#mendingtheworld — Public Fediverse posts

The sun sets so early now, as if nonhuman nature is mirroring the darker christofascist days ahead. Yet Friday’s nightfall offers a counterpoint: the blessed flames of shabbat, when sparks of otherworldly practices burst temporarily forth, and we recall it is not darkness that we fear—for the moon and stars are the most comradely of guides—but rather the folly of certain humans and certain human-made systems. We recall, too, that there are other humans—hopefully us—and human-made systems that strive toward “electrical sparks of something greater, something all encompassing,” something liberatory, as jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer asserted over a century ago.

For Landauer, who was murdered by proto-fascists in Germany in 1919, soon after taking part in an otherworldly revolution that for a brief time instituted autonomy and self-governance, anarchism “is a matter of the present … a matter of how ones lives.” Those lives, our lives, for him, were bound up in varied communal forms, yet tied to something else as well: love.

“Love … spins us round and elevates us to the stars, because it is a cord that connects us with humanity … Love sets the world alight and sends sparks through our being. It is the deepest and the most powerful way to understand the most precious that we have.”

Which brings me to @ratzonpgh, which self-describes as “lovingly jewish.” It is a project—embodying queer+trans, feminist, and anarchist sensibilities—that I’ve loved from the first, when it was just a twinkle in some jewish anarchists’ eyes in the pre-pandemic time, and I love even more in light of the current bleak conditions—its offerings pointing toward possible and actually existing alternatives in the present …

and past. For our next Kabbalat Shabbat—open to jews and non-jews—focuses on “blessed flames”:

“If there’s one thing we know about our history, we know that ritual and resistance go hand in hand. Join us on Friday, 13 December (aka 1312 aka ACAB), for our monthly gathering, revolving around the theme of Jewish anarchist ancestors. Through readings and song, we’ll be remembering the black-and-red thread the binds us to our rebellious ancestors as inspiration for the struggles and joys yet to come. We'll also set up a temporary altar to honor them; feel free to bring something to add to it. Kabbalat Shabbat followed by a vegetarian potluck and anti-zionist community building.”

Friday, 13 December / 7 pm start (doors open at 6:30 pm)
RSVP for address (Pittsburgh east end)
bit.ly/razmshabbat1213

#BlessedFlames
#MendingTheWorld

Short(ish) post to send abundant love and big bear hugs to everyone who feels broken by the past week and past year(s).

Please don’t break yourself to the point of giving up. ❤️‍🩹

It’s the social system that’s broken. It’s structured to fucking break our hearts, minds, and bodies, our soul and spirit. And while, as a wise rabbi said hundreds of years ago, “there is nothing so whole as a broken heart,” our aspiration should be “wholeness,” not “brokenness.”

We fight as healers—not hiding our battle scars, yet not letting them stop us from self-organizing together toward days when our rebel hearts can tend to the necessary aches that come with life and love, not the seemingly constant onslaught of unnecessary brutality and violence foisted on us by the fascist social order.

Still, I know many of us—many of you—are struggling. And I know for many of us, this plane of “existence” feels keenly unbearable at the moment.

Perhaps the most crucial direct action we can do right now, at this dire juncture, is to be each other’s balm. To not let the fear and trauma and grief—and so many other feelings—do the christofascists’ work for them and take us away from each other.

We can bear almost anything when we do so together.

See each other. Listen to each other. Share with and believe each other. Be vulnerable with each other. Laugh and cry with each other. Walk with each other. Hold each other. Love like you’ve never loved before, so we can all hear each other’s broken-whole hearts beating strong with the sounds of otherworldly life and liberation.

#MendingTheWorld

(photo: “you are not broken” sticker seen on the stolen lands of Montreal/Tiohtià:ke in late summer 2024)

After spending some 4 days in a big “liberated zone” that was managed by self-appointed leaders who announced “direct democracy” loudly on a microphone but didn’t actually let people autonomously self-govern, much less truly self-organize, it was tender indeed to be at the smallish, intentional, and highly participatory start of an outdoor solidarity space on the grassy quad at UNC-Asheville today.

