we keep us safe
What’s one step you can take to cultivate communal activity where you live?
Psalm 72:13-14
[Israel’s king] has compassion on the weak and the needy;
he saves the lives of those who are in need.
He redeems their lives from oppression and violence;
their blood is precious in his eyes.
Psalm 72 romanticizes monarchy, elevating the king to an almost god-like status. A lot of us are taught to do similarly with our own nation’s leaders.
But who really “has compassion on the weak and needy”? Who truly saves the people “from oppression and violence”?
My anarchist friends would answer with this protest chant: “We keep us safe!”
We can’t rely on those in power to care for us. Black and brown people know this, as police continue to kill them with impunity. Disabled people and trans people know this, as they jump through absurd hoops to get the accommodations or treatment they need—and sometimes get denied anyway.
When state governments pass cruel laws; when the Supreme Court repeals hard-won rights; when presidents insight insurrection or fund genocide — we must rely on each other. We keep us safe.
Look online or ask around to see if anyone in your neighborhood is organizing any skillshares or mutual aid groups. If so, how can you get involved? If not, what’s one step you can take to cultivate communal activity where you live?
If we really want widely shared support for co-ops (farmers know these), community (small and medium towns get it), and consensus (used by juries), then why waste time trying to redefine most everyone’s understanding of anarchist to fit some obscure and alienating academic definition? Why not move a majority of people toward a shared end goal, rather than a tiny minority that change nothing because anarchists are so easily dismissed by the media? Why not start with our churches replacing the force of majority rules with the equality of shared power that simply requires careful listening to each other, since Jesus already said king and slave are equal, eventually dethroning nepotistic monarchy for republics?
When enough people get used to regularly using consensus, then pressure builds on government leaders to share more power with main st. middle and working class, and end winner-take-all (exclude everyone else, but billionaires). Supermajority votes and shared executive power with multiple political parties would better represent everyone (esp. minorities and women) proportional to votes earned, so Donald, Hillary, greens, libertarians and others would have shared power in 2017, requiring unanimous agreement to start a war or launch the nukes, rather than unilateral action. Not perfect consensus, but a great next step. The Swiss already proved shared executive power works.
Promoting cooperative community consensus will gain far broader support than divisive and extreme words like anarchy, which sounds like chaos to normal working people.