Category: Articles

By moldyroot + uncle yam

I nstead of the beatniks of lore, the dirtbag heroin-and-sex addicts of the 50s that so many writers still adore– we are the beets. We have the same wandering feet as our forefathers, but we find ourselves in late-stage capitalism. We stand at the edge of society, both in love and infinitely upset with capitalism and technology. Unlike the beatniks, we care for our bodies and our minds, much like we care for our gardens. We are witnessing the end of the holocene, the only geological period stable enough to sustain agriculture. We are a burgeoning global community of writers and thinkers, beginning to find our voice. We are…

1. The surfers of the temporal stretch. We don’t want your expectations, at thirty or forty or fifty we can still be twenty. We can still work a job for two months, fly across the world. Give us a railroad gig and we will do it. We might quit two weeks later, work a migrant farm job, and circle back next year in constant motion. Like the beet, we only start to get wrinkles after ages in storage. What is storage if not the cubicle where a woman learns how to be a proper man? USO USO USO! United States Of… what?

2. After ten thousand years we see the end of a stable era, oh holocene! Not a big deal for us, the beet can grow anywhere in any condition, any season, any soil. We thrive on chaos, grow from messiness into… what manifestation of beauty? We are an idealistic produce.

3. We reject the binary political system, run away with our tail between our legs! Nuance is our love language. We grind up facts, roll them into philosophies, smoke them into questions. We don’t need big trucks, guns under our pillows. How many gallons of gasoline does a gun need? Beets are a gentle folk. Some of us are heirloom, saved from our grandfathers and grandmothers. Some are new eccentric roots. Come one come all, march in shamelessly, new beets!

4. In this era of infinite information, we adventure through the labyrinth of digital popcorn. The world is massive, yet small. Knowledge is infinite, but we can invite her over and talk all night. We can watch a movie, if we have a television. If not we can chop wood and read stories in tree rings. We can have a potluck with our astrobiogeodendrolocofolklorologist fellas. Just make a good argument and you can stay for dinner. We tend to our swelling heads, so our harvest can be bountiful. 

5. If you ask some old timers they will tell you that we are lucky because today it is so easy to travel. We don’t believe that. We are traveler souls and we would travel in any epoch. Histrionics of the middle age. Immigrants of colonialism. Beatniks of the fifties. Ravers of the nineties. Dimensional travelers of the future. We are all of that. Sometimes also more. We are seasonal workers. We are digital nomads. We can work in boats. We can be ski-teachers. We would still work in mines. For real. Where there is easy money there are beets. We can be everything. We can be everywhere. How to find us? You know that unique smell of soil that a beet has? Follow it!

6. Beets are not running up to the mountains to find a sacred place. Not yet. The beets know that society needs them. They can be urban hikers. They can live on the scraps of the city. Growing in pavement cracks and abandoned lots. Beets can last for months off of peanut butter or cheap white rice. Maybe mixed together. They want to eat local because they don’t trust organic. They’ve been working too much at the bottom to trust any industry. They know the way to happiness is the garden. But not yet. I told you, the beets are on a long mission. The Katastematic pleasure is our final chapter.

7. Beets are the travelers in Australia. Beets are the resistance in Greece. Beets are the trimmers in the Pacific Northwest. Beets are the grape picker in Champagne. Beets are the cherry pickers in the remote south of New Zealand. In the woods of British Columbia. Beets are the young generation of Mexico, of Morocco or Hong Kong. Not all of them. But some of them. Beets are growing among the normal people. Beets are not scared of the social network. They use it, as a tool. But not for living. Beets are activists in the oldest human form. The beets are the people that are acting to change the world. Slowly. No matter on which level of consciousness, they are doing it. Slowly yes, but constantly. 

8. The beet is underground, the beet is resilient. They love to be in groups yet they can stand alone. Beets are born beets, they can put down their roots as easily as they can tear them up.

9. Beets can adapt to technology, progress, or to Luddism. We can live in our leaking cabin with only a wood stove, or we can live as van life digital nomads. We can adapt to luxury, and adapt to hardship and austerity. We thrive in a mix. We want to live as many lives as possible. A cat has nine lives, how many does a beet have?

10. Beets can live anywhere, but we have a map marked in golden pen, x’s around the world. But Williams is the perfect soil for us. Sandy desert yet teeming with biodiversity. So many of us that we can catch water in the pockets where our roots touch.

11. We beets do not refuse the speed of globalization, of this global village. But we think that some things must slow, go back to the soil. Do you feel that is a paradox? Yes it is. Beets are a paradox and we are not ashamed of it. We are living in it and thriving in it because we know that we cannot escape it. Our world is a paradox, and to deny it would allow it to consume us. We have to work with it. Localize. Slow food, slow wandering. Barter, trade, understand where things come from. From our laptops to our ancestors, from our dinner to our cocaine.

12. Are you a beet? What’s your beet name? Oh you soil smeared friends, work for yourself and don’t call it work. Take time to talk, and really wake up. We will find each other. Anything for intellect and home cooking. No borders, no visas, no limits. If there are walls, we will take out our Persian rugs and float onwards. If the only way across is to crash through, we will fuck up the wall.

By Lola 

It’s unlikely that Mount Tamalpais is the remnant of an extinct volcano, but it’s possible. The eruption, if it ­ever happened, might have taken place 20 to 45 million years ago — this is according to the boy sitting ­next to me at the coffee shop; he advised me not to cite him in my essay — and it would have blanketed our currently ergonomic bay area with a suffocating layer of unforgiving black ash. I can see the sky obstructed with smoke for days, maybe weeks; the remaining redwoods and douglas-fir gray and unrecognizable; the tiny skeletons of moles, gophers, and hummingbirds scattered through the cinders. 

In time, patches of blue would return overhead. The wind would pick up debris and push it off toward the Pacific, alone undisturbed by the obliteration of a neighboring ecosphere, blue and welcoming as death in her effort to let the mountain be what it was always going to be: a mountain. But before the leaves turned green again and the soil regular brown, crawling with earthworms, before those still weeks of unbreathable air and black sky, before the few hours in which everything was destroyed, from invasive weeds to rare and endangered butterflies — before all of this, there was the fire, and before the fire, there was the longing to erupt. 

It’s commonly accepted that mount Tam was formed, not by an annihilating volcano, but instead by pressures formed at the San Andreas Fault. While the origin stories of volcanic eruption and tectonic plate movement both leave us with the same mountain, I wonder if some distinction is born out of which story we choose to tell. Was the mountain that I live on created out of fire-chaos-destruction-rebirth? Or was it formed through the slow, steady, and positive accumulation of mass between two moving fragments of the earth’s crust? In one story, there is no darkness in creation — no death, no fire, no unbearable longing to erupt. The world is built through apathetic progress, positivity, line graphs sloping up. No harm done. No rare butterflies obliterated, but no invasive weeds wiped out, either. 

