A counter-message, in French, for the June 24-July 1 period in Quebec, Canada. #CancelCanadaDay #SolidarityNotStates #NoBordersNoNations #Nonalaloi21

How do we make better mistakes each time?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot the past three weeks, having thrown myself, side by side with so many hundreds of others, into solidarity efforts for the now-codefendants in Atlanta—people caught up in the fascistic state repression against @defendATLforest and #StopCopCity.

For many who have dropped everything to voluntarily, tirelessly, and exhaustedly throw themselves in various jail, court, legal, logistical, and other support roles to #FreeThemAll, this isn’t their first time at doing antirepression work. They’ve gone through the hell—as defendants and/or supporters, inside and outside courtrooms, jails, and prisons—in other brutal crackdowns on our beautiful resistance, from the Green scare and RNC Welcoming Committee, to J20 and Standing Rock, to more recently, the George Floyd uprising and Line 3.

There’s so much collective wisdom, collective strength, and collective defense in our toolbox to fight the charges, with the aim, always, of #DropTheCharges while sustaining our movements. Yet the dynamics that can tear us apart from the inside our circles—whipped up, manipulated, and cruelly exacerbated by the state—are sometimes the hardest, way too predictable and familiar; often our tools are rusty or underutilized, or get lost in the mess of all else we have to do.

This time, maybe due the wealth of solidarity experience and multigenerational co-learning, or usually invisible longtime work of feministic+queer care-focused anarchists, or many big hearts converging, the mistakes are better. Or rather, we are doing better at “early intervention” and “harm reduction” to grapple with past mistakes in order to lessen them.

For example, having volunteer “on call” therapists to hold space for processing trauma and grief, rather than letting it build up, boil over, and burn us. Setting up care clinics, supporters for support crews, weeks of resilience, and umpteenth other acts of compassion that try harder to leave no one behind, and stave off the ways that stress and fear can divide us.

There’s a long road ahead, but we’re starting on better footing, better mistakes and all.

#CareNotCops
#SolidarityNotStates
#TryAnarchismForLove

(photo: anarchism is love, as noted in black-and-purple-painted “circle A” = “heart” symbols by some anonymous tagger on a brick wall on the stolen, colonized, unanarchistic lands of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal in March 2023)

It never ceases to amaze that despite all that the state and its thuggish bedfellows throw at us, we’ve got each other covered. We blanket each other with solidarity. Even from afar, across borders, we supply comfort.

That’s not a simple task, even under the best of conditions—and fascism is making for the worst. Moreover, given the weight of the collective and individual as well as historical and present-day trauma that’s layered on top of us because of the violence of states and their allies, sticking unflinchingly and lovingly (even when we don’t know and/or don’t always like each other) by each other’s side can sometimes be a challenge. Our pain, our grief, can spill out onto each other in messy ways.

Yet time and again, what the state and its cronies can’t reckon with are the deeply worn threads of our solidarity, notwithstanding our frayed edges.

Overall, we show up. Whether in front of a jail to make tender noise for those inside or at court to offer support, whether by raising tens of thousands for bail or organizing an in-person care clinic, whether by helping keep our movements going strong or holding space for rituals of resistance and communal mourning. Indeed, there’s no way to contain the innumerable acts of solidarity on any sort of laundry list.

Solidarity is being there for each other as if our social relations really matter. Meaning solidarity is acting as if the social relations we desire are already embodied in each and every one of us. Meaning solidarity is our best weapon against the state and its coconspirators.

So on a snowy day on the stolen lands of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, it shouldn’t surprise—but it should amaze—to see a big sheet-turned-into-banner voicing solidarity and empathy beyond borders for @stopcopcity and the dynamic struggle many hundreds of miles away to @defendatlantaforest.

#ForestsNotFascism
#CareNotCops
#SolidarityNotStates
#DefendWeelauneeForest
#MayTortuguitasMemoryBeABlessing

(photo: banner hanging off a railway overpass with graffiti in the background; the banner reads, “Cop city is a threat to everyone / Solidarity w/Weelaunee forest defenders / Revenge 4 Tort”)

Donations are greatly need for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, particularly as the detainers, facing the full wrath of the state, go to their second bond hearing on March 23:

https://atlsolidarity.org

Perfect welcome sign to the city that feels most like home—and is home to an abundance of anarchists of many generations—on exiting the metro just now: “neither nationalism or statism,” or more specifically, neither Quebec nationalism/sovereignty or Canada.

#ArtOfResistance
#SolidarityNotStates

@maksimilian_stepniakov @municipaladhesives @pinkpeacock thx! Hebrew might be good too, but I like using one of the Jewish languages expressed targeted for destruction by fascists, whether in Europe or Israel! #SolidarityNotStates

Following today’s awesome (aka accessible, helpful, and anarchist) Boston Anarchist Bookfair workshop on the Fediverse for anarcha-newbies here like me, I wanted to send heaps of thanks and love to the @fedizine and others folks who shared their passion for Mastodon as anarchist infrastructure and social fabric.

I learned a lot. But more than that, I marveled yet again that “we have everything we need,” including each other, to build our own worlds. And ones, as the workshop folks underscored, grounded in our own anarchistic ethics and practices.

#CareNotCapitalism
#FederationNotFascism
#MakeMediaMakeTrouble
#SolidarityNotStates

(photo: one of numerous circle A hearts seen in October 2022 spray painted across concrete barriers put up this summer by cops (or cop allies) to block an entry to @stopcopcity aka #DefendAtlantaForest and mysteriously moved the same night so as to free up the entry again)