ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, #4

(Note: this was written for an earlier No Kings rally, but it might be helpful for the ones tmrw, which should at least be renamed “No Fascists” aka “We Are All Antifascists”!)

🖤🩷🖤🩷

If you go to “No Kings” rallies today, no doubt it will be all you can do—as an anarchist who believes deeply in liberatory practices and politics—to maintain your cool when faced with both liberals’ and authoritarians’ lack of solidarity. Go with other anarchists and be each other’s support system, and debrief (rant, cry, laugh, and/or chill) afterward.

But also go as “friendly anarchist factions” to model what solidarity actually looks like—even if too many nonanarchistic folks don’t yet know what that feels like or how to do it. I always wish that people didn’t need to be, say, tear gassed or arrested to learn that ACAB isn’t just a slogan, and that anarchists will almost certainly be the ones to have their backs. But such is the wearisome “learning curve,” and the more folks who see beloved community self-defense modeled for them, unflinchingly, on the streets, the more they’ll understand how (and why!) to stick side-by-side too—including with us.

Be solidarity.

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, #3

(Note: this was written for an earlier No Kings rally, but it might be helpful for the ones tmrw, which should at least be renamed “No Fascists” aka “We Are All Antifascists”!)

🖤🩷🖤🩷

Back in the day, ahead of a big protest, anarchists set up “convergence centers”: big, scrappy, communal spaces where folks could not only find each other, make and eat food, plug into art and media making, etc. in the days before an (often direct) action based on a wide-ranging diversity of tactics—under an umbrella name like “Carnival against Capitalism” or “No Olympics on Stolen Native Lands”—but also skill up together.

There’s no time to do this before the poorly named “No Kings” (aka, it’s fascism) protests tmrw. Yet you could easily do pop-up skill shares. So many “newbies” are open to learning and eager for alternatives!

Remake the urban landscape into temporary autonomous “classrooms.” Use public furniture or gathering spots, or bring blankets or chairs to sit on. Write the skill share topic on cardboard and display it. Run around and announce skill shares as they start. Bored protesters waiting for a march to begin or tired of listening to rally speeches make great participants. Circle up and start passing along handy skills—say, how to help each other rinse tear gas out of eyes or turn a T-shirt into a mask (over your N95), or how to do forms of community self-defense or jail support. Offer an Anarchism 101 or local rad history talk too. Exercise hands and minds, encouraging liberal and progressive folks to (begin to) think and act for themselves.

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, #2

(Note: this was written for an earlier No Kings rally, but it might be helpful for the ones tmrw, which should at least be renamed “No Fascists” aka “We Are All Antifascists”!)

🖤🩷🖤🩷

It’s tough not to fume over the “peaceful protest” call for a “sit-down wave” at this Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies, such as one that asserts: if you see so-called infiltrators “destroy[ing] property,” “sit down and leave the provocators” standing. That’s how the self-appointed leaders of these nonprofit-corporate “ally” demos uphold a status quo that benefits them. In practice, it means anyone not falling in liberal line will get the brunt of police violence and state repression.

Enough fuming. My anarcho-prefigurative self says: outorganize the “peace police”! #BeGayMakeFun! Alongside bringing many zines to gift out at these rallies: Set up carnivesque “no kings, no masters” participatory games! Bring screen-printing supplies (stencils, silk screens, or even humble potatoes carved with printable slogans) and let folks print your rebellious designs on T-shirts, patches, or cardboard! Create playful shield-making art station! Become snack faeries, carting around yummy treats in wagons to freely distro! Do some rebel street theater or radical cheerleading! Bring a queer rebel marching band or amplified music, and start a street dance!

Anarchism is not just good politics; make it good fun, and when folks are drawn to you, anarchism will not only be welcoming but irresistible too. Plus, who knows, maybe you can joyfully teach people how do a “stand-up wave” against the real provocateurs (cops).

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, #1

(Note: this was written for an earlier No Kings rally, but it might be helpful for the ones tmrw, which should at least be renamed “No Fascists” aka “We Are All Antifascists”!)

🖤🩷🖤🩷

I know it’s no fun to go to liberal-progressive rallies, but thousands of newbies and/or newly awakened folks will be at this Saturday’s “No Kings” protest. Don’t let the nonprofit “ally” complex siphon off the genuine energy of those seeking social transformation—those who don’t yet know that, for instance, “police are not our friends” or “solidarity is our best weapon.”

Instead, print thousands of zines that allow people to “educate themselves in freedom,” especially accessible ones that include rebellious ideas and do-it-ourselves practices! Take those zines to rallies. Walk around and freely gift them to people!

