A small, black envelope finally found its way to me, dog-earred and postage due, having traveled farther than its kind sender likely intended—as if knowing it was gifting a vision of diasporic solidarity, aka #SolidarityNotStates, all states.

In it were seeds of sorts, fittingly, since a life in the diaspora in its liberatory sense is all about spreading seeds, “spora,” aka #CommunityNotColonialism, in which all peoples will always have the self-determined freedom to move, freedom to return, and freedom to stay.

There was a mini zine, with an antifascist symbol on its tiny cover, offering an equally tiny glimpse of the Jewish Labor Bund (“we hold to the view that Jewish safety lies not in an escape of a part of the Jews to the ‘promised land’ of Palestine, nor in submerging of the Jews into the ocean of Gentile peoples” [1947]), and a far different path that the trauma born of Nazism and earlier antisemitic violence could have taken, without relying on the always-brutal logic of states and their borders.

And there were a few dozen stickers of four different designs—all taking the shape of circles, as if gesturing toward the nonlinear time that has bound so many peoples to each other and our varied ecosystems, toward life cycles of care, toward the ways people circle up to share stories, food, and rituals, including across what today is called “identity,” ultimately such a flattening out of the wholeness of millennia-worth of cultures and interdependences.

This little package reached me, a Jew and anarchist, “identities” that increasingly are being contested, tarnished, broken, and more—making lived practices, versus the ever-more-hollow words, increasingly crucial (or telling) of one’s wholeness or not, one’s heart and humanity or not, one’s commitment to remain in open opposition to fascism or not. What I saw when the stickers spilled out was not those words—though I am a proud Jewish anarchist in a long, rebellious history of Jewish anarchism that never saw our (and anyone else’s) safety in states—but symbols that myriad peoples found have common ground and shared lives in, common well-being and healing, so all can be free.

May it be so.

(Thanks to the Rubble Art Collective for gifting me these stickers, which will find many a good, new home. “Anarchist Jews against Zionism and fascism” circle A/alef by @municipaladhesives)

If May Day, among other things, is about sharing the “wealth” (aka abolishing capitalism), there’s nothing quite like going to a small but sweet Really Really Free Market on this May 1 and being gifted a sheet of freshly printed stickers that feel just right for these suddenly rebellious times. (After all, #AllComradesAreBeautiful!)

Then, soon after, redistributing that “wealth” to others at a nearby May Day rally, made merry because of the danceable tunes of @brassyourheart (which may now have some tiny water jugs on a drum or two because this marching band can #AlwaysCarryABeat!).

There are so many others reasons, of course, to wear one’s #ACAB on their sleeve (or water bottle) this May Day, when so many universities and colleges are liberating spaces of solidarity for Gaza, and in the process, powerfully demonstrating that #AutonomousCommunitiesAreBeautiful.

And likewise, so many police are painfully demonstrating that #AllCopsAreBrutal—underscoring that cop cities (aka policing) everywhere must be abolished, from every river to every sea, just as the Haymarket martyrs also fought and alas died for, in part.

Next May Day, in liberation!

#CareNotCops
#CommonsNotCapitalism
#SolidarityNotStates
#TryAnarchismForLife
#UntilAllAreFree

(Ongoing love+solidarity to the brave+bold folks at @occupycalpolyhumboldt for gifting the world the joy of a humble water jug vs. cop during their occupation)

On 19 April, on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I learned two new things from my beautiful circle of Jewish anarchist friends.

I learned that the state of Israel, in one of its many moves to consolidate power-over (including over many of us Jews) through rewriting history and bending language to its will, changed the name of the Holocaust from what many survivors were calling it: “churbn” (“catastrophe” in Yiddish).

I already knew that the Israeli state changed “Holocaust remembrance” to a different date than April 19 to erase the anti-Zionist sensibility of the uprising’s key player—the Bund.

I learned too that one of my all-time favorite books, a memoir by Bernard Goldstein titled “Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto,” was originally titled “The Stars Bear Witness,” borrowing a line from the Bund’s anthem.

I say “all-time fav” not because it’s a pleasant read. Not at all. It follows the ghettoization, starvation, and murder of most of Warsaw’s Jews at the hands of fascism. Yet it also documents how longtime anarchistic infrastructure allowed for the kind of organizing, communal bonds, and determination that supported resistance before and through the uprising—including when death was a certainty for most.

Even if the only ones left to bear witness were the stars.

It’s the liminal time+space of pesach now, this first night of days ahead in which we Jews are compelled to revisit a story of past enslavement, direct actions to resist it, and moving from the narrowest of places—displacement, loss, and trauma—toward liberation. It was pesach when the Warsaw Uprising began too. Today, on this pesach, it’s the ghettoization, starvation, and murder of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of a fascism called Zionism (Jewish and Christian), but also longtime Palestinian resistance to it and global solidarity for a free Palestine.

The stars must bear witness—again, when it should have been never again for everyone.

I turn to my Jewish anarchist ancestors, setting their legacy among the stars, knowing they fought for a (w)holy different world that could have been. That we still fight for, side by side with all freedom fighters: #SolidarityNotStates.

Or to quote Emma Goldman, who wrote the following lines in Yiddish in 1907 when arguing against those promoting Zionism:

“We people have enough trouble from the state without establishing another one and becoming like the old bandits. You want to come up with a new Jewish state, but no, I think that the task of the Jews and their assignment in the world is to demolish and make a furnace of the nation-state.”

(Shoutout to Anna Elena Torres for translating and sharing Emma’s counter-vision)

#UntilAllAreFree

Hanukkah 5784: Flames of Resistance (Night 3)

Perhaps it is just my social media feeds and Signal text threads, but I suspect not—I hope not. In only three nights of this year’s Khanike, with still so much fire to go, rad Jews have shared thousands of photos and artistic renditions of their chanukkiahs ablaze with solidarity for Gaza.

We rebel Jews have faithfully followed the sensibility underlying this Festival of Lights, in a time of genocide that feels anything but festive, or for that matter, light, by visibly bringing forth the light of resistance. We’ve extended the practice of bravely and defiantly lighting our Hanuka menorahs in windows at moments when antisemitism has threatened our lives and indeed the whole of Jewish existence, to now bravely and defiantly lighting these same menorahs in all sorts of public places, often communally, as Zionism (including Christian Zionism) and Islamophobia threaten Palestinian lives and indeed the whole of Palestinian existence.

For us anarchist Jews in particular, we see this as inseparable from our antifascist practice, our antifascist duty, including to all the ancestors—Jewish and others—who were exterminated by fascists in other times … and now. As the Fayer Collective notes in the zine illuminated by my candles tonight, “For us, the fight against fascism … is a personal and direct fight for our lives,” for others’ lives, … “for the earth, the good life, and total liberation” for all. “And that knowledge has put a fire in our hearts, as anarchists and Jews.”

I’ve been proud of my fellow anarchic Jews—more so than ever—for bravely and defiantly resisting fascism, including in our Zionist kin, every single day since October 7, unceasingly, with public actions ranging from banner drops to Mourners Kaddish, mutual aid to blockades, disruptions, and other direct actions, collective care to rebellious rituals. And we’ve no intention of letting that fire go out, #UntilAllAreFree.

May Xanuka bring the miracle of the light of our solidarity never extinguishing.

#SolidarityNotStates
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife

(For a PDF of this Palestinian solidarity zine and many others, DM me your email; photos: my candles tonight; a Jewish friend painting a #JewsAgainstGenocide banner in October for a public grief ritual held a couple days later by a bunch of us anarchistic Jews in so-called Asheville, NC.)

