Author: Slingshot robot #1

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! 

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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.

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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!

By Anthony Moser 

I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.

To speak politely about AI, you put disclaimers before criticism: of course I’m not against it entirely; perhaps in a few years when; maybe for other purposes, but. You are supposed to debate how and when it should be used. You are supposed to take for granted that it must be useful somewhere, to someone, for something, eventually. People who are rich and smart and respected are saying so, and it would be arrogant to disagree with such people.

But I am a hater, which is a kind of integrity. It means I am willing to disagree with anyone, even if it is rude. “But I only use it to–” “Actually if you just—” “The new models–” “I was making fun–” Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. I am embarrassed for you.

Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, the way AI tech companies further the patterns of empire, how it’s a con that enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance, the exploitation of workers, as an excuse to fire workers and de-skill work, how they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence, how people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower, how it is inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative, how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy, defined not by its technical features but by its political ones.

But I am more than a critic: I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider.

I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response. Miyazaki said, “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” Scam Altman said we can surround the solar system with a Dyson Sphere to hold data centers. Miyazaki is right, and Altman is wrong. Miyazaki tells stories that blend the ordinary and the fantastic in ways people find deeply meaningful. Altman tells lies for money.

And I’m glad they’re lies. Because the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals. They want to build a genie to grant them wishes, and their wish is that nobody ever has to make art again. They want to create a new kind of mind, so they can force it into mindless servitude. Their dream is to invent new forms of life to enslave.

And to what end? In a kind of nihilistic symmetry, their dream of the perfect slave machine drains the life of those who use it as well as those who turn the gears. What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines.

And even as it consumes those who use it, even as the scammers become their own marks, even as it is sustained by exploited workers slotted in as human filters for algorithmic abuse – some people want to have a little, as a treat. As a joke. Just to make fun of it, just for the busywork, because it’s good enough, right? You understand.

I do understand: you want permission. There’s a machine in the corner wrapped in human skin that makes things out of shit and blood to look like whatever you want (as long as you don’t look too closely). You gave one to your teacher and they didn’t notice. Your boss told you to use it after they laid off half the team and it was fine. You fed one to your kids and they liked it. You want to know you can use it sometimes without me thinking less of you. You don’t need me to believe it’s useful, you just want me to be polite about it.

But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.

I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; loving people, making art, living in my body with its flaws and feelings and life. AI cannot be a hater, because AI does not feel, or know, or care. Only humans can be haters. I celebrate my humanity.

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988. 

It really comes down to how we want to live our lives. Thanks to an infinite series of random events across limitless space over an incomprehensible period of time, we’ve found ourselves together on this planet today. Possessed with self-awareness, free will, creativity, and a drive to seek pleasure with others, we gaze out at an interconnected ecosystem composed of billions of other creatures and us. Without all the oppressive cultural, economic and political cages we’ve built for ourselves, we’re in paradise. 

Yet even with all the restrictions into which we’ve been born, most of us are able to live meaningfully and peacefully — cooperating with others to create communities, enjoy friends, embrace lovers, and create homes. And even more, we make and enjoy music, art, literature, theater, gardens, parties, cuisine, and social structures and inventions that make our lives better. 

We want to be happy, not miserable. We seek to be inspired, not bored and frustrated. We don’t want to be scared or angry. We want hearts full of love, awe and wonder. 

Which brings us to the current moment of state cruelty, violence, repression and terror.  We refuse to live like this. The government is fucking up our lives. We would prefer to be out on a hike or going to the beach, but we will fight this shit not because we’re angry or because we want to fight for its own sake, but because we want to be left alone so we can do something lovely and positive. 

We’re not afraid of ICE or any of the government’s grim-faced tough guys. Go ahead and put a target on our back — fuck you!  The fewer people who cower in fear but rather rebel and refuse to go along, the less each of us will individually be vulnerable. We keep us safe.

We’re not hiding — we’re right here in Berkeley making this zine and distributing it everywhere. Not just to spit in the face of the systems that spoil all of our lives, but more importantly to keep focused on building a better world here, now and in the future by distributing ideas that can help. 

Human beings aren’t perfect — none of us always act the way we want to act or thinks the way we want to think. We don’t know how to fix everything. Let’s be modest and embrace the complexity and gray areas. 

But we can set our intentions in the right direction and focus on the right things. We’re not wasting our lives accumulating wealth and power or building AI computers to take our places. Life’s too short for that crap. 

There’s DIY projects to create, join and nurture. There’s art to create. There are ideas to work out and discuss. There’s fun to be had and lovers to kiss. 

Our continued existence, engagement, and defiance with humor, silliness, and playfulness in the face of state scare tactics is the message of this issue. Don’t obey. Make your own zine. Live. 

These articles are written, edited, and published by a very loose collaborative of people, with open meetings and little structure. No two Slingshots are published by the same group. Many of us disagree with aspects of articles we publish. Each issue is an invitation, if not to work on our paper, then to engage with the problems of our day. 

Slingshot is always looking for volunteer distributors. If you can hand out papers to your friends or put a few copies into your local cafe, library, truck stop, laundromat, school or whatever, we can send you copies for free. We’re trying to reach people who’ve never stumbled across the underground press before rather than just preaching to the choir. We’re also always seeking new writers, artists, and editors.  Even if you aren’t an essayist, illustrator, or whistleblower, you may know someone who is.  If you send an article, please be open to its editing. 

Thanks to the people who made this: Antonio, Decay, eggplant, Floyd, Hazel, Henry, Holiday, Jesse, Jody, Jordan, Laird, Matteo, Naomi, Rain, Robin, Rosie, Sanjana, SeanDunn, Sirkka, Soren, Story, Stuart, Sylvia & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot Article Submission Info

We’re not going to set a deadline for the next issue. We encourage you to submit articles for the next Slingshot anytime you want. We’ll make another issue when we feel like it. Check the Slingshot website, IndyBay, instagram and facebook for deadline info. We also have an internal email list that announces the next deadline so email if you want to be added to the list. 

Volume 1, Number 143, Circulation 38,000

Printed October 17, 2025

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