Category: Organizer Essays

February 29, 2020 is Leap Day — could we use our extra day for something extraordinary and powerful instead of the same old same old? The capitalist/industrial system wastes our time, strips life from the earth, centralizes power into a few hands, and extracts the meaning and pleasure from our lives.

While most of us yearn for a different world, it’s hard to know how to fight back or how to make a difference. You can’t revolt alone, and the structures of oppression and destruction are designedto feel inevitable, unavoidable and overwhelmingly powerful.

Nonetheless, the world is always changing. Empires alwayscrumble to dust eventually. And yet slavery and monarchy didn’t replace themselves. Someone or a small group of people have to take the first terrifying step off the sidewalk and into the streets to force change.

Rebels are just regular folks the day before an uprising — worried about the rent, full of contradictions, unsure what to do next. Revolt transforms the lives of those who make it. It clarifies the meaning of our lives while it heals and transform us. There is nothing like the electric experience in the streets when the crowds advance, the police flee, and anything is possible.

The right time to begin revolt is right now, but the precise day is arbitrary. The correct conditions already exist and have been present for some time.

We need to openly discuss and challenge power and refuse to be consumers, viewers and objects to be managed. This goes way beyond just the distribution of resources — instead, its time to question whether resources, alone, is what life is really about. We demand a world organized around being awake and engaged — where we pursue intimate knowledge of others, ourselves and the world around us rather than getting distracted by treats distributed to keep us obedient and on-task.

Shifting the focus from things and entertainment to DIY experiences is what the world needs now to prevent the technological system from destroying the earth. Life is too short and the world too beautiful to spend more time muddling through accepting the compromises of the corporate system and waiting for something better — far off in the future. We don’t have enough time left for that anymore.

Working in tiny collectives, nurturing gardens and bike coops and art spaces is vital to the struggle, but it just isn’t enough as the earth slides towards extinction. It’s time to attack and defeatthe structures of power. We’re not going to get burned out or tired once we start winning.

Leap day offers an extra day and invites us to shake off our routine, but any other day could work just as well. The global system — while vast — is fragile and vulnerable. Alternatives to the system of ecological devastation and economic inequality exist — cooperation, local control, sharing, living in harmony with the earth.

This year, consider February 29 as an experiment and an invitation. How do you really want to live? What would you do if you were living life like it really mattered? Would you go to work like normal, or can you think of something better? This leap day can be a universal general strike and uprising for a world worth living in, but its up to you, your friends and the whole world to take that first step. Leap for it.

Climate change is the defining issue of our time, yet instead of urgent and massive efforts to change course before its too late, society is paralyzed — by fear, dread, sadness, infighting and fossil fuel-funded disinformation campaigns. .

We can’t save the world by continuing to play by the system’s rules. The rules must be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today, but how? It is time to rebel.

Civil disobedience, blockades, strikes, building occupations, pipeline lockdowns, mass bike rides during rush hour, marches, street theater, riots, railroad barricades — and any number of other direct actions can be effective tactics to increase the costs of inaction and promote change. Preventing business as usual conveys the message that the operation of the machine has become so odious that unless it stops, the wheels will be prevented from working at all.

Not all actions or protests are the same in risk, the time and energy they require and their size and scope — nor should they be. Each situation calls for different strategies and tactics designed around political and social understandings of what will be the most helpful at a particular time. Here’s some very general tips that apply to a variety of different direct action and protest contexts — far from exhaustive or comprehensive but one has to start somewhere….

Pulling off effective, inspiring actions — either non-violent arrestable actions, legal protests or militant resistance — can be personally transformative experiences, not just for the change we’re trying to make in the world, but also for the change within ourselves. We will never be spectators again.

Affinity Groups

Affinity groups (AGs) are small direct action cells (4-8 people) who share attitudes about tactics and who organize themselves for effectiveness and protection during protests or civil disobedience actions.

The most effective affinity groups are composed of people with pre-existing relationships who know and trust each other.
In a chaotic protest or action situation, affinity groups enable decision making (as opposed to just reacting to the police) while watching each other’s backs. Affinity groups with experience and a vision within a bigger crowd can take the initiative and start something when the crowd is standing around wondering what to do next.
Some AGs use a code word which any member can yell if they have an idea for what to do next, so people can huddle and make a quick proposal the group can agree to or discuss alternatives.
AGs have divisions of labor in which some members stay away from the action to support members who might be arrested.
An AG can send scouts on a bike to check action opportunities.
Sometime different AGs cooperate before or during an action using an spokes council (meeting for making decisions involving large numbers of people more quickly, in which each AG is representedby a single member, often the rest of the group sitting behind their speaker to tell them about their views)

Action Aspects

•Recruit local people from diverse backgrounds. It can also help to have some local celebrities & upstanding community members as spokespersons.

