Reasons to hope

A week ago, a Boston prosecutor charged 13 pro-Palestine protesters with “promoting anarchy,” a special law created over a century ago when anarchists were the major threat to this noble, orderly, law-abiding country. If they’re convicted, they face up to three years in prison and will be permanently prohibited from working as a teacher in any school, public or private. The prosecutor bringing the charges is a Democrat.

A couple days ago in Catalunya, a close friend was one of several people beaten up and arrested at a protest attempting to blockade an event featuring a far Right Zionist who would be speaking against immigration. They’re out for now, but all charged with assaulting the cops.

Around the same time, I got a message from a friend in Chicago, telling me of the spirit of solidarity in the face of ICE terror, the alertness and willingness of strangers ready to jump out and stop the pigs at a moment’s notice to prevent their neighbors from being taken away, the tools and structures spreading spontaneously to help this work become more coordinated. Them telling me they had hope… I was breathing easier for the rest of the day.

Today I woke up from a bad dream, and spent most of the day trying not to fall into a deep pit. It means I didn’t get any work done, which I feel guilty about every time I have one of those days.

I want to focus on the good things, though.

The fundraiser is up, and spreading in multiple languages. Will you help spread it too?

https://www.firefund.net/pathstoecorevolution

I was telling a couple old friends, I don’t know how many big projects I have left in me, but this one feels important. If we could convince a big chunk of society to finally turn their backs on capitalism and all the institutions of power, to understand the ecological crisis as something that enfolds most of the social crises, that fundamentally it’s about relationships with the rest of the living world that colonialism took away from us, if we can spread anarchist and anti-state Indigenous methodologies for confronting questions of survival and revolution, there might actually be hope for these next few decades.

In the end, most people aren’t convinced by reasons or hypotheticals, but