Conversations with my 22-year-old inner anarchist
Perfectionism, possibility, facing my inner-critic and fighting despair in the face of fear and uncertainty.
My calendar on Saturday, April 5 was indicative: Go to brunch. Go to protest. Play a show.
Like hundreds of thousands of people around the United States, and the world, Saturday April 5 I joined a “Hands Off!” protest, this one in New York City. The day was windy and cloudy, spitting rain, a classic New York in early April kind of day. As I walked with my friend Keight and thousands upon thousands of other New Yorkers, down Fifth Avenue, past the New York Public Library lions Patience and Fortitude, past the Empire State Building, chanting and cheering and smiling and raging together, I felt a buoyed sense of hope. There’s more of us than them, I reminded myself, and we need to utilize the rights, and tools available to us across the spectrum to resist, to say no, to make our dissent visible. We need to make protest and dissent as normal as breathing. And then we need to go deeper than that.
As I shuffled through the canyons of midtown, I felt that I was walking along my 22-year old self. I was 22 in 2003, protesting the start of the Iraq War in 2003. The same streets, the same feelings: That we were part of a massive movement, that it not just about one issue, but many, that it was about putting forth a fundamentally different view of the world and of public policy, that we wanted a future that wasn’t based around violence, corrupt power, and scapegoating a vulnerable population. I was marching with Keight then too and it was one of those moments where I felt time folded in on itself and then I realized: 22 years old was half my life ago.
I still feel like the voice of that 22-year-old I was, or wanted to be, follows me around though. That person is both idealistic, perfectionist, and relentlessly sincere. She is also cynical, rigid, deeply judgmental, and dismissive. She is heartbroken that the history of the world has been shaped by violence, and so angry that time and time again, power asserts itself through violence, scarcity, and scare tactics. She is also kind of a jerk.
This inner-22 year old is an anarchist, yes, but is much crueler and more dismissive than any actual practicing anarchists I’ve actually known. These real-life anarchists tend to be deeply empathetic, idealistic, and steeped in radical theory and actively practice mutual aid. But this 22-year old insists on activist purity, or nothing. She is the imagined embodiment of all of my worst qualities. My inner critic in (almost) human form.
Later that night I played a show with Skirting, as well as our friends A Bird at War with the World and The Roulettes. All women and femme-identified people, most of us over 40. On stage I carried my hastily made protest, “Stop Obeying in Advance.” The night was sweaty and electric, one of those shows where you feel in the zone and transported from the back of a neighborhood bar in South Brooklyn to a place of possibility and energy, a place where you do feel another world can be possible, because the people in this room are going to make it. For me, this is the enduring power of punk and DIY. It’s also why I specifically insist on whenever possible, sharing the stage with other women and queer-identified bands. There’s a sense of solidarity and also never a question of why you are there or why you should be there. No one challenging your rock credentials or saying that you’re so “different” or sound like the only other band they’ve heard with women playing in them.
It was a day that gave me what I needed emotionally and politically, that reminded me of the power of creativity and community. But then my inner 22-year-old anarchist piped up. Didn’t I know she insisted, that the Hands Off protests were white washed, organized by Democratic strategists and not grassroots, that they couldn’t possibly bring any real change and if people just wave a funny sign and go home and feel they’ve done something they still haven’t actually done anything. Don’t I realize that simply opposing fascists isn’t enough? That we need to tear the whole system down first to rebuild something better?
She took a swig of her Nalgene water bottle covered in stickers (my 22-year-old anarchist is straight edge, as I was at 22), tucked in her silkscreened, obscure punk band t-shirt, and let out an exasperated sigh. Protesting she continued, is not a direct action. Instead, we could be blocking arms shipments to Israel and ICE deportation flights, and setting up community intranet for when corporations and the government shut internet communications down.
My inner 22-year-old anarchist is a real thief of joy.
She’s also not wrong. I understand her analysis, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t be also taking direct action, but that kind of action isn’t available to everyone. Resisting is going to take all of us, in multiple forms. I also can now see, at (almost) 44 what she (me) could not when I was 22. She wants direct action to change the world. She wants to change the world. Herself. Right now. She doesn’t yet realize that community, and commitment are a lifelong process that needs to change and evolve as the world changes and evolves.
