Mk: Hello and welcome to The Child and Its Enemies, a podcast about queer and neurodivergent kids living out anarchy and youth liberation. Here at The Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, to Anarchy Itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives, and youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression.
Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for youth that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create queer, feral, ageless networks of care. I’m your host, MK Zario, I’m 15 years old, and I’m the youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of the blog DebateMeBro, and trans liberationist organizer in the Great Lakes region and beyond.
With me today is Pearson, formerly the host of Coffee with Comrades and now just a super cool anarchist.
Pearson: Hey, what’s up? It’s so good to be with you. I’m stoked to have this conversation. It’s been a long time in development and I’m excited to sit down and talk with you. It should be A great time.
Mk: Yeah, agreed. I’m so glad that we could create a space like this is actually the first time I have featured a friend from the channel zero network on the podcast. So i’m This collaboration already.
Pearson: That’s awesome Yeah, I one of my favorite parts about being in the channel zero network and doing coffee with comrades was all of the cool cross pollination and the different kinds of conversations that it engendered in the You Ways that creative projects got to overlap.
So I’m thrilled that even though coffee with comrades is no longer around, I still get to participate that in different ways. Like I said, it’s really great to be here.
Mk: Yeah. Do you want to share your pronouns, your affiliated groups and any other organizing experience that you’d love for our viewers to hear about?
Pearson: Yeah, sure. So like you said, my name is Pearson. I use here, they pronouns, whatever works, I don’t really care that much. As the adage goes. Gender is a fuck and masculinity is a prison. So even though I was assigned male at birth, I don’t have any real affinity for it. Like you also mentioned, I used to host the podcast Life With Comrades, but unfortunately, sadly, that chapter of my life has come to a close.
These days I am a writer, a professor, I’m a parent I’ve worked with. A number of different groups like mutually disaster relief and the channel zero network, but I’ve also worked alongside folks in the libertarian socialist caucus in the DSA and student groups like students for justice in Palestine or the center for participant education.
So many folks who are liberation minded, I’ve had quite a few hats that I’ve worn over the years. So it’s hard to put that into a. Tiny, concise little script, but yeah I’ve had, I’ve been doing, anarchist organizing for cotton. I feel so old saying this, but well over 15 years now.
So that’s cool. And I’m glad that I’ve gotten to participate in it for such a long and protracted time and see how it’s developed and see the kind of really urgent and emergent ways that people are trying to challenge empire and trying to challenge the state and trying to develop networks and communities of kinship and care.
Mk: I love that so much and all the solidarity you’ve done with students especially is so meaningful as a teenage anarchist who’s been in the movement for two years now it is so amazing to see older anarchists really focusing on mentorship and friendship and care with youth. Yeah when we came up with this idea for an interview, you mentioned you wanted to chat about revolutionary movements and how they intersect with youth liberation.
While anarchism isn’t necessarily movement based, like I consider mine more anti futurist, more of the anarcho nihilist bend how, in your opinion, have more social movement type of spaces held space for kids and teens?
Pearson: Yeah, thanks for those kind words. I guess we can start there, right?
Because I think it’s so funny talking with folks and going to going to events, whether it’s something like the Asheville Another another Carolina anarchist book fair, the ACAB event that goes on in Asheville every year, or whether it’s going to events like the dual power gathering but you look around and I start to realize, oh, I’m like, I am starting to become an older person here and it’s been a weird kind of experience.
Cause I don’t necessarily think of myself as an old hat, like I don’t think of myself as like a veteran organizer by any stretch of the imagination. I feel like in many ways, I’m still flying by the seat of my pants. And there are plenty of people who, I Look up to and appreciate and admire and whose advice and insight I go to when I’m struggling, or when I don’t know what to do or what have you.
But at the same time I do think that there’s been like a market shift in the way that I’ve related to anarchist social movements as of late. And it’s something that has been Really, like a really recent kind of development. I think that I’ve come to terms with.
So I guess to answer your kind of more direct question, I think that social movements have done a. A mixed bag when it comes to how they have related to kids and teens and how kids and teens have had space made for them or how they have made space for themselves. I think that we are seeing a lot of that now in some really cool ways.
