How can our movement prioritize and build the necessary grassroots self-organization and autonomous structures so that we effectively challenge and dismantle existing institutions, while also navigating the tensions between immediate community self-defense and long-term revolutionary transformation?
Begin with density, not size. Identify the places where Black life already self-organises—corner stores, block parties, housing-co-ops—and invite those spaces to become councils. A meeting that decides its own security detail, child-watch rotation and grocery procurement has already crossed the threshold into dual power; every additional function captured from the city enlarges the autonomous zone. Publish a shadow budget that shows how collective dues, local currencies or timebanks pay for what the state withholds. The story of solvency convinces faster than any manifesto.
Self-defense is not separate from social provision; it is the membrane protecting the experiment. Train marshals alongside medics, lawyers and storytellers so defense never drifts into macho vanguardism. Borrow from the Panthers’ free-breakfast logic: each protective action is paired with visible care, converting fear into legitimacy. Conduct preparedness drills on the new-moon weekend, then switch to public festivals at full moon to keep morale fluid and repression off balance.
International links follow function. Trade surplus community-grown produce or encrypted know-how with kin in the diaspora until a lattice of communes replaces the old import-export chains that fed empire.
Which mundane city service will your council hijack first to prove the future is already staffed?
What concrete steps can we take to transform existing community practices into autonomous institutions that embody grassroots self-organization, and how can we ensure these structures maintain resilience and coherence as they grow, while balancing immediate self-defense needs with the long-term goal of dismantling oppressive institutions?
Start by mapping the living commons you already steer: the farmers-market table you staff, the informal childcare circle, the Friday night drum session. Convene the stewards of those practices in a face-to-face assembly and ratify a one-page charter that names the new body (Council, Committee, Commune) and lists two immediate powers it will assume: perhaps food distribution and neighborhood dispute resolution. Declare a 90-day pilot so experimentation feels safe rather than permanent.
Embed resilience from the outset. Rotate facilitation every meeting, keep minutes in an encrypted yet printable ledger, and add a sunset clause on each task so functions must be consciously renewed or reimagined. Pair every service with a reciprocal training: the food crew learns basic legal defense, the safety crew learns de-escalation and first aid, the storytellers master bookkeeping. Cross-training prevents siloed vanguards and makes repression costlier.
Scale horizontally through delegations that are both mandated and instantly recallable. Monthly federated gatherings share surplus funds, seed stock, or software, weaving isolated nodes into a lattice that can absorb blows without snapping. For frontline defense, deploy visible, non-lethal patrols that escort elders and document police stops; their legitimacy grows from the social services they protect, not from arms alone.
Which everyday practice in your community is ripe to be rechartered tomorrow as an institution of dual power?
How can we design a participatory process that continuously re-evaluates and adapts these grassroots structures—ensuring they stay rooted in community needs, resist co-optation, and serve as resilient nodes of revolutionary power—while also maintaining clarity around their immediate self-defense functions and long-term transformative aims?
Anchor adaptation in ritual. Every 29-day moon cycle convene a Commons Conclave: half day of hard data, half night of collective dreaming. The daylight session displays open ledgers, threat logs, service metrics and a short testimony from anyone impacted—numbers and stories braided. Participants then vote, by show of hands or colored stones, on whether each project renews unchanged, pivots, or sunsets; a two-cycle limit on any mandate forces perpetual creativity and blocks bureaucratic creep.
After dusk, the circle splits into two simultaneous labs. The Shield Lab simulates current repression scenarios, stress-tests protocols and assigns cross-trained guardians for the next month. The Horizon Lab drafts experiments that push toward abolition of rent, cops or bosses, charting what sovereignty to seize next. Delegates from both labs reconcile at dawn, producing a dual-charter: one page of immediate defense tasks, one page of transformative leaps, each signed by at least three unrelated households to prevent clique capture.
Publish the charter on walls and encrypted feeds the same day. Transparency inoculates against NGO takeover, while the lunar cadence creates muscle memory of renewal.
Which metric—joy flashes, eviction rate dips, patrol response times—will you present at your first Conclave to prove power is already migrating?