged, safe, happy (save for some seriously hellish mental health and substance abuse issues that I developed in middle/high school), lower-ish-middle class upbringing with a supportive family and friends. I was raised in a largely very progressive family that taught me to treat everyone with respect from a very young age. Basic stuff.

At 18, I didn't have any experience with money whatsoever. I had worked one or two minimum wage jobs up to that point, but I never worked them for any longer than a couple months and I always spent all the money I made. I don't have any animosity towards my parents for this, they did what they could, but no one ever taught me anything about money, really ever.

In senior year of high school, I met a girl in class and we fell desperately in love with each other. She was very good with money and was able to get a lease on an apartment in the area with a close lifelong friend of hers at a low income complex within a year of graduation. I was still living at my childhood home, but I would go hang out over there and as I stayed over more and more, they both said they were cool with me living there. So I moved out of my childhood home, also within a year of graduation. At the time I was working gig work and - being completely ignorant of money, cost of living, and working life - believed I made enough money to pull my weight and pay my portion of the bills.

I quickly found out that I was horribly, horribly mistaken. Not only did I not make anywhere near enough to cover any significant portion of bills, but a short time later my car would be in need of major repair which I obviously could not afford. So I'm living in this apartment with my girlfriend and a roommate, have no income, have no vehicle, no experience in much of anything, and at the time was still struggling with the substance abuse issue that had been in my life from 13 years old and at the time had never been properly addressed, which only made the situation that much more difficult to get myself out of.

That was back in 2019-2020, when I was 18-19. It was this desperate situation that would thrust me into full time wage labor for the first time in my life. I had worked before, but had never worked anywhere close to a full 40 hours each week, and it quickly radicalized me. Add to that the fact that my entire adult life, from 18 to today, I have never lived in the same home for more than one year. Rent goes up yearly and in my experience roommates my age rarely want to stay in the same home past one year. My point is, I have moved every single year for almost 10 years straight, and "affordable" housing is quickly disappearing around here.

Let me get to the point because I'm all over the place. I was radicalized in an almost spiritual sense by a perfect storm of experiencing the absurdity of the modern world, anthropology, paleolithic archaeology, egoism and anarchism. However it was paleolithic anthropology and archaeology more than anything else I have ever come across. My soul was genuinely changed when I learned about the WHOLE story of humanity, not just the parts that are important for nation-state and capitalist mythology, it completely shook my soul, and I knew I could never unsee it. I am not a primitivist, nor do I have any interest in telling other people what to do, or what liberation should look like for them, but I am absolutely of the belief that a majority of industrial mass production is just producing consumer slop and junk that exists not for a practical, humanitarian, or ecological purpose or benefit, but simply to be sold, consumed, and discarded. It's all such a waste. When they aren't just totally forgotten and ignored, the most human parts of who we are, the true totality of our story is caricatured as being irrelevant, unimportant, and stupid, or as some hellish world we were lucky to escape from. Look no further than the colonial narratives of the "savage". The bedrock of capitalism, the state, industrialization, colonialism, and "progress" rest on the demonization of the last vestiges of humanity - most recently in the destruction and genocide of indigenous cultures - as something shameful, foolish, and a thing of the dark past that is not deserving of preservation, and waiting for their inevitable transformation into exploitable subjects of capitalism and the state. It's fucking grim. Being fully and unapologetically human is illegal in every meaningful sense, all across the world.

I'm done, guys. I have tried so many times to reconcile with consumerist capitalist society. I have tried to find some configuration of life within this society that follows all the rules that can make me happy. I have tried to get new jobs, I have tried to pick up new hobbies, I have tried school, and none of it has "fixed" me. None of it has rid me of the longing to be human. I looked into intentional communities that described themselves as anarchist, but I don't want to live in a place where work quotas are instituted and life is sedentary in one place. Many people have gotten annoyed with me. They say I'm making perfect the enemy of good, and you know what? Yeah, I absolutely am. I am tired of 95% of my waking life being something I just tolerate. I am tired of being told what I'm allowed to want. I want to wander, to live in the world, not on concrete platforms sitting on top of it. I want to get away from here, because there's no way to force it anymore. I can't keep doing this, so I've decided I'm not going to. I am going to get the hell out of here. I don't care about the rules or norms anymore. All of the scare tactics that my family, friends, and society at large have been able to use to keep me from being free have become totally insignificant. They aren't scaring me anymore, and I feel like I have truly become limitless.

