neighbor, the revolutionaries you’re looking for are already in your neighborhood. if you’re feeling lost and wondering where your leaders are and what you’re supposed to do next, you have found this podcast right on time. welcome. tuck in and listen to this podcast.
the people you’re looking for are your neighborhood helpers, your artists, your coders, your taggers, your retirees, your cross-guards, your bus drivers, your scientists, your librarians, your educators, your gardeners, your canners, your hunters, your caregivers, your comedians, your empty-nesters, your writers, your planners, your children, your dreamers, your nurses, your firefighters, your social workers, your retired chemist, your local veterinarian, and your fellow weirdos.
we need all of ‘em. go find the people in your neighborhood.
this revolution starts at home— and it MUST start at home, if we are to have any chance at securing our freedom. revolutions that don’t develop deep roots and informed, local strategies will fail. them’s facts, sugar cube.
this is an at-home vs. away-game kinda situation. we know how to defend our turf and our people. we know how to make ourselves ungovernable. we know how to shut shit down everywhere in our home-places.
what you’re missing is the art of neighborliness that gets you out of your homes and off of your screens. allow me to help you find your way back to each other.
red and blue don’t matter no more. neighbors, this is fascism. if people are earnestly pissed off about this, then they’re on your side. we are a people who have collectively1 suffered under gerrymandered, underhanded political skullduggery for decades, if not centuries.
don’t tell me you’re all alone in your rural red area. every single bit of the organizing i have Ione has been in a red area. you only feel alone because you stay at home. get out there, babes. we need you, and we are everywhere around you. this is why these rich bastards keep us exhausted and hopped up on distraction: we are legion, and they can’t have us knowing that by going out there and being people. the need us just struggling to get by.
the literal best way to fight back is to stop reacting to these fascist shitheads, unglue ourselves from the screens, meet up in a public place, and begin to develop a strategy. i have linked to this resource because the word “strategy” means something very particular when it comes to organizing. the more folks who read this in your neighborhood the better2.
I promise you: if you get offline and meet up at your local library, or your local park, this weekend, there will be at least twenty people who show up. each of you is a leader. each of you is capable of recruiting other neighbors. we always need to be recruiting. always.
people aren’t getting involved not because they don’t care but because they don’t know how they can contribute.
if you don’t know how people can contribute, check out my earlier podcast, “the bill passed. now what?,” which gets pretty darn granular about almost all the hands we need on deck. listen to it. it’s not like anyone else is stepping up to give you a detailed plan. let it be a weirdo this time. this is a weird fucking timeline. consider it kismet.
here’s a thing to know: there are 41,552 zip codes in the united states.
every single fucking zip code is a battlefield these fascists must wage to subdue us. don’t cede a single goddamn one of ‘em.
locals know how to protect each other and fight back at home, even if it’s a group of outsiders. if you don’t know that, it probably means you don’t involve yourself with other people much. that needs to change, immediately, if you’d like to defeat this fascist siege of our liberty and basic human dignity.
just look how quickly they have trained you to accept indignity upon indignity— look how they abuse your neighbors and expect you to just let them.
you are not the child who couldn’t help your mother when your dad beat her anymore. you are an adult now. when you see abuse, you intervene. you uproot it. you stamp it out. you make it an inhospitable place for fascism to grow.
these fuckers intend to drag us all into hell. resist!
neighbors: you know your topography, your streets, your collective assets. we all know somebody who is good at knowing local somebodies— they’re your community switchboards. all you need to do is slowly amass the hundreds of pissed off neighbors around you. they are there. there will be more soon enough. don’t wait on them. organize now with the team you got.
all you need is the courage to go be patriotic people: meet up and make a plan.
do not cower inside!
there are millions of us across the country— way the hell more than 3.5% of the country. babes, at least 65% of this country (voters or not)— and like 90% of all human beings on the planet—do not want this fascist timeline. we rebuke it!
that’s why rich ass fascists do crazy terroristic shit to try and “keep us in line.” fascists aren’t mean because they’re powerful; they’re mean because they are weak, and they’re scaring you so you don’t think to check them. it’s a con. (read more here.)
neighbors, this has gone on far too long. they have made every aspect of our lives one struggle after another, and even though these men have more money than god and no law they’ll rabide, they have the audacity to want even more: our very lives. are you fucking kidding me? no. no fucking way!
get yourselves to a public park or a public library and meet up this weekend, while the iron is hot. whatever else is going on in your life can likely be rescheduled (in the interest of having a future life that’s worth living at all).
it’s time to build local strategies and wage nonviolent resistance on multiple fronts. it’s time for us to exhaust these fascist fuckers. it’s time to disorient them and challenge them in unconventional ways they won’t expect. surprise these shitheads. be aggressively weird about it, just to disorient them3.
i promise you: what you’re looking for is already exactly where you need it. assemble. and if you need help, i’m a DM away. likely seriously, dudes, i will help you. reach out. i’m not gonna fucking rest until we’re in formation. consider me a pro-democracy hotline.
in the meantime, i think it’s time to reread abe lincoln’s gettysburgh address and remember why our fourth grade teacher, ms. cookie quinn, made us memorize it:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Resources I Mention in the Podcast
Peter Ackerman’s. The Checklist to End Tyranny.
Srđa Popović. CANVAS Core Curriculum: A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle.
Southerners on New Ground. Core Organizing Tools.
though unevenly
i bet you a copper penny some teacher or librarian has already read it in your zip code. if not, there’s a bunch of pissed off ladies already in a book club: ask them to read it and lead a discussion. this would also be an glorious book club read for librarians, tabletop gamers, pissed of teachers, neurodivergent kinfolk, marginalized neighbors, and several irascible lawyers.
and to amuse each other. laughter can be an antidote to terror.
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