The Liberation Garden

Of course, I expect more than a few people think my writing style sounds like that, but there's a difference between "I had trouble following your tangent-laden, jargony text" and "there was little to no point in that wall of text".

Short of expecting everyone to know far more about both than is reasonable, I think we should probably normalize learning to spot the sort of embellished, wordy prose that doesn't actually say all that much and is common in corporate speak and marketing. They share a lot of qualities.

A thing that's shared by both therapy and liberation terms is that some people love misusing them to excuse shitty behavior and bad, anti-liberation ideas. Stuff like claiming it's "trauma informed" to not change alienating behavior or excusing imperial extractivism for the sake of workers.

The scope of what needs to be done is daunting and we'll only be able to do it together. Don't give up before you even get started.

But acting like it's all you can do? That's completely undermining the power of our collective action to solve problems and influence our material conditions. It surrenders our power to institutions outside of our control. It's fundamentally undemocratic and authoritarian.

Confining oneself to electoralism as the sum total of political activities, or even its pinnacle, is probably the most nihilistic and disempowering belief. That's not to say you should or shouldn't vote. You can decide on a situational basis when it's appropriate for you to take the time to do so.

The most basic social technology of organizing is meetings. That includes revolutionary organizing.

It's never too late to learn how to hold productive meetings.

I used to grow these awesomely huge pumpkins that would be like 20-30 pounds each and still delicious, but then I'd have to deal with an entire one of those pumpkins at once.

They're less impressive, but sometimes it makes a lot more sense to just grow more reasonable sized squash like a butternut.

"I'd die for the revolution"

Okay but would you organize and facilitate meetings? Cook for people and take care of childcare so community members can attend? Do the dishes?

Having interacted with liberals.

And the deeper, longer form media is necessary to address anything beyond an introduction. Otherwise, all you get is slogans repeated as if by reflex with no real understanding of a concept, and probably a reactive defensiveness about it.

It's often a way to mask unwillingness to engage with the deeper and more complex parts of the subjects.

There's actually a ton of short and accessible media that conveys leftist theory. So whenever someone demands that we need more of that anytime they're presented with anything more challenging, we should be skeptical of the motivations.

They're unwilling or unable to consider the fact that poverty and deprivation is supremely oppressive.

Liberals will repeat the phrase “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression” and within minutes also insist that socialist revolutions that dismantle literal slavery and feudalism somehow create worse circumstances, with no sense of irony.

When people invoke "common sense" it should be a big red flag. What it means is that the individual in question hasn't considered their own biases and assumptions and possibly can't tell the difference between that and valid, informed opinions.

We can debate and refine our concepts of how to build society differently and strive for truly horizontal social structures, but it's dishonest to accuse an imperfect but successful revolution of creating worse conditions when it objectively improved material and social conditions.

If we understand that manufactured poverty is the most violent and authoritarian institution, then any system that dismantles it is necessarily less authoritarian.

Liberatory economics will necessarily include creating ways to subsist that don't rely on extracting resources and labor from elsewhere, not simply distributing imperial spoils more equitably.

In their conception of direct democracy, the Zapatistas have a term that translates roughly to "bringing each other to greatness".

With intentions like these we could do a lot better with our organizing.

What some folks call "lazy gardening" is generally just applying the concept "work smarter, not harder" to your gardening tasks.

They have no clue what they're talking about, just a desire to sound moral without developing understanding. It's all vibes.

Developing an analysis of these power structures is how one moves past milquetoast reformism and towards actual liberatory ideology and practice.

You can claim to oppose imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, or capitalism all you want, but without having an analysis of any of those things what does that even mean?

This is why every liberal will claim to oppose white supremacy or colonialism or whatever but go on to promote those structures.

There's actually a really good solution to us mean, mean lefties criticizing you: stop engaging in apologia for settler-colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.

Most of the time, it works 100% of the time. 😎

Let's not mince words: if you think someone resisting in a manner that doesn't meet the standards of your precious settler-colonial sensibilities justifies state or quasi-state violence, you are a fascist.

Essentially reactionary politics combined with narratives of "good v bad" protesters and the demonization and scapegoating of the latter, illustrates how readily the ideology embraces the repressive authoritarianism their parades claim to oppose.

Liberals have been quick to show how much they actually believe in cop logic: that it's okay to just open fire if you feel even the littlest bit threatened. The response to the SLC protest shooting highlights it.

If you want to be involved in resistance, you need to know V=IR

My understanding is that a bystander was killed and the community defender wounded.

A little too on the nose example of "the damn liberals are going to get us all killed".

This person saw a rifle and jumped to a conclusion. There was no threat. They had no familiarity with or accountability to the community they were behaving like a cop in.

Leftist comdef groups aren't perfect but most have stressed training and accountability, especially if weapons are involved.