After the Iraq war protests failed to stop Bush’s invasion of Iraq I was devastated. It made me doubt the power of protest and assembly, because if the largest protest in history (until the Women’s March in 2017) could not achieve our objective, what was the point? I turned to cultural work and education, thinking that was where I could express myself politically, but was even further discouraged that could “do anything” when an (anarchist) friend told me that I wasn’t an “organizer” because I “organized events, not people.”
Thinking about that phrase still hurts.
I started to realize that my dark feeling of failure wasn’t helping when I read Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark when it was republished in 2015. I realized hope, and action, is a long game, and that our actions both massive and small add up to changes we cannot yet see or know, but we have to trust they will create change, but it’s not a one-to-one results (ie. I protest X therefore Y happens). Solnit reiterated these ideas in her closing speech at the San Francisco Hands Off rally, reminding us that,
“I talk a lot about hope. Hope is not optimism. Optimism says everything will be fine. Hope says we don't know what will happen but if we show up, if we stand up, we can maybe seize the chances. Hope makes friends with uncertainty, takes it by the hand and guides it toward our desires, hope grabs the possibilities. Hope recognizes the future is made in the present, it's made by what we do and don't do.”
We need to be in it for the long haul, Solnit reminds us, we need to keep showing up, keep using all that’s in our power and ability, even when it looks impossible, even when it’s scary. We don’t know what comes next, but it’s up to us to invent it. She says,
“I am not saying we will do this. For that we'd have to be patiently passionate and passionately patient. We'd have to stick to our principles, keep showing up and keep standing up even when it looks bleak. We have to do the right things even when the consequences of our actions might not be immediately obvious. We have to persevere even if it is scary, and by that we, I mean those of us least at risk on behalf of those most at risk. We can do this.”
My 22-year-old-inner-anarchist (because she is 22) doesn’t understand the long haul because she hasn’t yet lived it. 22 years old was half my life ago, which seems impossible, because I already was sure I was an adult at 22, much less sure than I am now.
At (almost) 44 I can look back and see so much of what my inner-22-year-old cannot. I can see my own consistency towards living my values, despite the despair that characterized so much of my mid-20s and 30s. I can see that I’ve committed to making art, through writing and music, to working for organizations I believe in that hopefully make the world just a little bit better, to organizing locally with my neighbors, to supporting causes I believe in. I’ve marched, called, door knocked, built community through events (which yes are organizing), donated, raged, rocked, and written in service to my vision for a better world for nearly three decades. And I hope to keep doing so for however long I’ve got.
I was a 22-year-old anarchist, yes, but now I’m a 44-year-old realist who tries to hold on to those ideals and passions that inflamed me at 22 and still do. I just have less of an ego, less thinking how can I solve a worldwide problem of power and oppression singlehandedly and instead think of how can I be in service to justice, community, and those who need support the most, however imperfectly.
Maybe I will look back at this post, tomorrow, or further in the future, and say my inner 22-year-old was right, that what we thought was resistance was just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but I hope she’s wrong.
There’s more protests today, and more planned for May 1st, and there will be more after that. See you out there. There’s a lot of rumors swirling about what might happen, there’s a lot of scary stuff that’s already happening and has been happening for quite some time. But we need to keep showing up, keep practicing compassion to ourselves and others, not letting our cruelest critics, those inner perfectionists, keep us paralyzed and silent, thinking we’re powerless unless we’re perfect.
xox,
eleanor
PS. I’m back in the desert and for my high desert friends, I hope you’ll join me May 4 at the Flamingo Heights Community Center for Flamingo Fest, our re-opening party. 12 - 7, drop by for a maker’s market, a signature cocktail, food by Citali Tamales, Friendo Burger, and Galaxy Pies, tea from Milk Thistle, music by The Kearns Family, a collaborative art project, and to connect with local nonprofits and community resources. We need each other more than ever and strengthening community ties means strengthening our resilience, compassion, and sense of possibility. We can’t wait to see you!
PPS. Anarchist friends, I am sorry to over simplify what you believe in and so boldly work for, I am indebted and grateful to the work you do.
Currently reading: A Map of Future Ruins by Lauren Markham