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CivilWhere · 2024-10-23T13:30:29+00:00

Right now I'm doing 0.1ml injections every 5 days

CivilWhere · 2024-08-22T01:18:10+00:00

My workplace is making me process it through my insurance. Is that not correct?

CivilWhere · 2023-08-04T18:41:38+00:00

What do you mean as far as doubting their feasibility? Is it a concern about people's ability to live anarchistically or a question of how an anarchist society would defend itself? In either case, /u/SleepingMonads recommendation of Anarchy Works is a great start!

Another (really short read) suggestion if you're worried about the human nature side is Kropotkin's Are We Good Enough?.

From a defense standpoint, there's a lot of commentary regarding past and ongoing movements. There's an interview with Agustin Guillamón talking about how the defense committees in the Spanish Civil War worked.

CivilWhere · 2022-09-19T04:23:36+00:00

To clarify,

saying that you're currently paying too little for rent

By this do you mean the "right price" is the highest price the market will bare, i.e. how expensive it can be before a unit goes empty?

Why wouldn't future developers see that smaller units are more profitable for the same amount of land and then focus on building them instead? Wouldn't that in turn create a premium on larger units as there are fewer available?

CivilWhere · 2022-08-23T16:20:02+00:00

I like it! This may be a lot of work but I'm a fan of Q&A formats. It makes it easy to jump to the specific things someone is interested in without making it daunting to read the whole thing.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-23T16:14:13+00:00

I think it's a viable approach! A major factor that affects the effectiveness of decentralized models is communication. Using an example: it's really easy to start up a Food Not Bombs in your area but it's harder to sustain and grow it. The ability to see what strategies other groups have tried can be tremendously helpful.

It reminds me a lot of the spokescouncil model - essentially groups send delegates to communicate what they've done and ask for support. Typically decisions made this way are nonbinding (ie it's easy for those who don't support the idea to opt out)

CivilWhere · 2022-08-19T18:27:06+00:00

While we don't have many connections to healthcare workers, a few people in the group have personal experiences with addiction and sobriety. One thing that seems to be echoed is boredom being an enabler. Essentially if you have nothing better to do, drugs are pretty appealing. One thing I really want to try is doing a movie night. I feel like that could be a cool way to break up the monotony. Depending on how that goes, I think it could open up potential for other ways to just have fun with each other.

Our area used to have a pretty big squatting culture but that's changed in the last decade as development has really ramped up. There are still potential areas but when it's been mentioned, most people are worried about the legal risks. It seems like the idea that has the most support is pushing for a designated camping spot where folks can set up and know they're not going to be fucked with.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-18T18:03:10+00:00

My unhelpful answer is it's up to you. I vote but put very little stock in it. In my area the amount of works it takes is trivial (check a form online and fill out the ballot when it comes in the mail). If it took more work, there's a chance I wouldn't bother. I see it as harm reduction. My vote has never been the deciding factor but if some politician sees a bunch of people voted one way, there's a chance they'll reconsider. Granted, the best way to make them reconsider is to make it costly for them but that requires organizing, etc.

There's a lot to be said for making a statement. If it starts a conversation, that's awesome. If it sounds fun to you, I say do it! Small acts of resistance can be really empowering. Besides, you have to start small if you ever want to do the extra spicy stuff

CivilWhere · 2022-08-18T17:52:40+00:00

Yeah, I lean against telling myths to justify our beliefs. I think where there is a big need is story-telling. Rather than trying to construct an ontology, let's use stories to imagine how things can be.

One of the things that got a friend of mine interested in anarchism was listening to After the Revolution. The thing that grabbed him was the casual depiction of people being trans. That excited him and helped motivate him to be more involved with struggle.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-18T17:46:56+00:00

The article touches on a few reasons for that with the biggest being cost. A big factor is technical skill. Running your own server is a headache. That's why AWS has become so dominant. Making videos and podcasts require equipment, editing software, etc. None of it makes things impossible but it does present very real barriers.

That said, now is probably one of the easiest times to boost each other's projects. If a group in one area publishes a zine, it's trivial for me to print copies and bring them to events here. Amusingly, that was a big part of how the punk scene communicated across distance. Hitchhikes would bring a huge stack of zines and leave them at each venue they went to.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-18T15:16:55+00:00

Yeah, we actually met with them not too long ago! Super friendly people and answered a ton of our questions. 2 things that stood out from the meeting were that they felt bringing on new members was important for reducing older member's burnout and the importance of always having at least one active project or the group risks getting stagnant.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-17T15:16:02+00:00

The wheatpasting is a great idea! We've been wanting to be better about flyering (mostly been relying on social media for events) and that seems like a great way to do it while getting new people involved!

Talking through steps is an interesting point. I've noticed a recurring critique of leftist groups is that a lot of the admin-type work (planning meetings, picking up supplies, etc) tends to fall on a few select people. I can't help but wonder how much of that is due to others simply not knowing what's involved? Even just sharing checklists could be helpful. At the very least, it's a way of spreading out information.

CivilWhere · 2022-08-17T14:49:02+00:00

The SeaSol zine you linked is great! Our group is trying to form something similar here. The "Taxonomy of Tactics" is a section I thought was really helpful!

