Category: Articles

Squatting Everywhere Collective (SqeK)

Edition Assemblage 2018

Rudolf-Diesel-Str. 37, D – 48157 Münster

Review by dj dio

This book is 356 pages long and contains 30 different authors writing on 30 different situations around the world. What unites these stories is the underlying question: “Who has a right to be where and who gets to decide?”. There is no more central social question in our modern times and these authors address this question directly and indirectly from many different angles. What makes this book very readable is that the answers come in the form of anecdotes and histories from a wide variety of real world struggles…..this is not a collection of abstracted theoretical discussions, this is on-the-ground praxis!

Real, lived experiences from the city streets, the villages, the countryside and the wilds told by people who are part of these struggles. My personal favorite was Margot Verdier’s reporting from the ZAD near Nantes in France where a very diverse group of folks have successfully challenged government and industry plans to build (yet another fucking) airport. Replete with victories, losses and lessons learned, you will find no references to 401K plans here! Read this book if you want to open your mind up to something other than cynical, individualistic survival strategies for the coming zombie capitalocalypse. You will be inspired!

Thanks if you purchased a 2019 Slingshot Organizer — selling them is how we pay to publish this paper.

If you want to help draw art or otherwise create the 2020 Organizer, contact us now. We include the work of over 30 artists from all over the US and internationally in each organizer — it could be you this year. The schedule this year is:

• Edit and add more historical dates (May and June)

• Update radical contact list (June and July)

• Make art for the calendar starting June 24 with all art due July 25.

• Make the organizer July 27/28 and August 3/4.

Once we get returns from stores in February, we’ll be giving away bulk quantities to organizations that distribute them to prisoners, immigrants, homeless people, or others who wouldn’t otherwise have access. Contact us if you want to participate.

The Slingshot Organizer smartphone app is available but we need help publicizing it. Tell your friends. Right now it only works on Android phones, but we think there may be an iphone version available in 2019.

Slingshot continues to receive many emails asking us to remove particular people from the organizer because they were alleged sexual abusers, racist, sexist or homophobic etc. While we don’t want to promote harmful people, it isn’t always clear that the answer is to write people out of history who have made important contributions to collective liberation despite their flaws. We edit the list of historical dates every year so if you have ideas or suggestions, please let us know.

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

Here’s some updates to the Radical Contact List published in the 2019 Slingshot Organizer. Please send us your updates about new spaces. We know we’re just scratching the surface of a global, fired-up, exciting do-it-yourself underground. Thanks for everyone who is making it all happen with your hard work and passion. You can sometimes find updates at slingshotcollective.org. Note that the on-line contact list hosted at tao.ca is no longer being updated and due to computer problems we are unable to take it off the internet. Sorry for the confusion.

GG’s Social Trade & Treasure Club – Brooklyn, NY

A social center with studio residences, an event space, art gallery and vintage shop with a forming income sharing co-op. 1339 Dekalb Ave, Brooklyn, NY 347-808-1919 ggssocialclub.com

Trans Pride Initiative – Dallas, TX

A community space and office that hosts events. 614 W. Davis St Suite 208, Dallas (Mail PO Box 3982, Dallas, TX 75208)

Dismantle Change Build Center (DCBC) – Portland, OR

A collectively operated community center that hosts a number of grassroots social justice groups including Critical Resistance, Don’t Shoot Portland, Brown Girls Rise, Urban Nature Partners PDX and Portland Books to Prisoners. DCBC also hosts Crescent Shine, a multi-vendor artist and consignment shop. It occupies the space that used to be In Other Words Books. 14 NE Killingsworth, Portland, OR 97211, dcbc@criticalresistance.org, dcbcpdx.org

Delaware Art Initiative Booking Collective – Claymont, DE

A booking collective for all-ages punk/DIY shows in the Wilmington area based in a house that hosts local independent label Impetus Records. 13 Delaware Ave, Claymont, DE 19703. deartinitiative.booking@gmail.com Folks in Delaware may also want to look for DisturbancE, a monthly punk zine that has lists of upcoming all-ages events, articles from people in the scene and local artist highlights. They host events but do not have a physical address (yet). disturbancede@gmail.com

Medusa Women & Trans Squat – Chicago, IL

An anarchist, feminist squat. 1450 S Avers Ave. Chicago, IL 60623 773-322-5562

People’s Harm Reduction Alliance – Seattle WA

A peer-run harm reduction organization that does needle exchange, hep-c testing and provides other services at a variety of locations. Headquarters at 1415 N.E. 43rd St. Seattle, WA 98105 206-330-5777 peoplesharmreductionalliance.org

Mankato Makerspace – Mankato, MN

A volunteer run art and fabrication space with welding, glass working, forging, woodworking, painting, aerosol, textiles, pottery and more. 1700 3rd Ave., Mankato, MN 56001 507-387-7218 mankatomakerspace.org

Empowerment Infoshop – London, Ontario, Canada

The have books and zines as well as shirts and buttons they make themselves. They have an archive and host events and shows. 613 Dundas street East, London Ontario, N5W 2Z1 Canada

Glitter Bean – Halifax, NS, Canada

A unionized workers coop cafe that is queer and trans centric with radical art and zines that hosts activist events, meetings, and parties. 5896 Spring Garden Rd., Halifax, NS B3H 0A6, Canada

The Common House – London, UK

An event space with members not consumers. Unit 5E, 5e Punderson’s Gardens, London E2 9QG, UK, commonhouse.org.uk/about-2/

Sparrows Nest – Nottingham, UK

A library that hosts events. They don’t want us to publish their physical address but if you email them to set up a time to visit, they’ll tell you. tel. 7388417325 thesparrowsnest.org.uk

Glasgow Autonomous Space – Glasgow, UK

A huge warehouse with a library, herbal clinic dispensary, kitchen, wood workshop, meeting space, and a garden with a greenhouse. Unit 11, 53 Kilbirnie St. Glasgow, G5 8JD glasgowautonomous.weebly.com

Librería Proyección – Santiago, Chile

A volunteer-run social center and library that supports small publishers with 3 meeting rooms and a multipurpose room for presentations and workshops. San Francisco 51, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile +56 2 2639 6950 www.libreriaproyeccion.cl

Infocentrum Salé – Prague, Czech Republic

An anarchist community center that hosts workshops, presentations, screenings and meetings with a radical library and archive. Named after the Salé pirate colony in Morocco, which was an economically, politically, and intellectually independent territory for decades that was a base for subversive activities. Open Monday to Thursday. From 4 pm to 10 pm. Orebitska 14, Praha 3, 130 00, Czech Republic, sale(at)riseup.net, sale.451.cz

Tři ocásci – Brno, Czech Republic

A co-op owned fair trade café and vegan bakery supporting human rights and civil society. třída Kpt. Jarose 1935/18, Brno 602 00 Czech Republic, info@triocasci.cz triocasci.cz 775 702 778

Changes to the 2019 Slingshot Organizer

• Interference Archive / Common Notions Books is at a new location (they moved and were not included in the 2019 organizer.) 314 7th Street Brooklyn NY 11215. interferencearchive.org

• We published In Other Words books in Portland, Oregon but they closed in June and are now DCBC (see above). They put a goodbye message on their website which is at the end of the on-line version of this article.