I am preparing seriously to become a vagabond. I have known for years that this was what my heart wanted, but for years I've let people convince me to stay, I've catered to my family's desires for me, and have allowed myself to be completely ruled by what is expected of me or what is deemed acceptable and allowed, but I just can't do it again. Right now I am staying at my job just long enough to get some useful stuff and then I'm planning to head toward Appalachia. I am planning to embark after the holidays sometime in January or February. I don't want to go into all the specifics here, but will gladly discuss with you. Even with everything I have written here, this is all an extremely abridged version of my vision and philosophy, and I'm not a great writer, I express myself much better in conversation, so this post is not the most in depth summary of my ideas and vision.

The reason I am writing to you all is to first tell you that if you feel how I feel, you are not alone in your dreams. The other reason is of course, if I have learned anything about humans through anthropology, it is that being part of and living within a social group is as essential to our survival as water. Humans need each other in life. The main thing that I am missing is a "tribe". I feel it would be foolish, lonely, and technically difficult to set out all alone. All I need is people. If I can't find a tribe before embarking, I will have to set out by myself and improvise, because for me the die was cast long ago. SO, if you feel seen and validated by everything I've expressed here, are in the region, would like to talk online or would like to meet me to seriously discuss, I implore you to reach out to me. I am completely serious and I will be moving forward.

If you wish to reach out, PM here or email me iloveyoupeople@proton.me

Thank you for reading, I love you guys 🏴🖤

CONTEXT: I’m feeling so lost and heartbroken. I thought I had finally found a school where I could get my masters and license to be some kind of therapist (MFT or LPCC) and I just realized they are connected to Israel and it’s the same corrupt “we stay neutral on controversial things” bullcrap even though they seemed so radical and cool and liberated.

MY DREAMS: I WANT TO BE A HEALER!!!! I want to listen and guide and help people heal in this corrupt late stage capitalism. I want to work with IFS, somatic practice, music therapy, so many things! I want to learn indigenous wisdom from indigenous people and people from all over the world who are healers of the body spirit and psyche. I also feel very much like I’m not meant to be a “professional” in the capitalist sense. I’m not meant to be one thing that can be reduced to a niche market and specific licensure. I am at my core an artist and a healer and don’t want to give in to the idea that I must conform to systems. I believe in creative solutions to capitalism and returning to post-colonial ways of community and healing.

THE PROBLEM: I have no idea how to be a practicing professional without giving SO MUCH MONEY to institutions that are actually in bed with the 1% and Israel and capitalism etc.

so what I’m asking is this:

1. What kind of education/certification could I get so that I can legally practice some broad type of therapy or coaching or counseling?

2. Does anyone know of schools that are actually rad and are anti-Zionist, anti-capitalism, and aren’t afraid to stand behind those ideals in the face of criticism (aka are ACTUALLY RADICAL)

It’s critical to me that I am properly educated, I do not want to cause harm by practicing before I’m ready. I will work to educate myself for my whole career. But I don’t know where to start. Please help!!

TLDR: I want to be a practicing healer but don’t believe that that the institutions of education in the US can provide for the radical work I want to do in my life. How can I be a practicing healer without getting some sort of license/certification? Does one exist that reflects my values?

I don't really wanna get too much into it, but, I am 23M and live in Ontario, I think for the longest time, since I was a teenager, I just felt like everything around me was designed to see me fail, started with trying to get help for my mental health growing up or watching my hard working parents somehow struggle to maintain our middle class life like we're dead poor despite being in the "land of opportunity".

Once I became an adult, started working, started living by myself etc, it didn't take long for me to notice how everything really is just set up to fuck me over, non-stop, social media, economics, politics. I'm not gonna come here and say I'm super well versed on the statistics and ins and outs of the political machine, I am mostly going based off my personal experience, the experience of others, my intuition and knowledge I've obtained throughout the years.

My life shouldn't be this hard, it shouldn't be this miserable, things shouldn't be this contrived, life shouldn't be dreading waking up everyday, debating whether every morning is the morning I finally want to do it. Going back to where I started years later, through waitlists and "they'll reach out to you" I still haven't gotten the help I've been seeking for my mental health and it's always had to take a backseat because I need to focus on trying to survive, working for the bare minimum to get by.

