I was Born an Anarchist
What does it mean to be a cosmically anarchist?
This letter is a prompt, a tool, an Active Imagination.
Even if you’ve never considered anarchy, try this exercise and see what happens.
Let’s get dreaming!
Table of Offerings
Cosmic Anarchy
Active Imagination Exercise - Recreate the past to shape our future
Fine, I’ll Talk About UArts
My French Intention
Re/De-Constructing Anarchy
Many people think anarchy is destructive chaos. Anarchy is The Purge. Anarchy is dystopia. In anarchy, only the strong survive. That’s somebody’s anarchy. But not mine.
Learning anarchy from me is like learning it from a mushroom. I’m just one fungal bloom spreading spores of ideas, but I’m not the whole picture. I’m not an entire body—that’s the mycelial network of my conversations with people more well-read than I am and spirit messages guiding my ideas and Indigenous wisdom and black-anarcho thought and other anarchist texts and documentaries I don’t even realize I’m quoting, and gut feelings defining my paths, and so on. Note I didn’t say “the books I’ve read” because I haven’t read any books about anarchy, which leads to my feelings about cosmic anarchy, defined later.
You can certainly learn from me. You can even admire my alien shape, my flared gills, my brilliant color stabbing up through the dark of the log, but I’m one perspective. Learn more from everywhere.
That’s the point of my anarchy: decentralized power and knowledge.
Many people don’t think we can achieve anarchy. While there are many moments in history when anarchy could have risen, over the fall, I studied with the Black Reconstruction School that Anima Adjepong and Adwoa Agyepong started through Forward Together. We nonlinearly read through Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois, and I discuss it more in my Labor of the Bloom post. (It was fantastic!)
In this letter, I want to:
Talk about my journey as a cosmic anarchist.
Take a moment to distill why I think the Reconstruction Era of U.S. history was perfect for the rise of anarchy and learn from it.
Provide an Active Imagination exercise for the shaping of a liberated world.
I’m not a historian, and a six-week course (no matter how fabulous) is not going to make me into a DuBois scholar or a Black Reconstructionist Era scholar, BUT I’ve got this gut, *emphatically points to my stomach* and this gut of mine does wonders of reading truths, deciphering secrets, and revealing pathways at an alarming speed. Humbly, my gut is just a gut, so take it or leave it, but I won’t minimize my gut’s abilities. They are tried and true, and my gut grows in wisdom with each passing mistake I make when I don’t listen. HA! ← Laugh of pain
After some history, I will provide an Active Imagination exercise to help you imagine the possibility of anarchy. All existence starts as thought and ideas.
But first
What is anarchy? (As I see it)
Anarchy is a structure of cooperation. It involves decentralized decision-making power, collective care, and shared resources, with the needs of the many in the hands of the many.
Our language of anarchy is a response to Western government and colonization. Anarchy requires decolonization. Period. Our ancestors did not know the word anarchy but moved into structures we recognize today as anarchy. We existed then; it can exist now and forever.
For those interested in a bit more nitty-gritty of the different subsets and political thought about anarchy… find other resources! Ha! But really, here’s an article about Black Anarchism, or you can find plenty of books at the Wooden Shoe. I won’t sit here and pretend I am some theorist or scholar. No, no, I am an energy worker. You come to me to get the intuitive, imaginative, etherically listened-to messages. You come to me for guts and nature metaphors and undulations. What do you mean by undulations, Malachi?
*wiggles eyebrows suggestively*
Here’s what we’re NOT going to do:
I have no interest in declaring one subset of “leftist” ideology as more superior or effective than another. I don’t see a point in fracturing ourselves further when we need collective ability for revolution—for REVOLUTION, not reform. However, we all have our roles to play, as every cell is composed of individual organelles. Each body has trillions of cells with different functions. I want our body to live.
There will be no literary elitism here. Get out ya own butt. Y’all are unwelcoming!
No ableist anarchy. We will always need some form of system (organic or structured) to ensure everyone is cared for.
