Month: February 2025

After watching for over a year as the leaders of the University of California (UC) failed to condemn genocide or reckon with the implications of the university’s investments, research, and donor complicity in the destruction and devastation of the Palestinian people, a systemwide collective of faculty, students, staff, and community members launched the UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine on November 11, 2024. UC leaders normalized the Israeli state and defended Zionism while restricting speech and employing militarized police power against those who spoke out against the genocide. 

Our first session focused on the inaction of UCSF, the sole UC campus dedicated to healthcare, to condemn the targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers, as well as Zionist donor pressure and influence. We are holding a second session in southern California on May 9-10. This session will focus on (1) UC investments in and research collusion with war industries, (2) racialized and militarized police repression of Palestinian solidarity, and (3) Zionist policing of forms of knowledge with the complicity of the university.

In addition to our live sessions, the UC People’s Tribunal serves as a repository for independent research about complicity of the UC in aiding and abetting Zionist aggression. 

We’ve begun to build a broad-based popular curriculum based on the archive.

Though 2024’s Palestine solidarity camps were crushed or disbanded, the tribunal continues their demands for divestment and anti-imperialist education. Campus-based struggle for divestment from apartheid South Africa lasted for years. We are in it for the long haul. For more info: ucpeoplestribunal.org

By Little Yew

Right now, a lot of Americans are hurting as the cost of being alive is falling out of reach. People on TV keep telling us to blame minorities and women for what’s going on. They tell us that if we disempower these groups, our economic woes will go away. This is a pernicious myth, designed to distract everyone from the real reasons life is so expensive right now: union-busting, privatization, and monopolies.

Union-busting hurts us all. In the 1950s, union membership in the U.S. was at an all-time high. This had a huge impact, boosting quality of life for many Americans. Then came the era of union-busting firms, in which bosses began hiring companies to spread lies and sow derision among workers. Thanks to union-busting tactics, workplace union contracts got derailed, and vital collations dissolved. This has led workers to constantly get a bum deal — or not even get a seat at the bargaining table. Union-busting is the one of the biggest reasons we’re in this current mess. To learn more about union-busting, check out A Collective Bargain by Jane McAlevey.

Privatization is another reason everything is so expensive. There’s this awful pattern that started in California in the late 1960s, and that spread to the whole country by the 1980s. This pattern is called “privatization,” and it’s the trend of eliminating public services and instead giving taxpayer money to for-profit companies to handle the services instead. These companies prioritize their investors above all else, and this leads to a degradation of services. It also means we often must pay for things twice. For example, our tax dollars might be used to hire a private contractor to build a road, and then they charge us a toll to use it. This awful logic is now everywhere in the U.S. — including in education, healthcare, and even military weapons. Privatization has led many of us to become straddled by debt or even go bankrupt over things that are free in other countries — such as attending university or access to healthcare. This entire system makes no sense, and it’s created hundreds of paywalls in our everyday lives through which we are constantly bleeding cash. To learn more about privatization, check out the 5-minute video “The Truth about Privatization” by Robert Reich.

Monopolies have gotten out of hand—and lay the foundations for price gauging. You might have heard that only 10 companies control almost the entire world’s food supply, only 6 companies control 90% of U.S. news media, and local rental markets have been flooded with Wall Street companies buying up all the housing stock. This is all part of a larger pattern in the formation of monopolies, in which fewer and fewer companies control the supply of something. This pattern lays the foundation for a myriad of awful things, including price gouging, thanks to lack of competition.

The bosses and Wall Street want you to blame minorities and women. Don’t fall for it. Disempowering those groups never fixes anything. The way to fix the economy and make life affordable again is to build up worker power, break up monopolies, and put a stop to privatization.

By anonymous

When I advise mutual aid groups and activists on their cybersecurity, their first question is often “What messaging app should we use?”

The answer is Signal. But, while encrypted messaging is important, just “using the right app” really isn’t enough. If a right wing activist can log into your accounts, or a police officer unlocks the phone of the person you’re messaging after a protest, it doesn’t really matter how well encrypted your messages were in transit. The messages of your entire group are now going to be in the hands of someone who can use them to harm all of you.

Our cyber security isn’t individual — it’s built with and through the actions of our community. As our cybersecurity risks increase in the coming years, we need to stop thinking of it as a personal concern, and start thinking of it as a community endeavor. We live in a cyber risk ecosystem, and if you haven’t taken the necessary steps to understand those risks or protect your devices, accounts, and communications, it makes your entire community more vulnerable to those risks as well. 

What are these risks? There are basically three broad categories we should consider: We all face a very heavy ‘background noise’ of financially motivated attacks from scammers and extortionists. For those of us politically involved on the left, we will also face similar attacks from right wing hacktivists. And finally, we should limit our exposure to government surveillance. 

There are many, many forms each of these attacks can take, but it’s important to understand the most common. For political hacktivists and financial extortionists, the methods will be similar. First, trying to log into your accounts with username/password pairs that were leaked from other hacked websites. Second, “phishing” emails and “smishing” texts that try to get you to download files or enter your password into a mimicry of an actual login page. Finally, exploiting technical vulnerabilities in your operating system or browser if it hasn’t been kept up-to-date.

