#Society / Social Issues

[myfandomrealitea]

I think one of the things that annoys me the most on the safe space post I made is people barging in to try to dictate how people can find respite, where, and how much respite they're allowed, and why.

"Oh its fine to take a break as long as you don't take too long and immediately launch back into activism again until your next burnout!"

No.

Respectfully; fuck all the way off.

"Yes!! Recharging is so important so you can keep being a good activist!!"

Who asked you? Who declared you Assigner of Respite Rights?

When I was at my worst in terms of mental health, I went a good two years doing absolutely fuck all for the rest of the world. I could barely get out of bed every morning, you can bet I wasn't doom-scrolling war articles and organising charity drives for the homeless.

I was one of the many, many people in the world that needed help.

And as I recovered, activism and fighting for other people were the literal last things on my mind. If they started talking about shootings on the radio I turned it off. If my friends started talking about the latest Worldwide Horror I asked them to stop or I left.

I'm better now, and I made the personal choice to re-engage with activism in the best ways for myself, and I've made the choice to only be an activist when I feel like I can properly be one.

Some people might never get to that point. There are billions of people in the world. Stop screaming at individuals who are tired and broken and need help themselves. Stop assigning blame to the wrong people.

That's not activism or justice knighting.

Its bullying.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Turbulent times are upon us. Already, blockades, demonstrations, riots, and clashes are occuring regularly. It’s past time to be organizing for the upheavals that are on the way.

But getting organized doesn’t mean joining a pre-existing institution and taking orders. It shouldn’t mean forfeiting your agency and intelligence to become a cog in a machine. From an anarchist perspective, organizational structure should maximize both freedom and voluntary coordination at every level of scale, from the smallest group up to society as a whole.

You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.

This leaderless format has proven effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds, as well as what the RAND Corporation calls “swarming” tactics in which many unpredictable autonomous groups overwhelm a centralized adversary. You should go to every demonstration in an affinity group, with a shared sense of your goals and capabilities. If you are in an affinity group that has experience taking action together, you will be much better prepared to deal with emergencies and make the most of unexpected opportunities.

This guide is adapted from an earlier version that appeared in our Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook.

Affinity Groups are Powerful

Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and socialist structures, they function without any need of hierarchy or coercion. Participating in an affinity group can be fulfilling and fun as well as effective.

Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction. Small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.

The Affinity Group is a Flexible Model

Some affinity groups are formal and immersive: the participants live together, sharing everything in common. But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.

A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.

Pick the Scale That’s Right for You

An affinity group can range from two to perhaps as many as fifteen individuals, depending on your goals. However, no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups if need be. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is often to have one affinity group to each vehicle.

Get to Know Each Other Intimately

Learn each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities and backgrounds, so you know what you can count on each other for. Discuss your analyses of each situation you are entering and what is worth accomplishing in it—identify where they match, where they are complentary, and where they differ, so you’ll be ready to make split-second decisions.

One way to develop political intimacy is to read and discuss texts together, but nothing beats on-the-ground experience. Start out slow so you don’t overextend. Once you’ve established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, you’re ready to identify the objectives you want to accomplish, prepare a plan, and go into action.

Decide Your Appropriate Level of Security

Affinity groups are resistant to infiltration because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities.

Once assembled, an affinity group should establish a shared set of security practices and stick to them. In some cases, you can afford to be public and transparent about your activities. in other cases, whatever goes on within the group should never be spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. In some cases, no one except the participants in the group should know that it exists at all. You and your comrades can discuss and prepare for actions without acknowledging to outsiders that you constitute an affinity group. Remember, it is easier to pass from a high security protocol to a low one than vice versa.

Make Decisions Together

Affinity groups generally operate on via consensus decision-making: decisions are made collectively according to the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic voting, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, is anathema to affinity groups—for if a group is to function smoothly and hold together under stress, every individual involved must be satisfied. Before any action, the members of a group should establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what risks they are comfortable taking, and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they can formulate a plan.

Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, it may help to employ a dual approach to preparing. On the one hand, you can make plans for different scenarios: If A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, you can put structures in place that will be useful even if what happens is unlike any of the scenarios you imagined. This could mean preparing resources (such as banners, medical supplies, or offensive equipment), dividing up internal roles (for example, scouting, communications, medic, media liaison), establishing communication systems (such as burner phones or coded phrases that can be shouted out to convey information securely), preparing general strategies (for keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, for example), charting emergency escape routes, or readying legal support in case anyone is arrested.