• Anarres Infoshop in Portland, OR isn’t in the printed calendar because they moved right before presstime. As of today they are looking for a new space – but by the time you read this they may have found one, so look them up.

• Blood Fruit Library in Chicago has moved to a new location that is no longer public, so do not go to the address listed in the 2019 organizer. If you want to contact them, email bloodfruit_library@riseup.net. Also they got a lot of letters from prisoners so prisoners can mail Chicago Anarchist Black Cross at 1321 N. Milwaukee Ave. PMB 460 Chicago, IL 60622 (it is a PO Box, not a place you can visit.)

• Qilombo in Oakland, Calif. was evicted.

• The phone # for Boing Anarchist Collective in Salt Lake City, UT changed to 385-229-4235.

• The address for Peoples Cauldron in New York changed. The new address is 3669 Main St., Stone Ridge, NY 12484. They share the space with Carthaigh Coffee, an anarchist coffee shop.

• Comrades in Chicago told us we should remove Working Bikes from the contact list because they said it isn’t a real community bike shop. They suggested we list West Town Bikes 2459 W Division St, Chicago, IL 60622 instead because even though it is a for profit business they have a work-on-your-bike night available even to those without funds. Slingshot is in Berkeley so it is hard to check this out, but if you’re in Chicago, please email and let us know what you think.

• We got an email from Delaware pointing out that the contact listed there is just a natural food store — they suggested better things to include (see above.) If we can’t figure out a good contact in a state, we may list a coop or natural food store so there’s at least something but we are eager to take those out if we can figure out something better. Thanks!

• We heard about K’é Infoshop — an indigenous community organizing space with a library that hosts events “in the capitol of the Navajo Nation” — but we can’t figure out if they have a physical address nor get them to write us back. We think the mailing address may be PO Box 400, Window Rock, AZ 86515 — let us know if you have any info about them.

• We didn’t include Edmonton Small Press Association in the printed edition. They are located at 11336 101 St. Edmonton, Alberta T5G 2A7 Canada 780-434-9236 ESPAArtHaus@gmail.com – please call or email for an appointment before you visit.

• The address for l’Etincelle should be 56
Boulevard du Doyenné, 49000 Angers, France.

 

ON LINE VERSION ONLY (do not paste into the newspaper by mistake):

Good Bye Message from In Other Words, Portland, Oregon

Dearly beloved In Other Words Communities,

There is no softening this announcement. After 25 years, In Other Words is closing at the end of June 2018. The current members of IOW do not come to this decision lightly. We are grieving. We invite all of you who have found even a moment of clarity, love, determination, and joy to spend some time with our reasons for closing In Other Words.

Some reasons for the closure are increased expenses and the lack of funds, volunteers, and board members. This is a cycle of In Other Words as an organization, and also the cycle of community spaces in capitalism. IOW periodically discusses closing because of a lack of money and people. This isn’t sustainable, especially emotionally, for the people who come here and work to provide this space as a resource to Portland Feminist communities. Even if funds poured in, and masses of people showed up in response to this announcement, we would not continue our tenure here.

We cannot continue because we know reform does not work. The current volunteers and board members stepped into and took over a space that was founded on white, cis feminism (read: white supremacy). It’s really difficult, actually, impossible, for us to disentangle from that foundational ideology. Volunteers and board members tried to reform and re-envision the organization, and have found it unattainable to do, especially with so little resources. We have experienced this as a very real reminder that reform doesn’t work. Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Capitalism cannot be reformed and ever serve the people. Abolition is the goal.

We are then very excited and grateful that Critical Resistance Portland is working to keep the space on Killingsworth open as a community center. Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.

CR is actively looking for partner organizations who wish to participate in keeping this vital community resource available. Interested organizations can email them here: crpdx@criticalresistance.org

To all of the people who have organized here, attended events, read a life-changing book in our library, gave their time, money, energy, knowledge, skills, and love to this space – we thank you. We invite you to share your stories, feelings, and memories of In Other Words.

We invite you to participate one last time. Please, join us in the closing process, to be a part of the transition of the end of one story and the beginning of another. If you would like to help with time and energy in physical or logistic closing work, you can email us at: scheduling@inotherwords.org or call 503-232-6003 between 1 and 5pm Friday through Sunday. If you cannot physically join us in closing and you would like to help, we still need funding to help us make it through this closing process. You can donate here: tinyurl.com/donate2IOW

Cover art is by Talia: Over the past year in the backyard of my communal building, one of us planted a garden: ·Nasturtium, which produce spicy yet fresh-tasting orange flowers; Rosemary; Iris; Tulsi Basil, another delicious-smelling and tasting plant, great for making tea; Parsley, plus two varieties of scented Geraniums, and a million little succulents. Then, the landlord cut down all of the Nasturtiums. No one realized how the flowering weeds were influencing all the other plants; much of the garden wilted. But then I noticed a new weed growing. Small wild tomatoes were growing! Over six months, the plant sprawled across the brick yard, curling up to bicycles and dropping sweet, red fruits all around. So I sent a note to the landlord, “You mess with this tomato plant, and there’ll be hell to pay!”

Please consider: when you’re gardening, weeds can be as beneficial or more so than ornamental plants. Look up: “Guerilla Gardening”. You can transform a simple, abandoned plot of dirt into a flourishing wonderland!

by PSEF crew

Humans are the only creatures who don’t recycle their waste back into the local landscape that produces their food. And the practice of removing our waste from that nutrient cycle is relatively new for us. Many societies around the world never abandoned the practice of collecting and returning human waste to the local environment, the widespread use of “night soil” in Asia being the most obvious example. Much ado has been made about poor sanitation in urban areas before the advent of sewers and flush toilets. Thermophilic (hot) composting allows the safe recycling of human waste on a home scale without the risk of spreading pathogens and parasites.

