Friendly reminder: I’m still seeking submissions for the next zine I’m curating, titled “Ritual as Resistance: Defending the Sacred.”

Length: 125 words, give or take
Deadline: May 11
Email to: cbmilstein {at} yahoo [dot] com

Please share this “call” far and wide!

I’m looking for concrete examples of rituals you’ve held space for and/or participated in; that draw on your own cultural practices and/or ancestral traditions; that blur the lines between sacred and rebellious, or shake up what the spiritual+political feels like; and especially, that are collectively and/or publicly done. (See fuller description in my previous post.)

Here’s a sample of one that I’ll be using in the zine, as inspiration and to offer a sense of what I want (though please note, I am NOT only looking for Jewish rituals—though we anarchist Jews love our rad rituals!):

“Fascists sticker-bomb your neighborhood. This hurts. Not merely because the memory of eleven people killed at the Tree of Life building—your childhood shul—still lingers, but they’re crafty bigots. They deliberately drop provocative flyers on people’s doorsteps to try to break solidarity between Palestinians and Jews. This inspires you to counter with agitprop. The ritual technology of prayer, in Judaism, allows us to make the most mundane moments holy. The eating of bread and sipping wine. Through the language of our ancestors, we make these acts sacred, connecting us with all who’ve performed them across the axis of time. You arm yourself with new ritual implements: a paint scraper, sharpies, and wheat paste, along with an extending pole for higher spots. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, even these moments where we cover up white supremacist drek can be holy!”
—Anastasia bat Lilith (@stormbringer_press)

(photo: glimpse of an elaborate, bilingual grief and ritual space that I and three beautifully caring anarchists set up for the whole weekend during the May 2023 @montrealanarchist)

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife
#NoSpiritualSurrender (with love and blessed remembrance to Klee Benally)

Shout-out to @igd_news for posting the full text of my latest, curated zine, “Anarchist Compass: 29 Offerings to Navigate Fascism,” along with both readable and print-ready PDFs for your downloading, reading, printing and/or freely distro’ing pleasure!

https://itsgoingdown.org/anarchist-compass-29-ways-of-navigating-christofascism/

#AnarchistCompass
#TryAnarchismForLife

(photo by @stormbringerpress)

Call for Short+Sweet Contributions to a Zine, Tentatively Titled: “Anarchist Compass: [XX] Tips for Navigating Christofascism”

Deadline: on or before March 24, 2025

Based on the “popularity” of the zine “Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism” (https://itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do-nothing-20-things-you-can-do-to-counter-fascism/), which has been downloaded, printed, and freely distributed by thousands of people, I’m hoping to curate a similarly structured+formatted zine. And like that earlier zine, which came out soon after the election, the aim is to serve up a welcoming batch of ideas that inspire people to think and act for themselves against christofascism, or at a minimum, help more folks around the world get through another day under the Trump+Musk regime.

But I need your help!

I’m seeking accessible contributions ranging in length from a sentence to a paragraph for what will become numbered suggestions (see “Don’t Just Do Nothing”), geared toward anyone who finds themselves on the side of antifascism, including those who’ve newly had their eyes opened. That said, I’m looking for anarchistic ideas, although they don’t need to be explicitly called “anarchism” (meaning: no electoralism or statism, please, but yes to an ethics of nonhierarchical self-organization, communal care, and social solidarity!).

The general notion is: What’s helping you find direction and/or heart these days? What ethical compass keeps you steadily steering toward freedom for all, particularly given all the sociopolitical pressure to abandon that path? What polestar aids you in determining what practices to embrace to fight and/or survive fascism, especially in collective ways? And/or where do you find inspiration at the moment?

Length: No more than about 100 words.

Send to: cbmilstein [at] yahoo (dot) com. If you prefer another way, DM me.

No promises that I’ll pick your submission, of course. But for those short+sweet ideas that seem a good fit, I’ll work with you to edit/copyedit pieces before weaving them into the zine, then create readable and print-ready PDFs to share widely and freely.

