Why I Broke Up with the Anarchist Community. About five years ago, I stopped hanging out and doing work in the anarchist community because it wasn't meeting my needs.
The community wasn't doing the kind of work I'm most interested in, it was completely white-centric, and it tended to silence me when I got the most passionate. In short, the anarchist community in the city I was living in failed me. But I never stopped considering myself an anarchist. During my hardcore anarchist years, the same tiresome things kept happening. I'd attend meetings or events and realize folks were glaring at my child. Realizing that I was perpetually on the verge of a giant rant, I decided that if my anarchist community refused to grow up, it didn't mean that I had to do the same.
But I never stopped considering myself an anarchist, even though that affiliation would make as much sense to many of my current friends and neighbors as "card-carrying Martian. " In fact, I am a die-hard anarchist. Let me ask a question. We're not doing good enough. Anarchist Tactics Grow Amid Brazil's Protests. Movement: The 5 Stages Of Becoming An Anarchist. Maybe you’re a libertarian.
But an anarchist? No way. Some day, however, you might be. On the path to anarchism, there are five stages. And unlike conventional applications of the Kübler-Ross model, the end result is not death or loss, but life and freedom. 5: Denial. To you, anarchism is silly. An anarchist friend of yours gives you a copy of Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty. 4: Anger. Why are these pesky anarchists undermining the libertarian movement? If confronted by a particularly persistent anarchist, you quote F.A.
Besides, even if private roads were indeed possible, surely the government is necessary to provide for the national defense. 3: Bargaining. Alright, alright. Your hero, Ludwig von Mises, knew this. Also, your statist girlfriend (or boyfriend, wife, husband) just came to terms with your inhuman belief in the institution of private property and is sleeping with you again. Thank You, Anarchists. With their emphasis on participatory direct democracy, the anarchists behind Occupy Wall Street have changed the very idea of what politics could be.
Occupy Wall Street protesters hold a general assembly meeting inside an enclosed site near Canal Street on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) It is becoming something of a refrain among the well-meaning multitudes now energized by Occupy Wall Street that the movement needs to shed its radical origins so as to actually get something done.
“If they can avoid fetishizing the demand for consensus,” James Miller wrote in late October in the New York Times, “they may be able to forge a broader coalition that includes friends and allies within the Democratic Party and the union movement.” According to some activists, groups like Van Jones’s Rebuild the Dream are poised to turn occupiers into Obama voters. Especially as the 2012 election season starts, the thinking goes, it’s time to get real. About the Author Nathan Schneider.