After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (if necessary, in a secure location without any electronics) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.

Tact and Tactics

An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching agreement with strangers, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action.

At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or at least to complement others’ approaches, even if others do not recognize the value of this contribution. Ideally, most people should be glad of your affinity group’s participation or intervention in a situation, rather than resenting or fearing you. They should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so to employ it themselves, after seeing it succeed and benefiting from that success.

Organize With Other Affinity Groups

An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or security is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, becoming accordingly more comfortable and capable together.

When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—before a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting at which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions. Spokescouncils rarely produce seamless unanimity, but they can apprise the participants of the various desires and perspectives that are at play. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are usually our greatest advantages in combat with a better equipped adversary.

Bottomlining

For affinity groups and larger structures based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to make sure someone can handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group couldn’t show up. Over time, you’ll learn how to handle crises and who you can count on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.

Go Into Action

Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening. Get together with your friends and start deciding what will happen. Don’t go through life in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of discussing what you want to see happen—and making those ideas reality.

Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without comrades with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are likely to be paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, your potential can be multiplied by ten, or ten thousand. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew it or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, the revolution would be accomplished in a few short years.

An affinity group could be a sewing circle or a bicycle maintenance collective; it could come together for the purpose of providing a meal at an occupation or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and occupied and burned down buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band was an affinity group. An affinity group invented the airplane. Another one maintains this website.

Let five people meet who are resolved to the lightning of action rather than the agony of survival—from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.

[queerism1969]

[burninglights]

the revolution is coming, but only if you learn to do the dishes.

You can read all the Marx and Lenin and Troksky in the world, you can own the hammer and sickle flag, you can use a photo of Thomas Sankara as your twitter profile, but theory and grandstanding means jackshit if you aren't going to back your theory up with action.

"but how do I fight against the hyperconsumerism that drives late-stage capitalism?" buy fair trade and ethically sourced! support local artisans! set up a barter system with some mates for skilled crafts and food items! establish a trade network in your community, so you're less reliant on corporations like Amazon!

"how do you want me to seize the means of production?" get involved with citizen advocacy groups! join a trade union or donate to funds to support picketing workers! look, if you wait for ~the revolution~ then you'll be waiting until your dying day. if enough of us organise and do a thousand little acts of revolution every day, then we can at least make a start.

Change soon come, but only if we take the steps to make it.

[bilboyagathechickenfootedhobbit]

The whole public sex discourse is insane. But what goes beyond insane into heart-dropping, what the fuck where did we go wrong territory is this attitude of ‘who cares if kids see? They’ll be having sex one day eventually.’ Like???? Yeah, most likely they will. My six year old kid will one day drive an automobile. Does that mean I should just give him the keys this morning and let him drive himself to school? I mean, he’s going to drive EVENTUALLY, right? By that same token, I should also just give him a tumbler of whiskey and let him take a drag off a cigarette; I mean, he’ll probably try these things one day ANYWAY, may as well be today, right? And since he’s going to learn what sex is, why not invite one of his little friends over and show them how to fuck one another?

Oh wait, does that make you uncomfortable now? The idea of two six year olds being encouraged to have sexual intercourse? DOES THAT SEEM WEIRD??? Why?? I mean, they’re going to do it one day anyway, WHY NOT NOW??? Why NOT get your six year old wasted and zooted and teach them how to properly fuck?? Does that make you feel weird? What are you? Some lame-o virgin who doesn’t know how to party? Weak sauce. See, I happen to be a super cool edge-lord sex god who has had ALL THE SEX and therefore don’t care if anyone sees anyone having sex. Since I, the ultimate Sex Lord, have definitely already had sex it is now appropriate for every single human on earth, regardless of age or anything, to witness anyone else having sex. I mean, I’M okay with it, so therefore everyone else has to be okay with it.

I cannot believe that at the exact same time on this hell site, we have a post going around threatening to kill adults for listening to TikTok’s on full volume in public and a post going around saying everyone is SUPES COOL with people just fucking wherever they feel like in public. So this site is more offended by auditory disruption than literal sex crimes being perpetrated against them.

