eight years later

Eight years later.

Eight and a half years ago, in January 2017, I wrote a piece titled, “So, what do I do?” in response to the first election of trump. In June 2025, six months into the second trump administration, I reread it. I’ve wanted to reread it for almost a year but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know exactly what within it caused anxious avoidance – anything from the writing itself being terrible to it deeply depressing me that in all that time, it might still be what needs to be said; that, perhaps, it will feel as if movement hasn’t moved at all.

Going back to it, I did, indeed, feel these things. I also, surprisingly, felt like it was worth a republish. It is haunting. I feel a deep immersion in haunting right now, currently wrapped in the words of Coates’ Message or dancing my eyes over the prose of Tsing. I’m haunted by myself as well. In eight years, I organized hard, I read and listened, and was inspired by both actions and words near and far. A lot happened in that time. A lot did not.

The original piece can be found here. I don’t need to write the same words again. It is, however, time to add more. Not only what lives in the depths of my mind – the loose jigsaw puzzle pieces yet to be snapped into place; there is also how I long to be in active conversation. The who’s who of today’s podcasts, articles, and books all geographically far from me but also with their own tents and cots set up in my mind, prodding me to respond to them around the campfire.

We begin there – the conversation I want to be having about the piece I wrote all those years ago and the offerings I find around me now.

Remind me what to do again…

In “So, what do I do?” I offered five things to do. I still like them: accept that the struggle for liberation is a commitment, don’t just react, be willing to question stale strategies and tactics, take time to think about the world that you want to see, and it’s up to us. I really want to pick up at this last point. Because the subsequent suggestion is that what people needed to do was come together with a group of people – even a small group – and begin to figure out what they can do.

In so many places across community and from the mouths of people I deeply respect, I’ve also since heard these words. I’ve heard them echo again in the last six months. Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba, Dean Spade, etc. These are some of the people that are my go-to for how to think about movement.

I don’t disagree. I love the idea of people getting together with their friends or neighbors or coworkers or book club or whatever and beginning to question what they can do and how to be a part of movement. I just no longer think it’s realistic; even as someone who eight years ago recommended doing that very thing. To be clear, it’s not that I don’t think people should do that – go, do that! – but I no longer believe that alone, it is enough to spark what is truly needed in these times.

There are several reasons why not; I will attempt to group them into context, ideas, and infrastructure.

First, context. We live in arguably the most atomized time in history. The US was the most individualistic culture on the planet before the pandemic tore us from each others’ daily presence. While some groups (almost entirely Black, Indigenous, and more newly immigrated groups) have hung on to collective ways as long as possible, the dominant culture has been able to strip most people of their basic human skills of collaboration. Between social media and COVID, we have come fully into an unfathomable place of isolation from each other.

This alone is a massive barrier to collective, liberatory action. To say: ‘get together with a group and figure out what you can do’ is actually a quite monumental task to request. There is little to no skillset or muscle memory that most people have on how to be in a group, facilitate a conversation, actively listen, deal with egos, etc. In some ways, this getting together with your people could be an opportunity to relearn but it’s only fair to suggest such an action if we are willing to accept that in doing so, part of that work is the effort to practice the social and collective functioning we’ve lost.

This may be the easiest adjustment to the original premise but it should not be taken lightly. Facilitation is a skill that must be learned. Choosing to go to the bonfire is an all-too-real wrestling with oneself against the feelings of safety and comfort that come with a Netflix night. Considering that you don’t have the answers to the worlds’ problems, that you don’t know all that you might need to to take them on, that you might not know how to be challenged, is harder than maybe it’s ever been. Judging these places from which people come is of no use. Overcoming them should be treated as work and if people end up in the group, then what is it that will keep them coming back? Being welcoming, having food to share, showing care and sharing slow time all must be cultivated and, for many people, relearned.

Additionally, in context – who is currently freaking out and needing guidance? My personal experience has taught me that liberals loathe to hear that while what is happening now (under trump) is horrible, it is in so many ways a pulling back of a curtain. Which is to say that Biden, Obama, and further back administrations from both parties deported millions of people, indiscriminately bombed other countries or allowed it to happen by allies and others, kicked people off of healthcare, cut social services, and allowed the ongoing outright decimation of the environment while doing nothing on the climate crisis.

This is relevant because it is important for each of us to grapple with why we’re freaking out now if we weren’t freaking out before. Which is, in turn, relevant because this entire line of thinking – responding to the question of “what do i do?” is a question that comes from particular groups of people. They are not the same groups of people who have been watching these things unfold all along and becoming politicized and motivated at any of those points prior. We’ve had a lot of those points prior (high numbers of natural disasters, police murders, assaults on Palestinians, houseless neighbors, etc.).

So, if you’re asking what to do now, let’s just be honest: you’re a bit late to the game. Or maybe you’ve been here and you see that what has been on offer isn’t working. Either way, welcome. Just consider that what you bring with you might need to be left at the door.

This brings us to the second: ideas. Again, to say to people: get together with your friends and do stuff isn’t wrong but what are the ideas that this group has? The left and certainly the radical left in the US right now is a mess – not just in organization but in ideology. So let’s look to Taiwo and Kaba – we can lean into their “join the doers” and “struggle produces politics” respectively – by that I mean, let’s say that getting together with friends to do something could be enough. But, realistically in this moment, it doesn’t work because doing a thing means asking for a thing. It doesn’t inherently look to some of those first four suggestions I made in 2017.