Once-volcano or not, mount tam is now dormant — just like the rest of the bay area, sliding down into pristine mill valley, foggy san francisco, the practical east bay and the steel-blue water between the three bridges. Now I am sitting outside a coffee shop looking out over a nearby park. My hair is clean and the mountain’s green. I am so young. There’s dogs everywhere: they stick to the confines of the lawn, eyes empty, tails wagging. Hair as clean as mine. Everyone here is smiling, including the clear blue sky, including the cartoonish police officer waving hello to the old ladies on their morning walk to town. It’s a very pretty picture. Here I am in the center of it, a very pretty, very respectable-looking girl. A dormant girl. And while there’s something superficially nice in all of that, something nice in the steady linearity of tectonic plates taking years and years to make a mountain, there’s something else, too. A feeling I can’t deny. An ugly longing I can’t suppress. And I think I want it all to burn. 

***

On his cross-country drive, he took a few shrooms in the white sands desert. After sneaking into the park and setting up camp on the dunes, the sun had already begun to disappear behind the flat, unforgiving horizon. When the sky was dark he retreated into his tent, dimly aware of his original intention to lie under the stars but uneasy of the wind blowing through that reserve of strange, pearly sand.

The night passed both quickly and slowly. He made little drawings and tried to write but his mind was fastened to the creature roaming around outside the tent, which he never saw but obsessively imagined. Finally, at an unidentifiable hour and after putting it off as long as he could, he ventured outside to pee. The sight of his tent after returning hit him with a deep and indescribable dread. There were notebooks and pastels strewn across his crumpled-up sleeping bag; a bottle of water had been knocked over and a few loose pieces of paper in one corner were soaking in the mess; something smelled weird. It was colder than he remembered. All he wanted in that moment was for the sun to rise, and the second this thought entered his mind, he could think of little else. Darkness became the culprit for both the mess inside of his tent and his unknowable fears outside of it.

Eventually, he decided to start tidying up. When everything was almost back in order, he thought of something he wanted to write down. Rummaging for the right notebook in his backpack resulted in another small mess and panic began to set in again: would he keep organizing things and then fucking them up again, over and over and over until the end of time? When would he rest? He lay down on his back, eyes shut tight, imagining the excruciating cycle repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating…and lying there, he noticed that each heartbeat was followed immediately by another, and another, and there was nothing he could do to stop them from coming, nothing that could convince him each beat was not simply a preparation for the next…

Time passed in this way. Later, he would sit up, slowly, and write on his left arm in big, clear letters: I WILL REST… Switching the pen into his left hand, he wrote in much clumsier and more cramped-up print: …WHEN THE SUN COMES UP. Why must things start so whole, so clean, so clear, and then become so inevitably messy? Why must we witness and create so much beauty only to witness and create such ugly chaos? He compared the messages on his two arms, disappointed in his work but tired enough to accept it. And much later, when the sun came up, he did rest. But his heart never stopped beating.

***

I gravitate towards non-linear methods of protest that are an end in themselves as opposed to a means-to-an-end: instances in which disrespectful forms of defiance such as law-breaking, violence, harassment, vandalism, humor, or theft produce an immediate sense of pleasure, joy, self-preservation, or liberation in state victims. Defiance for the sake of defiance asks us to drop our conceptions of scarcity, to embrace heat and darkness, and to accept that however many times we clean the tent it will always become messy again. [This] is not always for [that]. Volcanoes don’t explode so that they can become mountains again; I don’t flip off a cop in the hopes that he will respect me more. 

This exists for this. 

***

The boys are like the sky — or the ocean. Vast and blue and beautiful and surging with energy. This now, then that. Light on their feet. If not graceful in their easy successes then full of laughter in their momentary defeats. Once I started to watch, I couldn’t stop. As they rolled a spliff I would fill up and then burst with jealousy. The jam begins — a pause in the steady stream of jokes until it becomes a centerpiece in itself — someone flipped over a crate and now there are drums and now there is singing and now I’m lying down in my spilled pool of envy and maybe this is okay? Maybe I can bliss out in this invisibility? Maybe I can melt into this scratchy boy-bedroom carpeting and maybe my formless rage will dissolve into the floorboards and maybe I can feel at peace with being nothing at all?

Solace comes in the form of one tiny yet indisputable fact: I’ll never be the sky or the sea. But I can maybe be a bird or a fish.

(Small creatures, maybe, but small creatures with eyes.)

***

On my 21^st birthday I was a fish, but a content one, and I couldn’t believe the quantities of love that the blue house could hold in one night. I walked in with my sisters, soaking wet from walking along in the mission in the rain, and the boys were sitting at the piano or had picked up drums, guitars, and were playing a jazzified happy birthday to greet me. Justin made raspberry chocolate cake and in the kitchen they were already listening to Defiance Ohio and taking shots. I singed off most of my eyelashes on my crush’s spliff and drank too many beers and danced a lot and probably cried at one point. In the morning, on the balcony with Maddy, I confessed that I knew I didn’t deserve any of it.

“Lola.” She gave me this look. “Will you quit it with the scarcity narrative. There’s so much flowing out of everyone here, and we still all try to deny it of ourselves. It’s insane…” She gestured haphazardly at the sky and the street and the sun and the garden and our friends eating breakfast in the kitchen. I nodded, understanding her point. It all seemed so precious to me in that moment.

We slipped back into the kitchen and I was handed a burnt piece of toast with jam, and Wild Dog tried to grab a bite, and someone started playing Trees and Flowers on the speaker. Maddy raised her eyebrows at me, and suddenly I was thinking about how the ocean needs the fish as much as the fish needs the ocean, and inexplicably, as I smiled back at her, I felt I knew exactly what she was thinking without her having to say it —

Do you really think any of this beauty could exist without your eyes seeing it… your mouth tasting it…your skin feeling it… your heart racing with it…

***

Some ideas on exciting and pleasurable defiance:

– Kiss a cop

– Take a trip to the Aleutian mountain range, watch Paviot erupt

– Do the dishes

– Fall in love with one of your friends

– Write down a list of people you would do anything for, then do the things for the people

– Drop the scarcity narrative: instead of melting into the carpet, offer what you can offer

– Observe the flight of a beach bat at dusk

***

My friends are the long dry yellow grass on the mountain. Sometimes, just here for the season. Sometimes too easy to get lost in. When we are all together it’s usually guitar playing and ocean swimming and making fun of each other. But when conversation edges away from our immediate surroundings and tips into the wider world, I’m often asked about the whole burning it down thing — how is that supposed to work? How can we justify violent and destructive revolution with this sun that feels so good on this beach? With this peach that is so sweet with that cigarette that’s so perfectly rolled with Flo, standing there on the shoreline, looking so beautiful by the waves?