Feel free to share this “call”!

#TryAnarchismForLife

(photos: enormous circle As gracing the cityscape of the Exarchia neighborhood in Athens, February-March 2025)

Big shoutout to the good folks at @igd_news for sharing the full text of my essay “Stitching Together Other Worlds” and a downloadable zine version on their website, which is filled with daily nourishment in the form of anarchistic news, ideas, and alternatives. Follow and support IGD; contribute to it, too, whether your own writings and report backs and/or financially.

#MakeMediaMakeTrouble
#MakeMediaSharePossibilties

#ConstellationsOfCare
#TryAnarchismForLife

https://itsgoingdown.org/stitching-together-other-worlds/

When confronted with some impending loss, many of us engage in “anticipatory grief.” We run through various scenarios in our minds of what it might feel like and what we might do when the loss finally happens—a dress rehearsal, as it were, for dealing with the death of someone or something we love—thereby shifting how we act before that loss occurs—letting us better self-determine our responses.

These days, I’m in what feels a stronger imperative: “anticipatory rupture,” within which is bundled all of my fears, yet that I know must also include us noticing fissures in the christofascist edifice that we, communally, can generatively rupture.

Rupture involves “the tearing apart of a tissue”—sometimes of the very social fabric; it entails “the state of being broken apart.”

Which brings me to a familiar slogan in anarchist circles: “smash the state.” While it sounds good on paper—or on walls, stickers, and T-shirts—it’s a lot less pleasant when christofascists are the ones doing the smashing.

This isn’t to negate the aspirations embodied within our notions of antistatism, nor to abandon the desire for a world without states. It’s to say that such a vision is wholly incomplete without a liberatory horizon. Indeed, it can be downright scary and to be feared, with immense power to destroy.

We’re seeing this in dizzily accelerated, axe-wielding, real-time action as the Musk-Trump regime goes on a state-smashing spree. In a matter of weeks, they’ve done more to convince the world than we anarchists have in the whole of our tradition’s existence that it’s in fact possible to trash statist trappings, from laws to bureaucracy to so much more, but in the most self-interested, cruelest of ways.

I trust that as anarchists, we aren’t so crass as to celebrate their rapid rupture of the state, on their terms, into what might become “end-stage statism”—some version of “antistatist” christofascism that rapturously saves a handful of uber-wealthy at the literal loss of most of us and the planet.

I hope we turn to our do-it-ourselves’ power to create, especially past and present forms of self-governance—offering a rupture toward borderless freedom and well-being for all.

#BecomeSelfGovernable
#TryAnarchismForLife

(photos, of street art seen during #FuckFascism strolls on the streets of Athens: huge DIY letters painted in white and black on the side of a building, and reading “No border, free world”; tag on a wall in purple saying “destroy everything”; and drawing on a wall in pink of a big fish, with small fishes swimming up below it, and the words “happy new fear,” with the “A” in “happy” circled)

If May Day, among other things, is about sharing the “wealth” (aka abolishing capitalism), there’s nothing quite like going to a small but sweet Really Really Free Market on this May 1 and being gifted a sheet of freshly printed stickers that feel just right for these suddenly rebellious times. (After all, #AllComradesAreBeautiful!)

Then, soon after, redistributing that “wealth” to others at a nearby May Day rally, made merry because of the danceable tunes of @brassyourheart (which may now have some tiny water jugs on a drum or two because this marching band can #AlwaysCarryABeat!).

There are so many others reasons, of course, to wear one’s #ACAB on their sleeve (or water bottle) this May Day, when so many universities and colleges are liberating spaces of solidarity for Gaza, and in the process, powerfully demonstrating that #AutonomousCommunitiesAreBeautiful.

And likewise, so many police are painfully demonstrating that #AllCopsAreBrutal—underscoring that cop cities (aka policing) everywhere must be abolished, from every river to every sea, just as the Haymarket martyrs also fought and alas died for, in part.

