Month: October 2025

By PhotoNinja Ari

ICE is increasingly hunting for people in and around courthouses after they attend their immigration hearings. They wait outside courtrooms, ready to pounce the moment someone emerges from their hearing.

ICE exploits a vulnerable moment in a person’s life: Just when they think they are safe to walk out of court and go home, the threat of detainment looms. This can drive people to skip court dates, which can impact their immigration status. It’s a cruel catch-22 that tears families apart and causes undocumented folks to live in fear. One way to help out is by organizing court support networks.

What Is Court Support?

Court Support is a type of mutual aid that involves accompanying people to immigration court and assuring they are not alone throughout the process. We keep them company and intervene when ICE lurks nearby. It also involves getting to know people, listening to them, and supporting their need to feel safe as this scary situation unfolds. Sometimes the process can provide comfort, which is actually quite a lot. Just knowing you’re not invisible; that you won’t be kidnapped and disappeared without a crowd protesting, can provide some peace of mind throughout this shitty era of escalating state-sponsored violence against immigrants.

Grounded in Abolitionist Values: Solidarity, not Charity

This isn’t charity — it’s abolitionist mutual aid. Court support uproots the logic of surveillance, detention, and coercion. We’re building a world based on mutual aid, solidarity, and consent.

Imagine a world without immigration detention. Immigration detention is a scam after all, designed to funnel taxpayer money into the hands of private prison corporations like GeoGroup. If we don’t stand up for undocumented people, our own communities will be next. Those who profit from the prison industrial complex will keep finding new groups to target for mass incarceration until we put them out of business. Fighting to abolish ICE detention keeps all of us safer.

Court support is actually working!

Since the court support movement in SF began, the number of people who have been abducted after their court hearings has been drastically reduced here. ICE is far less likely to act if people with cameras and glitter are standing by. We’re the DIY paparazzi, shedding light on ICE atrocities by exposing their kidnapping ring. They may be hiding their faces, but we aren’t letting their crimes stay hidden.

Why It Works—And Actually Saves People from Abduction

• Visibility as protection: ICE is less likely to snatch someone right after court when there’s a crowd. Being watched de-escalates their tactics.
• Emergency intervention: If ICE tries to swoop in, the support team documents, witnesses, raises the alarm, calls legal help, and sometimes blocks them. This creates delays that can derail snap arrests.

Tip: Be sure to get enough volunteers to cover all the court dates and times. You want to avoid leaving a gap in which ICE could slip in and kidnap people. As long as there are always people there ready to document and pay attention to what is happening, ICE is far more likely to get camera-shy and back off.

From the Detention Watch Network’s #CommunitiesNotCages toolkit: “Abolitionist mutual aid is about forming non-hierarchical networks that respond directly to the needs of those under ICE terror, working in solidarity with those inside and impacted communities outside.” 

Learn more and find tips for how to start a Detention Watch Network in your community here: detentionwatchnetwork.org

By Hazel

You are trying to talk to someone, maybe a friend or a family member, about political action. You’re trying to convince them that, rather than the time for despair, now is the time for hope; and not hope in the system, but hope in themself and each other. The uncertainty of the moment has softened them, American preconceptions are crumbling, and the flag of patriotism once tinged is now covered with a decadent rot, but still you are fighting against a lifetime of habit.

There are many traits that mark an effective organizer. One of them is the ability to understand and respond to the context of each person you talk to. I will draw out three limitations in particular to keep in mind when trying to reach someone in a conversation. It is up to you then, as always, to decide who to commit your energies to and how to approach them. These limitations are fear, imagination, and social pressure.

On the subject of fear, I would hazard a guess that it plays a bigger role for those who have a chance at refuge: the affluent, ostensibly white, and cis-het. This is almost paradoxical, until you remember that most people who fall outside those groups live in a perpetual state of anxiety, if not outright fear. The chilling effect of those emotions simply won’t be as effective in halting the activation of people who are already inoculated to them. There is perhaps another conversation to be had about conservatism primarily among gay men and some lesbians as a performative defense mechanism, also due to fear, also out of a misunderstanding of the struggle they participate in, but that conversation is altogether too complicated to do justice to here.

The attitude of the fearful can be summed up by a surprising insight given by my partner’s father: “They’re not arresting white people, unless they protest.” …Lots to unpack there, huh? The only counter to this kind of thinking, the privileged perspective of those who know that quietude can be an escape for them alone, is to remind them of their lonesomeness. It is true, in all likelihood, that wealthy, quiet whites will be able to live through this particular moment in relative peace; and those that chose to do so will probably contemplate suicide thereafter. They will hate themselves for their cowardice, and they will hate themselves for turning their back on all their friends and relatives who did stand up and resist, who would have been that much safer with another person at their side. 

If you wish to talk with people who are afraid, you have to respect their fear, or else they will withdraw from you. At the same time, every single person who stands up makes every other person standing up that much safer, and everyone needs to understand that. Massacres are made of isolated protests, but when a million people march, five million, ten, no guns can stop them — for the authority would do irreparable damage to itself. (That’s not to say a big march will fix the country, but showing up is the least they can do to keep others safe.) 

Imagination is a precious resource, and it is criminally underutilized in the United States. It is this way because our leaders fear the leadership of the masses, so our education, our labor, and even our home lives have been shoved into boxes that hinder the growth of our imaginative faculties. To this point, it requires patience to talk to someone who cannot imagine an alternative to for-profit health insurance, or endless military spending, for example. You have to walk them through it without theoreticals. 

Don’t say socialism, don’t say capitalism. There is no agreement whatsoever on the definition of those terms. In the American conception, capitalism is always viewed in the ideal, with its wants and needs perfectly balanced in a perpetually virtuous market, while socialism and communism (they are always lumped together) is Stalinism. It is not worth the time it will take to dismantle this conception. It will be easier to create a functional, socially responsible system of governance than it will be to convince some these Boomers that they are just as propagandized as the Russians. So don’t lean on jargon; just describe situations and actions that can be taken to make them better.

