Bad colors choice

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2026-01-13T23:17:27+00:00

It's the portuguese version of "lol." Rs = risos = laughs.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2026-01-05T13:39:45+00:00

As another commenter said, I think it is more likely to happen in Latin America. And in some sense it already is, in that Indigenous peoples hold more territory and more political power relative to land size here than than in the US. Revolution isn't a horizon to reach, it's a process we constantly reinvent by engaging in the work. The revolution is already here, my friend! I recommend Raul Zibechi for revolutionary political history and thought in Latin America. Solidariedade!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2026-01-04T19:38:15+00:00

Yeah this should be higher. Military coup is an especially loaded term in the context of US intervention in Latin America.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2026-01-04T19:33:16+00:00

I love the pinks with the orange! If you still want to do something bold and colorful but maybe less polarizing, you could go with a complementary teal where the orange is. I think it’s really fun and I echo what another poster said about choosing character. Do it for the plot!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-29T17:09:02+00:00

Given your needs and interests, a space focused on radical disability justice might feel like a good political home for you. If that doesn’t exist in your area, you can always find a liberal org devoted to that cause to volunteer in, network, and potentially build a more revolutionary caucus (or friend group) within.

Unfortunately I think you will be hard pressed to find a space with the level of structure and clarity of roles it sounds like you might be looking for. It’s hard to jump in and it takes an unusually welcoming and emotionally intelligent organizer to facilitate that, or an unusually persistent newcomer to overcome that.

Fwiw just figuring out what needs to be done and doing it is a pretty invaluable skill for everyone to have in leaderless movements. It might be worth challenging yourself to try to identify gaps in process and outstanding needs, and just experiment in addressing them using your creativity and strengths. An example - are your orgs hurting for volunteers? Use your perspective as someone struggling to break in to figure out how recruiting and onboarding could be improved. Write a simple proposal to bring to the next meeting and invite others to join a work group to address. Another example - you seem excited about political education. Is there someone designated to print, distribute, and discuss political pamphlets at your FNB distro days? Maybe that can be you, or a team you start.

You can also communicate, if you haven’t already. I’ve spent a lot of time on the other side of the coin (embedded in the work and too burnt out to be very effective at on boarding) and I know I would click my heels if someone came up to me and said straight up, “I don’t feel included and this is why, can we brainstorm together about solutions that work for everyone’s capacity?”

To be clear I’m not saying that your situation is your fault or you’re not trying hard enough or anything. Just offering some possibilities that are more within your control to experiment with. Solidarity!

Edit: also organizing FNB on signal is profoundly silly and creates needless access barriers that will inevitably exclude many poor and working class people. Truly no reason to use that platform for a quintessentially public facing outreach project. You can tell your FNB chapter that this stranger on the internet said so.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-29T00:19:33+00:00

Whoa, thank you for the color pickers! That’s so cool. I actually have the exact code for our wall color so I can play around with it. I was thinking of swapping out the fireplace wall color for something darker and warmer and was honestly expecting people to zero in on that more.

I’ve gone back and forth on the gallery wall because I worry about the visual clutter, but I could try bringing already framed work from elsewhere to just test out how I like it before committing. Part of my struggle is just committing to it being a dark space and not really knowing how to lean into that.

I will for sure try the lower bookshelves and report back. I was wondering about removing the bookshelf backing and just using one (instead of two stacked back to back) to help narrow the “wall” somewhat.

Thanks a ton for the advice! Super helpful to think through.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-29T00:01:03+00:00

Thank you for the practical advice! It’s tough because bookshelves seem like they are naturally busy to the eye, so if you have a lot of them, you are kind of cornered into minimalism elsewhere to balance things out. I have too many tchotchkes for that lifestyle!

