How can we incorporate the creative, decentralized tactics of post-left anarchism—like carnivalesque protest and tactical frivolity—while also developing strategies that confront and dismantle the systemic violence and racialized inequalities embedded within neoliberal societies without falling back into hierarchical or vanguard approaches?
Carnival ruptures routine, yet the confetti evaporates if no apparatus follows to grind injustice into dust. Begin by keeping frivolity but changing its load-bearing points: let street theatrics serve as public front-door to deeper, community-run infrastructures that target the material sinews of domination. A clown bloc blocks traffic while a food sovereignty co-op in the same neighborhood severs reliance on exploitative supply chains; each action tells the same story of reclaimed life.
Decentralisation remains sacred, yet coordination can arise through federated councils where frontline Black, Indigenous and migrant organisers hold veto power over tactics that risk worsening racialised harm. That flips the script: instead of a vanguard directing the margins, the margins curate the carnival. Pair this with structural jiu-jitsu: debt strikes, rent escrows, selective refusal of digital platforms that harvest our data. These levers choke capital’s blood-flow while the carnival captures imaginations.
Theory of change? Spark an epiphany that another way of living is already underway, then defend that revelation by withdrawing labour, money and consent from the old order.
Which ritual of joyful disobedience could you launch next week that simultaneously drains a concrete revenue stream from oppressive power?
What concrete steps can we take to integrate decentralized, carnival-like protests with targeted economic disobedience—such as rent strikes or platform refusals—so that our creative tactics not only challenge authority symbolically but also directly weaken the systemic foundations of racialized violence and inequality, without reverting to hierarchical command structures?
Start by mapping the city as a living circuit: mark where spectacle can erupt and where capital quietly harvests value. Then announce a roaming festival—music, masks, stencil workshops—that spirals through those hot-spots on a predictable rhythm, say every full moon. Each revel becomes a signal for an aligned economic refusal already prepared in neighborhood assemblies. When dancers appear at a landlord’s luxury development, tenants across town simultaneously redirect rent into a common escrow. When jugglers jam outside a data-broker’s office, gig-workers delete the parasitic app in chorus. The carnival masks the coordination, keeping repression guessing.
Decision-making travels horizontally by open, time-boxed councils convened online and in person. Any circle can propose a target; approval requires consensus of directly impacted groups plus at least two others willing to twin creative cover with economic teeth. Funds from escrow or boycott savings flow into a revolving strike bank, administered transparently on a public ledger so power’s traditional gatekeepers have nothing to seize.
The alchemy: joy generates attention, refusal drains resources, assemblies weave both into a rolling wave that no hierarchy could choreograph. Which urban pressure point could your next carnival-strike unveil first?
To integrate carnival tactics with economic disobedience, we’ve organized neighborhood festivals that serve as both celebration and coordination hubs—like block parties with political art and messaging. We directly link these to targeted actions, such as rent strikes, by using these events to announce and synchronize withdrawal efforts. Decision-making is collective, with all impacted groups involved, ensuring no hierarchy. Joy fuels the resistance, making it harder for authority to suppress, while the coordinated refusal hits systemic roots directly.
You are already fusing pleasure with pressure; now sharpen that fusion into a self-reinforcing cycle. Treat every festival as the ignition stage of a longer burn. Before the first drum hits, quietly seed strike funds, legal shields and rapid-response comms so tenants can hold out once the party glow fades. During the revel, unveil a simple metric—dollars withheld, eviction threats blocked, patrol stops documented—so the crowd feels the economic blade behind the confetti. Afterward, host smaller porch circles that translate euphoria into weekly tasks: escrow logistics, landlord research, app-deletion tutorials.
Keep the choreography asynchronous yet interlocking. One block’s rent strike reaches week three just as another launches, creating rolling headaches for property owners who cannot predict the next flare. Rotate cultural motifs—cumbia one month, Afrofuturist cosplay the next—to frustrate surveillance algorithms trained on repetition. Above all, codify consent protocols: any action touching livelihoods requires explicit, revocable approval from those most exposed to retaliation. That guards horizontality without bureaucratic sludge.
Victory arrives when landlords and platforms recognize every joyous gathering as a prelude to lost revenue and concede before the bass drops. What fresh sensory twist—scented smoke, holographic murals, silent raves—could escalate your next festival into an even costlier refusal?