For example, we’ve got the student led protests in defense of Gaza and Palestine, right? We saw, Universities being occupied. We saw mass walkouts across the nation in high schools and then, and even in middle schools. But I think that we on the left have a really uneven history when it comes to trying to actually include kids in our movements, and I think this kind of comes from these two distinct and often like polar places, but there’s a real spectrum between.
These 2 things right? On the 1 hand you have folks who genuinely want to protect young folks from the state and from vigilante violence, right? They’ve seen horrific things firsthand. They’ve seen militarized police. They have seen Dipshits like Kyle Rittenhouse, waving an AR 15 and shooting protesters in during the uprisings in recent memory and they’re scared.
And I think that on one hand, this is like a reasonable and understandable threat matrix to be concerned about. It makes sense that those are. Real concerns. They are like legitimate sources of potential violence. And I think that we would be doing a disservice to ourselves and to others, if we are not aware of the ways in which that kind of plays out especially in the world today.
And I think it probably goes without saying that as a parent, the very last thing I want is for one of my kiddos to get arrested or hurt by the state. And the same, of course, holds true for anybody’s kid. But on the other hand You’ve got this kind of patronize patronizing attitude, right?
This whole idea that the kids are going to save us all that sort of thing, right? This generation is so woke. They’re so progressive. And I think it places way too much of an emphasis on young folks to the point where it almost can become a burden and it can be a excuse to abdicate Our duty as older people who are engaged in social movements or in liberatory struggles, because it’s a way of saying if the kids are going to be all right, if the kids are going to save themselves, then we don’t really have to worry about it.
And I think that there’s a really large spectrum that exists between those two attitudes. But I think that kind of encapsulates a lot of the ways in which people try to approach. It’s in social movements, right? And I think that it’s this this dialectic, right? I think it’s a bit more like a both and thing because obviously, kids are doing some really amazing and inspiring stuff right now, but I also want to recognize and think, critically about how We and I’m speaking to other older folks, other aging elder veteran, whatever you want to call us, because unfortunately now I do count myself among this category, right?
How do we aging elder veteran anarchists and revolutionaries create an intergenerational struggle, right? Where there isn’t this. Huge divide between the old and the young. I’ve had a lot of really wonderful experiences getting to meet older folks either at food, not bombs or through organizing at book fairs or through doing coffee with comrades.
It. And I want to be really intentional as I am getting older about trying to be if not a mentor, then a a sort of egalitarian way of relating with younger people and championing and recognizing the input and the value that. Folks have regardless of where they might be coming from, regardless of what age they might be because I’ve seen the ways in which intergenerational revolutionary struggle can be a hugely positive thing.
And I’ve been thinking about okay what does that mean for my role now? And so something that I’m just been piecing over and wrestling with now as a parent and as someone who’s in this weird liminal space, right? I think it’s really important to prize the autonomy and the agency and the experience of everyone.
But how do we do so in a genuinely egalitarian fashion? And I’m curious, MK, because I’ve talked a lot here just now about my own experiences, but I’m curious, like. Where, how do you see that intergenerational affinity between older folks and youth? Do you see it at all in your organizing efforts or is it something that is given lip service to but isn’t actually have sincere commitment?
I’m curious like what your experience is like.
Mk: So as a trans youth, I tend to see that sense of solidarity, especially in today’s trans spaces. And that is in large part because people are aware that the majority of transphobia tends to be specifically about fear mongering surrounding trans teens existing.
So when I meet trans adults, as a result, they’re very much about wanting to build a community of care with trans youth and Most of the anarchist spaces I’m in are predominantly queer and trans, so that tends to be the reason for that sense of solidarity. And usually that’s great, but sometimes it can get towards tokenism, not so much in the anarchist scene, but in more neoliberal spaces.
There will be a lot of fanfare surrounding the existence of a trans kid, but no one will really materially support the kid. And I also think I actually gave a workshop at Queer Smash Back about this very problem. Sometimes adults will either see us as an equal person and thus not understand that we face ageism, or see us as someone who faces ageism and not understand that we’re an equal person.