Next May Day, in liberation!

#CareNotCops
#CommonsNotCapitalism
#SolidarityNotStates
#TryAnarchismForLife
#UntilAllAreFree

(Ongoing love+solidarity to the brave+bold folks at @occupycalpolyhumboldt for gifting the world the joy of a humble water jug vs. cop during their occupation)

Hierarchy so weasels its way into people’s psyches that most folks seem to need some sort of authority to validate why certain forms of organizing (from demos to direct actions, from mutual aid efforts to DIY spaces) feel so good, rad, and genuine—like the whole of all of us are truly in this fight for a liberatory world together.

This has continually struck me since the genocide in Gaza began in full earnest, and likewise, anarchistic organizing in solidarity with Palestinians ratcheted up in full earnest. At or after every one of the many anarchistic offerings I’ve been grateful to be a part of co-organizing, various nonanarchist and frequently newly radicalized folks have both waxed eloquent over how much those spaces meant to them and been insistent to know the name of the top-down organization that made those offerings happen. It takes them many minutes to let it sink in that it’s more than possible to self-organize the kinds of protests, spaces, and actions we want and need, without permission or hierarchy, without a nonprofit, authoritarian leftist group, or political party. To simply gather some like-minded friends and comrades together—even just a handful—and go for it, pulling off all sorts of rebel magic.

I’ve repeated again and again: “some of us who are anarchistic got together and did this.” And time and again, folks pushed back: “but what organization are you with?”

I think it’s our duty as anarchists to show people it’s possible to think and act for themselves, and not feel compelled to have to add (more) hierarchy to do that. But also to be “friendly anarchists,” patiently trying to gift the notion of “thinking and acting collectively for ourselves” to those who aren’t (yet!) anarchistic.

So some of us finally decided to create a little trifold filled with anarchistic projects to hand out in AVL when asked “But who organized this?” and got consent from all 20 projects in it—a lot in a smallish town, making us anarchists a mite bit proud in the process!

Try it in your town! It’s already working here to aid folks to #BecomeUngovernable!

If you want the PDF to distro in AVL, or use as a template for elsewhere, DM me!

Snapshots of day 1 of the 3-day anarchist holiday called the @ACABookfaire
few accompanying words, because I’m tired in that good kind of way where you feel full and nourished from being around so many friendly, unpretentious folks putting their hearts into practicing other possible worlds in the here and now. It’s making me fall in love all over again with what anarchism should and can be, especially in terms of mutual aid, solidarity, and communal care.

Photo 1. The good type of flags flying proudly outside @firestorm.

Photo 2. The start of an altar to mourn the dead and remember them well so as to better fight for the living (please add to it this weekend), also outside Firestorm Books.

Photos 3-4. Asheville’s own anarchist bingo, times two—apparently already in the works even before my post the other day about bingo at this year’s Salon du livre anarchiste de Montréal | Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, and with its own regional flair.

#AlwaysCarryABook
#TryAnarchismForLife
#BingoNotBorders

https://acabookfair.noblogs.org/

The word “adorable” often isn’t associated with anarchism. But WTF, why not?

After all, so many anarchist experiments fling open windows into just how sweet the world could and should be.

Take yesterday’s anarchist zine fair on a snowy day in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal as an example.

The minute one entered the door of the homey cafe that hosted the fest for free, two tables of free literature warmly greeted you, including ones explaining anarchism—under the red-and-black homemade sign pictured here. Yet so did the tablers themselves—circled up cozily by the big front windows of the cafe, with the sounds and smells of coffee in the background.

Indeed, an air of anarcho-friendliness seemed to pervade the space. There was as much, or more, socializing than shopping, perhaps because many of the zines were free, pay-what-you-can, or cheap. Folks seemed intent on having political conversations, introducing folks to each other or catching up with friends, and excitedly sharing something they’d newly designed or newly written, or both.

