#solidarity economy

[bfpnola]

Many of the strongest examples we have of real solidarity economies – where communities are meeting their own needs outside of capitalist systems – come out of social movements in Latin America, and the communities who have carried those traditions of cooperation across borders.

Throughout the Caribbean, communities use susus and cooperative lending to resist extractive banking practices. Cubans have formed co-ops networks to build food sovereignty and economic self-sufficiency. Brazillians have taken participatory budgeting around the world. Puerto Ricans are leading the movement for energy democracy and just recovery with mutual aid. This list is by no means exhaustive, and each of these examples comes with its own complex set of struggles, celebrations, and shortcomings. With that, we’ve compiled this short resource list of solidarity economy organizing in Latin America and Latinx communities in the US as a reminder that another world isn’t only possible – it’s already happening.

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🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

[ecosentido]

-

Even as community composting increasingly makes its voice heard in the national composting conversation, data on the sector — key for both advocates of community composting and the composters themselves — can be hard to come by. The newly released report, A Growing Movement: 2022 Community Composter Census, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) aims to fill that gap. Its goal is to document the distinct nature of the community composting sector and to serve as a baseline for measuring its future evolution. The findings reveal that while it is true community composters face a unique set of challenges in an economic and political landscape that favors industrial operations, the sector has the potential to boom.

[astroponcho]

Astro Poncho Mission Statement - Version 1

What is Art?

I spend a lot of time thinking about Art, Entertainment, and Culture. I see them as three(?) sides of the same coin. Art is the human ability to express emotion, made manifest. Entertainment is the art that is made not only for the artist but for the audience. An accessible, designerly, art. Culture is the confluence of influence from art, geography, society, and the myriad of other ways in which humans permeate the world. Culture informs the art and entertainment made, and that art and entertainment feed back into the culture that it touches. Let’s call the intersection of these disparate parts Pop Culture. For reference…when I use the word art, I’m talking broadly about the conception of creative production broadly, from mass media to fine art.

Franchise Entertainment’s Impact on Art

Modern pop culture is influenced greatly by franchise entertainment. On any given day, massive communities are discussing new episodes, announcements, or content from and about the Disneys and the Warners of the world. The commercial success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed the way that audiences interact with media. Just look at how long people stick around after the credits start to roll in any given movie theater. More than 10 years in, and multiple phases later, not to mention the bungles of other IPs such as Star Wars (also Disney, hmm), there’s an undercurrent of fatigue with the franchise model. People love these stories and worlds, as evidenced by the continued box office success, but the discussion around franchises tells a different story.

Some see these franchises, especially Marvel, as creatively bankrupt, templated cash grabs. This has also led to what is a resurgence (or emergence) of the mid-tier movie, decently budgeted films that give the feeling of high-budget outings, but are more targeted, focused, and intimate. Generally, you have two camps: the people that love the Marvel outings and see the smaller movies as pretentious, or the fans of “cinema” that think that the MCU has ruined movies. This doesn’t have to be an either-or situation. I know that I personally love a lot of the MCU, and I also love my Sundance darling, neo-mumblecore movies, and my mid-budget thrillers, horrors, and dramas.

Many people bemoan franchise-based content, and due to their extreme commercialization, I can’t necessarily blame them. It can be tiring to get (what is perceived as) a remix of something that’s been seen before, over and over again. Franchises could be so much more. They could be one of the best ways to tell immersive, communal, and equitable stories, creating the avenue for similarly impactful experiences that connect to those stories.

This isn’t to say that all “franchise-style” storytelling and experience-building is in the Marvel, Star Wars, or DC styles. SCPs, Assassin’s Creed, and Unkown9 are reasonable steps in the right direction and have excellent audience engagement, but varying levels of story quality and intertextuality, and don’t necessarily tackle equity AND community at their cores.

The Problem with Pop Culture and Art

The world of art is in a weird spot, across the spectrum. I’d say that much of the issue comes from the current infrastructure, which is in need of some innovation. There’s a tug-of-war between the three main stakeholders: Creatives, Audiences, and Patrons. Creatives want to express themselves, audiences want familiar but fresh and exciting experiences, and patrons want returns on their investments. Intersecting with this is the ever-important conversation of representation, where those in the margins are held there in no small part by the very institution of media, creative production, and distribution itself. We have to figure out how to solve the issue of creating work that is financially sound, creatively-lead, and audience-loved while showcasing the humanity of people that don’t usually get that luxury.

How Might We create art and entertainment that gives creatives freedom of expression, allows them (and any “patrons”) to make good on their “patronage”, is socially-minded with an eye on inclusion and sustainability, and is appealing to pop culture audiences, by allowing them to have meaningful interactions with those stories and experiences?

Where AP Fits

Enter Astro Poncho (later referred to as “AP”). An entertainment label that zooms out from specific mediums, looking at storytelling and experiences as opportunities for innovation. We’re looking to meet the desires of the audience, of the creatives, and of those who invest in the projects getting made. To do that, we gotta think outside of the box.

Participatory culture / co-creation of media

If you think of any famous artist, from a filmmaker to a painter to a game designer, they represent one of the greatest misnomers of art; an individual auteur, a lone ranger, making their way through the tumult and toil through to a finished masterpiece. Even in obviously collaborative mediums like filmmaking, the person at the helm is credited for the project. By flipping the script and focusing on creating art that highlights collaboration through its production, the hope is that more people will get their due credit in meaningful ways and that more people will get to have meaningful contributions to the creation of the art. Essentially, changing the dynamics of a very gatekept space to include those on the margins.

Cooperative Governance

To strengthen the ownership of the art created, the enterprise would be owned by the workers. So, the artists would decide how the enterprise would be run and would work with the communities that the art appeals to have a more cooperative relationship. The importance of creating with instead of creating for can’t be understated. From the facilitation of creating user-generated content, to constantly listening to the community and understanding what they want, allowing the art to be owned by everyone involved can create a more active and meaningful connection. It can also lead to better art.

Human-Centered, Equitable, Liberatory Design

I went to school for design, so I’m very biased, but I see design as an amazing creative framework for solving problems. Being able to explore a problem from all sides and have a process that centers on those who’ll directly benefit from the problem being solved is the ideal way to address the issues we find in our world. Historically, both as I’ve seen in my learnings in school and in the world at large, design is a tool that is wielded by the elite, furthering their interests. It doesn’t have to be this way, and I definitely see design as a tool to unlock the potential of the future; we can use design as a way to work toward liberation, and AP’s work will be centered on this idea of equitable, liberatory design practices.

Transmedia

One of the benefits of living in the modern era is unfettered access to art, thanks to the internet. This means that the barriers to enjoying different art are lower than ever. Even with this, a lot of the ways that art is made don’t tune into the possibilities afforded by the time period that we live in. By breaking down silos and focusing on story worlds and experiences instead of specific mediums of art, AP can innovate in the art space, providing evolutions of what audiences, creatives, and patrons want while being flexible enough to find creative revolutions to art production.

Diversity

I see many paths to liberation. While some people write off art, and especially entertainment, as being commodified escapism, I see so much more potential than just that. Many people talk about and use art as activism, and I’d want to continue that tradition with AP’s work. I think that art that has “political” messaging has the strongest resonance, and can lead to change in the real world, for better or worse. Some of my personal favorite pieces of art are inherently political: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rosie the Riveter, Princess Mononoke, HBO's Watchmen series, and the list goes on. Art imitates life, and life in return imitates art. If we can use the power of accessible art that connects people with very intentional messages that showcase the humanity of all, helping us imagine more equitable futures, more progress can be encouraged in the real world.

To summarize: AP’s strategy for art creation plans to innovate by centering equity, inclusion, participation, and shared ownership to lead to more awesome art that helps inspire action towards a positive future.

This is a pretty complex nut to crack, and AP’s solution will probably change a bunch before it’s all said and done, but that’s the name of the game. To date, a lot of the advances that the creative industry has made have been based mostly on feasibility, as in how much the tech can do. Think VR, AI, the Metaverse, Blockchain, etc. The pieces that these advancements are missing are viability and desirability. The humans a lot of these advances are for don’t seem to be as interested in the tech as the makers do. AP is looking for that balance. By creating art with a focus on community, expression, and inclusivity, we want to be able to create a real impact in the space on the people that are touched by it.

The initial project that I have in mind with AP is a semi-frequent collection of works in a zine that focus on sustainability and the solarpunk genre and movement. It’d include fiction that encourages working towards positive futures for people and the planet, information on the current advances and movements being made, conversations with those people who are working in sustainable fields moving the needle, and things that you can do right now to help create a positive future.

I’m looking for more creatives, collaborators, and entrepreneurial spirits that are interested in going on this journey with me. If that seems at all interesting to you, I have a pitch deck with more info. It covers some similar but different information about our conversation here. It also doubles as a window into how AP might tell stories; you get the picture through one channel, but by going to a different channel you get more context…a fuller picture.

Thanks for sticking through to the end. Again, here’s the deck for more information, and a place to sign up for a chat with me about the project. Hope to talk to you soon! thx :) - Dip

[sustainableprosperity2]

https://popularresistance.org/digital-solidarity-in-the-sharing-economy/

DIGITAL SOLIDARITY IN THE SHARING ECONOMY

By Anna Moskal, Grassroots Economic Organizing.

December 5, 2023

Create!

Introduction

Digital solidarity and the sharing economy may seem like natural companions. To be sure, the sharing economy with its melding of community and commerce has the potential to be a key contributor to digital solidarity in developing economies. Both concepts revolve around the idea of collaboration, sharing resources and funds, community-building, the network effect, increasing trust between strangers, and the leveraging of digital technologies for the greater good. In this blog post, we consider how the sharing economy can contribute to digital solidarity in a developing economy; the barriers to the sharing economy doing so; and if unchecked how it can distort an economy. On that basis, we seek to propose a tentative legal policy for developing economies.

Digital Solidarity and the Sharing Economy

Digital solidarity is based on the idea of using technology and information technology to help people and communities around the world. It involves harnessing digital tools and resources to build community; leveraging technology to overcome economic, social, and political asymmetries; and assisting those who may have limited access to technology or face various forms of digital exclusion. Digital solidarity can manifest in many different forms including enhancing access to underutilised goods and services, increasing social inclusions, supporting vulnerable groups, as well as expanding education and skill development.

A potential contributor to digital solidarity is the sharing economy. The sharing economy is based on the concept of providing temporary access to underutilised assets and resources. It can include everything from free space, cars and objects to people’s time and skills. It is a socio-economic phenomenon that was originally presented as a path towards sustainable development (Heinrichs 2013), a marketplace that offers flexible and easily accessible jobs (Dunn, Munoz and Jarrahi 2023), and an innovative business model that can increase trust in society (Botsman and Rogers 2010). For example, in ride-sharing, the theory is that an otherwise idle seat is utilised and paid for when the driver is going in the same direction anyway. Especially in developed economies, it is a shift from ownership to sharing (Kathan, Matzler and Veider 2016).

Sharing economy platforms grew rapidly in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008) and the emergence of smartphones. Platforms started facilitating connections between those who seek resources (such as assets, knowledge, time and space) with those who are able to offer them. In developed countries, it has been an opportunity to switch from ‘asset-heavy’ ownership to paying for the use of goods and services instead. The sharing economy has been most closely associated with its popular and controversial poster children – Uber and Airbnb. Uber and Airbnb have facilitated transportation and accommodation, respectively, but have contributed to a ‘gig’ economy, a switch from employment to gigs, where job security is more precarious.

As is discussed below, some sharing economy platforms put social and environmental promises at the centre stage of their activity, while others are purely business-oriented and aim to maximise their profits. The sharing economy fuels economic growth and reduces the stress on the environment. Between these two extremes, there are a multitude of initiatives that attempt to integrate their socio-economic mission with generating profit. Many hold great promise for creating a supportive environment for digital solidarity among their users.

Even though sharing economy platforms take various legal forms, business strategies and objectives, there are common traits:

use of algorithms that efficiently match supply and demand, including doing so in real time;

dynamic review and feedback systems that, in particular, let us know that the person(s) we will be interacting with are probably safe;

in economic terms, platforms bridge the trust gap and have solved the lemons problem by providing information about the other party;

-leveraging the network effect; – reduced barriers to entry; – smooth transaction process and engagement of users.

Sharing is Caring Economy

Sometimes the emphasis in the sharing is on caring and community. That further illustrates how sharing economy platforms can help with digital solidarity. For illustrative purposes, we showcase three case studies where the sharing economy is indeed a caring economy. These include:

TimeBanks.org is a freely accessible online website that enables its members to earn time credits by fulfilling help requests from others, which they can then spend on the help they need. The spectrum of requests is wide and includes household tasks, computer assistance, transportation and picking up food, medical care, and yard work. For each hour of service of their choosing, members earn a one-time credit that they can use. This time bartering system is a unique way of building community through trust and solidarity between its members.

Nextdoor is an online neighbourhood network available in eleven countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, and Canada. It connects peers living in local communities and enables them to sell and buy products, exchange information on nearby events, publish posts on local crimes and complications, as well as provide recommendations. By doing so, it strengthens ties in local communities and increases trust between its members.

BeMyEyes is a free mobile app that aims to make the world more accessible to the visually impaired. It is now in over 150 countries by connecting them with sighted volunteers and companies from all over the world through a live video call. When Anna, a joint author of this post, was registered as a volunteer on BeMyEyes, she helped her callers by describing the colours of paints that they showed her in Ikea, distinguishing between purple and green socks (which look similar to some people with low-vision), and assisting in plugging in a three colour-coded RCA plug to the TV. Besides organising practical video calls, BeMyEyes offers an amazing community building blog section, where people share their personal stories, podcasts about blindness and useful tips and solutions.

These examples demonstrate that digital solidarity can indeed thrive within the sharing economy. Ostensibly a resource is being shared but it is really care and community that are shared. These initiatives have the potential to make a lasting impact on society and the way that we interact with one another in both the real and digital realms.

Sharing Economy in Developing Economies

For developing countries, the sharing economy can particularly help in the agriculture, human resources, and transportation sectors. It is an opportunity to access basic facilities that were previously unaffordable, as opposed to just activating underutilised resources. For example, in Africa, Hellotractor connects farmers who own tractors with those who need them and “there are numerous examples of mobile networks being used to communicate important information to [African] farmers, such as crop prices, pest issues and logistics […] Mobile platforms can be used to connect farmers or producer co-operatives with food storage and processing facilities, and this can help reduce food waste and maximise profits to farmers.”

The sharing economy provides scope for innovation and micro-entrepreneurship. For example, in the Philippines, Good Meal Hunting, brings together those who prepare and those who want home-cooked meals.

Barriers and Challenges

So far, we have discussed how the sharing economy can make a meaningful contribution to digital solidarity. Two further points need to be made.

First, both the sharing economy and digital solidarity are contingent upon having a digital infrastructure in place. Features of the digital structure include the internet, mobile payment systems, accessible technology platforms, as well as facilitating access to community or shop space and crowdfunding opportunities.

Second, the United Nations warns that an unchecked sharing economy in developing countries can concentrate power and distort the market; and lead to job insecurity and discrimination. Uber and Airbnb are large multinationals operating in cyberspace, often beyond the practical reach of local regulations with few obligations owed to service providers such as drivers. It may be that a business model based on commission is contingent upon increasing market share and therefore platforms have a natural tendency to become monopolies.

Regarding job insecurity, the concept of the sharing economy works best when the capacity is genuinely idle. An unused room in an Airbnb apartment is idle. Whether or not the room was rented out does not change the host’s activities. The same is true for an Uber driver accepting a passenger en route. In both cases, the payment is additional income without the host or driver doing anything different. When an Uber driver starts searching for passengers, the Uber driver becomes the equivalent of a taxi driver. The seat is no longer idle, and it is no longer a source of additional income. Uber driving is now work and an idle seat is downtime or lost income rather than being about monetising an idle seat. The opportunity cost of that work is another job. So, a full-time Uber driver is not truly part of the sharing economy. They are a gig worker who have lost the protections and benefits of full-time work. Concerns have been raised about the rise of ‘neo-feudalism’.

Conclusion

Hence, in developing economies, we argue that the sharing economy should be pro-poor, that is, it should seek to reduce poverty. The Institute For Sustainable Futures suggests that a pro-poor policy involves minimum wages for freelance workers, facilitating worker access to social security and training, promoting business standards for inclusiveness, and setting sustainability guidelines for businesses.

On that basis, we tentatively suggest that a legal policy for sharing economies in developing countries might be divided into three elements:

Enabling. Policy should support the acquisition of digital infrastructure at least in the initial stages. Since the digital infrastructure equates to power, ownership of platforms in particular should be thought through carefully. Pro-poor approaches could involve the development of platform cooperatives, and peer-to-peer sharing platforms. Laws should reflect this.

Promoting. Local laws should be facilitative of sharing economy activities. While this is out-of-scope and only initial thoughts can be expressed, the laws may involve ensuring there are joint ownership vehicles available and subsidising the acquisitions of assets for, say a platform cooperative.

Protecting. Likewise, competition laws should be pro-poor and guard against the risk of monopolies. They may restrict concentrations of ownership, require the adoption of pro-poor policies in the vehicle’s constitution, and provide for pro-poor personnel representation in management.

As noted by the United Nations, digital technologies have profoundly transformed society and our world is now more than ever relying on digital tools for connectivity and socioeconomic prosperity. We believe that the acts of digital solidarity can take many different forms and can be enhanced through the intermediation of sharing economy platforms. In light of the above, we hope that the sharing economy will not only be associated with its popular and controversial poster children – Uber and Airbnb – but also with a wide variety of platforms that help people and communities in developing economies by offering access to knowledge, information, skills and employment. By embracing both digital solidarity and the sharing economy, we can work towards a more connected, compassionate, and sustainable future.

[faultfalha]

The world as we know it is in chaos. It seems only yesterday that our lives were progressing as normal, until life as we know it collapsed inwards in a paradox of meaninglessness. In this time of distress, Dr. Jem Bendell’s book, Breaking Together, serves as a new compass for navigating this change. It is a compelling essay that offers a unique perspective on the ideas of resilience, regeneration and transformation, detailing Bendell’s personal journey and practice of breaking down and building up. As I absorbed the text, I began to reconsider my own relationship to life and the ever-evolving state of the world. By traversing the unseen realms that Bendell charts in his work, I have uncovered a new map with which to explore my own inner terrain. This is a map that invokes my intuition, encouraging me to make the decisions that come from an open-heartedness and understanding of our collective predicament. It is a book of comfort and healing for those who seek a way to exist in this new reality, one that we could never have imagined just days ago.

[songsforthenextworld]

The next world is trans and indigenous and beautiful. Trees line the porous gravel streets of coop coffeeshops and nursery schools, neighborhood cafeterias and fabrication labs.

In the next world there is no grass, just clover patches and native flowers buzzing with moths, kissing ripe tomatoes bobbing in the sun. All the people gather to write their own laws and pool funds, and nobody lives alone; nobody goes it alone.

The next world nurtures artists and thinkers, and music is made in the playgrounds and bars. Kitchen windows scatter laughter and spices, and clothing is mended and thrice handed down.

If you can’t lift a box, in the next world, you can solve a neighbors argument and that’s just as good. Schools are for care and curiosity, and no teacher ever begs for books.

The next world has its pain and sorrow, but your chosen family helps you bear its weight. In this world you only want what isn’t hard to work for, and you only work as hard as anyone else.

The seeds for the next world were long ago sown, and are watered in the shade of the system we know. You can already see the roots cracking through, if you know where to look, and you’re hungry enough.

The next world’s song is in the mouths of little babes, growing louder with every generation that rises. You can hear it in the library, in land trusts and public banks, in care circles and mutual aid posts and Signal threads.

The song is one you already know, you heard it once in history class. Or maybe read in a book somewhere or a magazine about somewhere else. Some other time, some other people, but what if it could be right here?

We have the words, we have the notes, we are the band and audience. Let’s play this tune, let’s sing this song. Now is the time, the next world is already here!

[politijohn]

Source

Let’s go

[the-overanalyst]

science vs. art is not the real conflict.

science is the study of reality. it just exists. it has no agenda. technological progress is the natural way of the world, it has been for thousands of years.

the real conflict is between art and business. which one gets to harness science for its own ends?

the frustrating thing about our current era is not that science is rising. it's that business is rising and carrying science up with it ever further away from art.

[inqilabi]

The best way to help Iranian women as persons in the west is to protest in front of US gov buildings, embassies, or UN buildings and demand to lift the crippling sanctions of 40 years that have been killing Iranians by preventing daily basic needs like bread, shelter, medicine and heat electricity from being met. You cannot have any social progress like womens rights when your basic needs can't be met. None of the counties under US imperialism will ever have rights for women until imperialism is defeated. Defeating imperialism is integral to women's rights

[whereserpentswalk]

The middle class isn't a thing in America. It is a concept created by capitalist society to describe workers whose labor struggles society can completely dismiss any validity of. But there is not middle class in any material way.

[vyorei]

Hey guys maybe if the West gets money-scared they'll stop the genocide

[bfpnola]

People who are active in a time bank earn credits through hours of community work then spend those credits in return for services from other community members. For example, they can take classes from other members, learning new skills such as a language or how to play a musical instrument. Give your time as you will—whether it be yard work, helping with transportation, picking up food, or cooking meals. All these exchanges are valued only in terms of the time spent doing them, making an important statement to participants about their self-worth. This is an innovative approach to stimulating neighbor-to-neighbor acts of kindness. One hour equals one credit—regardless of the service you give. No money is exchanged, only time. This affirms the value of community members’ talents and contributions and helps reweave the social fabric essential to community vitality. Indeed, people have used time banking for a wide array of projects aimed at repairing, rebuilding, or replenishing their communities. The practice helps the vulnerable, promotes intercultural learning, reduces isolation, and in some cases cuts out-of-pocket costs by tapping into communities’ often abundant but untapped social capacity. It gives members access to skill-building activities and job opportunities. Through these exchanges of time, members get to know their neighbors and make friends while helping to build caring, vibrant communities. There are several different models of time bank exchanges. One common model is a neighbor-to-neighbor time bank, in which individuals join a time bank so they can earn and spend time credits by helping each other. Each hour of service contributed by an individual earns a one-time credit that can be used in several different ways: 1) to receive services from other members of the time credit exchange; 2) to purchase with credits items such as school supplies, food, and clothing; and 3) to take classes, such as dance or music lessons, yoga, and so on. Depending on how the time bank is set up, an individual could also donate saved time credits to someone else. Another time bank model involves the creation of targeted or specialized exchange networks that focus more on time credits. An example is cross-age peer tutoring, in which older children tutor younger students, accumulating time credits that they can then trade for school materials and equipment such as donated computers.

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🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

[ecosentido]

—

Con la participación de más de 200 personas, Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico celebró su décimo aniversario en una actividad repleta de alegría. El evento celebró también la reciente titularidad del edificio donde ubica el Centro de Apoyo Mutuo desde el 2017, y que desde 2021 se disputaba con la compañía buitre de Ley 22/60, la infame The Morgan Reed Group.

[dailyanarchistposts]

On Sunday, February 25, we received an email from a person who signed himself[1] Aaron Bushnell.

It read,

Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people. The below links should take you to a livestream and recorded footage of the event, which will be highly disturbing. I ask that you make sure that the footage is preserved and reported on.

We consulted the Twitch account. The username displayed was “LillyAnarKitty,” and the user icon was a circle A, the universal signifier for anarchism—the movement against all forms of domination and oppression.

In the video, Aaron begins by introducing himself. “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest—but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

The video shows Aaron continuing to film as he walks to the gate of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, puts down the phone, douses himself in a flammable liquid, and sets himself alight, shouting “Free Palestine” several times. After he collapses, police officers who had been watching the situation unfold run into the frame—one with a fire extinguisher, another with a gun. The officer continues pointing the gun at Aaron for over thirty seconds as Aaron lies on the ground, burning.

Afterwards, police announced that they had called in their Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit.

We have since confirmed the identity of Aaron Bushnell. He served in the United States Air Force for almost four years. One of his loved ones described Aaron to us as “a force of joy in our community.” An online post described him as “an amazingly gentle, kind, compassionate person who spends every minute and penny he has helping others. He is silly, makes anyone laugh, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He is a principled anarchist who lives out his values in everything he does.”

Aaron’s friends tell us that he has passed away as a consequence of his injuries.

All afternoon, while other journalists were breaking the news, we discussed how we should speak about this. Some subjects are too complex to address in a hasty social media post.

The scale of the tragedy that is taking place in Gaza is heartrending. It exceeds anything we can understand from the vantage point of the United States. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 12,000 children. More than half of all inhabitable buildings in all of Gaza have been destroyed, along with the majority of hospitals. The vast majority of the population are living as refugees with little access to water, food, or shelter.

The Israeli military is now planning a ground invasion of Rafah that will add untold numbers of casualties to this toll. It is not hyperbole to say that we are witnessing the deliberate commission of genocide. All available evidence indicates that the Israeli military will continue killing Palestinians by the thousand until they are forced to stop. And the longer this bloodshed goes on, the more people will die in the future, as other governments and groups imitate the precedent set by the Israeli government.

The United States government bears equal responsibility in this tragedy, having armed and financed Israel and provided it with impunity in the sphere of international relations. Within Israel, the authorities have effectively suppressed protest movements in solidarity with Gaza. If protests are going to exert leverage towards stopping the genocide, it is up to people in the United States to figure out how to accomplish that.

But what will it take? Thousands across the country have engaged in brave acts of protest without yet succeeding in putting a halt to Israel’s assault.

Aaron Bushnell was one of those who empathized with the Palestinians suffering and dying in Gaza, one of those haunted by the question of what our responsibilities are when we are confronted with such a tragedy. In this regard, he was exemplary. We honor his desire not to stand by passively in the face of atrocity.

The death of a person in the United States should not be considered any more tragic—or more newsworthy—than the death of a single Palestinian. Still, there is more to say about his decision.

Aaron was the second person to self-immolate at an Israeli diplomatic institution in the United States. Another demonstrator did the same thing at the Israeli consulate in Atlanta on December 1, 2023. It is not easy for us to know how to speak about their deaths.

Some journalists see themselves as engaged in the neutral activity of spreading information as an end in itself—as if the process of selecting what to spread and how to frame it could ever be neutral. For our part, when we speak, we presume that we are speaking to people of action, people like ourselves who are aware of their agency and are in the process of deciding what to do, people who may be wrestling with heartache and despair.

Human beings influence each other both through rational argument and through the infectiousness of action. As Peter Kropotkin put it, “Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice are as contagious as cowardice, submission, and panic.”

Just as we have a responsibility not to show cowardice, we also have a responsibility not to promote sacrifice casually. We must not speak carelessly about taking risks, even risks that we have taken ourselves. It is one thing to expose oneself to risk; it is another thing to invite others to run risks, not knowing what the consequences might be for them.

And here, we are not speaking about a risk, but about the worst of all certainties.

Let’s not glamorize the decision to end one’s life, nor celebrate anything with such permanent repercussions. Rather than exalting Aaron as a martyr and encouraging others to emulate him, we honor his memory, but we exhort you to take a different path.

“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

These words of Aaron’s haunt us.

He is right. We are rapidly entering an era in which human life is treated as worthless. This is obvious in Gaza, but we can see it elsewhere around the world, as well. With wars proliferating around the Mideast and North Africa, we are poised on the threshold of a new age of genocides. Even inside the United States, mass casualty incidents have become routine, while an entire segment of the underclass is consigned to addiction, homelessness, and death.

As a tactic, self-immolation expresses a logic similar to the premise of the hunger strike. The protester treats himself or herself as a hostage, attempting to use his or her willingness to die to pressure the authorities. This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place. Today, however, as we wrote in regards to the hunger strike of Alfredo Cospito,

No one should have any illusions about how governments view the sanctity of life in the age of COVID-19, when the United States government can countenance the deaths of a million people without blushing while the Russian government explicitly employs convicts as cannon fodder. The newly-elected fascist politicians who govern Italy have no scruples about consigning whole populations to death, let alone permitting a single anarchist to die.

In this case, Aaron was not an imprisoned anarchist, but an active-duty member of the US military. His LinkedIn profile specifies that he graduated from basic training “top of flight and top of class.” Will this make any difference to the US government?

If nothing else, Aaron’s action shows that genocide cannot take place overseas without collateral damage on this side of the ocean. Unfortunately, the authorities have never been especially moved by the deaths of US military personnel. Countless US veterans have struggled with addiction and homelessness since returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans commit suicide at a much higher rate than all other adults. The US military continues to use weapons that expose US troops to permanent brain injuries.

Members of the military are taught to understand their willingness to die as the chief resource they have to put at the service of the things they believe in. In many cases, this way of thinking is passed down intergenerationally. At the same time, the ruling class takes the deaths of soldiers in stride. This is what they have decided will be normal.

It is not willingness to die that will sway our rulers. They really fear our lives, not our deaths—they fear our willingness to act collectively according to a different logic, actively interrupting their order.

Many things that are worth doing entail risks, but choosing to intentionally end your life means foreclosing years or decades of possibility, denying the rest of us a future with you. If such a decision is ever appropriate, it is only when every other possible course of action has been exhausted.

Uncertainty is one of the most difficult things for human beings to bear. There is a tendency to seek to resolve it as quickly as possible, even by imposing the worst-case scenario in advance—even if that means choosing death. There is a sort of relief in knowing how things will turn out. Too often, despair and self-sacrifice mingle and blur together, offering an all-too-simple escape from tragedies that appear unsolvable.

If your heart is broken by the horrors in Gaza and you are prepared to bear significant consequences to try to stop them, we urge you to do everything in your power to find comrades and make plans collectively. Lay the foundations for a full life of resistance to colonialism and all forms of oppression. Prepare to take risks as your conscience demands, but don’t hurry towards self-destruction. We desperately need you alive, at our side, for all that is to come.

As we wrote in 2011 in reference to the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi,

Nothing is more terrifying than departing from what we know. It may take more courage to do this without killing oneself than it does to light oneself on fire. Such courage is easier to find in company; there is so much we can do together that we cannot do as individuals. If he had been able to participate in a powerful social movement, perhaps Bouazizi would never have committed suicide; but paradoxically, for such a thing to be possible, each of us has to take a step analogous to the one he took into the void.

Let’s admit that the kind of protest activity that has taken place thus far in the United States has not served to compel the US government to compel a halt to the genocide in Gaza. It is an open question what could accomplish that. Aaron’s action challenges us to answer this question—and to answer it differently than he did.

We mourn his passing.

[1] In the email, Aaron specified his pronouns as he/him.

[euphorial-docx]

under my first wga/sag-aftra strike post, i had a frustrating interaction that makes me want to reiterate what the unions want from non-union supporters.

during the wga/sag-aftra strike, you should:

donate to the plethora of fundraisers set up to support writers, actors, and other crew members and businesses affected by the strike.

SHARE SHARE SHARE! post about the strike. outwardly and vocally support the strike.

support other unions in the entertainment industry trying to unionize! many of them are trying, such as the animators at disney! show them support too!

follow strike rules that are easily accessible online. what does following strike rules mean? it means not doing the work that the union writers and actors are currently not doing because of the strike. that would be scabbing, and scabbing makes you a dick.

participate at a local wga/sag-aftra event or picket.

contact employers— disney, amazon, netflix, apple, discovery-warner, nbc universal, sony, paramount, etc— and urge them to give the writers and actors a fair deal.

get more information at sagaftrastrike.org and wgacontract2023.org. ways to help and donate are on both websites!

‼️to reiterate: do not boycott. neither the wga or sag-aftra are calling for a boycott of streaming services. right now, boycotting services against the unions wishes is not helping anyone. it is counterproductive.‼️

[faultfalha]

A new compass is required to navigate the future. In "Breaking Together", Dr. Bendell offers a new perspective to help us understand the collapse. His theory is compelling, and the examples he provides make it clear that we must break away from our old ways to find a new path. It is a difficult journey, but the rewards will be great.