Writing with Movements Posts

Canadian Dimension just posted this piece, my latest “writing with movements” column. I’m re-posting it here. People whose names we will never know propelled liberatory struggles of the past. With plenty of contradictions and messiness, they fought oppression and exploitation, nurtured freedom dreams, and won victories that we sometimes take…

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was not the first time in U.S. history that an electoral shift to the right emboldened far-right forces in the streets. To take one example, the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Ronald Reagan in his presidential run in 1980 and white supremacist groups grew…

Canadian Dimension just posted this piece, my latest “writing with movements” column. I’m re-posting it here. The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing a lot about the current capacities of social movements and communities in struggle. Much of this is hopeful, as people across North America are organizing workplace actions, resistance to…

Canadian Dimension just posted this piece, my latest “writing with movements” column. I’m re-posting it here. Increasingly, activists and organizers are discussing the question, “What’s your theory of change?” For the most part, this is positive. As climate justice organizer and activist-scholar Jen Gobby explains, a theory of change lays…

My anarchist mentor Ruth Sheridan died on January 11, 2020, in Anchorage. The friendship and comradeship that she and I sustained over three decades, based in shared politics and deep love, profoundly shaped my life. Whenever I talk about sticking around in struggle, I invoke Ruth. I’m including here a…

A few weeks before the 1999 Seattle WTO shutdown actions, Punk Planet Magazine circulated a call for someone to cover the protests for their next issue. I eagerly volunteered and was delighted when they asked me to do it. In the following weeks, I filled a waterproof notebook with notes…

Canadian Dimension just posted this piece, my latest “writing with movements” column. I’m re-posting it here. This article is part of the Shutdown WTO Organizers’ History Project, a collection of histories and reflections from people directly involved in organizing the Seattle mass direct action in 1999. November 30, 2019, will…

Organizing for the mass direct action against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 was one of the most important experiences of my life. For this reason, I have been delighted to spend the last few months working with some other co-founders of the Direct Action Network on the…

The Summer 2019 issue of Canadian Dimension features this piece, my “writing with movements” column for the magazine. I’m reposting it here with links included. I’ve recently returned to a something I wrote in my twenties. Back in 2005, I contributed a “Letter to older activists” to the book Letters from Young…

The work of INCITE! and Critical Resistance has crucially propelled the development of anti-racist feminist and prison abolitionist politics over the last two decades. But as most experienced activists know, these politics have much longer lineages, which are well worth exploring and learning from. Emily Thuma’s book All Our Trials:…