In the developed world, most human waste is collected in sewage systems and pumped to waste treatment facilities. It is mixed with everything else that gets washed down a drain and often with the street runoff from urban storm drains. It is now rather unsuitable for composting and direct application to agriculture as it is full of toxins. Processing human waste in home scale, dispersed humanure systems is a great way to recover this valuable resource and complete the nutrient cycle.

Building a humanure system is probably the easiest, least expensive “environmentally friendly” thing a person can do; all that is needed is 20 sq. ft of outdoor space. It saves you money, reduces water and energy usage, improves your immediate surroundings, and eliminates your contribution to a major global problem (dumping of treated and partially treated sewage into oceans and waterways).

We’re often asked if hot composting is effective at breaking down and disabling pharmaceuticals in human waste. Scientists have yet to explore this as humanure is still totally taboo in the West. What is for certain is that sewage treatment does not adequately neutralize these chemicals, and they are already contaminating our water on a global scale with disastrous results. A good measure against these risks is maintaining an awareness of the medicines being consumed by household members who use the humanure toilet.

Composting is a fascinating, educational process and will change your relationship to your poop. You can add an outdoor bathroom to your home with scrap materials, a bucket and a $15 toilet seat! And digging out the finished compost at the end of the process is a revelation! It is sweet smelling, full of life energy and definitely better than any amendment you will ever find at the nursery or garden center. You will begin to shed your Westerner’s dread of poop and an important piece of you will be brought back into reality — we are part of these processes, not separate from them and they are magical! Poop is magical! So are thermophilic compost microorganisms!

When we first built our humanure system we were surprised at how the new toilet remained odor free and at how easy it all was to throw together. We were also surprised at how pooping out in the garden in an airy lean-to with a honeysuckle vine growing through it quickly made pooping indoors seem a rather barbaric practice. Free bathroom, an end to poop-phobia and killer vegetables? Fuck Yes!

By H. Sabet

Squiggling notes in my 2019 Slingshot Organizer, I notice that this Tuesday, January 22nd is the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade’s decision to legalize abortion in the US. Ironically enough, it is also a day that I dread its overturn. After Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation last fall, the Supreme Court had the fifth vote it needed to push the anti-abortion movement forward, allowing states to restrict abortions further, and essentially dismantling Roe v. Wade. Just weeks after Kavanaugh was sworn in, states had already started passing state constitutional amendments banning abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Many states, especially in the south, have already wiped out abortion clinics and services to near extinction. Currently, there are six states with only 1 clinic and ten to twelve states with only 2 or 3 clinics. Many people seeking abortions are forced to travel out of state and wait several days to complete the procedure—a costly and arduous undertaking.

Though 1 in 4 women in the US will have an abortion by the age of 45, abortion services in the US are shrinking for those who need it most. Regardless of one’s procreative preferences or lack thereof, access to abortion, care, and contraceptives is more than just a matter of reproductive freedom. As Robin Marty so perfectly elucidates in her new book Handbook for a Post-Roe America1, we need a reproductive justice framework that “goes far beyond just reproductive health and rights to highlight the intersections of race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, religion, and the other intersections of women and people’s lives.” At this critical moment, we must work to create a framework that not only pre-emptively protects our rights, but also expands rights for every single person in this cuntry.

New York legislators have set an example by passing the Reproductive Health Act on Tuesday—the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The bill essentially ensures the full protections guaranteed under Roe, decriminalizes abortions in the state, and closes loopholes for abortions needed later in pregnancy. Though all options for prevention and termination of pregnancy should be available to all women and people regardless of identity, the reality of the moment is that even if you’re lucky enough to access abortion care, abortions can still suck. They can be expensive, emotionally draining, painful, and often disrupt our work and personal lives.

Taking our bodies into our own brains

Given that a majority of abortions in the US in past years involved women who were not using birth control, contraception can be a key predictor of whether a woman will have an abortion. Many of these women who had abortions had concerns with contraceptive methods, or did not think they would get pregnant (Guttmacher Institute)2. The pressure for women to choose, afford, attain, and sustain contraception can be a massive and sometimes insurmountable barrier to reproductive freedom. This responsibility can and should be shared by both/all partners, and selection of contraception should be mutually feasible and beneficial. Though the relatively recent advent of birth control has empowered reproductive freedom, people’s reliance on it has potentially distanced us from our bodies natural cycles.

Because of this distance and our society’s penchant to avoid or vilify women’s cycles/moon time, rather than revel and support women’s health and comfort, many people remain fuzzy on the specifics around menstruation, ovulation, and fertility. Yes, even women, young girls, and maybe even you—it’s ok, no judgment—could use a refresher. Let’s take our bodies back through knowledge.

Here’s a breakdown ya’ll:

*An egg is usually released ONCE in each cycle. The egg lives 12-24 hours. This is ovulation.
*Depending on your regularity (the number of days between each cycle), ovulation usually occurs about 14 days before the start of your moon time/menstruation. Tracking basal temperature every morning, discharge, and other symptoms can help determine the day of ovulation. There are also home ovulation tests that you can get at many pharmacies.

*Sperm can live up to 5-6 days in the uterus, and can fertilize an egg during this time

What does this mean?

A woman is fertile for as long as six days before ovulation, and two or three days after ovulation, a total of seven to eight days of fertility each month. (optionsforsexualhealth.org)

[Insert visual/chart]

What can we do?

*The Slingshot Organizer has a dope af Mynstrual Calendar that helps you track your moon time/mynstrual cycle by recording the first day of each cycle. It gives an awesome visual that clearly shows the number of days between each cycle, your regularities and irregularities.

*Even though we all want to hate phones forever, there are many apps that help track your cycle, predict ovulation, moon time, symptoms, mood, and some that allow your partner to track symptoms and events as well.

*Even though we all want to hate Amazon forever, Amazon sells Plan B/emergency contraception—starting at $8/pill.

*Donate money or miles to women seeking abortion services.

