I have always maintained that we are all anarchists at heart, we don't like to be ordered around, we want to be a partner in what we do, and more and more we see people by-passing institutions of power and attempting to sort things out for themselves, without most of them having considered anarchism in any shape or form. There has been an increase in people moving to stop fracking, gentrification, evictions etc. and they have not been waving an anarchist flag or wearing an anarchist badge. It is just a realisation that if they want something done, then they will have to do it themselves, they no longer see the institutions as being on their side. The more it happens, the more empowered they feel, the more it will grow. Anarchism from the heart, not from the book.
Read the full article HERE:These newer movements are looking to one another for power, and creating it, horizontally and through self-organization. The state is increasingly rejected as the site from which to change society. Distinct from people who identify as anarchists, most members of newer movements reject the state out of experience and based on their observations from recent history. Foreclosures and evictions continue, water is being shut off in cities and towns from Palestine to Detroit, cuts to public spending and austerity measures are increasing, and land is being plundered by fracking and mining, with no respite in sight.After all, why should people turn to the institutions that are responsible for their problems for solutions? Instead, everywhere we see people taking matters into their own hands: affected people have themselves blocked mining companies in Greece and Argentina, and prevented pipes from being laid for fracking across the Americas. In Argentina the Malvinas Assembly stopped Monsanto from constructing what would have been the world’s largest genetically modified seed processing plant. Foreclosures in Spain, Chicago, and San Francisco have been prevented by neighbors coming together and blocking the eviction and auction of homes, and neighbors have also prevented high-end buyers from surveying apartments in working-class neighborhoods, such as Kreuzberg in Berlin. This is not a politics of demanding that others stop exploitation, but stopping it themselves through collective direct action. Distinct from traditional social movements, these are self-organized communities that see the process of the struggle and its goal as interconnected. Again, one can see the anarchist touch here—the spirit of non-hierarchy, horizontalism, and anti-statism—even if people in these movements do not identify themselves as such.
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