All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

Let’s talk about how we actually organise, in grassroots movements, in radical alternatives, and yes, even in the broader currents of #mainstreaming. Like a river system, the real action is often happening under the surface in tributaries and undercurrents that shape how power flows and decisions get made. We can roughly split organising methods into two broad categories:The Horizontals (our grassroots tradition) is often celebrated, but rarely understood in practice. These organising […]

Let’s talk about how we actually organise, in grassroots movements, in radical alternatives, and yes, even in the broader currents of #mainstreaming. Like a river system, the real action is often happening under the surface in tributaries and undercurrents that shape how power flows and decisions get made. We can roughly split organising methods into two broad categories:The Horizontals (our grassroots tradition) is often celebrated, but rarely understood in practice. These organising […]