Faced with intensifying repression and state violence, there is an understandable inclination to seek safety by avoiding confrontation. But this is not always the most effective strategy. “Counterintuitive though it is, in a confusing situation, often the best, if not safest, place to be is the front lines, so you can get a clear visual grasp of what is going on around you.” -“How I Came to Be a Victim of Molotov Cocktail Friendly Fire and Lived to Tell the Tale,” an account from the demonstrations against the 2003 European Union summit in Thessaloniki, published in *Rolling Thunder #1.” My friend’s grandfather grew up in Germany in the 1920s. Being Jewish, he got involved in radical organizations and sometimes engaged in physical altercations with Nazis. In a memoir that he recorded for his family decades later, he describes the situation when the Nazis took power: “In January 1933, Hitler became chancellor. I thought we would now start a revolution, but actually nothing happened. The communists defected—often en masse—to the Nazis and the social democrats held out a little longer but ultimately dissolved their organizations.” In May 1933, when he was twenty years old, he learned that he was about to be prosecuted for having broken a Nazi’s nose in a street brawl. Rather than face trial in a judicial system controlled by Nazis, he immediately obtained a passport and boarded a train for Holland that same night at 8 pm. Some years later, the rest of his family died in the concentration camp in Auschwitz. This story succinctly illustrates a surprisingly common phenomenon. Had my friend’s grandfather not participated in open confrontations with Nazis from the very beginning, had he kept his head down and avoided trouble, he probably would have remained in Berlin and met the same fate as his relatives. By taking the offensive, he put himself in harm’s way—but paradoxically, in the long run, that worked out better than playing it safe. Likewise, participants in the guerrilla underground of the Jewish resistance were among the only ones to survive the Nazis’ annihilation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. In organizing to meet the Nazi threat head on, they developed a robust relationship to their agency, and this served them well when the only way out was to organize a daring escape from the besieged and burning ghetto through the sewer system. For members of targeted groups, the initial impulse is often to withdraw, to go into hiding. Yet when it comes to both individual and collective self-preservation, it can be wiser to act assertively at the beginning, while it is still possible to influence the course of events. Even if this goes badly, it can be better to bring the conflict to a head immediately, before one’s adversary becomes more powerful. If nothing else, this strategy has the virtue of making it impossible to lull oneself into a false sense of security while the threat increases. It doesn’t always work out this way, but sometimes, it’s safer in the front. Anarchists marching on the so-called “Summit of the Americas” in Québec City, April 2001. It was noon on April 20, 2001. My comrades and I had assembled alongside hundreds of other anarchists and anti-capitalists at Laval University in Québec City to march on a transcontinental summit intended to establish a “Free Trade Area of the Americas.” In the center of town, behind miles of protective fencing and thousands of riot police, George W. Bush and his fellow heads of state were plotting to override labor laws and environmental protections to enrich their patrons at our expense. The sun was shining. More and more people were arriving at the departure point. One group even rolled up a catapult. The police were nowhere to be seen. Still, I was anxious. Most of my experience of violence was subcultural—fighting skinheads, hardcore shows. I’d never taken on an army of police before. At a meeting the preceding evening, a local organizer had told us that it would be impossible to reach the fence around the summit—there were just too many cops with too much armor and weaponry. As the crowd began to make its way out of the university towards the street, I consulted with a more experienced comrade. “Should we hang back and see what happens?” I asked. “If we want to be able to see what’s happening, we’ll have to be in the front,” he answered, matter-of-factly. We marched directly to the fence surrounding the summit and tore it down. The police could not stop us. The “Free Trade Area of the Americas” was never ratified. Washington, DC, January 20, 2005. My friend’s advice served me well four years later, on the day that George W. Bush began his second term. That night, following the daytime march against the inaugural ceremonies, a second march surged through the neighborhood of Adams Morgan, smashing banks and corporate businesses and attacking a police substation. Some participants dropped an enormous banner across a building façade reading “From DC to Iraq—with occupation comes resistance.” We were attempting to compel the Bush regime to end the occupation of Iraq, which inflicted countless civilian casualties and later contributed to the catastrophic rise of the Islamic State. As the march dispersed, a comrade and I found ourselves among a number of people walking through an alley. Ahead of us, police officers appeared at the exit. We could have turned around and run the other direction. But then we would have been at the back of the crowd, unable to see what we were running towards. “Run, run forward,” I said to my companion. We were already running. We dashed past the cops just as they closed their line across the mouth of the alley. “Don’t let any more of them out,” I heard one bark to another. We were the last ones to escape. The police had blocked the alley from the other side, as well. They forced the people behind us to kneel in the snow for hours. Years later, the detainees won a settlement from the city, but it was better to get away. Denver, August 25, 2008. On August 25, 2008, in Denver, during the demonstrations against the Democratic National Convention, a couple hundred people gathered for a march that had been announced but never organized. We were still protesting against the ongoing occupation of Iraq and against capitalism in general. Armored police were positioned in groups of a dozen each all around the park and the surrounding streets, outnumbering the young people sitting around with black sweatshirts in their laps. A vehicle was supposed to deliver banners, but a rumor reached us that police had detained the driver. Yet just when it seemed certain that nothing was going to happen, a few young folks pulled up their hoods and began chanting. Who are these people? I recall wondering. What are they thinking, masking up and linking arms with hundreds of riot police surrounding them and undercovers at their elbows? What can they hope to accomplish? Nonetheless, the other people who had gathered for the march regrouped with them and they began marching out of the park. They only made it as far as the road, where the nearest squadron of police formed a line blocking their path and showered them with pepper spray. No protest had occurred yet, I had heard no dispersal order, and already the police were using chemical weapons. A comrade and I watched all this with dismay. There were still about two hundred of us, but the police were closing in from all sides and the crowd was disoriented and uncoordinated. It was a recipe for disaster. We were at the back of the crowd. But the back can become the front—it’s just a question of initiative. My comrade began shouting out a countdown. Others joined in, instinctively. Counting together concentrated our attention, our expectations, our sense of ourselves as a collective force capable of concerted action. And then thirty of us were sprinting over the grass away from the police line. Seeing this, the rest of the crowd fell in behind. In a few seconds, hundreds of people were running across the park to the intersection at the far side of the lawn, where police had not gathered yet. Now the energy in the air was electric, in contrast to the malaise and uncertainty of a moment earlier. We passed through the intersection, into which some enterprising young people pulled a municipal sign reading “Road Closed”—and suddenly, we were approaching the business district. The same principle served us well later in the evening when we saw a line of riot police fanning out across an intersection a block ahead. Without pausing to confer, my comrade and I bolted towards them. We reached the line of police and dodged between them before they could block our path. They had orders to create a barrier, not to chase us. We were safe. Washington, DC, January 20, 2017. On the morning of January 20, 2017, another comrade and I joined the march in downtown Washington, DC opposing the inauguration of Donald Trump. In the decades that had passed since Bush’s second inauguration, police all around the country had militarized, receiving bigger and bigger budgets even as politicians claimed there was no money available for anything else. This time, the streets were crowded with 28,000 law enforcement personnel. There was open conflict with the police as soon as the march got underway. The wail of police sirens, the deafening explosions of flash-bang grenades at close quarters, the acrid scent of pepper spray, the roar of police motorcycles, the sizzle of adrenaline—it was a terrifying situation, but the demonstrators around us were giving as good as they were getting. The idea was to set a template for resistance on the first day of the Trump administration, sending the message to everyone that no one should passively accept the intensification of tyranny. The longer we were in the streets, the more dangerous it got. When we passed Franklin Square again, doubling back on our tracks, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before we were surrounded. In downtown DC, between the intersections, the streets are like long stretches of canyon between the cliff faces of the buildings. I knew the police wanted to box us in and kettle us. Every time we passed through an intersection, I glanced at the intersections a block away on either side to see if police were shadowing us on the parallel streets, preparing to cut off our exit routes. Every time we moved out of an intersection into another stretch of canyon, I watched the intersections ahead and behind for police. Whenever we were moving between intersections, we were vulnerable. As we approached 13th Street, police on motorcycles passed us on the sidewalk on our left, attempting to overtake us and seize the intersection ahead. We were still hundreds of feet from it. I urged my companion to run ahead with me, and we sprinted past front of the march, past the bike cops and motorcycle cops, who began ramming their vehicles into the people immediately behind us. When the cops saw that a few of us were already at their backs, they gave up trying to form a line and once again focused on racing ahead of us. Police hate to be outflanked—they can’t risk being surrounded themselves. The clash at the intersection showed that the march was no longer in control of the territory around it. It was time to make our exit. We ran down an alley on our right shortly before the next intersection. A hundred others did the same. Those who continued forward were blocked by a line of police at the next intersection, and turned around only to discover a much stronger police line blocking them from behind. For two long minutes, the crowd paused in confusion and dismay. Some people towards the back of the march had already taken off their gear and were hoping to pass as civilians in order to make their way out of the area, not realizing that they were already trapped from all sides. The participants at the front of the march kept their gear on and linked arms. Someone called out “We’re going to do a countdown!” They counted down quickly from ten to one and charged directly at the police line ahead of them. The person at the very front of the charge held open a flimsy umbrella as they all ran blindly forward. Somehow, the umbrella protected them from the answering stream of pepper spray. Fifty of them broke through the police line and escaped. The ones who lingered, waiting to see whether the charge would break through before joining it, remained trapped in the kettle. Someone later posted a humorous comment on social media to the effect that the cheat code for the J20 Protest Simulator was to be always running at the cops holding a hammer. But there was something to it. Afterwards, watching police footage released to defendants in the subsequent court case, we saw that even after the police and National Guardsmen had tightened up their line, one enterprising individual had escaped simply by sprinting as fast as possible directly at them and ducking between two of them. Everyone who was detained was charged with eight felonies apiece—up to eighty years in prison—for the crime of being mass-arrested in the vicinity of a rowdy march. A few took plea deals, but everyone else stuck together, establishing a collective defense plan and confronting the legal system head on. In the end, after two trials at which all the defendants were declared not guilty, all of the remaining defendants saw their charges dropped. Years later, all of them received payouts from the state to settle the resulting lawsuits. It sounds like a metaphor, but I mean it literally as well as figuratively. Whether it’s a march or a court case, sometimes it’s safer in the front. The Block Cop City. Several years later, I was in Atlanta for the Block Cop City mobilization. Protesters had been trying to stop the construction of a multi-million-dollar facility to further militarize the police. In retaliation, the police had murdered one person and arrested a large number of people at random, charging them with terrorism and indicting sixty-one of them on trumped-up racketeering charges. Before the action proper, there were two days of deliberations at a local Quaker community center. Everyone was on edge. The goal was to try to march into the forest and occupy the construction site. Would we all be arrested? Would we, too, be charged with terrorism and racketeering? The discussions went in circles as people fruitlessly attempted to predict what would happen and negotiated their own risk tolerance. It was decided that there would be three self-organized blocs within the march: essentially, the front, the middle, and the back. Officially, this distinction was not based on anticipated risk, because the organizers could make no promises about what the police would do. But no one was able to consider which bloc to join without panning back to larger questions. How much do I fear the violence of the police and the judicial system? What am I prepared to sacrifice for this movement? Only the bold few who had made peace with their fears and committed to taking the front of the march seemed at ease. Even with the “middle” bloc, there was a lot of agonizing and bargaining going on. “I’ll be in the middle, but not at the front of the middle…” That night, I explained to my family what to do if I didn’t come home from the demonstration. Both of my romantic partners, independently of each other, asked me whether it was really that important for me to participate in this particular march. Couldn’t I just leave it to the younger activists? It’s safer in the front. I remembered this saying from earlier mobilizations—but thinking it over, I wasn’t so sure. How could it be safer to charge directly into police lines? The slogan distilled lessons drawn on my own experience, but heading into yet another dangerous situation, I was dubious. On the morning of the mobilization, we assembled at the park. Despite a few festive flourishes, the atmosphere was somber: a few hundred people risking injury, arrest, and prison time for the honor of an embattled movement. Many people had decided to stay home at the last minute. We marched out of the park in a column, everyone assiduously sticking to their particular position in the risk tolerance spectrum. As long as we were marching down the narrow pedestrian walkway, this made sense, but it made less sense when we emerged onto the main road and advanced towards the construction site. We should have fanned out to present a broad front as we approached the lines of police and