Welcome to the first-ever spiral bound version of the Slingshot Organizer! The world we’re struggling for is one in which every individual has a chance to be fully human and free— not tied down by oppressive societal structures or cultural prejudices. It involves people living for experience, beauty, and pleasure— not just owning things. We refuse to settle for a beige world of conformity— we want color and difference everywhere like a million rocks on the beach, each one unique, with the state dishing out more fear, more war, and more repression, it’s up to us to powerfully articulate what we’re for, and then start building it! We can’t afford to get bogged down in what we’re against.
Publishing this is a really intense experience that always helps us focus on the complex connections between our activism and our personal lives. It’s amazing how working this hard can make us feel so close to each other and help us endure the personal trials we all face. As we move through our lives, we’re constantly reminded of how short and precious they are and how much we need each other. Loving and taking care of each other is the definition of community, building powerful communities is necessary to struggle against corporations and the state, but it is also a goal in and of itself because it makes our lives meaningful and worth living. So many radicals suffer from burnout because activism becomes a chore— a duty like work. If we’re serious about holding a new society, activism has to be about our love for our comrades and our love for what we’re doing.
This large-print version of the organizer is an experiment for our collective. For years, the most frequent complaint we’ve heard about the Slingshot pocket-sized organizer is that there’s no space to write. So here’s a larger size for those of you who need more space— whether it’s because your life is crammed with excitement and project or just because you like to write BIG! Let us know if we should do a spiral-bound book for 2006. We tried really hard to make up a great name for this project, but after a few weeks of thinking of absurd names like “the Log,” “the Time-table,” “the Arouser,” and “the Transmorgrifier,” we gave up. If you think of a really good name, send it to us and if we use it, we’ll send you an excellent prize.
This is the 11th year we’ve created the Organizer to inspire ourselves and you to build a better world. It also raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We try to distribute the newspaper for free anywhere in the USA. Contact us to become a local distributor. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Artnoose, Bekey, Crow, Crystal, Eggplant, Holi, Jenn, John, Kat, Laura, Leticia, Lew, Lexi, Molly, Monica, Moraya, Paseo, PB, Rachel, Tomás, and Xarick.