I overheard and took part in some conversations this last week that pissed me off. I needed a while to process them but now I have.

All I want to say about it is that I'm not impressed with so-called anarchists whose great idea of anarchism involves only looking out for and supporting their friends and the people who think like them enough that they have been deemed acceptable. I strongly disagree with those people whose idea of activism is creating a safe little hole for themselves and their friends to hide in while everyone else can get fucked and die.

I'm done fucking with anarchists who think broadly in partisan terms and who believe that folks who live in rural communities aren't worth their time or are beyond help.

That shit disgusts me.

In case you forgot and need a reminder, Blair Mountain didn't happen in Portland Oregon. Anarchism is a working class tradition. Wherever there is a working class there's anarchism.

Anarchism has deep roots in rural communities, and those roots remain.

But that's just the start of it, isn't it? Because aren't all lives equal and of equal value? Aren't we all the same?

I want to go to war against the powers of oppression and division. I'm not interested in your Cool Kids Club. This sort of exclusionary thinking only serves to keep us divided and to prop up animosities that we might otherwise transcend. When you treat people like enemies when they are guilty of nothing more than being different you play right into the hands of the keepers of power. When you treat people like enemies you make them into enemies. You strengthen your enemies.

You can't unfuck things in one place and expect that to stick. It's not going to work. If you allow those in power to remain they will only work diligently, day and night, to destroy you. If you create a safe space here you're creating an unsafe space everywhere else, for everyone else. And the powerful will not respect your borders anymore than they do with anyone else.

Carving out your own area will not gain respect or attention or understanding or create ideological converts. You will not spread anything by walling yourselves off. If you create a safe space for yourselves and you stop there, eventually you will be overrun, and there will be no one to save you because you pissed on everyone else already by excluding them and denying them your aid.

Urban areas do not now and have never had a monopoly on anarchism. Urban areas are not now and have never been more important than rural areas. Outreach to rural areas and respecting your rural neighbors is just as important to the work you do in the city or the work you do with the unhoused or the addicted in the city. Having been born in a rural setting is does not a Proud Boy. And who the fuck are you to decide who is valuable or worthy?

Who the fuck are you?