Hey all, I’m hoping this is the right comm for this kind of post. I’m really interested what brought my fellow lemmings to anarchism (or just radical politics in general). Was is a youtube video? A book? A conversation IRL or on the internet? For me personally it was a friend IRL who introduced me to an local anarchist collective.
Inherent rage at corrupt systems.
But I am no longer really an anarchist like I was in ny youth. Too much of a socialist these days. The statism got me.
Can you tell us more about that.
In short: sewer socialism.
I had spent years street protesting the war in Iraq, and had grown tired of trying to build community and organize in a college town.
So I moved out into a deep rural (and red) part of the country and got a job working in Public Health. This was well before covid and I just started working with grant money to help people retrofit and upgrade their septic systems.
It was a government job and it did more good for more people than I think any damage I did to police or federal property.
And from there I kept working and seeing benefits of public health and infrastructure. There’s a lot to the state and government that I don’t like, but public infrastructure is the valid basis of a state.
College towns are transitory as fuck. Non-student organizing in them is rough.
Your experience does remind me of what graeber says about why conservatives like the military in ‘bullshit jobs’.