Clandestine government agencies may engage in these attacks as well, but the vast majority of government surveillance is much more simple. Law enforcement will just ask relevant corporations to hand over all relevant information about you. Google, Meta, and many other corporations have specific web portals to actively facilitate these requests. And if you’re stopped at a protest or on the street, cops can and will forcibly unlock your phone using thumbprint or facial recognition if no password lock is enabled.

I believe that the likelihood and magnitude of all three of these risks (financial extortion, political hacktivism, and government surveillance) will increase a lot in the coming years for leftists, anarchists, activists, and noncomformists in the US. With Trump’s far-right politics and talk about fighting “the enemy within”, it doesn’t take a huge amount of historical analysis to see that there will likely be an increase in surveillance and prosecution based on political ideology. But I believe that financial extortion and political hacktivism against the left will drastically increase as well, once it becomes clear that the administration now lacks the will to prosecute such attacks.

The impact of these can be serious. Law enforcement investigations could lead to prosecution or incarceration. Not just for you, but for those you have messaged. We wouldn’t talk to cops about our friend’s activities, but many of us continue to communicate via unencrypted mediums (email, text) over corporate servers (gmail, meta), on insecure devices (no password or not up to date). If cops can find something incriminating in a conversation, imagine what they can find across all of your collected emails or texts with a person. 

In addition, as our government-run social safety nets are pillaged, it will become much more difficult to recover from financial fraud and extortion. While the background noise of financially motivate attacks can affect anyone, this will be particularly true for individuals and organizations that become politically targeted. It’s hard to be an effective activist if your elderly relative has just had their financial accounts drained, or your partner’s intimate pictures have been posted publicly online for ransome. Brown shirts have always been the first, cutting blade of fascist violence, and it’s hard to imagine far right groups desisting from these attacks once they feel a carte blanche to pursue those of us on the left without repercussions.

So, how will we face these threats? The anarchist answer is predictable — solidarity, mutual aid, community care. Masking in a pandemic. Providing food for your neighbors. Once again, in yet another domain, we need to help each other to our feet in the still-crumbling ruins, to build a safer world for ourselves, together.

Below, I’ve provided a basic checklist to help you secure your devices to keep yourself and your community safe. I encourage you to share this list (or even a single bullet point!) with someone else in your community as well.

There’s not space to fully explain all of these protections, and even this checklist should be mostly considered a healthy starting place! For more in depth information you can visit privacyguides.org or infosecforactivists.org.

Checklist:

For all of your Devices (phones, tablets, computers)

• Password (not face/thumb!) required to unlock lock screen
• Full Disk Encryption enabled (automatic for newer phones)
• All ‘sharing’ set to ‘off’ (airdrop, fileshare, screenshare, etc)
• Updated operating system (and auto-update turned on)
• Do all internet access through an updated web browser. 
• Install antivirus (usually not needed for phones/tablets)

For Important Accounts (Anything with bank details or used to impersonate you)

• Two-Factor Authentication enabled. (Preferably via app like 2FAS, not text)
• Password not used on any other of your accounts (Password managers like bitwarden help with this). 
• In particular, Email and Phone provider passwords MUST be unique — they can be used to unlock all other accounts
• Password not easily guessed (Random is best – use a password manager!)
• Audit privacy settings and disallow public visibility where possible

Communication

• Use Signal for sensitive topics and wherever else possible
• Assume text/email are unencrypted and not private
• Understand metadata and configuration risks for other apps like whatsapp, messenger, or telegram

• Use a trusted VPN on untrusted networks, or TOR to avoid surveillance
• set an admin password and wifi password for any routers you own
• Only use up-to-date browsers to access internet
• Avoid “smart home” devices where possible — lightbulbs, fridges, printers etc are easily hacked, consider any network with these devices “untrusted”.

Networks

By Ethan

Are you having some mixed feelings about mainstream social media platforms? Were you appalled when Meta announced its January 2025 “Actually, hate speech is cool with us!” policy change? Wanna learn about an alternate approach to connecting online? Come with me, on a journey into . . . The Fediverse!

Most mainstream social media platforms revolve around capturing user data to feed targeted ads and keep us locked in “walled gardens.” Network effects pull in all our friends, leaving us reluctant to switch. Meanwhile, proprietary algorithms mete out content in ways that enrich shareholders, leaving us with more ads, sensational junk, and less of what we actually want from our friends—resulting in what author Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification.”

What Is the Fediverse and Why It Matters

The Fediverse is a network of independently run servers, all using a shared protocol (ActivityPub) to seamlessly communicate with one another. Instead of handing control to a single corporation, each server is guided by its own community’s moderation rules—shaped by shared values, not profit motives. Unhappy with how your server is run? Move to another, and bring your followers.

Exploring Fediverse Platforms

Different services plug into this shared network:

• Mastodon offers a Twitter-like experience.
• Pixelfed is akin to Instagram.
• PeerTube, Loops, and Friendica cater to video, TikTok-style clips, and Facebook-like socializing, respectively.

All of these platforms can still follow and interact with each other because they “federate”—it’s one giant,interconnected world of smaller, values-driven communities.