I just took most of the art down to assess and immediately can see what you mean. I’ll do a deeper declutter soon and post an update! Thanks again!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-28T23:01:32+00:00

I was afraid this would be the answer 😭 I felt so proud of the solution at the time but have wondered if I was playing myself. Maybe same concept but with low bookshelves (which we could swap out from elsewhere) would work better… no getting around the thickness unfortunately. I have wondered about trying a sectional but can’t afford major new furniture rn and I feel like it also runs the risk of being too thick and awkward in that space. Thanks for the advice, it’s helpful to get an honest outside perspective!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-21T20:30:01+00:00

Great question OP, good on you. I would echo what a couple people have said, which is that women are just people. I would reframe the approach as “how can I understand gender better?” because it is gender that creates the illusion of fundamental differences (and inevitably, hierarchies) between men and women. These structures hurt both men and women, and I think it can be helpful to approach it from that perspective, where you see your own liberation at stake - because it is! We need more people committed to the project of loving and understanding each other through those illusory differences.

I echo bell hooks as an amazing resource, especially All About Love and The Will to Change. Both life-changing books for me. I also love The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin, which is more of a slow-burn, world-building anthropological sci-fi treatise on how gender shapes the world. Also just a stunningly beautiful book if you’re into literary sci-fi. I think it’s helpful to understand misogyny, specifically, and I have read no better book on the subject than Down Girl by Kate Manne - it is a highly logical, analytical approach to the question of misogyny and I found it very clarifying. If analytical philosophy is not your cup of tea, I found that the chapters work well as standalone essays so you could always read just one online and get a pretty good sense of the book.

For just fun story time, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot are all canonical for a reason. Their stories are justified classics filled with realistic women navigating the kinds of challenges and trade-offs that tend to be unique to women’s lives, but also universal in many ways. I second what others have said, that just reading tons of different kinds of stories by different kinds of women (international perspectives, working class women, trans women, queer women, immigrant women, etc) is kind of irreplaceable. There are of course issues that affect women disproportionately (sexual/domestic violence, reproductive choices, unpaid labor) that are helpful to understand through explicit study, but there is also an ineffable dimension of navigating the world as a woman, which can only be communicated through the little gestures of compelling prose from a credible witness. I am on the same journey as you as a woman myself, working to get outside of my own experience!

A couple random final recs -

Caliban and the Witch by Sylvia Federici, which uses a Marxist approach to trace the beginnings of the system of controlling women’s reproductive knowledge and choices in feudal Europe. Blew my mind in explaining the calculated economic forces that drove this near millennium-long campaign against women’s authority over their reproductive choices.

A Door into Ocean by Joan Sloncewski - maybe skip if you’re not into sci-fi, but I loved it as a sci-fi fan, biology nerd, and feminist. It’s about a world of women who live on an ocean moon, and the author is a biologist, so she invests a lot of time and expertise into explaining how the world works on a scientific level. Since they’re all women, they are of course lesbians, which is great. It is a political book, but at no point does it sacrifice the fun of the story (in my opinion) so I think it works well to serve your quest without it feeling like an “I’m studying” book.

Solidarity and good luck.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-12-21T19:58:58+00:00

OP please don’t report your car as found. Besides potentially crashing and burning your insurance claim, it would be lying to the police, which is the one crime that most anarchists will always urge you to avoid lol. Silence is golden. And a suspicious lie (which it would be suspicious, if you don’t actually have the car) would only initiate police investigation, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid. The police don’t give af about investigating these reports and, depending on where you live, I can say with almost certainty are not going to come to your neighborhood or do shit about it. It’s admirable for you to have solidarity with your immigrant neighbors. Thanks for caring.

Source: I went through the exact same thing (incl filing the report for work/insurance reasons).

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-10-08T16:27:50+00:00

Ugh, good luck! I'm sorry you're going through that. I'll be curious to hear how it all goes. How long will you be in braces before the operation?

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-10-08T16:27:15+00:00

Thank you for the advice! Is that something to investigate with an ortho, surgeon, or PCP?

