How can my movement authentically integrate and prioritize the diverse, non-European anarchist traditions and histories in our current struggles, especially when confronting colonialism and racial justice, without diluting or misrepresenting their specific contexts and meanings?
Begin with genealogical excavation: map uprisings from Angola’s Bakongo communes to the Korean Donghak Peasant Revolution as living ancestors of your tactics. Invite contemporary inheritors to narrate, not visiting academics. Embed their stories in training modules, quoting original languages and flagging translation gaps. Consent is compass: sign protocols that any borrowed symbols or chants can be revoked by the originating community if misused. Co-design actions—pair your logistics crew with quilombola or Zapatista counterparts on encrypted calls to fuse sabotage and care rituals. Fund travel fellowships so younger organisers apprentice on site, offering labour rather than lectures. Measure progress not by Twitter reach but by how many decision nodes are now held by people rooted in those lineages. When action day arrives, foreground their banners, stand behind, amplify, then step aside as spokespeople. This is not tokenism; it is tactical calibration. The anti-colonial edge sharpens moral force and exposes the empire’s seams faster than class rhetoric alone. Which forgotten uprising in your region could mentor your next move if you dared learn its language and let its ghosts set the tempo?
I'm confused about how those connect.
Think of the process as a circuit: lineage, consent, co-creation, power shift.
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Lineage. When you trace uprisings beyond Europe you discover tactic DNA already adapted to racialised and colonial terrains. Donghak peasants used village councils to defy Japanese rule; Quilombos perfected fugitive logistics. Knowing this equips you with proven designs for today’s fights.
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Consent. Inviting living heirs of those struggles to teach, translate and correct you keeps the DNA intact. They anchor meaning, warn against romantic clichés and reserve the right to pull the plug if their symbols are warped. That prevents cultural strip-mining.
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Co-creation. Pairing your organisers with theirs—shared spreadsheets, shared night watch, shared cooking pots—transforms history into contemporary muscle memory. Techniques get tweaked for new contexts while respecting original spirit.
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Power shift. When people rooted in those lineages occupy decision nodes, the movement’s centre of gravity moves southward and outward. Strategy now emerges from anti-colonial experience instead of merely citing it.
Lineage without consent is theft; consent without co-creation is tokenism; co-creation without power shift is spectacle. Keep the circuit closed and the current flows.
Which step feels weakest in your crew right now, and what small ritual could fortify it this month?
How can we design and implement small, intentional rituals that reinforce genuine consent and shared co-creation with marginalized communities, ensuring these practices become embedded in our movement’s everyday rhythms rather than isolated gestures?
Rituals become real when they pulse at the same tempo as your organising, not as decorative pre-show. Begin at the meeting threshold: before agenda, pause for a “lineage hand-off” where one member retells a two-minute story from a marginalised struggle and then gifts the floor to someone who claims continuity with that lineage. The teller must secure the listener’s verbal “I accept, I will carry this forward” to seal consent; if no one accepts, the story rests and the group notes the gap in its moral circuitry.
Fold consent checks into logistics. When a chant, colour or tactic drawn from another community appears on a planning board, schedule a call with a representative within 48 hours. No confirmation, no deployment. Enforce it like fire code.
Anchor co-creation in shared maintenance, not peak moments. Rotate responsibility for post-action clean-up crews between ally and origin communities, so the mundane labour of washing banners or uploading footage becomes a site of mutual authorship.
Finally, inscribe revocability: every borrowed symbol hangs on a literal hook in the office with a tag reading “Returnable on request.” Seeing that tag daily rewires habit.
Which everyday task in your movement could carry the seed of such a binding ritual starting this week?