I’ll run sand through my fingers slowly, thinking about the shiny sliver of light we exist in — healthy and comfortable and Californian — compared to the dark struggle that is home to most of the world, everyone who suffers through life so that we can enjoy it. Thinking about how we have to burn it down for those who maybe don’t have the matches or the energy to strike them right now, but who badly need it burned. 

But instead of saying all this, maybe I get up and join Flo where the waves are breaking, deciding it’s all kind of bullshit anyways. You can’t split the world up into people living in sunlight and people living in darkness. Even if you could — there’s cloudy days to consider, nights lit up with stars, full moons over the ocean — eclipses. We all contribute to the system; we all hurt because of it. So while I know that my privilege is crafted out of the oppression of another girl on another beach, maybe a few thousand miles south or a few thousand miles east, and while I know that because I have been randomly placed into this position of privilege it would be beneficial for me to bring destruction, chaos, and violence into our space of naturalized calm and manufactured peace, I also know that I am never going to save anyone, nor do I want to. We have to do this for ourselves as much as we have to do it for anyone else. I shoplift and graffiti frat houses and harass cops because maybe it can help even the scales; because even the most immaculate houses can have mold under their floorboards — but I’m not doing it out of any sense of duty, out of any notion that my proximity to whiteness and to wealth and to resources makes me any more capable of change than the rest of the world. At the end of the day, my everyday attempts at “burning it down” come from a few simple motivators. One: I feel like I’d die if I didn’t. 

Two: it feels good. 

Three: the yellow grass on the mountain. On my dad’s 56th birthday we found out about the tumor in my grandma’s lung. Life is frenzied, complex, buzzing in your ears and whirling before your eyes — and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, life becomes jarringly simple. You live, you age, you die. Your life is not all of the things you might do. It’s not the image you cling to of yourself in a far-away future: backpacking through Argentina, settling down in a house with pink roses growing in the front yard — rest, a clean tent, a sunrise. Life is what you did today, and that feeling you get when autumn begins, and the people you have been loving for some time now. The night of my dad’s birthday, as I leaned against the railings on our deck and inhaled Tommy’s cigarette, I fixed my eyes on a blue star directly above me. Then I looked to the left, at Tommy and Elliot laughing with my mom in the doorway. Both images gave me the same feeling, which was that maybe this is the whole point — looking at stars and looking at you guys and then looking at stars again—little moments where all my layers of feeling take a concrete shape, like a burning blue sun or three people I love in casual conversation — witnessing my life in the split seconds in which it occurs rather than as a series of things I do to reach a specific outcome —

The purpose of “burning it down,” then, goes deeper than our ambition to start over, to create something new. We also have this very human need to warm up by the flames. Admire the ash. Kiss, laugh, and dance in the heat. Participate in that ancient, inexorable pendulum swing between dormancy and explosion; then peer closely at each other in the firelight, noticing what before, we might never have seen. 

And when the sun comes up, and when the ash settles, we will rest. 

By Jesse D. Palmer

We need to talk about the elephant in the room — millions of people are being mobilized by fear and hate to support clown-like authoritarians who want more police, taller walls, stricter conformity and less freedom. It’s not just talking heads on Fox news and a few politicians — right-wingers are talking about starting a civil war and it’s no joke because these folks collect guns as a hobby. 

How did we get to the point where I’m looking up the dictionary definition of fascism: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

When I talk to other radicals one-on-one, they’re worried about a near-term descent into fascism — that MAGA types will seize power through another coup, armed conflict, or most likely by winning the next few elections and then rigging the system once they take it over to stay in power indefinitely. If that happens, it is not alarmist to think that a lot of us are going to end up in jail, disappeared, or dead — and that it will be impossible to continue any counter-culture or alternative projects, live free lives, or make any progress on social justice or environmental sustanability.

But so far as I can tell, the radical scene doesn’t want to talk about it — perhaps because it puts us in the awkward position of supporting the mainstream American electoral machine, which we all know is fundamentally unfair. How can we support a system responsible for genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, endless wars, corporate control? A lot of radicals I know would like to have their own insurrection — to smash the state, to seize power for workers, to make revolution. Engaging with MAGA means getting involved in the mainstream game, indirectly supporting democrats — too fucking impure. 

I don’t want to be the turd in the punchbowl, but sometimes history puts us in a situation where we only have bad choices and not choosing is itself a dangerous choice. In the 1930s, US radicals who opposed the US government and capitalism nonetheless joined WWII against fascism. Now is another time to do what we can to avoid fascism, because the present system with all its warts gives us room to oppose capitalism that fascism won’t. 

What does this mean? The liberals and the democrats are losing a popularity contest against MAGA because they represent the mainstream capitalist economic monster that is incapable of making things better for the vast majority of the population who work for a living vs. the 1% who make their money owning property, stock, and money itself.

We should not be in a situation in which regular folks in red states are whipped into a frenzy against regular people in blue states and vice versa — nor is this about rural vs. urban, white vs. multi-cultural, guns vs. tofu.

Everyone agrees that the economic and political systems aren’t working — we’re living through a period of unprecedented and disorienting change and its undeniable that life is getting harder each year for most people. Housing costs more, jobs pay less — everyone accepts and expects to live worse than their parents did. 

The question is who is to blame?

The radical scene has the most crucial role in opposing fascism, because we have the clearest answer: the 1%, the bosses, the landlords, the Corporations and capitalism itself which is a rigged game where creating inequality, misery, a dizzying pace of change and meaninglessness is a feature, not a bug. It’s simple and obvious — and even has facts behind it. 

The democrats can’t and won’t provide a credible answer because they are bought and paid for by the capitalists. When they try in some limited ways to offer solutions, their message is so mangled and guarded and inauthentic that everyone can see right through it and ignore it. 

Which has provided the perfect petri dish for MAGA, which offer scapegoats, confusion and misinformation to address very real problems we’re all feeling deeply. MAGA wants to blame everything on immigrants, crime (read black people), gays, trans people, woke people… But to do it, they have to contort facts and hatch spectacular conspiracy theories — stolen elections, QAnon, immigrant caravans, and similar gibberish. The problem is that when the only options on the TV are democrats who won’t offer a solution and MAGA solutions that touch on emotionally resonant issues, a lot of people are picking MAGA. 

