Anarchist hyperbole can be painfully annoying at times: an extravagant exaggeration at odds with how anarchists actually engage in the world or treat people, including each other.

Yet lately, I feel the hype is no exaggeration at all, but captures the extravagantly touching ways that anarchists are “making the world we need,” and with such care. And imagination and even joy—for care, imagination, and joy are necessary counterweights to the abandonment, lockstep fascism, and grief swirling around us.

On the one hand, anarchist hyperbole is a message in a bottle during an era when it can feel like all is lost: we may be far from other possible worlds, yet those other worlds are still always a potential, and thus something we can hold out and journey toward. Without that promise, what is there to fight for? To live for? Anarchism without vision, without aspirations, is hollow rhetoric.

On the other hand, anarchist hyperbole seems to be describing—at least now—what anarchists are actually doing on the ground, as their #EverydayAnarchism as it were: prefiguring what those possible worlds look like when premised on deep, self-organized, rebellious forms of #CommunalCare. There are many reasons why anarchism seems to have turned toward building up, in do-it-ourselves and even friendly ways, all that people need to survive and thrive, including the turn toward #MutualAid that so marked the start of the pandemic, and now, the ways anarchists are taking those practices back from liberal and capitalist co-optation because ecological and other human-made disasters are necessitating it. Also, though, there’s a way that the bleakness and violence of these “end times” appears to be drawing out anarchic play and creativity, both to protect each other and squeeze out beautiful, sacred life for each other.

I could list many real-life examples, but for now, I’ll uplift just one: @broken.window_rva, with some of its hyperbolic zines pictured here. One of their crew pulled me aside at the @acabookfair to joyfully share all the DIY other-possible-worlds of fun (esp. related to varied-themed bike rides), tender solidarity, and more! Check out their Instagram for inspiration.

I listened to #PeterWilkin talking about Tory #Anarchism on Graham Culbertson's #EverydayAnarchism podcast.

It's really interesting to think about how this ruling/middle class outlook has influenced me through Orwell, Cook, Python, Morris etc. It is witty and insightful but clearly privileged and (as Roger Law cautioned Graham), also darkly misanthropic.

I think it contributed to a catch-all cynicism in my own outlook which is ultimately conservative, and from which I am trying to rid myself.

Mini review of my latest book, #TryAnarchismForLife, published by the amazing Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness collective, with springlike-joyful cover by @eff_charm and life-giving circle A by Landon Sheely.

Grateful to @AntifascistMoon for posting their thoughts, in three tweets, about my 26 tightly crafted prose pieces revolving around some of the many beautiful dimensions of anarchism, all paired with a gorgeous circle A dreamed up and drawn by 26 different anarchist artists.

As they write:

“I couldn’t have higher praise for Try Anarchism for Life by @cindymilstein — absolutely incredible, beautifully written prose about the beauty found in a boundless, liberated, free existence for all!

“Ecotones of Possibility [one of the pieces] honestly made me cry — the beauty in [Milstein’s] descriptions of liminal space-times and the joy expressed in the anarchist grabbing their friend by the hand to come see those places found the perfect heartstring to pluck.

“The entire book made me realize I was an anarchist before I ever even properly understood what anarchism was. Thank you for sharing this view with the world!”

As always, this book is a labor of love for me. Any proceeds go to support the rad work of @tangled_wilderness to put out all sorts of other anarchic media from books to games to zines to podcasts.

http://www.tangledwilderness.org

#BeautyOfOurCircle
#TryAnarchismForLove
#EverydayAnarchism

(photos: book seen in the wild at Insoumise, a longtime anarchist bookstore in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal; 3-part mini review posted on Twitter, 3/20/23)

This mini review of “Try Anarchism for Life: The Beauty of Our Circle” (Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness) is the perfect size for my latest book, which involves me trying to say as much possible as, in as finely crafted a way as possible, within a series of tightly written essays. Moreover, I’m humbled by and grateful for @dmw’s words capturing much of the heart of this project—like all my books, a labor of love, yet in this case intended as a love letter to anarchists old and new. Or maybe my book can be read as a message in a bottle, reminding whomever finds it to keep on doing what we anarchists do best, even if so much of this fascist catastrophe of a world seem to make our life-giving practices feel futile. (They aren’t.)

Immense thanks to Dana Williams, including for getting my pronoun correct (a genderqueer “they”)!

And in case it’s tough to read Dana’s mini review via the screenshots of Dana’s Mastodon post, here’s the text:

“It’s hard to write a book about anarchism that doesn’t follow the same histories, platitudes & polemical style. But @cbmilstein has done just that with their poetic, philosophical, intimate, sometimes funny & always entertaining, and profound book, ‘Try Anarchism for Life: The Beauty of Our Circle.’ It includes two dozen pieces analyzing different characteristics of anarchist thought and movements, accompanied with drawings of the ‘circle-A’ by some pretty rad artists. A great primer.