What struck me was the way it lead with care—not pushing people past where they were ready to go, but engaging in lots of conversation, sharing, listening, and hearing. Knowing when to ask for support from others. Collectively wrestling with questions and co-education.

That care was especially evident, though, in the first two actions: setting up a free food and first-aid area; and spending hours reverently and beautifully chalking out the names of too many Palestinians murdered in Gaza, honoring the dead.

Who knows what will come of this relatively tiny solidarity space being opened up in a relatively tiny town. Yet as one student noted, they’re skilling up for the long haul.

#EducatingOurselvesForFreedom
#FoodNotFascism
#CareNotCops
#MourningOurDead
#MendingTheWorld

Vigil for Aaron Bushnell
and the 30,000+ People Killed in Gaza
Sunday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.

Gather by the Craven Street Bridge on the Wilma Dykeman Greenway by the river in Asheville to share words and silence in remembrance. That’s the same, now-sacred spot that we held a Public Mourner’s Kaddish in the early days of the genocide against Palestinians, and more recently, a remembrance for Tortuguita on the one-year anniversary of their murder-by-cops in Weelaunee Forest.

We’ll set up a DIY altar and gather around it. Bring flowers, candles, art, banners, and other mementoes to add to it.

We’ll have a few printouts on hand of “Memories of Aaron Bushnell as Recounted by His Friends” for folks to read excerpts aloud, and hold space for sharing thoughts and feelings, other readings, and/or songs/music.

Come as you are; bring your full self. And wear a mask for the collective care of all.

— self-organized by some AVL anarchists,
in love and rage 🖤💔🪬🍉🔥

#ArtOfRemembrance
#ArtOfResistance
#MourningOurDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#UntilAllAreFree

Moved to be able to share this art and the words below by @porknap, and do a humble amount of support to help make time-space for all who were touched by Tort’s life to engage in rituals of remembrance on January 18.

#StopCopCity #DefendTheWeelauneeForest
#ForestsNotFascism #CareNotCops
#MourningOurDead #MendingTheWorld

###

One year has passed since our beloved friend and comrade Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was murdered by Georgia State Police in the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta, GA.

We will gather in ritual resistance on January 18, 2024 @ 6 pm to share stories, songs, prayers, and feelings in remembrance of our dear sibling Tortuguita.

Bring words or non-words to share and altar items.

Mask up! Bundle Up!

We will convene at the grassy area off the French Broad River Greenway near the intersection of Craven/Riverside (in the River Arts District), Asheville, NC.

It should not be lost that the anniversary (or yahrzeit in jewish tradition) is happening the same month that 1 of the 61 defendants indicted with RICO charges will attend their trial, where they face bogus accusations of conspiring, racketeering, and inflicting domestic terr0r.

A bitter reminder to fight for our friends while they are still here (and that fighting for our friends who are not physically still here is tied up together, as prosecutors seek to use Tort’s diary as evidence in the trial)!

May their memory be a blessing.

From the forest to Atlanta to the United States to Palestine, hoping for an eternal shmita (sabbath year) for all occupied land.

@stopcopcity @defendatlantaforest @atlsolfund

🩷🌿🖤🐢🩷🌿🖤🐢🩷🌿🖤🐢

Hanukkah always challenges us—at the darkest time of year—to find the flames of resistance and possibility, even when it seems impossible. This year, amid the glare of bombs bringing such genocidal darkness to Gaza and Palestinians, it’s an even greater challenge. I’m grateful to my friend @chava_lah along with the @jewishzinearchive and @bcctucson for nonetheless inspiring me and others with their rad Hanukkah event to do a similar one (including borrowing some of their language) at @firestorm:

Flames of Antifascist Resistance

Night 7, Wed, Dec 13, 6 to 7:30 pm
All welcome!

Amulet Making!
Diasporic Jews have tucked plants and other special objects inside a pouch as a protective amulet throughout history. In traditional Jewish amulet making, fragrant herbs, salt, red thread, Hebrew letters or text, eyes, and hamsas are often included. This practice invites us into an embodied experience of building resilience in a world that can so frequently leave us feeling brokenhearted. You’re invited to make an amulet for yourself and/or someone who could use a little extra protection.

