#solidaritynotstates — Public Fediverse posts

If May Day, among other things, is about sharing the “wealth” (aka abolishing capitalism), there’s nothing quite like going to a small but sweet Really Really Free Market on this May 1 and being gifted a sheet of freshly printed stickers that feel just right for these suddenly rebellious times. (After all, #AllComradesAreBeautiful!)

Then, soon after, redistributing that “wealth” to others at a nearby May Day rally, made merry because of the danceable tunes of @brassyourheart (which may now have some tiny water jugs on a drum or two because this marching band can #AlwaysCarryABeat!).

There are so many others reasons, of course, to wear one’s #ACAB on their sleeve (or water bottle) this May Day, when so many universities and colleges are liberating spaces of solidarity for Gaza, and in the process, powerfully demonstrating that #AutonomousCommunitiesAreBeautiful.

And likewise, so many police are painfully demonstrating that #AllCopsAreBrutal—underscoring that cop cities (aka policing) everywhere must be abolished, from every river to every sea, just as the Haymarket martyrs also fought and alas died for, in part.

Next May Day, in liberation!

#CareNotCops
#CommonsNotCapitalism
#SolidarityNotStates
#TryAnarchismForLife
#UntilAllAreFree

(Ongoing love+solidarity to the brave+bold folks at @occupycalpolyhumboldt for gifting the world the joy of a humble water jug vs. cop during their occupation)

On 19 April, on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I learned two new things from my beautiful circle of Jewish anarchist friends.

I learned that the state of Israel, in one of its many moves to consolidate power-over (including over many of us Jews) through rewriting history and bending language to its will, changed the name of the Holocaust from what many survivors were calling it: “churbn” (“catastrophe” in Yiddish).

I already knew that the Israeli state changed “Holocaust remembrance” to a different date than April 19 to erase the anti-Zionist sensibility of the uprising’s key player—the Bund.

I learned too that one of my all-time favorite books, a memoir by Bernard Goldstein titled “Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto,” was originally titled “The Stars Bear Witness,” borrowing a line from the Bund’s anthem.

I say “all-time fav” not because it’s a pleasant read. Not at all. It follows the ghettoization, starvation, and murder of most of Warsaw’s Jews at the hands of fascism. Yet it also documents how longtime anarchistic infrastructure allowed for the kind of organizing, communal bonds, and determination that supported resistance before and through the uprising—including when death was a certainty for most.

Even if the only ones left to bear witness were the stars.

It’s the liminal time+space of pesach now, this first night of days ahead in which we Jews are compelled to revisit a story of past enslavement, direct actions to resist it, and moving from the narrowest of places—displacement, loss, and trauma—toward liberation. It was pesach when the Warsaw Uprising began too. Today, on this pesach, it’s the ghettoization, starvation, and murder of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of a fascism called Zionism (Jewish and Christian), but also longtime Palestinian resistance to it and global solidarity for a free Palestine.

The stars must bear witness—again, when it should have been never again for everyone.

I turn to my Jewish anarchist ancestors, setting their legacy among the stars, knowing they fought for a (w)holy different world that could have been. That we still fight for, side by side with all freedom fighters: #SolidarityNotStates.

Or to quote Emma Goldman, who wrote the following lines in Yiddish in 1907 when arguing against those promoting Zionism:

“We people have enough trouble from the state without establishing another one and becoming like the old bandits. You want to come up with a new Jewish state, but no, I think that the task of the Jews and their assignment in the world is to demolish and make a furnace of the nation-state.”

(Shoutout to Anna Elena Torres for translating and sharing Emma’s counter-vision)

#UntilAllAreFree

“Solidarity is greater than fear”!

And solidarity is also our best weapon, sticking side by side until #AllAreFree, whether of prison, state repression, or charges! Or in the beautiful sense of inhabiting the free and ecological societies and communities of free peoples that we dream of, fight for, and already prefigure in various ways.

Part of that solidarity is coming in the form of yet another webinar for anyone in the @stopcopcity and @defendatlantaforest orbit, but especially those facing the heavy boot of state repression. It’s made possible thanks to my remarkable pals in so-called Canada and their willingness to share their experiences of dealing with conspiracy after the G20 almost 14 years ago, and @firestormcoop, willing to host and share a recording after!

Here are the details! Share widely!

Solidarity Is Greater Than Fear:
Lessons from G20 to Stop Cop City

Monday, September 18
7:00 pm EST

Virtual event!

To watch the webinar:
bit.ly/g20solidarity

Join former G20 codefendants and organizers Cedar, @lawandprotest, Mandy Hiscocks, Syed Hussan, and @harshawalia8 for a roundtable conversation. They will discuss their experiences of how they dealt with the ups and downs of conspiracy charges, state repression, and movement solidarity following the anti-G20 mobilizations in 2010 in Toronto, ranging from coping with emotions to avoiding isolation, to legal and political and strategic lessons for movements, and more.

In collaboration with Firestorm Books, https://firestorm.coop/

#SolidarityNotStates
#CareNotCops

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 inside our circles—whipped up, manipulated, and cruelly exacerbated by the state—are sometimes the hardest, and way too predictable or familiar; here, often our tools are rusty or underutilized, or get lost in the mess of all else we have to do.

This time, maybe due to 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