The third and final installment of the series seeks to bring the lessons learned in the first two episodes home. This segment features an interview with Peter Gelderloos in which he describes his experience working to build transformative infrastructure in Catalunya.
Not all of us are so lucky to live near a large and organized movement like those described in part two, and that’s ok. For us to be truly organized as a global community, we need do work wherever we are. As Neto reminds us in part two, “We need to start from where we’re standing and from a reality that we recognize.” There are no answers, only strategies. This video seeks to provide guidance to anarchists just getting started organizing around the climate crisis. Different strategies work in different locales, social conditions and contexts.
Peter shares three urgent suggestions for those looking to organize around these issues:
Urgent Suggestion #1: A complete and Total Rejection of All the Institutions Responsible for This Disaster
Relying on those responsible for this crisis to save us is the worst thing we can do. It’s time to act collectively outside of the state and capital’s stranglehold over our lives to try to carve out spaces and networks that will give us the best possible chances of survival. Relying on nonprofits, elections, or authoritarian left movements has failed time and time again. We cannot afford to continue to misplace our trust in institutions that will not save us.
Urgent Suggestion #2: Pick a Project of Transformative Survival
The hour is seriously late. The sooner we get involved in organizing for survival, the better. If people in the territories you reside in are already working towards similar goals, it may be better to join them than to try and build a movement from the ground up. Sometimes we need to create new projects where there is a need for them and people willing to get them going. Building our collective autonomy may not appear to be directly related to our chances at surviving the climate crises, but it is! Any time we build our collective power outside of the state and capital we build power that is combative to the institutions that created this disaster, and that gives us the means to survive it.
Urgent Suggestion #3: Connect your project to a revolutionary web of solidarity
The climate crisis is a worldwide issue. We need to have a global response. Networks of people organizing around these issues exist all over around the world. We need to build an international web of solidarity and the more connections a web has, the stronger it will be.