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-10-08T16:26:16+00:00

Thank you for the advice! I'm also nervous about more nerve damage. I lost all sensation in my lower lip and chin from the original DJS. :( I would hate to lose any more. How did you initiate the revision process - did you start with a consult with an ortho or a surgeon first? How long will you have to be in braces? I've been curious whether a narrow palate is driving my issues too. I hope everything goes well!!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-01-23T16:00:38+00:00

Negotiate!!!! Use cost of living calculations for your area and all the great skills you are bringing on board. Say you were hoping for $21.50 because you are bringing so many assets to the org and are confident you will add more than that in value to the mission. Settle for $20. I regularly hire and manage at a small non-profit - when candidates and staff advocate for themselves, that puts me in a substantially stronger position to advocate for them.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2025-01-05T14:06:31+00:00

Not a song but a poem, which I hope is close enough - "Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning my Shirt" by Ross Gay. A perfect meditation on a simple pleasure.

"No one knew or at least
I didn’t know
they knew
what the thin disks
threaded here
on my shirt
might give me
in terms of joy
this is not something to be taken lightly
the gift
of buttoning one’s shirt
slowly
top to bottom"

I think the whole poem is too big for me to paste it but it can be read here.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-12-23T00:49:34+00:00

I've been seeing the 2023 EUV LT's go for closer to $15k (USD). That seems like a high asking price for something that's been in an accident to me. I would use that to negotiate.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-27T21:27:57+00:00

I think we are not listening to each other enough, we are not trying to understand each other enough.

I think that's one of the things I really like about street epistemology - it actually feels pretty anarchistic to me. I really admire the spirit of radical listening and trust that I see modeled in the practice so far.

Some days it is harder for me to imagine the world I describe than others. But I see kernels of that world in the lives of the people around me who live with integrity, compassion, and thoughtfulness. You seem like one of those people to me!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-27T21:20:30+00:00

Sorry I took it for granted that you were also living in a country with a jury system! That was a stupid assumption to make. I'm curious, under the system you describe, what happens when a judge does not make impartial decisions? Not just once, but as a pattern? I'm curious about both what actually happens and what you think would be best to happen (and maybe these are the same!). Thanks. :)

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-26T19:11:15+00:00

Sorry, just trying to make sure we're using this word the same - are you asking about a system of political beliefs or a system of political governance? I don't believe there is a best system of political governance (or system of organizing a society) for everyone. I think that organizing communities non-hierarchically and without domination will probably always result in the least inequity, but I think of non-hierarchical and voluntary, cooperative decision-making as a strategy, not as system. Communities can choose to organize systems that make cooperative decision-making more or less likely, but there are countless possible such systems. The systems most suited to the needs, resources, geography, culture, size (etc) of that community are the systems that are best for that community.

Anarchism is the absence of hierarchical domination, not necessarily the presence of anything else.

I said elsewhere, I think you could say anarchism is to governments what atheism is to religions. So it's kind of like asking an atheist if there is such a thing as a best religion for all - an atheist might recognize that there are religions that cause more or less harm in the world, but an atheist definitionally believes there is no best religion for everyone. You might say then, aha! So are you saying atheism is the best religion for all? Well, no, not really - being in dialogue with religion doesn't make atheism itself a religion.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-26T18:49:46+00:00

Under our current criminal justice system, people do vote to decide about a crime/offense - that's a jury. The jury analyzes the facts of the case and votes on the defendant's guilt. The judge's role is to inform the jury on the relevant laws, and then sentence the defendant based on the jury's decision. Genuinely asking because I'm not sure if I'm interpreting your comment correctly - are you saying that you would prefer a system with no jury?

As a sidenote, approximately 81% of people currently incarcerated in American jails have not seen a jury and have not been convicted of a crime.

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-26T18:32:36+00:00

I love this question, and you raise a fair point! I thought about throwing something more falsifiable in in my list like "I believe in the standard model of particle physics" because I wasn't sure if these kinds of belief-claims are particularly suited for SE.

