#the whole theme about vulnerability being given vs demanded

[teacup-gathering-itself]

📢Just bc YOU want to peg Hugh Dancy 📢 does NOT make Will Graham a bottom 📢

[wearesorcerer]

What are your opinions on the Draconic and Efreeti bloodlines? I know I've told you about my sorcerer with those two cross blooded, but I don't remember if you've talked much about them on their own.

Ooo, a combo analysis request! :D

I’ll go by the parts. When in doubt, I list Draconic first, then Efreeti (alphabetization by bloodline).

Class Skill: Draconic gets Perception, which is the most important skill in the game -- bar none. Efreeti gets Knowledge (the planes), which can be useful, but is the class skill most bloodlines grant anyway (to the point that you wonder why it isn’t just a Sorcerer class skill). We’re talking A+ vs. B+ (maybe A-).

Bonus Spells: 3rd - mage armor/enlarge person; 5th - resist energy/scorching ray; 7th - fly/fireball; 9th - fear/wall of fire; 11th - spell resistance/persistent image; 13th - form of the dragon I/planar binding; 15th - form of the dragon II/plane shift; 17th - form of the dragon III/giant form II; 19th - wish (both).

The Draconic bloodline’s spells are almost entirely support ones, whereas the Efreeti spells cover the more prominent Fire spells (save burning hands [eh] and meteor swarm). I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here: you’re almost assured to select the bonus spells from the Efreeti bloodline anyway and several of the Draconic bloodline’s spells (mage armor, fly, fear) are ones that would benefit most any caster.

Bear in the mind that mage armor is what you use to make bracers of armor and doesn’t stack with them, so unless you find a better arm slot item that bonus spell might become a dud. You can’t swap out bloodline spells known, sadly, so that is a drawback.

The only non-Sorcerer spell on either list is (oddly enough) spell resistance, which grants SR equal to 12 + your caster level. That pretty much means enemy casters have to roll a 13 to affect you with spells; not an impossible task by any means. As a 5th-level spell (10th character level), you’re likely to find other (and probably better) ways of getting SR if you want it. In general, if you want SR, you want the base value to be pretty high.

Overall, you’re going to have uses for the majority of the spells on either list, but the Draconic one has possible duds at higher levels. Efreeti wins in that regard (unless you don’t want to turn into a giant). Bear in mind the shapeshifting for later, though.

Bonus Feats: Draconic - Blind-Fight, Quicken Spell, Skill Focus (Fly), Skill Focus (Knowledge [Arcana]), Toughness; Efreeti - Dodge, Empower Spell, Lightning Reflexes, Skill Focus (Knowledge [Planes]), Weapon Finesse; Both - Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Power Attack

Power Attack will work quite well with your growth spells and Improved Initiative is always great to pick up. Empower Spell and Quicken Spell are both rather nice to have. If you go Dragon Disciple, you’ll need to take any Efreeti-specific feats beforehand. DO NOT TAKE TOUGHNESS.

Bloodline Arcana: +1 damage per die rolled on spells with the same energy descriptor as your bloodline/free Energy Substitution (Fire) on energy spells.

These are both rather good for a pyromancer, so I can see why you’d want the Crossblooded archetype with them. Combining them, you’d get things like chain fire lightning with bonus damage, which is just awesome. It also doesn’t word it like it’s the actual Energy Substitution feat, so you can use this with [Force] and [Sonic] spells. Load up on those and you’ll be practically unstoppable.

Bloodline Powers:

1st - Claws (with energy damage at 7th level) or Fire Ray (30 ft. ranged touch, 1d6 + 1/two SORCERER levels fire damage). If you were to decide to multiclass (say, into Dragon Disciple), Fire Ray wouldn’t be worthwhile. Heck, it’s not as good as that Fiery Burst feat I mentioned.

3rd - Draconic gets Nat Armor and some Fire Resistance, whereas Efreeti gets more Fire Resistance. The Draconic one would free up any need you’d have for an amulet of natural armor and either way the resistance becomes useless to you (you gain immunity to Fire at 20th level in either bloodline).