No Algorithm, No Ads, and No Tracking

Unlike major social media, the Fediverse doesn’t rely on targeted ads or invasive tracking. Yohronological feed is populated with accounts and hashtags you’ve followed, instead of being filled by the whims of a profit-driven black-box algorithm. 

Volunteer Effort

Fediverse servers are reasonably affordable to run, and are maintained and moderated by volunteers who periodically ask for donations from their users.

How To Get Involved

Pick a Platform: Mastodon and Pixelfed are presently the most popular.

Pick a server: Browse a list of servers, and sign up on one. I recommend avoiding the most popular servers for each service, mastodon.social and pixelfed.social

Explore and Connect: Introduce yourself using #introduction, liberally follow accounts and hashtags, and see what’s trending in the Explore section. Since there’s no algorythm filling your feed, you’ll need to do a little work to follow interesting people and topics.

Learn More: fedi.tips has incredible guides for getting started, and the punks over at The Counterforce wrote a brilliant “Guide to Mastadon Fediverse”

After joining, drop me a line, and ask me anything! I’m @dusk@todon.eu

I’ll leave you with the words of the excellent article by 404 Media: You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism. Whatever social media you opt to use, remember to connect and organize with folk near you, IRL.

By Kermit

In the wake of the L.A. fires, a lot of folks were re-posting a quote about how climate change will manifest “as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer…until you’re the one filming it.” The same could be said about totalitarianism. Each day the footage and news reports of actions meant to destabilize, shock, and control people are getting closer and closer. The fascists have hung up their dog whistles and are putting on their boots. For many of us inside the US who have felt insulated from the capricious actions of the state in the past, it feels like something vital about our world has just shattered. For those of us in whom that realization came a long time ago, it still feels like a turning point, where the pretense of slow moving and deliberative institutional stability is evaporating and the naked use of institutional violence, stripped of any veneer of legitimacy, is accelerating and openly repressing any attempt to mitigate the trauma left in its wake.

We don’t know how bad it is going to get or how effective court challenges will ultimately be against this flurry of executive orders, but the trend lines are clear and it is easy, in this moment, to feel like any and all of our actions are futile. The stories that have encouraged us to hope for the best and believe in a future that is better than the present increasingly seem like wishful thinking if not absurd lies. Electoral politics have failed us, the courts cannot be trusted to defend us and we have been conditioned to believe that these are the only ways to make the world better; to save it, and us, from a terrible fate. As we move forward it will be necessary to let go of stories that do not serve us and find other ways to remain grounded and able to thrive.

However we do that, we have to start by accepting that we cannot save the world; there is no way to turn back the clock and the arc of the moral universe does not always or inevitably bend toward justice. Clinging to the belief that time, reason, institutional safeguards or thinking good thoughts will prevent or overcome the bad things happening leaves us immobilized and unable to recognize what we can do to resist them. Things will never go back to normal; we will not be delivered out of this world and into a better one — this is the world we have and we have to decide how we will live in it, connected to our values and nurturing a culture that is robust enough to survive the coming storm.

The opposite of hope…

Faced with terrifying headlines and an overwhelming sense of current and impending trauma, It is understandable that many folks are checking out, their sympathetic nervous systems overloaded, reacting with despair and numbing distractions. Some try as hard as they can to sound the alarm, burning brightly and demanding that we pay attention to everything all at once, not realizing that to pay attention to everything leaves no time or mental energy for meaningful action or the capacity to tend to the things in our lives that we are fighting for.

It’s true that this is an emergency and direct actions are needed to slow the fascists down but martyrdom is not the answer and overwhelming people with information meant to scare them into action often backfires in the long run. It sets people up to burn out, lose motivation and disengage in order to protect their psyches.

Others who do see the perils of martyrdom counsel us to remain calm and distrust mainstream voices that are suddenly horrified by things they were silent about when a center-left politician was doing them. They point out that this process did not begin in the last election and losing our shit will not serve us now. They are right and calming our nervous system is vital, but knowing this doesn’t change the fact that things are getting worse and stopping here can lead to a sense of smug resignation; a feeling that since things have always been terrible and are unlikely to stop being terrible, there is no point in doing anything.

The idea that we are not able to fix the whole problem can obscure the fact that there are smaller things we can do that have an impact. If we understand the future as a winner-take-all contest between utopia and catastrophe, then being faced with realities that cause us to lose faith in utopia means that everything is lost. It renders us incapable of noticing the small ways utopian moments and dynamics can exist in catastrophic times.

…is collectivity.

There is an irony in the idea that to avoid hopelessness, we must walk away from a certain kind of hope. In her book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, Sarah Jaquette Ray talks about how the opposite of despair isn’t hope, but a feeling of collectivity, of being connected, with others, to something larger than ourselves. She describes not wanting to leave people feeling hopeful, but “like you have the capacity and power to do something, including the most important task, preserving yourself for a lifetime of thriving in a climate changed world.” We live in a culture and economic system that encourages us to focus only on our agency as individuals. Things like climate change and political instability are far too large for any one person to meaningfully effect (save the odd megalomaniacal billionaire), so we are forced to conclude that our agency doesn’t matter. When we recognize that we are all, unavoidably, also part of larger collective groups of people and nurture those connections, we are not only able to do things together that make us feel good, but realize the actual sphere of our influence and see opportunities to be part of larger efforts to make positive change.