*Provide alternatives

Alternatives to Contraceptives

Though hormonal contraceptives are widely used, they are not the only option. If you don’t want to take on the pretty huge responsibility, health risks, financial strain, and mental burden of birth control in the form of hormonal patches, pills, injections, alien probes inserted into your vagina, there are other options. There is the copper IUD, a nonhormonal alien probe-looking thing that can provide contraception for up to ten years. There’s also withdrawal and condoms, though not always dependable. Supplementing withdrawal or condoms with the use of FAM, or Fertility Awareness Method, can increase dependability. The Fertility Awareness Method is free and safe. It can also connect you with your own body in a way that may enhance your life in unexpected ways. It can deepen communication, cooperation, and responsibility between partners. FAM’s effectiveness relies heavily on regularity of moon times, willingness and ability to track symptoms accurately, and the use of consistent supplementary birth control as needed. This is where withdrawal, condoms, and emergency contraception can be imperative. The book Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler is an awesome resource for learning more about FAM!

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: None of the birth control methods mentioned (except for condoms) protect you from STIs. This is a very real thing, so if you would like to avoid STIs, it is crucial that you talk with partners about their last partner(s), their last STI test, and maybe even get tested together! Romantical date at the STI clinic—shown to help build trust and empower individuals and partners.

Why does any of this matter to me?

Even if you feel that this information does not directly matter to you, exploring these ideas, advocating state legislature, and researching more can be a way to support the people around you, to embolden your fellow comrades and community. Access to abortion, care and contraceptives is a class and race issue, and beyond. People with privilege will always be able to find help when they need it. What can you do to help?

1

 Seven Stories Pres, January 15, 2019

2

 a super rad, leading reproductive health/rights research and policy organization

by Michael Caro, 17 y/o

Let’s talk about some whiteys.

That’s all it takes for white people to be made a little uncomfortable. Even if you (a white person) aren’t made angry by the statement, you’re probably “taken aback” or “struck” by those words. Because of that fact I am going be saying “whitey” for the rest of this essay.

Now you might ask, “hey why you calling me whitey?” Because it challenges your incessant and irritating individuality. In America every white person is special (unless you’re poor, which makes you “white trash”). If you’re a whitey you very rarely have to consider the implications of your skin color in any situation. The result is that whiteys don’t think of themselves as white people but rather as not not-white.

Growing up half whitey on the front line of gentrification has been an experience. West Berkeley is one of the few true American “melting pots” I’ve actually seen. You can walk down Allston Way and see projects on one block and suburban houses on the next. I grew up not being exposed to many whiteys while also at the same time passing as white. The only concrete examples of white people besides what I saw on T.V. were my mom and police. I was treated as white without a white upbringing. Because of this, I observed weird instances of racial coding from a young age. I saw how people and police treated me as opposed to my dad, or how white people said racist shit with me and completely switched what they were saying in front of a black or latino person. The whole idea of the “woke white person” was kind of smashed with a hammer then shot with a glock.

When I read the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo it really gave me the vocabulary to express what I’ve seen happening and just called “white people shit.” So I will proceed to share what this book explained and why it’s worth reading, without using overly academic language.

In American society, race is relative to whiteness. The term “Person of color” (PoC), derived from the term “colored,” shows this dynamic. A person of color is a color in contrast to white, which implies that Euro-Americans are somehow aracial. So it makes sense that whiteys also tend to be avid supporters of the “we are all the same on the inside” phrase. While a good idea at face value, like most one sentence ideologies it doesn’t really capture the nuance of the real world. Yes, we are all the same (despite what disproven “scientists” from the mid 1800’s may say), but society doesn’t treat us all the same. From the moment of birth, a black baby has a bunch of bullshit (and some of that bullshit comes even before birth) to deal with that a white baby might not even see in their entire lifetime. Now if this were truly acknowledged, saying “we are all the same on the inside” wouldn’t really be a problem, but usually saying “we are all the same on the inside” is a response to someone stating that the experience of non-whites and white people are different. This stems from the idea that whiteys’ experience is the universal one. One cause of this delusion is that whiteys are the most portrayed group in popular media, which creates both physical and media segregation. When white people are not exposed to the perspectives of PoC in real life or in media they have no reason to think that there is any other general experience besides the one they know. This creates cognitive dissonance when whiteys are suddenly presented with experiences and perspectives that contradict their own (having to worry about clothing color, hostility from police, etc…). That dissonance then results in the triggering of white fragility.

In conversations about race (especially when a PoC is involved) white people generally display reactions of

guilt (e.g. feeling “attacked” or “blamed” regardless of whether they are)

anger

fear (e.g. fearing being called racist and by extension a morally corrupt person)

subversion (e.g. “we are all the same on the inside”)

“devil’s advocacy”

crying in order to subvert

silence

repeating the statement “I’m not racist” regardless of the subject

leaving the situation altogether

These are all hallmarks of triggered white fragility. This, in its essence, is the lack of racial “stamina” that white people display.

Now that we understand this we have to ask the question, “Why is it bad?” The main effect of white fragility is that it allows white people to keep themselves segregated from the perspectives of PoC. When a white person chooses to be play “devil’s advocate” or chooses to be silent and disengaged, they don’t have to really absorb what’s being said and can instead choose to remain comfortable and segregated in their viewpoint without suffering any real consequences. But all actions have consequences and the people who end up having to deal with white fragility are PoC. When white people are allowed to shut down or shut out the perspectives of PoC it reinforces the social dynamics of white domination. Whiteys are able to control who is listened to and what’s a valid thing to say without even realizing it. The all too common shifting of a conversation about racism to one about how a whitey involved in that conversation is not racist, in itself is racist, whether it’s intended to be or not.

Whether what you’re doing is racist or not is like whether you are or are not being an asshole. You don’t choose whether you’re considered an asshole, just like how you don’t choose whether you’re being racist. Your actions are to be judged by others, but there is a key difference between calling out a general asshole and calling out someone for racism. In our sort of “post civil rights era” America, being and/or doing something racist has been conflated with being a morally corrupt individual (among “progressive” whiteys). So when you call out someone for racism, in their mind you are calling them an inherently bad person. With racism being such a serious accusation, if someone were to call out someone else and the their peers don’t agree, the consequences for the person accusing are quite steep.  When someone calls out racism it should generally be listened to rather than dismissed, as its impact was racist enough for them to put themselves under scrutiny.

We as a society need to redefine the word racism. As society becomes more integrated, racism becomes more nuanced in how it shows itself (among progressive whiteys). Not actively calling people racial slurs doesn’t get you a medal. We live in a society that is steeped in white supremacy, colorism, and racism. Simply being “colorblind” (if that’s even possible) isn’t enough. It’s on white people to not only allow change, but actively make change themselves, as whiteys have actively been trying to take the ability to make change from anyone who isn’t white for centuries. Racism is not just racial prejudice, it is not only the individual actions of the “bad white people”; racism is also the systematic, social, and economic oppression of non white people. Anyone can be racist regardless of race, but the racism that is built into every individual in America by centuries of oppression, media messaging, and violence will always benefit the white man (and woman).

