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The moral case for making sure you use knowledge wisely, even if it's as a weapon.
Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Kyrie Irving and more all show up to the Mamba Pro Invitational. 💪
The moral case for making sure the lessons you learned don't die with you.
Some never learn to stop taking from others even when they are not entitled to what they persist to take from. A confiscation is led to a darkened place. It gets needlessly stuck. Please stop stealing and clinging as natural progress is never conflicted. They never want war.
After many late night conversations reflecting on how our movement has changed in the last decades, both locally and internationally, some long-time Milwaukee anarchists thought it would be a good idea to write these thoughts down to share with other people. …
We are suffering from a collective amnesia around state repression and recent history. With the resurgence of anti-fascism in the US and growing appeal of anarchism, new people are being brought into our circles who don’t necessarily understand our recent history. If we want to build a strong movement, we need to have a collective memory about where we’re coming from.
We’re at a moment where people are increasingly turning to anti-capitalism and realizing the pitfalls of working within the system. If you’re new to this world, welcome! There’s a lot you should probably know about how we got to where we are now. If you’ve been around Anarchyland for a while, use this text as a way to note the patterns of collective amnesia we often fall into and to help build a collective memory to sustain a long-term anarchist movement.
Collective amnesia is when we forget the stories, victories, mistakes, and debates of the recent past. It’s when we allow security culture to deteriorate and put ourselves and each other at risk unnecessarily. It’s when we think that the state doesn’t take us seriously and when we don’t take our work seriously. It’s when we don’t share a common understanding of where we came from as an anarchist movement. This is especially dangerous for people who are new to these movements and circles, but most of us seem to be suffering from this amnesia. This puts all of us at risk of state repression and the inaction that comes with constantly starting over with the same debates and mistakes.
In addition to the newly-radicalized people, there are always young radicals joining our movements. Activist generations tend to be very short, especially in an accelerated culture like the 21st century United States. Recent high school grads were in elementary school during the height of Occupy, and were in diapers during much of the summit-hopping era. Even though our activist generation (we are mid-late 20’s) wasn’t involved in the early summit-hopping era or the Green Scare, we had access to a lot of people who were, and we had access to the media they created. We knew what happened, we heard their stories, and it informed how we built our movements. Something changed though, and it seems like a lot of that knowledge hasn’t been passed on. That’s on us, and we want to remedy that.
Part of the problem with having collective amnesia is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Some people might not realize that there’s a reason to know specifics about Seattle ’99 or Miami ’03 or may not be aware that those cities and years have any significance at all. The people who organized in those times and places put in work to make sure that their efforts were recorded and remembered. They created media and shared their stories of resistance with us, but we could be doing better at passing them on. This is encouragement for people to record their own histories (without snitching on yourself) and to pass on recent anarchist history. This is part of building a collective memory.
We’re not only talking about collective amnesia as a movement-wide thing, but also in our own practices and organizations. We find ourselves forgetting the basics, particularly in the realm of security culture and repression. We let things slip in the name of not seeming paranoid because we don’t want our behaviors to seem exaggerated as to not weird out or turn off newcomers, but we know better, so we need to do better.
The Medicine Woman...
The Medicine Woman…
Phaedra hummed as she ground the Sunflower seeds and dried petals into powdery form. The brew will soon be ready. A dash of mint, a whisk of rosemary, a toss of thyme, a pinch of cinnamon and a shake of turmeric, it bubbled gently.
The Sunflowersalways bloomed with such brightness for as long as she could remember. Her rounded bump also kicked more vigorously whenever she hummed and mixed the…
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31 Days of Witchcraft: Day 19
Would you consider teaching others how to practice witchcraft? If not, why is that so? If you already do, what has the experience been like?
This is another one of those things that come along with being hereditary. You really don’t get a choice, the entire family is involved. That said, I really do like children, and I do like passing on knowledge, so I find it overall a positive experience. I think it leads to some really funny stories and helps you look at things differently when you’re teaching someone else. It teaches you what’s really important.
Favorite tree?
Blackthorn. If you don’t consider that a tree, then silver lime.
What I meant is is it okay for me to make my own traditions and rituals gathered from various sources; I really like just herbal magic and wanna focus on that. Btw thank you for the pentacle answer
Ah, you meant make your own tradition! Certainly, most people who are solitaries create their own traditions depending on how they see things, how they focus and the like. I would in fact encourage it. Just be sure to do it properly, cite your information and if possible keep notes, so it’s easier to pass on should you ever choose to do so.
