Americans, particularly white Americans, really need some education on long-form organizing and protests. How protest culture needs to be founded on community care and resilence for long-term resistance.
And such revolutionary work requires building a foundation of community resilence through strategies including street medics, mask blocs, mending and repair libraries, community gardens, mutual aid networks, alternative healthcare options, collective access, transformative justice work, free legal assistance, educating each other, sharing skills, writing and art, and the like.
I can't really sum this up as it's a multilayered topic, but I'll point out past movements that used various community care and resilence strategies in their long-term resistance. Resources at the end.
Civil Rights Movement had built up a lot of community care, educating their people, and alternatives of societal systems for their survival. These were used for some of their biggest actions (Black Panthers and MLK Jr often worked together due to the foundation Black Panthers built).
Disabled and Non-Disabled Miners had built up some mutual aid and distribution of supplies, which is why their wildcat strikes were some of the longest running in US Labor history.
STAR, the trans led revolutionary group, built up similarly before and during some of their biggest actions. They built up housing for each other, food distribution, educating others, as well as disruptive protest.
Indigenous resistance -- see Standing Rock for a recent example -- used mutual aid, community-led healthcare and gardening, cross-movement organizing, housing and food sharing, and other foundational actions to build and continue to build community care and resilence.
The Disabled Sit-in protests and Capitol Crawl had built cross-movement coalitions, such as Butterfly Brigade providing food, Black Panthers offering care assistance, others offering transportation and legal help.
Occupy also built this while it was ongoing. Mutual aids formed (and some still exist today) to distribute supplies and food. Free legal counseling was offered, people shared knowledge together, and even experimented with different styles of decision-making and governance.
Black Lives Matter had built up a lot of this prior from other resistance and tapped it and even expanded the community care strategies in many areas. (Those in my town are still doing this work.)
Yes, the USA turned genocidal and tried to destroy each of these movements, but they failed to stomp us out as many of us survived because of the community built. And many of these movements did win some of their major goals.
A protest with these equitable and often experimental community care foundations is more likely to succeed long-term. It's also a way to build up communities that are resilent and more able to hold firm against the oppressor.
If your praxis does not include these strategies, then that protest isn't ready for the long-term fight. And it'll be more prone to co-option by the state, which will bleed the people dry of our energy for a long-term fight.
And I will always assert that any protest that positions a vulnerable oppressed group as disposable and/or puts them into harms way is actually already co-opted by the oppressors. The protest's message has then been lost, the target the wrong group entirely.
Our goal in this fight against fascism is to build with each other the future we want right now the best we can AND to bring hell to our oppressors.
No one is disposable. Disabled activists, especially those who are multiply marginalized, often say that "We take care of us." That taking care of each other MUST be part of organizing and protesting. It's the best, and historically often the only way to win against our oppressors.
Without community and caring for each other, we won't win.
For more about this:
* Crip Camp documentary
* The Black AntiFascist Tradition by Hope and Muller,
*Emergent Strategy series by Adrienne maree brown,
*Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha,
*From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
* Our History Is Our Future by Nick Estes
* Red Nation Rising by Border Town Violence Working Group and it's follow-up The Red Deal
* White Rage by Carol Anderson
* A Disabled People's History of the United States by Kim Nielsen
* An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Dunbar-Ortiz
* Miss Major Speaks by Miss Major
* Let This Radicalize You by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes
* We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
* Beyond Survival by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
* A People's Guide To Abolition And Disability Justice by Katie Tastrom
* Disability Justice Principles by Sins Invalid
* Surviving The Future edited by Branson, Hudsen, and Reed
* How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong
* The Sea is Rising and So Must We: A Climate Justice Handbook by Cynthia Kaufmann
* Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
And I have a whole lot more recommendations, but that should get people started.
#CommunityCare #organizing #MutualAid #WeTakeCareOfUs #Activism #Protest #ProtestHistory #CivilDisobedience #MutualAid
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