Download and Subscribe: RSS

Find us on Itunes, IHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please like, rate, and review us. Tell your friends about it. To support us use the Blackflower Collective account on Patreon.

---

Outline:

S: This is Sprout

C: and this is Charyan, and we are the hosts of Molotov Now!, thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast.

S: In this episode we will finish off our 3 episode introductory series explaining who we are and where we come from. In our first episode we discussed where we are today in Aberdeen WA, with Terry Emmert stepping in to fulfill our local elites vision of a gentrified artistic college town. Our second episode, in two parts, was an in depth dive on how we got where we are, looking at previous reporting about the eviction of the River camp in 2019 and the years of fallout from that event. This episode will be a look at where we are going, by examining the newest radical project from the Harbor, The Blackflower Collective LLC. We will learn about the plans this collective has for providing low income housing coupled with social services and community engagement.

C: The problems of the community, housed and unhoused alike, will only begin to find resolutions through communal solutions that include the voices of the oppressed, and not through dystopian levels of policing and the harassment of our most vulnerable populations.

So long as we keep pulling people out of the metaphorical river, or conversely, making sure they never make it to shore in the first place, instead of looking up the river to see why people are falling in to begin with, any and all forms of policing and punishment for the crime of being poor will only prove to exacerbate the problem.

It will also generate new issues for the Far Right to rally around and allow them to push even more barbaric measures. An idea that has been floated around on social media by conservatives and considered by the minds of those in power. The idea essentially boils down to a concentration camp at junction city outside of the juvenile hall. A place where the homeless would be allowed to exist, but only if they worked, and they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else without facing criminalized punishments.

What else would you call this?

S: While you think about that we must go out for a quick commercial break, when we return we will be have a discussion of the Blackflower Collective LLC’s plans. We will begin to explore options of how we can begin to address the problems of the housing crisis without unilaterally punishing all of those who are forced into poverty, up next is our monthly radical news roundup, but first time for a word from our sponsors.

---

Ad:

Are you ready for the new world?

Introducing Blackflower Permaculture

It’s time to revolutionize the way we relate to our food. If you want to grow more food closer to home, reduce your carbon footprint, or just beautify your property; we are the design collective for you.

Don’t wait any longer to get a jump on your food security and contribute to a better world.

Blackflower Permaculture is a worker-owned and operated enterprise dedicated to the creation of a world in which individuals have the autonomy, knowledge and resources to create fulfilling lives and communities free of oppression. Our mission is to learn together the ways in which to healthily relate to each other and our environment. We are a collective of designers & consultants focusing on whole systems design and productive ecological landscapes.

Our goal is to guide homeowners, developers, and private enterprises through the process of vision development, real estate search assistance, residential & commercial design, and both design & project review. Blackflower Permaculture delivers comprehensive plans, which address the unique aspects of any project. We present food, energy, water, waste and building systems in illustrated site plans, which are as accessible as they are beautiful.

“Design allows us to participate in the creation of all sorts, when applied to culture, it is the ability to create one’s own culture as you see fit. There is much to learn from the past, but we must not be subservient to it, we can change our ways when it suits us. Permaculture gives a good path forward for attacking any problem head on. It is direct action, it is revolutionary. By designing a permanent culture built on these ideals we can promise a future to the next seven generations and begin to heal the wounds caused by such poorly designed systems as we have today. For this reason and more we feel it necessary to promote this distinct theory as a guide for those wanting to practice and learn design concepts that we can use to liberate our planet, redesign our world, and create a new world in the shell of the old.”

---

In local news:

Within Washington

[Aberdeen]

C: As February approaches there is still no cold weather shelter in Aberdeen, and from the sounds of it, there wont be. In addition, the nearby city of Westport has had some recent controversy around their shelter.

In recent weeks, formal requests by Westport city officials, which echoed public push back against the shelter, have halted plans to expand services at the county-funded cold weather shelter that has operated on West Spokane Street since November.

About 10 Westport residents voiced concerns about the shelter and its public safety implications, a sentiment that mirrored comments at the Jan. 9 council meeting.

Chaplains on the Harbor has operated a cold weather homeless shelter in its old schoolhouse building on West Spokane Street, at least in some capacity, for five years. Since Nov. 1, 2022, Chaplains has operated a 15-bed cold weather shelter using funding from the county’s cold weather shelter program.

In December, the Chaplains requested extra funding from the county to expand the shelter’s capacity. Barbara Weza, executive director for Chaplains on the Harbor said the Chaplains were forced to turn people away during the December cold snap because of capacity issues.

The Board of County Commissioners approved a contract amendment with Chaplains for an additional $45,000, which, according to the contract, would have allowed the shelter to expand by 10 beds. Those beds only would’ve been used should the shelter reach full capacity, Weza said, which hasn’t happened as often in the last few weeks.

Meanwhile, Grays Harbor County Commissioners tabled the vote on a proposed site for a separate cold weather shelter near Aberdeen, on state Route 105 west of the Bishop Athletic Complex, citing a need for more specific contract language regarding shelter policies. Commissioners also prompted the shelter’s contractor, Chaplains on the Harbor, to confirm logistical questions surrounding the proposed site, further delaying the opening of a service initially projected to start Nov. 1.

The hold ups at both of the shelters has resulted in what Barbara Weza, executive director for Chaplains on the Harbor called a “holding pattern,” with no administrative action being taken.

The Chaplains on the Harbor initially proposed a 35-bed shelter a few blocks from the Aberdeen downtown core in October, but the location was an issue. The city of Aberdeen voted to reject proposals for cold weather shelters within the city limits.

The board later named Chaplains an “apparently successful bidder” for the shelter, but asked for certain contingencies to be provided with the contract, including location and policy.

After a period of searching, the Chaplains identified the current proposed site, which is a three-bedroom house at 267 state Route 105, owned by Terry Emmert. Weza said the site, which is outside city limits, received verbal approval from Schave, and could potentially host 20-25 people.

Weza said Chaplains has been hiring and planning for the shelter, and has lined up inspections with the fire marshal, code enforcement, legal and public works departments while waiting for the site to be approved by the county.

But before they could approve the site, commissioners said contract details — behavioral policies, specifically such as a “check-in, stay in” and “good neighbor” policies — that were included in the Chaplains’ initial contract, were missing from the most recent version.

But because shelter projects have been delayed or altered, the county has a pocket of un-allocated money that was originally expected to be used on shelters.

According to a cold weather shelter budget assessment presented to county commissioners last month, which was presented by Grays Harbor County Public Health’s Healthy Places Manager Cassie Lentz, the county has roughly $130,500 in potentially remaining funds if all projects were fully funded.

However, that was before Westport objected to shelter expansion, and Lentz confirmed that the county hasn’t yet committed the full amount of its grant funding.

Lentz said those funds could potentially be used for something other than cold weather shelters, but those funds would have to provide homeless services and, in some form, be related to COVID-19 aid.

---

S: Library Carport Removed

In a move supposedly relating to the upcoming renovation of the Aberdeen Library, The City of Aberdeen took steps this month to remove a carport behind the library, months before construction is likely to begin. The carport was one of the last remaining public spaces that were out of the near constant rains here. It was frequently used by library patrons, employees, and the unhoused to stay dry. It has also been the long term site of the weekly meals put on by Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network. With no other dry place to set up their meals they have been forced to relocate under the bridge, down by the local encampment.

Reports are that the move to the new location has gone well, with the residents of camp saying they appreciate it being closer and the mutual aid volunteers being glad to have a large dry space in which to set up and hang out.

They said,

“Whatever the City throws our way makes us stronger as a community. Whether it’s evicting people from their homes, smashing our pallets, or destroying our shelter we always come together to help each other in times of crises. This attempt to dissuade us from the work we do was misguided, we will serve in the rain if we have to. We aren’t going anywhere.”

S: In Episode 2 part 1 we mentioned we would be doing a follow up with Katy Hussey, a resident of Dayton washington who has been the target of an illegal harrassment campaign that has costed her both her job and housing, Due to the severity of the situation we were not able to reach out for comment at this time. To support Katy in this hard time please send any donations to Venmo @katyHussey or Cashapp $KatyHussey to either help prevent their eviction or support them should things turn worse.

---

C: In Tacoma Washington a Tenant Rights Action Conference was called for Saturday, February 11th, at 12:00-4:30p.m at
Common Good, 621 Tacoma Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402

In a statement released by the organizers-

We are asking community leaders and organizations to endorse the Tenant Rights Action Conference by emailing Tacoma4All@gmail.com. Over a dozen labor and community organizations have already endorsed. For personal endorsements, please list your name and any relevant roles,  titles, or affiliations (if needed, we’ll make clear you are endorsing in personal capacity only). We hope to announce an initial list of endorsers by mid-January.

Tacoma urgently needs a comprehensive Tenant Bill of Rights.
Landlords in Tacoma and Pierce County evict tenants at a 56% higher rate than the rest of the state, with 90% of evictions due to inability to pay rent. A majority of Tacoma tenants are “rent-burdened,” paying more than a third of their income on housing. Studies show exceeding this threshold leads to spikes in rates of homelessness. With housing costs rising far faster than wages, rates of displacement continue to grow.

Tacoma has an acute housing shortage, estimated at 20,000 homes and growing, giving landlords even more leverage to hike rents, evict tenants, and ignore code violations. Landlord profiteering hits communities of color hardest everywhere, but the racial disparities in Tacoma are especially acute: rates of home ownership for Black families are 27 percent lower in Tacoma than the national average.

Evictions and rent hikes destabilize our communities and schools, increasing inequities. Three out of four renters who move do so following rent hikes. Students forced to move schools after eighth grade are twice as likely to drop out.

Robust tenant protections and rent stabilization are proven to reduce inequalities and increase stability, improving outcomes in education, health, employment, and incarceration rates. Yet tenant protections in Tacoma remain extremely limited, even as a wave of tenant rights laws were passed in cities across our state and nationally. It is past time that Tacomans get the same legal protections enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of renters across Washington.

That’s why we are organizing the Tenant Rights Action Conference.
We aim to bring a broad grassroots coalition together to discuss and  democratically decide on a strategy to win a robust package of tenant protections (see addendum below). Home in Tacoma for All is preparing both for a possible tenant rights ballot initiative in 2023, as well as opportunities to push our City Council to pass tenant protections.

Whatever strategy we choose, we know that we will need a broad coalition to win against landlord and business opposition. When we launched Home in Tacoma for All last April, we brought together over 120 community leaders, housing justice activists, labor organizers, and those most impacted by housing injustice for a powerful multi-racial rally. In the lead-up to the Action Conference, we aim to grow that coalition further and to emerge with an agreed strategy to organize thousands of Tacomans to take action.

