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…

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…