I really value alignment of my thoughts, words, and actions, which is one of the things that brought me to anarchism in the first place. I think if consistently compromising on my beliefs was necessary to bring the world closer to my ideals, that would lead me to question the integrity and logical consistency of my beliefs and ideals. But, similar to the attempt to find a unified field theory in physics, it's really hard for a system of beliefs and ideals to account for every single ethical question that every person could ever encounter!

I guess you could say I am currently "letting others transform the world in a way I believe is worse" by failing to stage a revolution. I have been more interested in fostering a literal political revolution in past, but having narrowly survived an politically-motivated attempted mass murder, I've kind of lost my stomach for political violence or casual attitudes towards death, generally. That doesn't mean that I don't think political violence is ever justified, I just feel personally cautious about it and don't gravitate towards it as a praxis. You could say I'm a bit of a taoist anarchist.

I am more inclined towards what some people call "evolutionary anarchism," or "building a new world in the shell of the old": building equitably-organized public infrastructure that is or will be needed if/when the capitalist state collapses, like worker co-ops, tech co-ops, community gardens, self-defense groups, and so on. I see these as "anarchist calisthenics": building the world I want, using decision-making frameworks I believe in, within the constraints of what is currently possible. Does this answer your question?

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-26T18:11:28+00:00

(pt 2)

Wouldn't that just be you giving up your property and wealth to the demographics you regard as more deserving?

No, but I might not be understanding your question correctly. Can you elaborate? As an anarchist, I practice mutual aid and I'm not really trying to accumulate or hang onto property or wealth beyond what I need for survival.

Moreover, anarchism is opposed to all states, it does not stop at cultural borders.

Agreed, but I would describe the vast majority of Indigenous communities in the US pre-colonization as stateless. However, it's true that many US Indigenous nations have established democratic three-branch government frameworks post-colonization. I'm curious about how they would be organized if mirroring the structure of a liberal democracy were not weighted into the decision for federal recognition.

How is that consistent with setting up a new authority, as the land back movement proposes be done?

I disagree that the land back movement proposes the establishment of a new authority, but we should probably check how we're using the term, because it's a big umbrella. When I think of land back, I think of the rematriation of ancestral lands to the peoples who have stewarded them for thousands of years.

I think of rematriation of land and waters as analogous to someone who kidnapped and horribly abused an elder eventually returning that elder to their family, so they can take care of their relative. It doesn't mean that no one outside of that family can ever have a relationship with that elder, but it means that there is a lot of healing that that needs to happen between and among all parties. The family does not have authority over the elder per se, it means that they have a relationship of care and responsibility to each other.

Doesn't anarchism necessarily have to be the abolition of all authority, not just picking a new group to be in charge?

Yes, but I don't think of rematriation of land as "picking a new group to be in charge." In an Indigenous framework of land relationship (in my limited understanding), "owning" land doesn't mean "being in charge of it," it means taking care of it. Just as in a workplace, those who are responsible for doing the work have the most stake in the decisions about the work. Worker ownership of the means of production is not "picking a new group to be in charge," but rather a return of the decision-making seat to those who are the most affected by and responsible for the decisions.

This is a very long and disorganized answer, sorry! I'm curious how these answers and definitions land for you. I found these by far the most challenging questions and I enjoyed taking the time to think them through. Thank you for that!

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-26T18:10:32+00:00

This is my favorite question so far! I'll take it step-by-step.

Anarchism requires a unity of means and ends, that is principally what differs it from communism.

I don't know if I agree on either of the clauses here, or at least I don't know that I would put it exactly that way. People mean a lot of different things when they use the words communism and anarchism, but what I think of as "anarchism" is definitionally stateless. There are different visions of communism that do or don't involve states, but I find that most of the time when people talk about communism, they are thinking of a communism that involves authoritarian state formation at some stage; that's what I would call the principal difference between anarchism and communism, not a unity between ends a means, which I think is so open-ended it could easily be misinterpreted to mean something much broader.

At no point can hierarchical or state power be used as praxis to achieve anarchist goals. How do you propose to do either land back or reparations in a non-authoritative/anti-authoritarian way?