Endorsing the Tenant Rights Action Conference does not mean you or your organization will automatically endorse the strategy decided at the conference, whether that is a ballot initiative or a pressure campaign on City Council. Rather, you are endorsing the urgent need for a serious community dialogue on expanding tenant rights in Tacoma. We thank you for your support!

To see the full document check the link in the show notes.

---

Outside of Washington

S: The cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors died after being tasered by a police officer in Los Angeles following a traffic accident.

Keenan Darnell Anderson, 31, died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a cardiac arrest following the 3 January incident.

Authorities say that an officer was flagged down after a crash took place, and the officer stated that Anderson was acting erratically and running in the middle of the street.

The body cam footage of the incident shows Anderson telling the officer “Please help me” before he takes off running.

Anderson was eventually pinned down on the floor by an officer, and shouted, “They’re trying to George Floyd me,” in reference to the Black man killed by police officers during a May 2020 incident in Minnesota.

As a struggle developed between officers and Anderson, one officer deployed his taser weapon. Anderson was then handcuffed and taken to the hospital where he died.

---

C: Memphis City officials on the evening of January 27th released more than an hour of footage showing the deadly confrontation between Tyre Nichols and Memphis police officers earlier this month. The released materials included three body camera videos and one overhead surveillance video.

The five officers involved in the arrest were fired after an internal investigation and are facing criminal charges, including second-degree murder. Following the release of the video Friday night, two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation. Following mass protests in Memphis where peaceful protestors shutdown the I-55 bridge, as well New York City where 3 protestors were arrested, & Washington D.C.

According to the footage, the incident starts to unfolds from 8:24 p.m. CT, when officers initially stopped Nichols for supposed wreckless driving that the Memphis police department has not been able to substantiate, to 9:02 p.m. CT, when an ambulance finally appears on camera to take Nichols to the hospital nearly 20 minutes as officers causaully chatted about above a beaten and bloodyTyre Nichols.

The following is a reading of a written description from a twitter thread from StepdadLRAD for those who want to know what happen but can’t bring themselves to watch the traumatizing video. Screenshots and link will also be in the show notes

Content Warning for graphic descriptions of police lynching in Memphis, Tennessee. If you would like to skip this content you can pick up the next news story by skipping ahead ___

The twitter thread reads as follows.

S: The following is a description of the #TyreNichols murder, I’m writing as I watch. It will be brutal and disturbing. This thread is for people who would like to know what’s happened but do not want to watch the video.

---

C: This marks yet another casualty of the White Supremacist State, Law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people or about 100 people a month last year alone, making it the deadliest for police violence since 2013 when experts first started tracking the killings nationwide, a new data analysis by Mapping Police Violence reveals.

The preliminary 2022 total – a possible under count as more cases are catalogued – marks 31 additional fatalities than the year before. In 2021, police killed 1,145 people; 1,152 in 2020; 1,097 in 2019; 1,140 in 2018; and 1,089 in 2017. The earliest data goes back to 2013, when journalists and racial justice advocates began counting these fatal incidents on a national basis. A database run by the Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police, also shows 2022 as a year with record killings.

---

S: Police and Correctional officers were also involved in the horrifying death of Larry Eugene Price, Jr. after arresting him for mental health issues and allowing him to starve to death while in custody awaiting trial.

According to information pulled from a report made by Newsweek-

On August 19th 2020 Larry Eugene Price, Jr. wandered into the Fort Smith police station, as he did almost daily. This homeless man was a regular and harmless part of the officers day. But this time Price, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and PTSD, used his finger like a gun to point around the station and at officers, threatening and cursing at those present. Officers proceeded to arrest him on a state felony – terroristic threatening in the first degree.

He had no real weapon, yet he was handcuffed and taken to the Sebastian County Detention Center. He went before a judge who set bond at $1,000. It was simple – he would have been free with $100 for bail, but he was destitute.

From then, everything else that could have gone wrong for Price did. His mind lost, his health gone – and seemingly no one paying attention to his well being – Price was dead a year later at 51. He was found in a solitary confinement cell with his eyes wide open, naked, starved, dried saliva on the corners of his mouth, in a pool of standing water so large his feet had shriveled. He had long since had his medication taken away. Toward the end, he had resorted to eating his own feces and drinking his own urine in an attempt to survive.

The official cause of death for Price was malnutrition and dehydration, and the manner was listed in the autopsy report as “natural”. The prosecuting attorney wrote to the Arkansas State Police on January 5, 2022, that there was no basis to prosecute anyone or any entity in the case. Only in response to Newsweek publishing this story, Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion wrote to say that an internal probe of Price’s death was underway.

The 356-bed Sebastian County Detention Center – originally built in 1994 for 260 and described in the suit as knowingly engaging in “unconstitutional practices and customs, profound training deficiencies, grossly inadequate staffing, overcrowding, and a reckless lack of supervision” – had had problems before.

From 2009 to 2019, for example, Arkansas prison inspectors doing state compliance checks found “in one inspection after another…the jail to be overpopulated with inmates, insufficiently staffed, and in need of additional space,” despite an expansion in 2007, according to the lawsuit. The same worries were found in audits done in 2020 and 2021, the year Price died.

The result, according to the filing, was that the jail was unable to handle inmate emergencies, as well as mental illness cases such as Price, who had his anti-psychotic and mental stabilizing medications – namely Abilify, according to medical records – taken away without explanation months before he died.

Newsweek found there had also been prior deaths in the facility, including the 2017 death of an autistic inmate and of Lewis Shores, a teen who had been accused of using a hammer to kill an elderly couple and fatally stabbing his mother. He died after suffocating in a plastic bag.

The sheriff’s office, which runs the jail, did not comment on the historic allegations.

Friends and family were neither allowed to visit or told of his 100 dollar bond, an amount they would have easily paid to free their loved one.

Specifically, the suit claims, Price “died not only because of their deliberate indifference and neglect, but also because of systemic deficiencies in the Sebastian County Jail’s policies and practices, which put severely mentally ill people at significant risk of serious harm or death.”

Turn Key Health Clinics is named in the suit because it failed, according to the lawsuit, “to train and supervise staff on how to properly monitor and document the condition of mentally ill patients in segregation, when to elevate them to a higher level of care when their condition is not improving, how to respond when they are not ingesting sufficient fluids or nutrition, and how to effectively address the needs of patients who express refusal to take certain medication or otherwise participate in treatment.”

The filing goes on to say the company, a regional provider of health care to places of incarceration, knew of the Sebastian County jail’s “failures and knew that they subjected patients with serious mental illness to a substantial risk of suffering serious harm, but it did not correct the failures. These failures resulted in Mr. Price’s suffering and death.”

The suit over Price’s death states that Turn Key psychiatrist Lewis failed in his legal obligation through a lack of care and attention to the inmate’s withering condition. Both doctors and nurses noted his, at times, psychotic behavior and yet cut his meds off anyway, then refused to see him again.

Heipt, the family’s lawyer, also criticizes how jail officials monitored Price. Heipt, through a public records request, obtained printouts of the logs for well being checks. “Between August 1 and August 29, 2021,” according to the suit’s allegations, “jail guards logged over 4,000 consecutive well being checks of Mr. Price, and each time they made the exact same entry: ‘Inmate and Cell OK.’…In the last 48 hours of Mr. Price’s confinement alone, they made this entry more than 300 successive times. They continued to log these same words, at least four times an hour, even in the hours and minutes leading up to his death — when Mr. Price was visibly malnourished, dying of starvation and dehydration.” They even made these same logs after his death.

---

C: The Supreme Court on January 3rd indicated it would rule in favor of a concrete company in Washington state seeking to revive a lawsuit it filed against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters alleging that a strike damaged its product.

The legal question is whether the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can sue the union for damages in state court over an August 2017 strike action when drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. It centers on an incident in which members of Teamsters Local 174 went on strike after negotiations broke down over a new collective bargaining agreement.

Glacier says it lost $100,000 as a result of failing to fulfill a contract on the day of the strike and also claims additional damages. The company says it was able to do the previously scheduled work the following week.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled for the union in December 2021, saying that any concrete loss was “incidental to a strike arguably protected by federal law.”

Based on questions of the justices during the oral argument, it appears the court will say that the Washington Supreme Court was wrong to dismiss the lawsuit. It could however be a narrow ruling adopting the middle-ground position taken by the Biden administration.

San Diego Trades Council v. Garmon (1959) lays out the process that employers must use if they believe their workers timed a strike so recklessly that the union should be held liable. In nearly all cases, the employer must first obtain a ruling from the NLRB establishing that their workers’ strike was not protected by federal law. Only then may they file a lawsuit against the union.

This is a tremendous blow to workers. One important reason the Garmon process exists is that it shields unions from lawsuits that could drain their finances and discourage workers from exercising their right to strike — after all, that right means very little if well-moneyed employers can bombard unions with lawsuits the union cannot afford to litigate.

---

S: If the Supreme Court decides to rule in favor of Glacier in this case then we will begin to see even worse conditions for the Working Class,

Even positions of privilege are not guaranteed so long as those above them are free to carry on with their exploitation.

Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc has laid off 12,000 employees from across teams. The staff was informed about the mass job cut by the CEO of the tech giant Sundar Pichai in a memo. Those affected include a software engineering manager named Justin Moore who worked at Google for over 16.5 years and was sacked after his account was deactivated at 3 am.

Mr Moore, in a LinkedIn post, wrote, “So after over 16.5 years at Google, I appear to have been let go via an automated account deactivation at 3 am this morning as one of the lucky 12,000. I don’t have any other information, as I haven’t received any of the other communications the boilerplate “you’ve been let go” website (which I now also can’t access) said I should receive.”

The employee added that his time at Google was “largely wonderful” and that he was proud of the work he and his teams did.

---

C: Workers at Twitter Singapore office were told to empty out their desks and vacate the premise via email. They were told that they had until 5 p.m. to leave the CapitaGreen building and resume their duties remotely.

Musk’s cost-cutting efforts have included not paying rent on its global headquarters, and it was sued over that issue last month by the landlord of its San Francisco offices.

Casey Newton of Platformer first tweeted about the Singapore office clear out, adding that the reason for it was failure to pay rent on the facility. This adds yet another hilarious chapter in Musk’s takeover of the company and the resulting downfall of Twitter.

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently facing a securities fraud trial over tweets he made in 2018 about taking the company private at $420 per share and having “secured” funding for the bid.

• Shareholders who traded Tesla stock following the tweets are suing Musk for billions of dollars in damages, claiming that his tweets led to them losing “millions and millions of dollars.”

---

S: Arkansas Gov Bans Term Latinx

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order last week barring the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents, saying the government should use “ethnically appropriate language.”

“The government has a responsibility to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities,” the executive order read.

In her order, Sanders said her administration’s policy is to “prohibit the use of culturally insensitive words for official state government business” and directed all state agencies to review their official documents and submit a report to the governor detailing their use of the terms “Latinx,” “latinx,” “Latinxs,” or “latinxs.”

