Weblog
04/09: anarchy (magazine) and capitalism
i know it will sound disingenuous, but it's frustrating to have people focus so much on the AK part of issue 64 (a la libcom and infoshop threads), although of course putting the bob black review online makes that focus somewhat inevitable.AK is relevant because it is symptomatic of a lot of assumptions that people aren't generally explicit about. like what sustainable means, and what a real anarchist struggle is (if one believes that workers are the base of a real anarchist change, then AK's position makes more sense than if one believes that resisting work is a more anarchist perspective), etc.
i am hoping that this issue of ajoda is only the first part of a more critical discussion about how we interact with capitalism. and i wish
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26/03: anarchy and criticism
so i made a lot of mistakes in the past month.several little ones, things that could've been caught by proofreaders, or other editors, but weren't.
the latest big one was from confusion about how the bar code works on the magazine. so once again, we have to get stickers made - which is money that we just don't have.
and, just like last time, this time i think i finally understand enough now to get it right from now on. but it's a learning process - again, part of the deal of taking on a project that is made up of pieces that none of us have ever done before. no matter how many times i think to ask for advice (not my strongest suit), there is always some question
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26/09: fight club
i am working on a workshop for the RAT conference.it is a workshop on the theory and philosophy of anarchist self defense, defining "anarchist" narrowly and "self" broadly.
addressing the questions of what, as anarchists, we identify with strongly enough to defend,
what are the uses and drawbacks of thinking in combative terms about what we're doing,
what do we do differently when we think about fighting for our (anarchist) lives,
and what kind of fighting is anarchist.
the motivation was thinking about a) the green scare, b) a long standing local reading group being called too mean/exclusionary, c) local pancake breakfasts started by anarchists that are no longer attended by anarchists, d) gentrification, and e) intimate violence.
and of course, everyday life.
the motivation was also my desire to have people around me who are willing and prepared to fight
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15/09: The good in the mote
i've been thinking about roles, and the constant negotiation between being an anarchist (i.e. in total resistance to almost everything that is taken for granted in this culture) and actually living in the world (and getting something done).it's challenging from how one measures success (good relationships? product? self expression? being understood? promoting ideas? making money?) to how to interact with partners to to what projects one chooses, and so on.
being in the world at all means engaging in fucked up dynamics, there is no way to live (as a native of urban US anyway) - despite dumpstering,
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25/08: Transitions & potential
I mentioned last time what a big deal it is to take on a project like AJODA. With 25 years (then) of reputation (not all positive necessarily, but distinctive and worthwhile in that distinction) not a voice to be muddied, even while adding some treble, some bass, and some back up singers (to overwork that metaphor).So we have ongoing questions of what to change, and how to change, and
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12/08: Getting Along
Someone was telling me that it seemed like the AJODA crew didn’t get along very well, and that surprised me. I think we get along, but it’s certainly a different kind of relationship than we had when we started with the magazine. That’s not only inevitable but appropriate, I think.Taking on a publication,
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05/08: Help*
What does it take to do things that are hard?How and of whom do we ask for help? And what kind of help do we ask for?
Various people want to write for the magazine, but for various reasons, including time, confidence, and weird-unnameable-psychological
-issues-that-i-don’t-necessarily-want-to-know-about, are not able to finish, or sometimes even start, writing.
For a long time I tried nagging people, nagging being the main behavior modification tactic that is promoted by this culture for people in weak positions. in my defense, usually the victims did actually ask for it. “Just remind me when the deadline is,” “just send me emails so I don’t forget,” “no, this time really nag me.”
It never worked.
So I’ve started getting
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28/07: Small and Stinky, but Ours
After doing some research when we were still just talking about taking on the magazine, four years ago, we decided that it made sense to become a nonprofit with the feds. Mostly because it could save us significant amounts on postage.As you might imagine, there was some fear that creating a nonprofit for a project that includes a title like “anarchy” would lead to some difficult questions, or just be a waste of the time and money ($500 that could have been spent to publish) that went into it.
On the other hand, it seemed like it would be not too difficult because one of us was in the middle of getting nonprofit status for another group, and was willing to take on doing it for us also. I was delighted to do only the writing of the mission, to have someone else do the forms, because at the merest whiff of the B* word, my brain melts like those clocks in the dali painting.
However, the person who was to take us through this process started having a hard time and was unable to finish, or in fact even to give back any of the writing that I had done (my fault for not saving copies, i know).
*rhymes with fleurocracy.
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