I’m drafting this newsletter on the 300th day of the genocide in Gaza. I’m writing from a city on the East Coast of the imperial heartland, a metropolis ravaged by deindustrialization and political corruption, one whose elites gleefully scrap it for parts to be sold to the highest bidder. Politicians across the electoral spectrum now loudly declare the bipartisan consensus around border militarization and deportations and migrant death. The four years after the largest social uprising in US history have witnessed a pervasive law-and-order, right-wing reaction, though one often dressed in multicultural liberal clothing.
And yet…
The encampments, blockades, and sabotages to stop the assault on Gaza have been unprecedented in the entire period since the Nakba. A new generation of activists is learning first-hand the depravity of the empire and the solidarity forged in resistance. The eyes of the nation are on Atlanta’s struggle against the law enforcement training facility that will now forever be known as Cop City. Underground networks distribute estrogen and abortion pills in the face of transphobic and misogynistic gender totalitarianism. Beneath the politicos and talking heads and well-paid civic leaders, the struggle is not only alive but smoldering, waiting to erupt. And you know what they say about single sparks and prairie fires. Each day the struggle continues is a day closer to the fall of the regime.
This is how we survive Thermidor in Babylon.
My book Defying Displacement emerges from struggle. It’s an attempt to think though questions that emerged during a multi-year fight in which I was part of a small group whose efforts to preserve community, homes, and land in San José, CA led us into a direct conflict with the wealthiest corporation in human history… and virtually every local politician, union boss, and nonprofit leader, besides. But we found common cause with communities in resistance around the world who likewise found their modest demands for collective survival pitted them against the commanding heights of what I’ve come to understand as the gentrification economy.
Defying Displacement is the product of trial and error, late-night talks with friends and mentors and comrades, and interviews with over a dozen activists in other cities around the US. In the past year, I’ve traveled from Providence to San Francisco to share our thoughts with others, finding everywhere new inspiration and co-conspirators. Like my book, this Substack is dedicated to examining the fissures created by the heat of resistance. If there’s any value to “radical theory” (fingers crossed!), that’s what I think it is: not offering proscriptions or guidelines or sweeping proclamations but reflecting the thinking from one part of a living, breathing, multifaceted and contradictory movement back to the movement itself.
I’ll be posting, generally, once a week until the end of America and/or the world. If you’d like to contribute financially, I’d really appreciate it – I got laid off from my job in February for Palestinian solidarity reasons (long story) – but it’s not necessary. As of this writing, things are kind of grim for me financially, but frankly there’s no shortage of grimness in the world at large. And I remain fully of hope, truly, for the things we can build and destroy together.
In struggle,
-A
This post has been syndicated from In Struggle, where it was published under this address.