The fair was small, so it had a certain intimacy about it. It helped that the tablers didn’t present an overwhelm of zines but instead curated their selection based on their own passions. You felt like you got a sense of each person tabling even if you didn’t know them simply by looking at their offerings. You could take time to meander around the tables, without that frantic feeling of some zine/book fairs that you’ll miss out if you don’t rush. And that slowness seemed to aid the social glue.

Same for workshops; there were only three of them, and the third happened after the zines were stowed away at the fair’s end, so that everyone could join together.

Maybe we anarchists are just so starved for such spaces, that any of them feel precious (true), and we anarchists are thus more open and friendly, if only from the high of going to such events (true too). Still, deciding to do a small fest in a comfy space at a time of year when folks don’t see each other as much, and making it so welcoming and adorable, showed care on the part of the organizers.

And WTF, we can all definitely use some sweetness these days.

#AnarchismIsAdorable
#TryAnarchismForLife

It's amazing how an anthology published in 2015 identifies & the White Fragility Industrial Complex and the Ally Industrial Complex as counterinsurgencies that stymie revolt & political possibility.

These essays unapologetically demands rigorous anti-colonial, anti-imperial solidarities against the world as is.

and for it I say? yes!

Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity & the Poverty of Liberalism ed by @cbmilstein

@bookstodon.com
#Bookstodon #TryAnarchismForLife #Anarchism

Great episode on Live Like the World is Dying featuring @cbmilstein.

Heartfelt, sincere, and inspiring as always. Psssst…buy Cindy’s new book #TryAnarchismForLife

I haven’t seen the moon in ages. Gray days blur into overcast night skies. Instead, I relied on written pages to tell me what I want to trust is out there this Hanukkah eve: the new moon, and thus a new month, Tevet 5783.

That, in turn, meant turning the page on my @radicaljewishcalendar to find the art of my friend @alias_alice, who’s across oceans, but lighting candles under the same moon that’s hard to see and so from the looks of this drawing is relying on books too.

That makes sense. Jews are “people of the book,” and some believe that the book preceded the creation of the world and was written in fire. Books can shape, reimagine, and transform the world, and make new ones. Books can save lives in this one.

Many, many new moons ago, when the pandemic was new, I felt beyond lifeless. Each morning, I woke startled anew, wondering why I was still here, and only wanting to sleep again. And walk, obsessively, for hours. For some reason, one day I tucked a big book of speculative fiction under my arm and set off on foot. I’d never read the genre, and as it was, my broken heart had no ability to read at all. Yet I sat by a lake and somehow got through one chapter. Then another chapter the next day, and so on, until I had something to look forward to, even if I still couldn’t clearly see it. I got lost in trusting the written fire of the other worlds and other moons created in this book.

Perhaps we Jews light candles with such ritual persistence because colonialism, christianization, and capitalism have stolen the moon—our illumination—ripping apart our lunisolar calendar, bloating out the skies with climate catastrophe, letting trillionaires like Musk make it their playground. Perhaps we write and read books as our weapon against them, and fiery promise of other worlds to and for each other.

So while we have to trust, hopeless as that feels these fascist-gray days, that the moon will reappear, new and maybe even whole, let’s always carry a book of our rebel wisdom and use its fire to the fullest.

Come, watch the moon with me, even if we can only imagine its guiding light, now obscured by all that pains us.

(photos: my night 7 candles in front of a drawing of a book, set against a pink floral background, with a 1940 Walter Benjamin quote, “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule” and the words #AlwaysCarryABook, or #ACAB; red spray-painted outline of a heart on a gray wall with the tagged words inside it, “If you want, we can watch the moon?!,” spotted in an alley in Montreal, May 2022)

#WeMustOutliveThem
#RitualAsResistance
#AllChanukkahsAreBeautiful
#TryAnarchismForLife

For those who missed @firestormcoop’s lovely offering of (cyber)space for a celebration of my new book, Try Anarchism for Life (@tangled_wilderness), here’s the video for your leisurely viewing:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=PAAaZvsqhh6MVlY4dN_bRDEFass3Evq4ltqQuf2DdP7n8t1I9nmaxli3oHw0E&v=87Ru1Rf9nrk&feature=youtu.be

What I love about crafting events with Libertie, besides loving Libertie as a dear friend, is her/their willingness to be creative and think outside the (Zoom) box! So shoutout to Libertie for suggesting and doing the logistical work to turn this launch into a visual feast of anarchist artworks, from the streets to walls to book covers to the beauty of the event promo image.