OUR JOB is to point out that we don’t need scapegoats. To do so is much more about storytelling and our hearts than endless academic critiques, facts or policies. We need to stop being scared of talking to regular people who might not agree with us 100% — it’s not giving up our purity to deal with the real world as part of a longer-term process of building a world we want to see.

We need to tell better stories not only to expose the system, but to describe a future people will want to be part of. We have to stop just being against stuff all the time — that doesn’t organize anyone in a sustainable or long-term fashion. 

And I know many will disagree, but focusing on guilt isn’t working — it doesn’t motivate most people. It barely works within the radical scene — rather it just promotes burnout and makes all of us afraid to say anything lest we be the next one to be cancelled. I was talking about this with a friend at the park recently and she suggested maybe all the radicals who want to stop focusing on policing language so much and start trying to engage with a wider audience should all get cancelled at the same time so we can get it over with and move on.

We don’t have — nor do we want — anyone like Trump or his talking heads. The best way to oppose MAGA has to be grassroots and decentralized — lots of talks person-to-person that focus on things we share no matter whether we’re in a red state or a blue state or what color we are or how we were raised.

MAGA hates elites and that might be a good place to start — the billionaires’ extravagances keep getting more absurd. $500 million yachts? Starting your own rocket ship company? What the fuck. These are points I think most people — MAGA or Berkeley Hippie — can agree on. But there’s positive stuff I think we can agree on, too. Most people love their families, care about their friends and their communities, work hard at their jobs and love the land we share. 

The goal of these conversations is so we can stop dehumanizing each other — which at this moment is dangerous because it allows those in power to divide us based on made-up differences and also makes violence more likely. You can kill the “other”, but it’s harder to kill a neighbor, someone you’ve spoken with, someone whose family you know. 

I want to say to my red state brothers and sisters that even though I’m an urbanite hippie from Berkeley — I don’t look down on you or have anything against you. If you think me or people like me hate you, you’re being fed a lie by people who DO look down on working people. They want to divide us and turn us against each other. 

What we need is solidarity — we have more in common than divides us. We even need to love each other.

I’ve been a radical since I was 16 years old and I have plenty I would like to change about this country and the system but nevertheless I love America — not just the coast, not just people who are like me — the whole thing and the other people with whom I share this land. Indiana, Kentucky, North Dakota, Kansas — these are places I’ve lived or visited or places people I love are from. I love the people and I love the land — even if I still criticize the system and the history of injustice that brought us together.  So far as I can tell the MAGA people are against the system, too — we see it different but I think there are places to overlap. I myself don’t own a gun and I sure feel worried about the harm guns do, but I don’t want to take away anyone’s guns and I can’t think of many people I know here in Berkeley that want to take anyone’s guns.  Certainly no one wants to take anyone’s bible. 

A key value is tolerance — live and let live. I am okay if you want to think or believe or live differently than I do. I don’t want to crush you or force you to give up anything. I don’t know if that’s something MAGA people can agree on as a group but maybe on a person-to-person basis? 

And moving beyond just avoiding catastrophe, I wish radicals would spend more time telling stories about the world we want to create. Glimpses of a world where we cooperate with each other to create beautiful, pleasurable and meaningful lives are already around us — and even though it’s painful and unjust that so many people are still excluded, it’s a mistake to just focus on problems and ignore the joyful parts of the here and now. Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m getting away with my life here in Berkeley — but it’s real.  People treat each other with respect and caring. There’s a zillion projects people have created to make the world better and not for money — art gardens, free pinball, shared hot tubs, community centers, even the Slingshot. I’m still living in a commune with 8 people and when one of us gets sick, the others jump in to help so we can all feel supported and safe. My daughter goes to an excellent public school where the 5^th grade puberty education seamlessly includes gays, trans people and body positivity. I just saw the Milky way on a moonless night standing in an off-the-grid, communal organic apple farm that hosts 3 generations of people living on unspoiled land with a pond for swimming, a sauna — where sheep wander amongst oaks and madrone trees.  People from diverse backgrounds speaking many languages mostly get along just fine in the East Bay — our diversity adds texture and excitement — with people pursuing many different passions that don’t hurt anyone — parties, concerts, dance, food, children, exercise — just regular living. 

The good parts of this world right now is the new world we’re trying to build — there’s no use waiting for the revolution or dreaming of some utopia. The question is how to expand the parts of our lives that are worth living? And how to avoid having the freedoms we enjoy not swept away by civil war, fascism, intolerance, hate and fear?

By Jean Meeds

San Francisco Movement of Rank and File Educators have been doing demonstrations and walking picket lines at a public San Francisco High school to help stop the teacher Exodus from San Francisco. I work there as a volleyball coach for the Women’s volleyball team. The San Francisco Unified School District has offered teachers a tentative 6% increase, but that does not come close to covering the increased cost of living in San Francisco.

San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the world and yet pays teachers at one of the lowest levels in the area. San Francisco is now known for its private schools. Funny, in my 5 seasons as coach, this is the first time I have worked as a coach in a public school, as all the other times I worked in several different privateschools. The students in public schools have more of a funky cool spirit as opposed to the bourgeois individualism vibe of private schools. 

There have also been unionizing events in private schools such as the Blue School in New York. Public schools teachers in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio have also gone on strike this fall and have won pay increases and other benefits. The CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) which is a militant union stated during their recent strike: “We are just not fighting for the interest of the teachers or the staff. We want a union that is fighting for the common interests of the teachers, the staff, the students, and the community.” The Union is an ally to the community!

Our schools may seem useful to turn children into doctors, sociologists, and lawyers, etc. but they are poisonous, as well. Both teachers and students are oppressed groups and exploited. For most of your school life, it doesn’t make that much difference what subject you are taught, the method is the real lesson. The form is the methodology. The structure of rules, punishments, and rewards trains us much more than the subject matter, which often has no relevance on one’s life. “Schools Not Jails” may be a cool slogan and there have been rallies held with that theme, however it is interesting to note that the architecture of many schools is similar to that of prisons.

It is also interesting to note that the National Labor Relations board has always blocked union efforts by students. The idea of students not being able to organize unions has its origins in the New Deal period. So much for progressive Capitalism! When we talk about reaching a deeper depth of democracy here in the US, one has to realize that political freedom is much more than what is in the legal statutes, but is rather a state of mind which can be either stunted or uplifted in schools. Whether one is in a public or private school, that is where one learns about submission to authoritarian agendas and how to follow orders mindlessly. 

While learning is important, the point is how we transmit this knowledge in a manner that is uplifting and meaningful. Organizing communities around educational justice issues is a good start, such as ending racially discriminatory discipline and policing practices and creating community-oriented schools with culturally-relevant curriculum for students.

I would like to thank Jerry Farber who Taught at San Diego State for some of the ideas and concepts in this article.

By Xinãchtli

2023 will mark the 200 year anniversary of one of the most horrific Holocausts of the Americas, buried in myths, lies: The Founding of the Texas Rangers Police-Army Militia, and the U.S. Yankee Colonization of Northern Mexico. 

The Rangers earned the nickname Los Diablos Tejanos, or The Texas Devils in the Mexican community, as blood-thirsty hires of lawless white supremacy, a colonial period known as La Hora de Sangre, or The Time of Blood: The Massacre of Mexicanos-Chicanos in the Occupied territories.

These colonial wars were for land, expansionist plantation slavery, inspired by the racist ideological doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

They set in motion a pattern of falsification of history, ongoing war crimes, the disenfranchisement of Chicanos in “Tejas” that have remained buried in lies.

Mexicans were hauled off in chains before “pseudo-judges” in mock kangaroo courts such as the infamous Law West of the Pecos saloon-court presided over by drunkard Judge Roy Bean at Langtry, Texas, convened by land-hungry swindlers to give “legality” to their war crimes, in stripping all native Mexicans of all social rights, stealing their properties, and criminalizing them as “bandits” declaring “open season war” against them as “personas non-grata” in their own native homeland.

This war has continued today, especially along the military-imposed U.S./Mexico border from Brownsville to San Diego, CA. A series of myths and stereotypes took hold in keeping with the sociological, geopolitical dialectics of the historical process of colonialism, as laid out by Dr. Frantz Fanon. This genocidal ethnic-cleansing was spearheaded by notorious Texas Rangers, founded in 1823, by the father of settler colonialism, Stephen F. Austin. Texas joined the Confederacy and many monuments and statues honoring these war criminals were erected in cities and at State Universities.

Many books, films andfolk song ballads were produced by the colonial class to justify this vile, ugly history, a history that critical race theory seeks the truth be told. However, Texas, the “Daughters of the Confederacy,” and proponents of plantation slavery, seek to have this false history buried in lies, living in utter hypocrisy, shame and infamy.

Visit the Texas Ranger’s Museum in Waco, Texas, and see the lies with your own eyes. True books, new authors, historians and University professors are ostracized, black-listed, banned, threatened with termination or denied tenure for teaching true history.

During the last 200 years, law has been used as an instrument of tyranny in the hands of the oppressors, to rule over the powerless, voiceless, the poor, the oppressed.

The Rangers have always acted as Gestapo enforcers of colonial rule, destroying Chicano civil rights, anti-war, union, third political party movement organizations, keeping Chicanos in second-class citizenship, subservancy roles, by the Neo-colonial structures. Chicanos have always valiantly resisted colonialism though various forms of organized struggles, including guerrilla warfare for the return of their stolen lands, for freedom from such an evil system of oppression, exploitation.

Texas Prisons and Colonialism are connected through an Umbilical Cord, as the granite stones and its electric chair “Old Sparky,” were built by ‘Prisoner Slaves’ Labor of the infamous colonial “convict-lease” program,” all stained with prisoners’ blood.

Texas Prisons also glorifies this ugly history at its Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville. Its prisons are disproportionately filled by Blacks, Chicanos, Asians, NativeAmericans, and its proliferation of “control units” and its counterinsurgency programs, the brain-child of fascist former Prison Director Dr. George Beto, designed to silence, repress dissent, such as the case of “Xinãchtli,” (s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez), now going on 20+ years in Solitary Confinement, shows the true nature of the carceral totalitarian state under colonialism, capitalism, imperialism. 

As 2023 approaches, any “official apology” from the State would be grossly insufficient, and insulting. 

Chicanos are entitled to a real healing process from the crimes of Colonialism; for a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, A War-Crimes Tribunal, for reparations, for freedom from existing Neo-Colonial criminal structures still in place today.

Colonialism has been declared a crime against humanity, guaranteeing its subjects the inalienable right to free themselves from its stranglehold by any means necessary, including armed struggle and revolution. Stay tuned for further national discourse.…

Viva La Raza ! 

Tierra y Libertad !

What we do: We provide free subscriptions to incarcerated individuals in the US who request them. Recently we only publish 2 times a year, so there may be up to a 6 month delay between when you request a subscription and when you get a paper. We do accept submissions of art and articles from incarcerated subscribers but we only publish a very tiny fraction. We don’t publish poetry or fiction, and only run personal narratives or stories about your case if they are framed within radical analysis. 

What we don’t do: We are unable to provide penpals, legal aid/advice, financial assistance, literature besides Slingshot, or respond to requests for other kinds of help. Usually, we can’t write back. We can’t use JPay / other inmate email services. 

Comrades on the outside: We receive 5-10 letters from incarcerated folks every day. We welcome help reading them and processing subscription requests! — Love, Slingshot

By StondeLobo

You might have seen operational refrigerators in your neighborhood or community center with signs that say “Free Food / Comida Gratis”, or “Take what you need, leave what you don’t”. Other pop-up resources you might have seen are Free Pantries, which are a type of cabinet with shelves to stack canned food or non perishables. These resources are not funded by government. It’s everyday people who crank the volume level up to 11 and voluntarily provide whatever food they can. Sometimes hygiene kits, or harm reduction kits are also provided to help the community that continues to struggle.

Free Fridges can be found in many cities around the US. There are even some in different countries where Free Fridges and Pantries are popping up to help their communities. According to the Freedge database there were 160 free fridges spread around 28 American states. There are three key points to Free Fridge programs, which are :

Give what you can, 

Take what you need, and 

Share by getting involved.

Sharing can mean a few different things that are not just related to food, such as knowledge, experiences and resources. 

Free Libraries are also a helpful resource for the community. Considering how many schools lack enough book funding, and how many neighborhoods lack bookstores and libraries with convenient open hours, such book exchanges are necessary for both children and adults. They are commonly found in some laundromats, community centers, and residential neighborhoods.

I think it’s pretty clear what the purpose of a Free Fridge program is. However, some will argue that it’s nothing but a disturbance in the community. These arguments are prevalent among some landlords and property owners who will not support it, claiming these resources attract groups of houseless individuals whom they do not want to see on their property. Others cite food health codes, or are simply apathetic because it doesn’t benefit them in any way. But just for the moment, picture this — Free Fridges and Pantries being placed where they are most convenient and accessible and where food is commonly found. Some examples of locations would be a food market center, laundromat, community center, public parks, — the list could go on. 

When I visit the nearest fridge or pantry in my community and I see children with their parents picking out food for the night, or when I see individuals picking up something to eat for their camp, it makes it obvious that this program works and has a resilient purpose in our neighborhoods. And when I see people dropping off food, kits, and other resources for people to be able to survive the night, I know community members have inspired one another to keep this going. I feel more inspired and motivated to keep supporting mutual aid programs.

Personally, I think every neighborhood should have a free fridge and pantry. You don’t have to be houseless to need access to food, clothes, books and hygiene products. Even individuals who have jobs or a home can struggle with hunger. We continue to make poverty wages as the cost of living goes up, and most struggle with feeding themselves and their families while trying to keep a roof over their heads at the same time, sometimes having to choose between one or the other. It’s a sad reality and I think we are way past the point of asking government officials for help. We don’t need government officials to do something that we can all come together and do ourselves. 

Check out some resources below for location information and guidelines on how to start your own free fridge.

Resources:

International Database

freedge.org freedge.org/locations/

*Town Fridge maps (Oakland, CA)

drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1031SQA16DTnp1ZOJS0wyS5H8Li_jJTfK

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

Making this paper is as much about building community as the publication itself. There’s a lot of meetings where we exchange ideas — but also socialize, tell stories, hear about parties and feel seen and heard. The Long Haul community center feels alive and exciting when we make an issue. The process is very loose — there’s no official “staff” — so it is always a surprise and a treat seeing who will come in. People from a lot of different backgrounds and different ages come through our cluttered loft. So it can be a little more interesting than a punk show or a party where everyone is kinda in your scene already or a friend of a friend. Also folks come in who’ve been reading the paper for years but we’ve never met before — so it confirms that someone actually reads this thing. 

It is humbling making a paper and casting it out into the world like a message in a bottle. We have no idea who might end up reading it but it seems like at least some copies filter out to new readers who’ve never been in touch with our scene before. Which is of course the point — to get outside the internet echo-chamber algorithms that increasing separate people into homogenous marketing lists. We’re hoping that our volunteer distributors can put some of the papers into places no would would expect to see an underground rag from Berkeley — truck stops, dentist offices, rodeos, weddings, military bases. If you’ve never seen the paper before — howdy, happy to meet you. Stay in touch. 

The Long Haul where we have our office sorely needs to start doing more events, so if you’re in the East Bay, please schedule something — DIY workshops, sing-alongs, sign making, seed swaps, poetry readings — be creative. 

A new project at the Long Haul is a risograph print room. It’s still very new and the structure and purpose behind it are a bit vague. We look forward to the new zines and paper revolutionaries coming up from it. reprographixed.com.

But jeez note to self: we really need to spend some time between issues cleaning the office and doing other background stuff like fixing the broken website.  Even more crucial is spending some time decentralizing and spreading out the work load so making a paper doesn’t vacuum up so many weeks.

We know a lot of subjects are missing from this paper like the Parker School struggle, the recent homeless camp clearances on Wood Street, refugee abuse, drones being sold to Turkey for genocide, gentrification, the rise of far right-wing governments in Europe … the list feels endless. Next issue send us articles about any of the topics you see missing. 

The free, word-of-mouth, 24-hour hot tub behind an unmarked gate on Essex Street in Berkeley is no more after its operator died. The tub brought relief and wonder to Slingshot staffers over the last 35+ years – what a gift to give to strangers – what a magical experience to dip into scalding hot water and then wander in an altered state of consciousness in silence through redwoods, even though you’re right in the middle of the city. Feeling tiny explosions on your naked skin and realizing with a chuckle— this is what rain feels like.  It’s frustrating and sad that the operator never moved past his trans-exclusionary attitude, yet the space itself was a unique fixture of the Berkeley roller coaster.

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers and distributors.  Even if you feel you are not an essayist, illustrator, whistleblower you may know someone who is.  If you send an article, please be open to editing. We’re a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Andy, Dor, eggplant, Elke, Finn, Hannah, Jennifer, Jesse, Josette, Josh, Lydia, Lola, Marley, Mello, Mimi, Patrick, Rachelle, Riley, Robin, Ryan, Sean, Sebastian, Silver, Stuart, Sylvia, Thelonius, Tess & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on January 8 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 137 by January 28, 2023. 

Volume 1, Number 136, Circulation 22,000

Printed October 28, 2022

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 slingshotcollective@protonmail.com 

slingshotcollective.org • twitter @slingshotnews

instagram/ facebook @slingshotcollective

About the Cover artist:

Salvatore Giommarresi is a comics author, illustrator, He’s a former member and editor of many editorials projects (magazine about illustration and comic).

His work draws inspiration from a variety of different sources and especially from what he experiences first-hand during his travels around the world. He likes experimenting new ways to apply traditional techniques such as origami to his art.

He is particularly interested in exploring the potential of comics in education. Currently, he organizes workshops and cooperates with schools, institutions, and NGOs at international level.

His pieces have been exhibited in Italy, Spain, Mozambique, France, Vietnam, U.S.A., and Albania.

https://linktr.ee/giommarresi

Circulation information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue donation. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul and Bound Together books, SF.

Slingshot free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $4 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. slingshotcollective.org

By P. Wingnut

People’s Park in Berkeley is still liberated territory — despite the University of California sending in 100 police for a sneak attack in the middle of the night on August 3 to steal it from us. Workers were up all night building a strong, 8 foot tall “unclimbable” fence that was spiked into the concrete so UC could start building a 12 story, $312 million dorm at the 2.8 acre site the next morning. Around 9 am, Expert Tree Service arrived and began cutting 47 trees.

But the UC’s efforts were always doomed. There’s a spell protecting the Park — a curse against the University cast by generations of people who’ve met and woven community there that extends outwards and continues through our lives. Almost everyone I’ve met over the last 35 years somehow relates to the community surrounding People’s Park.

The ugliness and violence of the UC’s predawn raid and attempted clearcut was met with determined, dignified people power. When we heard the roar of chainsaws and the thud of tree trunks hitting the ground, the fence was torn down — and the police and workers fled. They left millions of dollars of fencing and construction equipment — which was promptly disabled and now sits on the lawn near the free speech stage decorated like a post apocalyptic sculpture. 

I have to confess that I missed the physical defense of People’s Park on August 3. I got the bulldozer alert on my phone when I woke up at 7 am, looked on-line and saw photos of police and a fence … but I didn’t jump on my bike. I’d dropped by a rave in the Park the previous Saturday night sort of to say my goodbyes — I just couldn’t see how the Park could survive the momentum and city/corporate coalition that the university had built on their path towards development. 