•Safety first: know your limits! Discuss everyone’s limits before the action. Designate a police liaison and discuss each person’s capacity to risk arrest. Do parents have support with childcare? Do some people have disabilities, immigration issues, or other vulnerabilities?

•Checking in with each other during the action will keep the group united. Don’t forget to take pee breaks, which will be a lot easier when someone can act as lookout while you duck down behind a dumpster

•Educate. Some people are still plugged in to the corporate media and don’t understand the issues at hand. Be ready to explain the basics, and have some fliers to pass out.

•Personal Stories. Share personal stories about how you’ve been affected by what you’re protesting.

•Bring a book for blockades or occupations when you’ll need to stay awhile or musical instruments, depending on the desired tone. (Refer to the book list.)

•In a protest or march context, there are alternatives to confronting police lines. The police want you to play by their rules, but like guerrilla fighters, it’s our job to figure out forms of struggle where we have an advantage. Creating beautiful expressions of the world we seek to build — music, art, gardens, public sex, bicycle swarms, etc. — avoids the system’s us vs. them paradigm.

•Document any abuses. Designate multiple folks with cameras to document the action itself, and be prepared to capture abusive behavior by cops or security.

•In more organized contexts, avoid breaking the law aside from strategic aspects of an action. Talk through various scenarios beforehand, including potential police response. Incorporate a diversity of tactics, with different AGs filling different roles. If someone wants to do drugs or booze up, they perhaps need to go someplace else.

•Get legal support. Be in touch with local organizations like the National Lawyers Guild or law firms that specialize in civil disobedience, and with veteran activists who’ve dealt with local law enforcement in your area. Educate yourself about possible outcomes.

•Send us your stories of successful actions! We may run them in the Slingshot newspaper. All submissions to slingshotcollective@protonmail.com.

Some resources:

•Earth First!’s Direct Action Manual published on www.earthfirst.org has extensive detailed information about lockdowns, tree occupations, etc.

• The Ruckus Action Strategy Guide has some good tips: ruckus.org

•Some relevant titles: Requiem for a species by Clive Hamilton, Being the Change: Live well and spark a climate revolution by Peter Kalmus, DEBT: the first 5000 years by David Greaber and Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Fiction

The Hearing Trumpet – Leonora Carrington

America is Not the Heart – Elaine Castillo

Itzá – Rios de la Luz

The Marvellous Equations of the Dread – Marcia Douglas

Sabrina & Corina – Kali Fajardo-Anstine

M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Mean – Myriam Gurba

Coyote Songs – Gabino Iglesias

Speak No Evil – Uzodinma Iweala

Black Leopard, Red Wolf – Marlon James

The Map of Salt and Stars – Zeyn Joukhadar

Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luiselli

There, There – Tommy Orange

Girls Burn Brighter – Shobha Rao

A Man – Oriana Fallaci

NonFiction

This Accident of Being Lost – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Pleasure Activism – adrienne maree brown

Emergent Strategy – adrienne maree brown

Rage Becomes Her – Soraya Chemaly

The Terrible – Yrsa Daley-Ward

What You Have Heard is True – Carolyn Forche’

Uncut Funk – bell hooks & Stuart Hall

When They Call You a Terrorist – Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Heavy: An American Memoir – Keise Leymon

Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde

Tell Me How It Ends – Valeria Luiselli

Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief – Cynthia Milstein

Making Spaces Safer –Shawna Potter

Turning this World Inside Out – Nora Samaran

I’m Afraid of Men – Vivek Shraya

River of Fire: Commons, Crisis & the Imagination – Cal Winslow

Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

Turn this World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture – Nora Samaran

