An Open Letter to Us (marking where I’m at post J28)

An open letter of celebration & recrimination to OO, a collective I find myself still distant from but still very much connected to & loving of:

Cheers to all of us/any of us that are still working towards inclusive, collective action arising from horizontal decision making.  It’s really fucking hard.

Cheers to all of us/any of us that are actively weighing our personal involvement & commitment to OO, as a single instance of the ongoing work to experiment, discover, learn & grow these methods & tactics & moments of functioning liberty & equality between people.

Cheers to all of us/any of us that are listening to each other, helping each other reflect, think critically & make choices, & rejecting divisive, controlling recriminations about “true commitment” or “authentic involvement” or other variations on ideological purity & guilt ridden self flagellation.

Jeers to those who dismiss all of OO b/c of any one set of mistakes, misdeeds, failures or flaws.

Jeers to those who claim their vision of OO as the only one that’s accurate or real, or OO itself as the only true or possible way to act for social justice & unity & against exploitation.

& I am guilty at times of all these errors, & possess in moments all these virtues.

The true anarchist says: “Here’s what I saw, what I think, & what I screwed up & what I got right, as far as I can tell, with all the rigor & honesty & specificity that I can bear.  I’d like to hear the same from you.”

The Nixonian speech writer says: “Mistakes were made.”

Also: if you take my word for what a true anarchist says, then FNORD.