**Such Interesting Aunties: Queering Care**

*Joel is the only non-parental member of a queer parenting collective; Cody is a trans man who’s been mistaken for his chosen niece and nephew’s dad*

My son Joel is one of the subjects of this Substack post from Lisa Sibbett, who writes **The Auntie Bulletin**, about "practical, everyday kinship".

I'm proud of him: he is working out the practice of what, so far, I have merely theoretically gestured toward:

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://theauntie.substack.com/p/such-interesting-aunties-queering-care?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nwk0&triedRedirect=true

Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

The Law of the Excluded Schmooze

"The belief that freedom and discipline must be in opposition only makes sense in a civilization that has long lived under what we might call the law of the excluded schmooze.
...
Perhaps discipline, properly understood, is nothing more than care extended through time—and schmooze, the medium through which that care becomes collective."

#CommunitariumProject

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/the-law-of-the-excluded-schmooze

Do like me, support Framasoft !

PeerTube is crucial in the fight to erode the control of user content by centralized, commercial, exploitive interests.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://soutenir.framasoft.org

Democracy as Practice, Socialism as Counter-Community

If democracy is a practice, then it cannot be sustained by electoral ritual alone. It must be enacted in everyday life, through communities that share power, resources, and meaning.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/democracy-as-practice-socialism-as-counter-community

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Redefining Socialism

"[S]ocialism is not a set of policies. It’s a way of organizing life so that the systems we build, maintain, and inhabit serve the flourishing of people in their full, embedded, interdependent existence. That means not just changing ownership structures, but changing the terms of belonging and the terms of engagement."

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/redefining-socialism

How ‘The Dawn of Everything’ Speaks to the Current Moment

Graeber and Wengrow make the case that both [Hobbes' and Rousseau's] views are misguided, that there is no linear tale of human history. They argue that a closer look at the data reveals that human beings have been experimenting with models for how to live as far back as we can look.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://undark.org/2025/05/29/opinion-dawn-of-everything/

Lowering the Threshold: Socialism Begins with Shared Life, Not Just Shared Demands

What if socialism began not with political identity, but with shared life? This post explores how DSA’s strongest cultural practices could be extended outward—through low-threshold, participatory platforms we call communitaria—so more people can live socialism before they’re asked to name it.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject
#DSA

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/lowering-the-threshold-socialism-begins-with-shared-life-not-just-shared

The photo below shows the current state of #CommunitariumProject

This article gives a basic idea of what I would like us to build:
https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/communitaria-what-we-need-to-do-i-think

Elaborations can be found in these articles: https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/tag:TheCommunitariumProject

If you are interested please DM me or send an email to [email protected]

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity