Preface

"There is nowhere so much talk of liberty as in a state where it has ceased to exist." 

– J. J. Rousseau 

I have lost count of how many times I have heard from comrades asking, essentially, “Is it too late to take action to put a stop to the rise of fascism in the US?” My honest answer is that I think we are closer to a reckoning than most of us would like to admit. 

Protests and direct action are familiar to most Americans, and folx seem to understand the need to demonstrate. However, in order to make direct action possible and sustainable, we need to know we can still feed, house and clothe ourselves and our dependents while we protest or respond to crises. So many of us struggle to establish community support networks in our day-to-day lives, though, that we cannot expect to be prepared to participate in a sustained, national strike, or respond to widespread civil unrest, or weather an attack on our local power grid. 

Dependence on the state makes citizens more vulnerable to the abuses of state power. Until enough of us feel like we have support networks strong enough to weather uncertainty, lack of infrastructure, and the coercion of state authority then we cannot disengage from the system. 

Unlike other preparedness literature, this is not the place to seek advice regarding what items to stock your pantry with or how much wood to put up to last the winter. There are excellent guides of those types available everywhere. I have found that many of those guides focus on self-preservation, sheltering in place, and keeping your stores to yourself. Here, the intent is to help those of us raised with this kind of toxic individualism to learn the basics of community organizing in preparation not only for crises, but for collective action. 

The larger mission is to help create a decentralized network of community groups that can act quickly to protect themselves on their own territory while connecting with each other and existing organizations to enable communication and support mass mobilization. 

Like many of you, I have been feeling helpless and isolated. I knew I wanted to add something to the literature that provided practical, actionable steps based on a variety of settings. I started working with some of the new AI generators last year mostly for creative projects and job searches. During a break from my doom-scrolling, I wondered whether I could use what I had learned in order to collaborate with the AI to outline strategies, develop templates, and create coherence from my jumbled, anxious thoughts. 

I developed a syntax for working with AI that has been extremely useful; that being said, overall this work is a reflection of my many years of experience reading and practicing leftist principles. Although I am not solely responsible for the contents and structure of this work, I am responsible for any shortcomings and will work to revise and update as often as possible. Please feel free to adapt and revise as you see fit! Your experience will always be the most valuable tool in your arsenal.

This guidebook is a living document and simply a starting point. It is meant as a springboard for each of you to discover the people, organizations and built environment already around you while encouraging you to find ways to contribute to the safety and stability of your community. If you are one of the many people who feel fear and uncertainty about the days to come, I hope this guide will offer you concrete steps and strategies that help empower you to act. 

Before we can defeat the monster, however, we must name it. Fascism is here. The fragmentation of leftist organizations and activists leaves us without a united front. And although I think that our fragmentation may be one of our greatest strengths, it is time to weave a net together. Start at home, if you have one. Take stock of the resources and talents your household has to offer. Learn the streets of your neighborhood and take note of where things are: power lines and transformers, water towers, gas stations. As you’re moving through your environment, consider evacuation routes, where checkpoints are most likely to be set up during an emergency, and places where you and your Loom can rendezvous if you get separated during a crisis. 

Write it all down–pen to paper or printed, not just digital copies. 

We cannot wait any longer for systemic change from our government. Even as we watch our rights evaporate, our infrastructure crumble and civil governance unravel, we can weave the net that catches us. Consider that as you inventory, document, and organize you are helping create the opportunity for collectivist action that might eventually extend across your city, your state and our nation. 

Many of us that learned of the Holocaust can only imagine a genocide in the image of those death camps. Fascism, however rigid in its ideologies, is quite flexible when it comes to harnessing or exploiting whatever circumstances arise–whether war, plague, famine, or natural disaster–to first disable and then kill everyone that falls outside its narrow margins. We have seen this most recently in policies that have arisen to accelerate the COVID infection rate in our population, and to criminalize and terrorize the LGBTQIA+ community. 

We are in an active genocide, but the difference is that our people aren’t dying in camps. We aren’t being exterminated while huddled together, but in isolation: in the streets, at home, and in hospital beds. Why build costly gas chambers that might attract attention when there’s a virus on the loose that will do the job for you? Viruses don’t have a face or a voice or a will. But we have seen that fascism can bend the course of a pandemic to its own will, to meet its own ends, and veil the death wrought in its own name behind the veil of a plague. Be prepared should they turn to the veil of war next.

The only antidote to isolation is community. Remember, we cannot do this alone and, contrary to what many of us have been taught, we all deserve to be here. Our value as human beings is intrinsic to our existence. We do not have to “earn” the right to live and be at peace, any more than a sparrow does. In the words of Marx, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

We are legion. We are diverse. We are resourceful. We will prevail. 

Signed,

A Fellow Weaver

PS. Don’t be afraid to punch a Nazi.