That wouldn’t have been possible, though, without three other dear friends agreeing to share images of their anarcho-gorgeous creations (drawings, paintings, graphic design, etc.) and each speak for 15-20 minutes on how they think about art, beauty, and anarchism. So shoutout too to @lokimon, @muquuuuu, and @nobonzo (all of whom have beautiful circle A drawings in the book) for not only joining this event but, damn, also all being so ridiculously insightful, provocative, and inspiring with when they shared their thoughts and feelings. Indeed, feel free to skip past my opening (though maybe listen to my 5-minute reading of a piece from this book) to get to all their gems!

And last but not least, shoutout to my friends and part of the collective that published this book, @house.of.hands and @margaretkilljoy, for their willingness to speak briefly at the beginning about Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness!

If you know me, you know I generally hate doing Zoom events, or at least usually feel awkward during them and letdown afterward. Yet thanks to everyone above, this actually did feel joyful and celebratory, save for making me miss chatting with and learning from them all in person (may that happen soon[ish] somehow too).

I hope watching/listening brings you some or even much joy—something we all need a lot more of these days.

(photo: screenshot of the opening image from the YouTube recording of Firestorm Book’s #TryAnarchismForLife event on November 29, 2022, featuring the book’s cover in green and pink, designed by @eff_charm with circle A art by @landonsheely)

Care packages aren’t just beautiful on the inside—for what they contain as gifts, as sustenance, as rebel “love letters” to each other. (Though getting a no. 10 envelope filled with stickers from @municipaladhesives last week was lovely indeed, as the shimmery-metallic circle A that found a good home outdoors today attests to.)

It’s what overflows outward into the “worlds in which many worlds fit”—to borrow Zapatista words—that we are already, always, crafting in the here and now that’s especially beautiful, messiness and all.

That includes the “little touches” like the black and red rubber-stamped logos that Municipal Adhesives put on the envelope’s outside, meaning that various postal workers maybe couldn’t help but notice—perhaps speaking to their antifascist and/or anarchic hearts during yet another deadening day of capitalism.

Or the bigger, prefigurative ones, in which Municipal Adhesives thinks to make and distro stickers with circle A slogans that hold out a hand—on public walls and lamp posts—to the anarcho-curious or world-weary who long for something besides the daily disasters of the current social order—but need glimpses of what that could be and is when one embraces anarchistic forms of social relations and social organization.

Or the bigger-still ways that anarchists create do-it-ourselves spaces in which we remember that “we are the ones we waited for”—spaces open and welcoming to whoever is on a journey, their journey, to liberation and freedom. For as Municipal Adhesives reminded me when they PM’d me about sending a care package my way, we’d met years ago at the annual National Conference on Organized Resistance, in which a tiny anarchistic collective brought some 2,500 young folks together for a weekend that was a smorgasbord of hundreds of workshops and tables (by young-at-heart folks) spanning the whole range of radical politics. In this outwardly solidaristic, generative, open-door space, thousands found their political passion and calling—and each other.

Care packages are a joy—a life line—on a personal level in these dispiriting times, warming our insides. Yet anarchistic care shines when we common it, outward and upward.

#CollectiveCare
#WeAreAllWeHave
#EverydayAnarchism
#TryAnarchismForLife

I’m tired in the best of ways after an evening of queer euphoria sparked by (overwhelmingly) queer Oberlin students—first at a big (masked-up) gathering of (overwhelmingly) Jewish folks to engage in reflecting on the liberatory and life-giving promise of Jewish anarchism, complete with the light of a Shabbat blessing, and then the joyous treat of getting to see a DIY queer circus put on by students in an abandoned old gym, and the joy of chatting with my friend and host @scottbransonblurredwords.

