Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires

this is what i mean, when i say hope is counter-revolutionary.

we cant assume empire will collapse on its own, there is no guarantee of that.

and even if we could say with certainty that this empire will fall in 50 years, and that whatever supercedes it will not be a continuation of the same gristwheel of extraction, slavery, and capital, this empire exists now. people are enslaved now. the biosphere is being desolated now. genocide is happening now.

there is no hope for a better future that we dont fight for. and there may be no hope even if we fight to our last breath.

So, it is actually pretty dangerous to leave the house and be in public while seriously psychosocially disabled. Cops routinely assault people for shit like "acting strange," and the common line when they do so is "well I thought he was high on something." They are almost always cleared in court and seldom if ever even suspended with pay for being like this.

I was once slammed to the ground, pinned, handcuffed, dragged to the station and almost charged because I mistakenly thought I had the legal right to use a bus while schizophrenic.

See, I was pacing around talking to myself, as one does, and some nearby white woman called the cops on me. You MUST understand, there is always a Nearby White Woman. I wasn't threatening anybody, getting up in anybody's business, nothing like that, I was a fair distance from everybody else. I know because she fucking filmed me the whole time she was waiting for the cops to arrive lol.

Then old mate in the uniform comes right up, hand on his gun. "What have you taken? What have you taken?" The thing is, psychosis often comes with disorganized speech, and he's interpreting my answer as evidence that I'm high. Uh oh.

Then for forty eight hours I'm in the psych ward. Blood tests, invasive questions. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt had to ask me about my sexuality. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt is asking me if I masturbate. Explain to me why even after a blood test came back clearing me Dr. Densecunt is asking me about if I'm on The Substances. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt is refusing to call my family when I tell him to. They have no idea where I am. My grandma's losing her mind. Explain to me why Dr. Densecunt's answer to "when can I leave?" is "when we're confident you're safe," as we're the only demographic it's legal to hold captive indefinitely without the violation of any crime on suspicion alone.

You don't see schizophrenics outside unless we're homeless because you are a danger to us, Heather. Our safety depends on your comfort, Heather, and you are never fucking comfy, Heather.

And the thing is, I tell this story in leftist circles, and some fucking Melany, some Susan, some Cassandra or her wannabe boyfriend Mark always slithers out to tell me that I need to be sympathetic becuase wh wh what if she had trauma.

What if the sight of a disabled man fifteen feet away from her existing in public really triggered her tr tr tr trauma. Her mental health, defined as her comfort, is more important than your mental health, defined as a right to exist in public spaces, because you are ontologically a threat. Does this actually keep Heather safe? Fuck no it doesn't. Mate, the shit they do to disabled and especially schizophrenic women. You call the pork patrol on a schizophrenic woman, you have almost guaranteed she's going to be sexually assaulted, but what's worse? A disabled woman's rape, or Heather being expected to share a fucking sidewalk. Goddamn

An ecologically healthy, self-reliant culture would find such zones incapable of providing adequate food for a fraction of their existing populations. Free individuals would likely recognize them as hopeless wastelands of environmental desolation, rather than potential playgrounds to be newly explored and filled with expressions ofthe marvelous. Urban ways are inherently un-sustainable, they are destructive to the environment and to the human spirit. Their territories are organized entirely to accommodate political power and the market.

Sustainable, self-reliant, autonomous groups of people need a land base, a territory. This means that we need to make the acquisition of such bases a focus of libertarian struggle. This doesn’t mean a simple return to a movement of rural communes, although these could be an important part of a diverse movement toward achieving this objective. Rather having land, or at least access to land, must be acknowledged as the necessary condition it is for any group of people to live freely, to support themselves within.

For some radicals the focus might then drift away from activities aimed at reforming urban living with co-ops and community gardens and free schools, for instance, and toward the re-appropriation of their lives through the re-appropriation of sustainable land. For others, it could mean a shift from urban activism, no matter how militant, to identifying a potential habitat and making efforts to occupy it. Both of these approaches entail abandoning cities, either literally as the places where they currently live, or as the central stage where they assume that the revolutionary struggle must occur.

Assuming that all important struggles must occur within urban settings only reinforces the belief that urban societies are here to stay. Struggles and resistance against capitalism and authority are valid everywhere. In fact, the more an anti-urban element exists within the struggle, the more threatening it is. Radicals should be able to focus energy on solutions wherever they live: small towns, villages, cities, ghettos, ethnic neighborhoods or islands.

In order to create self-directed groups based on ecological principles, we need a habitat to experiment within and with, to learn from, to grow and gather food on, and to help provide us with shelter.

If we can push the project for social freedom and harmony with the biosphere toward one dedicated to the liberation of geographical areas within which we live, we canre-create/re-discover viable habitats. Then several things become possible. For one, a movement of genuine and stable communities might begin to establish itself. Should this arise, with its tastes of deep bonds, personal freedom, collective self-reliance (not on a state), organic self-direction, etc., our ability and motivation to resist will be much stronger.

Most non-native radicals are admirably fighting against specific forms of oppression and injustice or even trying to find ways to oppose the totality of our domination, but few are fighting for a communal place and the territory it depends on. This is because so many non-indigenous people ofNorth America are still visitors or settlers; they haven’t made this place home yet. Few have either a deep connection with our surroundings or with those who live within them.

Our insurgencies could be focused on the liberation of territory as potential habitats. These emerging communities of withdrawal and resistance might then form roots and become communities implanted in specific places, thereby gaining some of the strength needed to be genuinely effective forces for authoritarians to reckon with. Non-native rebels should be aiming for a time when they too will be defending their kin and their habitats or territories.

I take great inspiration from our comrades in Chiapas, Mexico, who, in defense of their territories and relations, took the first shot and, to a large degree, have won. With the realization that we have nothing to lose but our false freedom, false wealth, and false community, we too could be preparing ourselves for secession from the nation-states and ideologies that hold us captive, wherever we live.

Large areas of North America are still claimed by the descendants of earlier peoples, and radicals need to acknowledge this when occupying land wherever we live. It’s important for us to educate ourselves about the indigenous people who lived in our area before contact with empire and its civilized soldiers and citizens, and to reach out to the traditionalists, our natural allies, among them. Without a land base we can’t be free, self-sustaining people. But in many places the land already belongs to an indigenous group, so our occupations must go hand in hand with relationships with them, or at least general knowledge of their history and territorial claims. Colonization and colonialism can take many forms, including revolutionary attempts at occupying land.

Some believe that an anarchist uprising always includes the liberation of geographical areas from the rule of the state and capital and therefore always include a renewed relationship with the natural world. But this isn’t the case. Many radicals and rebels still seek anarchy through the creation of large political organizations, by winning converts and taking over the levers of production and distribution. They want us to manage civilization for ourselves rather than abolishing it and creating a total transformation of our life- ways. Their vision still includes cities, factories, an ethic of production rather than a subsistence ethic, overarching infrastructures (transportation, industry, research, large political organizations) and large-scale agriculture.

That set of ideas has as a condition a situation in which the natural environment is subservient to humans rather than predicated on a more harmonious, reciprocal relationship. If the primary relationship we have with the natural world is based on its domination and colonization, then it would seem that everything built on that approach has a predictable outcome: the degradation and eventual depletion of the land that it relies on, just as under capitalist civilization.

Unfortunately we can’t have our industrial cake and eat it too. Anarchist industrialism, like its sibling, capitalist industrialism, is untenable in the long term….”