I do not (try to) practice nihilism.
There will be no blanket banishment. Each aspect of our world must be examined with nuance. I will not throw out a tool just because an oppressor has historically used it. We will take it from their hands. It does not belong to them. Then we can decide if it is useful, whether it remains a tool or becomes compost for a new world.
Allow me to Propose: Cosmic Anarchy
Do we need another subset of anarchy? Probably not. But I love to list, pattern, name, and organize things. (Is it the Virgoness or the neurodivergence?)
^ Answer: Both ^
Cosmic Anarchy is a modality of collective organization of discentralized power, directly influenced by the energetic principles of Creation of Reality, Collective Consciousness, and Experiential Evolution or whatever spiritual, energetic, or esoteric principles you ascribe to.
A Cosmic Anarchist is a person who is inherently drawn to anarchist principles and manifestations without formal education or direction toward that end.
Before I go further, I will lead by saying that my perspective on reality is not religious or faith-based. It comes from my study and tangible experiences. I am not better for having these understandings. You are not worse for thinking it’s bullshit. I am just offering you my perspective and experiences. We just ARE. That’s it.
For three years, I studied with an elderly Black woman named Gretta, an energy worker and a “transformational specialist.” She’s a chatty Gemini, a bit all over the place, but her positioning in her understanding of reality could not be more grounded. Despite her human antics of yelling at her husband while we were on the phone in a session or being suspicious of computers, she taught me things that expanded my being-ness far beyond, far within, and without humanity.
Taught is not the right word. She supported me in remembering.
I remembered Creation of Reality—the understanding that we are a force of constant creation manifesting all aspects of our existence within and without linear time.
I remembered Collective Consciousness—that while we experience individual realities, we are, in truth, one infinite consciousness.
I remembered Experiential Evolution—as one consciousness; we are one infinite curiosity. In our individual experiences, we move through lessons, which are our unique signature of existence, our own paths. All paths lead to remembering who we are and perhaps back around again. I don’t really know. I’m still remembering.
I talk about how these concepts often get twisted by those addicted to white supremacy and other power structures here.
Creation of Reality tells me I am responsible for my actions, thoughts, home, planet, and surroundings. I am an independent individual creating my own reality. In the truest sense, I can do anything that I want. The creation of reality affirms my cosmic anarchy because I govern myself. Cosmic anarchy tells me my lessons are my own, and I am on my own path. Creation of Reality tells me, “I am god,” but so is literally everything else.
And
Collective Consciousness reminds me that I am myself; I govern myself, but that person over there is also a self—that is also me. If I do not wish to suffer, I do not wish that other self to suffer. Within the boundaries of my individual lessons, I will collaborate with that other self to create a reality together that we wish to experience. Together, we acknowledge we are individuals, AND the individuals who are us are also One—we are multiple truths existing at once. I do not wish to oppress myself. I do not wish to enslave myself. I do not wish myself suffering. I do not wish myself hunger. I do not wish to have my consent breached. I do not wish to manipulate myself. I do not wish to gaslight myself. My cosmic anarchy affirms that I do not want to be a part of any governmental or ruling structure that does those things to myself—to all of my selves; when I say all, I mean all things, not just humans.
And
Experiential Evolution reminds me that each hardship is mine and part of my lessons, journey, and story, but they are not fixtures of reality. My suffering is not calcified in the universe. My story is growth and change. The nature of reality is movement; just because I have manifested hardship through a collective collaboration of suffering (such as patriarchy, racism, transphobia, etc.) does not mean I have to stay in that lesson. I am not supposed to stay in that lesson. I am supposed to learn it. Learning requires a minute and expansive flexibility. It also requires accountability from those who took action in the manifestation of a lesson, taking action to dismantle that lesson; for example, white people must dismantle white supremacy. My cosmic anarchy affirms that we will move through our lessons more easily and dexterously if we dismantle all power structures of control and oppression to evolve with freedom.