---

C: Anti-drag bills have proliferated in 2023. States like Arizona, Montana, and several others have seen bills proposed to ban drag being seen by minors or drag in public. One state, Nebraska, would even say that people who are under 21 years old cannot see drag. Arizona’s bill says that drag events can’t happen before noon on Sunday. All of the bills include language on how they define drag that leaves people wondering if these laws will also target the transgender community. A new bill being proposed in West Virginia, however, goes a step further: it outright bans any “transvestite or transgender exposure, performance, or display” if minors are present.

There have been increasing escalations in anti-drag bills recently. Nebraska’s bill states that a performance is banned if “the main aspect of the performance is a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.” Transgender people could easily be read into that law and thus banned from doing any sort of public performance. These bills also make no distinction between a live and recorded performance, leaving some to wonder if movies like Mrs. Doubtfire would be banned. Several Shakespearian plays utilize drag. What about transgender comedians, transgender musicians, and plays in which transgender people are cast?

Needless to say, things are scary and uncertain in the states in which drag laws are being proposed.

Four Senators in West Virginia  just decided to clear up any uncertainty: yes, they absolutely do intend to include bans on transgender people being in front of minors in anti-drag bans. West Virginia SB 252 explicitly targets the trans community in a bill that defines any “transvestite or transgender exposure to minors” as obscene matter. See these lines from the bill:

The bill modifies 61-8A-1 (Definitions of Obscene Matter To Minors) and directly includes “transvestite or transgender exposure, performance, or display” as obscene matter. Section 61-8A-2 then defines the penalties for exposing minors to “obscene matter” (“transgender exposure” included in this new bill):

What does this mean for transgender teachers? Transgender parents? Earlier in the same bill, they ban “obscene matter” within 2,500 feet of any school – this would in effect treat all transgender people like sex offenders when it comes to schools. Are teachers going to be fired because they are giving minors “transgender exposure?” Are plays with transgender people in them going to be cancelled? Are parents walking their children to school going to be targeted?

It’s disconcerting to see weekend news of drag queen events being stormed by far-right militant organizations like the Proud Boys and then to see these laws proliferate afterwards. Republicans sometimes try to distance themselves from these groups, but it is clear that there are major figures in the Republican party who intend to steer the party and any states they control into an oppressive new era of anti-LGBTQ+ enforcement. The intimidation tactics being used in an extralegal fashion are resulting in Republican politicians not condemning but supporting these goals.

Some might argue that these bills have no chance of passing, or that they will be struck down as unconstitutional. I want to emphasize that this isn’t just a single Republican proposing it – several bills like it have been proposed all over the country. While this is the most extreme version of these bills, four senators have sponsored it: Senator Michael Azinger, Senator Bill Hamilton, Senator David Stover, and Senator Vince Deeds.

It feels like we are approaching new territory every day we see new anti-trans legislation. Criminal bans on gender affirming care are being proposed in many states that would ban care up to, in some cases, the age of 26. Now we are seeing attempted bans on gender-nonconformity and bans on simply being trans in public. Are we going to return to the days of the three-article rules which resulted in people getting arrested for “impersonating men/women” in public? Stonewall was a fight in part as a result of these kinds of laws being imposed on the gay, trans, and drag communities. It is unthinkable that we could return to those days yet again. I hope that we never do.

---

S: North Dakota Bill To Mandate Pronouns Associated with DNA to be used by employers or face 1500$ fine

North Dakota has been the site of many anti-trans bills in 2023. Already it has seen multiple bills proposed that would do things like ban transgender people from sports, ban transgender birth certificate updates, and medically detransition trans youth. One of these bills, the bill to ban trans birth certificate updates, even received a “do pass” from its committee hearing yesterday.

North Dakota’s SB2199 would mandate that all employers in the state who receive state funding as well as all schools, institutions, state agencies, and offices misgender transgender people at large – not just students but all transgender people. The bill mandates that “words used to reference an individual’s sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression mean the individual’s determined sex at birth, male or female.” It also mandates that this be determined through the individual’s deoxyribonucleic acid, their DNA. Those who violate will be charged by the state a fee of $1,500.

Here is the text:

---

C: In Santee, CA as reported by Unicorn Riot– For the second time in four days, the Cameron Family YMCA in suburban San Diego County closed its doors ahead of a rally by violent anti-LGBTQ bigots targeting the facility for its transgender-inclusive policy. Local far-right organizer and Qanon supporter Mike Forzano called for the Saturday rally in a January 17 Facebook Live video, broadcast from his car, in which he explained that the event would also be in honor of his own birthday. Forzano is one of several Southern California anti-LGBTQ activists looking to capitalize on panic sparked by recent false claims by a 17-year-old that a trans woman’s presence in a YMCA shower area meant she had been exposed to a naked male and therefore assaulted.

In addition to Proud Boys chapters and the right-wing Latino group LEXIT, those welcomed under Forzano’s banner included members of the violent white supremacist group American Guard, including one man sporting a swastika tattoo on his right arm. During Forzano’s event a small group of women counter-protesting for trans rights were accosted by men wearing knives and pepper spray canisters; one anti-trans rally attendee said he wanted to “string them up and fucking hang them.”. One masked anti-trans protester believed to be an unattended child repeatedly aimed an air rifle or paintball gun towards reporters filming the event. LEXIT activist Sylvia Araujo was seen on video briefly assaulting photojournalist Kelly Stuart (@skyspider) while she was documenting that far-right activists had covered over their vehicles’ license plates with tape.

Local media reported that Samuel Deuth, a pastor at the ardently right-wing Awaken Church in San Diego, spoke at Saturday’s event. In March 2022 the church hosted the “Reawaken America” tour with Eric Trump, Roger Stone and former general Michael Flynn in an ceremony laden with Qanon imagery that aimed at sanctifying the far-right January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Unicorn Riot reported on Flynn’s organizing which led to the Capitol attack.) More mainstream religious leaders said the tour promoted a “Christian nationalist ideology that weds discrimination and militarism with a warped view of Christian faith.”

The rally lasted about two hours with roughly 150 in attendance; no arrests or injuries were reported. San Diego Sheriff’s Department deputies from the Santee Sheriff’s Station observed the event from the YMCA parking lot and did not intervene in any altercations.

A previous rally on January 18 targeted the same YMCA and forced it to close as local Republican school board and city council gave anti-LGBTQ speeches to a crowd of approximately 500 people. Proud Boys, members of American Guard and others also engaged in some brief violence against counter-protesters and media on the fringes of the Wednesday event:

Republican officials promoted an apparent hoax falsely painting transgender people as violent predators. Among their supporters were clearly identifiable Proud Boys and at least one man with Nazi imagery tattooed on his head.

A 17-year-old recently claimed she was exposed to a nude “male” in the Cameron Family YMCA shower. While the trans woman she targeted had previously undergone gender reassignment surgery, the teenager’s misleading account sparked a transphobic moral panic claiming the gym’s trans-inclusive policies, in compliance with state law, were causing helpless underage girls to be assaulted by naked men.

The Cameron Family YMCA in Santee has had to repeatedly close due to threats from the escalating anti-LGBTQ+ campaign seeking to deny trans people the access to public facilities guaranteed to them by California law.

About 500 anti-trans rally goers gathered in front of the local YMCA while about 2-300 people attended a nearby counter-protest and dance party organized by the San Diego chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and local antifascist collectives.

Members of violent racist groups such as the Proud Boys and American Guard swung fists and makeshift weapons at counter-protesters as speeches degrading LGBTQ+ people as “deviant” and “criminal” were given by Santee City Councilwoman Laura Koval, El Cajon City Councilman Phil Ortiz, and Cajon Valley School Board member Anthony Carnevale.

Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin and Foothills Christian Church Pastor Mike Van Meter also delivered supportive comments to the pro-bigotry event. So did Andrew Hayes, who serves as both President of the Lakeside Union School District and District Director for California State Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones.

San Diego Sheriff’s Department deputies were present with riot gear and crowd control munitions, but did not intervene. No arrests or injuries were reported.

---

S: Idaho Supreme Court Mandate C Sections For Abortions

On January 5, 2023, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s near Total Abortion Ban (I.C. § 18-622), its 6-Week Abortion Ban (I.C. 18-8804 to -8805), and its related Civil Liability Law (I.C. § 18-8807). Planned Parenthood v. State of Idaho,—but they also offered some ‘clarifications’ on law that aren’t likely to do anything other than further confusion and suffering. For example, Idaho’s ban requires that doctors who legally terminate pregnancies (in the limited exceptions that the state allows to do so) in a way that quote “provide[s] the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.”

The court writes that doctors performing abortions “must remove that unborn child in a manner that provides the best opportunity for survival (e.g., vaginal delivery or cesarean delivery)” as opposed to a procedure like a D&C—even if the doctor understands that the fetus will not be viable—unless doing so would pose a “greater risk of the death of the pregnant woman.”

---

C: Idaho Senator Sen. Scott Herndon Unsuccessfully Tried To Remove Rape Incest Abortion Exemptions. In four pieces of proposed legislation he sought to change the state’s abortion laws, remove requirements for public works contractors to provide bathrooms that align with gender identity, and strengthen the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws; the one proposal of his that the Senate State Affairs Committee members did not vote to introduce would have removed rape and incest exemptions from Idaho’s abortion bans.

---

S: Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking state universities for the numbers and ages of their students who sought or received gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Why he’s conducting the survey wasn’t completely clear. LGBTQ advocates have criticized DeSantis for policies seen as discriminatory, including his infamous “Don’t Say Gay Bill” banning instruction on sexual and gender identity in early grades and making it easier for parents to remove books related to the topic in public schools.

“We can see cuts in funding for universities to treat students with this condition, and I think an all-out elimination of services is certainly on the table,” House Democratic leader Fentrice Driskell said.

The survey is similar to one DeSantis is forcing state universities to complete regarding spending on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory programs.

The current memo asks universities to “provide the number of encounters for sex-reassignment treatment or where such treatment was sought,” as well as data for students referred to other facilities. It says to protect students’ identities in completing the information.

The survey requires breakdowns by age, regardless of whether students are age 18 or older, of people prescribed hormones or hormone antagonists or who underwent medical procedures like mastectomies, breast augmentation or removal and reconstruction of genitals.

---

C: KENORA, Ont. — Searches for unmarked graves at the site of a former northern Ontario residential school have uncovered 171 “plausible burials,” the Wauzhushk Onigum Nation said Tuesday, with other sites still to be investigated.

Most of them were unmarked, except for five with grave markers, the First Nation said in a news release.

“Both Canada and Ontario have continued to express their commitment to reconciliation, to the truth, and to healing of our communities,” Chief Chris Skead said in the release.