“It seems written simple and engaging enough for a lay-audience, but also sophisticated enough for those who are well versed in the topic. I suspect it’s the kind of book that’ll continue to reward on additional reads too. That’s not an easy kind of book to write!

“It takes a different, yet in some ways similar, approach as their earlier book, ‘Anarchism and Its Aspirations’ [@akpress], a book that I still recommend to those wanting to learn more about anarchism. Both are highly recommended!”

For a copy, or a bunch, of the book, head to www.tangledwilderness.org.

🖤💖🌿

(photo by @plantneighbor, who contributed a beautiful circle A to the book, featuring the book’s joyful pink+green cover, designed by @eff_charm, held up against the backdrop of a field, trees, and mountain)

#TryAnarchismForLife
#EverydayAnarchism
#TheBeautyOfOurCircle

What can we do, as researchers, when politicians act in confict with the knowledge that is already out there?

Excellent talk with Bruce C. Glavovic, Timothy F. Smith and Iain White on "The tragedy of climate change science", and on the state of #academia and #democracy, in the podcast #EverydayAnarchism.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qyVCvAoicpAC3NAWRZAs8

Truth be told, it’s been hard to get out of bed this winter. More pointedly, it feels hard to find reasons to get out of bed.

Some call that depression, set in motion by trauma and grief. And no doubt there’s much truth in that. Yet I call it trying to live with “the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’”—a gap that these pandemic years has pried so far apart, it’s now (in winter three) nearly unbridgeable. And without a bridge, any sense of being able to wander forward toward horizons of possibilities gets blocked.

Hence the limited reasons to peek out from under the comforter and see promise in a new day.

That gap, mind you, is always there. And I know that we anarchist types, no matter how beat down we feel, continually have to build our own bridges—again and again. But we can’t do it alone, nor without bridging the generations so that we can come at the project of constructing a new world from multidirectional vantage points of brilliance and inspiration.

So I’m super grateful to @marixfort and her 7- and 10-year-olds for supplying me with some much-needed scaffolding right now.

Marixfort read my new book “Try Anarchism for Life” (@tangledwild) to these two kids, who both loved it, and had lots of questions and comments. Last week, out of the blue, the youngest said, “You know what, mamá, I will raise my kids to be anarchists. Thank you for reading us that book.” Then the two children dreamed up and drew the bridge-building “blueprints” (pictured here), and asked their mamá to share them with me, and their mamá said I could share them with you.

The beauty of anarchism is that even if you (or me) can’t see across the rumble at times, but can only see the ruins, there are always other anarchistic spirits who will hold up a cobbled-together lantern to aid you in noticing (again) the flowers and rainbows in the misty distance, and thus help you go the extra mile. Or in my case, get out of bed.

#BeautyOfOurCircle
#EverydayAnarchism
#AWorldInWhichManyWorldsFit

(photo of #TryAnarchismForLife by @blkstarseed, featuring cover design by @eff_charm with circle art by @landonsheely)

Complex tasks are often considered best handled through hierarchical structures. We have been trained to believe that only with dictatorial leaders and middle managers can great feats be achieved. As a counterpoint I would turn you to the task of moving a large object. While this task is indeed too difficult for a single person, a small coordinated group would have no trouble with the task. And we regularly see this task performed through non hierarchical relations. T.O.T. (Together On Three) is a simple chant that coordinates people to enact an otherwise impossible task, were it done alone or uncoordinated. This simple act is one of many everyday acts that represent our innate human capacity to operate without hierarchy. If we take a moment and evaluate our relationships, which have yet to be appropriated by the state or capital, we see anarchy is ubiquitous in our nature.

#EverydayAnarchism

Original image sources

[1](https://pixabay.com/vectors/anarchist-symbols-anarchy-logo-40386/)
[2](https://pixabay.com/vectors/business-box-couple-holding-2853515/)

Care packages aren’t just beautiful on the inside—for what they contain as gifts, as sustenance, as rebel “love letters” to each other. (Though getting a no. 10 envelope filled with stickers from @municipaladhesives last week was lovely indeed, as the shimmery-metallic circle A that found a good home outdoors today attests to.)

It’s what overflows outward into the “worlds in which many worlds fit”—to borrow Zapatista words—that we are already, always, crafting in the here and now that’s especially beautiful, messiness and all.

That includes the “little touches” like the black and red rubber-stamped logos that Municipal Adhesives put on the envelope’s outside, meaning that various postal workers maybe couldn’t help but notice—perhaps speaking to their antifascist and/or anarchic hearts during yet another deadening day of capitalism.