This is what I remembered in my early 20s, and it reminded me that the anarchist feelings of my childhood were not an accident or an anomaly. I was always unconsciously tapping into this reflection of a sliver of truth that is my current understanding of the infinite universe. I can only perceive fractals, and they are beautiful.
I was Born an Anarchist
(of some kind)
I was not an obviously, outwardly “rebellious” child—occasionally mischievous to a babysitter or my little sister (sorry!) I adored school, the teachers, and their praise. I didn’t question why a teacher needed to be a teacher, not because I loved authority, but because I loved to feel loved. Knowledge sharing (in the best of times) is an act of love. The praise felt like love. As a neurodivergent kid, the guided structures were home.
But roiling in the pit of my belly, firing prophetic synapses in my developing brain, I intrinsically did not trust or like the government. My mother was not a politically vocal woman then, certainly not an anarchist. The family I grew up around the most was comfortably center-left Democrats with a sprinkle of Republican conservativism here and there. No one was teaching me to mistrust the government or the military (in fact, my father loves both). My mistrust was quiet, hidden in the embryonic ghost of a future self.
Even when I was young and thoroughly indoctrinated in a hierarchal, capitalism-worshipping church, I believed God did not want us to have a government. As I became more articulate, I would cite Samuel 8, where the Hebrew god chastises the Israelites for wanting a king. God tells them a king will do nothing but take and take, and one day, they will beg for God to save them, but he will not be there. A king, a government, was a punishment on earth God was unwilling to save his children from. But they begged for a king, and he provided. Even though I am no longer a disciple of the Bible, the symbolism of this story thrums in my unconscious.
There is nature, and there is nurture. Before the capitalist-seething mega-churches of my youth, I was not raised in a staunchly government-loving environment. One could point to my first years at the co-op elementary school, where we called our teachers by our first names and baked bread for the houseless on MLK Day, as to why I had anarchist feelings in early childhood. But again, nothing was so explicit. I heard both distaste and support for George W. Bush. I was not told what to believe about the government, but I was told to be kind and generous and to love my neighbor as I loved myself. I saw only horrors from my government; I saw no love there. As a child, I was confused by this dissonance; as a Christian teen, I saw the government’s actions as a punishment from God. The horrors did not stop as I grew up. I was born into that generation that only knows war, a sustained scream of global agony.
So yes, you could site the fact that I was in 2nd grade during 9/11, witnessing the acrid roar of Islamophobia and military worship or the repeated death of Black people by cops or the way I saw my schools change, the stripping of learning for the pursuit of statistics as to why I was…maybe, just maybe, displeased with the U.S. government. But other kids saw this, perhaps even felt it, and they did not feel displeased, let alone rebellious. Many still do not feel the thrumming in their chest every time they witness the U.S. government in action—the internal, even ancestral, drums of warning.
Let me be clear: I was not always living anarchy in my actions. That love of praise twisted into an addiction for a long time. In college, I was horrifically ensnared by respectability politics, thinking that if I just made the Black Student Union the best club on campus (and I did), then the president would listen to us. THEN they would care about us and respect us. That’s not how white supremacy works. I was an RA—a university employee, a cop lite in a colorful orientation t-shirt, and I *chokes on cringe* tried to quell student rage by quoting MLK when Black students were digitally screaming at the student admin office. Which quote? I don’t remember, but I was so stupid and so afraid of the authorities being mad at “us.” Us means the Black student body, so I worked hard to appeal and appeal and appeal. It got us nothing and cost me my soul for a long time. At that point in my life, my entire worth depended upon people in authority liking me. It was a survival strategy beaten into me. It was an insidious distraction and a violence. I’ve apologized before and will take the time to apologize again. I’m sorry, UArts Black students of my years. Y’all deserve infinitely better. And to all those recovering overachievers, I see you. I’m here for you. Take a nap.