From personal experience, I know that a single zine can change many hearts and minds—and create “accomplices” now willing to experiment with anarchistic forms of street militancy, from varied types of community self-defense to myriad types of collective care and mutual aid.

#MakeMediaBuildSolidarity
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#TryAnarchismForLife

The ABCs of Anarchism: The Letter K

Of late, I’ve noticed an unfamiliar word slipping into the anarchist vocabulary—so much so, that it felt both a pattern and palpable shift. So I began paying attention, and sure enough, more and more anarchists were using it in DMs to me, or when speaking on a panel, chatting in person, and posting on social media. One new zine I picked up at a free lit table even railed against its opposite—adding “un-“ in front of the word—and called for its banishment from our circles.

This linguistic turn felt at odds with the times at first, and then it started to dawn on me that it’s actually a healthy response to them—to fascism and the attendant disposability of human and nonhuman life.

I ran that thought by a friend who loves etymology, a fancy term for the history of languages and their wordly ancestors, and they instantly exclaimed, “Kin!” We’re queer+trans chosen family, so I didn’t get the connection at first—thinking they were simply glad that I’d called them to talk. “The origin of the word is in ‘kin,’” they added, and to paraphrase, “these days, we especially need to care for each other in that way.”

K = Kind

As a Jewish anarchist, I doubly know that “Jewishness” and “anarchism” share an inherent need to stay in motion, to continually wrestle with and remake our words, ideas, and practices, always delighting in shape-shifting based on the contexts, precisely as how we get free—together. There’s also our double aspiration as anarchists (and to my mind, as Jews): to always critique all forms of hierarchy and domination—the K = kvetch side of things—and always embody forms of freedom in their place—which includes K = kindness. Or should have.

Somehow anarchists have become an especially unkindly bunch over the past decade or so, allowing liberalism and capitalism (and posi rad-liberals) to steal and water down “kindness” into mushy meaningless—when we should have been fighting to keep kindness rebellious!

Now, we’re at a point in human history when *simple* acts of genuine kindness (from the heart, voluntarily, as kin), mean the world, quite literally, to keep us and others from falling into the fascist abyss.

#TryAnarchismForLife

(photo: spray paint, stencil, and sharpie combo of #AllComradesAreBeautiful, with two adorable pink and black cats encircled by a heart, with the letters #ACAB at their paws, as seen on a wall near an anarcha-queer feministic squat in Athens, March 2025, aka #CatsNotCops and for that matter, #KindnessNotCops)

Thanks to the awesome and rad folks at @igd_news, my latest curated zine, “Ritual as Resistance: 18 Stories of Defending the Sacred,” is now available on its website to read, and as PDFs to download, print, and distro freely. See link below.

And support your indie anarchist media—with your dollars and readership!!

Excerpt from my intro to the zine:

“We make our own sacred spaces — spaces on no maps — through repeated rituals of resistance whose meanings stretch beyond borders. Because our ‘grief knows no borders.’

“This zine is a sampler of some of the modest ways that anarchistic people from varied traditions are doing just that, and gestures toward ‘bigger’ ones. It’s impossible to understand Standing Rock, Stop Cop City, or Palestinian solidarity encampments, say, without acknowledging the key role of rebellious spiritualities. For one example, see the film ‘Yintah.’

“My hope is that this humble zine inspires you to imaginatively blur the line between ritual and resistance, until the death machine sputters and stalls, and all that then moves freely is life. For it is us, side by side, that can make all sacred against the profane of this world. Because our love knows no borders.”

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife

https://itsgoingdown.org/ritual-as-resistance-18-stories-of-defending-the-sacred/

Freshly birthed zine: “Shades of Love”

I actually wrote this “new” one in spring–summer 2012 for a pal’s anarchist anthology on love, but they never ended up publishing the book. So at long last, I’ve turned it into a zine. May it touch your heart in these icy-unloving christofascist times!

As always, my zines are labors of love, freely gifted, for you to freely share. DM me your email for readable and print-ready PDFs.

On a strictly voluntary basis, in this case it would warm my weary heart if you’d contribute $5 or more to your favorite anarchist(ic) labor-of-love project, whether to a bail or abortion fund, mutual aid or solidarity (not charity) effort, or collective space.

This zine is less “practical” than other recent ones, and more of a poetic, hopefully tender “love letter” of sorts from me to you, my sweet fellow rebels.

Thx to @dioishh for the gorgeous cover art, @_hey_casandra_ for kindly turning my layout into PDFs yet again, and @the_bejeweled_narwhal for this lovely photo!

