something along the lines of what david graeber suggested in his recent article on autonomedia, “Some speak of a debtor’s strike, or debtor’s cartel. Perhaps so—but at the very least we can start with a pledge against evictions: to pledge, neighborhood by neighborhood, to support each other if any of us are to be driven from our homes.” http://slash.autonomedia.org/node/11569

but this can logically span out to other options for resistance against capitalism. we could put out questionnaires, to figure out the current needs of our communities, in order to learn how to better provide each other mutual aid, and “lead by obeying” like the zapatistas say.

in hard times the poor have always been resourceful in finding ways to support one another, and this is something that anarchists could network around in order to emancipate ourselves, alongside the people, and who knows maybe the people will start to emancipate themselves.

for instance we could host councils or meetings within our communities to develop and gather the responses to such questionnaires, and then go from there. the nature of the current crisis though obviously spells out the possibility of greater effectiveness through throwing events like really really free markets/ food not bombs, yet perhaps those events could be tailored or appendage to such gatherings of our communities in order to 1) encourage participation in the questionnaires 2) start up the relationships that will be so crucial in creating mutual aid networks.

until then, let’s meditate further on these questions.

In response to nolaanarchy, the good news is that no one of us (or one group of us) needs to come up with all the answers. All that needs to happen is for each person or group to come up with something that might be an answer and test it. Just one!

yes, how DO we do that? can we get some smart people to propose some courses of action that take this into account and make sense and are easily reproducible and/or able to be co-ordinated nationally?
the wraps were great. how else can we use that network to accomplish more than is capable alone?
this article is awesome in that it asks the right questions, but I am kind of afraid that perhaps the authors lack answers to those questions, as i feel like i also do.
but i think this offers an excellent framework to start the conversation about answers from, so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel with every small anarchist group in creating a shared perspective to then develop plans from.

i want to think more on this and see if i can come up with any answers, because none spring immediately to mind. i am really leaning towards more trying to create intentionally anarchist areas or neighborhoods in cities, as a base to organize resistance and ease the daily struggle of living from.

also one thing regarding the perspective this article proposes: i think that perhaps the loss of momentum post-9/11 came partly from what y’all said, but also i think perhaps they came from such an abrupt change of focus, from anti-free trade to anti-war, and the loss of momentum that causes. i hope a similar fate doesn’t await us again, as anarchists decide whether and how to confront the financial crisis and its implications. but the shift from pre to post-9/11 also meant a shift in focus from a part of capitalism (globalization) that exposed inequality’s underlying structural nature and the state’s collusion in that to a focus on a part of capitalism (wars) that doesn’t as readily lend itself to such a deep critique of the entire system. and perhaps a shift to a focus on the financial crisis could lead back to a more fundamental critique of the capitalist/state system? maybe not though…. i think a full shift into focusing on the impacts of the financial crisis as a point of conflict is something we need to think about pretty hard and decide whether to focus on that or not.

i hope i can come up with some answers i feel like i could find to the questions posed here once i think about it some more. but thanks a ton for getting the right questions out there at least. its a start. perhaps some answers will soon be clearer…..

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081117213345359

Bash Back! is staying impressively active post-RNC.