Recognizing that we are each only a small part of something larger can take the pressure off and give us permission to care for ourselves. It also allows us to better identify the scale within which our agency is powerful; certainly inside our own heads, but also in the lives of the people we love and are loved by, perhaps among our neighbors and other people we encounter or connect with as we move through the world and even as part of larger collectivities; haphazard and intentional, cultural and occupational.

Strengthening our communities and building collective solidarity has to start with finding our people and talking to them about the things that matter; building relationships with others that allow us to have healthier relationships with ourselves. Exploitative work schedules, antisocial urban planning and ‘social’ technologies that isolate and discourage us make this task harder. Finding ways to overcome those barriers and live in defiance of a culture that would seek to alienate us can push us to take the emotional quality of our lives more seriously.

Making sure we are able to conserve our energy for a long and ongoing struggle is important. There are always ways to respond to the present moment that are not meaningless; that connect us to one another and the world around us and encourage us to find joy and purpose with each other. Paying attention to our need for play and pleasure increases our capacity to get through difficult times. Resistance can look like sharing burdens and joy, like people who know how to laugh with, soothe, affirm and challenge each other. It is important to stay focused on the places where we can have the most impact, but also to honor the necessity of finding playful moments of presence with each other and to be reminded of the wonder of being alive; of recognizing that we have more energy to face the world when we feel connected to the people around us.

Our lives are precious, our stories matter

When I lived in Berkeley, I had an old crimethinc poster on my door that said something like “Beauty must be defined as what we are, otherwise the concept itself becomes our enemy.” The stories we tell ourselves about the world matter; they shape our lives, fuse meaning onto our actions, nurture our relationships and help us understand our emotions. As we learn to nurture stronger bonds with those around us and build more resilient narratives together to replace the stories that have failed us, we can articulate our own values more clearly and counter the rhetorical and material escalation of the fascists more effectively. 

Fascist narratives try to convince us that choosing to value our own life and culture demands devaluing the lives and culture of others. This is bullshit. I know that the lives of other people are precious precisely because my life and the lives of the people I love are precious to me and in dehumanizing others, we dehumanize ourselves.

My own certainty about this did not develop in a vacuum, it was nurtured and grew over time, through many conversations and experiences with people in my life. Conversations like those and the relationships and communities around them are what teach us how to critically engage with the world, allowing us to take in new information and let it change us. There is so much over which we have virtually no agency or ability to control. We do have agency over the stories we tell ourselves about what is important and who we want to be. We can learn to tell stories that acknowledge the grief of this moment and the trauma of the past honestly, that allow us to move through that grief and into a space where we are more healed and better able to meet whatever life might throw at us. 

Figuring out how to live in the world as it is means finding ways to create meaning and build structures that serve us on the scale of our own lives. It means interfacing with technology in ways that promote community building and solidarity while evading state surveillance, respecting the common humanity we share with people all over the world and understanding the systems of power that seek to estrange us from one another. 

Once we let go of the idea that we will get to paradise or return to normal, we have more capacity to make choices that build meaning, connection and resilience. Working together, we can build and defend the best lives we are able to make for ourselves, not as atomized individuals or nuclear families, but as networks of support and mutual aid bound together with ties of solidarity and love.

By Lola

We went to chinatown to watch the lunar new year parade. The streets were packed and we had to park 10 blocks away, up on a steep hill in north beach. I remember walking towards the fireworks, slowing down every two minutes as i waited for you to tag a trashcan, full moon hanging low over criss-crossing streets. We found the rest of the group in huntington park, drinking and skating the stoop of grace cathedral. Something felt sad and lost. I told you i was going to go find the parade. This was 2024, the year of the dragon. We ended up back in oakland that night, at the ave, and although no one seems to remember that, or the parade itself, to me it was unforgettable. A foray into my year of wishing and wanting. We lit christmas tree fires in the street all through that winter, and fire was all i could see — all that I was betting on. I didn’t have a strategy. I just knew I was angry and in love. I just wanted to get closer to the heat. 

Around me, like hot wax, the world moves, drips, pools, morphs. Gray whales and monarch butterflies begin their migration journeys north. Palestinian resistance fighters push the IOF off of their land, and march homeward. Seasons twist, winter arrives, you give me a knife for my birthday. I keep it in my purse. An email on how to protect our students from ICE is circulated through the school that i work at. And as I walk in spirals from the first full moon of the year to the last, it seems like the dragon has spoken her message loud and clear: all movement hinges on its proximity to the open flame. I find myself tucking into corners where the wax is hottest, the most malleable. I initiate fights that i don’t have the skills to win, i love people who i’m pretty sure will not love me back. And it feels good, for a while. This chasing, wishing, praying.