9th - 30-ft cone of fire (1d6 per Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple level) 1 (9th)/2 (17th)/3 (20th) times per day (+1 for Dragon Disciple) or giant form I (but you turn into an Efreeti and get its heat ability) once per day.Of the two, I’d take the giant form I unless I were to go into Dragon Disciple. Giant form I is a 7th-level spell, so you’re casting something effectively five levels before you could otherwise, whereas the cone’s length is fairly short.

Giant form I gives you Large size, +6 Strength, -2 Dex, +4 Con, +4 nat armor, low-light vision, Darkvision 60 ft., Fire Resistance 20, and Cold Vulnerability.You already have that Fire Resistance without the vulnerability and you might have low-light vision or Darkvision from your race (I forget what you said; I’m assuming Ifrit), so really what this does is increase any natural armor you’d get at that level from the Draconic bloodline and otherwise works like righteous might (but no DR, instead getting an additional +2 Str and +2 Con).

15th - Fly 60 ft. (average) whenever you want or +30 to your base land speed. Flight is always needed, so this frees up needing the spell or an item, but average maneuverability is rather lame and air speeds are generally much slower bang for your buck than land speeds (because you’re moving in three dimensions instead of two, so you need a faster speed). There are feats for that, but you’ll not want them at that level -- especially if you go Dragon Disciple. There are also spells (I’ll have to look some up later).

20th - Blindsense 60 ft. and immunity to paralysis, sleep, and fire or immunity to fire, plane shift once per day to or from the Elemental Plane of Fire, and limited wish once per day as a spell-like ability.Efreeti all the way here. Never pass up wish of any kind if you can help it.

There are three things to bear in mind when dealing with these bloodline powers specifically:

How melee focused are you going to be? The claws power demands melee. You can supplement it with your growing powers, but otherwise I’m betting you’re going to want to use your feats for something else.

Are you going to go into Dragon Disciple? As I wrote before, if you’re doing the Draconic bloodline, there’s almost no reason not to do the Dragon Disciple. Because of the wording, going into Dragon Disciple will advance both of your bloodlines (it’ll work with Crossblooded), so again, there is almost no reason not to take this prestige class.Reasons you might have: another prestige class that more directly benefits your theme, multiclassing, ... That’s really it.The greatest thing about this? You don’t have to worry about losing blindsense, wings, or the cone. Effectively, you’re going to get both of your 9th- and 15th-level bloodline powers just because of the wording. You also get form of the dragon I/II as spell-like abilities (cannot be counterspelled), so that would free up your 13th- and 15th-level bonus spells known.

They won’t work with feats and abilities that benefit your spells. I bring this up because you can’t use your Bloodline Arcana on your Fire Ray or your claws’ elemental damage and if you want to take Spell Focus or anything, it won’t apply.

Now, the downside of Dragon Disciple is that you’ll have to invest in feats to get your full casting back, but that’s not that big of a deal unless you have certain feats you must take at high levels.

Overall: The Draconic bloodline is a varied and useful bloodline on its own, but not exceptionally good. However, if it’s paired with the Dragon Disciple, there aren’t many that are better. The Efreeti bloodline’s capstone ability is fantastic, but effectively you get a dud of a 3rd-level ability (nothing left over) and your 1st-level ability is only slightly better than a cantrip (and even then is lacking the key range you’ll want). Together, the two are fantastic.

Notes and Other Options: If you only want a couple of things on one Bloodline, the Eldritch Heritage feat chain might be worthwhile. It won’t net you the capstone ability or bloodline arcana (which is a major downside in this particular case) and won’t qualify for Dragon Disciple (in which case you’d want Draconic as your primary bloodline), but spares your Will saves and wouldn’t interfere with advancing your other bloodline.

As I noted, Fiery Burst is strictly better than Fire Ray: at-will, Close range (25 + 5 ft/2 caster levels), 5 ft.-radius burst that deals 1d6 fire damage per level of the highest level Fire spell you are able to cast at a given moment (you need the spell known and an available spell slot to use the feat), with a Reflex save for half damage. Neither would be great against Rogues, but the range, damage progression, and number of possible/probable targets on Fiery Burst is much more forgiving than Fire Ray. You can’t take Fiery Burst until you can cast 2nd-level spells (4th level, meaning your feat for being 5th character level), so at minimum it will have a better range and deal far more damage than Fire Ray would at the same level.