Candle Lighting!
Jews and Palestinians are woven together, and solidarity is the only way forward. We take heart knowing that there’s a long lineage of anarchist(ic) Jews who’ve actively resisted Zionism and fascism. As we light the Hanukkah candles, we call on those ancestors to guide our actions and aid us in keeping liberatory flames lit.

Storytelling!
Words have special powers for Jews—from the mystical to the humorous. It is said that if a single letter is left out of a sacred text, one destroys the whole world. Words can also mend this world. They are carriers of traditions, cultures, and memories, beyond borders and states. Jews use words on holidays like Hanukkah to illuminate moments of resistance and what it means for everyone to be free. You’re invited to read or share a story of resistance from a Jewish text or one that speaks to your rebellious heart.

“The fight against fascism isn’t about ‘allyship’; it is a personal and direct fight for our lives. And that knowledge has put a fire in our hearts, as both anarchists and Jews.” —Fayer Collective, Atlanta

https://firestorm.coop/events/3122-flames-of-antifascist-resistance.html

#CandlesNotColonialism
#LatkesOfLiberation
#MendingTheWorld

There were so many sweet, tender, and moving moments at this past weekend’s @ACABookfaire—not to mention silly, inspiring, and connective ones (like the best and most wholesome kind of anarchist family reunions), among so many other dreamy descriptors—that it’s hard to narrow down examples, much less narrow down my gratitude to the organizers, tablers, presenters, and really everyone who converged at this bookfair.

But a highlight for me was the beautiful space made for not only honoring but also remembering and being vulnerably real about our grief—that is, sharing the whole of ourselves and life, with its abundance of joys and sorrows, wins and losses. There were three workshops related to mourning, ritual, dying, and death. There was an altar specifically built for the bookfair by an anarchist gravedigger and casket maker, and people added flowers, notes, art, photos, and herbal grief potions to it over the three days (see pictures 3 and 4).

And there was the friend from Durham, NC, who brought the banner pictured here, which they entrusted to me on the sixth anniversary of Charlottesville on August 12, and which @firestormcoop then let me hang in a prominent place of visibility and honor—over the area in the bookstore used for speakers during the bookfair. Six years ago, the banner was painted soon after Heather Heyer was murdered, and so many others were deeply injured and forever scarred, by fascists during the Unite the Right rally in Cville. It then was originally hung from the stone base of the first Confederate monument that folks tore down in NC, and later, on the one-year anniversary of that monument falling, it was hung up again—this time as part of an altar with names and flowers and candies around it, and folks read the names of people killed by the police in Durham.

The banner now has a home at Firestorm, as daily reminder that “we struggle in memory of all we’ve lost to white supremacy and fascism.” To my mind, all anarchist spaces should routinely make such room for the #ArtOfRemembrance, #RebelliousMourning, and #MendingTheWorld—which is about mending our own rebel hearts too.

On this sixth yahrzeit of Charlottesville, I’m borrowing this photo posted by my dear, tender-hearted, brave, and loving friend @scottdanielwilliams as my small #RitualAsResistance.

May Heather’s memory be a blessing and continue to spark blessed transformations that mend this world.

May friends and any of accomplices who were in Charlottesville that day, whether forever scarred physically and/or emotionally by the fascists, or in any way forever changed, find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.

May all of us who felt the impact from afar also find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.

May we all continue to spark blessed transformations to mend this world, as direct actions of the grieving rebelliously and deeply, and caring and loving rebelliously and deeply.

#MourningOurLosses
#FightingForTheDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#ArtOfRembrance
#WeMustOutliveFascism

Mourning our dead—who herself did so much to mourn via her music against the often-murderous violence of the Catholic Church, colonialism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, fascism, and more—as seen wheatpasted in a bunch of public places around so-called Asheville, NC.