“Finding the truth and exercising caution on everything touched by this genocidal legacy comes at a price and it’s a price our Treaty partners need to be prepared to pay. That is true reconciliation.”

The truth and reconciliation approach is a form of restorative justice, which differs from the customary adversarial or retributive justice. Retributive justice aims to find fault and punish the guilty. On the other hand, restorative justice aims to heal relationships between offenders, victims, and the community in which an offense takes place.

According to records provided by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 36 children died at the St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, Ont., the First Nation said. “Based on conversations with survivors, and their testimonies, the true number is believed to be significantly higher,” it said.

Between 1897 and 1972, more than 6,000 Indigenous children attended the Catholic-run institution in Kenora.

The plausible burials were found during studies conducted by the First Nation’s technical, archeological and ground-penetrating-radar team, and informed by testimony from survivors, it said.

The studies were first launched in May as part of a multi-year project intended to locate unmarked graves.

Wauzhushk Onigum Nation is now seeking resources to get greater certainty on the number of plausible graves in the cemetery grounds linked to the former school and to conduct investigations into sites near it.

Additional sites, which are not covered by the current search and include land now privately owned, have been identified by survivor testimony, archeological assessment and archival investigations, the First Nation said.

Ontario Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford said he communicated his full support to Skead upon hearing of the discovery.

“As we continue to uncover the truth of our collective past on the journey toward reconciliation, we will continue to support these investigations and will support healing for survivors, their families and community members suffering from mental health and addictions due to intergenerational trauma and harms inflicted by the Indian Residential School system,” he said in a statement.

More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and communities and sent to church-run residential schools beginning in the 19th century, a central element of a state-backed policy that amounted to cultural genocide, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The idea for the schools came in part from the United States. In 1879 the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in Pennsylvania. The school’s motto was “kill the Indian, save the man.”

A motion calling on the federal government to recognize residential schools as genocide passed the House of Commons with unanimous consent in October.

The 2021 findings of possible unmarked graves at a former Kamloops, B.C., residential school set off a number of other investigations.

Last week, Star Blanket Cree Nation in Saskatchewan said ground-penetrating radar had turned up 2,000 areas of interest and a child’s bone had been separately found at the site of one of Canada’s longest-running residential schools located in that province.

The Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program has a hotline to help residential school survivors and their relatives suffering trauma invoked by the recall of past abuse. The number is 1-866-925-4419.

---

S: New Extremist Israeli Government in power cause mass atrocities in 6 days since Jan 1st

Israel’s new extremist government has been in power for a short time and here’s what they’ve already done. In their first six days they killed four Palestinians, including three children. Bombed the homes of two of the slain. Destroyed at least four homes and a water tank in Masafer Yatta. Broke into Al Aqsa Mosque, among the holiest Muslim sites in the world. Violently invaded the Palestinian city of Jenin multiple times.

Palestinains have been subjected to horrendous violence by every single Israeli government. But based on it’s first week in power, Israel’s new extremist government may be the worst yet. The new government openly admits it doesn’t believe that Palestinians have the right to exist on their own land. Its violence from the last week alone is what that looks like in action.

---

C: Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent whose career included 14 years as legal counsel in the Minneapolis division where she worked with prosecutors and agents directly involved in the Peltier case, has written to Joe Biden making a case for Peltier’s release.

“Retribution seems to have emerged as the primary if not sole reason for continuing what looks from the outside to have become an emotion-driven ‘FBI Family’ vendetta,” said Rowley in the letter sent to the US president in December and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

The FBI’s repeated opposition to the release of Leonard Peltier is driven by vindictiveness and misplaced loyalties, according to a former senior agent close to the case who is the first agency insider to call for clemency for the Indigenous rights activist who has been held in US maximum security prisons for almost five decades.

Rowley added: “The focus of my two cents leading to my joining the call for clemency is based on Peltier’s inordinately long prison sentence and an ever more compelling need for simple mercy due to his advanced age and deteriorating health.

“Enough is enough. Leonard Peltier should now be allowed to go home.”

Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe and of Lakota and Dakota descent, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an Indigenous civil rights movement founded in Minneapolis that was infiltrated and repressed by the FBI.

The 1977 murder trial – and subsequent parole hearings – were rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the FBI had coerced witnesses, withheld and falsified evidence.

---

S: In lighter news, in Bakersfeild, California a video has circulated of two men set themselves on fire after dumping an accelerant on a California immigration services building and setting it ablaze.In the video caught by a ring surveillance camera the two men proceed to dump the accelerant over the side of the building and parking lot in front.

As one of the men continued to spread the fuel, the second squatted over a puddle of the accelerant and tried to light it on fire. The fire ignited violently and the man sprinted away with his leg on fire. The second man panicked and fell down twice, and like his accomplice, sprinted away from the scene of the crime on fire.

The man could be heard screaming as he ran into the night.

---

C: And finally, a new Hero has been etched into the record book of radical legends, praise be to the almighty Mud Wizard and their sidekick Greta Thunberg whom demonstrated their power against the legions of German riot police in defense of potentially 35,000 protestors protecting the coal beneath he long-occupied village of Lützerath from being mined by one of the nations largest energy companies, setting up barricades and treehouses, using rope systems to evade capture, and ensnaring officers in deep mud.

In fact, this mysterious figure had already appeared in our storied radical past, during the legendary battle of ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Where the police ambushed the Wizard among a group of other Heros. The Wizard casted spells of water at the police, proclaiming “I baptize you in the name of the ZAD!” In the ensuing chaos, he made off with one of their batons.

The same Wizard was later seen delivering a sermon to the retreated liberal retirees chanting “disarm them” while holding the very baton he had taken from the Legion.

Victory to the mud wizards! Defend the earth!

For more information on this story check our the article The Defense of Lützerath by Crimethinc

---

S: Crimethinc Headlines

https://crimethinc.com/2023/01/10/january-8-the-brazilian-january-6-tracking-the-rise-of-fascism-from-the-united-states-to-brazil

https://crimethinc.com/2023/01/11/january-2002-the-battle-of-york-anti-fascism-then-and-now

https://crimethinc.com/2023/01/19/the-defense-of-lutzerath-a-photoessay-and-poster-documenting-ecological-destruction-and-resistance

https://crimethinc.com/2023/01/19/solidarity-with-the-movement-to-stop-cop-city-and-defend-weelaunee-forest

IGD Headlines

Jan 6th https://itsgoingdown.org/inside-the-wood-street-commons-fight-against-displacement/
Jan 9th Final Straw: Mutual Aid Groups Mobilize in Face of Asheville Water Crisis
Jan 11 Residents in Chicago, Illinois are Reclaiming Vacant Properties
Jan 16, 23 Savannah, GA Residents Rally at Brasfield & Gorrie site to Stop Cop City!
Jan 16, 23 Antifascists Push Back Against Proud Boys in Redlands, CA
Jan 13, 23 Opponents of Cop City Project in Atlanta Call for ‘Weekend of Solidarity’
Jan 18, 23 Police Murder ‘Cop City’ Protestor in Atlanta Forest
Jan 19, 23 Rallies in Solidarity with Fight to Stop ‘Cop City’ Spread After Police Murder Forest Defender

 

---

Segment one –

C:Welcome back to Molotov Now! We will now examine the recent article published by us at The Harbor Rat Report entitled,

The Blackflower Collective:

And the role of worker owned co-operatives in our future struggles

S: When it comes to Anarchy the last thing you probably imagine is a business, and for good reason. For most of us the only relationship we ever have with a business is as an exploited worker in the employ of someone else who has more authority over your daily activities and makes more money too. But if we want to come together in this current society and make something of note, much less a living, then it needs to be a business, especially if you want to rent or own property. These constraints make it so that a radical has very few option that could sit well with them ethically while still being able to navigate the world of leases and bank accounts in this late stage capitalist system. One option is open to them is what is known as a collective, or a co-op, used somewhat interchangeably, a legal arrangement that allows for every member to be a co-owner in the operation.

C: Anarchists have long been capable of attending meetings, organizing initiatives, and making decisions collectively or autonomously. So it comes naturally that this style of business involves a lot more work than your average sole proprietorship. But the trade off is the lack of a hierarchical structure and maximum direct involvement in business decisions for members. Both are  sweet rewards for any leftist, after all…who doesn’t want to get rid of the bosses? But can this be truly revolutionary, or is it just the sad justifications of a movement in decline? The last gasp before being fully assimilated into the settler colonial project?

S: In this article we will attempt to answer these questions by looking back at the origins of cooperative development and mutual aid in our species, as well as the history of radical spaces being jumping off points for further social movements and actions. We will take a sober look at the problems our community faces here in Aberdeen, WA, which parallel the nation. Then we will end by doing something that anarchist and other radicals have been rightly chastised in the past for not doing enough, we will offer solutions. Solutions that get to the root of our problems and begin to provide a place from which we can really act to secure a better world.

---

Origins of Cooperation and Mutual Aid:

C: 19th century Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist Peter Kropotkin wrote in his seminal book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that,

“In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense — not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavorable to the species.”

S: Kropotkin argued that evolutionary species whose conditions of living included the least amount of individual suffering and the maximum amount of mutual aid and cooperation, were time and time again the most numerous and prosperous of those he studied. He found that while certain predatory animals were solitary, most animals lived in social relationships, and while species may in fact compete for resources, within a single species mutual aid was far more likely to serve the species than inter-species competition. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, which are mainly the ability to grow old and learn more things that could benefit your species, was a result of this inter-species cooperation and that unsociable species are doomed to decay.

C: In regards to human development Kropotkin pointed out that we found early humans living in clans and tribes at the very dawn of the stone age; we saw a wide series of social institutions developed already in the earlier stages, in the clan and the tribe. He argued that these customs and rituals were the result of this early form of mutual cooperation among early human ancestors. Next in the evolution of humanity came the village community, which brought a new, still wider circle of social customs, habits, and institutions; many of which are still alive among ourselves. It is of note that these early communities were developed under the principles of common ownership and defense of a given territory and common defense of it.

S: And finally, in the last two chapters Kropotkin argued that although the growth of the State, patterned on Imperial Rome, had put a violent end to all medieval institutions for mutual support, this new aspect of civilization could not last. The State, based upon loose aggregations of individuals and undertaking to be their only bond of union, did not answer its purpose.

He wrote,

“The mutual-aid tendency finally broke down its iron rules; it reappeared and reasserted itself in an infinity of associations which now tend to embrace all aspects of life and to take possession of all that is required by man for life and for reproducing the waste occasioned by life.”

C: He remarked that in addition to his theory of mutual aid there was a counter current to this tendency in that of the individual to obtain superior social or economic status and that this tendency was a progressively developed one as well. This was not a feel good story about humans all loving each other and being good to one another, it was a scientific exploration of what makes social species evolve certain social institutions and customs and what role mutual aid plays in the evolution of those animals, humans being chief among them in his mind.