In this way, Mamdani’s mayoral campaign has given us all a very polished example to follow. Rather than draw the line at theoreticals, draw the line at dignity and have dignity mean affordability. Can a dignified life be synonymous with an affordable existence? No, not at all, but it’s something people understand. And when your someone asks you how all the changes to our current system will be paid for, the answer is cut ICE funding, replace corporate subsidies with public ones, and tax the rich. And if that doesn’t make sense to them, you can give up. 

Your time is precious. The last thing you have to remember when talking to your someone is the type of social pressure you exert on them­. The reality is that if you have a healthy relationship with a person, your dissent about their political opinions is not a threat to them. In most cases, that’s a good thing. It means your love for each other is unconditional, but it also means that you simply might not be the person to reach them. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope for them, and it doesn’t mean that all your efforts in talking to them about the current situation are wasted. 

Probably, you won’t be the one to change their mind, because they’re just too comfortable talking to you. The family space should be one in which people are comfortable, at least up to a point. If your uncle or your homie is sounding like a eugenicist, you need to get some mutuals together and make a plan. But if your someone is trying their best to understand what they’ve been seeing in the world and still can’t seem to accept the fact that they can do something to change it, it is okay to let go of your obligation to be their guide and instead allow yourself to just be a person with them. 

In truth, you’re better off talking to strangers. Because a stranger’s actions cannot be explained away by personality. Without the context of familiarity, they must be taken at face value. A stranger comes from the unknown and returns to the unknown, like a force of nature. So if you want to change some minds, get out there and be a force of nature.

By SF Bay Mutual Aid and PB

Authoritarians want us isolated and afraid. Through raids, bans, and cruel policies, they’re trying to make fascism feel normal. Families are separated, neighbors harassed, and whole communities pushed into silence. But we refuse to face this alone.

Solidarity Circles are small, self-organized groups where people choose each other and stand together.  Small, trust-based groups have unique power. They can move faster than large organizations, go deeper than public campaigns, and act more creatively than top-down efforts. Civil resistance does not only mean confrontation. It also means building the world we want and refusing to comply with systems that cause harm.

Community Building

Community building lays the foundation for action. It is how we build trust, belonging, and political imagination. It creates the conditions for sustained resistance and collective care. You can invite friends, neighbors, coworkers, or others into your circle or help them form their own. Potlucks, movie nights, hikes, art nights, or skill shares build strong relationships and make movement work enjoyable and sustaining. Listening circles, ceremonies, or healing practices help process grief, joy, and transformation together.

Educational and Persuasion 

Circles gather to raise consciousness and shift understanding of power, justice, and collective struggle. Circles can help make political education personal, grounded, and engaging by reading books or articles together and helping each other connect the dots between lived experience and systemic conditions. Circles can host teach-ins to lead public conversations about housing, labor, policing, climate, or racial justice. Some hang posters, create zines, put on performances, alter billboards, paint graffiti or chalk messages that shift public narratives.

Mutual Aid

Circles can responds to immediate needs while building alternatives to systems of neglect and control. This is a form of resistance grounded in care, survival, and solidarity and can include distributing food, transportation, funds, medical supplies, child care, or housing support. Some circles offer emotional support with peer listening partnerships or regular check-ins to reduce burnout and isolation. Circles can provide emergency support for people facing eviction, arrest, natural disasters, or personal emergencies. Circles can create systems like tool libraries, protest safety teams, or solidarity funds that increase community resilience.

Disobey and Refuse 

Civil disobedience involves intentionally refusing to comply with unjust laws or systems. It can take many forms, from quiet acts of defiance to public disruption. Some circles engage in direct action such as sit-ins, blockades, banner drops, or other disruptions targeting harmful institutions. Others support strikes by showing up for workers on strike with material support and physical presence. Circles can provide sanctuary and protection by offering shelter and support to people targeted by law enforcement, including immigrants, trans people, or abortion seekers. We can all withdraw participation from systems of exploitation with boycotts, divestment campaigns or work stoppages. 

There is no single best tactic. Circles are strongest when they act with intention, figure out what to do together, and stay connected to the broader strggle for justice. To join or start a circle in your area, solidaritycircles.org/join.

By Anonymous

Here are practical ways to resist military occupation of our cities and ICE acting as a federal secret police against kids and grandmothers.

Decentralized diversity of tactics

It takes varying and broad-based activity to avoid government domination, ranging from refusing service, polite marches, dressing up in frog costumes, blockades, strikes and directly confronting troops. Tyrants escalate violence to provoke reactions on their terms that can strengthen their hands and discredit us. Their goal is to divide communities so they can isolate, criminalize, and lock up militants. We don’t have to take the bait. Their over-reactions can be turned against them. However, our numbers, mobility, and flexibility can give us an advantage in some contexts. Our focus should be on what works. 

Prepare now & expand networks

Uprisings require support from people and networks who aren’t on the front lines. Now is the time to deepen existing relationships with your family, neighbors, coworkers, and friends. Meet people where they’re at and identify tangible ways they might help. How could existing organizations, social networks, and structures oppose authoritarianism with their resources? Restaurants, warehouses, auto repair shops, stores, construction contractors, etc. can refuse to provide resources to invading troops, or provide necessary goods and services to those resisting occupation. Sports leagues, local media, libraries, museums, schools, bookstores, and hospitals can cancel events, denounce violent repression, distribute calls to action, and provide sanctuary to people fleeing tear gas. Who in your circle may have some of these connections?  With security in mind, we can develop protocols for sharing information, needs, and materials in an efficient manner.

Prepare together 

Map skills for everything from physical and mental health to housing to growing food. Pool resources to help those who need them. Mutual aid is the foundation for collective strength.