There’s such strength in this image, with eyes so intent on seeing and confronting hard truths, underscoring her own lyric, “I’m proud to be a troublemaker.” And yet there’s a sorrow to this image, to those eyes, that almost unwittingly makes one start replaying other lyrics of hers, tape-loop style, in one’s head: “To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”

Others have already said this, but it hits me every time I see this outdoor “altar” to Sinéad O’Connor / Shuhada’ Sadaqat: she, like other brave feminist truth tellers and healers, should have been honored in life, not relegated to a social death during life, nor had life made so hard and repeatedly abusive that death came too early.

May her memory spark a blessed revolution.

(photo: black-and-white headshot of Sinéad facing directly at the camera, with eyes wide open and no smile on her face, pasted on a buffed-gray, formerly graffitied wall)

#ArtOfResistance
#ArtOfRemembrance
#MourningOurDead
#MendingTheWorld

Grief rituals, one could argue, are part of the essential grounding for millennia-old cultures that orient toward far more ecological relations with the whole of this earth, including each other. For loss is part of the seasons of life, which ancient—and yet still here—cultures recognize needs to be honored through ceremony so as to remember what is loved and cherished, and continually reaffirm a duty to love and defend life.

It is little wonder that as colonialism and capitalism, heteropatriarchy and white Christian supremacy, grew into hegemonic death machines over the centuries, they tried to kill off innumerable life-giving rituals and ceremonies that humans passed along over generations to hold each other through transitions. They tried to make people forget that minds and bodies crave—and need—those rituals and ceremonies in order to sustain hearts and spirit. And without heart and spirit, humans become shells of themselves.

It is little wonder, then, that so many humans today, but especially human-made institutions like states and their police, are so hollowed out of heart—of empathy and sociability, solidarity and communal care—they all too easily acquiesce to or participate in killing off life.

It has been a week since Tortuguita was murdered in cold blood by cops within Weelaunee forest, where Tort gave full heart and loving spirit to defending life-giving ecosystems. May their memory be a blessing.

In that week, so many people have, in essence, “sat shiva,” a ritual within Jewishness that is about taking seven days to be with community (whether people or trees) to begin to honor and process loss of a beloved and grief at their death. Shiva doesn’t mean doing nothing. It is a time to sustain our hearts and spirits.

So it’s remarkable—a testament to Tort as well as the big, amorphous, autonomous, yet interwoven circles of rebels—that this past week has witnessed an outpouring of remembrance that we do indeed need and can revive ancient grief rituals, as precisely the ground that allows us to keep fighting, not merely to #StopCopCity, but to stop all systemic theft of lands and life.

#RebelliousMourning
#MourningOurDead
#FightingLikeHellForTheLiving
#RitualAsResistance
#MendingTheWorld

(photo: sign with words “Weelaunee People’s Park” seen among the trees in October 2022 at @defendATLforest)

There are no safe spaces. But there are sacred spaces.

At this moment in history, like other particularly brutal epochs, there is no separating that sacredness from the unsafeness.

That’s what this sacrilegious world order has forged over more than five hundred years of conquest, plunder, displacement, genocide, and ecological destruction. Its theft of land and lives, lifeways and ecosystems, has desecrated every corner of the globe.

Yet time and again, those who would defend land and freedom create brave spaces. Meaning despite the risks, often impossibly heavy ones, they find strength in the sacred, aiding them in fighting the good fight and holding them when they must mourn and honor their dead.

Perhaps that braveness, even when we’re afraid, is part of what compels our sacred duty all that much more.

We know what’s at stake, for one: the further loss of sacred places and sacred life. Yet equally, while we defend sacred spaces such as a forest, we know what it feels like to inhabit dignified lives worth living, in common with all living beings, because there is a magic to the sacred. The sacred animates life against their death machines.

Moreover, we understand that in our brave spaces, it is up to us, and only us, to love, care for, and protect each other, to make our spaces ever safer for us all. We know that any sense of safety comes though our love and solidarity, and when we’re lucky, glimpses of the spirit of far better social relations—in right relation with earth.

Brave spaces are most crucial, though, when bad things happen, including our worst nightmares, and our efforts at those “safer spaces” are momentarily shattered. We feel a sacred obligation to grieve the sacredness of what’s been stolen from us, including by making more brave and sacred spaces, like do-it-ourselves vigils, altars, and other tender spaces of remembrance on the dangerous landscape of this violent social system.