Excerpt from the zine’s opening:

“When I was a little kid, we had this big weeping willow tree in our backyard, and when it was in full bloom, its slender overhanging branches would form a porous pale-green umbrella arching from sky to ground with expansive space underneath. Open space. Yet delicately screened too.
From inside, seated on the gently compacted earth, you could see outside, softly, through the millions of little leaves playing gaily as the wind touched them. You could look outward through tiny peepholes, which in turn let in winking shapes of light like stars on a crystal-clear night, with each glimmer held in the embrace of the shadows cast by leaf after leaf.
I recently asked my six-year-old bio-niece what she meant by the word love, which she says several times a day to her mom, and she responded matter-of-factly, ‘Love is all that’s good.’ She doesn’t have a weeping willow in her Orlando-sprawl backyard; only crunchy-dry grass and a too-small palm tree and blindingly unmediated sunshine.
Still, maybe my niece is onto something.”

#FallInLoveNotInLine
#TryAnarchismForLife
#LoveAndSolidarity

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE, pt 4

If you go to “No Kings” rallies today, no doubt it will be all you can do—as an anarchist who believes deeply in liberatory practices and politics—to maintain your cool when faced with both liberals’ and authoritarians’ lack of solidarity . Go with other anarchists and be each other’s support system, and debrief (rant, cry, laugh, and/or chill) afterward.

But also go as “friendly anarchist factions” to model what solidarity actually looks like—even if too many nonanarchistic folks don’t yet know what that feels like or how to do it. I always wish that people didn’t need to be, say, tear gassed or arrested to learn that ACAB isn’t just a slogan, and that anarchists will almost certainly be the ones to have their backs. But such is the wearisome “learning curve,” and the more folks who see beloved community self-defense modeled for them, unflinchingly, on the streets, the more they’ll understand how (and why!) to stick side-by-side too—including with us.

Be solidarity.

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

(photo: pink and black circle A heart spray-painted on a wall in Athens, Greece, during a queer+trans International Women’s Day march on March 8, 2025)

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE, pt 3

Back in the day, ahead of a big protest, anarchists set up “convergence centers”: big, scrappy, communal spaces where folks could not only find each other, make and eat food, plug into art and media making, etc. in the days before an (often direct) action based on a wide-ranging diversity of tactics—under an umbrella name like “Carnival against Capitalism” or “No Olympics on Stolen Native Lands”—but also skill up together.

There’s no time to do this before the poorly named “No Kings” (aka, it’s fascism) protests tmrw. Yet you could easily do pop-up skill shares. So many “newbies” are open to learning and eager for alternatives!

Remake the urban landscape into temporary autonomous “classrooms.” Use public furniture or gathering spots, or bring blankets or chairs to sit on. Write the skill share topic on cardboard and display it. Run around and announce skill shares as they start. Bored protesters waiting for a march to begin or tired of listening to rally speeches make great participants. Circle up and start passing along handy skills—say, how to help each other rinse tear gas out of eyes or turn a T-shirt into a mask (over your N95), or how to do forms of community self-defense or jail support. Offer an Anarchism 101 or local rad history talk too. Exercise hands and minds, encouraging liberal and progressive folks to (begin to) think and act for themselves.

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

ANARCHIST PUBLIC SERVICE, pt 2

It’s tough not to fume over the “peaceful protest” call for a “sit-down wave” at this Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies, such as one that asserts: if you see so-called infiltrators “destroy[ing] property,” “sit down and leave the provocators” standing. That’s how the self-appointed leaders of these nonprofit-corporate “ally” demos uphold a status quo that benefits them. In practice, it means anyone not falling in liberal line will get the brunt of police violence and state repression.

Enough fuming. My anarcho-prefigurative self says: outorganize the “peace police”! #BeGayMakeFun! Alongside bringing many zines to gift out at these rallies: Set up carnivesque “no kings, no masters” participatory games! Bring screen-printing supplies (stencils, silk screens, or even humble potatoes carved with printable slogans) and let folks print your rebellious designs on T-shirts, patches, or cardboard! Create playful shield-making art station! Become snack faeries, carting around yummy treats in wagons to freely distro! Do some rebel street theater or radical cheerleading! Bring a queer rebel marching band or amplified music, and start a street dance!

Anarchism is not just good politics; make it good fun, and when folks are drawn to you, anarchism will not only be welcoming but irresistible too. Plus, who knows, maybe you can joyfully teach people how do a “stand-up wave” against the real provocateurs (cops).

#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife
#EducatingEachOtherForFreedom
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon

(photo of a brick wall with a circle A spray-painted on the concrete foundation below it, as spotted on the stolen lands of Tioh’tià:ke/Montreal, June 2025)