Let me attempt further clarity with an experience. I live in a great neighborhood. Most of my neighbors know that calling the cops could mean someone gets killed and so the default is watching them when they do show up as opposed to calling them. These are people who have shown that they will drop what they’re doing and run to defend the community against ICE. And also, when you put them in a room together, they tend to start with seeing if the city councilman can come talk to them about what to do. There are not significant, let alone dominant strains, of radical ideas. Even in a state fully captured by fascism, in conversations about ICE in the neighborhood, the go-to is the electeds and asking the city or county to fix the problem.

So, if we are to say: get together with your people and start to figure out what to do. Then, realistically, there needs to be a means by which people can be exposed to new ideas that are not reactive, not stale, are built on the world we want to see and the acceptance that we have to build it. One possibility is that those who have spent more time learning and experiencing what autonomous, outside of the state organizing looks like could participate in those groups and conversations. This presents a couple of logistical challenges. One, there aren’t many of us with that experience and less of us with that experience who are willing to tolerate newbies (with or without good reason); not to mention that those newbies don’t have a great track record of listening to us anyway (maybe someday I’ll write about how that played out in the 2020 George Floyd Uprising and beyond; for now, I ask you to trust that many of us have had these experiences).

The actions required in hopes of actualizing liberation are difficult to figure out for anyone in these times. How can we ask people who just started to figure that out on their own? Do we… or even do I feel confident in how to insert such ideas in ways that people can take in and do something with? We have the voices of those who are thinking and acting on this as well as those who have historically – a few of which are named in this piece. The question is how to get those ideas to these new groups? As I work on these exact questions in my own neighborhood, I can tell you that we’re not all reading the same books or listening to the same podcasts.

If the commitment is there (big if), is it then a dedication to learning while doing? The proverbial Zapatismo, “make the road by walking.” Still, there must be a tie to what exists now – these groups are not building a new movement but, hopefully, can find their piece in building a better one.

Lastly, infrastructure. Here’s really the crux of things. Let’s say that that people do indeed start to get together with their crews. Let’s say that there is widespread understanding that that requires a) intentional relearning of collective functioning and b) a need to listen to potentially challenging ideas that support the group in being more focused on autonomous, community building, direct action, etc. So, they each just do this alone, one little drop of water never finding the stream?

Honestly, I don’t believe that A or B actually happen without infrastructure but even if they somehow magically did, there is still no movement infrastructure to hold and network these groups. It might be fun to do the little things but eventually, it also might feel futile.

In so-called left movement right now, there are non-profits and (at least where I live) authoritarian socialist groups. In their own ways each tries to control all organizing space and completely lacks any creative, impactful, or meaningful tactics or strategy. One way or the other, it’s politics of demand and stale marches/rallies, and begging elected officials.

That may technically be infrastructure but if that’s all we’ve got, we’re going to keep losing.

What is much harder – especially because nobody is going to get paid for it – is for community to build networks of autonomous groups where those ‘get together with your people’ crews feel less isolated, have more access to radical knowledge, history, ideas; and feel like they are part of something bigger.

This is neither new nor unheard of in history. Unions made up of many shops. Spokescouncils made up of many affinity groups (AGs). Both, throughout time, have offered significant challenges to the conservative, capitalist agenda. Both were possible because of daily mutual aid. In their moments of greatest strength, neither were based on paid professionals nor left authoritarian political ideas. There are examples across the globe of projects and places experimenting with radical infrastructure.

We will need to push ourselves – as the existing movement – to the point of letting go of the failure of the stale left authoritarians and their weekly marches as well as the state-oriented non-profits and really challenge ourselves to create autonomous infrastructure if we are going to ask people to get together to form the pieces that fit into said infrastructure. There are plenty of examples we can look to both historically and presently around the world.

So, I stand by what I suggested those eight years back, what those I respect continue to suggest to this day. But I want to speak to those relatively few of us who aren’t walking in the door right now. Because to ask people to do this is one thing but really what we need to do is get our shit together so that if they actually do crew up, we have something to offer them in a movement.

It’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come” but if we don’t build anything, why would we ever expect them to stay? This is really the challenge to the offerings from eight years ago or six months ago – it’s not just up to those who just arrived. Those of us already here, need to be able to ask questions of this “movement” we’re in and what it is lacking that keeps it from growing and becoming a true threat to the fascist state.

When I arrived in movement, there were many ways to join, plug in, be a part of and AG, go fight global capitalism – in my neighborhood and also with 10s of thousands of others at the halls of neoliberal capitalism. We weren’t special or somehow magically different than people a mere quarter of a century later. The world has changed and it has changed us but we are not incapable of choosing to find our own ways of doing work that could be just as impactful if not moreso.

So, yes, get together, form a crew, look to someone who has been around – who is actually doing things. Or start with a few of the resources shared here.

To those like myself, those of us who aren’t new, find your crew, too. And also, it’s time to build the infrastructure needed to hold all of this. Make it so people come, make it so people stay, make it so we build that new world we need so badly. Accept that the struggle for liberation is a commitment, don’t just react, be willing to question stale strategies and tactics, take time to think about the world that you want to see, and remember, it’s up to us.

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References and Respect (citations that informed and inspired my words)

please don’t buy books from Amazon when your local book store or bookshop.org is an option

Kali Akuno, Klee Benally, Mariame Kaba, Dean Spade “Mutual aid: Building communities of care during crisis and beyond”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The message

Movement Memos podcast, in general, and specifically episodes for this writing:

• Kelly Hayes with Shane Burley (May 1, 2025)
• Kelly Hayes with Mariame Kaba (March 20, 2025)
• Kelly Hayes with Margaret Killjoy (February 20, 2025)
• Kelly Hayes with Dean Spade (April 3, 2025)

Olefemi Taiwo’s “Donald trump and his allies don’t really care what kind of leftist you are”

Anna Tsing’s The mushroom at the end of the world