*

My sister told me that the earth recognizes three different kinds of blood. The blood of life (blood from childbirth), the blood of transformation (period blood) and the blood of death. Because reproductive health is in crisis — our natural cycles are no longer honored and revered and birth has been co-opted by patriarchal western medicine — the only blood that the earth is receiving now is the blood of death. In many ways we have tricked the earth and ourselves into believing that we have arrived at the end; that we are all dying. There is always death in the news, and there is always the death that the news will never report. The president announces he will level Gaza out and turn it into a strip mall. Some people — especially liberals, eager to blame anything and anyone other than empire itself — are very scared now. For others, this is nothing new. More threats and intimidation. The violence will continue, as it has continued for a long time, and the resistance will continue alongside it. (Trump is never going to “own” Gaza; as Subhi put it, “The west is so lost in their tiny little world that they are incapable of realizing not everybody in the world values what white westerners value… Many Palestinian muslims would rather sacrifice their lives, their bodies in this world, than to be pushed out of their land — hand over their holy land to the enemy.”) 

On tuesdays, grand lake theatre shows old movies for $5, and we decided to go see the wizard of oz. I had this crazy creepy feeling the whole time we were in there, watching this film that by someone’s colonial, 20th century american standards, was supposed to be a simple allegory for good and evil. A clueless white girl shows up in someone else’s country, kills the witch who lives there and steals her magical shoes, consequently pissing off the witch’s sister; she then makes friends with a bunch of infantile older men who help her kill the witch’s sister and promptly head back home, taking the shoes with her. It occurred to me, as I watched this wild series of events go down, that a mainstream american film from the 1900s is not different at all from a movie that might have been produced in nazi germany. We have a long history of comparing the atrocities of the US government to other, infamously “evil” states. We draw on north korea, russia, germany, iraq… stating that contemporary displacement, genocide, and oppression caused by the US is “almost as bad” as the foreign dictatorships of the past. But we don’t need to travel so many miles away, so many years back to make sense of where we are today. We don’t need to analyze foreign military structures, propaganda films, or government policies to understand how oppression works. Because it’s all right here at our own doorstep. There is nothing more American than genocide. 

It can be a twisted existence. Knowing where we are, and how we got here. Maintaining that awareness everyday. How much blood is there, under the paved streets? Under the grass on their front lawns, under the high rises and bridges? Under the sand on the beach? Blood of death, blood of life, blood of transformation. The history of this place is a history of enslavement, exploitation. Displacement and starvation and control. But that’s just one way to look at it. Because of course, a good amount of the blood that has long-since soaked into the earth belonged to the cops and presidents. And depending on which way you wanna see it, the history of this place is also a history of resistance. 

*

The lunar new year, like the wiccan holiday Imbolc, celebrates the half-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is the turning point between winter and spring, a tentative light pin-pricking the darkness. In the weeks that border two different seasons, it always feels like the membrane between past and present is thinning, perforating. The last time i could feel the seasons shifting like this, perceptibly, breathlessly, it was sometime in october. The clouds high and dark and tinged with orange, the once-lost feelings swimming tentatively to the surface. I was teaching middle school at the time, seventh grade english. I remember the first rain of the year, during second period. A drizzle against the big west-facing windows of classroom 204. The brief moment between summer and fall, just like the one between winter and spring, always makes me feel hopeful, nostalgic. Like the first leaf that shrivels, turns red, falls from the branch to the street: there is both the sense of knowing and not knowing what will come next, the urge as well as the reluctance to remember that the branch will become bare, the rain will fall, the neighbors will frame their door in christmas lights. Most of the time these days, i’m all caught up in my emotions. Lost in my own ups and downs. It is easy to forget that all of the change — the 

up only to cool down, the anger and hardness that gives way to soft vulnerability, is all part of the natural swing of things. Remembered or forgotten, weaving between apocalypses and dandelion seedlings, the repetition and balance of our world is ceaseless.

Lyrics from the band Drugdealer have been stuck in my head since high school. Wild motion running through your life…helps you to ease your mind, be still sometimes. I don’t know exactly what they were attempting to say there, but i’ve always felt a lucid sense of direction in those intervals between structure, steadiness, and sterility. Momentum follows heat and renewal arrives alongside ash. The state of the world is terrifying, and it isn’t an interlude. Maybe it has always been this way, always will be this way. If the end times are here, maybe they have been here since the first ice age. Maybe they have been here since the day the ice began to melt back into the sea. That burning desire for revolution is ingrained within us — we mirror the planet we call home. Irrational, incendiary, flooded in moonlight. But as assata shakur said, revolution must be scientific, not just emotional. We can’t afford to get lost in the heat now, bugs smashing dully against the street lamps, sand crabs crawling straight into the driftwood fire, punches thrown clumsily on the sidewalk, swinging and missing and swinging and missing and swinging again — 

In a couple weeks, the lunar new year parade will wind through the streets of chinatown. I’ll probably be there to see it, leaning against a windowsill with my tall can, watching the fireworks that they’ve aimed at the moon, that same full moon. But a year older, now. 2025 is the year of the snake. Similar to the dragon, but smaller, stealthier. Still deadly, but with no fire in its lungs. I imagine this snake slithering quietly through the rubble of the past year, observing, assessing, plotting. In filipino mythology, serpents would sometimes follow warriors into battle, indicating that one’s ancestors were on their side. Whether we wanted this or not, the world has begun to burn. I don’t think thats going to end anytime soon — i don’t think things are going to start calming down. I’m pretty sure we’re headed for more chaos. More battles. It’s a beautiful instinct, to follow the heat. But i don’t want to follow it blindly. Whether or not we remember the balance of life, the pendulum will continue to swing. From light to dark, side to side, quiet to loud — from firing guns to writing poems — its time for us to collect ourselves, now. Organize. Militarize. Lock in. Your wishes and prayers have always been more than scraps of paper to be set aflame, sent off into the wind — they are the venom in your fangs. Remind yourself, and bare them. 