Perhaps the only real thing people can do is to educate themselves and the people around them. If you try to present some of these ideas to some white people you know, you will probably be met with white fragility- that’s just how these things tend to work out. People who stopped reading the first time I said “whitey” will never get this message; and even if they had kept reading, they probably never would. But that’s not who this piece is for. For change to happen in this country, white people need to be willing to not only create change within themselves but to spread change within their own communities. White people need to be willing to call out racism when they see it. So next time your work buddy talks about having “jungle fever,” tell him “hey bruh you should try to lay off that.” While this might require that you put your ass on the chopping block, after centuries of making everyone else do the same, it might be time for your turn.

Extinction Rebellion was formed in the UK in late 2018 and has already been involved in numerous disruptive direct action protests — thousands of people blockading the 5 main bridges over the River Thames in London, gluing themselves to the gates of Downing Street, blocking major roads with ‘swarming’ roadblocks (repeated 7 minute roadblocks) and even a sit-in at the UK headquarters of Greenpeace. They are spreading around the world.

Accepting that climate change threatens humans as well as other species with extinction, they aim to raise the stakes of government inaction and they have issued 3 demands: “1. That the Government must tell the truth about how deadly our situation is, it must reverse all policies not in alignment with that position and must work alongside the media to communicate the urgency for change including what individuals, communities and businesses need to do. 2. The Government must enact legally-binding policies to reduce carbon emissions in the UK to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It must cooperate internationally so that the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year. 3. By necessity these demands require initiatives and mobilization of similar size and scope to those enacted in times of war. We do not however, trust our Government to make the bold, swift and long-term changes necessary to achieve this and we do not intend to hand further power to our politicians. Instead we demand a Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for purpose.” It would be great to interview them, but instead here’s answers to questions they asked themselves in the FAQ on their website.

ARE THINGS REALLY THAT BAD?
Yes. We are facing an unprecedented global emergency, the planet is in crisis and we are in the midst of a mass extinction bigger and faster than the one that killed the dinosaurs. Scientists believe we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown. The Earth’s atmosphere is already over 1°C warmer than pre-industrial levels and the chance of staying below the 2°C limit set in the Paris Agreement is tiny. Projections show we are on course for 3 degrees of warming and probably much higher.

We and our children will face unimaginable horrors as a result of floods, wildfires, extreme weather, crop failures and the inevitable breakdown of society when the pressures are so great. We are unprepared for the danger our future holds.

The time for denial is over – we know the truth about climate change. It is time to act.

WHY DO YOU THINK YOU COULD SUCCEED?
There is no guarantee of anything. World leaders have failed to adequately confront the existential threats posed by climate and ecological breakdown, let alone the causes of the crises. Polite lobbying, marching, voting, consumer- and shareholder-activism, have all failed. We are now on the brink. If asking the establishment nicely doesn’t get them to act, then the only option left is civil disobedience, to disrupt the ordinary working of things, so that decision makers HAVE to take notice.

As Frederick Douglas put it,’ “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue ‘til they are resisted with either words or blows, or both.”

We are strictly and avowedly non-violent. But we can and will use our words and our bodies to disrupt the system that threatens us all.

That said, our aim was to always test out tactics, reflect on what works and then repurpose and adapt as circumstances change. Our goal has always been to build a mass movement. We have undertaken research and training to understand how things change. We are training coordinators on how to mass mobilise.

We know the task ahead is daunting and the likelihood of success may seem slim, but the stakes are so high, the risks of continuing down the ruinous path we are on so dire, with all Life hanging in the balance, that doing nothing, even doing only what we’ve done before, is unthinkable.

Ultimately, we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. Given the scale of the challenge, we remain unattached to outcomes. Meaning that although we hope we can save something of Life on Earth, we are motivated by action being the right thing to do, rather than taking action because we think it will work.

People are now waking up to the enormity of the crisis that we face. … People are not stupid. They are aware that these disasters are escalating in severity and frequency and that increasingly they are approaching our own shores, with thousands dying in the recent heatwave across Southern Europe. And they are rightly angry that our Government’s response to this is to approve ever more catastrophic projects to exploit ever less conventional sources of fossil fuels, such as fracking, causing earthquakes in Lancashire in grim portent of the much larger scale calamities to come. They demand a brighter future, in which we and our children are free to live in a world where we are in harmony with the rest of the living world around us, and not in conflict with it. There is a growing will to be rid of the corrupt power structures leading us ever deeper into the abyss and to forge the beautiful future that we all wish for our children and their children’s children. The time is ripe, right now, and we are confident that this is the beginning of the movement which will finally turn the tide.

YOUR CAMPAIGN SEEMS TO FOCUS ON MASS DISRUPTION. ARE YOU NOT SCARED ABOUT WHAT DAMAGE YOU MIGHT DO TO PEOPLE’S LIVES?
We have partially shut down Heathrow Airport on two occasions and carried out many road blocks. We are always concerned about causing inconvenience to people and it doesn’t feel good when you learn someone missed an important gathering like a funeral or a hospital appointment. We are doing it as we believe we have to look at the bigger picture of how many people are dying today and how dire our trajectory is (the extreme being that human extinction is a very real possibility). In the face of this we accept that we inevitably cause inconvenience to people. We sincerely apologise to them. We are firmly and collectively of the view that, given the dismal failure of world leaders to date, disruption is now necessary to get anything like commensurate change. If there was a better, less disruptive way of doing this we would do that instead! Many of us have faced arrest, fines, convictions for our actions; some of us have been on hunger strike and gone to jail. So we are willing to take the consequences of our actions and to make personal sacrifices in order to do them. Business as usual is simply no longer a viable option.

AREN’T YOU JUST GOING TO GET A LOT OF INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE ARRESTED, IN PRISON, AND WITH CRIMINAL RECORDS, SO THAT YOU HIT THE HEADLINES?
No, everybody taking part in non-violent civil disobedience in defense of the planet, whether experienced or not, understands the risks they are taking and the reasons why, of their own free and informed will, they are choosing to take them. We understand that this is an important element of movement building and disrupting everyday life / perceived normal reality, to create a national conversation on the climate and ecological crisis. As George Monbiot put it in his inspiring speech on 31st October 2018 at our Declaration of Rebellion against the UK Government on Parliament Square: “The only time that people know it is serious, is when people are prepared to sacrifice their liberty in defence of their beliefs”.