S: Cooperation dates back as far as human beings have been organizing for mutual benefit. In ancient times, clans and tribes were organized as cooperative structures, allocating jobs and resources among each other, only trading with the external communities. In the middle of the 19th century though organizations called mutual organizations first used these ideas in economic enterprises. First among tradespeople, and later seen in cooperative stores, educational institutes, as well as financial and industrial enterprises. One common thread throughout these examples is the principles that an enterprise should be owned and controlled by the people it serves, and share in any surpluses on the basis of each member’s contributions, rather than their ability to invest capital.

C: A consistent driver of the global cooperative movement has been the concept of economic democracy.

From Wikipedia,

“Economic democracy is a socio-economic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders.”

S: Although there are necessarily a variety of ways to organize for economic democracy, based on local laws and customs, anarchists have been at the forefront of advancing locally organized cooperatives. With multiple small co-ops being linked through a confederation of unions, and communities. Marxists, who as socialists have likewise held and worked for the goal of democratizing productive and reproductive relationships, often placed a greater strategic emphasis on confronting the larger scales of human organization. Since their worldview says that the State is organized to steal from the working class they spent most of the early 20th century stealing the idea of the State as a force to advance the agenda of the working poor. Marxists considered appropriating national and international-scale institutions of capitalism to be the first pillar in creating conditions favorable to socialist development.

C: Ever since industrial capitalism took root in the early 19th century, workers have struggled to create spaces where progressive political demands could be made. Labor movements of that time demanded higher wages and better working conditions and hours, but workers also pushed beyond into demands for the abolition of the wage system entirely, common ownership of the means of production, and a social structure lacking the element of forced labor. They wanted people to be able to determine for themselves what they worked on and how much they worked on it. Decoupling the need to work from access to the fundamental necessities of life.

S: As written by the Symbiosis Research Collective in their piece Community Democracy and Mutual Aid,

“Bargaining for a better share of economic surplus without transforming the ownership structure of the economy itself is not a strategy that can succeed in the long term.”

They continue,

“Despite the temporary successes of mid-century social democracy—“successes” that inadequately addressed matters of ecology, race, gender, and internationalism—the present neoliberal consensus has driven unionization to an all-time low. Unions have been curtailed by mass unemployment, the casualization of work, anti-labor laws in developed countries, and violent political repression in industrializing ones. The traditional industrial proletariat is no longer well defined or large enough to be the single revolutionary agent, and perhaps never was.”

C: The Research Collective noted that one of the most promising worker institutions for achieving workplace democracy is the worker’s cooperative.This is doubly productive since it not only secures people’s ability to control their workplace but it also helps to spread socialist ideas into the mainstream since worker ownership is such a central demand. Through engaging in cooperative workplace development we can escape the chains of wage slavery and reduce our reliance on the capitalist framework and State interference in our workplaces. Collective workplaces are not without their downsides though as illustrated by some of the larger cooperatives such as Mondragon—a network of cooperatives in Spain with over 74,000 worker-owners and 12 billion euros in assets—which supports a wide range of industries and programs, and has implemented some degree of internal democracy. Yet it also demonstrates many of the limitations of even successful cooperatives.

S: The Research Collective notes,

“The cooperative’s [Mondragon’s] internal democracy has slowly eroded amid reforms meant to keep it competitive with capitalist firms. Between 1985 and 1991, the component worker-owned co-ops of the Mondragon network ceded most of their decision-making power to the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a centralized holding company whose elected upper management was largely unaccountable to the worker-shareholders except in largely symbolic annual general assemblies. At about the same time, Mondragon began hiring legions of wage workers (nonowners) in its foreign subsidiaries. By 2014 only 40 percent of Mondragon’s employees were worker-owners who had voting power in the cooperative.”

C: Another obstacle to cooperative workplaces is the reliance on banking since none of the capital present comes from investors. Banks are not usually friendly to the somewhat complex and experimental structures which can be found in the average cooperative. This results in most lenders asking for large amounts of collateral for loans or even some sort of influence in the decision making of the organization. These limitations and hardships often result in most cooperatives failing before they even really start. The successful ones tend to be on the smaller side of things at a local level. Optimistically though, once a company is able to get off the ground studies have shown that cooperatives are typically more competitive in the market than traditional corporations of the same scale. The main weakness of cooperatives is financial, they can be hard to fund since most workers don’t have the necessary capital to invest in a large initial contribution.

---

Anarchist Spaces as Revolutionary Incubators:

S: One of the most common tactics for anarchists over the last hundreds years has been The Occupation. This can be anything from reclaiming a public space, to a squat of a building or a piece of land. During large uprisings we can see the development of so called temporary autonomous zones, spaces where art, poetry, and surrealism are blended to display the anarchist ideal. These spaces often experiment with alternative decision making methods and forms of community not seen outside the zone. Anarchist see squatting as a way to regain private or public spaces from the capitalist market. They serve to practice actual mutual aid and self governance structures as well as serving as wonderful direct actions that the wider community can engage with. Having such spaces allow us to experiment with new ways of relating to one another and creating social bonds based on radical solidarity and mutual aid. These artistic and often vivid examples of anarchist ideas in action are the best way we have to bring people into our movements long term.

C: Physical spaces are not the only spaces worth seizing and defending. Anarchists have a long history of using newspapers and journals as mediums of releasing their revolutionary ideas and updating the populace on actions and thoughts relevant to contemporary anarchism. With the advent of the internet, anarchists were some of the first to use this new medium to do the same. It is often easier to make your own website because of issues with distribution faced by small autonomous collectives. One common method is using blogs, electronic libraries, and other portals to archive this content for interested parties to benefit from. Anarchists were also involved in developing various open source software that we use today to keep ourselves safe from State surveillance. We must be our own media since the modern capitalist media landscape has no voice for our messages and will not cover our issues.

S: There are many examples of anarchists being involved or directly leading projects experimenting with community since the 19th century. Countercultures, counter economies, and regional anarchist movements have all sprung from and self organized such communities based on anarchist ideals. These have included intentional communities founded by anarchists as social experiments and community-oriented projects, such as collective organizations and cooperative businesses. There are also several instances of mass society “anarchies” that have come about from explicitly anarchist revolutions, including the Makhnovshchina in Ukraine, Revolutionary Catalonia in Spain and the Shinmin autonomous region in Manchuria.

C: Some of the most famous current projects include Exarcheia, a community in central Athens, Greece close to the historical building of the National Technical University of Athens. Exarcheia is notorious for being Athens’ historical core of radical political and intellectual activism. Exarcheia is often considered the anarchist quarter of Athens, known for its radical democracy.

S: From Wikipedia,

“Exarcheia was created between 1870 and 1880 at the confines of the city and has played a significant role in the social and political life of Greece. It is there that the Athens Polytechnic uprising of November 1973 took place. In December 2008, the murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a policeman in Exarcheia caused rioting throughout Greece.”

C:Many socialists, anarchist, and anti-fascists live in and around Exarcheia along with many artists and intellectuals. It is a veritable art district where theatrical shows and concerts are held around the central square. Police stations and other symbols of authority (and capitalism) such as banks are often targets of far-leftist groups. One can find numerous anti-capitalist graffiti in Exarcheia. A self-organized health structure providing medical services functions there as well.

S: Another prominent space for revolutionary action has been the Zone to Defend or La ZAD which refers to a militant occupation that is intended to physically blockade a development project in France. By occupying the land, activists aim to prevent the project from going ahead. The acronym “ZAD” is a détournement of “deferred development area” (from French: zone d’aménagement différé). The ZADs are organized particularly in rural areas with an ecological or agricultural dimension, although the name has also been used by occupations in urban areas.

C: The most notable example is the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes which helped a broader campaign to defeat the Aéroport du Grand Ouest, a proposed airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, north of Nantes. The ZAD du Testet existed from 2011 until 2015 and prevented a dam from being constructed. Evicted ZADs have amongst other things contested the construction of an electricity substation, a motorway and a facility for the storage of nuclear waste. There have been ZADs in the departments of Aveyron, Bas-Rhin, Doubs, Isère, Loire-Atlantique, Meuse, Seine-Maritime, Tarn and Yvelines. The occupation of the Hambach Forest in Germany and the No TAV movement in Italy have both been compared to ZADs. The ZAD de la Colline was the first Swiss Zone to Defend.

S: Barcelona is also home to numerous social centers and illegal squats that effectively form a shadow society mainly made up of the unemployed, immigrants, dropouts, anarchists, anti-authoritarians and autonomists. Peter Gelderloos estimates that there around 200 squatted buildings and 40 social centers across the city with thousands of inhabitants, making it one of the largest squatter movements in the world. He notes that they pirate electricity, internet and water allowing them to live on less than one euro a day. He argues that these squats embrace an anarcho-communist and anti-work philosophy, often freely fixing up new houses, cleaning, patching roofs, installing windows, toilets, showers, lights and kitchens.

C: In the wake of austerity, the squats have provided a number of social services to the surrounding residents, including bicycle repair workshops, carpentry workshops, self-defense classes, free libraries, community gardens, free meals, computer labs, language classes, theater groups, free medical care and legal support services. The squats help elderly residents avoid eviction and organize various protests throughout Barcelona. Notable squats include Can Vies and Can Masdeu. Police have repeatedly tried to shut down the squatters movement with waves of evictions and raids, but the movement is still going strong.

S: Two more examples that may not consider themselves strictly anarchist but are great examples of anarchistic practices and experiments in radical feminism and new ways of living are the Zapatistas of rural Mexico, and Rojava in Northeast Syria.

Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities are de facto autonomous territories controlled by the neo-Zapatista support bases in the Mexican state of Chiapas, founded following the Zapatista uprising which took place in 1994 and is part of the wider Chiapas conflict. Despite attempts at negotiation with the Mexican government which resulted in the San Andrés Accords in 1996, the region’s autonomy remains unrecognized by it.

C: On January 1 1994, thousands of EZLN members occupied towns and cities in Chiapas, burning down police stations, occupying government buildings and skirmishing with the Mexican army. The EZLN demanded “work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace” in their communities. The Zapatistas seized over a million acres from large landowners during their revolution.

S: The Zapatista army, or EZLN, does not hold any power in the autonomous municipalities. According to its constitution, no commander or member of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee may take positions of authority or government in these spaces.

C: These places are found within the official municipalities, and several are even within the same municipality, as in the case of San Andrés Larrainzar and Ocosingo. The MAREZ are coordinated by autonomous Zapatista Councils of Good Government (Spanish: Juntas de Buen Gobierno) and their main objectives have been to promote education and health in their territories. They also fight for land rights, labor and trade, housing, and fuel-supply issues, promoting arts (especially indigenous language and traditions), and administering justice.