Broken? OP? No, I wouldn’t say so. The whole point of Reserve feats is that they prevent you from using something more powerful (in this case, scorching ray or fireball) to give you a 5e-style cantrip. Still, it being late 3.5, some DMs might balk.

I’m not going to poo-poo having a Fly speed, but unless your opponents are also flying, it’s not going to be of much benefit to you when you’re doing melee stuff (if you intend to go that route). You’d need Flyby Attack for that, but you probably won’t qualify for it at a time when you could take it.

[roominthecastle]

Craig Mazin’s general theory on screenwriting

There is nothing honest or truthful about rigid structural forms. Robotically following a template (e.g. Syd Field’s 3-act structure or Chris Vogler’s hero's journey) likely results in a well-structured bad script. What real writers follow are their characters, and what great writers follow are their characters as they evolve around a central dramatic argument that is meaningful to other human beings.

Structure is not a tool, it is a symptom; it is a symptom of a character's relationship with the central dramatic argument.

Structure isn't something you write well, it is something that happens because you wrote well. There is a lot of what and when in structural templates but if we don't know why these are there, how are we supposed to know how to write them? "What's my motivation?" may be a cliché but it is the key to structure: what is the purpose of the narration?

Narration helps us move through a changing world; story is about a change of state and there are three basic axes on which change can occur:

internal: the character’s thoughts and feelings; it zigzags all over the place.

interpersonal: the main relationship; usually starts neutral then, depending on how the story unfolds, it can dip, rise, plummet, spike.

external: the plot; usually a straight line with a start and an end.

Narration is made up of scenes and follows the Hegelian dialectic: we take a thesis (”[x] is true”) and apply an antithesis (”no, [x] is not true and here's why”). What results from this collision is a new thesis called the synthesis which starts the whole process over again.

Every scene begins with a truth, something happens inside that scene that challenges it, a new truth emerges at the end, then we begin again. At the beginning of every scene we have a situation involving the three basic axes of change and we fire an antithesis at least at one of them to create something new. This is what story is -- constant changes. And the glue that holds these changes together is called the theme (or unity, first used by Aristotle in Poetics).

The purpose of the story is to take the main character from ignorance of the truth of the theme to the embodiment of the theme through action.

The theme is the central dramatic argument that has to be an actual argument (e.g. “life is beautiful even amidst horrors”) and not a vague concept (e.g. “brotherhood”) because a script without a central dramatic argument feels empty and pointless. But you probably don't want to start with the argument as it is a weird way to begin a script. Usually, we think of an idea first but then we should ask, "What central dramatic argument fits with this?" and, ideally, you should think ironically here, e.g.

idea: “a fish has to find another fish somewhere in the ocean”

central dramatic argument: “no matter how much you want to hold onto someone you love, sometimes you have to let them go”

While the argument sounds pretty cliché, it is great to pair with the idea because it contains irony, i.e. the outcome of reunion will be a separation. This is thematic structure and it guides the writing process. And you can always have a really good script built around a cliché. It’s the execution around the cliché that should be interesting, that’s what matters.

Usually we introduce our protagonist in an ordinary world but ordinary doesn’t equal mundane. It just means that the protagonist's life exemplifies their ignorance of the theme (central dramatic argument); in fact, typically, they believe the opposite, the anti theme. This ignorance is likely what enabled them to achieve a stasis that is not a perfect life, it's not the best life they could live, it is just the life they settled for; an “acceptable perfection”.

Without the writer’s "divine nudge", their life could go on like this forever, so our job is to undermine it via an inciting incident. It is a moment designed to disrupt a character's stasis, making the continuation of their specific "acceptable perfection" impossible and begin their transformation. It is genetically engineered to break this character's soul and destroy them. Everything the character does at this stage is in service of trying to recapture the stasis that's been destroyed. So your heroes, on some level, should be cowards in a manner of "I don't want things to change, please just let me be."

Underlying that attitude is fear and fear in your character is the heart of empathy. We feel for characters when we fear with them. Every protagonist fears something and this fear, the vulnerability, is our connection to a character. And the fearful hero should have lived their lives to avoid the thing they are afraid of. We are taking their safety blanket away and pushing them forward; they wanna get back what they lost and they wanna go backwards. This tension is what propels us through the second act portion of the story.