IS YOUR ORGANISATION HORIZONTAL? WHY NOT?
We are a decentralised organisation – anyone can do things in the name of Rising Up! / Extinction Rebellion if they agree with and adhere to our principles and values [ed: a 10-point list is on their website] – people don’t need anyone’s permission on that basis. We use holacracy as a decision making tool – people are empowered to get on with jobs without everyone agreeing on outputs. Good holacracy includes taking advice and feedback from at least two people and being responsible for outcomes. We have learned from previous movements and groups that consensus can really clog things up and drain energy so we wanted to try a different model to empower participation. Strategic decisions are made by the coordination team, those who are putting in the most time to make this thing happen. That said we are currently investigating ways to improve this.

DON’T YOU REALISE THAT IF PEOPLE GET ARRESTED WHO ARE BLACK THEY WILL GET FAR WORSE TREATMENT? AND AREN’T YOU TOO NICE ABOUT THE POLICE?
Yes, we are aware of the structural racism in our policing and legal system. We give people information about arrest and those of us who are white have acknowledged our privilege, in the likelihood that we will be treated differently / better than our colleagues of colour. People can take a variety of roles. We think it’s important for white people to use their privilege. People of colour (PoC) have been more at risk for generations in defence of the environment and their lands, both here in the UK and around the world. It is time to for white people to take this risk too so that PoCs, who are threatened by structural racism, don’t have to. The ecological crisis affects people of colour more than it does white people currently. Environmental activists of colour in other countries have been killed for defending their land. We also try to acknowledge the police as human beings and to be respectful during our protests, but this does not make us naive about what the police have done to activists and communities in the UK. Activists have been subjected to lies, assault, the spy cop trauma and worse.

AREN’T YOU ALIENATING A LOT OF THE PEOPLE THAT YOU SHOULD BE WORKING WITH?
Yes, we may be. There is far less awareness than we need in the public around just how bad a situation we are in, though there are signs that this is finally and rapidly improving. This goes to the very heart of the problem. And so, yes, people who do not understand, or who through denial reject the gravity of the situation being laid out by scientists, may find it easy to disagree with the actions and find us alienating.

The aim is not to alienate people, of course. The aim is to make these most critical and urgent issues of our time finally unignorable to decision makers. If they want less disruption, they must act.

Yes, this is an uncompromising stance to adopt, we accept that. We do because we have clear sight of the utterly uncompromising nature of the situation we are in.

 

By Muck

Decolonization is means and end: to take on its labor is to trace the plait of us and our lands, following our becoming with our environments. Colonization unthreads our art into its image. In decolonizing, we must know from how we are woven how to (re)weave, how we create ecological arts through land and culture, how we live our stories and histories. To decolonize is to overcome our anxieties of alienation and authenticity, aid our peer decolonizers, and oust the colonizers from our lands and minds. To decolonize is to (re)form land culture, our knowledges and heritages as they arise from our lands. While I use my own Filipino heritage as an example, we are to weave decolonized ecologies everywhere, from Unist’ot’en to L’eau est la vie and outwards.

The weave of ecology between land and culture encompasses entire bodies of knowledge ranging from botany and agriculture, to myth and history, to language, and results from generations of intimation with our lands. Some of my culture’s discrete artifacts hint at the connection. Filipino adobo, meat marinaded and boiled in soy sauce, vinegar, peppercorns, and garlic, is theorized to have come from the ingredients’ widespread occurrence through the Philippine Islands, and because its acidity ensures safe storage at high ambient temperatures and humidity. The etymology of the Filipino dance form tinikling suggests imitation of the tikling bird in the dancers’ skips over bamboo sticks.

The knowledges, traditions, and methodologies we form surrounding our lands are disrupted by colonization, replaced with an industrialized, commodified abstraction of land. How so? In my culture’s history, colonization has changed the names of our foods, our lineages, and our lands, pushing peoples together under an imagined “Philippine” identity. Colonizers have committed genocide of peoples and lands, leaving behind landscapes of coconut palms and concrete. Colonizers engender internal strife that forces us to leave behind our homes for their empires, whether foreign or on our soil. Colonization has tied us to the market, an abstraction both land-ful and placeless, everywhere and nowhere but in empire. Colonization births us in foreign lands and paradigms, neutering our own diverse knowledges. This is the colonization ecology that controls our lands, movements, and thoughts.

What is the ecology of decolonization? It involves (re)formation of our relationship with land, implicates both the physical ousting of capitalism, colonialism, and their bodies and infrastructure, but also the mental ousting of colonialism. Without colonizers’ discipline, without pipelines and “explorers” on our lands, we are free to move around in our own spaces, explore ourselves and our surroundings, the physical framework of our cultures. The Wet’suwet’en and Lakota wars against TransCanada and the State are two examples of the importance of the physical fight. But we have to allow ourselves the mental freedom to explore and build, an equally daunting, if not more insidious, task.

Our positive project of mental decolonization begins with history. First we look to our roots and understand the relationship with land that produced knowledges like cuisines and languages from land. This involves (re)constructing land knowledges and setting up the conditions of their application via land (re)claiming, dependency, and ecological immediacy. Reviving pre-colonial history is not decolonization ecology’s goal – in studying history we study ways of moving forward by building on our heritage. We can choose to integrate the languages and ways of knowing our ancestors spoke alongside the ways of knowing we employ now. We can build knowledges of our lands as they exist today. We change with our lands and times.

What about settlers like me, brought to or born in lands we settle upon? What relationship do we have with land, removed from our roots? We consider the very deconstruction, though not the elimination, of the notion of roots. Imbued in the latter is the concept of authenticity, an idealized past or origin invoked to measure our “purity” relative to the effects under colonialism. Anticolonial theorists like Frantz Fanon or Ngugi wa Thiong’o have suggested reviving traditions and languages, possibly even repatriation, in rebuilding cultural myth and identity.

I reject authenticity as a tool used by oppressors to invalidate our histories and integrate us further into our colonizers’ culture. I reject the idea of returning to roots because there is no going back, only going forward. Just as I’ve said above, we choose our futures. Using willows or using aspirin, speaking English or speaking Lushootseed, living in the United States or the Philippines, what’s key in mental decolonization is understanding and employing the same processes that accorded our ancestors their knowledge, deciding our own directions, redeveloping agencies colonizers have deaccorded us.

