Reasons to hope

A week ago, a Boston prosecutor charged 13 pro-Palestine protesters with “promoting anarchy,” a special law created over a century ago when anarchists were the major threat to this noble, orderly, law-abiding country. If they’re convicted, they face up to three years in prison and will be permanently prohibited from working as a teacher in any school, public or private. The prosecutor bringing the charges is a Democrat.

A general strike in solidarity with Palestine

A couple days ago in Catalunya, a close friend was one of several people beaten up and arrested at a protest attempting to blockade an event featuring a far Right Zionist who would be speaking against immigration. They’re out for now, but all charged with assaulting the cops.

Around the same time, I got a message from a friend in Chicago, telling me of the spirit of solidarity in the face of ICE terror, the alertness and willingness of strangers ready to jump out and stop the pigs at a moment’s notice to prevent their neighbors from being taken away, the tools and structures spreading spontaneously to help this work become more coordinated. Them telling me they had hope… I was breathing easier for the rest of the day.

Strikers demand the severing of all economic and military relations with Israel

Today I woke up from a bad dream, and spent most of the day trying not to fall into a deep pit. It means I didn’t get any work done, which I feel guilty about every time I have one of those days.

I want to focus on the good things, though.

The fundraiser is up, and spreading in multiple languages. Will you help spread it too?

https://www.firefund.net/pathstoecorevolution

I was telling a couple old friends, I don’t know how many big projects I have left in me, but this one feels important. If we could convince a big chunk of society to finally turn their backs on capitalism and all the institutions of power, to understand the ecological crisis as something that enfolds most of the social crises, that fundamentally it’s about relationships with the rest of the living world that colonialism took away from us, if we can spread anarchist and anti-state Indigenous methodologies for confronting questions of survival and revolution, there might actually be hope for these next few decades.

In the end, most people aren’t convinced by reasons or hypotheticals, but by things they see happening around them. The projects and struggles we’ll be highlighting and supporting in different territories of the Brazilian state are inspiring, and they work. We can’t copy-paste them to completely different territories with completely different histories, but we can trace patterns, see what resonates with the struggles or projects that have been the most transformative in the places where we live. And from those patterns we can learn methods of struggle that make the difference between misery and liberation.

All images from Barcelona, 15 October 2025

If that sounds useful to you, help spread the fundraiser, and help spread the texts, interviews, and videos that will be coming out of this encounter over the coming months.

It’s late now, I can’t find the energy for any more writing, but here’s some pieces I can recommend.

People have been putting on screenings of this video trilogy from sub.media (I wrote the script!) and it sounds like it’s leading to some great events. You can watch it alone if you don’t have the will to get off the couch, you could invite over some friends, maybe you could even host a public screening at a library or a social center. At the bottom of the page, the sub.media folks have included a packet with critical questions for facilitating a group discussion.

https://sub.media/its-revolution-or-death-a-three-part-series-from-submedia-and-peter-gelderloos/

Here’s a critique of the Chinese state as a continuation and perfection of all the oppressive projects launched by Western colonialism.

The Repetition of China

I haven’t gotten through the whole thing yet so I can’t say whether I agree with it all, but at the least it’s definitely intelligent.

Here’s another good one by Marcela from Feel the News, about when and how people were forced to work, “to sell or rent their bodies to access provisions for survival”. Smart, informative, searing, brutal, and lighthearted in a way that shows how people can survive this hellscape not just for another day, but for generations (which is something I think we all need to learn how to do).

I'm Luo, I'm here because of a hut tax

Here’s something I wrote about how the ecological crisis, connected to capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism, are destroying a place that is very dear to me:

https://prismreports.org/2025/08/06/chesapeake-bay-real-estate-fishing-deforestation/

There’s so much more I want to write, and sometimes I don’t know if I’ll be able to. In that poll I gave y’all back in early August, I know that recommended readings and my rants were your least favorite type of post, whereas a lot more of you liked the radical histories and analysis of the present day. So I want to give you more of those things but, not coincidentally, they take a lot more time and effort.

Nonetheless, I want to:

• follow up on “The Right’s Rollercoaster to Hell” series by giving you an analysis of the Left today, and then a piece of strategic suggestions for how to best deal with this growing shitstorm;

• write about a small network of scientists and doctors who create alternative facts by publishing transphobic academic papers with ambiguous assertions that are hard to actually measure, and then others (often the students of the first group), who use these studies as footnotes for even more transphobic claims they publish in mainstream media – and then how all of them are rewarded for attacking our trans siblings with promotions in academia and the medical industry;

• get back to my Death Ethics series, exploring questions of revenge, direct action, and personhood;

• get back to my series on techno-optimism and Luddites, hopefully before AI takes over my account and starts writing all these things for me.

I feel daunted, imagining getting even half of these out by the end of the year.

Maybe you can help me out.

We can break the fear. We can make these streets ours again.

What are some reasons you find to hope? What are some stories of people helping each other out to survive precarity, sickness, depression, trauma, to keep putting one foot in front of the other or to know when to collapse and how to get back up again, how to get through the night and steel ourselves against the day?

Tell me in a comment, or start a blog of your own, or better yet, make it into a zine, a painting on some wall, knit it into a blanket you make for a friend. I don’t like these new technologies that have occupied all the space between bodies, but I still trust paper, paint, a thread…

Okay, one image from Chicago, with all my love and respect. (Photo by Zubaer Khan)

Thanks for being here, despite it all.

And one from Brazil, since it would mean a lot if you could support this