S: The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part.

C: The supporters of the region’s administration state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence. The region’s administration has also been accused by some partisan and non-partisan sources of authoritarianism, support of the Syrian government, Kurdification, and displacement. However, despite this the AANES has been the most democratic system in Syria, with direct open elections, universal equality, respecting human rights within the region, as well as defense of minority and religious rights within Syria.

S: The region has implemented a new social justice approach which emphasizes rehabilitation, empowerment and social care over retribution. The death penalty was abolished. Prisons house mostly people charged with terrorist activity related to ISIL and other extremist groups, and are a large strain on the region’s economy. The autonomous region is ruled by a coalition which bases its policy ambitions to a large extent on democratic libertarian socialist ideology of democratic confederalism and have been described as pursuing a model of economy that blends co-operative and market enterprise, through a system of local councils in minority, cultural and religious representation.One major influence on the politics of this region’s administration has been the anarchist and author Murray Bookchin’s works.

C: The AANES has by far the highest average salaries and standard of living throughout Syria, with salaries being twice as large as in regime-controlled Syria; following the collapse of the Syrian pound the AANES doubled salaries to maintain inflation, and allow for good wages. Independent organizations providing healthcare in the region include the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Syrian American Medical Society, the Free Burma Rangers and Doctors Without Borders.

---

The Problems We Face Today

S: Since the inception of our local Food Not Bombs and the Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network we have noticed one glaring need, and that is a place for people to camp safely that can be used as a stable base from which to secure the rest of your needs.

C: It is very hard to provide or receive assistance when you don’t have a tent and are moved from place to place every single day by the police. That is the most unstable form of houselessness. Another level of stability is provided by a tent, assuming you can keep it from being destroyed by the weather or the city. But this form of shelter is not very stable still, for that you need a consistent place to keep your tent, a campsite.

S: This is what the campers along the Chehalis River had for so long, and what was stolen from them when they were evicted in 2019. When you have a campsite you can maintain that allows you to know where you are going to sleep each night, it allows you to have one place to keep all your things, it allows you some measure of privacy, and safety from the streets and weather. Another advantage to having a consistent campsite is that you can start to build structures that provide even more privacy and safety, people at the old river camp had constructed many shelters out of pallets and other found materials which could be readily heated in winter and were easily as large as some tiny homes that now trend across the country.

C: As political activists, we found that people who we were engaging with at our events were often living on the streets and that alone made it difficult for them to engage with the political nature of our literature or ideas. While interested and supportive, their focus was always on meeting their direct needs, such as getting food, water, and clothing. Unsurprisingly, it is hard to concern oneself with reading about revolutionary politics when you aren’t sure where your next meal will come from or even where you will sleep that night.

S: So this is an impediment to organizing our community, the fact that it’s need were so great and so immediate that its almost all we could do to help people meet them. That has been the last two years of action in this town, trying to secure enough stability for our community so that people can start to think about why they suffer through these material conditions and then start thinking and organizing to change them. We can not expect people to be able to fully engage in political direct actions when they are in such vulnerable positions. It is our duty to show solidarity with those who need it and help those who are in positions of vulnerability to rise out of those conditions and by this show them that our ideals are worth their salt.

C: So one thing our community needs is a place for people to camp long term and have the ability to live in a stable environment and build their own spaces to their liking. This would provide people with the ability to heat themselves during the winter, reducing the burden on  the currently inadequate shelter options. It would also allow for garbage and sanitation services to be implemented which would reduce pollution and keep people safer and healthier. This would give people the ability to take better care of their spaces and maintain them free of trash and unwanted accumulation. With this level of stability it’s feasible to start going out and connecting with service providers, looking for employment, addiction services, healthcare, and whatever other things a person may need to do in their life.

S: A village of tiny homes with central corridors for green spaces, gardens, and communal areas, would provide much more privacy from unwanted spectators, police, and the city. It would provide a healthy and safe place for people to start to rebuild their lives and get back into permanent housing or stay on site permanently and build a life there. Ultimately what the unhoused need is housing. That’s what we need.

C: Our radical community of activists and volunteers has also needed it’s own space since day one. We have set up our weekly meals in parks or parking lots for two years now. We could do immensely more for our community if we had a base of operations from which to cook and serve meals.

S: If we did have our own space we could also think about offering all sorts of new services that we cant offer now. We could host meetings and events, workshops, skill shares, a place to hold union meetings to start unionizing local sectors. In addition to the expansion of our harm reduction services, we could offer new things like legal assistance and health clinics, both overwhelming needs in the community. Plus, we could store a wide range of library items such as books, tools, and seeds, that people would be able to borrow for their own projects and return them to the community stock when done. We could eventually build this tool library into a real makerspace with 3d printing and light manufacturing equipment. All this so that people could truly start to make their own things at scale and begin thinking about profitable business ventures to help them make money without having to become an employee at some shitty job that will exploit their labor.

C: We want to have as many people as possible freed from the oppressive cycle of work and rent. To do this we cannot simply get people “back on track”, to do this would be to completely miss the point.  Our goal needs to be total emancipation for all. We are making these radical spaces as jumping off points, organizing centers in which to build a community willing and able to go far beyond simple social services and revolutionize our way of living and relating. This model can provide the economic stability that we all need to be able to volunteer or labor in the movement struggle.

S: As mentioned before assimilation into the mold is not the goal here. We are not trying to get back into the grind, we are trying to upend the workflow completely.

C: But how can we organize when we have no place to do so?

S: We have been steadily stripped of these places of communal gathering since the elite in society realized the dangers these types of spaces presented to their rule. It seems unlikely that any social movement will succeed unless it is able to take and hold space at a scale not often seen. Temporary autonomous zones have sprung up at many recent protest sites, usually started by radicals and anarchists looking to provide people with a space to imagine and explore new modes of living. The ideas and trials undertaken in these spaces can ripple out into the larger social structure and have lessons to teach and political ramifications that extend long past any eviction. Just as these spontaneous autonomous zones can be springboards for the next level of development, so to can smaller anarchist spaces be used to inspire and organize such autonomous zones in the first place.

C: Our town is not yet ready for this level of political disruption, although it may seem cut off and isolated at times the State is ready and able to mobilize law enforcement from a wide area and even call on the help of the feds to crush any rebellion not strong enough to withstand it. We need spaces in which to learn how we might curtail and resist these efforts, we need to gather to consider and reflect and ruminate on our goals and our needs, and our strategy to achieve them.

S: The police can repress one uprising, even if its large; what they are not prepared for is many small uprisings all over the place. Its no longer enough to travel to major urban centers for mass demonstrations, we need to be taking the lessons learned and applying it back home in our small towns and outlying cities.

C: Radicals everywhere should aim to inspire these sorts of actions where they are. We need to be ready for the next wave of mass uprising and be able to transform people’s righteous rage into a productive forces for overturning the table on our rulers, and securing a good living for everyone.

---

The Solutions We Need Today

S: We have a representative from The Blackflower Collective here with us in studio. So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself, let our listeners know your pronouns, and then tell us what do you think the needs are facing Aberdeen at this moment?

D: “Hello, you can call me Daisy and my pronouns are she/her. I’m here today on behalf of The Blackflower Collective and am exciting to be able to talk about our project here with y’all today. It is clear that what we need is space, a home base. A place from which to grow a strong and resilient community able to take revolutionary action and withstand State repression. The average reader might think of renting a spot in town, and for some that model may be successful. But with the trajectory our community has taken locally we need to actually own property.

We have so much of an uphill battle to fight against the local owning class and political far right that we cannot be subjected to the whims of a landlord to establish the kind of stability we are looking to bring.

C: What you need is your own land. What’s the plan for that?

D: To buy and maintain –

oh hello kitty, what’s your name.

S: wait..

C: fuck, how did he get in here? did you lock the door like we said?

D: What’s wrong he’s just a cute little kitty

S: We need to leave now.

C: get out of here…go on…

S: make sure they’re all gone or were fucked

C: Hey you all go on get..

S: lock that door

C: Ok, phew that was close. there were only four of them this time

D: I don’t understand

C: Those aren’t normal cats, those are sabot cats, and they are trouble.

S: are you sure they’re all gone?

C: yeah i checked everywhere

Ok, sorry about that everyone. Let’s get back to where we were…

D: wait what the fuck was that?

S: Don’t worry about it

C: We were talking about the collective’s plans for buying your own land.

D: Well our goal to buy and maintain a piece of property will require money though and that’s why we have started this LLC. Even though the model of what we are trying to do really lends itself more to being in the nonprofit sector, we felt that the legal structure of a cooperative member owned LLC would allow us more resilience in the long term as we wouldn’t be subject to the desires of our funders. We would rather let people support us through traditional commercial activity and reinvest that money into the land projects.

This means that we, as radicals, will be interfacing with capitalism. But we all do this anyway when we go to work for an employer and pay for housing to a bank or landlord. We think that the goal is important enough that taking on this additional burden of operating an anti-capitalist business in a capitalist society is worth it.

S: How can you make this something that will not fail and leave people even worse off than before?

D: So the first thing we need to do is develop some sources of revenue. We are leaning on what the collective knows to start us off. That is we will be using the permaculture design concepts that will guide the development of our land someday and offering these design services to customers. We can design your apartment balcony, or your homestead, your eco village, or your backyard garden.

We are also starting a bookkeeping service that will eventually fold into our business incubator project. This way we can have some revenue coming in to help us save the money for the property, alongside doing crowdfunding efforts and local fundraising events. Once we obtain the land the potential revenue streams almost become too many to name. From the sale of timber, to rentable event space, we will be leaving no stone unturned in our efforts to make sure we can sustain this project indefinitely.

C: The next question is what do you do with the property once you have it?

D: Our plan is two fold: the property would be divided into two separate sections. The public-facing section would be dedicated to the social center, the rest of the property to the rear would be the eco-village where residents would live. The social center side will be where we centralize community resources, and the self governed eco-village would have immediate access to those shared community resources.

The social center would serve as a business incubator for various community initiatives, and resident’s personal small businesses. It would also be the central hub for preparing and serving food, with an internet cafeteria and community kitchen. Space will be dedicated to a mutual aid depot, for storage and distribution of supplies used in ongoing mutual aid work on and off-site.

Spaces would also be set aside for future projects such as legal and medical clinics, a union meeting hall, and many mixed use spaces for workshops, maker/art spaces, as well as spaces for rent to the public.

S: Tell us about your plans for a media center?

D: One of the projects Blackflower will be undertaking is the building of a media center for the public to be able to make their own video and audio media and will have resources available for help with distribution. We want the social center to cater to the wider community beyond just the eco-village, drawing people from the region to a unique space where they can interact and participate in new models of economics, design, community, and education.

