The Age of Reason is dead. Rejoice! We buried him in the shade of the birch tree, and we sang as we dug. We sang new and old songs of knowledges bravely earned, and those lessons became the soil we shoveled on top of him. The Age of Reason came to all of us once, and all of us, in one form or another, at one time or another, in one place or another, or all three, took a sip of his spoils just to know what it tasted like. Some of us, we are deeply ashamed to say, drained the whole glass and asked for more. We know this shame is something we cannot bury. But we did bury him.

In the explosion of interest in the topic of abolitionism during and after the explosive summer of 2020 its meaning and purpose has become distorted in its trek through the popular imagination. The topic of Transformative/Restorative Justice also increased in popularity, and as a result many people even conceptualize TJ/RJ as being one in the same with abolitionism as a political position. While this essay is not intended as an outright dismissal of the importance TJ/RJ practices, it is an examination of why they have risen to prominence and a challenge to the idea that they represent the totality of an abolitionist politic.

When faced with the stories of physical and sexual violence, manipulation, gaslighting, and coercion that survivors tell from their experiences within abusive relationships, many people’s first question frequently seems to be “why didn’t they just leave?” And, indeed, with a limited understanding of the overall context that forms abuse, victims remaining with their abusers seems unimaginable. After all, if someone walked up to you on the street and called you a worthless piece of garbage, or slapped you in the face, you would not be inclined to share their company any further, so why do abuse victims appear to accept horrific treatment time and time again without leaving?

Relationships are deeply personal. They are the smallest and most fundamental blocks that form our histories, our cultures, our societies. We are dependent, and thus deeply vulnerable, to other human relationships from the time we are born to the moment we die. Nothing human-made was made outside of relationships. Everything we make is a product of relationships. We are intrinsically tied to other people; such is the reality of human existence. To discuss relationships, then, will always be something that hits everyone in a way that is close, personal, and sometimes uncomfortable. We have insecurities we have been unable to quell and often reach for different forms of relationships as a salve to those insecurities. All of us, ultimately, wish to feel loved, cherished, and appreciated by other human beings, and almost all of our activities beyond basic survival activities (and very often even those basic survival activities) seem to bend towards that end. What will give me the adoration of others? What will earn me the love of others? What will make others impressed, drawn to me, trusting of me? When driven by such intense social need, it can be difficult to truthfully and genuinely assess the underlying values we hold when we seek out connection. What makes a relationship valuable? What makes a person valuable? What makes me valuable?

Radicalising people towards liberatory politics is a challenging, deeply rewarding, and vital component to building real political power towards liberation. It is also emotionally taxing, difficult to navigate, and often rife with conflict. I hope to offer some tools, tactics, and frameworks for engaging in this process with others in ways that can keep doors open for continued process, as well as protect the boundaries and energies of my fellow militants who engage in this work.

Hello.

2002. I was 14. The days when dial up internet connections were still common and the Internet was slooowww. Images could take literally minutes to download, arriving block by block from the top left corner to bottom right.

It is nearly eighty degrees in New York in late October. “My god, aren’t we fucked?” I think to myself as I find Calla Walsh and Paige Belanger drinking coffee outside a Moroccan café at a small rickety table on the Lower East Side. The pair look like ragged young hipsters you might see at a DIY metal show in a basement. Calla is scrawny, but there is an unmistakable intensity in her eyes. Paige inexplicably carries the duality of someone who would knit you a sweater or throw you out of a helicopter.

To the true anarchist anarchy is freedom from rulers and the patriarchy; to the manarchist it is the freedom to exercise patriarchal control and rule over others. Combat manarchists.

The writings of Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee have given rise to the emergence of an authoritarian insurrectionalist tendency that has been recruiting and building its ranks for about the past decade and a half. Although one of the trademarks of tiqqunism is its approach to “invisibility”, or not being legible as a distinct tendency, after so many years and some significant betrayals, tiqqunists have thoroughly revealed who they are and what they want, which is at direct odds with any struggle against authority.

Me: Stop filming or I smash your camera.

What follows are the notes of a talk given in Berlin, Athens, and Marseille in 2020.

At its best, security culture can be beautiful – we create practices together to protect ourselves and one another, building trust to open our relationships up to the potential for shared action. This can feel like nurturing a sense of complicity and solidarity, not just with our immediate comrades, but with anarchists and rebels everywhere. Everyone spreading the flames of revolt holds precious secrets together with their trusted comrades, and this keeps our fight alive.