May all that is sacred embrace us now, because the big @defendATLforest community is hurting.

May Tortuguita’s memory be a blessing—and spark the blessedly ecological world they fought for.

#RitualAsResistance
#SacredSpaces #BraveSpaces
#MourningOurDead #MendingTheWorld

https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/2023/01/19/solidarity/?amp=1

(photo: resanctified entry—after a cop incursion—into the Weelaunee forest, featuring red-and-black anarchist hearts painted on a pink-painted concrete slab and a #StopCopCity yard sign, as seen in October 2022)

It feels pretty special, blessedly so, to be able to do my first in-person talk and schmooze with others about an anthology that I started curating in the “before” times, which “routinely” included lots of book events at many beautiful spots, and finished in the early hellish pandemic days, and was birthed into print as the pandemic began to shift into another “new normal” part of the fascist social fabric. Like so many of us, I’ve been profoundly separated from so much I love these past 2.5+ years, including the delight of bringing the books I do—as labors of love—into the world among others.

But Jewishness, and especially queer anarchist Jewishness, is used to inhabiting liminal spaces, spaces of betweenness. Twilight is the par excellent moment—ecological and one could say trans or nonbinary sacred—that eases us into new months and new years, rituals and holidays, grief and transition. We also have millennia-long experience with separations, both traumatic and joyous, both forced on us and self-determined, whether in diasporic motion or through the separation between Shabbat (25 hours a week of dwelling in the world to come, as ongoing dress rehearsals of sorts) and havdallah, when we move out of the sacred into the mundane until the next Shabbos.

That ancestral legacy offers a palpable resilience, or perhaps fierce fighting spirit to survive, with many contemporary Jewish anarchists feeling affinity for the refrain sung by a village of Jews many moons ago as they were about to be slaughtered by Nazis: “we will outlive them.”

At many points in this binary, brutal pandemic time of “masked” vs “unmasked,” mutual aid vs abandonment, I didn’t know that I would outlive it. The same may be true for you. Many folks we love didn’t outlive it. And that feels so much truer for so many of us in the days ahead, as fascism increasingly acts out and acts on its transphobia, misogyny, antisemitism, racism …

My Jewish anarchism teaches me so much, crucially right now that joy and sorrow are always intertwined, and that it is our task not to complete the aim of mending the world, but not desist from it either.

💖🖤 to @scottbransonblurredwords for setting up this event!

Event description:

Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists

Using the anthology “There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart” as a jumping-off point, editor/writer Cindy Barukh Milstein will sketch a picture of contemporary Jewish anarchism and then facilitate a conversation. Today’s Jewish anarchists pull from ancestral wisdom, within Judaism/Jewishness and millennia of diasporic rituals and communities (without states). Yet they are also remaking Jewish anarchism, especially via anarcha-feminist and queer+trans practices—cultural, political, and spiritual—building bridges from bittersweet grief to rebellion and joy. Milstein will touch on ways that Jewish anarchism is being utilized in organizing and movements as a weapon against, to name a few, colonialism, capitalism, fascism, and ecocide. Yet they’ll also explore what it means to embrace Jewish anarchism as the ground for communal solidarities that sustain and “mend” us while cultivating visionary forms of liberation—and life—all with the aim of getting better and better at living “the world to come” in the here and now. Whether you’re Jewish or not, an anarchist or not (yet), come share in reflecting on the promise of Jewish anarchism.

Notes: At Oberlin on Friday just before Shabbat begins. To embody our collective care, masks are required at this event—with N95s and KN95s strongly recommended—and we urge everyone to rapid test before coming, and don’t come if sick or COVID positive. There will also be copies of the anthology and other books by Milstein for sale, at a sliding scale (cash or PayPal). Lastly, Milstein encourages everyone to bring along a small offering/memento to place on a temporary grief altar.

#AnarchismOrFascism
#WeMustOutliveThem
#MourningOurDead #MendingTheWorld
#TryAnarchismForLife
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife