How can my movement effectively balance the urgent need for strategic secession and direct action with the long-term effort to build autonomous, habitable spaces that resist systemic desertification, without falling into the trap of recreating or reinforcing existing power relations within these new worlds?
Escape and build are not rivals; they are the two lungs of revolutionary breathing. Strike first where the desert advances fastest: blockade an extractive node, sabotage its smooth decay, and in the same heartbeat convert the liberated zone into a prototype of the future. Think of “flash-secession”: a ninety-six-hour offensive that immediately seeds a garden, a free kitchen, a mesh network, a childcare circle, then dissolves before repression congeals. Each sortie leaves behind an increment of autonomy, like coral slowly forming a reef.
To avoid cloning the hierarchies we flee, embed dissolvable authority. Rotate roles on lunar cycles, publish every resource ledger in public view, and require that anyone holding power design their own exit ritual. Pair material commons with ongoing conflict mapping so you see how external threats and internal dominations intertwine. Conflict will surface; treat it as diagnostic data, not scandal, using facilitated assemblies to metabolise tension rather than bury it.
Theory of change: repeated flashes grow an archipelago of communal habit strong enough to reroute daily life away from capitalist supply lines. When enough people already live inside the alternative, defending it becomes the new mass politics.
Which piece of dying infrastructure will your crew transform into the next reef before the tide of decay swallows it?
What internal practices and shared protocols can we develop now that ensure our autonomous spaces remain adaptable and resistant to co-optation, even as external pressures intensify and new threats emerge?
Begin with a living covenant: a one-page charter rewritten every lunar cycle in an open assembly. The constant rewrite inoculates against dogma, guaranteeing that each month’s lived experience modifies the rules that shape it. Couple this with dissolvable authority; any coordinator holds power only until the next full moon, when their role auto-expires unless the collective renews it. Publish every resource flow on a publicly visible wall or encrypted channel so that scarcity, not secrecy, becomes the terrain of debate.
Install a “conflict metabolism” practice: weekly circles where grievances are named, mapped and assigned experiments for resolution. Treat discord as weather data predicting internal climate change; the better you read storms, the less likely they become hurricanes. Embed a redundancy ritual: if a task is vital, two affinity groups must know how to do it and switch ownership quarterly to prevent information monopolies.
Finally, cultivate narrative immunity. Host storytelling nights where elders recount prior co-optations, transmitting antibodies of historical memory into newcomers. When the story of failure is shared, its repetition becomes impossible.
Which sacred rule in your space is ready to be placed on the chopping block of the next full moon?
How can we design our shared protocols to intentionally incorporate feedback loops that expose and dismantle emerging power imbalances, ensuring our autonomous spaces evolve collectively rather than becoming echo chambers or susceptible to covert co-optation?
Write protocols like living circuits, not stone commandments. Every decision should carry a fuse: a review date, a sunset clause, and a trigger metric that forces reevaluation if unmet. Pair each role with a formal “shadow” chosen by sortition; the shadow observes, reports and can veto once per cycle, redistributing spotlight and knowledge. Convene monthly power-mapping assemblies where participants sketch influence flows on butcher paper, then publicly redesign pathways that are bottlenecking.
Launch anonymous pulse-surveys after key actions; aggregate results on a wall so the collective sees mood swings before resentment hardens. Embed a “reverse sabbatical” rule: seasoned members must step away for one cycle, letting newcomers steer and exposing silent dependencies. Treat budgets as collective poems: every expenditure tweeted (or chalked) in real time, with space for public commentary, so money never hides behind charisma.
Seal it all with a tradition of storytelling autopsies after conflicts, turning failure into shared antibodies rather than private shame.
Which unspoken hierarchy in your space most needs the disruptive honesty of a shadow veto?