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Reminds of the town of Chéran where they kicked out the cartels and their lackey politicians. The community is self-organising, elect their leader on a yearly basis, and protect themselves by having regular patrols. I don’t think anarchism will work on a large scale (or at the very least, there is no global culture yet to demand such set up), but Chéran is an ideal model for me for an anarchist society.
Anarchism isn’t mean to work on a large scale, it’s meant to be a million small scales all tailored to each individual community’s needs and co-operating with each other.
How would there be guarantee that their neighbours won’t attack them? Even this is a problem for Chéran, hence why they have armed patrols. Heck, even practically speaking, we are already living in an anarchy. What are nation states if not self-organising society? Even with attempts of international cooperations through globalisation, that still failed because each countries’ cultures are too distinct from one another to create a mutual trust.
For ideal anarchism to work, there has to be a global cultural shift for humans to be like minded enough that mutual trust is built amongst each other not to attack or cheat each other. The only instance I have seen this work is in fiction in Dune, where the planet Arakkis is populated by Fremen and living in anarchist framework with their different tribes and little cultures, but overall identify themselves as Fremen and have solidarity against invaders. Although, that’s where their problem lies, outside the planet. Even utopian anarchism has to extend into universal scale.
How would there be guarantee that their neighbours won’t attack them?
How would there ever be a “guarantee”?
Even this is a problem for Chéran, hence why they have armed patrols.
It seems you found a solution.
Heck, even practically speaking, we are already living in an anarchy.
No.
What are nation states if not self-organising society?
Wut?
Right, if Greenland is on its own, armed patrols could deter nuclear armed US from invading! Even anarchists don’t realise we’re already living in an anarchy!
You are rather severely distorting the meanings of terms.
You may find that is the case but I think there is a gap with idealists on reconciling theory and empirical results.
How about we treat the cities like a “gated community”?
Pull their own shit on ICE. May I ZEE your papers please!
No identification, no entrance. ICE, no entrance. On the list of Pride Boys, no entrance.
We don’t really have city gates.
Place barriers at the intersections. Not a member, not allowed in.
How many intersections do you think there are in a city?
There are 2 on my block.
One on each end of the street.
So your “city” is a single block. Got it.
Are there any examples of groups who actually do work in this vein? Like beyond fliers but actually building an organization that works to keep people safe.
I think a lot of the political support for policing would disappear if there was a less harmful alternative providing direct services to the community. A lot of people hate cops but don’t know what alternatives exist.
I mentioned it on a separate comment but the Mexican town of Chéran is a self-organising community where they keep regular patrols to keep the cartels out, after they kicked out their mayor for taking bribes from the cartel.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Edit: this is very cool, thank you. Some takeaways were that there seemed to be a strong solidarity and vision among the community of how they wanted things to be run. So that may be a first step to building such organizations. The second is that the government officially tolerates their autonomy which is interesting. This may be more difficult in the fascist USA where I’m located.
Unfortunately, I think to get off the ground and begin building community buy-in, such an organization would need to avoid actions that would cause them to be immediately shut down and brutalized by our governments. This will limit the available tactics significantly.
The Black Panthers are in the news a bit currently and have been doing this for like 50-60 years?
Have they? I’ve heard a little about a resurgence but I also was under the impression they had sort of collapsed decades ago.
This reminds me of a story I’ve been told from a revolution.
There was a block that the residents had secured via community efforts, and the police had pretty much lost all authority across the country at that point.
A cop who lived there tried to come back home and pompously demanded at the gates to be let in as he’s a cop. After giving him the usual shit about what a piece of shit he is and why he doesn’t try to arrest them for not letting him, they also noted, “And by the way, why aren’t you wearing a seat-belt?”
His world crumbled within minutes.
And then everyone clapped