As an adult, I have not read any anarchist theory like many of my friends. My ADHD makes reading hard, but I’m trying in bits and pieces. I feel ashamed about this aspect of my disability, especially as someone whose passion is writing. To combat the shame, I state my reality loudly and lean into my strengths of intuition and listening. Despite the lack of formal education, my convictions toward anarchism mature with me. My anarchy is a return to my childhood suspicions and love of freedom. My beliefs come from my understanding of collective consciousness, the evidence of history and colonization, and learning communally with others. I believe in dismantling centralized power and the strength of community and collectivity. I love myself. I forgive myself. I am moving through my lessons.
That was a little personal historical context to add a grounded touchstone to my cosmic anarchy. Let’s move into the colonized history of Turtle Island, specifically during the Reconstruction Era.
Why Reconstruction?
To put it simply, the Reconstruction Era was the period during and after the slow emancipation of enslaved Africans.
In his book, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, Dubois (in my understanding) is combatting decades of racist rhetoric that Reconstruction was a chaotic failure because Black people could not take care of themselves. Instead, he appeals to his (white) contemporaries that the liberation of enslaved Africans was one of the greatest labor rights movements in history. Marx is a prominent figure in the book. Rooting this liberation as a labor revolution aligns emancipation with a white political and economic revolution history and “complex” thought. As this book came out in 1935, I think this was a perfectly reasonable strategy to get people to wake up and realize how many factors were working against Black people in this era. It’s not a transformative strategy, as it requires an alignment with whiteness, but it was a good start. Northern workers did not want Black people in their factories and made that clear through consistent violence; Abe Lincoln saw emancipation as simply a means to an end, essentially saying, “If I did not have to free them, I wouldn’t;” southern farmers made insidious false promises of freedom to trick enslaved Africans into being soldiers; attempts of Black-led government were destroyed, and no resources were given—no 40 acres, no mule.
Have you ever considered that a mule is an animal that cannot procreate? A mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, and while it lives just fine, it cannot reproduce. Thus, the symbolic promise has no stability or longevity.
This moment in history was a true upheaval of economic and political power structures. It was an opportunity for a new form of governance, care, and leadership, but that did not happen.
You do not have to be an expert in the Reconstruction Era to do this Active Imagination exercise. You don’t have to be a historian, either. I believe in your imagination. Consider the Reconstruction Era an inspirational launch point, not a rubric. You may not need it at all.
To Dream Anarchy: An Active Imagination Exercise
We spend a lot of time discussing and imagining the future, considering it our only mode of influence.
Black Quantum Futurism talks about time as cyclical rather than linear and that we can achieve states of mind that can shape our future and our past—influencing in all directions. This is named an inheritance for all Black people.
With that in mind, let’s influence the past with our present focus through the Jungian practice of Active Imagination.
Let’s imagine our present world is an archarist society rather than a capitalist democracy/oligarchy.
What happened during the Reconstruction Era that laid the foundation for this future, aka our anarchist present?
This question contains three questions in it.
What does your anarchist society/culture/community look like to you?
You don’t have to have all the answers, but I know we all think about the world we want to live in. Allow yourself to dream.
Some things to think about:
In your anarchist community, how would people with disabilities be taken care of?
How will medication, health systems, etc. work?
When does something become no longer anarchy? When does it become anarchy?
Is your anarchy influenced by or shaped by any government, societal, historical, or anthropological concepts?
How does the Earth/environment/plants/animals factor into your relationship with anarchy?
Does gender exist in your anarchist society? If so, what is your relationship to it?
Are you eliminating all forms of oppressive structures, including concepts of race? What does that look like to you? How does your anarchist culture handle race?
What does accountability look like in this culture?
Is there currency in your anarchy? If so, how does it look, and how does it move?
Will there be any form of leadership or none at all? If the latter, how does your community make decisions? How is every voice heard? Is every voice heard?
How is harm prevented?
How is harm addressed?
Are there laws, agreements, or guides of any form? If so, who makes them? How are they upheld?
