Notices by cedar@kolektiva.social

@Gigi shared this earlier, but police in Canada posed as tea vendors to massively collect DNA from the Kurdish community at a cultural event. They identified a relative of the person they were looking for which led them to make an arrest.

The most surprising thing about this situation is that the police in Canada owned up to it.

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Lots of Louise Michel content today, love to see it.

One piece of her legacy that doesn't get enough attention is her support for the struggle of the Indigenous Kanak people of New Caledonia against French colonialism.

She was exiled there after the commune along with other communards who were spared from execution, but she was one of the only ones to actually get on side with the Kanak uprisings that took place -- most of the other deportees chose whiteness and took the side of their jailers.

Bonnano has influenced more than any other #anarchist (who I haven't met), especially his text Locked Up. So much of the analysis in there helped me make sense of my own experience of #prison and to position myself within it with more integrity.

In particular, the critique of participation was useful to me. Bonnano describes the prison system as opening up, creating more options for prisoners to participate in their own oppression as a way of accessing privileges or less prison-like forms of punishment. He emphasized that this is a way of isolating the hardened ones who will be left to rot in ever darker dungeons while also being an insidious form of social control over those who participate. It is a way prison extends itself out into supposedly free society...

At my first sentencing, we refused to take any form of conditional sentence and insisted on doing straight time because we didn't want to be our own jailers. It was harder in some ways, but it meant we came out with our heads up.

So thanks Alfredo. I'm sure I will keep returning to that text and to the rest of your work.

Phone Security Tips!

Police in Ontario are targeting solidarity activists' phones and using the information they get to lay charges. Here are some tips for staying safe while staying active.

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@hakan_geijer
It's so slippery when anarchists get involved in movements with left leadership without their own organizing or even analysis to draw on. You end up saying or repping things that don't make sense, like celebrating the militarization of struggle. I don't think you get free with totally clean hands, but I do believe in prefiguration, in creating the social relations you want immediately.

I'm visiting some old friends and am watching them through the window as they plant garlic for next year. We spent the morning talking about how to remain an active anarchist long term, what it really takes.

One thing that stood out to us is the importance of continuing to make new friends, even as most people stop doing that as they hit 40. Which means probably having a lot of younger people in your life.

We all see some challenges there around embracing the fire and drive that folks in their 20s often bring to organizing while also acknowledging our own need for stability and predictability.

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I want to believe there is a relationship between struggles locally and globally, but then the Israeli military kills 3000 children and my best idea is start a social centre in my neighbourhood and it all starts to feel a bit like bullshit.

@hakan_geijer
I got to the point where I could fumble through novels, do political translation, and chat about life. It's a hard language, but totally do-able.

@hakan_geijer
Me! I did it daily for six years to be able to do translation during the Syrian rev and also to welcome Syrian migrants in our community. I kinda lost the thread on it a few years back, but I'd be glad to share tips and resources.

@hakan_geijer
I love that aspect too, where it talks about how every piece of land is equally important to the health of watersheds, even cities, and that wildness and connection to place is always possible.

The indigeniety and spirituality piece is super interesting. The text is very much speaking to other settlers and discourages them from adopting a nature-based spirituality, since this kind of connection can only emerge over generations. I guess this could be either the kind of appropriative new age type of spirituality or the derrick Jensen talk to the trees kind.

I'm glad you liked it! I wish more projects would pick up where that one left off and continue building ecological knowledge in an antiauthoritarian way. Like the tour they did where they went around doing workshops on contested urban and suburban wild spaces, I'd love to see more of that.

Have you never read Towards an Anarchist Ecology? Oh my gosh! Either print off the zine at the link above or read it online starting here:

https://knowingtheland.com/2013/04/08/towards-an-anarchist-ecology-introduction/

"We are settlers on this land, raised in cities, rootless, and alienated from the ecosystems we can’t help but be part of. But we want to unlearn what we have been taught by the dominant culture, and in the process, we want to re-learn joy, connection, and wonder, while embracing grief and loss in order to heal. We want to decolonize, and to do this, we need to build a new kind of relationship with the land. We want to take steps towards an anarchist ecology, towards a knowledge of the land that is anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian."

@hakan_geijer
Nice! I'd be curious to hear what you think once you've had time to go through it.

@hakan_geijer
Yeah, it is hosted on indybay:

https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2014/01/28/towards-anarchist-ecology.pdf

It's all old school cut and paste, real cute :)

At the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair, there was a workshop on anarchist ecology based on the classic text Towards and Anarchist Ecology by Knowing the Land is Resistance:

https://knowingtheland.com/2014/01/28/new-zine-collecting-towards-and-anarchist-ecology/

It was based on the chapter called Re-enchanting, about how maintaining a connection to wild spaces can fuel us in struggle and nourish our spirits.

One participant brought up a critique of affect-driven politics, of having our engagements shaped by what feels good. They said Re-enchanting was the part of the text that spoke to them least and were surprised the presenter chose to focus the workshop on it. Here are a couple of reflections on that:

Anarchist organizing is unique in that, whatever its goals, it tries to immediately create in some small way the world you want to live in.

Horizontal organizing, autonomy, and solidarity in my projects give me a taste of what's possible.

I've always found that anarchist ideas spread better by creating experiences for people than through texts or debates. Bring people into anarchist organizing, let them feel it. Create situations of autonomy where people get to feel powerful and see how quickly folks start to seek them out for themselves.

@anarchopunk_girl
Sounds like you're talking about social war :)

@hakan_geijer
The difference between an ideology and a shared conclusion is the process that goes into it. An often very repetitive process, but certainly better than the alternative.

Having to argue that demos don't need marshalls wearing reflective vests...

Anarchists have held a hundred demos here in the last decade and our tools have always been self-organization and autonomy in the streets, not creating a group of people whose job is to manage the crowd.

Yes, you want some people to show up planning to hold the front and back and sides, some people who shut down intersections, but these people don't need to specialize, set themselves apart from the rest of participants. Because anyone can do it and in fact we want anyone to do it.

The difference between a crowd and a social force is self-organization. The whole purpose of demos, to me, is to increase self-organization and combativity, to become a force. It might seem like I'm exaggerating, but importing a practice of marshals to our scenes goes in the opposite direction.

A friend once told me that one of the roles of anarchists is to have the same conversations over and over.

I love meeting new people and finding ways to work together, even if sometimes it feels like I've been having the same debates for a decade. It is worth it though in that we contribute to the overall political culture and maybe find a few accomplices along the way.