anarchist mama; thoughts on community, ideology.

The other night we went to the Day of the Dead Celebration. It was a hit. It seems to get better every year, luckily there was no rain to rain on our parade. I had this peculiar feeling of being home, in my community at its best. It was my fourth Day of the Dead in Petaluma, I have been here just over three years. Less and less do I feel like I need a group of "radicals and anarchists" to feel part of a community. Yes, I am an anarchist mom. I dedicate my time to dismantle power (from above, that is) while cultivating grassroots and personal power (or power from within). When I was more deeply involved in anarchist groups and collectives, the question persistently asked was, “How do we get people to join us?” My natural inclination was to respond with, “We don’t get folks to join us. We join them.” The truth is that the lifestyle of the average anarchist group is just not attractive to most people (and vice-versa). Anarchist principles are helpful when practiced in the general public than small bands of radicals. As change becomes more and more inevitable, as our old unsustainable and unjust ways of living and institutions crumble, anarchist principles and ways of organization have begun to be explored and integrated (but we usually don't have to call them anarchist, it makes people jumpy).

As people realize that we can’t depend on government or rich people and their corporations to make things function well for the rest of us, we look to more grassroots ways of organizing. Which is where anarchist theory is based. Power of the people. Direct Democracy, deep democracy, consensus building, self-government, mutual aid, crushing hierarchy, radical self-theory, taking our lives into our own hands, localizing power...localizing everything. Horizontal organization and co-operation without coercion. The time is right, as folks are fed up and joining horrible groups like the Tea Party in reaction to big government, there needs to be a better movement towards freedom from too much control.

But back to community. My money-centered, gender-normative community… I am often pleasantly surprised. As I come more and more into myself, as I learn to trust my instincts and my own strengths and convictions and not worry so much what the “community at large” will think, and as I root myself deeper into my community and value it, I realize I am not so different. Instead of quietly becoming jaded and critical, I open my mouth and say crazy things with faith (or hope?) that what I say will find fertile soil.

But what is community anyway? What is an "activist community" or progressive community? Perhaps an activist community is a place to feel connected. But at the same time, are communities today to be groups of people who think alike? In this country, in this day, community cannot mean what it once meant, because we have changed. We are not a homogeneous group or tribe. It is normal to want a groups of comrades, but we pride ourselves so much on individuality and diversity, so shouldn’t we celebrate that, even if our neighbor voted for Bush? Community building is as much an inner journey as an outer one. Learning to live with and connect with the Other, this is where the real work of building community comes from. Community can no longer be about feeling comfortable, if anything, it ought to be about coalition building. At least, perhaps we need to understand and differentiate between two kinds of community. An intentional community of folks working toward a common goal, and a community of neighbors, where we learn to live together, create dialog, breach “the aisle.”

An Activist Community is a bit incapacitated unless it engages with and becomes part of the community at large. Community building is acting from where you are, with those you live with. Change starts locally, things change when people change, because the government won't change until we do. My utopia isn’t so different from the majority of the other utopias in the minds of so many folks around here (land of the liberals). I am just crazy enough to deschool my mind and head for the Utopian horizon. Three steps forwards...two and half steps back...I do it for my daughter. If things don't change, if the dominant ideology stays intact, I may survive my life with relative ease, but it is Ramona's life her friends lives and her children's lives (if she chooses to have them) that will suffer at our inaction as a society.

To me, mothering is about caring, which goes beyond sleep training, schools, educational toys, etc. You don't even really have to be a mother to mother. It is about caring for the life and the world that our children are entering into. Mothering is political. Caring is an action, or it ought to be. Mothering is about building our utopia today, in all the ways that we can. The future is now.

The media that dominates and propaganda may confuse and manipulate the so-called “sheeple” but people are becoming more awake with a desire for a different better way of life, evolution, that stays intact in the ocean of misinformation and hidden agendas (while some others are fighting to stay in denial/asleep). I think that people can sense an era ending. The mechanistic mind, industrialization, capitalism vs communism…all so passé. The ideas that I once thought too radical to spout all over Petaluma just aren’t. Decentralize Everything. It’s more democratic, its more fulfilling, its more sustainable, its more productive. And it creates the one thing that I hear folks around here (especially mothers) pining for. Community. Communities are arising throughout the world as the major site of struggle against oppression, consumer culture and environmental destruction and for dignity. These remarkable communities are mostly located in what we call the Global South, but it could happen here. Maybe it already is.

Or am I getting too far ahead of myself?

rad·i·cal adj.
1. Arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a radical solution to the problem.
2. Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme: radical opinions on education.
3. Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: radical political views.
4. Linguistics Of or being a root: a radical form.
5. Botany Arising from the root or its crown: radical leaves.
6. Slang Excellent; wonderful.