Defend One Another: Community self-defense ranges from deescalation to physical intervention. Build resilient neighborhoods where the army and ICE are not welcome. Spread non-compliance, contempt, and revolt as an act of solidarity with those already facing repression.

Distribute: Share skills and supplies in decentralized, coordinated ways. Build logistical strategies to get people and supplies from one place to another. Diversify roles to build a stronger movement where people can take different levels of risk.

Communicate: Practice digital security. Use Signal and burner phones. If digital networks fail or become unsafe, have a plan for alternative communication, like runners.

Be water

Keep Your Toolbox Full: Don’t rule out tactics that might be new or uncomfortable for you. Debate is healthy, but “violence” versus “non-violence” is a mirage.

Be Wise in Application: Work with the terrain. Address actions you think were a mistake in good faith. Adjust tactics and formations to specific goals. Discuss the pros and cons beforehand. Debrief afterwards.

Learn Together: Treat each act as training for the next. Reflect upon what is working and what is not. Share your insights with others.

Be Creative: When one tactic is hitting a limit, try something new. Our greatest strength lies in our ability to rapidly evolve and act with asymmetric impact.

Uprisings succeed when they remain complex, diverse, and contagious. Refuse the impulse to condemn people fighting tyranny — whether through sit-ins, marches, or direct confrontation. By embracing those who fight beside us, we protect everyone from the repression that will eventually come for us all.

Keep each other safe

Bring Buddies: Don’t arrive or leave a street action alone. If you think you’re being followed, don’t lead them to your home or your comrades’ homes.

Support Arrestees: Bail, jail, and court support are crucial. Fundraise for bail and legal defense.

Create Safe Houses and Support Networks: People may need to hide and be supported materially and emotionally. Plan now.

Don’t Talk to the Police: Nothing good ever comes from talking to them. Do tell your comrades if you are visited by the police.

Don’t Brag or Implicate Others: Sensitive info should not be shared publicly.

Beware Accusations of Infiltration:  Don’t speculate on motives. If you don’t trust someone, don’t work with them. Don’t make accusations without definitive proof. 

Stay safe to remain dangerous

We can defend against police riot control munitions with preparation and the right gear.

Clothing: Nondescript, without identifying logos or bright colors. Police will review surveillance footage after the fact to identify suspects. Cover identifying tattoos, piercings, and hair.

Helmets: Wearing an inconspicuous helmet (like a baseball bump cap or bike helmet) can protect against head trauma from rubber bullets, grenades, and batons.

Gloves: Gloves make sure you don’t leave fingerprints. Heat-resistant Nomex or leather gloves protect your hands if you throw away police tear gas canisters.

Umbrella : Deflect police munitions, block pepper spray, and provide cover from police and media cameras.

Masks: Cover your face to prevent identification. Full-face respirators or half-face respirators pared with goggles offer protection against chemical weapons and eye injuries from police munitions. 

Cash: Get home safely without getting tracked through apps or payment processing systems. Buy your protest gear in cash. Bring a set of different clothes to change into directly after the action, but don’t bring your phone!

Stay together: Don’t let the police separate your crew. Stay tight, regroup, and hold space, never turning your back to the adversary. Attempts to split the march into “good” and “bad” protesters are doing the police’s work for them.

Use barricades: Dragging objects into the street behind the march protects everyone from traffic and police charges.

Keep moving: The police might try to surround the march to “kettle” and mass arrest everyone. Keep it moving, especially in vulnerable terrain like intersections. Avoid bridges.

Get in formation: Practice moving together in a “stack” with your crew. Keep your group together, holding onto each others’ shoulders or backpacks.

Extinguishing tear gas 

Wearing heat-proof gloves and a respirator, submerge the tear gas grenade in a wide-mouthed water jug containing 3 tablespoons of baking soda, dish soap, and/or vegetable oil for each liter of water. Cover the top with one hand, just enough to keep the gas from getting out, and shake the jug. Never seal a bottle containing an active tear gas canister — you don’t want it to explode. You can also use heat-proof gloves to throw the gas canisters away from the crowd, or sticks to knock them away. Leaf blowers can disperse the gas quickly, keeping the air fresh and breathable.

By anonymous 

Attacks on trans existence are escalating. Fascists in power are signaling their intent to use already existing systems to deny us healthcare and disappear us. Those systems, for-profit medical care, abusive mental health treatment, and the criminalization of people who aren’t the favored demographic of the state, have been built up over decades and centuries to remove people the dominant culture deems undesirable. People of color, disabled people, and mad people have always felt the violence of these institutions. The problem is not the expansion of these systems to harm more people, it’s the existence of these systems in the first place, and we must work to abolish them as we take action to meet our own particular needs. The good news is that for decades and centuries we’ve been developing ways to counter these systems and care for each other outside them. 

Because it’s already impossible to get HRT (hormone replacement therapy) through doctors and pharmacies for many people, there is a strong tradition of DIY HRT in the trans community. The best way to get started is through trusted friends and local community, but there are online resources as well. One of these is diyhrt.info, which hosts information about dosing, safety, and sourcing for hormones. It includes information on Estrogen, antiandrogens like Spironolactone, and Testosterone. 

The use of the existing healthcare system to restrict access to care means that we won’t all lose access at once. While some already can’t afford to go to a doctor, others will be able to pay out of pocket indefinitely. Those who have the privilege of access to prescribed hormones can stockpile them for community preparedness by saving excess medication (easiest with injected hormones) or getting a prescription for more than the dose they’re actually taking. 

To protect each other from institutionalization we have to be mindful of what resources we call upon when someone in our community is in crisis. Crisis hotlines like 988 will call emergency services without the consent of the caller and cooperate with police, and we need to inform people around us that they should not call 988 or 911. We need to be each other’s emergency services whenever possible, developing skills in providing care in crisis. One approach for this is MAST: Mutual Aid Self/Social Therapy; there are many others. 