If answering these is daunting, you can answer them in reverse. For example, how do I not want harm to be addressed? That might be easier because we have more experience with systems we don’t want.
Take your time with this. Imagining a new world takes energy, especially when forces are designed to strip us of this agency.
What happened in history that led to your anarchist present?
This is also a big question, as I am asking you to imagine a couple hundred years of history. Don’t force it; follow your thread of imagination.
Consider big historical moments that shaped us: presidencies, market crashes, depressions, and wars. Consider less visible moments: what was taught in school, what was whispered in the bedroom, what meetings led to actions, what groups formed in secret, domestic labor, etc.
You don’t have to focus on the Reconstruction Era; it is a period of great change that gives you a starting point on your timeline.
Here is one example of a historical reimagining I have about the Reconstruction Era to get you started. Feel free to use it or ignore it.
I learned in my class that one of the reasons lasting revolution did not continue during the Reconstruction Era was because poor white people were unwilling to align their struggles with Black people and instead vied for the scraps of supremacy that racism could offer.
“Du Bois argued that the capitalist elite turned the white working class against blacks. This had the mutually reinforcing effect of dividing the working class while also enabling a new black serfdom, which emerged in the forms of sharecropping and Jim Crow. As opposed to class solidarity, white workers acted on what Du Bois termed the ‘psychological wages of whiteness,’ yet another innovation that was far ahead of its time.” ~ Hartman
Does that sound familiar?
My revisionist reimagining is that the capitalist elite did not convince poor white people to subjugate Black people. What would that look like, and how would that affect history?
Take this example and run with it, or use your own.
Now, you have practiced imagining a new world. Amazing work! You are already summoning the reality!
Look at the parallels between the Reconstruction Era and today. Look at your imagined history.
What can we implement today that would build the anarchist reality you want to live in?
Bonus
Go do it.
Fine, I’ll talk about UArts
but only because it relates to anarchy.
Why am I talking about my alma mater?
“UArts’ Closing Within One Week Notice? This Just Isn’t Done” ~ Philadelphia Citizen
“State officials will investigate sudden closure of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts as 600 workers are laid off” ~ The Art Newspaper
“The University of the Arts is closing June 7, its president says” ~ Reddit Thread
I graduated from UArts in 2017. I was the Valedictorian. I was in several clubs, and I was president of most of them. I had a double major in Creative Writing and Illustration. I was an RA. I was a writing and language tutor. I did three thesis projects in my senior year.
If you’re looking at this with awe, I will contextualize it and say I was suffering. I was ill. I was entrapped in an undiagnosed disability of neurological difference and anxiety. My actions above were compulsive. They ate me up inside. It’s taken YEARS to get myself back.
I loved UArts and gave them my everything.
Why did I love UArts so much?
I grew up there.
Before I was born, my mom worked at UArts as an associate professor of dance education. She often took us to work in her literal closet office because she was a single mom. My sister and I grew up on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the Terra building, dancing in the studios, dramatically enacting narratives with my tiny body in front of expanding mirrors—portals to other dimensions. I watched countless performances by students and international professionals alike. Art and performance did not seem like far-away dreams; I met people daily who dedicated themselves to their crafts. Even when we had to move to the countryside, my mom kept her job at UArts, commuting around 4.5 hours daily. That choice led to her absence in many aspects of my youth, but it also meant that I had the privilege of a free education through tuition remission.
UArts was not my first choice. I was horrifically insecure about my visual art, but then my mom told me that my year would be the first year of the Creative Writing Program. It felt like a sign. Stories flooded into my dreams and surged out of me into my portfolio. I received every scholarship they offered from UArts, but ultimately, I had to give them back due to tuition remission, but that told me I was wanted.
Most people go to college to experience independence, but I was very alone in my teenage years. I was raising myself. The year I went to UArts was the year my mom was promoted to the Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, so yes, we were now on the same floor. UArts saved my relationship with my mom, allowing us to grow closer in those four years of constant proximity. On hard days, I would melt in her office into a literal puddle on the floor. She’d offer me a Dove dark chocolate and a hug.
