u/CulturedCryptid

Many of you are likely familiar with the story of the Prairieland Nine, but if you aren’t, I encourage you to take some time to learn about what happened. There is a lot of nuance, and I don’t think I can do it justice here.

The TLDR; at a noise demonstration outside of an ICE facility, a protester fired their weapon at a police officer who had drawn their weapon at some other fleeing protesters. This officer was injured when their shoulder was grazed by the bullet/bullet fragment. The rest of the defendants were guilty of being at the same protest, or for being in the same signal chat, including one for their local Emma Goldman Book Club. 30 years in prison for being in a book club and distributing zines… 50+ years in prison for being at a protest…

Now, as many of you know, this might be the weakest Leftism has ever been in the US, and it is understandable to feel helpless. To be unsure of what force could possibly wrench us from the abyss, heaving and broken as we are.

Unfortunately, I do not have that answer for you, and I do not think there is any one person out there who does.

But, we are not one person…

We do not all have to stand in lockstep, or chant in unison, but we must organize. We must build our communities, discuss our values, and rally in solidarity with the folk heroes that the regime offers to us through their daily conveyor belt of horrors.

It is in this moment that we should reflect on Emma Goldman’s legacy, and the symbolism of this moment a hundred years after her lifetime.

By many accounts, Emma Goldman was radicalized by the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, when a bomb was thrown at police officers after they had opened fire on labor protesters the day before. The person who threw the bomb was never caught, but eight of the protest organizers were put on trial and then executed purely for being anarchists.

Now, 140 years later, and the only notable difference is that the state now realizes that executing these folks would turn them into martyrs, so better to just silence them and lock them up for life…

So, let us read. Let us learn from each other and our histories. Let us come together I community, and find the strength to stand up and liberate ourselves and our communities. Let us give them the middle finger, and show them that we are not afraid.

The working class is the engine that drives capitalism, and without us, it is nothing but a lonely philosophy of greed and destruction. We are the nurses, we are the farmers, we are the contractors, we are everything that we need.

The rich are nothing to us but masters, and we do not need them. Let us organize and show them how little we care for their sick and twisted world.

Again, we are everything that we need.

So start a book club.

Many of you are likely familiar with the story of the Prairieland Nine, but if you aren’t, I encourage you to take some time to learn about what happened. There is a lot of nuance, and I don’t think I can do it justice here.

The TLDR; at a noise demonstration outside of an ICE facility, a protester fired their weapon at a police officer who had drawn their weapon at some other fleeing protesters. This officer was injured when their shoulder was grazed by the bullet/bullet fragment. The rest of the defendants were guilty of being at the same protest, or for being in the same signal chat, including one for their local Emma Goldman Book Club. 30 years in prison for being in a book club and distributing zines… 50+ years in prison for being at a protest…

Now, as many of you know, this might be the weakest Leftism has ever been in the US, and it is understandable to feel helpless. To be unsure of what force could possibly wrench us from the abyss, heaving and broken as we are.

Unfortunately, I do not have that answer for you, and I do not think there is any one person out there who does.

But, we are not one person…

We do not all have to stand in lockstep, or chant in unison, but we must organize. We must build our communities, discuss our values, and rally in solidarity with the folk heroes that the regime offers to us through their daily conveyor belt of horrors.

It is in this moment that we should reflect on Emma Goldman’s legacy, and the symbolism of this moment a hundred years after her lifetime.

By many accounts, Emma Goldman was radicalized by the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, when a bomb was thrown at police officers after they had opened fire on labor protesters the day before. The person who threw the bomb was never caught, but eight of the protest organizers were put on trial and then executed purely for being anarchists.

Now, 140 years later, and the only notable difference is that the state now realizes that executing these folks would turn them into martyrs, so better to just silence them and lock them up for life…

So, let us read. Let us learn from each other and our histories. Let us come together I community, and find the strength to stand up and liberate ourselves and our communities. Let us give them the middle finger, and show them that we are not afraid.

The working class is the engine that drives capitalism, and without us, it is nothing but a lonely philosophy of greed and destruction. We are the nurses, we are the farmers, we are the contractors, we are everything that we need.

The rich are nothing to us but masters, and we do not need them. Let us organize and show them how little we care for their sick and twisted world.

Again, we are everything that we need.

So start a book club.

The mutual aid group that I am with has been developing and testing an app for collective organizing and routing requests for aid. We hope to develop this into a fully open-source, self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted, and federated node based program. It would allow collectives to communicate, offer services, form coalitions with other collectives, and develop projects that can operate across a number of different collectives.

Everything is consent based, and decisions can be unmade. Collective decisions are made by petition, and the thresholds required to approve those petitions are determined by aggregated governance preferences between all of the members of that collective. There are no super-users or admin.

Anyways, I won’t get too deep into the weeds, but we are looking for other folks to help test the program, and offer feedback on the GitHub repository. We have started an open alpha test server, and will share the link to that below.

There are warnings on the app, but the security features are not yet complete, so obviously do not use any personal identifying information. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but just in case. Please don’t.

Lastly, there is a feedback form linked at the top of every page, so if you decide to try it out, please use the feedback function! Bugs, feature recommendations, security concerns, whatever, we want it all.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/anarchos501/commons.git

Commons test server: https://commons.chat

Thanks!

The mutual aid group that I am with has been developing and testing an app for collective organizing and routing requests for aid. We hope to develop this into a fully open-source, self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted, and federated node based program. It would allow collectives to communicate, offer services, form coalitions with other collectives, and develop projects that can operate across different collectives.

Everything is consent based, and decisions can be unmade. Collective decisions are made by petition, and the thresholds required to approve those petitions are determined by aggregated governance preferences between all of the members of that collective. There are no super-users or admin.

Anyways, I won’t get too deep into the weeds, but we are looking for other folks to help test the program, and offer feedback on the GitHub repository. We have started an open alpha test server, and will share the link to that below.

There are warnings on the app, but the security features are not yet complete, so obviously do not use any personal identifying information. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but just in case. Please don’t.

Lastly, there is a feedback form linked at the top of every page, so if you decide to try it out, please use the feedback function! Bugs, feature recommendations, security concerns, whatever, we want it all.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/anarchos501/commons.git

Commons test server: https://commons.chat

Thanks!

The mutual aid group that I am with has been developing and testing an app for collective organizing and routing requests for aid. We hope to develop this into a fully open-source, self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted, and federated node based program. It would allow collectives to communicate, offer services, form coalitions with other collectives, and develop projects that can operate across a number of different collectives.

Everything is consent based, and decisions can be unmade. Collective decisions are made by petition, and the thresholds required to approve those petitions are determined by aggregated governance preferences between all of the members of that collective. There are no super-users or admin.

Anyways, I won’t get too deep into the weeds, but we are looking for other folks to help test the program, and offer feedback on the GitHub repository. We have started an open alpha test server, and will share the link to that below.

There are warnings on the app, but the security features are not yet complete, so obviously do not use any personal identifying information. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but just in case. Please don’t.

Lastly, there is a feedback form linked at the top of every page, so if you decide to try it out, please use the feedback function! Bugs, feature recommendations, security concerns, whatever, we want it all.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/anarchos501/commons.git

Commons test server: https://commons.chat

Thanks!