Making Spaces Safer – Shawna Potter

River of Fire: Commons, Crisis, and the Imagination – edited Cal Winslow

Uncut Funk – bell hooks and Stuart Hall

Fateful Triangle – Noam Chomsky

Uprooting Racism – Paul Kivel

Graphic Novels

Fütchi Perf – Kevin Czap

Mis(h)adra – Iasmin Omar Ata

Young Terrorists – Matt Pizzolo

On a Sunbeam – Tillie Walden

Poetry

Electric Arches – Eve Ewing

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude – Ross Gay

Invasive Species – Marwa Helal

Magical Negro – Morgan Parker

Nature Poem – Tommy Pico

Don’t Call Us Dead – Danez Smith

Young Adult

The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo

Children of Blood & Bone – Tomi Adeyemi

Internment – Samira Ahmed

The Marrow Thieves – Cherie Dimaline

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali – Sabina Khan

Gabi Girl in Pieces – Isabel Quintero

Juliet Takes a Breath – Gabby Rivera

The Grief Keeper – Alexandra Villasante

White Rose – Kip Wilson

Prisoner pen pals

Prisoner support ranges from books-to-prisoners projects that mail free books to inmates to individually becoming penpals with a prisoner. Some people focus on political prisoners while others see the entire prison-industrial complex as illegitimate and criticize the way that it targets marginalized communities. A key way we can support prisoners is by communicating with them. In an email-dominated world, writing an old-fashioned letter on paper can be surprisingly rewarding for you as well as a prisoner. Here are some tips on writing letters to prisoners.

• When writing to prisoners, you have to put their prisoner number on the first line of the mailing address to get it through.

• Make sure to put a return address on your letter. If you are writing to a prisoner you don’t know, it may be best to use a PO box or other address that doesn’t disclose where you live.

• If you’re writing to a prisoner, keep in mind that the prison officials or other authorities may read your letter. Don’t discuss anything sensitive. If the prisoner is waiting for trial or sentencing (or on appeal), it may be better not to discuss the details of their case.

• Prisons prohibit mailing items like books, food, money, etc. Ask the prisoner for the rules.

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep like offering to find a lawyer to take their case, sending them money or expensive items, offering them housing on release, organizing a support campaign, etc.— being let down when you’re locked up can be especially devastating. Be clear about your intentions. If you’re not looking for a romantic relationship, it can be helpful to all involved to say so right off.

• While the state locking people up is shitty, it doesn’t follow that all prisoners are angels. They are people just like everyone else, and some of them are flawed or can be manipulative. Use reasonable caution and treat prisoners like you would another penpal.

• Be careful about accepting collect phone calls from jail — prison collect calls are usually absurdly expensive.

Thank you for being with us for another year on this beautiful, magical planet. Yes, we’re teetering on the edge of the abyss but we’re still here, we still have some choices left, and it’s not over yet!

Our point of view is crucial. It’s time to stop spending so much energy imagining the end of the world, and rather imagine how we can be rid of fossil fuels, industrialism, capitalism and the instant-gratification-unsustainable tech we have all become accustomed to. To save ourselves, human society has to quickly change virtually all its technologies and activities all at the same time — it’s overwhelming.

There is no single way to respond to our predicament. While none of us can change everything all at once, everyone can change something and co-creating environments of change can snowball.  Perhaps things we cannot change on our own we can change together, organisms in an ecosystem of change.

Dramatic transitions can be opportunities not just for survival but for excitement, creativity and inspiring connections with other Earth rebels. The struggles, joy and liberation we find in fighting the powers that be is part of the point.  Even if we are not successful, fighting for this green Earth and for each other is the best way to spend the time we’ve got left.

This is the 26th time our collective hasamused itself by publishing the Slingshot Organizer. Its sale raises funds to print the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US, often at the places listed in the Radical Contact List. Let us know if you can be a local newspaper distributor in your area. Also please send us content for the paper. Thanks to the volunteers who created this year’s organizer: Alex, Alina, Amy, Ana, Carolita, Charis, Daktie, Day, Devon, Diego, Dov, Fern, Francesca, Giz, Hannah, HB, Heri, Ingrid, Isabel, Isabella, Jeanne, Jenna, Jesse, Joanna, Jutta, Kale’akai, Kaleb, Karen, Katherine, Kerry, Laurel, Lew, Mark, Max, Melanie, Molly, Nadja, Nat, Natalie, Nich, Rachelle, Sabrina, Sasha, Saturn, Silvia, Staci, Talia, Taylor, Wyrm, & those we forgot.

Slingshot Collective

A project of Long Haul

Physical office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mail: PO box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 • slingshotcollective.org

slingshotcollective@protonmail.com • @slingshotnews

Please download our new free Slingshot Organizer smartphone app

Printed in Berkeley, CA on recycled paper

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All volunteer collective – no bosses, no workers, no pay.

