Old Capitol Books has been a busy beehive fomenting intellectual dissent and fringe power, hosting lectures and readings on Marxism, war resistance, police abuse, LGBTQ issues and other leftie greatest hits. This Wednesday they up the ante with “The Promise of Anarchism: An International Panel Discussion.” This isn’t anti-WTO, brick-throwing upstarts playing with fires and breaking shit.
This is a coalition of organizers from Brazil, Czech Republic, Slovenia and North America. They’re on tour behind a website, www.ToChangeEverything.com, that looks sophisticated and graphical, with a blog, an archive, a store that sells merch, links to free films and downloadable ads tour sponsors can use. The logo is inviting and the writing is smart.
These folks are aware and they aim to be taken seriously. They also wish to remain anonymous, though they emailed more of their intentions.
They’ve laid out steps for revolution. The first is to stop relying on the political process of petitions, campaigns and nonprofits, and to rely on each other.
Next, find others of the same mind across divisions of social privilege.
“The third step,” they write, “is for these groups to develop the capacity to protect themselves from the intervention of hierarchical groups – for example, the way that the people of Rojava are doing against ISIS right now, or the way that protesters did in response to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.”
Do it ourselves. It sounds appealing in a country that prides itself on independence. The degree of our dependence on a pre-fab system is so complete it’s nearly invisible. This event proposes not so much bombing the system as dismantling and reconfiguring it into a new shape.
THE PROMISE OF ANARCHISM 6pm Wed, Oct. 21, at Old Capitol Books, 559 Tyler St., Monterey. Free. 333-0383.
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