2025-02-01
The flip side of crisis is opportunity
Remember: they want us to be afraid. The way to resist is build community and solidarity by coming together in our neighborhoods. It is feeding each other at potlucks. It is organizing neighborhood defense and mutual aid care. It is making the focus of our lives building solidarity with neighbors. Organize. Talk. Organize. Celebrate with each other.
We build resistance by building community SOLIDARITY.
And it doesn't hurt to fuel it with some righteous fucking anger. A favorite of mine from the 1990s was Rage Against the Machine.
And it doesn't hurt to study the history of people's resistance in the US. In my time in Memphis we ran a small info shop library out of the deCleyre co-op and it was stocked full of such books. At various points we also created newsletters, study groups, action campaigns and a couple of mini-conferences that mixed our effort to explore the people's history of resistance with our day-to-day actions in Memphis.
As we explored the history of indigenous resistance we also campaigned for the release of American Indian Movement political prisoner Leonard Peltier with marches and multi-day campouts at the Federal building in downtown Memphis. As we studied the history of early radical, direct action labor movement of the late 1800s and the Wobblies in the early 1900s we actively supported local labor organizing. The US was built on genocide, slavery and white supremacy but along with that was a constant resistance to break down the systems put in place by the white patriarchy. Knowing the rich tapestry of that resistance can feed our struggle today.
Yesterday a friend shared this video of neighbors in Tennessee coming to the defense of a family whom was being targeted by ICE agents. I shared with a family messages thread and young relative replied that he was terrified of what was coming in the next four years. As I read his reply I was reminded of the likelihood that he and many other Americans are not aware of the deep history of freedom struggles in the US. Of course I can't know what he and others know or don't know. It's been a long time since I was in school but I don't recall the people's history being taught. And with good reason.
The history of people's struggles can serve as the building blocks for a foundation of resistance. That history is our cultural heritage and it serves to inspire as well as to inform us what has been done before. It is a glimpse of what is possible when we work together. Most of what we face now is just a repeat of the old and never ending repression and system to maintain the power structures of privilege. And our resistance has been there the whole time.
Perhaps, perhaps, in the long trail of time, everything we go through in the next few years will prove to be the cultural kickstart, a vaccination that was needed to reboot that part of our cultural story that his been forgotten in recent decades. It would be quite a thing to see us rediscover the joy and beauty of deep solidarity and direct action. This is as much a part of our cultural heritage as white supremacy and genocide.
Nothing we do going forward is going to be easy. It's going to be a huge, painful mess to work through. Only time will tell how we do.
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