There are also anti-carceral crisis chat and phone lines, such as THRIVE Lifeline and Trans Lifeline that will not call emergency services without the caller’s consent. These can be good resources, certainly better than 988, but be aware that these services may still report information shared with them to law enforcement to comply with mandatory reporting laws regarding credible threats of violence or abuse of minors or vulnerable dependent adults. 

Those who are trying to eradicate us are also communicating their intent to label us as terrorists and extremists, and use national security and military infrastructure to target us. Improving our digital and communication security by leaving corporate social media, using encrypted chat and email, and communicating in person whenever possible are all steps worth taking. But while trans citizens of the US can see the threat of contrived national security crackdowns on the horizon, our immigrant neighbors and comrades of all genders are already facing the brunt of this assault. I don’t think I need to tell a trans person reading Slingshot to act in solidarity with immigrants and the Palestinian people, but it seems wrong to write all this without a reminder. 

Ultimately our safety comes from solidarity and community. As we take action for personal and community preparedness like stockpiling hormones and practicing community based responses to mental health crises, we must continue building robust webs of trust, care, and rebellion. Tending to our relationships with each other, attending trans community events, and organizing more, especially small independent ones, is as vital as it’s ever been. 

It’s looking like things are going to get harder, and I’m not going to pretend I think we’re all going to make it. I think many of us will though, and I have enormous faith in us to take care of each other and fight like hell for the joyful, free future we live moments of already as we care and fight. 

Resources referenced: 

DIY HRT Directory: diyhrt.info

THRIVE Lifeline: thrivelifeline.org

Trans Lifeline: translifeline.org

Mutual Aid Self/Social Therapy: theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-jane-addams-collective-mutual-aid-self-social-therapy

By Harlin/Hayley

Breathe in.

The Earth is now 10% hotter than it was 200 years ago. 

Breathe out.

Imagine if your body warmed to be 10% hotter than its average temperature of 98.6°F? What would that feel like? Which part of your body would be damaged first? Do you think you could survive such a thing?

Breathe in.

The average global temperature before the industrial era was 13.7°C. We have now breached a 1.5°C increase in temperature. That is a 10.95% increase. This has really happened. We are there.[1]

Breathe out.

The ocean is now 25% more acidic than it was before industrialization, and that number is rapidly increasing…

Breathe in.

As the ocean grows more acidic, saltwater lifeforms begin to suffer. Those with calcium carbonate shells are especially suffering, including corals, oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, and sea urchins.

Breathe out.

The thing causing the ocean to acidify is that CO2 is falling into it. Around 20%-30% of the carbon from burning fossil fuels is absorbed into the ocean, raising the ocean’s pH levels. 

Breathe in.

Notice your body as you interact with this information. Do you feel tension anywhere? Try noticing the tension. Try staying with it.

Breathe out.

Do you remember how back in the 1990s, if you went for a long car ride, your windshield would get covered in insects? Have you noticed how that doesn’t happen anymore? Have you wondered why?

Breathe in.

Scientists call it ‘The Insect Apocalypse.’ Around 70% of all insects on this planet have died off in the last 50 years. Our planet has lost 70% of its insect biomass.

Breathe in.

The Earth is still losing between 10-20% of its insect biomass each decade. Birds and rodents depend on insects for food. The food chain is already being impacted…

Breathe out.

Resist the urge to assign blame for all this. Let’s see if we can just stay focused on the harm for now.

Breathe in.

When soil is healthy, it is able to absorb CO2 and can also be used to grow food. But when soil is improperly cared for, it begins to degrade and these qualities go away.

Breathe out.

According to the World Atlas of Desertification, 75% of the Earth’s soil is already degraded. And if current trends continue, this will rise to 90% by 2050. This will impact all life on Earth.

Breathe in.

We have to see it to heal it. The greatest danger right now is to look away.

Breathe out.

Should we talk about what is happening to wildlife populations, and how they have changed since the 1970s? 

Breathe in.

The Living Planet Index (LPI) tracks changes in the population of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish that are being monitored by scientists worldwide. The LPI shows an average decline of 73% in population size of all monitored wildlife since the 1970s. 

Breathe out.

Are you still with me?

Breathe in.

You may be trying to blame all humans for this. There’s a reason for that. You have been deceived. 

Breathe out.

Starting in the 1950s, fossil fuel investors learned their product was warming the planet. Rather than warning the public, they began to develop a strategy to protect their profit margins…

Breathe in.

So beginning in the 1950s, polluting industry leaders, led by fossil fuel tycoons, began to fund a massive misinformation campaign that aimed to blame human population numbers on environmental harm.[2] There is no evidence to back up the idea that human population size is the cause of pollution. By tricking people into blaming human population numbers as a scapegoat, industries could avoid regulation and continue their polluting activities unchecked.

Breathe out.

Did you know that emissions continued to accelerate during the pandemic? Most people seem to think that emissions went down, but they didn’t. We can see this if we look at the NOAA atmospheric CO2 data.[3] A whole lot of people died, but emissions only accelerated. Thanks to what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism,” whenever disasters occur, emissions and pollution accelerate because capitalists are able to get away with more when the good people are distracted taking care of each other. Emissions went up during the pandemic, and that is why.

Breathe in.

Just 180 entities account for nearly 70% of all CO2 emissions since 1850.[4]

Breathe out.[5]Are you still with me?Breathe in.What do you feel right now? Stay with it.Breathe out.

[1] I must credit eco-theorist Tobias Menely for sharing the communication technique of using percentages of change rather than raw temperature numbers. Earth’s average global temperature before industrialization was just 13.7°C. A temperature change of 1.5°C is actually quite a lot. Each decimal point that we add is actually quite a big deal. It is absurd we aren’t tracking these things more closely. 

