The Plan – Here’s What You Do

Everyone is always moaning on anti-work about there being no plan. Well here you go, premised on several factors.

First, the presuppositions (not debating these, telling you what I think they are):

1. Workplace organizing in the U.S. is dead, we lost, the system is set up to discourage and de-fang it, get over it, move on.
2. The U.S. is a declining empire during one of the most political and ecologically volatile times in its history. This will result in power vacuums at the local and regional level in the future.
3. Electoral politics in the U.S. is a choice between neo-liberal authoritarianism (Democrats) empowering fascism in the long term or outright fast-track facism (Republicans). Voting is only harm reduction in delaying facism, and that's questionable given Dems often deport, arrest, prosecute, and oppress more than Repubs in their stupid race to trip over themselves showing the American public they aren't commies.
4. Armed revolution in the United States is suicidal and would inflict so much death and destruction in this country that the Civil War would look like a scrimmage. Even discounting military involvement, facists and right-wing actors are better armed than leftists and know how to shut up and fall in line under an authoritarian leader.

With all this in mind, here's DUH PLAN:

Urbanites:

1. Connect with local leftists with similar goals, form a neighborhood organizing collective, and rent or buy a house together in a neighborhood. Determine how much is needed to maintain basic living expenses and work that much and no more, if you can help it.
2. Form interest groups to begin gardening (seeds are pretty cheap – learn to save them) and producing your own food, learning how to repair basic mechanical equipment, learn about and educate others in the group about self-defense and basic survival skills, and other hard skills that will help you reduce your own expenses and be an asset to others.
3. Begin noticing what is not getting done in your neighbor – is there trash everywhere, do you know of neighbors who struggle with food bills, are there lots of cops pulling people over for broken tail lights in the neighborhood – identify what people need that the system is not giving them, and start doing it. Build barter networks, get to know people. When shit goes down, your people are there. When people need help, your people are there.
4. Throughout this, engage in political education with neighbors with no bullshit buzz words. Put it in layman's terms how you everyone needs to take care of each other and everyone who lives in a place should have a say on how that happens. Don't fly off the handle when someone with regressive politics pushes back. Educate, educate, educate. If you can't get through to certain segments, disengage from political discussions and keep helping them when they need it. I promise, when the choice is between some twat politician and the person who brings them food and helps them pay for their mom's funeral, they will choose the latter.
5. Once you have established a network of people throughout the community, go around and ask people's interest in forming a community assembly where neighborhood issues can be discussed and everyone gets a vote on it. If no traction, repeat 1-4 until it happens. When it happens, repeat steps 1-4 but on the assembly level, rather than the house level. The neighborhood will increasingly begin organizing to take care of its own issues. If and when the state pushes back, your people will be pissed.
6. Congratulations, you have established a small dual-power structure, where you can contrast how shitty the economic and political system is with your own bottom-up creation alongside your neighbors. This entity is prepared to step into a service or power vacuum should the local, regional, or even federal government step back due to civil unrest, climate emergency, etc.
7. Link up with others in your city/area doing the same thing, or if they are not doing the same thing, send a group of your own people to replicate it in another rental/bought house in a hood.

Rural Folk:

1. Connect with your rural neighbors, many of whom are likely conservative or right-wing. If you like, also have a group of leftists live in your home or rent one in the country. Realize yours is a harder task politically, but take advantage of the sense of independence and self-sufficiency many rural people have. The seedbed is there to pull these people back from right-wing politics. Re-frame this as community self-sufficiency and community independence. Repeat the steps above, but initially organize around shard road, well, and other service agreements that are common in the country. Link up with city groups and support one another.

There you go. Go do it.