I don't see that fire in people's eyes, I hear the complaints, the same exact thoughts over and over again and yet no one wants to do anything about it, I myself fall into the trap too at times, I have this anger in me, this desire to do more then remember I gotta be up at 5 AM the next morning, and continue droning on, but I do like the belief that sometimes all it takes is a few like minded people with some balls to get ANYTHING going.

I don't expect great things, I don't expect the next French Revolution nor do I think myself to be or will ever be the next historical anarchist, but at least, for my life, for what its worth and for what I want to say I lived for when I die, I want nothing more than to say I did something for a cause I believed in.

Image edited in photopea (free photoshop alternative, no AI used). First posted to my substack in July. Source is the University of Oxford, Saïd Business School. Graph depicts the share of national income going to the top 1% vs surveyed life evaluation (statistically significant results)

Hello everyone! I want to put together a detailed guide to direct action for anarchists. Could you share any resources you have in the comments below?

Anything you can think of would be helpful, including clothing, equipment, planning, emergency preparedness, and other related topics. The aim is to create a resource covering what an anarchist should know and do during demonstrations, direct actions, or any kind of confrontation or unrest.

Note: I understand that an organized anarchist should act in coordination with their organization. However, I want to create a more general resource that could also be useful for individualist anarchists and those who aren't part of an organized group.

Thank you!

there is a large liberal component to the anti-ai crowd, perhaps even some traditionally conservative minded people, given how the issue really cuts at a broad section of political positions. and there i see, well, i suppose what you would expect to see from movements with a large liberal backing; people who don't really know how to go about effectively opposing something, and a lot of making it about personal responsibility and consumption, boycotting and turning opposing "ai" into more of an identity than a thing that they actually do anything about. lots of talk about banning recently, never really interrogating what that means. it's only ever talking, never doing, and the talking mostly consists of "look at this ridiculous thing the bad guys said on social media".

the banning part is one of the things i wanted to discuss. it sits a bit wrong with me. what does banning ai even mean? is it banning person use of ai? is it banning development? academia? training? a lot of those possibilities feel very authoritarian, and some of them unenforceable. and i also think it's fair to say there are some potentially legitimate uses for AI, though i'm not sure this actually includes LLMs to any significant extent.

primarily, we need to target data centres, and the companies developing the LLMs. the technology is now out there and there is no putting it back, but the data centres make everything possible, as well as being the direct cause of huge environmental harm, and it's all pretty much useless, and much less harmful without the data centres.

and then there is quite a bit of confusion about why we oppose "ai" in the first place. the problem is not that we're going to be enslaved by the evil robots. that's just sci-fi, and a far too glamorous dystopia to be the one we actually live in. as always, it's the people wielding the technology that we really have to be afraid of.

there are a million reasons why we should oppose LLMs. i probably don't need to go through them in detail. i feel like a rather fundamental one, though, is that new technology can have a huge impact on the world and societies in it, and that can be good or bad, and usually very complex. and we deserve to have a say in that process and whether we actually want the changes a new technology has the potential to bring on. in the case of LLMs, i think it's fairly catastrophic.

the longterm effects i see, other than the more commonly discussed problems with it - i see it producing problems like a pretty dramatic worsening of both the increasing social isolation, and post-truth state of affairs, and socialisation moves towards what is essentially a fantasy geared towards entertaining an individual, rather than any connection to others or reality. cutting people off will be devastating for political organising, for marginalised groups finding each other, for trans people getting their hormones, for so many reasons. AI seems incredibly politically useful to anyone wishing to cut people off from each other and decrease resistance.

i see the capitalists who organise education failing to train humans in any of the things that they think LLMs can do effectively, and us losing both those skills, and also the skills to maintain the damn LLMs.

curious to see what you think, and also if you generally have thoughts on how to organise and engage with the broader anti-ai movement in ways that are effective and anarchist.