armored vehicles blocking the road, but no, the crowd stretched out into what was almost single-file line, like lambs lining up for slaughter. Nonetheless, the ones at the front picked up speed, forming a V-shaped wedge with their reinforced banners and pointing their umbrellas forward to block the cops’ view as they charged directly into the shields of the skirmish line. The rest of us dragged along behind, holding the positions we had committed to holding—no less, and no more. The people with the reinforced banners pushed the first line of cops back until it was reinforced by a second line. Even then, they didn’t relent; they kept on pushing forward against the police. The cops lashed out with their batons, but went on losing ground. The bloc at the front of the march stuck together, protecting each other, acting deliberately. Maybe they were afraid, but it wasn’t fear that was determining their actions. Looking on from behind them, I was terrified. I was grateful I wasn’t in the front, having to make decisions. Police batons are scary, jail time is scary, felony charges are scary, but the truly frightening thing is responsibility. People will accept a lot of negative consequences in their lives just to avoid responsibility. And unfortunately, it’s impossible: try as we might, there is no avoiding the fact that as long as we are able to make decisions and take action, we are responsible for ourselves. That is true whether you position yourself at the front or at the back, or even if you don’t show up at all. I watched the front-liners ahead of me push both lines of police back until they reached a third line comprised of futuristic stormtroopers. No sign of the stormtroopers’ humanity was discernible beneath their military gear; not even their eyes were visible. They had completely removed themselves from the human community. The stormtroopers pulled out tear gas canisters. I watched in disbelief as they tossed the canisters one after another over the heads of the ones at the front into the middle of the march—into the midst of those of us who had hoped that others would run risks on our behalf, who had intended simply to be an appendage of others’ agency. Perhaps it would have been safer in the front, after all? Then everything vanished in a poisonous white haze. We staggered blindly back in disarray, choking and coughing. But the stormtroopers had gassed the rest of the cops, as well, and the other cops were not wearing gas masks. They, too, had retreated. Against all odds, the battle concluded in a draw. In the end, the only person who was arrested that entire day was someone who had opted to play a support role far from the site of the action. They were detained in a vehicle near the park from which we had set out. No one was charged with terrorism or racketeering. In all our anxiety, we had forgotten the greatest risk of all: that we might do nothing, that we would let ourselves be cowed into abandoning the streets. With so many people already facing outlandish charges, marching on the construction site was a risky proposition, but permitting the state to crush the movement would have set a precedent that would threaten other movements, emboldening the authorities to use the same tactics elsewhere. Sometimes you can only find out what the risks are by taking a chance. This time, we had gotten lucky—but in a way, we had also passed a test. Anarchists at the May Day demonstration in Bandung, 2019. Photograph by Frans Ari Prasetyo. It’s not really safer in the front. Staying home is safer—at least, it’s safer until the long-term consequences of abandoning the streets set in. Then nowhere is safe, and it turns out it would have been better to take some smaller risks earlier on. The anti-fascists who went to Charlottesville in August 2017 to confront the “Unite the Right” rally were putting themselves in harm’s way. One of them was killed; several of them were severely injured. But if they had stayed home, if they had permitted fascists to establish control of the streets, the whole world would have become more dangerous. The likelihood that we may be forced to fight the same battle all over again today does not take away from the fact that they won us eight years of relative safety. Even when all really is hopelessly lost, it is generally better to act boldly, sending a signal flare of hope across the generations, the way the Communards and the Kronstadt rebels did. In so doing, you at least preserve the possibility that others will be inspired to continue attempting to build the world you desire, so that one day, your dream might be realized—even if without you, at least due in part to your efforts. But that’s not where we are today. We face powerful adversaries, but the majority of people, including many of their supporters, have good reason to oppose them, as well. If we bring people together, if we demonstrate effective ways to fight back, putting our own risk tolerance at the disposal of larger struggles, many more people will eventually join us. There’s no reason to hasten into glorifying martyrdom or accepting defeat when the future is unwritten. Not everyone can be in the front all the time, of course. It can be exhausting. But the front isn’t a spatial location. Understood properly, it doesn’t necessarily require a particular kind of physical ability or skillset. It’s a way of engaging with events, of remaining focused on our agency, taking the initiative wherever we can rather than just reacting to our opponents’ initiatives. Everyone can open up a new front of struggle by identifying a vulnerability in the ruling order and going on the offensive. The more fronts there are, the safer we all will be. Facing the second administration of Donald Trump, many anarchists and anti-fascists don’t know where to begin. During the previous Trump administration, we fought hard against an adversary that was much more powerful than us, and won—only to find victory snatched from our hands by cowardly Democrats, who eagerly took over where the Republicans left off, disappointing so many people that Trump was able to return to power. But that is not a reason to give up, this time around—it just shows that all along, we were right about the nature of power, and we owe it to the world to demonstrate a real alternative. In countries ruled by fascism or other forms of despotism, the majority of people do not necessarily support the authorities; they have simply become dispirited, accustomed to passivity. Much more so than liberals, anarchists are used to being outnumbered and outgunned, to fighting against incredible odds. While Democrats make excuses for the fascists or even embrace their agenda, we should demonstrate that it is possible to take ambitious, principled action to resist it. If you feel despair, if you feel defeated, if you catch yourself dissociating or focusing on what our oppressors are doing rather than on what you can do yourself—that is territory that the enemy has claimed within you. Give them nothing without a fight. Stay focused on your agency. Every hour, every day, wherever you are positioned, there is always something you can do. Take care of yourself and those around you. Keep your eyes out for opportunities and seize them. We are in a fight—but it is a fight that we can win. It’s safer in the front. The umbrella charge on January 20, 2017. Further Reading We Fight because We Like It: Maintaining Our Morale against Seemingly Insurmountable Odds

January 18 is the Day of the Forest Defender, honoring the life of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta, and everyone else who has given their lives in the fight against those who would render the earth uninhabitable in the course of their pursuit of profit. This year, a call circulated for people to organize festivals of resistance in their communities on the weekend of January 17-19. Here, we share reports from some of these events. The situation is grim. Despite acknowledging that Trump represents fascism, Democrats have nonetheless welcomed the arrival of despotism, dutifully voting for new legislation targeting immigrants and doing their best to keep protesters out of the streets. Tech CEOs have followed suit, pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and crowding into St. John’s Church to worship at the feet of their new master. Elon Musk made the Nazi salute twice from the podium during the inauguration, leaving only just enough plausible deniability to confuse the most naïve. Musk has posted fascist dog whistles on Twitter before, even before he purchased it in order to reintroduce Nazis to the platform, ban anarchists, and promote the fascist agenda. From this point forward, nothing should surprise us. The incoming government has made it clear that they intend to inflict as much harm as possible on those who are vulnerable while concentrating as much money as possible in the hands of the ultra-rich. These are the central points of their agenda. Attempting to spread information about their misdeeds in order to provoke popular outrage is a waste of time. From here out, all that matters is developing the capacity to defend each other from their attacks while preparing to go on the offensive as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The faces of the oligarchy looked craven and servile as they lined up at the inauguration to toady to Trump. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the most rapacious, but they can only hold on to power by being completely subservient to its demands. Fortunately, not everyone is taking this sitting down. Anarchists around the country called for “festivals of resistance” the weekend before the inauguration in order to bring communities together prepare to resist. Here follow reports from a few of these. You can read the original call to organize festivals of resistance here, along with a list of dozens of events around the country. January 11 Sacramento, Chicago, and a few other locations hosted events a weekend early, building up momentum. Sacramento, California On Saturday, January 11, well over 600 people came together in downtown Sacramento for a community gathering at a local Methodist Church featuring workshops, skillshares, info-tables, and a key-note address from anarchist author and mutual aid organizer Dean Spade. The previous night, people had gathered to write letters to political prisoners. On the day of the event, hundreds streamed into the building, dramatically outnumbering the nearby Trump rally at the capitol, which brought out only a hundred people. The workshops included basic first aid, tenant organizing, food autonomy, anti-fascist organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid. Dean Spade spoke for over an hour on mutual aid organizing with the recent fires in Los Angeles in mind, and also talked about how we need to change the broader culture in our movements, bringing in more people and creating a home for people to grow in through different cycles of struggle. The event featured a well-organized security team and several zine tables and distros. No major problems occurred. So much pizza was ordered from a local business that the owner told one organizer, “This is bigger than Dave Matthew’s Band.” Crash into this, Dave! January 17-19 Over two dozen cities hosted Festivals of Resistance this past weekend. Brooklyn, New York From noon until after 9 pm, Interference Archive had a packed house as people participated in a marathon of presentations and skillshares, concluding with a film screening. Elsewhere in Brooklyn, people courageously redecorated a billboard. Here follows their statement. Footage of the billboard in Brooklyn. Today, thousands of people across the world organized events and took collective action in honor of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. Tortuguita died defending the Weelaunee Forest. January 18, the Day of the Forest Defender, commemorates their 26 years on this earth and their steadfast commitment to collective liberation. Their spirit is alive in our resistance. We, the writers of this message, took over a billboard on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of NYC’s largest highways, used by 130,000 vehicles daily. We covered a CopShot police billboard—that recruits informants with a $10,000 bribe—with a tribute to Tortuguita and all land defenders. In the context of a city that spends $29 million dollars a day on policing, off the side of a highway that displaced thousands of families with a stroke of a pen, we replace the state’s cowardly propaganda with a commemoration of land defenders’ sacrifice and struggle. Collective memory animates our will to destroy this empire that is killing us and our planet. As the US funnels billions into building Cop Cities across the country in its latest attempt to repress us, they concede what we already know—that rebellion is inevitable. Viva Tortuguita and all land defenders. We will destroy this empire, with Earth as our witness. The billboard before it was improved. Central North Carolina The weekend opened with a concert and dance party on Friday night. On Saturday, the Festival of Resistance in Durham, North Carolina drew 300 people for four hours of workshops running two or three at a time. Visitors could take their fill of free material from a dozen literature tables representing various mutual aid and community defense groups; some of those have been around for years or decades, while others emerged out of the assemblies that followed the election in November. Food Not Bombs provided a full hot meal, there was a busy childcare space. The events continued on Sunday with four more hours of workshops in Chapel Hill, followed by a screening of a film about Rojava that concluded with a discussion featuring the director. A projection at the entry to the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina. Gary, Indiana Following up outreach events in Chicago, more than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport to demonstrate against the role that it plays in deportations, which Trump has been threatening to ramp up as part of his program of doing harm to undocumented people. You can read one report on the action in Gary here: The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer. Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press. The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression. Minneapolis, Minnesota About thirty people attended a movie screening of Fell In Love with Fire, including many new faces. In the discussion following the film, many participants related their experience in the George Floyd Uprising to the uprising in Chile, reflecting on how to fight the new Trump regime. The evening concluded with writing letters to prisoners. People were very engaged and took a lot of zines and posters. Oakland, California About 150 people, mostly anarchists, marched to an abandoned OUSD [Oakland Unified School District] building, broke in, and held an assembly in a courtyard inside the premises. A dozen people spoke about various existing projects and how to get plugged in. Then, there were six breakout groups to discuss strategic horizons related to Antirepression 2, International Solidarity Housing Immigration Community resiliency/disaster relief, and Other. Afterwards, at 5 pm, a dance party got underway at the amphitheater at Lake Merritt, and people reconstructed the George Floyd memorial there. Olympia, Washington In Olympia, a coalition of local organizations and people from different political scenes organized a big-tent “People’s March.” The more anarchist contingent within the group advocated to attach a Festival of Resistance directly after the march. Dozens of organizations sponsored the events. The event was diverse, well-attended, and notably intergenerational. The rally before the march drew about 1000 people. There were several speakers, including a speaker for Palestinian liberation, a recorded speech from local incarcerated pan-Africanist Tomas Afeworki, and a speaker and translator from La Resistencia, the group dedicated to shutting down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. There was also a moment of silence for a beloved long-term organizer, a participant in the organizing group behind the event, who passed away a week earlier. The march began with a local Indigenous activist performing a drum song; in the back, a marching band kept time. Because of the ties between anarchists and other local activists, there was a lot of good faith participation. It appeared that the black bloc of about 20-30 people designed its splinter march with consideration for the family-friendly march, diverting police attention elsewhere. A little vandalism and graffiti occurred, to only a few people’s dismay; most in the march seemed unconcerned. The march ended at the capitol, where people promoted a brand-new announcements-only Signal thread modeled on Austin’s Sunbird. A couple more speakers closed out the march. The Festival of Resistance started immediately afterwards at a location only a few blocks away. The building was packed from the beginning. Probably 150-200 people circulated through it. This was the real aim of attaching the two events. Food and drinks were served. Several organizations set up tables—letters to prisoners, the Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project, zine distros, and the like—and people mingled and ate for an hour before the sessions. Then, there were announcements, a toast to our dearly departed, followed by two rounds of discussions and workshops. The workshops included direct action 101 (with a local history flipbook collecting printed communiqués), resisting repression, and the history and culture surrounding the local Artesian Well and the struggle against its enclosure. There were topic-based facilitated discussions, as well. Many people expressed the desire to keep the ball rolling and repeat this model in order to try to continue the conversations rather than having to begin again from scratch. In retrospect, it would have been ideal to have already planned a future event that people could put in their calendars, or an activity that could facilitate people generating something like that together. Providence, Rhode Island Following the Providence Festival of Resistance and words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades, some people marched to the Atwells Avenue overpass and hung a banner over I-95 reading “Revenge for Tortuguita—No More Presidents.” Richmond, Virginia Up to 500 people attended the Richmond Festival of Resistance in the course of the day. Many contributed names, remembrances, or tokens of other martyrs to the altar honoring Tortuguita. In addition to celebrating grief together, Richmond’s “Festival of Resistance,” advertised locally as the inaugural “People’s Assembly,” included a full day of tabling, workshops, panels, and free food. The gathering launched a new initiative, the People’s Assembly, a recurring venue for citywide coordination and strategy building. The idea is to hold citywide assemblies in each season, building from the neighborhood assemblies that many people left this gathering inspired to begin. The altar to Tortuguita in Richmond, Virginia. Tucson, Arizona Less than a week in advance, a handful of friends decided to hold a humble “Parade of Resistance” on the Day of the Forest Defender. With only three days’ notice on a busy weekend, 30-40 people gathered in a park while members of a local brass band played a short set. The parade then took a one and a half mile route through the part of town with the most pedestrian traffic. The sound system was bumping a cumbia mix made by a comrade who recently passed away. The vibe was fun and playful, and generally very well received by bystanders, some of whom joined in, dancing in the street for a block or two. The cops arrived about halfway through, but people ignored their orders to vacate the street, and they resigned themselves to redirecting traffic for us. Their investment in a “progressive” image often complicates their efforts to assert control. The messaging was an experiment in vagueness. The only banner read “Towards a Free World”; it was accompanied by colorful butterfly puppets. A few paraders distributed pamphlets with accessible language calling for revolutionary action and transformation. On the back, a flier promoted an upcoming “Festival of Rebellion” on February 15. The march ended at sunset at a classic spot for punks and train kids. Across the tracks, there was graffiti honoring Tortuguita and our dear friend who has just passed away. The dance party continued into the night with a bonfire and more graffiti. Ultimately, it was a nice morale boost and very worthwhile, considering what a light lift the organizing was. It gave some of us a chance to get out in the streets without demanding a bunch of work from an already overloaded network. Definitely better than doing nothing. Hopefully, it created some momentum to carry forward.⁩

It’s time to take stock of the year have just lived through and get oriented for the year ahead. Here, we review the events of 2024 and our own contributions to the fight for a better world. A year that began amid genocide in Palestine and war in Ukraine and Sudan is concluding as Donald Trump prepares to return to power. This has grim implications in the United States, where Trump has explicitly promised to carry out “the largest mass deportations in US history,” but also elsewhere, as Trump may attempt to seize new territory, permit Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to resume invading Syria in order to carry out ethnic cleansing, and make deals with other fellow autocrats at everyone else’s expense. From this vantage point, we can see that we have been living through the rise of a new reactionary nationalism that is now positioned to supplant neoliberalism as the dominant political paradigm. It has been gaining power almost everywhere—from Russia to Italy and Germany, from Brazil to Indonesia. It is clear now that the Biden era did not interrupt the rise of autocracy, but simply represented a stage of its rise, during which liberals demonstrated that they, too, were eager to militarize the police, fund genocide, and normalize extrajudicial violence—even if that meant preparing the way for an authoritarian regime that will do away with democracy as they knew it. For decades now, we have been fighting on two fronts against neoliberalism and fascism. These are challenging conditions: winning a battle is no guarantee that we will not have to fight that battle again and again, and every time we lose a battle, we are forced to fight it once more, but on worse terms. That makes it all the more important that the ways that we fight demonstrate our values and reflect the sort of life we consider worth living. As 2025 begins with an explosion in Las Vegas and an attack in New Orleans, it looks like we are in for a bloody period. As we have already seen in Trump’s aggrandizement of various murderers and, on the other side of the battle lines, in the support for Luigi Mangione, this era is shaping up to be a clash between different kinds of violence. It is not the future we would have chosen, but the story is not over and there may be better days yet to come. This year, the challenge will be to fight as hard as we have to in order to defend ourselves and our communities while nourishing the parts of ourselves that are imaginative, that are tender, that can not only desire a better world but believe it into being. We will have to do these things in the midst of turmoil, rather than waiting for more peaceful times. We can do this. Happy new year, dear comrades. Footage from an anarchist demonstration outside a jail on New Year’s Eve, 2024. Resisting the Police State The militarization of the police continued throughout the Biden era, creating the conditions for Trump and his supporters to ratchet up state violence even further. Seeking to document the proliferation of “cop city” police militarization projects, we published an incomplete list of such projects around the country, along with a report from a protest against one of them in Lacey, Washington. Not surprisingly, the rate at which police murder people has also continued to increase. When police in New York City attacked a person they accused of dodging the fare on the subway—opening fire, shooting the suspect, a police officer, and multiple other people who happened to be in the station—we reported on a collective fare strike action that people organized in response. Finally, in a massive history and analysis, we explored the history of the Stop the Sweeps campaign in Austin, Texas, aiming to distill lessons about autonomous organization to aid revolutionaries elsewhere in future struggles against police violence and dispossession. Climate and Capitalism The floods of May 2024 inflicted the most damage of any climate event in Brazilian history. Similar catastrophes occurred in Spain and elsewhere around the world. We circulated reports from anarchists who responded to these disasters, including anarchists in Appalachia who experienced Hurricane Helene. Panning back to show these events in context, we published an article by Peter Gelderloos exploring why the strategies that mainstream environmental movements are employing to halt industrially-produced climate change are intended to fail. Finally, we designed two posters—”Capitalism Is the Dance of Death” and “Capitalism Thrives on Death.” We mass-produced a sticker version of the former. Solidarity with Palestine Throughout 2024, the Israeli government continued its project of carrying out a genocide in Gaza to make way for its colonial ambitions. We have published several perspectives from people in the region making the case for an anti-colonial understanding of the situation and exploring what it means to act in solidarity with Palestinians. When students at Columbia University and Barnard College set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide at the hands of the Israeli military, we immediately circulated coverage from within the movement, as well as a thorough history of the campus occupation movement of 2008-2010. We did the same thing when students at Cal Poly Humboldt campus occupied a building in solidarity, precipitating a showdown with police from throughout the region that raised the bar for campus occupations with a bonk heard round the world, a bonk for the ages. As the Gaza solidarity movement established campus occupations around the country, we documented them—from the University of Texas at Austin to the the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and as far away as Mexico City. Speaking of Austin, we also published a guide to running an announcements-only Signal thread based on the experience of organizers in Austin. In “Why the State Can’t Compromise with the Gaza Solidarity Movement,” we explored the strategic questions that emerged in the course of the occupations—questions that still face us today. A banner seen at a Gaza solidarity encampment in Mexico City, featuring the titular character from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, The Little Prince. The text reads “Until that which is essential becomes visible.” Sidebar: The Wall Street Journal On May 2, the editorial collective of the Wall Street Journal published a hit piece implying that our publishing project was behind the Gaza solidarity encampments across the United States. The New York Post followed suit the next day, copying the homework of their brighter and more industrious classmates. Not much brighter, mind you. To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you would think we were the ones pulling the strings behind the entire solidarity movement. But remember, Columbia University is a walled fortress. Security guards check the IDs of every single person who comes in and out. The only people who could initiate any kind of solidarity movement at Columbia were Columbia students and faculty, and that is exactly what happened. We publish reports from participants in movements like the one that broke out at Columbia, but we are not the ones radicalizing them. The violence in Gaza started that process—and the police did the rest. Capitalist genocide enthusiasts have only themselves to blame for the pushback that they are experiencing. We used to consider the Wall Street Journal to offer reliable journalism. Morally, of course, they were completely bankrupt—their whole project is to justify the tremendous disparities in wealth and power that capitalism produces. But if your raison d’être is to advise capitalists regarding their decisions in the market, you generally have to stick close to the facts, lest you give bad investment advice. Not so anymore, apparently. This time, they intentionally misrepresented the situation, bending the truth in order to drum up outrage and fear according to the format set by Fox News and even worse outlets. And this was not some rogue columnist, but the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal itself. This represents the best they are capable of, the highest priorities of the paper and its owners. Their coverage functioned as an offensive operation on the terrain of discourse, truth be damned, intended to discredit student protesters and make a target out of anarchists in general. The explicit death threats that the troglodytes who read their coverage sent us were an inevitable and presumably intentional consequence. In any case, they will do nothing to discourage us from playing our part in resisting genocide. On the contrary. Elsewhere in the Mideast In response to simplistic readings of the situation in the Mideast, we published a statement by Iranian exiles arguing for a consistent opposition to the Iranian government as well as the Israeli government and all the other forces complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. We also published a text about how Kurdish protesters in Turkey succeeded in preventing the autocratic Turkish government from annulling the municipal elections of March 31 in order to install its own representatives in positions of authority. When the Syrian revolution finally got underway again, we presented perspectives from participants in the revolution in western Syria alongside a report from anarchists in Rojava, the northeastern region of Syria. Finally, we published the reflections of a Russian anarchist volunteer in northeastern Syria. He described watching the Russian mercenaries exit the country after inflicting years of atrocities—hoping that one day, he might see the same soldiers lay down their arms in his homeland, too. Amid widespread suffering and peril, his anecdote represents a glimmer of hope. History cannot remain frozen forever—and all tyrants eventually fall. The Return of the Far Right In the background of all of these events, the buildup to the 2024 elections was like a ticking time bomb. For those who were paying attention, it was clear that the Republicans were likely to win. In a time when increasing disparities in political and economic power are driving many voters to seek a strongman to represent them, the Democrats doubled down on presenting themselves as the party of the status quo, permitting their own ossified bureaucracy to throw the election to their rivals. We identified this problem in July. Yet some were still surprised on the night of November 5. The truth is, the Democrats are responsible in many ways for the problems we face today, and no half measures can avail us in this situation. At the same time, the return of Trump will only intensify the crises we face. We immediately set out to mobilize in response, calling on people around the country to host assemblies and festivals of resistance in order to create the kind of connections that people will need to protect each other. As we see it, based on the experiences of the previous Trump era, resistance is our only hope to put a limit on how far this slide into authoritarianism can go. Further Afield Similar struggles are coming to a head all around the world, now. For example, for several years, locals and environmentalists have fought against the Tesla “gigafactory” outside Berlin—the biggest factory producing electric cars for Tesla in all of Europe. In March, we published an interview with a participant in a forest occupation blocking the expansion of the factory, alongside a translation of a communiqué by a clandestine anarchist group that carried out an act of sabotage that shut down the Tesla factory for at least a week, costing the company hundreds of millions of euros. As Elon Musk expresses his commitment to outright fascist politics more and more explicitly, forms of resistance are especially inspiring. Our correspondent in Argentina sent us a report on the opening of the reign of Javier Milei, titled “Six Months in a Neoliberal Dystopia”—a vivid picture of the rival forces and visions contending for the future everywhere. In August 2024, a wave of protests rocked Indonesia in response to political machinations aimed at anointing a successor to President Joko Widodo. We interviewed anarchist participants in different parts of Indonesia. Elsewhere, in Georgia, a protest movement erupted against the government’s shift towards Putin’s authoritarian regime and the grip of foreign economic powers upon the Caucasus in general. We published a report from the streets and an analysis of the causes and stakes of the protests. And More We didn’t spend 2024 just reporting on social struggles and analyzing geopolitical conflicts. We also published more thoughtful, personal texts, such as this meditation on love for Valentine’s Day and this personal narrative from the front lines of the opioid epidemic. For Steal Something from Work Day, we agitated in support of workers with sticky fingers, arguing that workplace theft should be understood as the most widely practiced form of wealth redistribution in our time: The United States Department of Commerce estimates that every year, “businesses lose $50 billion as a result of employee theft.” Let’s zoom in on that word, “lose.” They aren’t saying that $50 billion just disappears; it isn’t simply mislaid, nor willfully destroyed. They mean that $50 billion ends up in the pockets of the workers, rather than in the bank accounts of corporate executives. In other words, the problem is that the money ends up in the hands of the people who are doing the work that produces it. For April Fool’s Day, we published an extended rendering of the old CrimethInc. lightbulb joke. In a further ironic development, this text was earnestly translated into Spanish and Basque by a comrade in Basque Country who was not familiar with the concept of April Fool’s Day. “How many anarchists does it take to change a light bulb?” I asked. “We’re not here to change things for people,” said the insurrectionist. “The light bulb has to change itself.” “‘Communism is not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality has to adjust itself,’” quoted the communist. “It is ‘the real movement that abolishes the present state of things,’ which is to say, the darkness.” “So if we change the light bulb, it was communism that did it?” objected the insurrectionist. “Talk about gaslighting.” “Lenin says ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrocution of the whole country,’” the communist answered. Film This year, we completed our documentary about the 2019 uprising in Chile, “Fell in Love with Fire.” Following up our earlier coverage of the Chilean uprising, this film offers an inspiring portrayal of the tactics that gave demonstrators control of the streets, the organizing strategies that enabled the movement to act effectively while remaining leaderless, and the importance of time and space in revolt. In addition, we published footage of a play that the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective performed at the Zapatista encuentro in January, supplementing accounts of the journey to the encuentro and the gathering itself. We also produced a video walkthrough to accompany our guide, “How to Host a Haunted House.” History To celebrate the back-to-back birthdays of Louise Michel and Mikhail Bakunin, we published a narrative account of Michel’s exile in New Caledonia, followed by a virtual tour of Bakunin’s birthplace and family home, Priamukhino, including the museum documenting his life and the lives of his relatives and friends. Revisiting queer resistance to the Nazis in search of tactics and inspiration for our own times, we published “Queer Wanderings through the Other Germany and the Anti-Nazi Underworld.” To pass on the memory of more recent historical events, we published retrospectives on Reclaim the Streets, Occupy Wall Street, and the anarchist resistance to the fascist gathering in Charlottesville in 2017. In order to enable our slain comrades to continue to address the living, we published the diary of Dmitry Petrov, in which he offered an eyewitness account of the revolution of 2014 in Ukraine. We also contributed an introduction for a book documenting the life and times of Aleksei Sutuga, a Siberian anti-fascist who passed away in 2020. Obituaries On February 6, 2024, the billionaire Sebastián Piñera perished in a helicopter crash. Considering how many Chilean radicals met their deaths from helicopters during the dictatorship, Piñera’s death hangs in history as an unsurpassable example of poetic justice. At the end of February, we received an email from a person who signed himself Aaron Bushnell. He had written us to explain his reasons for setting himself on fire at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. In communication with his friends, we published their memories of him. He seems in all regards to have been an exemplary individual. Aaron Bushnell. Tragically, the anarchist Luciano Pitronello, also known as Tortuga, who had cheated death in 2011, passed away as the consequence of a workplace accident in August. We published a eulogy in his memory. Speaking in Tongues This year, we have published material in Arabic, Basque, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese, among other languages. As of now, we have over 200 articles available on our site in Spanish and Italian, and over 100 in German, French, and Portuguese. For a full listing of all the material we have published in languages other than English, you can start here. In addition, we work with people around the world to keep our works available in print in other languages and regions, as well. For example, this year, our comrades in Brazil did new print runs of three of our books in Portuguese: Recipes for Disaster, Expect Resistance, and Days of War, Nights of Love. We take internationalism and the project of building bridges between different communities and struggles very seriously. It is an honor to work with and learn from our comrades all around the world. If we can build vibrant connections and circulate new ideas and tactics as they emerge, we may prove more resilient than the global capitalist order that has created so many challenges for itself as well as for us. Stormy seas ahead. Appendix: New Print Material All of the following releases are available in our tools section. Please print and circulate them yourself! Posters and Stickers Click on the image to download the sticker. Click on the image to download the poster. Click on the image to download the poster. This is also available as a sticker. Zines Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine. Click on the image to download the zine.

The toppling of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was many years overdue. Yet the tragedies in Syria are not over. Israel has bombed hundreds of locations around the country and seized a considerable amount of land in the southwest, while Turkish proxy forces are threatening to attack northeastern Syria in order to carry out ethnic cleansing. As in 2019, when Donald Trump gave Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the green light to invade the country, we call on people around the world to engage in solidarity actions to discourage the world powers from permitting this to happen. To humanize at least one of the countless people whose lives hang in the balance here, we offer the reflections of a Russian anarchist volunteer in northeastern Syria who has participated in the revolutionary experiment in Rojava for many years. He describes watching the Russian mercenaries exit this country where they have inflicted so much harm, hoping that one day, he might see the same soldiers lay down their arms in his homeland, just as Assad’s mercenaries have. For more updates on the situation in northern Syria from anarchist internationalists on the ground, you can follow this Russian-language telegram channel or consult the website of Tekoşîna Anarşîst. I am composing these lines sitting on the cold and dusty floor, leaning against the wall. I really want to sleep. Over the past two weeks, I have lost all sense of what time it is—I have not often had the chance to be on the surface. Sleeping on a thin mattress in a common room is not the routine I am used