When you think about plot as something to jam characters into, that's when you run out of road around the second act. You run out of plot because it wasn't generated by anything other than you. A story is a journey during which characters grow from thinking one way to thinking the opposite. You are the parent with a lesson to teach them but the characters have to make these choices. If you write with that in mind, when you start thinking about plot as something that you are doing to your characters, that's when you can lead them from anti theme to theme, and you never have to ask "What should happen next?" only "How can I make what happens next better?" But how do we teach characters?

First, by reinforcing the anti theme. The protagonist is knocked out of their stasis and they are trying to get back to it. They are going to experience new things and these should reinforce their belief in the anti theme, making them want to get back to their stasis even more. We are basically creating a torture chamber here. We write a world where we oppose our character's desires and by doing so, we reinforce their need to go backwards. We design moments of push-and-push-back. We keep forcing them forward but also put things in their path that make them wanna go back. This creates tension, which is exciting, and when they get past those obstacles, it will be meaningful.

Then comes the element of doubt. The protagonist still believes the anti theme, so they need to run into something or someone that exemplifies the opposite, the theme. When they get a glimpse of this other way of living, they realize there is value to it, it is attractive to them, and their belief in the anti theme wavers. This doubt creates a natural internal conflict. The protagonist is rational as in that they have to have at least the capacity to see that there is a better way to live, which is a critical component. And it is fear that separates the irrational hero from their rational potential. Through circumstance, necessity, or another character's actions, the hero experiences a moment of acting in harmony with the theme. This could be something they do or they could watch someone else do it (active vs passive experience), and it brings about the magical midpoint change.

The protagonist's belief system has been challenged but there is no willingness to go all the way and believe the theme yet. They may not even understand the theme yet but they are already wondering if the anti theme they’ve been clinging to really answers or solves everything. And the very moment the protagonist considers the possibility of switching sides, you hammer them back in the other direction. The story has to make them shrink back into their "old way" and thus the hero retreats. This is the essence of dramatic reversal.

Something unexpected and contradictory/ironic works best here. This punishment makes the eventual completion of the journey that much more impressive. The further you go here, the more you feel at the end. When you design obstacles, lessons, glimpses of the other way, rewards, punishments, the beating back and pushing forward, keep thinking ironically. Think of surprises that twist the knife. If they have to face their fear, make it overwhelming. Don't disappoint, punish. Make characters lower their defenses by convincing them that everything is going to be okay, then punch them right in the face -- metaphorically. As a writer, you are the Old Testament God. Ask the questions "Where is my protagonist on their quest between theme and anti theme?" and "What would be the meanest thing I could do to them right now?" Then do that over and over again until they are left without a belief. As the demands of the narrative begin to overwhelm the protagonist, they begin to realize that their limitations are not physical but thematic.

This is when the other side begins to seem increasingly reasonable but they still cannot embrace it. They are given a chance to do so but they fail at it because they still cannot quite accept the theme. They just lost their belief in the anti theme. They are trapped between rejection of the old and acceptance of the new because the old way doesn’t work anymore and the new seems insane/unattainable. This is why they call this a low point. The original goal of going back to stasis is blown to bits. Whatever they believed at the beginning has been exposed as a sham but the enormity of the real goal is impossibly daunting. The protagonist cannot yet accept the theme because it is too scary. Their core values are gone but they aren’t ready to replace them with new ones. The protagonist is lost. What we need from drama is moments where we connect to another person's sense of being lost because we've all been lost. This will make the ending work. In absence of this there can be no catharsis.

Characters develop as they move through the narrative. The narrative is gonna impact their relationship to the theme. When a character finishes interacting with this portion of the narrative, their relationship to the theme or central dramatic argument changes from "I don’t believe that" to "I don't believe what I used to but I cannot believe this new stuff yet, either." If we think in terms of acts, this happens around the end of the second act, and it ushers in the defining moment when the character needs to face their greatest challenge and worst fear. This resolves the story being told and the life of the character; it brings them to a new stasis and balance (=synthesis).

You have to design a moment that's gonna test the protagonist's faith in the theme. They have to go through something to prove they believe in this new theme. It's not enough to say "I get it, I was wrong." They have to prove it via action and in a way where they literally embody the new theme with everything they have. Before that, there is another round of torture, the relapse, which is a temptation right before their big decision/defining moment. We hold up their safety blanket and say, "Go ahead, character. Take it and go back to your old ways." They have to reject this and do something extraordinary to embody the truth of the theme. They have to act in accordance with the theme and by doing so, they prevail.

We have to create a mechanism to tempt and then force action. It also produces one last chance to punish the character: they experience the cost of embracing the new theme and they don’t back down, they demonstrate their faith in it, which brings a reward. Finally, after many collisions of many theses and antitheses, there is one big final synthesis which we need to see: the after-story life in harmony with the central dramatic argument. If you remove everything in between the first and last scene, there should only be one fundamental difference: in the beginning, the protagonist acts in accordance of the anti theme and at the end it is replaced by the theme.

There is really only one big act and it's called your story.

[crimethinc]

Update from the Nicaraguan Insurrection: Horizontal Organizing vs. Left Neoliberalism and the Pitfalls of Nationalism

Two weeks ago, we published a report from the uprising in Nicaragua that began in April. Since then, the situation has only intensified. Here is an update from our comrades in Nicaragua, describing the most recent developments and the stakes of the struggle. In Nicaragua, we see an uprising against the neoliberal policies of a “left” government in which a movement is attempting to resist right-wing cooptation in the absence of an established anarchist or autonomous movement. We are concerned about the prevalence of nationalist and rhetoric and imagery, but we believe that it is important to support revolts against authoritarian governments in order to generate dialogue that could open up a revolutionary horizon. Just as it will not benefit leftists to support unpopular and oppressive “left” governments, it does not benefit anarchists to refuse to engage with insurgents whose goals are still evolving.

For the past month, Nicaragua has seen daily protests against the government of Daniel Ortega. This is being called La Insurreccion de Abril (“the April Insurrection”). Over the last two weeks, these protests have escalated to countrywide blockades and urban barricades. Organized students are occupying three public universities (UNA, UPOLI, UNAN). Nicaraguans in every major city have taken to the streets to demand complete systemic change, including the resignation of Daniel Ortega. Riot police and Sandinista Youth continue to carry out pro-government repression, although this has died down in Managua, Masaya, Matagalpa, and Jinotega.

“It’s been amazing to protest in the streets of Managua without government or Young Sandinista repression. We’ve been able to do this for ten days now. It’s the first time since Ortegas came to power that we’ve been able to take the streets in this way. I truly feel as if the city is ours. We’re witnessing amazing street art, art projects, and interventions. We don’t know what’s going to come out of the dialogue. Government reform, police reform, new elections, autonomous regions?

I feel good, but it has been exhausting. We have good days and bad days. I feel emotionally drained, just working and working and working. Not really taking time to think. It’s been exhausting to live on a day by day space and time. So many doors have been opened!

Classes began at UNAN, the largest public university in the country, on Monday, May 7. Students organized a protest inside the university campus, staging a sit-in and then spending the night. This continued until the university shut down. UNAN is now occupied with an estimated 500 students inside. The students are organized as a commune with rotating personnel guarding the barricades, receiving aid, maintaining communications, re-painting old murals, and staffing a medical center. All the major roads towards the UNAN are barricaded and defended by students, causing major traffic congestion. Nevertheless, drivers cheer the students on as they pass the barricades.

The demands of the UNAN student groups are comparable to those announced by other student organizations: justice, peace, the completely restructuring of student unions, an immediate end to the repression carried out by police and Sandinista Youth, and university autonomy. Other universities, like UNA (the agrarian university), have already created their own student governments outside the state’s framework of legitimacy.

The student representatives of the Coalition of Students have announced that the students of each university should organize as best fits their local conditions, whether that means through the UNEN [the government-sponsored student union] or outside of it—whatever path will lead towards educational autonomy.

During the second week of May, police and Sandinista Youth carried out periodic attacks on UNAN each night, but people protected the entrances to the universities with cultural activities like music and singing; people spent the night at the gates of the university to secure the safety of the students inside. It’s now been about two weeks since the last major confrontations at UNAN involving police and Sandinista Youth.