[2] For real time monitoring of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by NOAA, check out: gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/. It is absurd that newspapers aren’t printing daily CO2 numbers. These numbers are far more important than the stock ticker numbers they so eagerly waste ink on every day. 

[3] To explore how industrial actors worked to spread the myth that human population numbers are the cause of environmental problems from the 1950s-70s, check out the work of historian Emily Klancher Merchant. Here’s her website with a bunch of links to her writings:emilyklancher.com/research

[4] Want to learn exactly which companies are the most responsible for historical CO2 emissions up to this moment? Check out the Carbon Majors Dataset at: CarbonMajors.org.

[5] This text draws creative inspiration from the eco-awareness somatic workshops led by Jote Lamar in the San Francisco East Bay in the early 2010s.

Byline: This article was written by two Bay Area organizers who have been involved in the Palestine Solidarity movement since October 7th.

In the face of the ever-worsening genocide on Palestinians, there is an urgent need for those of us in the solidarity movement to review our conditions and strengthen our tactics. For the past two years, we have mainly targeted the financial and ideological ties of institutions — important, but slow work. With a genocide that shows no end in sight and little give from targeted institutions, it’s time for tactics that are riskier and more disruptive, tactics that can seize power. 

We are now almost two years into Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide on Palestine. As we write this, Israel has begun its ground invasion of Gaza City, that will displace one million Palestinians. In the coming months, more than 2 million Palestinians will face famine due to Israel’s strategic aid and food blockade placed on Gaza. On September  9 the IDF carried out an airstrike in Qatar in an attempt to assassinate senior Hamas negotiators.

Israel has made it clear that it has no plans to stop the genocide. At this juncture, appeals to the morals and ethics of institutions, or demonstrations without a clear goal besides visibility and optics, are not enough. We must expand our tactics and goals to build veritable power against the state, which entails building a mass movement capable of coordinated, targeted action.

Of course, we must acknowledge the enormous risk of repression that disruption invites, especially under the current administration. In the past nine months, key organizers, overwhelmingly Palestinian and Arab, have been targeted and abducted by ICE and threatened with deportation. Many individuals have been driven out of the movement entirely, while others have succumbed to fear and hysteria, opting to “quell” the movement under the guise of safety and security. These include tactics like surveilling members, enforcing hierarchy and deference politics, and closing organizations off to outsiders, which effectively shrinks the movement’s base and reinforces a defensive posture. History, however, shows us that repression can be politically clarifying: each crackdown expands the pool of people ready to resist. Our task as organizers is to channel that energy into collective power.

So far, the movement has been led primarily by extremely insular vanguardist organizations that push limited pressure campaigns or organize marches for visibility. There is a dearth of radically open organizations that welcome and are willing to further politicize anyone willing to act, organizations that do not exclude based on identity, knowledge, or expertise. This demands that we push against the ever‑present fear of infiltration and make accurate assessments of where people are at, while also engaging in real coalitional work.

In the Bay Area various openings exist. Notably, the recent PYM (Palestinian Youth Movement) investigation uncovered arms shipments bound for Israel from the Oakland airport, a revelation that presents a ripe opportunity for disruption. From here we must organize strikes, block weapons shipments, and shut down government offices. We must turn the momentum of repression into a catalyst for an aggressive mass movement. Repression does not have to kill this movement; it can be a catalyst that forces a mass, coordinated movement.

By Lichen 

The United States has always been an atrocity, and we’re now living in the naked fascism that the systems of oppression this state is built on lead to. I know too much about history and the system I’ve lived in my whole life to think the odds are good for trans and disabled people like me. I’m angry and scared and overwhelmed with grief. I take action, it makes me feel safer and gives me a sense of agency that tempers trauma. I show up for my friends; community and mutual aid give me the means and will to live. I know the future I dream of, full of reciprocity and autonomy is still possible whether or not I make it there, and I know I will stay and fight for that. I also recognize I’m hitting limits. I can’t be in action all day every day. I need times of rest and leisure, time to be more than a marginalized body in resistance. Movies and pop culture have never offered me an escape, just more dissonance. I need something more ancient.

I don’t want to judge people for indulging in celebrity culture, mainstream entertainment, meaningless fluff, whatever. We’re all just trying to hold ourselves and each other together in the face of horrors our tender animal bodies didn’t evolve for, and find rest and comfort however we can. But so much more is possible! Our leisure, fluff, relaxation, rest, fun, don’t have to be in the letting go of our ideals, the mind-shutting-down to be numbed by the spectacle, the surrender to consumerism. We have so many more outlets for joy, fun, and pleasure in which we don’t simply ignore our reality, but create moments of the new world we dream of. What follows is just one of infinite visions of this kind of joy, my little offering for you to consider and add as a data point in the beautiful experiment of your own life.

In the evening I spin yarn with a drop spindle (one of the most ancient tools for making yarn and very easy to diy) or a spinning wheel. I cover my lap with a towel I wove and prepare wool to spin. The wool is from a sheep named Holly who lives in Santa Rosa and is tasked with eating invasive grasses, or wool from Black Mesa Solidarity Network, a network of Navajo families holding their ancestral land in Arizona. I spin the wool and dye it with flowers grown by my community. In a few weeks I have enough yarn to weave a blanket. 

The process of taking fiber from its rawest state to an object of use and beauty connects me with other people, other species, the land I’m held by. It’s gratifying, fun, relaxing, and a place I can claim agency. 

Weaving is a rhythmic, satisfying practice that helps me move through overwhelm and distress that can feel unbearable, a medicine of creation and autonomy that has helped me process complex trauma outside the carceral treatment settings where much of that trauma occurred. Of course it also gives me useful fabric that I use to make home goods and clothing for myself and others, demonstrating the possibility of community produced textiles independent of global trade and exploitation. 

