Taking a Minute

We're going to take a break for a week or two, so that I've got a little breathing room to pursue the book When/If which I've been threatening for I think actual years now. But I want to leave you, for that time, with a call to action–or calls, maybe?

I went to the first meeting of a new group of abolitionists tonight, mostly university students and professors, it seemed, but some folks just local radicals or simply interested parties. I didn't talk–a white guy in an abolitionist space, I feel like most everyone else in the room has more and better things to say than I–but I listened while the gathered discussed the very adroit work of a former student of mine (yes I am apparently a hundred years old), and talked about ways that we might soften the carceral system in response to their repeated hardening of efforts. We didn't magically come to a solution. We didn't even, I don't think, precisely name some tactics in response to that question. But we did talk, and we talked at length about the injustice of mass incarceration and how it relates to other systems of oppression. We talked briefly about mutual aid and about teaching our children just what justice means.

This was done at that radical bookstore I talked about. I think north of 30 people showed up. We put another meeting on the books for April, and dispersed. It may not have seemed like much at the time, and it may not seem like much reading it, but this is just about all I want from you: gather together around a particular subject, talk about the shit that's plaguing us, and begin to talk about ways out of this quagmire. When I got home, I opened up my gun safe and did some dry fire training, both rifle and pistol. It was a Very Anarchist Evening.

The thing is, both the meeting and my (kinda bad) shooting circle back to the same thing: the solution to our problems is community. Again and again, it's community. It's people together that will take the teeth out of the carceral system by meeting the needs of the folks at risk, by decoupling ourselves from the labor the state draws from incarcerated peoples (insofar as is possible), by learning and teaching about what justice should look like. It's communities that we must defend and that must defend us. And these efforts, together, strengthen us against the absolute shitstorm that's coming and the ones that are already here.

There's so much bad breathing down our necks, folks, and yet I am not feeling beat. I feel like things in my little corner of the world could get turned around by force of collective will. That might sound silly when our opposition has all the money the devil ever printed and an army besides, but it can be done.

So, simple steps: in these two weeks there is 100%, without a doubt, a meeting of your community members. If you're in a decent-sized city, 100% there is even a meeting of folks already talking about this kind of stuff. Find it, go to it. If there isn't one– say you live in a rural area–then make one up. Host a Zoom. Get some friends together for an afternoon or an evening to blueprint your gardens, to do some light repair on your winter clothes before they get put away, what have you–and talk. Get mad. Figure out what you're going to do next.