BARSNYC – What Does Black Anarchism Mean?
This is lifted from an Instagram post by BARSNYC, we corrected a few typos and added links to the original texts.
[https://www.instagram.com/p/DCzWA0XvtrQ/?img_index=9]
Introduction
Black people throughout the African diaspora have been resisting, rebelling, revolting, and rioting against the systemic anti-black oppression since the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Black anarchism represents a subset of this broader tradition of resistance that continues to carry on the fight for total liberation and honors the struggle of our ancestors.
Zoe Samudzi
“The Funbamentalist”
“Black anarchy is chaos, because black life is chaos. Black life is surveilled, and its policed, and it’s destroyed prematurely. And yet, black anarchism is this praxis of understanding what it means to sustain that chaos. And it means mutual aid. and it means, trying to figure out what it means to make a word that is safe for black trans women. For black children. It means trying to figure out how we can think about justice outside of the carceral system, it means transformative justice, even when it doesn’t seem like an answer is ever achievable, and there is no answer.”
William C. Anderson
“State Reform Isn’t Enough”
“Black anarchism rejects coercive authority and oppressive top-down hierarchies as they exist across the entire political spectrum. It doesn’t pretend that anyone who claims (or has claimed) to be a liberator, speaking on behalf of the masses, cannot commit atrocities. And it recognizes that acknowledging this, rather than denying it, is how stronger movements will grow. Black anarchism means moving away from and transcending all leftists inundated with oversimplified other/or sectarian binaries. We are struggling for something much greater.”
Marquis Bey
“Anarcho-Blackness” [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/marquis-bey-anarcho-blackness]
“Black feminist anarchism cannot be contained by inclusion into any organization. It has to be a modality, a manner of walking that threatens to undo the city, steal back the body, and break all the windows because that is where anarchy happens. Anarchism that is not Black feminist is not doing anarchic work.”
Charlie
@charliebanga [https://linktr.ee/CharlieBang]
“Black anarchism means I don’t have to bow down or bend the knee to kings, queens, presidents, politicians, police officers, gods, or deities. I’m not intrested in being subservient, dominated, or controlled by so called masters, rulers, and authority figures. As a black anarchist, I’m more concerned with becoming a permanent inconvenience to those that pose the greatest threat to humanity, the earth, and all that inhabits it. My true goal and desire is to be autonomous, ungovernable, and unwavering in my pursuit to overthrow the state and all unjust hierarchies by any means necessary.”
Emiko
@freecongonola [https://www.instagram.com/freecongonola]
“Black anarchism to me means taking matters into my own hands. Not only am I an anarchist, but I’m also an educator, and we all know that the US education system is bullshit. My grandfather worked with the panthers to help run the freedom schools in the Bay Area, and that’s what black anarchy looks like to me.”
Semiyah
@bsg.bookclub [https://www.threads.net/@bsg.bookclub?xmt=AQGzLm-RROc-k3n4QM9qLu7fFroQmRQ5hoK3gtirjvk75AA]
“Black anarchism is a practice that compels me to apply autonomy everywhere in my life. As an artist, it challenges me to create music that is not bound by rules or a formula. As a writer, it requires me to constantly ask the other question, even if its’s uncomfortable. As a member of a collective, it implores me to use my gifts and skills in a way that not only can liberate me, but others as well. Black anarchism gives me no choice but to think beyond the confines of the colonizer’s boxes and define for myself not only who I am, but who I will be and who I must become in order to get free. Black anarchism has shown me that my resistance is a thing of beauty that refuses to be crushed by those that seek comfortability in conforming.”
Marcela Onyango
@feelthenews [https://www.instagram.com/feelthenews/?hl=en]
“Black anarchism to me means trying to live as freely as possible in a world that was not intended for me to be free while fighting for collective liberation. It means roasting the pigs while using my comedy to constantly tell people we are not free. It means reminding everyone I know that we live in a racial hierarchy that is built on the oppression and exploitation of Black people. This also means that I’m not invited to a lot of parties because nobody wants someone yelling, ‘schools are prisons’ at their parties. But that’s okay. I don’t want to be at a party that pretends that we don’t live in hell, much like I don’t like to live in hell. I want to live in a world free of oppression. A world where we take care of each other and get high together (if we want). Black anarchism means creating fragments of that world today while actively fighting against a white supremacist state that is preventing the birth of that world.”
Lucy E. Parsons
Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism (1929) [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lucy-e-parsons-the-principles-of-anarchism]
“Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote-begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.”