Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy (AK Press)

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief (AK Press)

If you’d like to snag one or more of these books, email at cbmilstein [at] yahoo to work out the simple details.

#TrashFascismNotBooks
#ReadWriteRebel
#EducatingOurselvesForFreedom
#AnarchistHoliday
#HonoringOurDead
#FightingForOurAncestors
#FightingForTheLiving

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

All anarchist(ic) spaces should routinely include grief altars.

So it lit a fire in me to see this one today at a @stopcopcity, @defendatlantaforest, and Palestinian solidarity afternoon of five workshops in so-called Asheville, NC, thanks to @12basketscafe lending its space and the @pansy.collective weaving it all together.

One candle on the altar burned for the whole seven hours, gently illuminating a banner behind it asserting that Palestine will be free. That flame seemed a carrier of the radical traditions, wisdoms, and solidarities in the room, and danced and flickered as if in tune with the joy and sorrow among us. The roses did what they do best: tend to broken hearts. Or as rebels have long said, “We need bread, but we also need roses!”

As we were all pitching in after the last workshop to clean up the space—where routinely, mutual aid breaks bread, as it were, through the community meals and so much else that happens there—I noticed the altar builder meticulously and reverently dismantling it. They gently picked up petals and leaves, and told me that they were going to set up the altar again at tonight’s fundraiser party.

If we can’t dance, it’s not our revolution. But if we can’t mourn and honor our dead, too, and remember that we only grieve what we love, and we love and fight for life and freedom fiercely and beautifully, then it’s not our revolution either.

#RebelliousMourning
#TryAnarchismForLife
#MourningOurDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#UntilAllAreFree

Tomorrow, at a Palestinian solidarity speak-out and march that many caring hands in so-called Asheville have been busily organizing for the past six days, we’ll set up our fourth public grief altar since October’s genocide began. They’ve all felt remarkably beautiful and painfully necessary—and not nearly enough to hold the tragedy and horror of so much loss.

But it feels impossible—if one has a heart—and disrespectful—if one has any humanity—not to mourn the dead as much and as often as we can, and as intimately bound up in our dogged resistance to the fascism that knows no boundaries.

Two essays, both mourner’s prayers in their own way, by two Palestinians and a Jew recently spoke to me. Both short pieces felt as if they’d be sacred offerings/gifts on or near our altars. So thanks to the design acumen of @beheldritualarts, they are now 4.25x5.5 zines, borrowing powerful illustrations from @erikruin, @wendyelisheva, and @land.of.sky.art.

Here’s a glimpse of each—via an extract and also my photo of the front and back covers of these zines, set on a grief altar of autumnal leaves.

From “Grief beyond Language by @nickikattoura and Nada Abuasi: “Language cannot communicate what the mind cannot process. Maybe we do not need to write. Maybe we weaponize our chants as eulogy, turn our marching into prayer, transform the streets into a funeral procession.”

From “Kaddish for the Soul of Judaism” by @agelender: “Can you hear me recite the Mourner’s Kaddish for every soul killed in Gaza? It may take me a moment, I have to say thousands of prayers, and each person has a name. I will sit Shiva for a million lifetimes. I leave a stone on each martyred grave to root the dead back into the earth, but I can still hear the screaming. … I want to turn back the clock.”

For downloadable imposed (print-ready) PDFs of these two, paired zines for your public and collective spaces of rebellious mourning and Palestinian solidarity actions, email me at cbmilstein (at) yahoo.

#MourningOurDead
#WeMustOutliveZionism
#WeMustOutliveFascism
#WeMustOutliveStates
#FightingForTheLiving
#UntilAllAreFree

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

The world is on fire today, on this 54th anniversary of the starting spark of the Stonewall rebellion. It’s hard to see that as good, though.

Yes, Paris is caught up in flames of protest, but only because police murdered yet again—this time a teenager, Nael M, during a traffic stop.