By Icarus Rising

As our country lurches forward towards fascism before our eyes, let’s go back to basics to help stay grounded. A key principle for the battles ahead is that everything that’s happening in the outside world is also happening inside of us. 

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a model of the mind that sees us not as a single, unified self but as a system of different “parts” — each with its own perspective, emotions, and strategies for survival. Some parts of us are protectors, working hard to keep us functioning in the world. Others are exiles, carrying deep wounds, fears, and suppressed memories. At the core of this system, beyond all the internal conflict and trauma, is something deeper: the Self.

The Self is not a part — it’s the center of who we are when we are connected, calm, and leading from clarity rather than reaction. When our parts trust the Self to lead, we feel grounded, creative, and courageous. We don’t exile or suppress parts of ourselves — we integrate them. Healing happens not by dominating or controlling the mind, but by listening, understanding, and bringing all of our inner world into balance.

But what happens when a society, like an individual, is built on exile and domination?

Fascism: The Politics of Exile and Control

Fascism is not just a political system — it’s a way of organizing power that mirrors the same patterns of exile and suppression that traumatized minds experience. In authoritarian states, dissent is crushed, contradictions are silenced, and those who do not conform are cast out. There is no room for complexity, uncertainty, or questioning — only obedience, control, and fear.

IFS teaches us that when a person has exiled parts, they develop extreme protectors to keep those parts hidden. The same thing happens in authoritarian societies:

• The government functions like an extreme protector, trying to keep order by any means necessary.

• Those who challenge the system are treated like exiles — pushed out, discredited, or destroyed.

• Fear becomes the organizing principle — for both the rulers and the ruled.

And just like in an individual psyche, the more a system relies on repression, the more fragile it becomes. The exiles don’t disappear. They grow stronger in the shadows. The system becomes more extreme, more paranoid, more desperate to maintain control.

But there is an alternative. Just as IFS teaches that healing comes from Self-leadership, societies can heal through collective leadership — through creating space for all voices, embracing complexity, and refusing to be ruled by fear.

That’s where courage comes in.

Courage: The Key to Facing What’s Happening

In IFS, courage is an aspect of the Self. Not as an abstract concept, but as an embodied state — a way of being that allows us to face fear, hold our ground, and act with clarity even in the face of overwhelming pressure.

Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s the ability to move forward despite fear. It’s what allows us to:

• Look at reality without turning away.

• Stand up to systems of oppression without losing ourselves in hatred or despair.

• Trust that another world is possible, even when everything around us is crumbling.

Fascism feeds on fear and isolation. It wants us to believe that we are alone, that resistance is futile, that we must obey to survive. But courage shatters isolation. It reminds us that we are not alone, that there are others who see what we see, and that together we are stronger than any system that seeks to control us.

Courage is not just about individual action — it’s about collective transformation.

Building Self-Led Communities: The Path to a New World

The old systems — authoritarian politics, extractive capitalism, and rigid top-down control — are collapsing under their own weight. The future is not going to be built by governments, corporations, or elites. It will be built by people—by communities that take responsibility for shaping the world they want to live in.

This is why self-led groups and healthy leadership are the future. Just as IFS teaches us to trust the Self to lead internally, we need to cultivate leadership that is accountable, responsive, and rooted in connection rather than coercion.

Authoritarianism thrives on control and domination — where leadership is about exerting power over others. The alternative is not the absence of leadership, but a different kind of leadership — one that is shared, participatory, and in service to the whole.

Imagine:

• Networks of mutual aid that meet real needs while building long-term infrastructure for survival.

• Groups where leadership is dynamic — where people step up to guide, teach, and organize based on trust, skill, and accountability, rather than status or control.

• Communities that create space for real decision-making, where leadership is about responsibility and contribution rather than authority.

This is the difference between hierarchical domination and healthy leadership:

• Fascist leaders hoard power. Healthy leaders distribute it.

• Fascist leaders suppress dissent. Healthy leaders make space for different perspectives.

• Fascist leaders operate from fear. Healthy leaders cultivate courage.

When leadership is about service rather than control, responsibility rather than dominance, and relationship rather than coercion, it strengthens communities rather than creating dependency.

Fascism teaches us that power means domination. But the truth is, real power comes from connection, trust, and the ability to move together toward a shared vision. The more we practice Self-leadership, collective courage, and accountable organizing, the less control the old systems have over us.

This is how we win — not by waiting for permission, but by building something new, together. Let’s start by talking about it.

Expanding the Vision: IFS Support Groups and Collective Healing

Imagine a future where Internal Family Systems practice extends beyond therapy rooms into grassroots communities. I envision self-led IFS support groups, both face-to-face and online, where people come together like in 12-step groups to share their inner journeys, support each other’s healing, and practice courageous self-leadership in a world that tries to divide us. These groups could offer regular meetings, peer support, and shared resources, creating networks of care and empowerment. In a time when isolation and fear are weaponized, spaces where we can bring our whole selves — wounded parts and all — into connection are revolutionary. Let’s build those spaces together. 