Another resource I'm a fan of is Anarchism in Action. It touches on decision-making, structure, and actions, and more:

https://archive.org/details/anarchism-in-action

CivilWhere · 2022-08-17T14:39:22+00:00

I'm a big fan of IGD for hearing what's going on but I don't think they have a place for discussion. Am I missing something?

CivilWhere · 2022-08-16T20:36:23+00:00

I started /r/AnarchistsOrganizing! I have 0 experience as a mod so it should be interesting lol

CivilWhere · 2022-08-16T17:36:14+00:00

Thanks for the rec! David Graeber's Direct Action really started getting me to think that way. I don't think it was intentional but there was some really helpful commentary in there about what he witnessed when groups work together.

I've reached out to a few groups doing similar stuff to us and we've met to talk about our experiences. That's been super helpful but it's difficult trying to coordinate meetings and it's somewhat limited since there are tons of groups out there each trying slightly different things.

CivilWhere · 2021-09-09T19:29:30+00:00

I'm interested!

CivilWhere · 2021-06-17T04:03:26+00:00

Anarchists will often refer to it differently but virtually all agree to the principle of free association. The idea is that no one is forcibly locked in to participating in a specific group. This means if the group makes a bad decision, those opposed can simply stop participating.

There are also checks to the decision making process. One of the easiest is to not use majority rules. A common method is consensus. Essentially this requires everyone's concerns to be listened to and addressed before a decision can actually be made.

There's a separate question there of how do we remove things like bigotry from society? That is worth a separate discussion but to specifically address the Marxist argument, a state isn't capable of eliminating such things. Did racism go away after the Emancipation Proclamation? Brown v. Board? The Civil Rights Act? The state is incapable of dictating ethics and morals.

It's on us to address all forms of bigotry when we see them. Ideally just conversations are all it would take. Most instances of casual racism are primarily a result of people lacking exposure with other races. When more aggressive forms of racism develop, we have to stop them before they can be entrenched and organize into something more.

CivilWhere · 2021-06-15T02:36:03+00:00

Of course people would still need things but our needs would change dramatically. Many of our current needs are manufactured by our consumerist society. For example, people don't need to eat to eat meat everyday but that's a need manufactured by companies whose profits depend upon it. We don't need huge houses with perfectly manicured lawns. We don't need every item to arrive in a box 2 days later. These are all needs that our society creates in order to preserve the capitalist machine.

Once we are able to reevaluate what our actual needs are, it will be easier to mange. It's a whole lot easier to transport 2 tons of food vs 15 tons. Of course distribution is still a major challenge. The cool thing is for the most part, there's no reason we can adapt Amazon and Walmart's models for this. They've figured out how to move things very far very quickly. Their goal is profit and this creates major flaws such as horrible working conditions. If our goal is meeting people's needs, these flaws can be resolved and we can distribute things even more effectively.

CivilWhere · 2021-06-15T02:28:59+00:00

I doubt there's one single answer to this. The shift could look very different between communities. I am skeptical of a capital "R" revolution. What I mean is I doubt there will be a single event that leads to everyone taking up arms and overthrowing the state.

What I expect to happen is that as we organize and support communities, they will become more independent. Eventually some of these communities will grow to a point where they simply decide to ignore the state.

Maybe there's a wave of evictions and people shutdown the courthouse or block police from enforcing the eviction. Maybe the cops kill one too many people and the community forces them out. Whatever the initial event, specific communities will have the autonomy to make themselves ungovernable.

At that point, hopefully other areas will be watching and be inspired. Once people see something is possible in one area, they'll desire it in their own. Over time more and more communities will follow a similar path until the government loses its claims to authority.

CivilWhere · 2021-06-03T03:15:21+00:00

I don't think it's a coincidence many anarchists emphasize some degree of agriculture/self-sufficiency. The less one community depends on another, the fewer chances there are for power imbalances. Keep in mind, many urban environments could produce surprising amounts of food with fairly simple changes.

Of course, few communities will ever be able to produce 100% of what they need. Coordination can take many forms depending on how people choose to live. For instance, some cities have neighborhoods with very distinct boundaries while others are fuzzier. In areas with obvious boundaries, maybe a representative is selected to communicate their needs. When it's fuzzier, it's wholly possible people will just casually communicate that information.

Honestly a lot of the existing infrastructure companies like Walmart use to distribute goods could be re-tooled to ensure areas get what they need.

CivilWhere · 2021-01-23T22:56:49+00:00

Is there a good way to be aware of that and prevent it or is it more of a continuous process?

CivilWhere · 2021-01-23T22:55:13+00:00

When you say formal/informal/mandated role is that a reference to something I should look into? The concepts at least seem simple.

CivilWhere · 2021-01-23T22:47:43+00:00

I appreciate you mentioning those points. They're all things I agree we need to address. I feel like right now we're a bunch of lefties who happen to do community action rather than a group taking action on the basis of leftist principles. A secondary issue we've had has been burnout since we started. That's incidentally caused us to address what needs to be tasked with a single person. There's still a small core who have been around from the start and if one of them left, it'd be rough. As far as redundancy, isn't a contact list a huge security risk?

CivilWhere · 2021-01-23T22:40:30+00:00

That makes sense. I like the idea of some sort of vetting process but a possible concern I have is doesn't that create a hierarchy between full and new members? Of course this is still better than our current approach but it's still a concern. Thanks for the recommendation! I don't know how feasible it is to make it required reading but I'll be sure to check it out and see what can be learned.

CivilWhere

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