And for sure, no light can be found in the Quebec fires, further dispossessing and displacing Indigenous communities from their unceded lands, or its resultant smoke, paying no heed to borders as it freely travels across unimaginably vast swathes of the United States, Canada, and Europe with toxic air.

Never mind how Christo-fascism has only been further fueled this past year by latching onto banning abortion and implementing all sorts of genocidal machinations aimed squarely at queer and trans people.

Just trying to take a walk to stir the embers of my imagination or merely as a form of mental health/wellness—my go-to for both—is now an exercise in burning my eyes and lungs, and breathing in the rancid odor of what smells like many, many, many houses on fire. Because our home, our ecosystem, this earth, is on fire.

But lest I wander completely down the path of dystopia, this Stonewall uprising day, I took a #BeGayDoCrime stroll in honor of all of those many moments—past, present, and future—when rebels danced around flames of their own self-organizing and direct actions—flames that illuminate other possible worlds with their brilliance. Per usual, the #ArtOfResistance didn’t disappoint, even if this afternoon, in the unhealthy smoky part of this planet where I was walking, it took the form of noticing a little anarchic sticker asserting “Trans resistance” with flames of its own.

And thus my heart felt just a bit warmer, a little less burned by despair.

#StonewallWasARiot
#HonoringOurAncestors
#FightingForTheLiving
#FireInOurHearts

On my #FuckThePolice walks, I visit with a small forest of trees perched on a hilly embankment on Anishinabeeg lands above a river flowing from one side of so-called Michigan to the other. There, especially now that the leafless branches are expressively etched against the winter sky, I commune with these trees, silently or with my human words.

I notice how they care for each other (and me too) through the seasons of life. How they move at a pace that allows them to see each other through disruptions to and losses within their ecosystem. They quite literally “stand by each other,” but more then that, they weave themselves into an interdependent, solidaristic fabric of life—and death.

I’ve watched, for instance, how when rain eroded the ground beneath one of the trees, its exposed roots were held tightly by its neighboring trees, as each other’s foundation. Or when lightning knocked part of a tree over, it fell into the branching arms of another tree, and over time, has died in its own sweet time while its fellow trees bear witness. Or when wind whips the trees mercilessly, they appear to interlace fingerlike branches to weather the storm together.

Today in another forest far to the south, Weelaunee in so-called Atlanta, police inflicted their business as usual of stealing land and lives. They murdered someone who was both communing with and defending trees. They shot them dead, in a forest that has already seen much pain at the hands of colonialism, capitalism, and racism.

No doubt the trees there, in their own way, wept, even as many of us did too—tears of rage and sorrow.

It’s not that the trees and people we love will, alas, be spared violence these fascistic days, despite all of our beautiful resistance to @stopcopcity and other assaults.

Yet the trees, like sturdy ancestors, like friends who intimately know our struggles, are there for and with us. That’s part of why we defend for them. They show us there’s ground beneath our feet, and roots that sustain and interconnect us. And they guide us to grieve well, as sacred spaces from which, today, they and we must once again #MournOurDead and continuing #FightingForTheLiving.

(photos: Weelaunee forest, welcome banner in trees, #Fuck12 tagged on a fence, and candles left over from a collective Sukkah/Shabbat ritual, @defendATLforest, October 2022)

Love and solidarity to all those at Club Q last night.

Love and solidarity to all the friends, families, acquaintances, and community members who know and/or knew someone who was at Club Q in Colorado Springs.

Love and solidarity to all my fellow queer and especially trans folks.

Rage and grief and rage over the five beautiful people who didn’t make it out of QClub.

May Their Memory Spark a Blessed Revolution.

#MayTheirMemoryBeABlessing
#MourningOurDead #FightingForTheLiving
#TransgenderDayOfRemembrance
#WeMustLoveAndProtectEachOther
#CommunitySelfDefense #LoveAndRage

(photo: our solidarity with each other—all of those of us that the fascists want to disappear—must be visibly rock-hard solid; as seen in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal this summer)