Sharing seeds and plant starts connects me with my community in another way. Our decentralized garden is made up of pots on balconies, small patches of backyards, and soil in the margins. And what a pleasure it is to point to the gradient of bright orange to butter yellow and name the corresponding varieties of Coreopsis and Marigold and the beloved friends who care for them, me, each other. 

Spinning connects me to practices of creation that span millennia. I use a lot of wool because of its properties as a fiber and the stories I get to spin. Stories of local sheep living gentle lives, and of people resisting, persisting, and living beautiful, difficult lives in resistance to centuries of genocide. The act of spinning is soothing and intriguing, it feels like magic and looks like it. It’s also true that I simply can’t afford to buy significant amounts of commercial yarn, no matter how much unethical cost cutting the yarn company does. Acting on my ideals is the most effective strategy I’ve found for surviving and finding moments of joy as a disabled, mad, trans person in this world. 

I take pleasure and pride in the process and the sources of the materials, the connections and responsibility I take for living at least a scrap of the life I dream of. Off the loom comes a blanket, and I give it to a friend. 

To keep fighting we need rest, and we need pleasure. We need connection and joy. Sometimes I can turn off my mind and consume something detached from my reality, but often I feel the dissonance too strongly. We need respite from dissonance too, and the dominant culture can’t offer us that. For me, spinning and textiles offer a means of self-soothing and world building where I can shape my process to minimize dissonance and envision how textiles will be made in a more just and gentle society. 

I want to live. I want you to live, and I want us to be free from scarcity and fear. Let’s fight for that, and as part of that let’s rest and make things that make us glad to be alive and feed our imaginations for the worlds we can craft now and as long as we’re here. 

Transition

By Carob Chip

What the f**? The anti-cancel culture government says being “transgender” is canceled. Fine by me, I’m over it. Being “trans” is old news to me, I just wanna be a tomboy and I could give a fuck. Are they going to go back to middle school and tell the class that in fact, I was never queer cuz they fucked up my ID back to the way it was? (Are they gonna tell my mom?)

But beneath the tough attitude, I feel deep sorrow. Transition is an act of hope. To find yourself in “trans” is to deeply want what lies trapped within the restrictive and repressive cultural expectations of gender.

Transition becomes all bound up in the acts of others: in the embrace of friends, names on the lips of voices loud and high, the soft curve of a lover’s spine against mine.

These kinds of experiences, even if the specifics and language are different, are widely shared. I don’t think that “trans” is always such a distinct and exceptional experience. Transitions are present and felt in many places: by the immigrant woman at night school teasing her lips into new sounds; immigrant youth re-learning their name in Latin characters; the woman in the dyke bar filling with an unfamiliar want; the belly full with child.

Transitions can happen only in our interactions with each other.

With their presence, the people in the “LGBTQ” library support group showed it was possible. There were those who cried when it became hard, and those whose shoulders they cried on. There were the ones smoking outside after session and flirting. 

I remember my grandmother’s stories of escaping the church’s threat of eternal damnation to go to the dance hall and see the boys. I remember giving a ride to the gay trans girl mechanic who swore she would never wear a dress.

Community spaces make many of these transitions possible. They are being threatened to serve commercial and political interests. Many people born today will not know the experience of having a space, besides libraries or schools, to be present and be with others in a non-commercial way. Public schools are fraught with coercion; and libraries are facing censorship and cuts, to suppress challenging ideas and promote a privatized marketplace of services. Only with difficulty can we imagine the land without heavily policed and fortified borders.

Spaces are threatened by the possibility of violence by fascist vigilantes, lonely and unwell people, or the fascist state. In particular, radical spaces are undermined by high rent prices and inequality, which makes it difficult for people — especially working-class people — to engage in participatory projects.

When we talk about these challenges, in addition to book bans and bans on trans identification and knowledge, we must talk broadly of long attempts by both dominant political parties to suppress forms of insurgent working-class education, knowledge and culture. Too often it is just said that “libraries are under attack” or “trans rights are under attack.” No, we are living with the results of decades of violent state-powered demobilization of labor and radicalism.

Capitalism takes the form of cultural death. Feminist memory, labor history, indigenous thought, and even ordinary family stories are all under threat. Life needs have been subordinated to commercial exploitation, and we must survive the devastating consequences. Families are being ripped apart by a social order that invites us to abandon our capacity for love and celebrates engagement in online keyboard wars and right-wing extremism.

We must keep our cultures alive. This is a fight that includes every single person. Every place has culture, left-wing and labor history. Queer people have often been at the forefront of remembering, forming chosen, inter-generational community; making art out of necessity and desire, and fighting back for survival. We look to the past to make sense of the lethal present. Our bodies become archives.

Resisting efforts to erase trans life will require a clear-eyed view of the situation at hand. Trans rights activism beginning in the 1990s challenged the mass media’s denigration and sensationalism of our experiences, and made appeals for recognition and inclusion to politicians and psychiatric/medical bodies. Today, these gains of recognition — which did not stop the economic exclusion and violence experienced by many poor trans people — are being challenged.

The terrain has changed substantially. The mass media is increasingly controlled not only by corporations, but by right-wing billionaires, some of whom are politically motivated to re-animate denigrating anti-trans tropes. Liberal politicians, seeing these attacks, might be sooner to embrace hostility to trans people than a politics of challenging private equity or universal healthcare — which would genuinely challenge the right on new terms. As Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser notes, the policy-making of nation-states has become “more accountable to global capital than to any public.”

In the immediate term, specific efforts will have to be made to help trans people survive.

Alternative access to hormone replacement therapy, and affirming care and community are critical. Finding access to gender-affirming care — just like accessing abortion, healthcare, safe working conditions, and clean water — has already been very difficult. Informal and organized efforts will continue to be needed to try to fill these gaps.