But how do we build an anticolonial relationship upon settled lands? I’ve settled stolen Seminole and Coast Salish lands, lands that despite my high affinities, I will not call home. Yet my ancestors’ homelands are foreign to me. L’eau est la vie has similar circumstances, expelling Energy Transfer Partners from gulf Louisiana where the pipeline will pollute the waters of both poor black folk, settlers, and the United Houma Nation. It’s hard to argue against the anticolonial character of such an action, but what relationship with land should we as non-colonizing settlers of indigenous lands choose to foster? What are we to do?

We create decolonized spaces for the colonized. We take back land bases from our colonizers and free them for the indigenous folk of those lands, create refuges for those escaping colonialism in their home lands (or elsewhere). We fight not only against the pipelines on the Pacific Coast, the Gulf, the Plains, Appalachia, but also against walls, police, and industrialization. Such a relationship is an overtly political-analytical ideology of land, creating a new type of culture that’s anticolonial but also a product of a non-indigenous relationship with land. We are to be stewards (but not saviors) to the peoples and lands we settle upon, we are allowed to build our own knowledges of a land (we are allowed to feel seasons, for example) but the land will not be ours.

Why take on decolonization? Spectators try rationalizing anticolonialism with theory about cultural diversity. This understanding is hierarchical: such progressivist discourse subjects us to the Western gaze of cultural preservation, like a bird redesignated as threatened instead of endangered. I would say that one would have to understand decolonization as if an insider, but there’s no hope for that project. I write for decolonizers to uphold their unique knowledges of their own anticolonial struggles, their relationships with their lands, to talk not as if to others about their culture, but to talk in living our culture and our lands. Our liberation narrative dictates that we decolonize all cultures and lands, but we also decolonize our own.

Do we have an end in discussing a decolonization ecology? Our own (re)formation. Ousting the colonizers and their constructed worlds begets us the unbridled energy of agency and self-determination; it allows us imagination, new states-of-being to explore, and the foreground of our land bases. The land relationship coevolves with these decolonized realities. We can develop and explore our knowledges and methods of the land outside of exploitative industrial language. We can relate with our fellow decolonizers and share our cultures and becomings in the anticolonial war. We can know our give-and-takes with our lands, the more we depend on what we can see and live. We are no less of peoples now than we were or will be – our potentials, however, will be fully realized in a decolonized ecology.

By Victor Strazzeri São Paulo, Brazil

The election of former army captain Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil with 55% of the vote is a watershed moment for politics in Latin America with ramifications that extend far beyond it. What is at stake in the right-winger’s victory is what political formulas will prove successful in the post-2008 world and whether any horizon of liberation will be left standing if the increasing convergence of far-right politics and the radicalized neoliberal agenda favored by the capitalist classes grows more widely into a full symbiosis, as it did in the Brazilian case.

Political life since the 2008 global economic crisis and the ‘great recession’ has played out in very peculiar circumstances, as they have prevailed for a full decade now and risk being normalized. This period has had its share of tragedies and the balance sheet has been overwhelmingly tilted towards the right. It has also raised prospects of hope and profound change that, despite being in short supply lately, must come to bear on the analysis of any major political shift as is the case of last year’s Brazilian election.

The narrative of our times rings familiar by now. The system formerly known as ‘the end of history’, i.e., the unfettered, neoliberal variant of global capitalism, experienced a catastrophic crisis at its very core and the result has not only been the continued dominance of the economic doctrine and deregulating free-market policies responsible for the crisis, but an even more vicious cycle of attacks on workers’ rights in the aftermath of government bailouts of the financial system. The decision to turn ‘there is no alternative’ from slogan to policy in the post-2008 world has since spurred a global resurgence of bigotry in all its forms, from xenophobic nationalism and white-supremacism to overt racism and misogyny. Bolsonaro is the latest embodiment of this new global state of affairs, but far-right victories have not been the only hallmark of political life in the last decade.

After the signal for global revolt was given by Tunisia in late 2010, countless explosions of mass unrest have presented a challenge from below to the neoliberal status quo the world over and Brazil was no exception. Whether they were movements for democracy and social justice in countries long ruled by authoritarian regimes such as Egypt, the square occupations they inspired or a resurgent women’s movement, the crisis years have seen constant eruptions from a mass reservoir of popular unrest. In fact, the possibilities raised by these revolts are the key to understand both the aggressive right-wing resurgence that has now scored a major victory in Latin America, as well as how progressive alternatives to it can be built.

Until recently, Latin America represented a consistent glimmer of hope that another way of doing politics was indeed possible. That its progressive governments were riddled with contradictions, perhaps nowhere more than in Brazil, is something I will return to below. With Bolsonaro, however, the region decisively followed suit in the broader trend that has seen progressive alternatives crushed and bigoted politics tolerated as long as neoliberal orthodoxy remains in place. That, after a quarter-century of struggle for social justice, the region is again the stage for a right-wing experiment is highly significant. Seen from below, globalization is not about working people in different countries taking each other’s jobs or pushing down each other’s wages, but rather about how they intimately share in each other’s catastrophes (whether aware of this or not).

From this standpoint, these defeats must be understood in their interconnections, commonalities and particular traits. What distinguishes the Bolsonaro government is, in this sense, the toxic mix it brought into office: libertarians, hard-line conservatives, evangelicals and direct representatives of large landowners, banks and powerful interests seeking a more thorough privatization of the health and education sectors. Migration played next to no role in the elections, showing that the far-right can come to power without necessarily leveraging the issue. The rejection of ‘gender ideology’, i.e., policies of gender equality and LGBTQ rights, was, however, central to his discourse. This is by far the most universal fixture of the global right’s agenda, likely stemming from its claim to vindicate their core constituency, the self-victimizing middle-class white male. The ability to galvanize this sector, which gives it its most ardent supporters, is key for the right’s advance.

The same was true for Brazil, but Bolsonaro’s camp had to build a broader basis of support to win the popular vote. In a country ranking among the world’s worst in the concentration of income, wealth and land-ownership this demanded convincing the middle classes and even better-off segments of the working population that social justice — whether it translates to addressing racial, gender or class inequalities — generates losers outside the elites. The successful forging of a ‘bottom-up’ identification between the country’s struggling middle-classes and its ruling elites was perhaps Bolsonaro’s greatest feat.

