Help Support Anti-Authoritarian Efforts In Solidarity with Migrants in Chicago

Announcing solidarity efforts in so-called Chicago to support migrants “becoming co-organizers within anti-oppression frameworks.”

We are a small group of Brown and Indigenous anti-authoritarians working with Tenants United in “Chicago” to support global south migrants who’ve been entering Chicago in rising numbers.

The manufactured scarcity, statecraft, ruling class depredations, and arbitrary borders are turning Chicago into what could be a pressure cooker if it’s not already–mind you, Chicagoans tried to unsuccessfully collapse or kill much of the government in the 2020 uprising for reasons that have hardly abated, if at all. Conditions in Chicago have only worsened since 2020 many would honestly say (those who are even here still to tell their story since at least 80,000 people have been socially cleansed out of the city since 2020).

Help new arrivals (migrants) in Chicago to become co-organizers and personal collaborators within anti-oppression frameworks. // Ayude a lxs recién llegades (migrantes) a Chicago a convertirse en coorganizadores y colaboradores personales dentro de marcos antiopresores. pic.twitter.com/OAtoDSPe8h

— Tenants United Hyde Park/Woodlawn (@TenantsUnitedHP) September 4, 2023

The problem, to be clear, is not our class siblings coming in, it’s the social engineering that is pitting people against each other. Nature provides everything we need. The colonizer illness throws everything in disarray with its arrogance and lack of restraint or limits.

Within that still strong hegemony, the nurturing forces in Chicagoland and abroad are vastly stifled.

To be clear, this did not begin around April of this year. To those who are only tapped into news cycles and the news’ ideas of what a crisis is and when they exist, it may seem this only started recently. But this particular crisis has been happening since at least January and maybe even last year (this type of work has always been a constant stream for me, so the lines of dates blur, I have to admit).

It has already reached levels that are stressing much of the mutual aid system of support and the government’s function, of course, is to modulate the scarcity it enforces, only just enough to leave people with enough surplus energy to attack each other instead of concentrating fire on the real enemies of all of our problems. The way things are going, I expect things to get increasingly difficult and worse before they get better.

Chicago is one of many important battlegrounds of the apocalypse the rulers have been carefully creating–it’s already here, though we must not give into the idea that victory is not possible. The climate change refugees of the future have already been pouring into the area, near the lakes that hold around 20% of the earth’s freshwater (if we cannot tap into a water abundance that exceeds popular understanding of how much freshwater is practically and ethically accessible). And the engineered inaccessibility of land and housing has been quickly increasing since 2020.

We cannot lose Chicago to authoritarianism. If it shall be where many will be forced to go, we have to maintain an anti-authoritarian strong hold around the lakes so that these places are able to nurture everyone in need.

We are seeing many victories and failures in the effort so far from anti-authoritarians, horizontalists and liberal mutual aidists, but these cannot demoralize us as long as we’re learning our lessons and adapting with them: the fruits of victories are sown in the fields of defeat.

Hopefully one lesson we are learning is that we have to popularize the need for worker self-managed takeovers, Land Back, etc. and certainly not by route of the “liberal”, “radical” or “good” NGOs, business unions, nonprofits, policy makers or advocacy groups. We need bottom up insurgencies from all corners of social life, whether they happen in full force right away or begin from a very slow start. Our job must be to build these things in their best forms ahead of the above-mentioned organizations’ schedules and notions of viability–their job is to criminalize them or make them legal as a means to destroy them or water them down, whether the leaders or rank-and-file of these organizations are operating in good or bad faith.

We will do what we can to support our siblings and children from anywhere in the world who come here and invite them to their birthright: to be peers in the struggle against the colonizer and authoritarian illnesses and the curers of them. Any donations made to our fundraising shall be used to that end.

Solidarity to all those involved anywhere in the world as well as to our peers in Chicago whom we are not bumping into enough in this work, if at all. Solidarity to all anti-authoritarian revolutions and revolutionaries in the world, especially those in exile like our Sudanese compañeres–these are only strategic retreats and preludes to a wonderful era of balance if our solidarity and self-organization is strong and clever enough.

Sorry if we cannot respond to you. We are a small crew who are also doing a lot of translation in this support system sorely lacking in translation or translator support–certainly translatorphobic, as is common even in anti-authoritarian relationships I have personally witnessed for a decade.