So I really think that intergenerational organizing means acknowledging that age is a social construct that exists and acknowledging that adult supremacy is a social construct that exists and actively working to dismantle it. We cannot be age blind, we cannot just pretend this doesn’t happen, but we have to build solidarity with people of all ages, whether or not they face ageism or compulsory development or whatever it is.
Thank you.
Pearson: Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense.
Mk: Yeah so on this topic, what youth liberationist tendencies do you see in today’s anarchist milieu, and how do they intersect with queer and neurodivergent struggles? As I mentioned, the queer spash back tendency really has a youth liberationist side, and that’s brought me so much joy as someone who identifies for that tendency.
But I know there must be so many other faces like this.
Pearson: Yeah, totally. So here’s the thing. I think a lot of this work is being done by kids. And as a result, I think that means that it often gets rendered invisible or undervalued. And I think, obviously, that’s a real shame, because even in ostensibly like leftist milieus, I find that Kids experiences and their desires and their autonomy is often dismissed, even, or, perhaps, especially when it’s paid lip service to and I think to a large extent, that’s because people are not actually surrounding themselves with kids.
They may not have kids themselves. They may eschew, having kids, or they may not have. Roles in life, either in work or in, in, in their community that bring them in close contact with young folks. And I think as a result that a lot of times people inherit the popular attitudes that are endemic to our hierarchical society.
And in this case, namely ageism, right? In this. This conception that adults have more agency and more autonomy and more power than youth and that youth need to be shepherded and protected and that they could never possibly conceive of, let alone act upon a genuinely revolutionary program.
And so I think that it’s a real shame. When that happens, and I think that as a result, a lot of times that work is, like I said, just sidelined or invisiblize and it’s, exactly why I’m really excited that a show like The Child and Its Enemies exists on the CZN to help elevate those struggles to help elevate those voices and to shine a light on what, unfortunately, is often marginalized work.
I think, if we’re talking about ideas for youth struggle if we’re talking about the ways in which intergenerational Affinity can develop into really fruitful forms of community and kinship. 1 book in particular that I would direct folks towards is this awesome intergenerational book on youth liberation called trust kids, which is a, anthology collection edited by my friend Carla Bergman, and it’s got poetry. It’s got art. It’s got like critical, thoughtful academic essays. It’s got very thoughtful, nuanced, personal, and narrative themes. Based essays, but it runs the veritable gambit between, writers, poets, artists, academics, essayists, and crucially kids themselves.
I think a lot of times when people talk about youth liberation, again, especially in our Leftist milus, they often will actually eshoo kids from being included in those conversations. And what I think makes trust kids such an awesome and invaluable resource is that it actually has contributions from youth, right?
Which is fucking awesome.
I guess the other places that I see this form of youth liberation happening is as a professor. I see it really, especially with my students. I work at a university satellite college that is a open source program.
And as a result, I get a lot of students from, typically marginalized communities, right? A lot of youth of color, a lot of neurodivergent people people with ADHD, people with autism people who have physical disabilities. And 1 of the things that I have found to be really eye opening and really engaging and really affirming.
Is seeing the ways in which these kids will not only advocate for themselves interpersonally, but the ways in which they try to advocate for 1 another as a whole, and this takes place to a number of different student organizations, but I also try to model that and provide tools for students in the classroom.
1 of the things that we do at the very beginning of every semester, we write a kind of collaborative. Community manifesto where everybody is interjecting. Everybody is contributing to this shared document that kind of sets the mood or the vibe or the environment for our learning.
And it’s based upon the critical pedagogy of people like Paula Freire it’s based upon the work that Francisco Freire did with the new school. And it also is based upon other anarchist or anarchic adjacent theorists, like people like bell hooks, people like Rob Hayworth, et cetera.
And so as a result students have a lot. Of autonomy over not just the way that they engage with the class, but the ways in which they engage with each other, the kinds of conversations that they get to participate in what we read, what we look at, what we research, what we discuss and as a result, have a huge degree of autonomy.
