Blog: nerd teacher

The Power of Having Diverse Anarchisms: Building Alternatives Outside Neoliberal Globalisation

Note: This essay was written in collaboration with Sonia Muñoz Llort.


It should go without saying, but it appears that nearly every individual and collective we encounter is struggling with self-organisation and mutual support. Almost every conversation that we have across those we connect with highlights the same few problems. We hear complaints of groups that prefer to focus on 'building numbers' even as they engage in supporting and defending abusers and bigots within their ranks, further pushing people out. We hear complaints of exclusionary behaviours with groups or organisers completely ignoring almost any degree of accessibility and often refusing to do what it takes to maintain a healthy environment. We still see people trying to create hierarchies of inclusion which, they claim, is a result of "not having enough resources" to do everything and having to focus on only the "most important" actions. Read more…

I Really Don’t Care About “Normal” People

Every so often, there’s a discussion in anarchist circles about how we need to tread lightly, sound more realistic, and stop dreaming about “perfect utopias” because otherwise we’ll “scare the normal people off.” If we keep talking about a world so drastically different from the one we’re in, the “normal” people won’t even want to participate! We’ll never get traction! No one will want to do it!

This sentiment is beyond infuriating, and it doesn’t make me care about “normal” people because “normal” people—or anyone who claims to be “normal”—just don’t care about people like me. Queer and disabled people are never seen as “normal,” so we’re automatically written out of this statement by virtue of existing. The world in which my neurodivergent self can happily and safely exist is not the same one that “normal” people even want to support because they’d rather pretend that everyone understands everything in the exact same way.

Every time we say that we need something, we’re told that it’s “too much” or that it’s “too hard” or “too expensive” to possibly include everyone. Read more…

How Can We Prefigure Society When We Only Seem to React?

Prefiguration of society is one of the most common themes discussed in anarchist circles. Whether or not it’s ever truly done justice—and honestly, I don’t think it ever is—it’s something that we’re often trying to figure out. It’s a question asked by anarchists and non-anarchists alike, though the latter tends to try to use it as a gotcha question more often than actually engage in discussions about what it might mean.

And yes, it is exhausting to constantly have those discussions about what an anarchist society could look like only to later find that they’re happening in bad faith and that the person you’re talking to is only interested in tearing everything down.

But prefiguration is something that we need to give more credence and thought to, something that needs to be fleshed out a bit more and have more ideas attached to it. Though I mostly don’t think it’s done out of malice, anarchists tend to throw around the solution of “prefiguring society” like some kind of bizarre buzzword that should just end an argument. It’s vague and doesn’t really tell anyone anything, leaving people with only the question of what we mean when we say it.  Read more…

Forever Cleaning Up After Others: Reflections on Creating Digital Collectives of Mutual Care

Note: This essay was written in collaboration with Sonia Muñoz Llort.

At the beginning of 2020, around the start of the pandemic, we realised that we had an immense need for a supportive community, somewhere that helped us realise that we weren’t alone despite our growing isolation both emotionally and geographically that intensified the feelings of loneliness. Much of this comes from the fact that, as educators in schools and academia, we rarely have the space to discuss how the practices we’re forced to engage in are inherently abusive and authoritarian, how we’re engaged in work that forces us to focus on racialised capitalist structures and are required by the system to prepare students to work in that world. We were rarely able to share how the contradiction of working in those spaces constantly makes us negotiate our own values and understanding of the world. Read more…

You Can't Reform Things Built to Harm

Like a fool, I entered my career as a teacher believing that you could work within the system to change it. As a person with a range of undiagnosed disabilities who had been harassed and verbally abused by a range of teachers who claimed they were “ensuring I was ready for the real world” or “needed to learn discipline and respect in order to succeed,” I wanted to ensure that other children didn’t go through that. As someone who repeatedly had to fight with school systems because of misogynist teachers who tried to fail girls who took their classes, because of teachers who refused to accommodate documented disabilities, because of teachers who’d outed me as bisexual way before I was even ready or prepared? I wanted to be someone who could enter schools and change that and make sure the environment was safe for students.

I learned very quickly that you can’t do that. It’s all bullshit. Read more…