C: You mentioned permaculture, how will that fit into the plan for this property?

D: As part of the eco-village campus we will offer permaculture design courses for people to learn how to design their own properties, as well as offering professional permaculture design services to regional property owners who want to hire someone to design their property for them.

S: You really seem like you want to do a lot of educational projects at the property? What with workshops and design courses.

D: The eco-village will not only serve as a practical solution to lack of housing but also a learning center where permaculture design concepts are experimented with and taught. Education is a large part of the goal of this project, beyond design courses we want to have music, history, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), political education, and more as part of a holistic unschooling program. People can generate their own curriculum and pace their own learning.

C: What are the long term future goals of the project? If everything goes well over the next, say, five years…what then?

D: In the future we want to develop the property into a true educational facility catering to alternative educational experiences for those not interested in traditional educational styles. The desire of this collective is to inspire people to consider the alternative ways we might live and work and relate to one another so we will encourage attempts by the community to put their novel ideas into action. With all of the nearby activity the possibilities for on-site employment abound for residents of the eco village, so people in need of employment will have a ready made place to work and make money while contributing to a revolutionary movement.”

S: As mentioned above the eco village will govern itself, being an independent entity to Blackflower. The likely model for this entity is called a Community Land Trust (CLT). In the short term, it is the institution best suited to creating an anti-gentrification bulwark of socialized housing run by the community.

C: A CLT is a non-profit legal entity entrusted with property management in the community’s interest—ensuring affordable housing, preserving environmental assets, and driving cooperative neighborhood development. The leadership of this non profit is usually the residents of the land over which the CLT has authority. This way decisions about the community can be made by the community itself, protecting it from the whims of developers and gentrifiers.

S: With a CLT, one could raise funds to purchase property and build low-income or sliding scale housing options, securing them for residents long term outside the volatile housing market. The CLT could run on a time based economy, where individuals who are members in the CLT would commit to a certain number of labor hours to projects of restoration and maintenance. This body would benefit from the local social center’s vast tool library, and the mutual aid depot’s building materials to build all manner of sustainable buildings.

C: In conjunction with the Planned Unit Development (PUD) model of residential development a CLT would create mixed use housing able to fit the needs of the community and would designate a certain percentage of land to communal green spaces and gardens. This would act to maximize residential participation in community and create opportunities for experiments in alternative modes of life.

S: As noted by the Symbiosis Research Collective,

“Understandably, many individuals and families have no desire to live in communes, and an emphasis on expanding the cooperative sphere of daily life should not be a barrier to entry. However, many other people feel constrained by the alienation and limitations of current housing options. Revitalizing community and pushing back against our social atomization is an important aspect of all projects in this organizing model—rethinking living arrangements most of all.”

C: They explain housing arrangements in their proposed system through a lens of two axes: duration of anticipated residence and degree of communality. For the first axis housing opportunities would consist of a spectrum of option including emergency temporary shelter for those currently unhoused, transitional housing for domestic abuse survivors and people seeking to transition away from temporary shelters, short-term housing for up to one year for college students or visitors, semi-permanent housing for one to five years, and finally permanent housing. The second axis ranges from individual apartments to single family homes with a variety of communal living situations based on the needs of the residents. Their plans are for manifesting at a large municipal level scale but many of the ideas are applicable to smaller scale residential developments.

S: The goal is to expand and encourage common management of the home, shared rituals of belonging, and collective child-rearing. All features of the current intentional community housing movement. This allows for a much more diverse population living in much denser conditions but able to interact and relate to their communities easier and more effectively than what our system of isolation currently allows. By working, eating, and living close to home we can more easily come together to affect the changes we want to see.

C: A CLT used in this way would foster community while laying groundwork for the liberated society. The eco-village campus will be built by and for it’s residents using cheap natural building techniques in order to provide each person their own warm, safe, dignified living space. Transitional or permanent, this housing would serve as a stable base from which to build a community based on resilience, skill sharing, learning, and love.

---

S: We are getting the cue that its time for a musical break, when we return we will begin to analyze the article we’ve just examined and talk about what we might be able to expect from a project such as the one Blackflower has proposed and compare it to similar projects across the world including Cooperation Tulsa, but for now here is “I Want Something” performed by Evan Greer, HIT IT!

---

Music:

“I Want Something” performed by Evan Greer

---

Segment two:

C: Welcome back to Molotov Now! its time for us to analyze the article we’ve just examined and talk about The Blackflower Collective LLC.

S: Well so that seems like a really cool project to get involved in, I’m glad we made the choice to do so early on.

C: yeah, by choosing to get in on the ground floor we can assist them in raising funds as our platform grows to get this project rolling even faster.

S: Maybe we should explain the relationship between Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective for our listeners.

C: That’s a great idea. People are probably wondering what exactly is going on there.

S: So we at Sabot Media are fully invested in the idea of this project. So in order to signal boost their plans and fundraisers we have lent some hands in helping them with our media operations, promoting them, getting the word out there about their projects, making graphics for them, etc. We know the organizers from our work on the streets doing mutual aid in town. When they approached us about getting involved it was just as we were starting to think about starting Sabot Media. So, we figured our place could be the media arm of the operation, so to speak.

C: Yeah, they didn’t really have anyone with that knowledge base and so we stepped in to help, and obviously were drawn in by the project and how cool it sounded.

S: And now we are working together towards opening this media center with them so that we can both use it for our media projects, and to share it with the community so others can start media projects of their own.

C: Right, Im so excited to start actually building the thing everybody needs to be able to tell their stories and have them be heard by media collectives such as ourselves.

S: Well they gotta buy land first, no timeline on that unfortunately.

C: So, to clarify for our listeners, we are not The Blackflower Collective?

S: No, we are going to remain our own separate thing. We figured that with the content we were producing that would be best. We don’t want them having any editorial control over what we produce at Sabot Media.

C: Ok, so now that that has been covered let’s get into it. What do you think about the project? What are your biggest concerns and critiques? Do you think it can really be successful in the long run?

S: I would say some of my biggest concerns for the project are the local right wing reactionaries. I don’t think that they will want this sort of thing in “their” town and will push back on it as much as possible. I don’t foresee any physical harassment, but trying to stop things at the county level may be their move since they have people in those positions. As for critiques…I guess I should think of one huh? Give me a sec.

C: I don’t know Sprout, I think that there is a real possibility of physical harassment to be honest, with the political climate in this county i think they should be preparing for that eventuality.

S: Let’s hope not. Ok so one critique I could make is about the use of the word permaculture. Not that I don’t respect the hard work that people who use that term do, and the usefulness of those practices. It’s just kind of become a bit infested with the sort of white nationalists that find themselves farming. It did a great job of putting forth some ethical considerations for designing systems, but when it comes to it’s politics, there really aren’t any and it’s starting to show. It has become a subculture, and I’m not sure if it is politically aware enough to realize it’s being infiltrated by the far right and do something about it. Haven’t seen enough written on this subject and I hope to write on it in the future a bit.

C: Oh really so it’s that bad huh? I didn’t know it was a haven for white nationalists?

S: I don’t know how pervasive it really is, I’m not sure I would call it  “haven” exactly but it doesn’t have the explicit politics necessary to safeguard against that sort of trend. I just hope it’s something they are aware of and guarding against.  They have some interesting writings on their website about something called “anaculture” that seems like they are, but we will see what they come up with and keep everyone updated.

C: Interesting, so they are experimenting with a new sort of methodology?

S: Let me read from their website:

S: Our social, political, and environmental, and economic system are not broken…

…but they are poorly designed. They achieve the goal they were designed for – short term profit – but because the design was ad hoc, haphazard, and inequitable they leave many in poverty while promoting a very small number to unimaginable wealth. It is beyond obvious to merely state that these systems are not sustainable. But the next step is realizing that they can be redesigned by us. As humans we can design much better system when we introduce ethical considerations into the core of the design process, this gives us permaculture or ethical design. But again this seems to fall short as we see a variety of examples of a right wing fascist creep into the permaculture community, and the community itself seems ill prepared to counter this trend.

S: Ok, so they are well aware of the problem then that’s good. Continuing from their site

S: As a possible hope to resist this we would like to introduce a new concept: Anaculture, or anarcho-permaculture. It is our desire to develop this theoretical approach by experimentation and trials. Taking the uniquely anti authoritarian ethics of the anarchist intellectual tradition and combining it with the already established library of permaculture techniques, we hope to fortify the future of these design movements against fascist infiltration.

S: Nice! I’m glad they are addressing this front and center. I should have read through their website. It goes on,

C: Ya, you should really read their bit about their inspirations, they pull their ideas from some really interesting projects such as Firestorm Co-op, anyway what else does it say?

S: Design allows us to participate in the creation of all sorts, when applied to culture, it is the ability to create one’s own culture as you see fit. There is much to learn from the past, but we must not be subservient to it, we can change our ways when it suits us. Permaculture gives a good path forward for attacking any problem head on. It is direct action, it is revolutionary. By designing a permanent culture built on anarchist ideals we can promise a future to the next seven generations and begin to heal the wounds caused by such poorly designed systems as we have today.

C: I love the nod to the seven generations concept of the Iroquois.

S: I’m not familiar with that.

C: It’s a concept that urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. It is believed to have originated with the Iroquois – with the Great Law of the Iroquois – which holds that it is appropriate to think seven generations ahead and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their descendants.

S: Oh that’s awesome, that makes a lot of sense as a way to ensure sustainable practices. people in our culture can be so short sighted when it comes to profit over the planet. They finish with this piece:

S: We believe that any ethically designed system must reject authoritarianism and embrace universal emancipation, both for human and non-human systems. There is no compatibility between the ethics of permaculture and the far right worldview. For this reason and more we feel it necessary to promote this distinct theory as a guide for those wanting to practice and learn design concepts that we can use to liberate our planet, redesign our world, and create a new world in the shell of the old.

S: Well I’m glad I looked that up. That is reassuring to know they are addressing the issue and working towards a new way of doing things.

C: Ya this Anaculture thing sounds really cool, i hope it can offer the permaculture community the political awareness it needs to stop the fascist creep, they always seem to find ways to co-opt sub and counter cultures to spread their garbage ideology, feels like the Punks were the only ones who have successfully pushed them out.

S: It is, that’s a good one. I kinda wish I had come up with it if we are being honest. So we were talking about my critiques, and that pretty well put those to bed. But you had asked how I thought it could last long term, or whether I thought it would be able to. And obviously there is no way to know for sure, but I think that it’s got a really good chance. The people behind it are smart and motivated, they are active in the community and in radical mutual aid work. I trust them to put together something that works to meet the needs of the community. I think as the article mentioned funding is one of the biggest hurdles, so hopefully people out there listening who have the money consider going and helping them out with some donations. That would be an amazing group to give your money to, they will be doing amazing things here on the Harbor.