And I found that especially, because your question was geared towards questions about, how neurodivergent youth and how I see that happening. That’s 1 of the big ways that I see it happening is students advocating for themselves and for their needs and saying, hey this grading structure doesn’t actually work for me.
I need this spelled out a little more clearly. Or, oh, because of the fact that I struggle with deadlines, I need some more time and being able to work with people and find the best way to empower their learning is a really edifying aspect of my job. And I guess the last place that I see this.
As a parent with my kiddos both my kiddos are varying shades of gender nonconforming, varying shades of queer they are both neurodivergent and they are engaged with their friends and with, our friend group in our larger community in a variety of ways, whether that is being a positive influence in, the rural Midwest on our neighbors.
I had the other morning, 1 of our. One of the neighbor kids in our neighborhood came over and knocked on our door and she had missed the bus. And we’re driving. I, my, my kiddo had already caught the bus. And I, put on my shoes and jumped in the car and took her over because she was scared to tell her stepdad and that her stepdad was going to yell at her.
And on, anyway, on the way during the drive, One of the things that she told me this is a young kid, I think nine or 10. And the only kind of real morality that she’s been taught is a very regressive form of like patriarchal Christianity. And so I’m using her words.
These wouldn’t be my words, these were her words. And she said, like my. My parents taught me to not like gay people, but I think that Jesus wants us to love everybody. And so I love gay people. I love bi people. I love non binary people. I love trans people. And you know who taught me that?
And I was like, who? And she was like, your kiddos did. And I was like, super touched because I can, trust on my kids to to be A positive influence in the world and a positive influence on their peers and to get to see how those conversations are fruitful and flourishing is 1 of the most edifying possible things as a parent the last little kind of scenario that I will say just a.
Cause I’ve been on a long spiel here is our co op. Our co op is democratically run. We homes, we used to homeschool, both our kids now just our younger kiddo is homeschooled and it is a democratically run homeschool. And at the beginning of every semester one of the things that we do is we all sit down, parents and kids alike.
And go over what it is that we want to do with that particular semester, whether it’s just Hey, we want to have some social days, or, Hey, we want to have a pajama day, or we want to have a day where we talk about languages, or we want to have a day where we talk about history, or we want to have a day where we all dress up in Ren fair outfits and pretend that we are in the medieval ages and whatnot.
And being able to equip tool, equip kids with the tools to navigate democratic processes to, to model those and the reality and to point to them and illustrate to them in different ways. Hey, this is the way that like, actual democracy works that you have a direct say and how that’s different from.
The more representative forms of so called democracy that are occurring in the world especially occurring here in the United States. And I think that, all of these are small mundane kinds of ways in which. Organizing or practicing liberation happen. But I think taken as a whole, they represent this idea that anarchy is not just, Molotov cocktails and black block and smashing windows and throwing bombs.
It is a sincere commitment to care to community, to kinship, to mutual aid, to Having a direct egalitarian say over our own lives and having agency, and I think in particular, having that kind of agency and autonomy in an intergenerational way.
Mk: I love that all so much. Thank you so much for sharing about what youth liberation looks like in your life, what liberatory parenting and education look like, all of that.
So many people need to hear that. But the through line that stuck out to me the most was the fact that youth liberation can really just start with youth advocating for our needs, standing up to bigotry that we and our friends face. And. How you talked about your neurodivergent students learning to stand up for themselves by advocating for the accommodations they needed.
Youth liberation doesn’t always need to start with some grand social movement goal. It can literally just be about the problems in your community. I when I started the new middle school a couple years ago, I noticed a lot of homophobia and self repression. I was getting called slurs.
It was a mess. So I started a queer and trans anarchist collective. And now 20 percent of the school is in said collective and has transitioned,
Pearson: that’s dope.
Mk: Yeah we love, self advocacy. And yeah youth organizing has always existed, even though the lip service to it hasn’t. But a lot of it, as you say, is really specific to certain schools, or localities, or just our social circles, rather than formal organizing.
Yeah. So it’s easy for us young anarchists to feel so alone in the milieu and wonder if we’re the only one. Like I’ve been at so many anarchist meetings where I’ve been the youngest and everyone’s been amazingly supportive and it’s been a good experience, but it’s also been a little depressing that no other teenagers feel comfortable doing that.