Info: undergroundtransmissions.substack.com

By H-Cat

A quarter of a century ago, as a teenager, I marched in the streets of Seattle as part of the people-powered “counter conference” that emerged in response to a meeting of the World Trade Organization, a global organization that allows non-elected businesspeople to bypass local laws. I had been raised Republican, but one reason I was out there, marching alongside hippies, union members, and cloistered nuns, is that I believed in the democratic process. I was sure, at that time, that the United States and every country was being governed in a fair and democratic way. The existence of an organization like the WTO challenged my vision of how the world was supposed to work. How could it be that a bunch of non-elected businesspeople had bypassed the democratic process and taken charge of everything? Enraged that this “unjust coup” had somehow happened, I hitched a ride into Seattle from the suburbs to join those protesting. I knew I needed to be there because the WTO stood against everything I believed was right.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that my entire worldview would be turned upside down during the days I spent at the protest — thanks to so many educators and truth-speakers present at the gathering. These people taught me that there were deeper, systemic issues that had been happening all along — they shared this knowledge through zines, pamphlets, speeches on street corners, songs, performances, and works of protest art. I especially learned a great deal from folks who took the time to explain to me one-on-one why they were there. I’ll never forget these two French cheese farmers who kindly took the time to explain to me and my protest buddies about how their livelihoods were being impacted by systemic machinations that aimed to put control over the means of producing goods into fewer and fewer hands. 

The activist-educators seemed to take two approaches: sometimes they’d focus on a single instance of harm and then zoom out to explain how that instance was the result of part of a larger pattern. In other instances, they would share a list of the awful things happening, often as a list of demands. Whether or not these demands were feasible, the act of presenting these lists served an educational purpose: it helped those of us who were less aware catch up and quickly understand that these things were actually happening. 

To seasoned activists, all of this was probably pretty boring, and maybe even disheartening. Just the same “tired talking points” they had already heard at rallies before. But I hadn’t been to any of those rallies. For me, I was learning all these things fresh, for the first time. These activist-educators were presenting me with information that defied the lies I’d been raised with. It was like I’d been living in a bubble, and that bubble was bursting. I was learning about a bunch of awful, large-scale things that had been happening all along. This is a vital first step towards truly fixing anything: How can these massive, systemic forms of yuck be changed if people aren’t even aware that they are happening?

Right now, a similar moment is unfolding all over the country as lots of people rise up for the first time. People are looking for answers… Now is a time for speaking with clarity about what’s really happening — about the things that have been happening all along.

It is only by working to name the harm that we’ll be able to end it. It is only through a process of putting words to forms of active harm that we can transform these things into history, and relegate them to the past. Now is a time for onboarding, and for speaking with clarity about the things we want to go away.

This moment may be the first chance in over 200 years to make deep changes to the way things are run in the U.S. Whoever tells the most compelling stories of how we got to this moment will dictate what happens next. Don’t let that work be done by revisionists or apologists. Now is a good time to look up the work of Elinor Ostrom, the Noble-prize winning economist who showed us that “the tragedy of the commons” is a myth. 

A new system is possible — as long as we can still dream. Imagine what it would be like if our voices mattered? Imagine if we transitioned to a worker cooperative commonwealth where neighborhood councils made local decisions as part of a participatory budget process. We could restore the commons, rebuild public places where we can grow food and make art. We could build an economy that centers human and ecological well-being, with healthcare for all, robust access to education, tool libraries and maker spaces. It’s more than possible to transition to 100% clean energy — Scotland’s already there. 

All the best things are still absolutely possible. In fact, this may be the moment in which we can get everything we ask for.

By eli l.a. 

I have just returned from the most sexually-prolific Quaker camp you can imagine. There were duct-tape bras, boob contests, and various unmentionable behaviors in crowded rooms. I once kissed nine girls in one night. We streaked and swapped partners. It is 2007 and I am twelve. But we don’t have time to get into that now, because this is a love letter, a thank you to my first-ever boyfriend, who also happened to be my first trans boyfriend. Let’s call him Luca.

Luca and I met in our middle school’s theater program. At the time, I knew Luca was thirteen and hated skirts. I was typecast as the loud best friend, and Luca was in crew. But it was really at this camp where I fell for Luca. 

Sure, Luca looked great in his new short haircut. But more importantly, Luca was becoming Luca. He discovered sharpie beards, braggadocios bisexuals, and, yes, a love of duct tape. We did not get romantic until we returned to our hometown in Maine. Luca was entering his freshmen year at the notorious gay high school. I got the same haircut as Luca and started eighth grade. 

The good news: Luca’s bus home stopped at my middle school. At the stop, we picked each other up with big bear hugs in late August. I’d jump on board, go to Luca’s, and we’d talk about our dogs and, of course, penises.

The bad news: come September, we could only hug for a short period of time, even though the bus waited about half an hour at that stop. Around five seconds into our embrace, we’d get a loud harrumph from on high. 

There was the principal, ironically named McCarthy, standing right next to us, counting us off with his watch, telling us we had to separate. He did this for almost the whole 6-month relationship, and we were Type-A as in Achievers, so we honored adults and their authority. Each time, we let go of each other. If we took a second or two longer, I’d get a heavy hand on my shoulder, like a stone that threatened to drown me. 