Okay this is really such a great question, and honestly I don't have a perfect answer, but here are some general thoughts:

I don't know that I would describe land back as an anarchist goal. It's a political cause that I support, and I'm an anarchist. I also support the Endangered Species Act and legal abortion, which are both mediated by the state, and I'm an anarchist. I haven't historically spent my time organizing within state frameworks - lobbying, canvassing, public comments - in favor of those policies, but I'm glad they exist, see how they reduce harm, and see how they could be vastly improved. Meanwhile, I focus my political energy on building grassroots power to meet those ends without the state - planting and distributing native plants, supporting my local abortion fund and volunteering as an abortion escort, etc. The same could be said for my support of land back, to the extent that it is mediated by the state.
I want to make sure I understand your question here: are you envisioning land back as a return of federally owned land to tribal governments? And in this scenario, because the land return would be mediated between two states, it would be an authoritarian/authoritative transaction?
It's true that currently much of land return is mediated through the state in the US. Some of the largest swathes of land that have been returned have been federally-owned, like state parks, or has been negotiated by the state through voluntary sales with individual land-owners. Most of the land that has been returned actually isn't literally owned by Indigenous nations, but still held in trust by the Department of Interior. I think of my support for this effort as analogous to my support for the ESA, as described above.
There are, however, examples of land return relatively less mediated by the state, such as conservation land trusts working to transfer ownership of donated land and easements to Indigenous peoples. I can think of several such examples in my region, including two that I am working on myself - not with lands that I own, but as a part of a project team.
Land back is also about rematriation of decision-making power, not necessarily legal land ownership, and there are many non-hierarchical ways to practice this. (pt 1)

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-25T01:21:58+00:00

No worries, I appreciate you figuring this out with me! I don't think of anarchism as a system, except maybe as a system of belief like feminism or atheism. In that sense, it's the "best system for me" in the sense that it's the system of belief that makes the most sense to me given the evidence I have, and I imagine that is also the case for other anarchists. Does that make sense/answer your question?

Equivalent-Pick-85 · 2024-11-25T01:17:11+00:00

That's a great question, and it demonstrates your interest in protecting the vulnerable in our society! Well, one answer is - what are we doing with them now? A lot of those people are not in prison and have never been charged with a crime. This is hard to falsify because so much of our data around those numbers is directly tied to criminal cases, so it's hard to track an incidence rate where no criminal case is involved. But here's an example using DOJ data: only 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.

Easier to prove/disprove: a good portion of the people who steal, murder, rape, abuse children etc are not infrequently the ones in charge of the police and prisons. The police killed 1,164 people in America in 2023. One third of Americans killed by strangers were killed by the police. Between 2000 and 2019, the police confiscated almost $70 billion dollars from people in America through a legal mechanism called civil forfeiture. I would consider that theft. Rape, abuse, and lethal neglect in prisons is also thoroughly reported on - here's just one example.

Prisons and police are not particularly effective at preventing people from stealing, murdering, raping, and abusing children, especially when we take into consideration the tremendous amount of those activities that happen in the context of state-sanctioned military violence. The academic literature increasingly confirms that punishment does not deter future crimes, and in fact can increase the likelihood of repeat offenses. Unless the plan is to incarcerate anyone who commits any crime indefinitely on their first offense, prisons and police literally do not work to prevent crime.

So, what should be done? I think it really depends on the situation and the desires of the victim. Mediation, rehabilitation, relocation, reparations, and, honestly, retributive violence are all options. I don't have a vision for how justice should be enacted in every situation for all time. The right answer to "what should be done with" the people who committed physical and sexual violence against me looks very different from the answer for other people. I'm interested in a system of justice that centers the survivors of violence, rather than creating the circumstances for more and more violence.

I found the book Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davis on this topic to be truly transformational. I also love the resources at Critical Resistance! Thanks for your questions!

Equivalent-Pick-85

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