Syllabus/content/session/takewhatyouneed.md

title
Take What You Need and Compost the Rest

Dangerous Spaces

"Fuck therapy, I just want to fight back" - a queer homeless comrade in the PNW

"Action dries your tears" - a PMS slogan that we heard from some Greek comrades

This section explicates some of the reasons why we just can't stand to exist like this anymore and we're going to do something about it. You will not be able to silence us with your violence. We are not the crazy ones, you are. We've got nothing but healthy responses to a sick world.

Recommended Reading

• A Modest Proposal from Some Crazy Bitches

  • https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/dangerous.pdf, page 30
  • A communique from "one of many future autonomous cells of crazy bitches," encouraging direct confrontation and vengeance against rapists and rape apologists.

• Healing and Fighting: a false dichotemy

  • http://www.anti-politics.org/distro/2009/fight_back-read.pdf (pages 21-25)
  • An anti-civ piece discussing how fighting back against our oppressors is a necessary part of healing, comparing the connection between healing and struggle to the body's process of fighting an infection.

• 'Hurting Yourself', Icarus Project

  • https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/6714401/hurting-yourself-the-icarus-project
  • A harm reduction resource for those who self-harm.

• Profesto of the Prostitutes War Group

  • https://prostituteswargroup.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/pro-festo-of-the-prostitutes-war-group/
  • Sex workers rejecting reformist, legalizing solutions and instead putting their skills towards insurrection and social war.

• Queers read this

  • https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2013/10/queers-read-this.pdf (anger pages 3-4)
  • notes on the justifiability of anger

Discussion

• So, what are some things you'd like to destroy? (Don't worry about the how right now, just name what needs attacking!)
• What do you do with your anger? Where in your life do you feel like you can express it and where do you keep it hidden? Where do you direct it?
• Has safety ever felt attainable to you? When safety isn't an option, what do you try for instead?
• Have you ever experienced fighting back in a way that feels more healing than burnout-inducing? What strategies, tools, approaches, and relationships made it so? In an experience where that wasn't the case, what could have gone differently?

Case Studies, Aspirations, and Provocations

The forms of care that we want to see don't exist yet, so we can't cite them, but we are trying. Here are some of the things that keep us going when we are feeling down, that inspire us to act when we feel trapped, or that motivate us to find each other. We want to build the aspirational supportive queer commune, too, but where can we put it? What does it look like to turn illness into weapon? What is missing and what will the future of autonomous support look like?

Recommended Reading

• Sick Women Theory

  • Sick Woman Theory http://maskmagazine.com/not-again/struggle/sick-woman-theory
  • Not every form of resistance will take place in the streets, because it can't. "Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible." Care for ourselves and one another as protest and as refusal of the capitalist logic that declares all of us who are "sick" (physically ill, mentally ill, traumatized, oppressed) to be disposable, not meant to survive.

• This Cat

  • https://dg6xfr3y1xvv2.cloudfront.net/liartownusa-living-my-truth-postcard-ITEM-5925061bdce3c-555.jpg
  • Basically, we saw this cat just when we needed to, and we hope you have the same experience. Such an inspiration.

• "Descending into Madness: an anarchist-nihilist diary of anti-psychiatry", Flower Bomb

  • https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/flower-bomb-descending-into-madness-an-anarchist-nihilist-diary-of-anti-psychiatry
  • An analysis of personal experiences within the psychiatric system and survival outside of it, from a nihilist and anti-civ perspective

• "I-don't-bash-back-I-shoot-first", anonymous

  • https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/ShootfirstBooklet.pdf
  • Practical suggestions for turning your queer affinity group into a queer gang.

• "Hack your rage and anger in the keys", Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK)

  • http://www.spkpfh.de/Hack_your_rage_and_anger_in_the_keys.htm
  • The historic German collective that coined the phrase 'Turn Illness Into Weapon' here outlines some of their powerful lingo and theory against the health dictatorship. They have a lot of other great texts throughout the years that speak to many of the theoretical issues addressed in this syllabus, but directly from the perspective of the mad.

• https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/scullc34.html

  • Skullcap saved my life, no joke. We get a lot of inspiration from plants, but all the things you can learn from them don't always translate into text so seamlessly. This one is an all around great nervine that will chill you out in that mild way that you might need when you're bouncing off the walls or stirring with thoughts.

Further Reading

• 'Everything is Going to Shit Anyways' FAG MOB

  • https://downandoutdistro.noblogs.org/files/2019/02/fmob3.pdf
  • Insurrecto queer nihilist graffiti as a chokepoint for our collective love and rage

• A few articles from Herbs for Mental Health

  • An overview of the different ways that plants can support mental/emotional health https://herbsformentalhealth.com/10-types-of-healing-plants-for-mental-health-and-emotional-wellbeing/
  • ...and a discussion of non-psychiatric, community and nature focused tools for living with the ongoing stress and trauma of oppression. https://herbsformentalhealth.com/continuing-traumatic-stress-disorder/

Discussion

• How can we help you? How can we help each other? What do you need? What does your crew need to keep going, to keep fighting, in this world that might otherwise want us to shut the fuck up?
• What do we still need to figure out? Are you going to get in touch with us to start materializing all of our crazy dreams of emotional support?