More broadly, how would you say that the idea of revolutionary movement spaces intersects with youth liberation? Decentralized tendencies tend to be pretty kid and teen friendly, as they allow for autonomous organizing that take kids needs into account, like we just talked about.
And I’m curious about your views on how centralization affects that.
Pearson: Yeah, totally. As I’m sure will not surprise you being an anarchist, I am not a big advocate of centralization. I’m sure your audience and you yourself are well aware of kind of the the dangers that come from centralization.
I think centralization is a model that often. Often it’s maybe too generous. I think centralization is a model that invariably leads to forms of hierarchy and bureaucracy. And I think that as a result like we end up thinking about this particular tool that we think on the surface is going to make things more efficient or make things better.
And it actually does the opposite. It takes the wind out of our sails. It stymies our ability to respond or to react quickly. And as a result, what I think often ends up happening is that we have these really hamstrung organizations that are incapable of responding to the emergent crisis.
Crisis of our time, right? And think about something like an NGO or a non government organization, right? For not for profit kind of organization. I think that those, organizations can and do useful stuff all the time. And I think that it is just it’s nearsighted to just be dismissive about that work entirely.
Because even if we do have legitimate critiques of those structural flaws, I do think that there are opportunities to. Work within those spaces and ways to pull them more to the left ways to try to increase the amount of decentralization ways to increase the amount of agency and autonomy within those frameworks while also.
Being unflinching and full throated and are very legitimate critiques of those structural flaws. But that said, I suspect that many of your critiques and my critiques of centralized and highly regimented institutions stem from the ways in which they do harm whether that’s like looking at something like The boy scouts now the scouts right?
Hugely centralized organization that was ostensibly to trying to teach survival skills, trying to teach people the ability to be in nature, trying to champion a respect and even a love for our natural ecology or what happened? What’s the big news? The scouts have had rife with.
Sexual abuse and controversy because of the ways that they have covered that up. And it’s interesting hearing people who who I love and who I care about, who have been engaged in scouts, for example, who have had a hard, large degree. Of decentralization and have had a really beautiful, really productive, really amazing experiences where they’ve learned so much and they’ve been able to engage with the world and go camping and be in nature and learn survival skills that are really integral and really important for everyone to know and how different that unique experiences because of that decentralization because of that like detachment from this larger group.
How different that is from the very real ways in which the centralization of that body led to so much predation, led to so much harm and so much suffering because of the ways that people’s very real concerns about predators and their ranks or the ways in which sexual abuse was allowed to flourish.
And so I think like something like scouts is a really prime example, especially for youth of the ways in which. Decentralization can actually lead to some really beautiful and really beneficial things and centralization at its worst can lead to some really heinous and really horrific things. And I guess I bring that particular example up because I’m really curious what.
A more robust attempt at creating a liberatory cultural framework for kids might look like I’m struck by the history of the ways in which physical fitness culture was like this huge deal in places like Spain before the Spanish civil war, as I understand it, there’s this huge support for youth programming.
That was. At least in part for kids and by kids, and I would love to see more of that. I think that a lot of that is getting done in fits and starts. I think a lot of it, unfortunately is the type of thing that. People are maybe afraid to start or maybe don’t know how to start or where to start because they think, oh this is going to take money or this is going to take time.
Or kids just are not, given the agency and given the autonomy to actually create those programs and not given the support they need by elders in their lives. But my hope is that something like that could come back because I think, survival skills, being in nature being able to relate to other people and relates to the non human world, I think is such a vital and integral thing.
And as a result, I think that when we lose that, or when we just say, oh scouts is bad. And this idea is bad. And because of all, because all the sexual abuse happened, we should never try to do anything like this. I think that there’s this interesting kind of through line where it’s yes, this is a terrible thing that happened.
Yes, this the blame should be. So it should be fully and full throatedly put upon the centralization that was endemic to this organization. But if we look at it at this other vector there’s this Other way of organizing ourselves, this other way of structuring ourselves that does not seem to lead to the same kinds of predation that does not seem to lead to the same types of harm and suffering.
And I think that we on the left who care deeply about our ecology, who Derek care deeply about our. Our non human kin, I think it’s really important for us to continue that particular struggle. Yeah, that’s a long diatribe, but I think I answered your question about centralization and the ways in which it’s bad and harmful and not good.
Mk: I love your emphasis on the necessity of youth being able to teach one another practical skills in spaces that are safe Like in my local anarchist community We really prioritize skill shares and resource shares and that’s something teenagers turn out for a lot because compulsory education Is not the most supportive way to develop as people However, that’s still something we need to be doing at rh and always You The Child and His Enemies actually has a discord server for kids and teens and adult allies who want to learn more about anarchism and want to help each other self educate.
And I’ve really been beautiful networks of care for him there because people actually feel safe to be imperfect and to grow and Deliberate one another. Unrelatedly actually speaking of this idea of like anarchist education and what it means for radical spaces to be and becoming, what was your experience like hosting Coffee with Comrades?
Have you always been into anarchist media or was this a relatively new project?
Pearson: Yeah, totally. I have always been into anarchist media. I’ve told this story many times before. But when I was, 14 or 15, I was struggling with trying to define what I was politically, like trying to find the right word for it. And it wasn’t until I read the comic book via V for Vendetta by Alan Moore that I. Was first introduced to the idea, to the term anarchy and to the idea of anarchism. And ever since i’ve had an abiding interest in anarchist media
my entire dissertation that I wrote for my PhD is like about anarchist media. I don’t call it anarchist media explicitly necessarily in that particular text. That’s what it is. Basically, what it was my master’s thesis is all about anarchism and hardcore music. Yeah, I’ve always been interested in anarchist media and I’ve also been interested in not just critiquing it or thinking about it, but also creating it.
Whether that’s writing poetry. I’ve got a number of poetry collections that are very inflammatory and anarchic. I’ve written many short stories. And I’ve obviously done Talk with Comrades. I enjoyed my time hosting that show. It ran for just over five years. And I, I have some bittersweet memories, but they’re more positive than negative.
Overall, I got to meet a lot of really lovely folks and inform what I hope are lifelong friendships with them. I got to have the opportunity to use that platform humble, though it was to give a voice to some really important work. And I’m glad that body of episodes exists and I’m proud of the work that we did.
So yeah, I’ve always been interested in it. It’s something that I’m always constantly engaged with whether it’s thinking about it critically and from an academic standpoint, whether it is reading it whether it’s reading anarchist fiction or anarchist writers, just for the fuck of it, or people who are maybe adjacent to to anarchist philosophy or anarchist ideals or whether it’s making it myself and poems and stories and, novel manuscripts and all that good stuff. So yeah, I think it’s super, super critical. And I’m glad that there are shows like the child and its enemies that are carrying that torch and running with it.
Mk: Coming to anarchism through punk and independent media and art is so meaningful and I think really sheds light on what there needs to be more of in anarchism because too often there’s a focus again on the movement stuff on Solely on action rather than on the anarchist culture we create.
And yeah, I got radicalized for classic queercore in part and also Emma Goldman. Yeah. So what would have made organizing spaces more accessible for you when you were younger? And what advice would you have for kids and teens who want to do anarchist organizing?
Pearson: Oh, that’s a great question.
While I ponder it you mentioned queercore. Have you heard of the band CU Space Cowboy?
Mk: I have not, but I will Google them.
Pearson: They’re so good. They’re so gay. They are so great. They’re like they’re like a hardcore screamo band. But I’m pretty sure all of them are queer in one form or another their vocalist is trans.
They are explicitly like anarchists and come out of anarchist organizing. They’re great. They had a record that came out this year that has a really long name that I can’t remember for the life of me. I think it actually. I take that back. I think it might just be called Coup De Grace.
Anyways, great band. See you Space Cowboy. Great band. Highly recommend to you and your listeners, especially if you’re into, queer people yelling things and writing cool music.
Mk: Yeah, this podcast actually tries to platform queer core. Our intro and our outro are by the amazing queer feminist band Daisy and the Scouts.