We are settlers on this land, raised in cities, rootless, and alienated from the ecosystems we can’t help but be part of. But we want to unlearn what we have been taught by the dominant culture, and in the process, we want to re-learn joy, connection, and wonder, while embracing grief and loss in order to heal. We want to decolonize, and to do this, we need to build a new kind of relationship with the land. We want to take steps towards an anarchist ecology, towards a knowledge of the land that is anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian.

None of us wanted to wake up on January 18th to the news that a forest defender in Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest named Tortuguita, known to the Law and its death system as Manuel Teran, had been murdered by police during a morning raid. It was the last thing that we wanted to hear. Tears came to my eyes while reading the news of their killing before their name and picture had been released, and later after seeing an image of them glowing, smiling, luminously full of life I thought of how much more devastated I would feel if I had known Tortuguita, if I had heard their voice, felt the warmth of their presence, knew them as a friend, as a fellow anarchist and a comrade, how utterly broken my heart would be if they were my child, if I had raised them lovingly and spoke to them almost every day on the phone, as their mother Belkis had.

Yá’át’ééh, I feel it necessary to offer these pieces of the introduction I wrote for Black Seed: Not On Any Map, particularly because this overall piece was originally situated in the midst of a larger conversation and may feel like it’s missing a couple of things to some readers.

The First Intifada (meaning shaking off/uprising in Arabic) was the first Palestinian uprising against Israel’s takeover of Palestinian territory, lasting from December 1987 until the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. The “intifada,” which went down in history as the name of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, is known by this name all over the world. In December 1987, an Israeli pickup truck crashed into a vehicle carrying Palestinians in the Gaza region, killing four people. Thereupon, the Islamic University of Gaza students started the uprising that would be known as intifada by calling all Palestinians to gather around the hospital to take care of the people who lost their lives or were injured.

Throughout the world, the word “anarchism” has a variety of meanings. When most people think of “anarchism,” the first things that come to their mind are fire-setting bomb throwers and masked rioters smashing Starbucks and McDonald’s windows. In the popular imagination, anarchism is synonymous with chaos. Armed with this image of anarchism as a nihilistic, violent ideology, many people cannot fathom how anyone could self-identify as an anarchist. After all, don’t anarchists hate authority and government? Don’t they want to destroy society and bring about some kind of anarchic utopia populated by roaming gangs of drug-addled hippies who spend their days smoking weed and having sex with whomever they please in abandoned warehouses? No wonder so many people find this idea so laughable… However, within the broad category of social and political movements known as “anarchism,” there are many different ideas about how to achieve greater equality, liberty, and justice for all people. Some anarchists advocate for non-violent resistance or peaceful coexistence with other ideologies and lifestyles; other anarchists support vandalism and property destruction as a tactic against oppressive institutions; some call for an abolition of government while others demand more local control over education, prisons, roads, parks, etc. In this article, we will explore early individualist anarchism in the US which is, in my honest consideration, the closest thing to what the concept of anarchism really is. Looking at the history of the anarchist movement, the main representatives of individualist anarchism are thinkers such as Godwin, Stirner, and Tucker.

The term “egoist” has appeared often in the history of philosophy and social thought, as well as in political ideologies. However, while there are several variations and explanations of what egoism means, its usage has been quite inconsistent. Therefore, when reading about the subject, it is important to distinguish which type of egoism we are talking about. Egoist philosophy generally refers to any school of thought that considers the self (i.e. one’s own personal interests) to be the primary source of ethical standards and action, superseding external factors such as social norms or other-regarding principles. As a result, egoist anarchist schools of thought tend to emphasize personal liberation and non-subordination so that individuals may pursue their own ends without sacrificing them for others or vice versa.

Below, Freedom reproduces a transcript of a talk with Uri Gordon on the current situation in Palestine and Israel organised by Infolibre Thessaloniki.

It’s been a mainstay of the radical left for a long time to blame the lack of radical activity by whatever particular collective subject they believe to have potential on some sort of capitalist subterfuge. The various arguments for what exactly happened range considerably, but they tend to assume that a subset of the population who would otherwise revolt against the system have been brought off and/or propagandized into submission.

Obviously, you don't run around telling everyone you're under investigation, anyone who has been investigated, or in close relation with someone who has, knows this well. So how do we ensure we keep those around us safe while under this type of pursuit?