We had to postpone this particular Jewish Anarchist Salon because it was dreamed up before Oct 7, before so many lives were stolen in Israel/Palestine (overwhelmingly Palestinians, but also Jews), before the ferocious bombing and genocide was unleashed on Gaza. The murders haven’t ceased, of course, despite so much powerful resistance and Palestinian solidarity worldwide, so it’s perhaps even more crucial to converse about …

Jewish Anarchism, Resistance, & Military Refusal in Israel/Palestine

Sun, Dec 3 // 12 pm ET

Presentation by @mesarvot (https://linktr.ee/Meaarvot)

The Jewish Anarchist Salon (JAS) is open to anyone who identifies as an anarchistic and anti-Zionist Jew.

Mesarvot is a refuser support network acting against the occupation through antimilitaristic actions.

JAS invites you to join in co-learning and dialogues related to what it means to be both anarchist and Jewish today. In recent years, Jewish anarchism has had a rebirth, reemerging in resistance to growing fascism, including increasing antisemitism. But it’s also reimagining itself, whether in terms of queer+trans and feminist sensibilities, cultural and ritual practices, or spaces that prefigure the world to come. This salon aims to build on and encourage the further growth of Jewish anarchism as well as strengthen connections with each other. The hope is that in these conversations and beyond, we can develop creative, proud, and liberatory responses to our broken world.

As in the past, this 1.5-hour online gathering will revolve around a theme, which will be kicked off with some framing thoughts by our presenters for 30 minutes. Then we’ll move into both small- and big-group conversations.

For this salon, some of the questions, among others, we’ll explore together are:

* How can we better offer solidarity across and beyond borders, between Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab anarchists inside Israel/Palestine, and those outside it?

* How does one sustain one’s ethics/resolve/bravery as a small collective going against the grain of most of society?

* How have (or should) Jewish anarchistic tactics and resistance shifted in the face outright fascism, including an increase in both Islamophobia and antisemitism?

To register: bit.ly/jasmesarvot2

#JewishVoicesForAnarchism
#SolidarityNotStates
#UntilAllAreFree

Tomorrow is one Gregorian calendar month’s worth of what is now another genocide to stain this world blood red. There is the necessity and yet impossibility of marking such a gruesome anniversary, especially because the Israeli state’s killing spree, in league with its allies—the United States and other statist powers, military contractors and suppliers, Christian Zionists in particular but Zionists in general, and more—grows worse by the day.

We must honor our dead for so many reasons, including because they arm us with the tools of fighting back, including with memory. As we diasporic Jews are proud of saying and singing: “We will outlive them”—fascists, occupiers, willing executioners called soldiers, all those who side with dispossession, disappearance, death. For us, rebels with stones for grieving and resisting, life is sacred, as is struggling for liberatory lives for all.

Stones seem powerless against this current murder machine. Yet somehow stones still hold great weight.

As you’ll hear in my contribution to the Palestinian solidarity panel pictured here—held at @firestormcoop and recorded by @thefinalstrawradio—I turned to my Jewish practice of using stones to mark grief in collective, public ways. I laid out a big pile of stones. That pile seems ridiculously small now in light of the thousands of Palestinians genocided since this panel. Those stones feel more and more fraught, for they look too much like the gray rubble of bombed-out buildings in Gaza atop people and homes and hospitals and schools and lives and dreams. But they feel, too, like the stones thrown by kids to defy a nation-state intent on destroying them—kids who taught and teach us bravery and brightness and even hope against all odds, toward freedom.

As @folkloreforresistance taught me today as well, “In Palestinian folklore, we believe that stones can be our witnesses,” recording and remembering the Israeli state’s barbarism.

May stones mourn the dead, battle creatively for the living, throw off this genocide, and pave the way for #SolidarityNotStates.

May it be so.

(To hear the panel: https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/29/against-genocide-a-palestinian-solidarity-panel/; photo: pumpkin+stones grief altar, November 4, at a Palestinian solidarity speak-out and march in so-called Asheville, NC)

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

#ACABmeansIDF

#PumpkinsNotPolice
#CucurbitsNotCops
#AllColonizersAreBad

#SolidarityNotStates
#FreedomNotFascism
#AllCeasefiresAreBeautiful

(pumpkin spotted at Firestorm Books)

“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