Many people in radical circles spend a bit of their time doing prisoner support activities. This can range from joining a books-to-prisoners project that mails free books to inmates, to individually becoming penpals with a prisoner. Some people focus on political prisoners — prisoners held because of their involvement in radical actions or framed because of their beliefs. Other people see the entire prison-industrial complex as illegitimate, criticize the way that it targets marginalized communities, and/or believe that it is wrong to imprison people at all. Many people are in prison because of the war on drugs, or because economic inequality under capitalism impoverishes entire communities and pushes people to do illegal things to survive.

A key way we can support prisoners is by communicating with them. Prison is a deeply isolating environment. In an email-dominated world, writing an old-fashioned letter on paper can be surprisingly rewarding for you as well as a prisoner. There are many penpal networks that connect prisoners with those on the outside. If you’re in the bay area, Slingshot collective receives hundreds of letters from prisoners each year and is always looking for people to help us write back.

Here are some tips on writing letters to prisoners.

• When writing to prisoners, you have to put their prisoner number on the first line of the mailing address to get it through.

• Make sure to put a return address on your letter. If you are writing to a prisoner you don’t know, it may be best to use a PO box or other address that doesn’t disclose where you live.

• If you’re writing to a prisoner, keep in mind that the prison officials or other authorities may read your letter. Don’t discuss anything sensitive. If the prisoner is waiting for trial or sentencing (or on appeal), it may be better not to discuss the details of their case.

• Prisons prohibit mailing certain items like books, food, money, etc. Ask the prisoner for the rules.

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep like offering to find a lawyer to take their case, sending them money or expensive items, offering them housing on release, organizing a support campaign, etc.— being let down when you’re locked up can be especially devastating. Be clear about your intentions. If you’re not looking for a romantic relationship, it can be helpful to all involved to say so right off.

• While the state locking people up is shitty, it doesn’t follow that all prisoners are angels. They are people just like everyone else, and some of them are flawed or can be manipulative. Use reasonable caution and treat prisoners like you would another penpal.

• Be careful about accepting collect phone calls from jail — prison collect calls are usually absurdly expensive.

Sometimes it can be hard to know if you’re crazy, or if it’s the world that’s crazy. Watching while our society destroys itself triggers despair and anxiety. Yet it is possible to summon the courage to stay engaged with the world, survive and fight back. When you’re suffering from depression and anxiety is often the hardest time to ask for help from others around you — and paradoxically when you need help the most. Feelings exist for reasons — if you repress them too hard, you can miss important lessons they may have for you. Here are some tips you can use when you’re in crisis which can also be helpful if you’re trying to care for someone having a breakdown.

• It can help to turn your focus from the crisis and onto what you find joyful until you can gather resources.

• Our brains are connected to our bodies so concentrating on physical health can help treat mental distress. Eating healthy food on a regular schedule and getting enough sleep are key. Exercise, dance, biking and physical movement can help. So can fresh air and having a stable, calming place to stay.

• It is okay to ask for help or to discuss disturbing mental states with others. It helps everyone when these feelings are out of the closet.

• When things are really painful or stressful, it can help to step back and disconnect from feelings that you’ll be destroyed unless you achieve a particular outcome like keeping a particular lover or avoiding changes. Change is inevitable and our greatest source of pain can be our attachment to keeping things static. A year or two from now, whatever is happening now will be a memory and the pain of wishing it was otherwise will be gone. Most changes, even when they are painful, open up other opportunities.

• Joining a mutual support group of peers listening to and helping peers as equals can be validating, while not necessarily endorsing your feelings. You can form one yourself or join an ongoing group.

• Find a counselor who supports your self-determination. Ask about confidentiality if someone else — such as your parents, boss, or governmental program — is paying for your therapy.

• Drugs and alcohol often make mental health problems worse.

• There is no shame in using psychiatric drugs such as those for depression or bipolar disorder if you know they work for you.

• Acupuncture, meditation, massage and other alternatives can help some people.

• Keep in mind that some current emotional crises may be caused by traumas from the past, which may need to be emotionally and consciously processed in order not to keep recurring.

• When you’re depressed, the most helpful thing to realize is that the depressed feeling will eventually pass and your life will begin to seem meaningful again later. Depression inhibits your ability to perceive and understand the world correctly. Your perceptions of isolation, loneliness, un-lovability, and hopelessness are not accurate when you are depressed. You have to get through the low point so you can correctly understand reality again on the other side. Avoid making any decisions or drastic moves such as hurting yourself when you are unable to correctly perceive reality.

• Many communities have 24 hour a day crisis hotlines or crisis centers. Call 800-SUICIDE or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 if you’re thinking about killing yourself or 800 646-HOPE to reach a rape crisis line for survivors of sexual violence.

