Non-Profits Destroy Social Movements

When the government came up with this whole 501C3 scam, they smartly figured out how to fuck up social movements my burning out awesome people by focusing their energy on running a business rather than revolt. Radicals should be opening squats, growing food, and burning down banks rather than filing foundation reports, massaging the fucked-up egos of spoiled board members, and licking ruling class ass.

Recently, I convinced myself to think you could change a fucked up system from the inside out. This is what doctrinaire anarchists refer to as "reformist" thinking. Stupidly, I've wasted years trying to "reform" so-called progressive organizations from oxymoronic, hierarchical tendencies in "democratic" organizations. You can't make a good omelet out of a bad egg. Non-profits can't be fixed. You can use their resources, pay the bills, and even do amazing projects within them, but when it comes to advancing progressive social change, real change, radical systemic change, you can't do that under any I.R.S. structure. Nope. You gotta take the hard road and do it yourself, with community, without a pay check, just like people have done it for centuries. Revolution is not a job.

Think about it. If a bunch of folks jobs feeding people depend on other folks starving, do you really think the comfortably employed will work to end hunger? They might lessen it, but they need people to go hungry to get a check.

I can't tell you how many people in the progressive non-profit sector feared a Democrat landslide in this last election because they were being bankrolled by anti-Bush sentiment. It felt like the non-profit "activists" needed a fascist president to justify our income fighting fascism.

It's sick.

The revolutionary flames that should be burning through this country are being snuffed out en masses by 501 C3s, professional "activists," greedy non-profit executives, and lackluster boards filled with ruling class creeps justifying their creepiness by "giving back."

I'd love to see a mass boycott of this whole system so we could have some real alternative economies and Democratic structures in the USA.

If folks need day jobs, fine, go work for Greenpeace, but in the evening, consider revolt.

Happy Valentines Day to Heartbroken Queer Freedom Fighters, Lovers, and Friends

Valentines Day: a day of love and possibility, shame for single folks, gloating for coupled folks, and awkward scheduling for the polyamorous. I am happily in love today--in love with the concept of radical, queer sex, polyamory, self-righteous anarchist puritanism, hedonistic defiance, and political rejection from the progressive mainstream (who as you probably know is cheating on democratic structures and having a love affair with authoritarianism and the IRS via 501c3s.)

This year, failing to collectivize an organization I deeply love, I once again remember that political failure is normal, striving for beautiful things doesn't always work, and political breakups within movements are painful. Because I feel a bit heartbroken from my misguided love affair with liberalism and the non-profit industrial complex, this Valentines Day, I cry a little.

Nonetheless, I'm happily in love with Hillary and about a dozen other friends, am constantly inspired by folks working for social change (winners and losers alike), and long with all my heart for the romantic possibility of an egalitarian world. With these things, I am in love and will live and die for them.

This evening I am going on a date with my dearest, sweetheart Hillary, pedaling back from some fancy restaurant to a slow-dance party where Denver's finest, queer punks, anarchists, and misfits will gently rock the night back and forth like awkward middle-schoolers in love.

Ah, sweet Denver. Ah, sweet Love.

The Trouble With Optimism. The Seeds of Resistance

In my years working in non-profits, I've seen dozens of people walk through the doors starry-eyed and optimistic and leave claiming organizational leadership, infighting, and hypocrisy crushed their souls. So many people enter new political eras, social movements, and non-profits with an inflated sense of hope and possibility and leave burned out and defeated. To maintain our ability to serve in social movements, we must grapple with despair. Sometimes we lose. Sometimes, the President everybody wanted can't pull us out of the recession in time. Sometimes those fleeting feelings of optimism fall under the boot of a repressive structure.

The French Revolution, The American Revolution, The Soviet Uprising, and the Iranian Revolution all serve as big examples of a classic rule: in the name of Democracy people centralize power and betray their vision. The results kill.

So how do we work towards liberation when capitalists and autocrats hijack our movements? How do we move forward when leaders value centralized power more than Democratic will?

Bankers stole trillions from the people. Obama filled his cabinet with neo-liberals and neo-cons, presuming he could get the best input from a diversity of opinions. We stand on the brink of economic and environmental collapse with a President loyal to a dialectic between two parties with identical allegiances to corporations and bankers. Where do poor people, homeless people, the mentally ill, and the battered and beaten find representation? Where do those who want cooperation from the bottom up find solutions?

Inside each of us, we yearn to create the world we want to see, not through representatives, Presidents, Executive Directors, and managers, but through communication, collaboration, and community. I can imagine the naysayer reader seeing the word "community," and saying, "I don't even know what that means.

It's simple. In love and joy, we discover the seeds of true resistance and possibility. See community as a space where people share in the cultivation of food, culture, health, and well-being. Communities can be found in neighborhoods or across cities and regions. Our future depends on these associations working to build the local infrastructure needed to survive: urban farms, alternative health structures, cultural centers, and sustainable transportation.

How we do it is up to us.