C: They are already out there taking jobs with the bookkeeping and design services.

S: Really? that’s awesome! So what are some of your concerns or critiques of the project? Lets get into your thoughts now. Do you think it can really last?

C: Well the most obvious obstacles are gonna be the funding for property and the community engagement, whether that’s supportive or reactionary engagement. The price of land is going up everyday and it is often bought up the moment it hits the market, making it harder to secure deals without the cash on hand. Not to mention because the nature of these projects and the root of reactionary politics are in a clash, the reputation and legitimacy of Blackflower and the community it supports will constantly be contested by the same reactionaries that have driven the conditions that necessitate the need for this space in the first place.

S: So you’re saying that they have an uphill battle against the local far right reactionaries politically speaking. I agree, I think they are cognizant of that though. What do you think as far as the longevity of the proposed project?

C: This is a struggle that will go on long after the oppression of capitalism have been resolved. Rather than cede defeat in a theoretical future demise, I would think it a better question to ask not how long this space will last but how it will effect our community in the time that it does last, this space may be dissolved when the class struggle begins to put stress on the chains that bind it or it might evolve into something unpredictable entirely. Nothing lasts forever so we cannot focus on what Blackflower will be but what Blackflower will do and how we can support that.

S: So, earlier you mentioned their inspirations. Let’s dive into that a bit. I pulled this up from their website again,

Inspiration

We have been inspired by so many groups during the development and planning of this project. Below you will find some of the projects and groups that have shown us the possibility of doing things differently, our own way, and have been successful at doing so.

• CHEHALIS RIVER MUTUAL AID NETWORK –

A grassroots group of community members in so-called Grays Harbor County, WA engaged in political direct action. We are not a Non-Profit 501c3, a business, or a club. We are normal people who try to organize the vast potential of our community to build the world we want to see, without asking for permission.

Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network is what brought the founders of Blackflower together and what put us on the streets to meet so many good hearted people in our community. Its the reason there is a Blackflower Collective in the first place. They continue to do excellent work and we are happy to be able to partner with them so they can grow their project in our physical space.

• SABOT MEDIA –

An open collective of radical media makers. We are an Anarchist Media Collective looking to provide an outlet for Radical Analysis, Organization, & Education through various media projects.

Sabot Media was birthed from Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network and is a vital member org. They have essentially taken over the media wing of the network.

• FIRESTORM COOP –

“We are a collectively-owned radical bookstore and community event space in Asheville, North Carolina. Since 2008 we’ve supported grassroots movements in Southern Appalachia while developing a workplace on the basis of cooperation, empowerment and equity.” Patreon

Firestorm would probably be the most influential in the formation of our own business plans. We looked to them early on for guidance on forming, and running a cooperative worker owned company. They were generous enough to share their insights and their operating agreement, which has formed to backbone of our own operating agreement at Blackflower LLC. They are a shining example of what we would like to model in our space, and give us constant inspiration in our own projects.

• COOPERATION TULSA –

“Cooperation Tulsa is an emerging Cooperative Network in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are part of the national Symbiosis federation of organizations in North America. Our work primarily focuses on food sovereignty, decommodifying land, and building municipal democracy. We are a horizontal organization dedicated to indigenous and cooperative values. Currently we are working on a network of community gardens and urban farming in Tulsa.” Open Collective

We have taken great comfort in watching this awesome group of folx build this project from the ground up. Since their project is so very similar to ours we love to see them succeeding and gaining attention. We hope to connect with them, and the larger Symbiosis federation they are a part of, in the future and begin a dialogue about sharing experiences and skills.

• BUNKHOUSE ACRES –

“A 20 acre black-led farm and bread school in the Middle Satsop Valley.”   GoFundMe | Venmo  |  Paypal  |  CashApp

A portion of Bunkhouse Acres’ CSA food shares are donated to local BIPOC families in need and leftover or unclaimed produce gets used by our Food Not Bombs project for our Community Meal.

• SEATTLE COMMUNITY FRIDGES –

“We are a mutual aid group wishing to end food insecurity on Occupied Duwamish land.”

Free food for the community | Comida gratis para la comunidad. Inspired by @iohnyc. Venmo

Seattle Community Fridges are part of the wider regional solidarity network Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network sends prepared food and produce to as often as possible.

• NORTHEAST COALITION OF NEIGHBORHOODS –

“Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods (NECN) fosters healthy communities by engaging citizens to become directly involved in determining how their neighborhood evolves, and giving them the tools to have their voices heard by policy makers and the public at large.”

Although they do excellent work in Northeast Portland, our solidarity work in the region has seen us working with many of the incredible groups listed in NECN’s PDX Mutual Aid and Support Directory. We list them here because we were delighted to be listed alongside many groups that inspired our work.

• MUTUAL AID DISASTER RELEIF –

“Our national network is made up of many eco-activists, social justice activists, global justice activists, street medics, herbalists, permaculturalists, black liberation advocates, community organizers, and others who are actively organizing around supporting disaster survivors in a spirit of mutual aid and solidarity. ” Donate | Action Network

We have a deep respect for these folks, they do amazingly radical and liberatory relief work at a large scale. They are directly responsible for inspiring this group, and actively help us in procuring certain donations as a registered 501(c)3 organization with some incredible connections.

S: It’s time for us to go away for a quick break when we return we will be giving a quick recap of what we have discussed today and give some final analysis about this Blackflower project but until then, presenting our brothers from across the pond “Cock Sparrer” Performing “Were Coming Back” Hit it!

---

Conclusion:

C: So in conclusion the community being built here in Grays Harbor of radicals and activists on the Harbor willing to take action to bring about the world they want to see need their own space. Blackflower Collective has been formed from grassroots discussion by that community, and from members of the community in order to meet that need. They have many, many creative and ambitious goals for the project, some of which they have started already and some of which are still being researched and developed by the collective.

S: A major goal of the collective is educational in nature, they express a desire to provide an alternative learning style for people who are not able to learn from traditional schooling methods. It will be interesting to see how much the youth will want to be involved in this project, a major belief of us here at Sabot Media is the wisdom of the youth. We should listen to them more often if we want to succeed in our radical visions of the future, it is their future after all. They even hope to develop the property into a real campus with on site residences and revolutionary coursework. This is a beneficial project of liberation, we must be ready to educate people about the causes of their material woes, and the possibility of solving them ourselves.

C: The collective is also very focused on the ecological, wanting to design the property themselves along the perma – or…anacultural practices and techniques they have learned and will be experimenting with. They are aware of the fascist creep into these spaces and seem well poised to prevent their space from falling prey to such predation. The eco village they are designing will be packed with communal green spaces and gardens that will bring people living there outside and into the fields. Being together while accomplishing the tasks of life will form a true bond between neighbors. This trust can be leveraged for all sorts of radical direct actions through the use of affinity groups.

S: After everything we’ve learned today any way you look at it, this is a radical project, even though it operates as an official LLC, and they will have to make money to survive, like any other business.

C: As for funding the collective is busy getting parts of it’s business plans up and running to start generating revenue streams. On top of this they are starting to do things like planning benefit shows and art shows to raise funds for the land. However this is a crowd sourced project, it cannot come to fruition without support from the community, not just the local communities of so called Grays Harbor but from the community of radicals who wish to see this project fulfilled no matter their location, so please if you can, Blackflower is taking donations at linktr.ee/blackflowerllc if you have the ability to contribute to this much needed project please do so.

S: We wish them the best in their endeavors and offer them our most sincere solidarity in the effort. We will be there with them, side by side, the whole way. We can’t wait to see what sort of mischief we can make together.

---

Outro:

C: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Molotov Now! We hope you found it informative and inspiring. Our goal with the podcast is to reach out beyond our boundaries and connect the happenings in our small town with the struggles going on in major urban centers. We want to talk to you if your a big city organizer, we think we have a lot you can learn from, and we know you have much to teach us. If you would like to come on the show please email us at sabot_media@riseup.net with the header “Molotov Now!” and we will be in touch about setting up an interview and crafting an episode to feature you.

We want to give a shout out to our friends at:

• C: Queer Satanic who come with Good news and bad news for our devilish comrades. The good news: the four former members of The Satanic Temple won their legal defense after nearly three years of TST suing them in federal court for online criticism. Congratulations on their victory! The bad news: the Temple has appealed their loss to keep extending this case and its expenses for the defendants, which in December exceeded $115,000. Any donations to their legal defense funds would be appreciated. Their website is queersatanic.com
• S: We want to thank The Blackflower Collective for their continued support and wish them luck in their fundraising efforts. To support them or learn more their website is blackflowercollective.noblogs.org.
• C:Thank you to Evan Greer for letting us use their song “I Want Something” and Thank you to TKO Records for letting us use the song “We’re Coming Back” by Cock Sparrer on the program today
• S: Kolektiva, the anarchist mastodon server, is growing faster than ever thanks to Elon Musk’s stupidity as many activists close their accounts for bluer skies as can be seen in the fluctuation of followers over on IGD’s socials, join at kolektiva.social (spell kolektiva) and follow us and other online activists on decentralized federated internet.
• C: Dont forget to go to bit.ly/lakotalawicwa and sign the petition by the Lakota Peoples Law Project telling Joe Biden and attorneys for the Department of Justice to do everything in their power to protect the Indian Child Welfare Act and defend Secretary Deb Haaland.
• S: It is the heart of winter and we still are without shelter in Aberdeen, without intervention more and more of our homeless population are becoming casualties of the state, Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network is still running a winter fundraiser to buy warm weather gear for the homeless, To donate visit bit.ly/crmandonations.
• C: Don’t forget The Communique is looking for artist and author submissions, please write to sabot_media@riseup.net to submit your entry before March 6th for our Spring Equinox edition.
• S: Please send any donations to Venmo @katyHussey or Cashapp $KatyHussey to help prevent them from facing eviction or to support them should they do so.
• C: Thank you to Pixel Passionate for producing our soundtrack, please check out their website at www.radicalpraxisclothing.com and check out their portfolio in our show notes
• S: and finally IGD recently featured an interview with us on their podcast This Is America, discussing all the work that radicals are doing on the Harbor, for more info and to listen go to itsgoingdown.org

S: Remember to check out sabot media’s new website for new episodes, articles, comics, and columns. We have new content all the time. Make sure you follow, like, and subscribe on your favorite corporate data mining platform of choice and go ahead and make the switch to federated social media on the kolektiva mastodon server today @AberdeenLocal1312 for updates on Sabot Media projects such as The Harbor Rat Report, The Saboteurs, Ask Annie, our podcast Molotov Now! and many other upcoming projects.

C:  That’s all for tonight. Please remember to spay and neuter your cats and don’t forget to cast your vote at those who deserve them.
S:   Solidarity Comrades,
C:   This is Molotov Now! Signing off

​

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on Google+