• Ecopsychology is realizing nature and wilderness are our greatest healers. Spend some time outside the city to get centered and get away from pollution which is in itself mind-altering.

• If you have a loved one in crisis, the most helpful thing is to make it clear that you care and be there to listen. They may not be able to call or ask for help — it can be very helpful to keep calling them every day or two to check-in, even if they don’t answer the phone or seem to want help. Sometimes it is okay to want to be alone so don’t be too pushy. Just make it clear that you care. It’s also import to get support and advice for yourself. Caring about someone who is in crisis is in itself a big challenge.

• Social change: Actually address the stressful factors in your environment. Revolution can heal.

• If someone is having delusional thinking or expressing violence related to mental issues, these suggestions may not be enough and it is okay to reach out for professional help.

A key to figuring out how to resist capitalism, earth-destroying mega-technology and velveeta culture is learning how to re-define our values based on what it means to be fully human, awake and free. All of us who’ve grow up within this system internalize its values in subtle as well as more obvious ways. Perhaps without even realizing it we start to define what we like and don’t like, what we are willing to strive for and what we dismiss, what we see and what fades into the background based on a value system defined by an economic, technological and cultural environment structured by capitalism.

The capitalist economic system requires all participants to simplify their thinking and behavior to pursue narrow goals: the most efficient, quick, cheap method, technology or form of organization. It is important to understand that although these goals are easy to understand, they don’t really mean anything — they are means to an end, but the end itself (more stuff, more growth at the lowest cost) doesn’t really have any ultimate meaning. Capitalism has no internal way to determine whether anything — including, in particular, constant growth and cheapeness — is actually good. In fact, on an ecologically finite planet, limitless growth is not good. Capitalist growth is going to kill us if we can’t stop it soon. Just having more stuff does not make human beings happy or make their lives meaningful.

Because capitalism is designed around constant competition, the pressure to pursue its very narrow goals is almost irresistible for companies, communities, and individual people. If any element of the system rejects the pursuit of efficiency, others who are more efficient will out-compete the resister who will be forced out.

But human beings are not machines. We are not merely cogs in an economic machine. It makes no sense that psychologically, culturally and in our day-to-day decision making we should primarily pursue efficiency, the lowest costs, and other valueless means-to-an-ends forms of thinking.

The most fundamental aspect of being human is our ability to experience raw emotion, wonder, love, freedom, pleasure and sensation. These are experiences totally outside the awareness of economics, corporations or computers. When your face is stained with tears — of happiness or sadness, but in either case being-ness — those are the moments you know you’re alive.

Humans seek freedom, self-determination, adventure and challenges, whereas corporations, hierarchical authority structures and machines seek control, order, routine and the easiest, quickest and most boring solution to problems. Humans seek to express their humanity — we sing, write, draw, dance and rebel. Only living creatures can love, which is an irrational emotion that is also essential and even magic. It is the glue that makes society possible, makes our lives worth living, and can give us the strength and courage to organize, resist the capitalist destruction of the world, and survive. Yet love is totally invisible to capitalism — computers and corporations can’t love. These structures can’t comprehend solidarity that is based on love and that doesn’t depend on trading something for something else.

To create a new society, we have to figure out ways to resist the social structures and institutions that oppress people and are destroying the earth. We have to create alternatives that can meet people’s needs based on cooperation, sharing, free will, beauty, pleasure and ecological sustainability. Doing these things means re-organizing our priorities away from mainstream goals such as achieving success and getting material possessions.

To the extent the process of our struggle as well as our goals are based on human vs. system values, we can decrease burnout by increasing our sense of meaningfulness. We won’t be seeking one path in our politics while self-judging our lives based on internalized values from the system. The part of our mind structured by the system is filled with a lot of “shoulds” that upon closer inspection make no sense. It can be easy for our “reasonable” system-mind to doubt our human impulses for adventure, freedom and ill-advised love that can leave us dangling out on a limb.

Taking a different path or doing it yourself for your own reasons will be slower, more difficult and often very confusing and messy. Resisting the global machine means you’ll miss out on the treats it has to offer, and it may role over and crush you if you don’t step out of the way at the right moment. The funny thing is that a lot of times, enjoying easy treats makes you feel empty, while seeking complex, tough pleasures makes you feel alive and engaged. Taking the human and therefore sometimes irrational and inconvenient path seriously and following it with all your heart is what the world needs most right now. We’ve gone as far as we can with making things fast and cheap — now its time to build something meaningful and human.