In the long-term, however, we will need to accept that the liberal politics of recognition will never be sufficient. It is not viable against the right-wing, and even if it were, it is incapable of confronting climate change, disenfranchisement, prison, wage, and chattel slavery, and other forms of exploitation and impoverishment.

“Resisting” the new order is not sufficient either. As the latest issue of prison newspaper Under Lock & Key points out, “Those who try to have both capitalism and fewer oligarchs force the imperialists to extract more superprofits abroad, while pushing oppressed nations within U.$. borders out to limit the pool of wealth redistribution.” While I think “the imperialists” is overly simplistic and obfuscates a constellation of imperial interests, there is much merit to the argument that redistributive solutions within national borders will not suffice. Our politics need to extend far beyond electoral maneuvering and statecraft. In recent years the idea has spread that our “positionalities” are so specific, it is hard to co-create politics with other people of different experiences, let alone people in the Third World. In reality, we are already connected politically by the circuits of global capital.

What is necessary is a clear-eyed program that challenges the power and primacy of global capitalism. This will look so very different than the embodied experience of transition. But it may no less involve an embrace of hope and difference, despite uncertainty and a hostile cultural and political terrain.

---

The distinction between the politics of recognition and redistribution, used in passing here, is adapted from Nancy Fraser’s theorizing in “Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition.”

By sirkka

Ever since I tipped over into what some call “political consciousness,” I’ve felt a fierce anger simmering just beneath the surface. Even when I feel relatively well, grateful for my community and the goodness in the world, this anger is close at hand. It whines: How dare they ruin, suffocate, destroy, what is all of ours, by right? The abundant earth, the beautiful creative potential of every person, the rich diversity of life on this planet. The injustice of globalized capitalism, of colonial violence, sickens me. Every day I feel this fury: sometimes red hot, sometimes a dull ache, sometimes quiet depression. The worst is when it hides, masquerading as apathy or brain fog, but no, it’s still there, just discouraged, confused, and unsure how to express itself. 

It is hard to acknowledge (even to myself) that I don’t always know what to do with these feelings. Lately, I’m noticing a cynical pattern: I get an idea, usually while talking to friends — Yes! A fundraiser film screening, a new community space, a mutual aid groupchat! That’s surely a step in the right direction! — but then the scale of the crises we face strikes me, and I begin to worry and doubt that we will be able to intervene in a meaningful way. Then my anger loses purity; I begin to feel jaded, bitter. Ready to quit before I’ve even begun. The absolute devastation and cruelty perpetuated by the zionist entity and the u.s.a. in Gaza has a lot to do with this. It is painful to spin your wheels trying to think of how to act, how to stop the immense harm that is unfolding in Palestine and come up with little that seems up to the task. It is a deadening feeling, to be disempowered. Where is our agency? Can we find it? 

We are living in wildly anti-revolutionary times. State repression is ubiquitous. The reality of surveillance means that much of what we say or do is trackable: purchases on a debit card, conversations through whatsapp, sharing news or event flyers on social media, even our phone’s location gathered near other politically frustrated people’s phone’s locations. The carceral system in this country is overwhelming, and expanding every day. So. many. people. are locked up and held separate from the rest of society, subject to the whims of a racist, settler-colonial judicial regime that is destroying their lives. On top of this, political discourses on social media and elsewhere can feel so scattered and diffuse, totally overwhelming and inconsistent. So: we are experiencing fear and confusion, distraction and state violence, paranoia. It is natural to fall into hard feelings and to feel discouraged. 

I share these thoughts not to advocate defeatism, but out of curiosity. What happens if we acknowledge the parts of each other that are mad as fuck, disillusioned, and grumpy? Tired, doubtful, a bit nihilistic? Maybe from a place of blunt honesty new pathways will become visible, maybe we will feel invigorated to dig deeper and find a bit of clarity. Unfortunately, things are too dire for us to wallow – we need each other! If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed to the point of inaction, let’s start by naming that. I feel you. 

If I look squarely at this part of myself, I realize that — despite fairly consistent radical study and about a decade of ‘movement work’ — my feelings of jaded passivity are stemming from the confusion I’ve just described. This indicates, to me, that I need to tend to my theory of change. 

What is a theory of change, you may ask? I would describe it as an informed personal assessment of how we, the people, the earth, might get out of this shithole system of death: racial-capitalist-colonialism. What do YOU think might work? What would need to happen to make that possible? (Workers getting organized to block the global flow of capital? Militant uprisings to achieve and defend autonomous zones, where neighborhood assemblies can begin to self-govern? A collectively-tended free food forest in every community so people can quit their day jobs and still eat?)

I think there are three overarching questions to consider. First, a theory of change needs to include an assessment of power: Who and what holds the power in this system? Where are resources held, how are they managed, who decides? 

Then, you consider the vulnerabilities: where is this system unstable? How could we challenge it in a manner that might be effective? 

Finally: what could come next that would be better? How do we build up the habits and amass the infrastructure to support life after the fall of empire? This part is so important. We are not encouraged to develop our revolutionary imagination – daydreaming is radical praxis! 

These are not easy questions to answer. It takes effort, imagination, study, and conversation to develop a theory of change. And we are up against a virulent anti-intellectualism that makes it even harder. As Assata Shakur (rest in power!) said: “no one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” And yet, it is essential to have a theory of change as a personal guide for action in the face of a faltering system. It is the framework through which you can assess whether certain actions will feel effective to you while you engage with them. 

To add another layer of difficulty, your theory of change will itself need to change and adapt as the world shifts. Life moves cyclically. We don’t simply achieve political enlightenment and then feel oriented forever. Even if I found a clarity of analysis a few years ago, the world has changed and I have changed. And american capitalism has proven itself terribly adaptive. So, I need to return again and again and ask myself: what is my theory of change now?