This is why we fight after all: for life; for life in common, through our joys and sorrows. A life that lets us share our euphoria with each other, but also holds us through all the dysphoria that this world throws at us.

This is why we fight: so that more of us, more often, can experience the euphoria of what we want our lives to be, and what we know our lives can be.

I’m so grateful to Scott for gifting me this portal, even if only for this Shabbes, itself always a portal, including because it includes me getting the queer euphoric delight of joining Scott for a celebration of our two new books—both revolving around “living anarchism,” toward lives worth living for all—tomorrow from 6-8 pm at @TheRhizomeHouse. If you’re in the Cleveland neighborhood, join us!

(photos: 3-panel infographic about tmrw night’s 2-books-in-conversation event; good excuse to throw in another beautiful photo, this time by @lovelybookshelf, of @eff_charm’s life-exuding cover design for my new #TryAnarchismForLife book (tangledwilderness.org), with pink circle A by @landonsheely; also, shoutout to @rebelgrrlraechel for organizing the Rhizome event)

It’s never too late to #TryAnarchismForLife! Or at least register for tomorrow’s book launch fun! And I really think it will be fun!

How could it not be? We’ve got 7 anarchists and dozens of slides of anarchist art and a short reading of some anarchist prose and likely some anarchic jokes sprinkled in or at least lots of good anarchist cheer—and maybe my favorite snaggletoothed anarchist dog will even make an appearance!

There’s still plenty of time to register—either to join us live online or get a recorded version afterward. The “us” is me, Libertie of @firestorm, Casandra and @margaret of @tangledwild, @lokidesign, @muquuuuu, and @nobonzo.

Tuesday, November 29
7 to 8:30 pm EST

https://firestorm.coop/events/3022-try-anarchism-for-life-book-launch.html

Enormous love to Firestorm and all 6 of my accomplices on this event for putting so much care, enthusiasm, and smarts into making it happen. Because besides fun, I know you all (or y’all) will bring forth a hell of a lot of much-needed beauty and inspiration and dare I say promise—like stars in a night sky—in these ugly times.

For copies of my just-published book “Try Anarchism for Life: The Beauty of Our Circle,” see Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness at www.tangledwilderness.org, AK Press at www.akpress.org, or Firestorm Books.

(Part 6 of 6): By way of celebrating my new book “Try Anarchism for Life” being in print and out in the world, and because I have a backlog of photos of circle As in the wild, plus to honor and thank the folks who took the time and care to write blurbs for this book, here’s a trifecta of what I hope are some beautiful expressions of anarchism: street art + the book’s cover + a blurb.

“‘Try Anarchism for Life’ puts beauty back at the heart of the ‘beautiful idea.’ It is a gentle, warm reminder of the dreams that anarchism inspires and sustains. Utopian in the best sense of the word, it radiates hope and confidence, opens new vistas on familiar ideas, and affirms the value of mutual aid, solidarity, and creative collective endeavors.”

—Ruth Kinna, author of “The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism”

This wraps up my silly little series! But you can join me in celebrating the book, and more important, beauty of “creative collective endeavors,” thanks to the ever-beautiful folks/friends/pups at @firestorm (some of them pictured here), which will be hosting an online gathering this Tues, Nov 29, of Libertie of Firestorm, me, Casandra and @margaret from @tangledwild, and three other amazing friends who contributed circle A drawings to the book, @lokimon, @muquuuuu, and @nobonzo. We’ll literally show you lots of what makes anarchism so beautiful via a slideshow of art in varied rebellious mediums as well as modeling why that beauty always has to include a multitude of ideas and practices by sharing our varied musings in friendly anarchist fashion.

To register (to watch it live and/or get a recording of it later), see https://firestorm.coop/events/3022-try-anarchism-for-life-book-launch.html!