In discussions with comrades who work and operate inside of UNAN, they report that they’ve never experienced this kind of togetherness and collectivity. They describe a union that transcends class, gender, and race, people united around the cause of justice and autonomy.

“Several contacts inside of UNAN advised me not to enter to conduct interviews, since it is likely that there are infiltrators from the Sandinista Youth inside the campus who would recognize me and might harass me outside.”

A map of the blockades around Nicaragua.

Managua experiences about fours marches every day, organized in different parts of the city. Each march has a different theme and a corresponding location. Marches have been connecting new historic places, like Camino de Oriente (where the revolt started) and Rotonda Jean Paul Genie (the new roundabout, which is not a memorial site) to places like UCA and Rotonda Ruben Dario that are in the center of the city.

We have witnessed marches organized by diverse sectors of the population: various colleges and high schools, alumni marches, marches of teachers and professors, marches organized by the private sector. Mothers and family members of the victims murdered by the police have also led their own marches.

At the same time, taxi drivers have created their own protests, mobilizing around the spike in the price of gasoline. You can see the phrase No + Alza (“stop the rise”) painted on windows of taxis, buses, and cars.

Nicaragua pays the most for gasoline despite having the strongest relationship to Venezuela. There is no transparency in this transaction. A general boycott of PETRONIC, the State-owned petroleum company, is also taking place.

Revolt in the streets.

The confrontations are now predominantly occurring outside Managua in smaller cities like Masaya, Sebaco, Matagalpa, Estelí, and Granada. These confrontations have led to looting and chaos in the streets as families try to protect their homes and businesses. Since the police and state officials are doing the absolute minimum, in some places there has been a push towards self-government and local assemblies. We have seen several small business sectors organize themselves to prevent looting and crime; at the same time, we have seen groups making deals with the local police to protect neighborhoods.

Most of these confrontations occur when the police disrupt protests, creating a state of emergency in a given locale. This gives looters an incentive to attack gas stations and supermarkets. Pro-government news sources then report the looting, blaming the protestors for everything. It is well-documented that the police have used live ammunition on protesters.

We can see the response to these confrontations on the walls of the city streets. Sin Justicia no hay Paz! “There is no peace without justice!” No eran delincuentes, eran estudiantes. “They were not thugs, they were students.” Se busca asesino with an image of Daniel Ortega: “Wanted Murderer!”

Fue el Estado (“it was the state”) is one of the most popular slogans we see spray-painted in every corner of the city. This slogan conveys the popular idea that the Orteguista government has corrupted the state, and the state is responsible for all the violence, destruction, and death. In this narrative, the solutions that are implied are oriented toward restructuring the state so that it will cease to be affiliated with a political party and more “neutral,” catering to the needs of the whole population, not just the Orteguistas. Obviously, this is not an anarchist analysis.

Solutions outside of the state are slowly emerging, but the process is not complete. Neighborhood assemblies, community patrols, student unions, trash collection schedules, and pirate transportation have emerged as necessities in practice: short-term solutions. As anarchists, it’s our task now to demonstrate that these can offer long-term possibilities for autonomous community-run participatory structures.

Live ammunition.

On Monday, May 14, it was announced that the “dialogue” between the state and the student movement plus the private sector and “civil society” [various NGOs and other groups] would occur on Wednesday, May 16. The student movements originally stated that they were willing to engage in dialogue, but that the ongoing police repression made it impossible. Nevertheless, a day later, a part of the student movement agreed that they would be at the dialogue table.

So far, two sessions of this dialogue have taken place; the next session is scheduled for Monday, May 21. Everyone expected the first session to turn out to be a trap against the students, but it turned out that it was a trap for the state. The church (the mediators of the dialogue), “civil society,” the private sector, and the campesino movement all supported the students in their demands that the government put a stop to the repression and recall all police personnel. For the first time in Nicaraguan history, a student interrupted the dialogue, stood up to face Daniel Ortega, and attacked him on account of his authoritarian and violent government. Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo never give interviews to the press, so it was amazing to see them so vulnerable.