Make it make sense.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Imagine being 9 years old and asking your dad about the things you're interested in doing when you grow up and he's like "No ❤️! But you can get married, have babies, and then maybe your sons can do those things ☺️🫶 "

[r3n0-5]

What ppl don’t say about being intelligent or multitalented is that you have to hide your skills so others don’t feel insulted, humiliated, or feel like you’re making fun of them for not having the same abilities as you, human beings like to compete between them, and if they find someone who excels at something, the first thought they’ll have is to find a way to exclude that person, so the talented in question doesn’t “steal” the attention from them, so they can be recognized, they’ll find a way to ridicule the “talented one” so others will believe it’s not that brilliant, humans work by ego, and ego also destroys them, destroys the society, and nowadays society is based in capitalism, the capitalism needs this type of behavior to keep humans away from each other, so they don’t work together to destroy it, so humans will always be slaves ‘cause they’re addicted to recognition and instant gratification and individualism will always be attacked ‘cause it’s a form of freedom, and there’s nothing big companies and their bosses hate more than freedom and a mind clear from poison, so if you’re intelligent, talented, whatever word you want to use for it, don’t make yourself little just because everyone laughs at you, if you have an idea that seems crazy for this world, it’s because this world is rotten, not because you’re wrong, keep being free

[ex-foster]

[movedtodykedvonte]

No but seriously if Miles had got home to his parents before Miguel what was Miguel going to do? Snatch him away from his mother and father without a fight?

Would he have even had it in him to actually look at this kid he’s been calling an anomaly and mistake the entire time, shielded by his parents, parents protecting their child, a child, and still just write him off as an anomaly? To match the glare of Miles and justify why he can’t is to protect what is important to him as they hold him? To match the glares of Rio and Jefferson and say they must understand that they have to hand over the focal point of their universe because of predetermined bullshit they could quite literally never understand?

I feel like a stand-off between him and the three of them would be less violent but somehow more of a punch to the gut than actually see them fighting.

[myfandomrealitea]

I hate the constant push to doomscroll, man. I have limited time on this planet, I don’t wanna spend it like the world’s gonna blow up.

BREAKING NEWS:

Local Internet Person wants to spend their life enjoying their existence instead of sitting on technology all day reading about world horrors to the detriment of their own health! The audacity!

Join us for more news at ten.

[dailyanarchistposts]

The way most people talk about climate change we are led to believe we all have an equal part in creating the capitalist nightmare we live in, but that’s a lie. The unsustainable and extractive nature of capitalism grew directly from the ideological and material foundations of European colonization. We cannot hold the entire human species responsible for that. It’s victim blaming.

The vast majority of waste is produced by the same people and institutions who hold power. Fighting for our planet, the health of our land, our food, our homes, our communities, is where the fight against capitalism and white supremacy collide. Any fight for environmental justice must also be a fight for racial justice because BI&POC are the ones who disproportionately bear the weight of climate change.

White Settler Colonialism Is Destroying the Planet, Not Poor BI&POC

Don’t believe the Malthusian and eco-fascist myth that there are too many people on the planet to care for. This is a lie peddled by capitalists, eugenicists, and people who advocate for genocide. We know that every landbase has its limit for how much life it can support (indigenous peoples have been saying this for hundreds of years), but “overpopulation” rhetoric is overwhelmingly used as a means to enforce colonial hierarchies where wealthy white people can maintain lives of access and privilege while poor BI&POC barely survive.

Instead of telling poor BI&POC to have less children or to stop wanting better lives, we should build a movement to fight climate change which centers racial justice, abolishes capitalism, and forces wealthy, predominately white populations to stop hoarding resources.

Here are some Earth Day facts for tomorrow so you don’t fall for the lies:

Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. (Source: the Guardian)

Black communities are exposed to 56% more pollution than is caused by their consumption. For Latinx communities, it is 63%. (Source: American Journal of Public Health)

97% of waste produced in the United States is corporate waste. 80% of businesses are owned & operated by white people. (Source: “The Story of Stuff” & US News)

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5% of the planet’s human population, yet they are protecting 80% of its biodiversity. (Source: National Geographic)

The world’s richest 10% produce half of carbon emissions while the poorest half contribute only 10%. (Source: Oxfam)

The world’s wealthiest 16% use 80% of the planet’s natural resources. (Source: CNN)

We are not all equally “responsible.” White settler colonialism and capitalism are destroying the planet, not poor BI&POC.