For a copy of the book, order from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness at www.tangledwilderness.org (for folks in and outside of the US too), @akpressdistro at www.akpress.org, or your favorite anarchist(ic) bookstore, like Firestorm, or look and/or ask for it at your local library.

(photos: beautiful circle A sentiment + bonus sticker by @municipaladhesives, as seen in mid-October at @defendATLforest; book cover, lovingly designed by @eff_charm with circle A by @landonsheely)

#TryAnarchismForLife
#TheBeautyOfOurCircle
#WeAreAllWeNeed

That weird and wonderful moment when your “baby” is born—nestled in a cardboard box that reached your doorstep today—and you can finally hold it in your hands. And the friends who saw it before you were right: it looks much more gorgeous in person than in this photo. But don’t all proud parents say that? (Pick up a copy from and see for yourself!)

In celebration, I’ll likely be sharing a series of “baby photos” over the coming week, with bonus pictures of circle A photos taken in the wild that have been filling up my phone-camera.

For now, I’ll probably stare at my newborn way too much this evening, trying to get used to it now truly being in my life.

Available from its publisher/coparent, @tangled_wilderness, or its chosen kin, @akpressdistro and/or awesome anarchistic bookstores.

(photo: #TryAnarchismForLife, showing the book’s pretty green-and-pink face designed by @eff_charm, smiling up at me with its circle A by @landonsheely)

#TheBeautyOfOurCircle
#AlwaysCarryABook
#TryAnarchismForLove

In a time of rising and “more successful” fascism around the globe, not to mention its white Christian supremacist version in the so-called United States, along with fascism’s virulent and violent conspiracy theories that weave antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Blackness, anti-immigrant, and other racist, ableist, queer/transphobic, misogynistic (etc.) worldviews into an always-genocidal worldview/practice (aka they hate and want to eradicate everyone who isn’t them)—it feels extra sweet to be among anarchist(ic) friends and accomplices here on Mastodon, including feeling to wholly/holy seen by Kolektiva’s emojis (to share only a few)

#TryAnarchismForLife 
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife
#TryQueerAnarchismForLife
#TryFeministAnarchismForLife
#SolidarityIsOurBestWeapon 
#TryAnarchismForLove
(photo: proofreading a picture-prose piece about a month ago from my just-birthed new book, “Try Anarchism for Life: The Beauty of Our Circle” [published by @tangledwild and available via @akpressdistro], with circle alef here by Naomi Rose Weintraub)

There’s only one day left (through Nov 15) to preorder my new book, #TryAnarchismForLife, a labor of love, with all proceeds benefiting its scrappy-lovey publisher, @tangledwild! As “thanks” for preordering, you’ll also get a batch of ex libris bookplates featuring some of the circle As in the book.

To preorder: https://www.tangledwilderness.org/shop/p/try-anarchism-for-life-preorder

As for the book, Rivers Solomon, author of “An Unkindness of Ghosts,” wrote: “Part manifesto, part prayer, part devotional—a rousing collection of vignettes and micro essays that inspire and incite. Try Anarchism for Life is a refreshing and necessary addition to the repertoire of anarchist literature.”

And Mark Bray, author of “Translating Anarchy,” noted: “Paired with unique renditions of the classic circle A, Milstein’s poetic phrases endow age-old concepts like mutual aid and solidarity with renewed vitality and urgency.”

Lastly, here in a nutshell is what the book aspires to do: “Try Anarchism for Life” revolves around a thought experiment: What are some of the many beautiful dimensions of anarchism? In reply, it blends gorgeous circle A drawings by twenty-six artists with my words, forming picture-prose that are at once (I hope) inviting and playful, poignant and dreamy. The pieces encourage you to notice and expand on liberatory practices, especially in a time when so much feels impossible. In depicting how anarchism gifts us lives worth living, may my book warm ailing hearts and offer tender succor.

#TheBeautyOfOurCircle