Over the past year, I happened to listen to three podcast series about people trying to create communities where people lived together and handled issues without resorting to coercion, with varied results.
I found them all fascinating, and I don't have any grand theory about what they all mean in. relation to each other, but I wanted to share them here because they're interesting.
1. Occupy: An Unfinished Uprising
I missed out on Occupy, both literally and ideologically—I remember being excited about it, while also feeling suspicious of it. Three years into the Obama presidency I was invested in the idea that change would come about through having smart, morally-driven people in charge of our institutions. Looking back, I wish I'd paid a lot more attention. This show, which is focused almost entirely on Zucotti Park, does a really good job of drawing out the general principles of collective decision-making that made it possible for amazing things to happen, as well as all the specific moments that led to things going south.
I've been feeling for a while that Rojava was a gap in my knowledge that I needed to learn more about—in fact I can pinpoint exactly when this feeling started: it was when I learned that noted Dirtbag Left personality Brace Belden had gone to Syria to join the fight against Isis with a cadre of feminist, maybe-anarchist-maybe-Marxist revolutionaries.
It's possible that you've never heard of Rojava. It was, until this year, a radically feminist, anarchist-adjacent Kurdish autonomous zone—a lot like a country, but not quite. They held their own for a long time against Isis, Assad, and the Turkish government, and created something really incredible. What you learn from this show is pretty mind-blowing.
This is a show about how an attempt to create an autonomous non-coercive community went very bad, and led to the murder of a sixteen year old child. It's a tough listen but an important one, if only because everyone in the world should know what an impressive and inspiring kid the victim, Antonio Mays, was, because that is not the narrative that became most common about him.