to. We often fall asleep at different times. Sleep is interrupted by people walking from room to room, information being transmitted by phone and radio, alarms being raised because of possible SNA1 attacks on our position. To freeze under a swath of open sky, straining my ears over the beating of my own heart—can I hear Turkish drones in the sky? Are there artillery salvos, are there missiles flying? And so I sit here, hugging my machine gun and wrapping my face in a scarf. And the long hours of waiting drag on. Of course, I think a lot about the situation that has rapidly unfolded in Syria. I can’t shake the feeling that we are on the brink of a major war. Yet here, the view of the quiet villages occupied by pro-Turkish fighters on the other side of the front line can be deceiving. Everything looks calm; the fields between us are empty; nothing moves. In reality, this is the result of several years of war. The balance of precautions that has developed over this time: traps, mines, surveillance cameras and patrols on both sides—all of these narrow the possibilities for offensive action. Realizing this, I feel an invisible tension that stretches to the horizon in the direction of the enemy. This situation is periodically shaken by the arrival of artillery shells and gunfire. The people at the other positions around us are in a similar situation. There is a city behind us, and pro-Turkish fighters can try to break through us straight to it. Everyone in our position is ready to defend against any attack. In contrast to the daily reality on our part of the front, we are able to watch the news. Events are developing at breakneck speed. The Assad regime has fallen, Manbij is under attack by the SNA, Deir ez-Zor is in the hands of the SDF2 to prevent the Islamic State from capturing the city—and now Shehba has been surrendered, Deir ez-Zor has been handed over to HTS,3 there is fierce fighting in Manbij and the subsequent retreat. Almost a million people have been forced to leave their homes due to new hostilities. Israel has been bombing military infrastructure throughout Syria. A lot of contradictory and incorrect information is circulating on various channels. It is clear that information warfare and psychological war are being waged. This is intended to influence people’s perceptions of the situation, to shape the discussions and the general mood as well as the coverage that other media outlets provide, not to mention its effects on the participants in the events themselves. The news about the adoption of the green-white-black tricolor with three red stars as the flag of the new, post-Assad Syria occasioned special discussions among us. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria considers itself part of this Syria. In view of the history of this flag, which became a symbol of the revolution in the country and the banner of the uprising against Assad in 2011, this move is not surprising. There are also contradictions. HTS took this symbol into circulation. But it does not belong to them. Now an opportunity has opened up to make the project of democratic confederalism a possible option for all of Syria and beyond. Politically and in many other ways, Rojava is stronger and richer than HTS. The latter has just had a wave of success, while in Rojava, we have experience and a well-developed idea. The SDF would also prefer a political solution to the situation in Syria. Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi said that no one wants war here except for the pro-Turkish proxies. Watching all this, some quick and perhaps naïve thoughts flash through my head. Footage from cities liberated from the regime shows people celebrating the fall of the regime. I have noticed that there are almost no women visible among them. This seems like a significant contrast to what many of the rallies and marches in Rojava look like. The thought has also crossed my mind that it could become possible to see previously inaccessible places in Syria. After many years of dictatorship, traveling from Rojava to Damascus, for example, without “special routes” has seemed impossible. And what about the millions of people who were born and raised here? What about the Kurdish population, who for a long time were not even granted passports? What about those who were born after their parents were forced to emigrate from Syria? Or the generations who have known nothing but Assad’s rule and war? These reflections bring me back to the situation in Russia. Witnessing the broad Syrian opposition, millions of people watching what is happening with hope, packing their bags to return home, it is difficult not to think: what will it be like when the same thing happens in Russia? The Assad regime was guaranteed by Putin’s power; its fall has already completely changed the position of the Russian army here. Following the soldiers of Assad’s regime, who realized that they were no longer in danger from the old order and abandoned their equipment, weapons, and positions, the Russian army is also leaving. I watched with special feeling as the Russian columns passed by me at one of the positions. I peered into the faces of the soldiers, trying to understand whether they realized that all these years, they had been terrorizing the population with bombings, they had surrendered Afrin to the Turkish army, they had kept Assad’s regime alive—and now all this is over. Russian military aid to the Syrian dictatorship has ended. I do not think that those soldiers realized that they were looking into the eyes of a man from the same country as themselves, but who chose the other side of the barricades. As will probably happen in Russia one day, the fall of the regime here has created a space that must be filled by a new political system. HTS, the former Al-Qaeda in Syria, which is doing its best to appear “presentable,” is unlikely to be able to organize a new state without a quick collapse or a new crisis. Although they overthrew Assad, HTS is not a liberation force in terms of its values. Perhaps in Russia, we will also see the regime collapse thanks to forces that are far from the values ​​​proclaimed by the Rojava experiment. Women’s liberation, the coexistence of various ethnic groups and other identities, each with their own autonomy, communes—today, in the Russian Federation, these are not especially popular topics, even in the opposition milieu. Whatever the character of the force that overthrew Assad, it will stir up hope in the hearts of millions. It will also open the door for new ruling elites and their interests. Hope and enthusiasm are in short supply in the fight against Putin’s regime today, but they are necessary for success. Sometimes, we will have to endure deep contradictions and disappointments. In between my reflections, everyday affairs, and the organization of defense, our daily life is not without familiar things. An Arab comrade, who has been through almost all the fronts of the defense of the revolution, pours sugar into the teapot with full ladles, laughing and saying, “Dims” (Kurmanji for “syrup”). A cat named Myshka wanders among us, and we joke that she is part of the defense. A comrade next to me diligently writes Arabic script and shows her work to the Arab comrades, who patiently check her spelling. Sunrise is coming. We are ready, the strong sweet tea is invigorating, and a new day is ahead. Events are moving very quickly—every couple of hours something new and unexpected happens. What awaits us today? I don’t know. But the thought that we are standing in defense of the revolution and its ideals together with people of all ethnicities and ages from around Rojava, that each and every one of us is making a contribution, gives me strength and clarity. I hope that Rojava’s survival will bring victories to our anarchist movement, which, in my opinion, can learn a lot here in Syria. Syrian National Army, a proxy force serving the Turkish government. ↩ The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. ↩ Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a coalition of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups from northern Syria. HTS evolved out of Jabhat al-Nusrah, which began as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. ↩