A side note: It is important to approach this process with a healthy dose of humility. As I said before, it is a personal assessment of power and how to challenge it, but there needs to be space for differences amongst those of us striving for a better world. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you alone have figured it out, and need to control those around you to bend them towards your vision. Of course, we can’t actually know how the path will unfold or what will ultimately be effective. The world is too various, the terrain too diverse and forever-changing, so don’t act like an authoritarian. That being said, it is useful to discuss and even debate theories of change with your network, because we do need to be discerning. Maybe someone will confront you with an idea you hadn’t considered, or your perspective and life experience will expand someone else’s framework. Leave space for that. I believe in you, in us, that we can live with this nuance! 

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

To illustrate what a theory of change looks like, I will share a few aspects of my own and how I came to them. 

I have been involved with and attentive to Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movements on Turtle Island since the #NoDAPL movement in 2016 – a struggle that saw thousands of people gather for almost a year to oppose Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline. This was a struggle rooted in the long history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism, as well as the reality of the climate crisis and the absurdity of building more fossil fuel infrastructure as we tip into ecological collapse. There is a lot to say about this political moment, and I recommend Lakota historian Nick Estes’ book on the topic titled “Our History is the Future” if you’d like to go deeper. For now I will say that this movement in favor of life on earth was brutally suppressed; the clear and organized “NO” articulated by water protectors seeking to stop the violation of the earth and our communities was ignored, and those who physically took a stand were sprayed with a firehose in the middle of winter and attacked by police dogs. It was wildly undemocratic, to put it lightly. 

It illuminated, to me and to many, the inability of settler-colonial governance structures (i.e. the u.s./north dakota) to break with corporate interests – the state will not be wielded in favor of Indigenous sovereignty because its very claim to power depends on Indigenous disempowerment. Relatedly, I came to understand that the u.s. will not stand against the extraction of “resources” from the earth (or lifeforce from workers) because this governmental system was formed in the spirit of imperialism: it was made by and for those who sought to profit off the bounty of the “new world.” 

While these insights might seem pessimistic, they actually felt clarifying. Of course there’s some pain that comes with the realization that the governance structures we live within are designed to disempower us, but to think otherwise was a privilege and an illusion to begin with. When you begin to reject the false promises of electoral politics and reformism, you join a long lineage of liberation seekers who have sought more potent means of challenging capitalistic powers. 

One part of my theory of change, then, is that we can not rely on approaches rooted in electoral politics to achieve the change we need. So, what comes next? This is the work of our lifetimes, and there is no easy answer. But, staying with the example of Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movements, we see that these struggles are not just a negation of the fossil fuel economy, they are also an affirmation of long-lived lifeways that center community care and deep, reciprocal relationships with the world. The resistance encampments that emerge through the course of opposing pipelines are spaces where these lifeways are practiced. A place (a physical place, importantly – the land is involved!) where people of any background that feel called to oppose capitalistic-colonial domination are welcomed, carefully, at the speed of trust, into conversation and the work of collective upkeep. 

Drawing from these experiences, I am heartened and guided by the concept of revolutionary prefiguration. The idea that we must practice, in the here and now, the world that we want to bring about. One thing that electoralism does is it takes you out of the scale of your local community, into the abstracted world of federal or even state politics. Further, it takes you out of the present and into a rigid framework of time structured by an election cycle: wait and see, it might go your way, then things might be better! I reject these alienating concepts in favor of living in my body, with my community, within a specific ecology, facing the unacceptable violences that are happening right now. How do we stop them? It seems to me that a self-sustaining physical intervention has to be a part of any effective strategy. So this is another part of my theory of change. I don’t claim to know the way out, but I have some ideas – I hope you do too.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

We need to take the challenges of our time seriously. The feelings of overwhelm, time scarcity, and nihilism that crop up are not accidental, they are the outcome of a truly harsh economy and are methods of social control. If we are all tired and grouchy with no time to spare, then who is going to challenge globally ascendant fascism? I say this to remind myself as much as anyone. Staying focused on what we actually think might be effective and engaging in work that is sustainable for us is key in the face of a chaotic media landscape and accelerating global crises. Consideration of your theory of change is one way to gain that clarity. It is a tool worth considering and returning to. 

To conclude, I want to briefly discuss fascism. I’m sure, as a Slingshot reader, you’ve been hearing this word a lot lately. All of our alarm bells are ringing, and not without reason. What does fascism actually mean, though? We can’t find our way out alone or in a vacuum, learning from history and radical theory allows us to be discerning: it can inform how we might imagine political openings in the face of contemporary conditions. 

Fascism is something specific. It is not another name for any type of dictatorship, or an oppressive society in general. Drawing from black and indigenous radical traditions (which provide greater insight than euro-centric histories of fascism which have blinders on from operating within the heart of the empire) we can understand fascism as an intensification of the tendencies that are already present within the form and practice of colonial rule and capitalist imperialism. It is a “mode of punitive governance … animated by a politics of fear, cruelty, racism, and heteropatriarchy that serve as screens for insatiable demands for unobstructed access to land and labor,” (“For Antifascist Futures” p. 6). A feature of fascism is that it is bolstered by a mass movement, usually propelled by the middle class, but the key point is that this is a massive, violent, scare tactic to prevent people from understanding that there is a wealth grab going on – the same impulse towards the consolidation of wealth that lies at the heart of capitalism. 

To imagine the defeat of fascism, we must understand what it is and where it is coming from. There is no end to fascism without the end of capitalism and its outgrowth, imperialism. How does this affect our strategy as we move towards liberation? What does this allow you to dismiss as distractions? How can this inform our theories of change? 

Don’t forget the love that is underneath the righteous anger that is underneath the nihilism and depression. Our experiences of passivity and confusion are a result of purposeful disempowerment, and that’s another reason to get angry all over again! I am with you in despair and hope. Solidarity forever!