Then Luca and I stood there awkwardly, not touching, principal still behind me to make sure we didn’t sneak another dirty hug. Next to us, my best friend and her cisboyfriend exchanged saliva. They were sometimes caught in the stairwells, hands down each other’s pants. She’d sit on his lap, and in the next seat over, the vice principal was telling Luca and me to stop holding hands. The days got colder. 

That was the price of Type A as in Assimilate. We did what we were told. Luca was Type-A as in Ambition. He started studying for the SATs at twelve, networking his way toward med-school internships, yes, before high school started. He was, of course, about to become the president of the gay high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, which is extra super gay. He wanted to succeed. He didn’t want Attention for being trouble.

But trouble gave us attention. It wasn’t just the middle school principal. Strangers on the street, even our friends, would yell ‘Dyke’ at us.. Luca’s step-dad, a lawyer, held doors for us just so he could say, “Ladies first… or, WHATEVER.”

We had a daily tourniquet of otherness. So we sought out everything that made us feel something or helped even a little. Luca wore three sports bras to school until he graduated to binders. And yes, he slept in them. Luca started taking birth control without the sugar pills, so he would never bleed. One day, Luca called me crying. He’d carved the female symbol into his forearm with his mom’s pumice stone. It took a month to heal. Some days all he did was cry. Some days all I did was cry. And that was pretty reasonable, honestly.

We often ate a whole jar of Nutella in an afternoon. We watched videos about how to look good naked, how to kiss, how to make your breast-shape change with certain exercises. Luca made duct tape wallets, duct tape ties, a functional duct tape tux with pockets. We snuck into our town’s only sex shop — ‘Condom Sense’. We got kicked out because we couldn’t stop laughing at the candy thongs. 

That Valentine’s Day, Luca made me a three-dimensional duct tape rocket ship. It was full of presents — a chocolate rose, a pink stuffed bear, a long rhyming love limerick. My parents thought it was Type-A+ as in Absolutely Adorable until we got to the last gift. Out fell red hot handcuffs with stripper pink feathers. Seriously.

My jaw dropped. My parents’ faces fell. They’d already been getting calls from school about how I wasn’t behaving Type-A as in ‘Appropriate.’ Now this. But they said nothing, just immediately wandered out of my room, while I blushed with shame and slammed the door behind me and hid the handcuffs under my bed. We have never spoken of it since.

Please understand: Luca and I were not doing anything that kinky. Yes, we were hooking up. Yes, we talked about sex and bodies all the time. Yes, we were really going through puberty. But the one time Luca offered to show me porn, I literally ran out of the room. I never saw Luca’s chest, let alone a nipple. That was our vibe.

We never used the plastic handcuffs. Luca just thought they were really funny, and he wanted to share the joke with me, because, guess what? Sex and gender is a fucking joke. It is a farce. We all look silly. Why not enjoy it? 

Next time we saw each other, I play-slapped Luca’s shoulders — “Why didn’t you tell me! You should have seen their faces!” — and he cackled with glee. Beautiful glee. I wasn’t actually mad. How could I be? How could I pass along that shame I’d felt, when my parents saw Luca’s gift? 

I loved Luca, I loved all his gifts, and all his trouble.

But our parents did not get the joke. So we stopped touching in front of them, learned what ‘platonic’ meant, and immediately started promising that it defined us. We wouldn’t give up the dating moniker — we were too obviously infatuated — but the idea that we only friend-touched meant we still got to have some sleepovers. Of course, these were sleepovers neither of us would ever have been allowed to have with a cisboy. We learned the queer art of milking a paradox.

Of course there’s more here, more awful, more daily menace and humiliations we don’t have time for. Remember, this is a love letter. I’ve come to enjoy that gender is not between my legs, but something created on the stage, like the middle school theater where Luca and I met. Gender is a fairytale of costumes and props and dramatic hand gestures. It’s how we sing or if we speak in questions. But the current genders on offer are old stories written long ago by our ancestors, who would not love us, their queer descendants. But queerness is always alive and creative and growing flowers in the cracks, finding new ways to apply fake beards.

In Luca’s case, gender included some surgeries. Last I knew, he was a pediatric residential surgeon, specializing in gender-diverse healthcare. Hence the changed name — I want to celebrate the messy intimacy of genderdiverse youth and their vital relationships, while allowing some well-deserved privacy. I want you to hear all our stumbling and the rocks in our way and let you know that we turned out OK. We are human, we are lucky, and we are a beautiful mess. 

It’s important Luca survived adolescence, that I survived, that it does indeed get better. Now, Luca has chest hair, and a career, and a dog. Trans men are lovable. Their joy fuels the queer cause. So often the ones who can’t hide are the brightest beacons. 

You don’t have to be Type-A to survive — that’s not what was lovable about Luca. I wish I could give every trans kid with the absolute liquid fire of gender euphoria Luca had in 2007, running down those dirt paths, leg hair in the breeze, surrounded by laughing girls. He was so goddamn beautiful. Every day, for longer every day, he came out with the sun. Thank you. 

Contact the author @aliaselila