All We Have Is Each Other

"The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise."

Is it not time to start giving serious thought as to how to rebuild within our communities, outside of the established system? The response to this pandemic has made it abundantly clear that the government will do nothing of real substance to help the people in need. Horizontally-run, community-based programs are the key to a new future, and a way to upend the plans of the drooling Disaster Capitalists who are already circling like the vultures they are.

It’s been done before and it works: From ambitious endeavors like credit unions, free clinics, street/action medical groups, free breakfast programs, “liberation schools," community-run food banks/co-ops and gardens, to mutual aid networks, D.I.Y. clothing swaps, and neighborhood library boxes.

There are so many examples and inspirations to look to and to learn from: Rojava, The Young Lords, the Paris Commune (minus the executions... or not), the SDS, Occupy (in the beginning), the Kibbutz movement (before it was coopted by government interests), the Zapatista controlled parts off Chiapas, and so on.

The power is in our hands, let us not squander this moment.

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Recommended reading: Capital In The Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (Harvard University, 2013); Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution by Peter Kropotkin (various editions, 1902); The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies And the Promise of Direct Democracy by Murray Bookchin (Verso, 2015) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein (Picador, 2007); They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy From Greece To Occupy by Dario Azzellini and Marina Sitrin (Verso, 2014).

Artwork: The Angel Of The Paris Commune by Walter Crane, 1901
Quote excerpted from The Port Huron Statement, 1962