The second session of the dialogue concluded with an agreement that the government would have their police and paramilitary forces stop attacking protestors in return for the students calling for the road blockades to be lifted. The road blockades have completely paralyzed the economy. Despite this agreement, the Agrarian University was attacked on the night of Saturday, May 19 and four students were injured. Consequently, the deal is off and the blockades are back up.

A key player in all of this is the CIDH (Commision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, “Inter-American Commission for Human Rights”). They are currently compiling evidence and testimony to present a report on whether there have been human rights violations in Nicaragua. They will present this report later this week. This report could trigger international repercussions against the Ortegas. The CIDH, of course, is essentially a neoliberal organization answering to the Organization of American States.

The immediate demands presented to the government include justice for the 63 people who have been murdered in the course of the repression. This would involve a trial of the government and police officials responsible for their deaths. Through such a trial, there would also be a push towards separating the police from the Orteguista party, as originally stipulated by the constitution. A more far-reaching reform of the police could also happen. Through this reform, people will also push for a complete change in the system of government, including educational autonomy and separation between the Orteguista Party and public institutions.

The Autoconvocados (“Self-Assembled”) movement controls the streets with the power to mobilize hundreds of thousands in Managua, enjoying the freedom to protest for the first time in over ten years. Any negative response or suspicious activity of the government will be received with public demonstrations.

No justice, no peace.

Improvised munitions.

On Horizontal Organizing

The Autoconvocados movement is an umbrella term that can be used by everyone, but only some events are approved and legitimized by the Autoconvocado committee, a group of about 10 organizers that run the official Autoconvocados Twitter account, among other things, to which they post official events. This group operates through consensus and has no leaders.

The Student Coalition is the group representing the students in the dialogue with the rest of the State. This coalition includes representatives of major universities all over the country. It is a coalition of five different student groups, operating horizontally and through consensus. According to the media, two leaders have emerged; this is how the media attempts to create leadership. In fact, the organizing is very much horizontal. This student coalition has the capacity to rally hundreds of thousands of people, setting the tone for the discussion and reaction. One part of the coalition is the Coordinadora Universitaria Por la Justicia y la Paz; out of those with delegates in the dialogue, they have been the closest to a feminist perspective.

All the other public affinity groups that have emerged, like the Artistas Autoconvocados and Arquitectos Autoconvocados (artists and architects), are basically different sectors that are organizing themselves non-hierarchically to set up actions and promote events. There are no public leaders in these movements, only delegates and representatives.

Overall, the most obvious aesthetic of the opposition is nationalism. It is under this banner that all the solidarity and direct action has happened.

All the same, there is a lot that is horizontal about this movement. Small affinity groups organize through social media to deliver medical supplies, food, and resources to communities that have suffered from rioting and looting. Basically, these horizontal organizations are promoting a culture of participation and consensus. A culture of listening and suggesting. A culture of face-to-face politics. A culture of solidarity and inclusivity. A culture of direct action. All things we would have never learn through “party system” politics.

In terms of the future, it is this practice that is creating the theory for the short-term goals. Practices come first. First, we need people in the streets to react to the immediate actions of the government. But in this situation practice cannot create long-term goals. For that, we will need theory.

Text Messages from the Uprising

“Today was the happiest day of life.”

“I’m at the safehouse making bulletproof shields out of garbage cans.”

“They are killing us with snipers, send help send help”

“I’m on my way to Costa Rica. There were people outside my house telling me that they were going to burn down the house and kill me.”

“A tree of life fell on top of E——!”

“There are barricades surrounding your neighborhood, you can’t get in.”

“I have a group of 70 gang members ready to fight, just let us know where to go.”

“We need to occupy the Central American University.”

“Your meme made the national newspaper!”

“Friends, just got out of a meeting, our TV show has been canceled, it was too radical.”

“They’ve burned two trucks in front of my house. And the house behind mine is on fire. I need to get out of here.”

“I’m outing pro-government supporters on Tinder.”

“Don’t, worry V—– sent a drone to check out the situation.”

“Friends, I made this new group because I think there were infiltrators in the other group.”

“VICE wants an interview, what should we tell them?”

“To go fuck themselves.”

A roadblock.

Further Reading

Nicaragua, Ortega, and the Student Movement

Capitalist Development in Nicaragua and the Mirage of the Left