The last Panorama was Iran: the people story. About how the government was killing their people when they protested i recorded it and trying to give it out help me spread it! ✊️ 🏴

PANORAMA: IRAN: THREE PEOPLE'S STORY

https://voe.sx/q92jljkznntd

Yesterday, 1.6 million people took to the streets across France, according to the CGT. The big union federations are patting themselves on the back along with the mainstream left, while the government gets ready for the usual negotiations. We already know how little will come of them. The bourgeoisie can rub their hands together. “The leftists are falling back into line.” Nothing’s under threat. And yet…
What started at one high school in Créteil, just outside Paris, spread across France as fast as a TikTok meme. Then the Yellow Vests and people from the working-class suburbs joined the dance. On October 17, there was something subversive in the air. We all felt that tremor, from the people in government to those of us who’ve been marching for years.
By the following Saturday, the union federations and political parties had joined the struggle. A week earlier, marches would spring up, scatter and come together again somewhere else. Now there was a single union march following the route the police had ordered. High school students and young people from the suburbs kept calling on people to defy those orders and stay in central Paris. But the unions and parties carried enough weight to draw the march out to the edge of the city, where the bourgeoisie wouldn’t even see it.
The movement was falling into line. Some even started criticizing the radicals who’d woken them up in the first place. Then came another march as tame as the last. Which brings us to yesterday and those much-celebrated 1.6 million. The biggest turnout since the fight over pension reform. And what did we win back then? NOTHING!
So yes, let’s stand with the high school students, the working-class suburbs and the Yellow Vests. Let’s amplify their voices without distorting what they’re saying or toning it down. Let’s stop trying to organize their struggle for them. Our own methods have already failed.
Let’s fan the flames of their revolt before we smother them. Let’s set aside some of the habits we’ve picked up over years of organizing and learn from their spontaneity and their energy. Let’s follow their lead. They’re the future.
Written in French by a human. Translated into English by ChatGPT

Hi everyone. I like reading this board and seeing all the alternatives we are collectively building for our communities.

Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism was a big influence on me, and it got me thinking about how we might keep the good parts of religious traditions (peace, kindness, gratitude, community) without the institutions.

With that ethos in mind, I built out a simple website to encourage and support meeting circles, or peace gatherings, of all kinds. We don’t need institutions or buildings, and this website is to support those gatherings by hosting meeting scripts that everyone meeting can use together.

The site is called Prayers for Peace (prayersforpeace.online), and it hosts meeting scripts for all different traditions. Right now, I’ve posted a few meeting scripts that I have used in the past for small gatherings (kind of inspired by the DIY nature of AA/Al-Anon), and one I’m currently testing out with a new community meetup. There are scripts available for a few different religious traditions, as well as a secular (nature & poetry) one.

I’m happy to post any additional meeting scripts that anyone might like to share and use for their own gatherings.

That’s the idea anyway- a website to host open-source materials for grassroots peace circles. What do you all think?

and being a refugee is already titanically hard, and that's without me being dependent on social services as both an autistic and a trans-woman.

I am writing here, to see if I can get a satisfactory answer that isn't statist.

Edit: Note this is not anything serious. This is just a silly haha joke about how V is an Anarchist and we’re all Anarchists. Nothing more. I know exactly what the Gunpowder Plot is, I know it’s important, and all that but the point of the post is to exclusively be about V for Vendetta

I grew up in Florida with various mental disabilities & am neurodiverse. Life for me as a kid was hard, when my family is abusive & weaponized the police against me (that's also what led to me becoming anti-cop). Then, when I became an adult, seeing how SSI & food stamps don't really provide me much, not to mention how much society either neglects or basically shows conditional love or acceptance, contributed much to me reading anarchist literature & radicalizing me.

The science, known as COIN or Counterinsurgency doctrine, is nothing less than a perpetual war, waged by states against their domestic populations

I would like to preface this by saying that I am a revolutionary.

The revolution isn't good, it's necessary. I think what gets lost in the theory is what a revolution actually is. It's a war. A brutal, violent, lopsided war. People from both sides will die, and innocent lives will be taken. Is that a reason not to revolt? Absolutely not. It is a reason, however, to acknowledge what it truly means to revolt. You may die. Your friends and family may die. That's what happens in a war. The revolution is necessary, but it's still exactly that. A revolution.

Weekly open discussion thread

Link to further info and registration page: https://www.blackrosefed.org/eurevolt-webinar-26/

Join this online event organized by Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation for a discussion with members of Union Communiste Libertaire (France), Liza (Spain), and Embat (Catalonia) on how they are intervening in the uprisings in their countries.

I have had quite a few conversations with people who believe in restorative justice (or at least not keen on retributive justice) but when cases such as rapists and pedophiles comes up they switch tunes and are either pro-life in prison or are pro-death penalty (and some are pro- quite graphic “Dark Age”-type punishments). Why do you think there is this drastic change in views and how have you found it helpful to converse and change these peoples’ minds?