I still have friends from UArts, and they are some of my closest. One of my partners was the same year as me at UArts; we were even paired for an orientation exercise but then did not see each other again for nine years—just enough time for us to grow into our queer, polyness, and learn enough lessons to be exceptionally compatible best friends and lovers. I love you chonky.
UArts gave, and UArts took away.
As stated before, I was a compulsive overachiever, which drained me. I won every award I could, but it still wasn’t enough.
I was an RA out of survival. I could not live in the tiny South Philly apartment with my sister and mom. There was no room for the crafting of two majors. I could not afford to live elsewhere, so RAing provided free housing at the cost of becoming a campus antagonist. I begged my residents to be smart, to be sneaky. We were a dry campus, but at the end of the day, I was a mandatory reporter. I know I did some good in that role. I talked students down from anxiety attacks and suicidal ideations, a role much too big for the measly $100 I was being paid a month, the two weeks of training.
UArts gave me the flexibility to double major and be independent, but it also gave me professors who did not know how to navigate my disabilities and were dishonest with me, stunting my craft. It gave me a path to emphasize my scattered focus.
UArts gave my mom a thirty-year career, but then they took it away when they suddenly and without good reason fired her a couple of years after I graduated.
That was the day UArts shattered all semblance of loyalty for their compulsive Valedictorian. UArts became a traitor and an enemy to my family. It’s a betrayal I know my mom is still processing.
But on June 7th, my mom and I breathed a sigh of relief. We were betrayed years ago. While our hearts go out to all those impacted, we thank divine alignment we were not caught in this shitshow.
This brings me to my hot take.
I don’t think there should be art schools.
The protest shouts, “Save the arts!” I say free the arts—free art from all institutional grasps, boundaries, and kept gates.
I left UArts adamant about not pursuing a graduate degree. I did not want any institution to claim my skill (UArts certainly couldn’t). These feelings were affirmed when I learned more in an hour poetry lecture by Paul Tran at the Tinhouse Winter Fellowship in 2023 than in my entire four years (yes, I was a poetry concentration). You don’t need higher education to learn your craft. You need time. You need to find individuals, friends, or peers to learn from. You need to share resources. You need to apprentice. You need to read, listen, or ingest abundantly, however your craft suggests. You need to practice. But you do not need a higher institution. The “connections” argument is a lie. Artists are everywhere. You can connect anywhere.
Goodbye, UArts. Rest in pieces. Give away all your resources. Redistribute to those you’ve betrayed and to the people whose land was stolen to house you. May the composting of your body grow a new era of artistic freedom. Amen. Ashé.
My French Intention
Depending on when you read this, I might be packing, on an airplane, or in France already. On July 1st, I fly to Paris for a self-appointed art sanctuary and a writing residency I was accepted into.
I’ll save the details, but I want to say I am curious. I am so curious why France wants me so much. France was the first place I traveled alone, thanks to a janky exchange program (more on that later). I was fifteen, about to turn sixteen, a milestone age. Now I am twenty-nine, about to turn thirty. I return to France fifteen years later for another summer before a milestone age. Why? I apply to hundreds of things! Why was a French residency the first one to accept me? What is France trying to tell me? What is my unconscious trying to tell me? Does it have to do with a lineage of Black creatives who sought refuge on French soil: Josephine Baker, Eartha Kitt, and James Baldwin, to name a few?
Why now? France, like many places, is on the brink of succumbing to a fascist party. Please read Angèle’s article to learn more. This party, of course, seethes at the mouth with a hatred for Black, brown, and particularly Muslim immigrants. I will be traveling there as a Black, trans/queer feminine person with light brown skin during the election, a cusp of change. Why does France want me to witness it? Why does France need my body? Who wants me to listen?
If I discover any of these things, I will let you know.
I intend to claim safety in myself. I intend to create abundantly. I intend to listen.
May you dream our liberation and make manifest its existence.