Beardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gwynnion/116394127711780639

Decades of history show that the Democrats are repeatedly the party of #capitalism alongside of the Republicans. They have continued to move further right. This is not a party that actually wants to build a fair, just and equitable society or one that cares about expanding #democracy. This is a party that relies on the lack of other choices and one that will almost always support the ruling class. They rely on an a #politics & electoral system that offers no choice to bully all of us who are not a part of the ruling class, which is most of us.

The #Democrats, as a rule, are the other party of the 1%.They have no interest in fighting #fascism because they're also a party of power.

The working class of the #US will never break this cycle unless we organize and build something new to bypass this system. Working "in the system" is a trap. We've stuck in decades of refusing to try.

We need to recapture the spirit of the resistance and organizing by #labor from 1860-1930.

#Anarchism

Show threadAlison Wilder1d ago

@bss totally agree. I'm curious whether you have an opinion about whether it's best to do that via a takeover of the Democratic party, a la the Tea Party's takeover of the Republican party, or whether it's better to go a new way.

I can see advantages to both.

Show threadBeardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago

@alisynthesis
I'm pushing for a bottom-up take-over of the economic and political system. At a fundamental level the party system, as an electoral system and a political process of governing is not a truly democratic system. I think we all know it was never really designed to be. The aristocracy designed it not to be.

It's time for a new revolution. Doesn't have to be violent. But it does have to be us rebuilding from the bottom up. Folks like Clara Mattei who's written a book "Escape from Capitalism" are out doing this work in communities right now.

WE BUILT THIS WORLD. IT'S TIME WE UNDERSTAND THAT. IT IS OUR WORLD.

There is nothing sacred about capitalism. It's a piece of shit system based on violence and theft. So, my take, is fuck the entire thing.

We build a bottom-up labor movement, radically democratic: Community assemblies, worker-councils and so on. We shut down the old system by mass mobilizations, strike after strike after strike, rolling general strikes with no end.

Show threadBeardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago

@alisynthesis We build organizations like the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America but even that's not enough. It can't be based on any one organization, even a big socialist one. We have to fully support communities of struggle on the ground. Every community, small town, city, neighborhood, Everyone everywhere. A truly mass social movement grounded in challenging hierarchies and decades of thinking and living lives rooted in power and domination. The goal is deeper than mere political change.

This would need to be a cultural revolution as much as a political and economic revolution. It is a broad-scale social revolution that builds solidarity between all oppressed people and movements.

And it's one that also needs to recognize our international dependence, our role in empire and colonialism. Our strength and commitment needs to be connected to the struggle of Southern Nations upon which we've been preying, starting with Cuba and all of our southern neighbors in this hemisphere.

Show threadAlison Wilder

@bss this is all some fabulous long-term thinking. Do you think there's an intermediary step? I mean, all the on-the-ground work in the world is not going to change the basic structure of the US federal government for quite some time, right?

Or are you thinking that, if the entire culture changes from the bottom up, the structure of the US govt will take care of itself?

Apr 14 at 2:29pmWeb
Show threadBeardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago
@alisynthesis
Hmmmmm. The Wobblies of the IWW (and many others of similar thinking) have said for a long time, we are building the new world in the shell of the old. It's prefigurative so in that sense it is both intermediate and even immediate. A small example: 27 years ago I and a group of anarchists built a housing co-op in Memphis. We immediately saved money (contributing less to capitalism). The house served as a home base/starting point for many community-based projects like neighborhood gardens, a micro-radio station (long live Free Radio Memphis!), a bike co-op and more. We were a mess. But we were also a group of mostly young folks building a very different kind of life, different social relations that challenged our upbringings. Weekly house meetings to do democracy. We ran our own democracy. So did our many off-shoot orgs like the bike co-op, the radio station, and more. We implemented these things immediately. And our projects were real. They had impact...
Show threadBeardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago

@alisynthesis The bike co-op was started by a 17 year old high school drop out and it continues to this day. it was set-up to take in old bikes, teach neighborhood youth how to fix and rebuild a bike. They each rebuilt a bike that was then given to another kid. So they were learning skills and practicing mutual aid. Then they received a bike another had rebuilt. So, a cooperative built by youth, run as a democracy that was immediately helping the local community by providing bicycles that could be used as real transport while also upcycling at the same time.

Working class people working together to build a better world for themselves in defiance of capitalism. The co-op is appropriately named Revolutions. No laws, no legislation, no capitalism, no party poltics.

The Wobblies also used to say: Direct Action gets the goods! They would also say: The workers only have to put their hands in their pockets to bring the system down.

We have to ask more of ourselves.

Show threadBeardy Star Stuff 🌹🏴🇵🇸1d ago

@alisynthesis Sometimes things do take a long time. We've got used to making so little progress and so used to doing so little, I think we underestimate what we can achieve if we set ourselves to the task.

And given the immediacy of the climate emergency and other various crises, now more than ever, we have to demand from ourselves that we move forward with haste. If ever there was an emergency this is it. We have to recognize ourselves to be in a real existential planetary crisis.

But all this means upheaval. This truly means the lives we've known in recent decades are about to change in a way that they will be unrecognizable. That's the kind of deep revolution we need.

The folks of Minneapolis gave us a taste of what can happen in a very short period of time when they mobilized to defend their neighbors against ICE. That kind of mass, city-wide mobilization is what we need and we need it in every city.

WE BUILT THIS WORLD. WE CAN CHANGE THIS WORLD.

Show threadAlison Wilder1d ago
@bss amen