And we always have a musical interlude by an independent queer artist. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up. They sound super cool.
Pearson: Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. So back to your question which is specifically, what would I have? What would have made organizing spaces more accessible for me when I was a youth?
And what advice would I have for kids and teens who want to get into anarchist organizing? I would say to the first part of that, right? Asking about whether they were accessible. They did. They weren’t, but they weren’t hostile either, if that makes sense, right? There wasn’t a sincere effort to open up space for youth.
But there also wasn’t a a feeling of Oh, I don’t belong here necessarily. One of my organic, like earliest memories organizing was in Orlando after there were a series of arrests for food, not bombs. And I remember just being disgusted and outraged and not, being accused.
Being very young, not really understanding coming from a very sheltered, background, not really understanding, like, why is this happening and not having a language to articulate it and being able to have conversations with people who had been arrested many times for having the audacity to share food with anyone who wanted it in the public.
Yeah,
Mk: I still hear about arrests for that. It is. I’ve had a friend call it the criminal mutual aid conspiracy, but really people should not be arrested for providing food or at all.
Pearson: No, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I can think of things that would have made those spaces better. But I, I.
It’s hard to think of ways that folks particularly catered to or accommodated young people. So I would say it wasn’t an attitude of exclusion. There was a degree of acceptance when I was getting involved, but I wouldn’t say that folks went out of their way to try and make. People comfortable or rather make youth comfortable when they were getting involved in organizing which kind of brings up the 2nd.
Kind of crux of your question, which is with the advice that I would give to kids and to teens who are interested in getting into anarchist organizing when I did talk with comrades, we had a. A much maligned, much misunderstood kind of tagline which I still love dearly which is fuck theory, do shit.
And a lot of people took umbrage with that particular line because they’re like, ah, theory is really important. What are you doing if you don’t actually do any theory? But what they failed to Realizes like it’s fuck theory and do shit. So there’s still, it’s not do organized thing.
It’s not do good things. It’s do shit. And it’s what it’s trying to point to is the messy fumbling beautiful, joyful ways in which we try to engage with each other. I think that there’s a really seminal quote by our mutual channel zero network homies in the crime think X workers collective where they say the change everything start anywhere.
And I think that is bar none. Some of the best advice that you could give to anyone who’s. Looking to get involved in anarchist political organizing, whether they are kids or whether they are teens or they are adults. I think that there are ways that each of us can get involved in our communities.
And unfortunately, they’re not all going to be super sexy. We’ve spent a lot of time in this conversation talking about what are ostensibly pretty mundane, pretty milk toast, pretty not boring, but pretty run of the mill ways in which people try to engage in organizing. And I think that those are some of the most.
Beautiful and emergent ways it’s not to say that getting in, in block and marching with hundreds of people through the streets and going to a demonstration isn’t also beautiful, but I think that the more ways in which we. Don’t just see anarchy as a one off event, but as something that we embody something that we do a way of inhabiting the world and relating to each other the better off we will be.
Yeah, if you want to change everything, start anywhere, whether that is at your school, whether that is in your home, whether that is with your friend group. How can you make the relationships that you have more egalitarian if you don’t know how to do it, then ask your friends if you don’t know how to, if you don’t have people who are like minded necessarily near you go to your local library and read some books or hop on the anarchist library online and download a bunch of essays that look interesting.
Listen to the other podcasts on the channel zero network. There are so many ways that people are getting engaged in the beautiful and life affirming and necessary work of social struggle. I think that. It’s really easy to get dejected. It’s really easy to get paralyzed. It’s really easy to think that, it’s a buy into the lie that you and your friends can’t actually do anything to change the world.
But the reality is that every time that we live in Ways that fight back against hierarchy. Every time that we live in ways that negate oppression in ways that uplift joy and kinship, that is a victory in and of itself. That is a transformation of the world. That is a transformation of the ways in which we relate to each other.
My advice to young folks would be stay wild, stay young, stay free. We are. All that we have, which is terrifying, but also really beautiful and affirming because it means that there is no salvation for us, but we can make it with our own hands. If we have the resolve, if we have the faith in one another, and if we have the boldness and the courage to try and to fail and to get back up out of the dirt and try again.