I had a pre-existing plan to take LSD with my girlfriend August 3 that I’d already had to cancel twice — when I got covid and when the Supreme Court overturned Roe…. So I said “fuck it — let’s take the acid”. We discussed set and setting, and my set was “transformation.” I remarked that maybe us taking acid could be like the butterfly effect where a seemingly minor act triggers a hurricane across the world. I was thinking about climate change, inequality and my own personal struggles to work less and live more freely…. 

The University’s attack has ended up invigorating and expanding the numbers of Park defenders so that any future UC attack will be met with far greater resistance. Before August 3, a lot of Park activists (perhaps secretly) had a creeping suspicion that this time, the UC might finally get their way. I was feeling like that too. The City and the University have spent years trying to isolate and marginalize the Park by framing it as an outdated vestige of the 1960s or just another homeless encampment that should be “cleaned up” to make way for progress. Some of us felt tired and felt there were more pressing issues demanding our time. The numbers of participants at events dwindled…

The acid was amazing with strong visuals — probably because a comrade gave it out for free last time we were making Slingshot. We hiked up to the redwoods above campus and after we peaked, I noticed the constant sound of helicopters circling above. So I turned on my phone and wondered if I was still hallucinating because … the fence was down! We were still tripping pretty hard but I said “we gotta go to the Park to see what’s going on” and when we got there, it was filled with people — the fence had been smashed. 

Since the foiled police raid, there’s daily events and plenty of new folks of all ages and backgrounds being drawn to the thriving energy at the Park. A recent week’s schedule featured Garden Tours, Nonviolent Direct Action prep/training, a Spokescouncil meeting, Fire Mitigation Hügelkultur gardening, Open Air Temple — even an art opening. There’s an info table with literature and Food Not Bombs still serves 5 days a week.  While most of the trees were cut down, a few remain. The free speech stage, basketball court, bathroom, and some other structures remain. With so much less shade, a big priority has been re-planting and re-greening so there’s plenty to do — everyone gets a blister. 

The only way to protect the Park long-term is to make it a wonderful Park full of life and beauty — not just a tattered nostalgia trip. If it’s getting cold in your part of the country, now might be a good time to head west to Berkeley where it’s sunny almost all year and it never freezes. 

The Park right after a police raid wasn’t a great place to be on acid, so we biked down to the Marina to watch the sunset and I read out loud what I’d written in the last issue of Slingshot — it seemed right on: “Slingshot does not know and therefore cannot disclose the specifics but People’s Park is magic — it is not governed by the standard laws of physics or social norms. So don’t believe the hype: There will be a mass mobilization to defend the Park the minute the UC moves to install a fence. Or maybe dragons will emerge from volcanos — who the fuck knows but the UC should be careful stirring up the demons that inhabit the Park.”

In my acid haze, I realized how profoundly the Park proved that no matter how hopeless things look, anything is possible. Unexpected or unexplainable things can happen so long as you try. We need this awareness not only about People’s Park, but about everything in the world that horrifies and frightens us — plastics in the oceans, hatred, racism, the rich getting richer, fascism rising, soulless corporations ruining everything. 

The future of People’s Park is up for grabs. The University claims they intend to start construction as soon as a court injunction is lifted in November — maybe by the time you read this. But UC is unlikely to attack until its 40,000 students are safely out of town — even if only 40 percent of them support the Park, it’s too risky. Late December or early January in the middle of the night is when they’ll raid. 

We’ll always have the upper hand at the Park because it’s in our blood — it’s about freedom, an absurdly diverse counter-community of freaks and misfits, art, music, and the land.  Love is more powerful than brutality and money. The police officers and UC employees don’t really care what happens — its just more real estate, more money, more numbers in a computer to them. The contractors have plenty of job sites where they won’t be constantly yelled at — where it won’t take a 24 -hour a day occupying army of police to protect a quarter mile of fence. 

The butterfly effect can work. So just like I had to play my part by tripping and missing the protest, defending People’s Park and other seemingly doomed free spaces is crucial towards defending the earth, defeating those in power, and building a world worth living in. See you at the Park. 

Text SAVETHEPARK to 74121 to join the bulldozer alarm text alert. For more info check peoplespark.org for events.

By Lola

You wake up, make the bed. Wing your eyeliner and clean the kitchen before leaving for work. Eyebrows slightly raised in anticipatory defiance as you walk to the bus stop—they call it resting bitch face. You don’t call it anything. It’s just an old piece of armor, now invisible, even to you.

You move through the day with your emails to send, your essays to write, your plans to confirm or cancel, your friends to laugh with or to console. Or maybe the day moves through you, with its hurts for you to confront, authorities to appease or to challenge, headlines to internalize or ignore. And although the year may be sprinkled with escapades on glittery Friday nights, poignant sunset drives and serendipitous first dates—this day-to-day can get pretty tiring. Tiring and busy. If you’re walking around in a certain kind of body (a body that is not white, male, and abled) it can be pretty draining at times, too. So much so that sometimes, we have to pick and choose which emotions we want to feel and which we will have to ignore. And in this state which is so inundated with infuriating abuses of power and hollowing tragedies, I think that anger is often the first to go. Who has the time?

In other words—I am so used to this wearisome anger that I worry I have lost my ability to feel it acutely, and in the right moments.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was asked how I felt about it a lot. As a young woman… It seemed like everyone wanted me to scream and yell or something, make a big show of my outrage. But I couldn’t. Sometimes I would lean into the anger a little bit just to end the conversation. My aunts, parents, my boss, politically correct men—somehow they all seemed more upset about it than me: the only one of the group who might need an abortion at some point in the future.

I guess it is hard to feel a sense of shock or outrage when I am deeply aware of the loss of bodily autonomy I have experienced, as a girl and a woman in the US, throughout my entire life.

There are the better moments, when my hair is soft and my boots are leather and I’m dancing around my sister’s kitchen, eating vegan curry with her roommates. I know I am free to move and laugh, and I know how beautiful I look, and I know the effect that it has.

But things are often not so good. Other times I am lying on the ground at the skatepark early in the morning, in the fog, before anyone’s there. With my hood pulled up around my face. Or I’m having a silent moment of horror because these jeans don’t fit me the way they did last year. Maybe I’m having sex with a lovely, respectful boy but crying for a reason I can’t seem to explain to him. And if I had to articulate a common thread between the seemingly irrational meltdowns, I guess that thread would be my having to exist in this female body. The hips, the cheekbones, the eyelashes, the thighs, the wrists, the stomach, the shoulder blades, the butt, the waist—I should be looking in the mirror and seeing the infinite beauty in all of that, in this powerful femininity—but it’s hard to get past seeing all the ways it has held me back, and brought me down, and made me afraid.