The key to this was hypocritically blaming the economic crisis the country has faced in the last few years on the corruption scandals of the Workers’ Party administration, on the one hand, and on ‘excessive state intervention’, on the other. This paved the way for a return to an agenda of neoliberal reform and privatizations embodied in Bolsonaro’s Chicago-trained Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes. While other candidates offered a similar return to neoliberal orthodoxy, Bolsonaro was the only one capable of garnering mass support through a hard-line stance on crime — bolstered by his status as a former army captain — and the promotion of conservative values in line with a growing evangelical segment of voters.

Bolsonaro’s victory, built on a combination of nostalgia for the times of the military dictatorship and radical free-market agenda, is highly symbolic considering the peculiar role Latin America has played in the neoliberal epoch. The region is both the seat of the very first neoliberal experiment under the auspices of the Chilean dictatorship in the mid-1970s, but also where the first cycle of sustained mass opposition to widespread privatization and deregulation arose in the 1990s, leading to the election of a series of progressive governments in the following decade, the so-called ‘Pink Wave’. Few of these center-left governments still stand, but Brazil is no doubt a central piece in the reversal of the political fate of the region.

Beyond its continental dimensions and place amongst the ten largest economies in the world, Brazil’s political developments have always carried broader significance. The overthrow of progressive president João Goulart in 1964, while not the first CIA-backed military coup in Latin America, was a major watershed for politics in the region and the US-led efforts to prevent the Cuban Revolution from igniting a turn towards socialism in its ‘backyard’. It is no coincidence that Bolsonaro is a product of the civil and military regime that ruled Brazil until 1984 and which he refuses to call a dictatorship. During the campaign, Bolsonaro has in fact gone on record claiming he wanted to restore the country to what it was ‘forty or fifty years ago’. In 1968 the Brazilian dictatorship suspended all remaining civil and political freedoms and stepped up the bloody repression of the opposition and insurgents. He has also repeatedly paid homage to one of the dictatorship’s most notorious torturers. Bolsonaro’s victory, much like the coup in 1964, represents not only a major political shift in the region, but another far-reaching Latin American experiment.

Will democracy survive the experiment or simply be hollowed out? The latter process has, of course, already been underway in Brazil since 2016. Bolsonaro would probably not have been elected were it not for a parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party that year and the subsequent prosecution of ex-president Lula by Judge Sérgio Moro, whose anti-corruption crusade has won him a controversial appointment as Minister of Justice in Bolsonaro’s government.

The more fundamental question remains, however, why the most moderate of the ‘Pink Wave’ governments, which never fully broke with neoliberalism and refrained from implementing any structural reforms that could address the country’s major social inequalities was precisely the one to end in a ‘soft coup’ and be succeeded by a far-right politician. In this respect there are close parallels to the fate of the Obama presidency. Lula’s election was, for Brazil, just as momentous as Obama’s. A former union-leader with roots in the country’s impoverished Northeastern region was swept into office with tremendous popular support in 2002.

Yet, the expectations of profound change his election raised were never truly met; the government’s desire to reassure foreign investors and local elites never allowed more than timid redistributive measures. These were, nevertheless, already enough to draw fierce opposition from the oligarchy and the media under its control. Lula will be remembered by the policy shift that marked the end of his first term in office, soon after an initial round of corruption scandals hit the Workers’ Party and put his reelection at risk. The shift comprised a state-led investment program, the massive expansion of credit and moderate rises to the minimum-wage which contributed to a cycle of growth — aided by the ‘commodity boom’ — between 2007 and 2012 and very high levels of government popularity.

Lula chose Dilma Rousseff as his successor, hoping the middle classes would identify with her image of a tough but efficient public administrator. Dilma Rousseff’s election again combined a highly symbolic character — not only the first woman president, but a former guerrilla-fighter — with the refusal to address the country’s secular legacy of inequality other than through very gradual, market-friendly policies.

In 2013, the country was suddenly gripped by a massive surge of social struggle. The country’s working youth demanded free public transportation and more investment in the public health and education systems rather than in football stadiums and costly mega-event infrastructure. At the same time, a record number of strikes indicated that the gradual pace of social change favored by the government was vastly out of touch with what the more active segments of the youth and working population were expecting. Significantly, the massive demonstrations led by social movements and small leftist parties, on the one hand, and the strike wave, on the other, were parallel phenomena that only rarely converged. This rekindling of protest went, however, entirely unheeded by a Workers’ Party government seeking to reassure the markets in the context of the worsening economic situation that marked the start of Dilma Rousseff’s second term in 2015.

The resulting political vacuum coupled with a turn to austerity and the emergence of new corruption scandals centered on Petrobras, the country’s state-owned oil company, saw right-wing supporters take to the streets, benefiting from massive positive coverage in the media. The far-right saw an opening in what had become a full-blown economic crisis and plunging support for Rousseff and stepped up its protests now aiming for an impeachment; an opportunistic vice-president, Michel Temer, offered the private sector a combination of austerity and neoliberal reforms the Workers’ Party would never be able to deliver thus sealing the fate of Dilma Rousseff, despite her never being directly tied to corruption scandals.

Temer’s time in office (2016-2018) was an unmitigated disaster for Brazil’s working people, as he took advantage of the democratic hiatus to approve a series of reforms attacking workers’ rights and, in a matter of months, reversing several hard-fought policy advances on the rights of people of color and of native peoples. This culminated in single-digit approval ratings — the worst ever by a president since redemocratization — and a despondent electorate, who also had to contend with a common refrain from corporate media that a return to Workers’ Party rule was synonymous with corruption, inefficiency and raised the prospects of becoming ‘another Venezuela’.

Instead of going on the opposition and denouncing the parliamentary coup and subsequent regressive legislation, the Workers’ Party bid its time expecting Lula’s victory in the 2018 election. His arrest and consequent removal from the presidential race led to a desperate campaign by all progressive segments of the electorate in favor of the moderate former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad. Significantly, the women’s movement built by far the leading force in the opposition to Bolsonaro during the campaign, holding several massive demonstrations. Though Haddad made it to the run-off vote, there was not enough time to reverse the surge of Bolsonaro in the polls, though many in the left had their doubts on whether a Workers’ Party government would have ever been allowed to take office.

The opposition is still reeling from this massive defeat, but the campaign made it clear that social movements will likely lead the resistance to Bolsonaro, though they will need allies if the worst authoritarian threats and neoliberal dystopian scenarios are to be prevented. If the right has found a formula for coming to power in the Bolsonaro experiment, which the global right will look to replicate elsewhere, it is now the left that has to find the formula that can reunite the party left, the labor movement and the resurgent social movements which were either side-by-side (but distant) or at odds in the struggles opened up in 2013. Progressive forces everywhere should be watching.