Or the bigger, prefigurative ones, in which Municipal Adhesives thinks to make and distro stickers with circle A slogans that hold out a hand—on public walls and lamp posts—to the anarcho-curious or world-weary who long for something besides the daily disasters of the current social order—but need glimpses of what that could be and is when one embraces anarchistic forms of social relations and social organization.

Or the bigger-still ways that anarchists create do-it-ourselves spaces in which we remember that “we are the ones we waited for”—spaces open and welcoming to whoever is on a journey, their journey, to liberation and freedom. For as Municipal Adhesives reminded me when they PM’d me about sending a care package my way, we’d met years ago at the annual National Conference on Organized Resistance, in which a tiny anarchistic collective brought some 2,500 young folks together for a weekend that was a smorgasbord of hundreds of workshops and tables (by young-at-heart folks) spanning the whole range of radical politics. In this outwardly solidaristic, generative, open-door space, thousands found their political passion and calling—and each other.

Care packages are a joy—a life line—on a personal level in these dispiriting times, warming our insides. Yet anarchistic care shines when we common it, outward and upward.

#CollectiveCare
#WeAreAllWeHave
#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife

Teaching is antihierarchy that we witness all the time! By acknowledging a knowledge differential and attempting to bring the other person up to the same level the teacher is actively destroying the power differential granted by their greater knowledge.

We do bits of anarchism every day, yet many still think it is fantasy. I am here to tell you anarchism isn't fantasy, it is the default state of most human interactions and we van use this to shape a better world now!

#Anarchy #Anarchism #Anarchist #EverydayAnarchism

(Image stolen from birdsite too long ago to recall creator)

(Part 5 of 6): By way of celebrating my new book “Try Anarchism for Life” being in print and in the world, and because I have a backlog of photos of circle As in the wild, plus to honor and thank the folks who took the time and care to write blurbs for this book, here’s a trifecta of what I trust are some beautiful expressions of anarchism: street art + the book’s cover + a blurb.

As it serendipitously and delightfully happens, my book came out on the heels of my dear friend Scott Brandon’s book, “Practical Anarchism,” and both of us seem to be preoccupied with focusing on anarchism as life, as living. Perhaps that’s no coincidence in this fascist time that would see so many of us dead—most of us, in fact. So our #EverydayAnarchism has to be a fighter for and carrier of life. It feels no exaggeration to say it’s either #AnarchismOrFascism.

Thanks to @TheRhizomeHouse and the caring labors of our friend @reblgrrlraechel, Scott and I hope to bring our books into life-giving conversation when we gather on December 3.

Now, onto the blurb:

“What a beautiful and playful collection of anarchist ruminations, like an imaginative picture book for adults (but not in the grown-up sense)! It’s a joyful contribution to anarchist literature as well as to Milstein’s own writing. You can read this poetic book in any order—an alphabet that goes from big A to little a and beyond—which makes it a perfect book to pick up to stimulate creativity and meditation. But after reading the whole thing, one gets the sense of the fullness of a life devoted to anarchism; that is, the mutual care and love for each other and the world that raises the stakes for freedom from domination. As we Jews say, ‘To life!’—that is, to a life worth living!”

—Scott Branson, author of “Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life”

Copies of my book are available from @tangledwild at www.tangledwilderness.org (in and outside the US), @akpressdistro at www.akpress.org, or your favorite anarchist(ic) bookstores and libraries.

(photos: #QueerAsFuck circle A as seen in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, summer 2022; fabulous book cover, designed by @eff_charm with circle A by @landonsheely; 2 out of 3 panels from the “flyer” for our schmooze—see The Rhizome House on social media for full info)

#TryAnarchismForLife
#TheBeautyOfOurCircle
#PracticalAnarchism
#WeAreAllWeNeed
🖤💖🌿

Decentralised federalism, #Mastodon ‘s modus operandi, is a core anarchist constitutional principle, shaping almost every major anarchist organisations worldwide since the 1870s. Just sayin… #everydayanarchism

And because you get more characters here…this piece by Colin Ward is interesting because it explains anarchist federalism in the context of European integration around the time of the Maastricht Treaty (1992). #takingbackcontrol

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/colin-ward-the-anarchist-sociology-of-federalism

Decentralised federalism, #Mastodon ‘s modus operandi, is a core anarchist constitutional principle, shaping almost every major anarchist organisations worldwide since the 1870s. Just sayin… #everydayanarchism

And because you get more characters here…this piece by Colin Ward is interesting because it explains anarchist federalism in the context of European integration around the time of the Maastricht Treaty (1992). #takingbackcontrol

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/colin-ward-the-anarchist-sociology-of-federalism