Mk: I love that all so much. And yet, starting small with organizing isn’t just about making things achievable and accessible, although that is important, it is in fact the only way societal change has ever happened, through usually small groups or movements full of small groups of passionate queer and trans people.
It might not seem like some monumental social movement now, but that’s okay as long as it materially changes people’s lives. It can be an anarchist group at a middle school. It can be a zine distro in your suburb that you’re sure no one will go to until it radicalizes someone. It can even just be unmasking and transitioning yourself.
A lot of anarchism starts with internal work. Nothing is too small to be anarchic and youth liberation is for all facets of our lives, not just the one time that we go do an action, but it’s a clearing of everything. So on that note, any shameless plugs regarding your organizing and media?
Pearson: Yeah, I have one more plug, but there’s one other thing that I want to say on that note as an adult before we wrap up going, I’m going a little off script here, but I hope that you’ll hear me. I think that one of the things that I have found that has been really edifying, I came into being a parent later in life.
I God, I have had the joy of getting to cohabitate and help raise my partner’s kids. And I think that one of the things that has been really eye opening to me through that experience is that like youth liberation is obviously about liberating kids and teens first and foremost but youth liberation also liberates us.
It helps us heal. The broken, despondent child that lives inside of us adults. So often, the child that has been spit on and derided and degraded. And it’s really painful to confront that. It’s really hard to look at the ways in which your Having the joy of being someone who you love, someone who you care for, whether they’re a student or whether they are a neighbor’s kid, or whether they are your kid getting to have opportunities and joys that you didn’t have as a child.
And it’s hard not to feel a little bit like. Salty a little bit hurt a little bit vindictive. But I think that at its best, what ends up happening is you realize that you’re starting to heal parts of yourself that have been so long neglected parts of you that have been like I said, sat upon and derided and sidelined and marginalized.
And when you make space as an adult for the kids in your life for the kids in your community, for the kids in your affinity group, what ends up happening is this weird thing where you start to heal all of that trauma that you’ve been carrying around in your body for so long. And it’s a tried and true.
Kind of adage, but, liberation is not just for you. It’s not just for me. It’s for us, right? We’re not free until we’re all free. And I think that the beauty and the promise of children’s liberation is not just that it will liberate youth and not just that it will liberate young people and teens and kids, but that it will also.
heal the child that is aching inside so many adults and that it will set a path towards liberation for us all.
Mk: Thank you so much for bringing that up. I agree that I really love Ayanna Goodfellow’s concept of age trauma, how all of us carry our experiences of ageism regardless of what our age is now.
And I think youth liberationist work can really be a part of healing for a lot of people. Adults, I know, like I’ve known people who have never questioned ages some, but not even in their youth, but as adults are realizing how much harm it causes. And as a result can realize that it wasn’t their fault when they were mistreated in that way as a child.
So yeah, I’m so glad that you brought this up.
Pearson: Yeah, totally. So anyway, to answer your question, shameless plugs, I have a whole hell of a lot of podcast episodes that you can check out and catch with comrades. We have a backlog of over 200 episodes. They are non anthological, or they are anthological.
They are non sequential most of the time. If they’re sequential, I made a point of making sure that you would know. But yeah, just find one that looks interesting to you and check it out, if that’s something that you are curious to hear about. I also have two different poetry collections that are available through The Anarchist Publishing House Rebel Hearts Publishing.
The first one’s called Watching God Become Human, and the second is called Your Mind is the Cathedral Where I Finally Find God. If you like rad poems, or sad boy poems, or romantic poems, or all of the above, There is something in there that you will love.
Mk: Thank you so much for sharing your youth liberation journey and all your thoughts on what social movements mean for teenagers.
And if anyone wants to learn more about this podcast, please look us up wherever you get podcasts or go to the child and its enemies that know blogs. org to follow us on social media and join our discord and signal groups. I’m MK Zariel. This has been Pearson from coffee with comrades, and you’re listening to the child and its enemies.