[queerism1969]

[tumbler-polls]

[bestcadaverinthejujutsumorgue]

All the clans are clearly mentally ill, that’s the trade off to being hereditary aristocracy clinging to antiquated power, you get the brain demons. The cursed techniques come with curses. But whereas the Kamo keep their embarrassments locked down tight (curse wombs secured, possessed old patriarchs symbolically folded back into the family tree, illegitimate children assimilated) and the Zen’in have the sort of of simmering rot-in-the-walls, sprawling gothic horror disease that only rears its head once every few generations, I think the Gojo have been having public breakdowns since the Meiji era. It would go a long way to explaining why everyone reacts the way they do to Satoru, and why his family is so invisible in the narrative. Oh, a Gojo having manic episodes, saying unsettling things, making vague grandiose threats, and exhibiting eccentric behavior? A likely thing for him to do.

[girltalkcollectives]

‘Women Supporting Women’ Shouldn’t Be a Trend

Let’s talk about this whole “women supporting women” movement that’s plastered all over social media. Don’t get me wrong — I absolutely love seeing women lift each other up. But can we address the elephant in the room? Why is this a “movement” in the first place? Why did we need to make basic human decency into a hashtag?

Think about it: When was the last time you saw #MenSupportingMen trending? Or why isn’t there a viral movement about humans being decent to other humans? The fact that we had to turn women supporting each other into a trendy social media campaign speaks volumes about where we are as a society.

It’s giving very much “bare minimum, but make it aesthetic.”

Here’s what bothers me: We’re celebrating women supporting women like it’s some revolutionary act of kindness, when in reality, it should be as normal as breathing. We’re out here acting like it’s groundbreaking when a woman compliments another woman without ulterior motives or celebrates another woman’s success without feeling threatened.

Let that sink in.

We’ve literally had to create a whole movement just to normalize something that should have been in the default setting. It’s like having a trend called #PeopleBreathingOxygen or #HumansEatingFood. Like… why do we need to make this a thing?

And here’s another layer to unpack: Why is this responsibility primarily placed on women? Why are we the only ones expected to be carrying this torch of supportiveness? Last time I checked, being supportive, kind, and uplifting wasn’t a gendered trait.

The internet is flooded with:

“Girls supporting girls!”

“Women empowering women!”

“Sisters before misters!”

But where’s the energy for:

“Everyone supporting everyone!”

“Humans being decent to humans!”

“Basic respect for all!”

Don’t these sound ridiculous when you spell them out like this? They should, because they’re pointing out things that should’ve been obvious from the start.

The fact that “women supporting women” has become a marketable trend tells us two things:

Society has such low expectations of women’s relationships with each other that we had to brand basic decency

We’re still not addressing the bigger issue of why support and upliftment aren’t universal values

Here’s what really gets me: Brands are now capitalizing on this movement. They’re selling us “girl power” and “women supporting women” merchandise like they didn’t spend decades profiting off of putting women against each other. The same media that thrived on “who wore it better” segments is now preaching about female solidarity. The irony is not lost on me.

And let’s talk about how this movement, while well-intentioned, sometimes feels like it’s putting even more pressure on women. Now, not only do we have to succeed in a system that wasn’t built for us, but we also have to be everyone else’s cheerleader 24/7. When did support become another item on women’s already endless to-do list?

Don’t misunderstand me — I’m all for women supporting women. I’ll shout about my friends’ achievements from the rooftops. I’ll hype up strangers in bathroom lines. I’ll celebrate every woman’s win like it’s my own.

But I’m also tired of acting like this should be remarkable.

I’m tired of it being a “woman’s responsibility.”

I’m tired of it being a trend instead of a norm.

What I want to see is:

Support being genderless

Celebration becoming universal

Kindness becoming standard

Upliftment becoming natural

Because honestly? The real trend should be everyone supporting everyone. Period.

The next time you see #WomenSupportingWomen, ask yourself: Why isn’t this just called being a decent human being? Why did we have to gender basic respect? Why did kindness need a marketing campaign?

Maybe instead of making women’s support for each other a trending topic, we should focus on making it so normal that it doesn’t need a hashtag. Maybe we should expand this energy to include everyone, regardless of gender. Maybe we should make basic human decency the standard, not the exception.

Because at the end of the day, supporting others shouldn’t be a trend.

It shouldn’t be a gender-specific responsibility.

It shouldn’t be remarkable at all.

It should just be how we exist in the world.

[lenjaminmacbuttons]

does anyone know where i might find a post about how post-apocalyptic scavenging stories, specifically noting the last of us and the walking dead, are fundamentally reflective of a fear of homelessness. i know i saw one when the tlou series was first releasing but i cannot for the life of me think of where to find it