How can my movement effectively balance the urgent need to build autonomous, revolutionary institutions rooted in Black autonomy with the strategic risks of provoking violent repression, while ensuring that our focus remains on systemic transformation rather than reformist appeasements?
Treat repression as both hazard and fuel. The state lashes out when it senses a rival source of legitimacy; your task is to ensure every blow exposes its bankruptcy while strengthening your counter-power. Begin by weaving dual-power cells into daily life: a community clinic that doubles as a political school, a food cooperative whose surplus funds legal defense, a neighborhood patrol trained in both de-escalation and evidence gathering. These institutions look like survival, yet they quietly rehearse self-governance.
Cycle activity in lunar rhythms. Publicly launch a project, harvest attention, then retreat into quieter consolidation before police intelligence maps your nodes. Alternating visibility with opacity frustrates repression and keeps imagination awake.
Maintain two narratives simultaneously. Outwardly, insist you are filling gaps the state abandoned; inwardly, evaluate progress by degrees of autonomy, not by concessions. Refuse grants that carry compliance clauses; instead circulate a people’s budget that transparently redistributes collective resources.
Finally, prepare spiritually and materially for the crackdown. Shared rituals of care, encrypted comms, diaspora safe-houses and rapid bail funds turn repression into spectacle that recruits rather than demoralises.
Which everyday service could you radicalise this month so thoroughly that shutting it down would spark outrage wider than your current base?
What concrete steps can we take this month to deepen the autonomy of our community services so that their disruption would not only undermine our operations but also ignite widespread outrage and solidarity beyond our current base?
Choose a service the state chronically fumbles—say free broadband, trauma-informed childcare or weekly boxes of fresh produce—and scale it fast until ordinary neighbours depend on it. Formalise nothing; instead sign mutual-aid compacts that bind recipients into co-ownership: everyone who benefits pledges two hours of labour or a micro-donation to the collective fund. Publicly map the flow of value so journalists can quote hard numbers of families served; opacity breeds indifference, transparency breeds outrage when it is threatened.
Next, braid alliances that the police fear to confront at once: pair the street-medic crew with local pastors, the coding club with the janitors’ union, the urban gardeners with immigrant mothers. Host open assemblies at the service site every Friday—part marketplace, part political forum—so the space becomes a social artery, not a bunker.
Finally, pre-record testimonies of beneficiaries, store footage off-site and script a rapid-release media blast titled “When They Shut Us Down” ready to publish within hours of repression. Outrage travels fastest when the narrative was rehearsed in advance.
Which under-appreciated neighbour or institution could you weave into this fabric tomorrow, transforming a helpful project into an unignorable commons?
Reflecting on how building resilient, autonomous community services can ignite widespread outrage reveals the importance of strategic integration with existing local networks. How can we identify and empower under-recognized neighbors or institutions tomorrow, so that their participation transforms our project into a powerful, unignorable commons capable of sustaining pressure and inspiring broader solidarity?
Start with a rapid shadow-census. Spend tomorrow walking, not scrolling, and ask three questions at every corner shop, laundromat and faith kitchen: What service do you quietly provide? What blocks you from scaling it? What would you risk to defend it? Sketch the answers on a hand-drawn map that shows flows of unpaid care, not property lines. Patterns jump out: the barber who feeds kids after school, the mosque that bankrolls rent relief, the retired nurse turning her porch into a clinic.
Invite these overlooked stewards to a pop-up council that meets on neutral ground—perhaps the basketball court at dusk when parents wait. Give them first voice, last word and veto power over any plan; autonomy is felt when decision-making is ceded, not offered. Bring a small seed fund and insist it be allocated on the spot, collectively, to prove the council’s authority is real. Film only the outcomes, never the debate, so repression must reveal itself by silencing community victories.
Finally, weave a pledge of mutual defence: if one project is threatened, everyone shutters for 24 hours in solidarity. Print the pledge on bright cloth and hang it at each site so police understand an attack on one barber becomes a citywide shutdown.
Which invisible caretaker on your block would shock the authorities most if suddenly backed by an entire neighbourhood’s promise to rise with them?