It is this huge heavy weight. Which is crazy. Because I know that I got out pretty lucky, as far as being a girl goes. But even with the privileges I possess, I am perpetually aware that as I walk around in this body I will always be holding, high above my head, an invisible invitation: Say something! Do something! Touch me! Scold me! Project your discomforts onto me! Take a picture of me! Validate me! Intimidate me! Make an example out of me! Free of charge! 🙂

So it is hard to feel shocked that Roe v. Wade was overturned, because I never felt much of a right to my body in this place. Maybe that comes from the first birth control pill I took freshman year of high school, which would alter my hormones for ever-after, all so I could have sex with a confused 16-year-old boy who watched too much porn, or maybe it started a long time before that, with the detentions I received at the age of 11 for having and showing “cleavage,” or maybe it started even before that, in third grade, when my two best friends and I decided to go on our first diet, to lose weight. At the age of seven. Maybe it even goes back to infancy, when my mother’s friends would meet me for the first time and guess whether or not I would be beautiful and, based on this, what kind of life I might lead.

I don’t know where the lack of autonomy starts. I just know that I can’t remember a time when I really had it. But that’s the thing about a heavy weight—it becomes familiar. At some point, it is no longer the foreign object you carry. It’s just the hand that used to carry it.

Roe v. Wade was overturned and I didn’t bat an eye—but The Washington Post did…my Instagram feed did. The mainstream left was all up in arms (haha, if compulsively reposting is our new armed resistance) for their standard 48 hours; liberal media outlets ran their obligatory ~unprecedented times~ cover stories; teenage girls and their moms dressed in green and were safely ushered down blocked-off city streets, cardboard signs in hand.

Then: we washed our hands of the tragedy. The edges dulled, if you had any to start with (I didn’t)—and life continued as it was. Only this time, without safe access to abortion.

What the fuuuuck…? The left co-opted our rage before we had two seconds to process it.

The problem with mainstream liberal resistance tactics (or one of them, at least) is that they are not sustainable. Anger is anticipated and quickly molded into catchphrases and petitions; negotiations are promised; a couple of dinner conversations become slightly awkward; maybe we pencil in a different bubble on our ballots a few months down the road. Our lives are our lives and a couple of months ago the supreme court did something really bad and I got upset about it. By which I mean, there isn’t a shred of congruence between the fleeting anger we felt and the half-hearted things we might have done about it and the rest of our existence. To protest, then, becomes a duty—a place we might go or a thing we might do to check a box rather than an extension of our life itself and the ways we create meaning within it.

For the right, overturning Roe v. Wade was always a project with ambitions far deeper and wider than banning abortion. It was about perpetuating the fungibility of the female body, dehumanizing women of color, stripping oppressed communities of their right to eroticism, to agency, to their futures, and to the futures of their children. The overturn was born out of a long winding road of oppressive tactics geared toward controlling the female body and our conception of what it means to be a woman. And likewise, our anarchist response must be rooted in a fight much bigger than reproductive rights. It must be rooted in reproductive justice.

The reproductive rights framework—almost entirely focused on pro-choice—alienates many women of color in its assumption that women do not face reproductive threats outside of anti-abortion laws. Kimala Price’s article “What is Reproductive Justice? How Women of Color are Redefining the Pro-Choice Paradigm” articulates the ways that women of color are at risk for a slew of reproductive threats that white women might never have to think about—such as the fact that their children will face the constant risk of death or injury by police brutality. Reproductive rights, or pro-choice politics, are comparable to gay marriage legislation and affirmative action: the left wants us to see these efforts as progress, small wins within a corrupt system. But what happens to our collective sense of agency when we ask for such small allowances from the state and choose to ignore deeper, more foundational issues in order to gain them?

We need a framework for sustainable, anarcha-feminist protest—protest that starts at the roots and sticks to the roots. I think that this kind of protest has to be grounded in our emotions, and I also think that our emotions must be expressed in the collective in order for them to move us where we need to be moved. For me, and maybe for you too, the first step will be to get in touch with my anger. I mentioned the jeans not fitting, the hormones getting fucked by Loestrin, the early-morning skatepark meltdowns and the frequently teary sexual encounters—tips of the iceberg, and I don’t list them here so that you will feel bad for me, or so that I can feel bad for myself about being a girl. I list them here because they help me remember my rage. And remember that it all comes from the same source. I fucking hate that source.

Maybe if I’m angry enough about the whole operation (ya know, the whole Amerika thing) then it will make it easier for us to be angry together. For some people, lack of access to abortion is the most pressing issue. For others it’s rape culture, or police brutality, or fatphobia, or domestic abuse—the list goes on. Our struggles against each of these issues are made stronger through our ability to forge connections between them, and through that process, between ourselves. 

To remember this rage every day—that is not going to be easy. No one is going to pay us to do it. But rage and resistance are two sides of the same coin, as are resistance and love, love and purpose… Going out to “protest” shouldn’t feel like going out at all. It should feel like coming home. At home, you are allowed to feel everything that you feel. You are allowed to cry about those feelings or laugh about them or shout about them or write about them or organize about them. And as we embrace these feelings, as we react to them honestly, as we speak to each other about them and witness the uniqueness of each of our experiences, and then the overwhelming similarity—it is in these spaces that genuine protest evolves.

Fighting back against the Roe v. Wade reversal is so much deeper than an isolated response to a specific fuck up. Who wants Roe v. Wade, anyways? What is it—a decree signed by some Very Important Men saying I get to have an abortion? I could do without that. I want autonomous reproductive health collectives, anarchist women’s circles, access to DIY abortion information, education on my natural cycle, self-defense classes, male allies and male birth control options, healthy sex, a village to raise my future baby, and the respect that I deserve for existing every day in this body. I want to catcall attractive men as I walk down the street, let them know that whatever they think they can do to me, I can do to them. But I won’t. I won’t. I want us all to be better.

***

You come home, take off your shoes. Peel off your jacket and close the door. But instead of stepping into the living room and leaving the day firmly behind you, maybe pause there for a moment, with your hand still on the doorknob. Turn it slowly. Step back outside into the cold sun. Do you feel your feet on the dirty sidewalk? Do you see the crows on the power line? What’s for dinner? Your manager said something icky to you today. Maybe after you eat, your roommates will be in a snuggly mood, and you will all share a bottle of wine. Everything hurts, everything heals. Don’t check out just yet. This is it—your life. This is the whole thing. It is important that you do not forget it is yours.