Margaret Killjoy

"Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free." --David Graeber

Can confirm, every Signal chat in town either said nothing or made one snide comment and then immediately got back to work

Brass plaque CNC engraved saying "This tree is named Sophie Rae Lichterman."

I work at a CNC shop. It seemed you were talking to me in one of your recent Cool People episodes.

this sounds like an insult but I mean it earnestly: i was impressed by how boring it was. Just people doing people things. Later there was a big punk festival in the park to celebrate too, but I just went to boring meetings and reportbacks about history in an anarchist office building and it ruled.

TBH that's always felt a bit like an outdated policy, but I suppose the people who make those policies know more about labor organizing than I do.

well fine i'll count it because I went to y'all's 100th anniversary celebrations and it was the first time I saw an anarchist-owned office building.

honestly I had them written into one of the drafts of this piece, but it was already 3x longer than my usual post. It's a really, really similar structure.

oh lord i never go to meetings. They sent me an email asking if i wanted to meet up with organizers in my area and told them "no thanks i just want to pay my dues and talk about our rad history"

Meta also does active harm and its owner eats dinner with Trump, but I continue to use Instagram to reach people with ideas and Facebook Marketplace to buy weird old junk off strangers in Appalachia.

It's a funding and dissemination structure for independent writing, and it's an effective one. The main alternative people suggest, Ghost, doesn't have content restrictions either it appears and also provides a platform to anyone willing to use its software.

When people pushed Patreon to ban Nazis, it led to several prominent anarchist projects losing their funding. I don't trust tech companies to be the arbiters of speech.

I'm bothered by Substack's platforming of fascists, but I think the majority of its top political newsletters are left-leaning.

my reasons for staying on substack are complicated and unlikely to address your concerns, but: I have found that when we ask platforms to develop codes of conduct and deplatform the rightwing, it is adult content creators and anarchists who find themselves deplatformed and demonetized.

definitely counts by my book

oh, yeah. TBH I think every wobbly I know doesn't work for a wobbly shop. Though I run across times in history, including modern history, where what the IWW does is help people organize, even if bigger unions get the dues and the shop at the end. Still good work to do I figure.

hell yeah that counts. I'm a former lapsed member myself. I joined when i was first eligible, then i ran out of money, then rejoined when I got podcast job and could afford it.

if we're in the same union (IWW, or soon to be WGA too, or fuck it, SFWA which isn't technically a union) let me know and I'll follow you back?

yeah seemed like it. as soon as i realized what was happening i dipped.

i thought they were trying to get me to talk about anarchism on a documentary, then slowly i learned it was a "docu-series" and then that they just wanted me to give camera crews access to squats and train yards and other places where people really don't want to be filmed

the soviets were functionally disenfranchised, because democratic centralism is, you know, centralized.

they existed in tension with the Duma during the dual power period. Then in the October revolution (which was more of a coup, with the anarchists doing a lot of the heavy lifting) the Duma was overthrown, but Lenin took control of the congress of soviets and centralized power.

in this case, it's easier to say that this is generally accepted history (although people might interpret it differently). The soviets began as a pluralistic project of workers councils, supported by the Left SRs, the Bolsheviks, and the anarchists (presumably among others and non-affiliated folks)

i think they're not arguing against my point, but believe that bringing it up is bad form. ("counterrevolutionary")

yeah, honestly, this makes sense to me. one of the people in my comments there specifically was like "I became a marxist leninist because of a tiktok creator"

amazing!! @whysophiewhy.bsky.social

i turned down hosting a reality tv show about ten years ago

(this probably has less to do with the crowds on these various platforms and more to do with that my work breaks containment more on IG, and more of the bluesky tankies blocked me long ago)

me: posts an analysis of various revolutions that were built from local councils, including the so-far uncontested fact that the Russian revolution started that way before Lenin consolidated power and disenfranchised the soviets.

bsky: "yeah makes sense"

substack: "sure"

IG: "You are the CIA."

All the involved groups are denying the reports that Kurdish fighters have entered Iran

The government is literally busting down doors and confiscating political literature. All eyes on Prairieland 👀👇🏻

PJAK have just released a statement calling for the establishment of communes to replace the state in Rojhelat (Eastern/Iranian-Occupied Kurdistan). They haven't called for attacks on regime forces, but have said defense committees will be needed to resist state attacks on the communes.