we could have it all
alternate title: scarcity is a fucking lie
Dear Beloved,
Despite oligarchs’ weird fixation on making our planet unlivable, the earth keeps giving us the means to repair our ecosystems and take care of each other. It makes me wonder why we walk around with microplastics inside our bodies when we did just fine with glass/cloth/clay containers for thousands of years, and nature has even gifted us with fungi that can eat plastics.
Then I remember the forementioned oligarchy and their planet-killing hubris. Egos like theirs won’t stop because they can’t - they’re cushioned from accountability by money, lawyers, and yes men. They won’t stop because they’ve been told that their wealth signifies superiority - they’re smarter, stronger, more strategic than the 99%. Ergo what they have, they deserve. What they don’t have, they’re entitled to because they are superior.
Oligarchs are narcissists. Wannabe conquerors obsessed with old world conquerors that take our resources - our land, our water, our seeds, our labor, our data - to build new empires in their own twisted image.
Meanwhile, their political puppets fabricate crises and scapegoat vulnerable people to distract us. They manufacture scarcity while hoarding the world’s resources and watch us fight over the crumbs.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could have it all. We being all of us - the other 8 billion people, the animals, the plants, the insects, the fungi. Humans have lived in harmony with the world and her other inhabitants for some 300,000 years.
There are 8 billion of us, and only 3,028 billionaires.
Why should we let them destroy our only home and run away to their bunkers, to space, to Mars, to everywhere else while we burn? Why should we let them? Better yet: How do we detach our society from the illusion of inevitability? How do we unveil the lie of scarcity to others still convinced? How will we dismantle manufactured superiority? When will we abolish hierarchy and reclaim our future?
It certainly won’t be through neoliberalism or collaboration with the state. It won’t be through respectability politics or representation within profit-worshipping systems.
Our future is made through direct action, Beloved, and a refusal to submit to the idea that all of this - endless wars, AI companies’ co-option of our data and water, climate destruction, mass unemployment, limited affordable housing - is inevitable. It is manmade, and what is made by oligarchy’s hands can be dismantled by our own.
We start by building new systems and networks in the decay.
Gather
The first step to collective change is a we. Nothing will happen with a you or an I. We need to come together.
The first and most crucial step is, of course, the most difficult. In Westernized society, especially here in the belly of the beast, many of us live in silos. The housing crisis forces us to move often, and we’re often forced to prioritize jobs’ locations over where our community lives. Third spaces have faded away. Public spaces are either privatized or policed. Despite social media’s advertising, it’s disconnected us from authentic relationships.
Building: A DIY Guide to Creating Spaces, Hosting Events, and Fostering Radical Communities
Community Organizing Guide by Neighborhood Anarchist Collective
Reach out to
’s new peer-to-peer hotline to talk about your community building challenges, joys, and ideas.
Food Sovereignty
We have a right to our own food systems. We deserve healthy, culturally relevant nutrition that is good for our bodies and the land. In a world abundant with food, no one should ever go hungry.
Save our seeds! Whether from your own garden’s bounty or from produce purchased at the grocery store, save and store seeds.
Bonus: Connect with local gardeners and organize a seed swap. Seeds are meant to be shared! They are better off on our shelves than locked away in seed banks.
Live in an apartment? Don’t let that stop you from starting a garden.
You can even plant your own food in grow bags and recycle items in your home into other kinds of plant containers.
Bring back canning parties. Gather friends to divide up excess food and together, preserve it. Divide up the spoils. Gift a can to that neighbor you never talked to and invite them to the next canning party. Repeat.
Community Safety
We keep us safe. That’s not a cute slogan or tagline. It’s our reality.
Read and share Building Community Safety: Practical Steps Toward Liberatory Transformation by Ejeris Dixon
DOXCARE: Notes on Prevention & Aftercare for those Targeted by Doxxing or Political Harassment
A Better Way for 2A leads the conversation about responsible gun ownership and aims to make gun education accessible to marginalized communities. They have a growing list of resources such as safer gun stores and training offerings.
Attend or co-organize a Night Out for Safety & Liberation (NOLS) in your town. This event is a tool to foster community discussion how we can practice safety without police or carceral punishment.
Check out Home Alive’s anti-violence curriculum, which is designed based on the concept that violence prevention is a community responsibility.
Community Care
“The first sign of civilization is a healed femur.” - Margaret Mead
We’ve always taken care of each other. Even through war, famine, terrorism, abductions by the state, empire gorging on life, land, and sea - we’ve survived because of all we give and receive.
If you’re reading a little newsletter about dreaming and building better futures, one where we may all thrive, then you have gaps in your life. You must also know that the scarcity in your life profits someone else. What you may not know is that you also have gifts meant to be given.
Check out this zine The People Are Waking Up! and fill out its Resource Inventory. Share the zine with people you trust and strengthen your network of care.
Start a harm reduction program in your town but please also remember harm reduction’s origins as a liberatory practice.
How to Do It Anyway: A Guide to Self-Managing an Abortion at Home by abortion doula, Hazel Acacia
Organize meal trains for community members
Find inspiration at One Million Experiments, a curated collection of community-based safety projects and a podcast exploring how we define and create wellness and reduce harm in a world without police and prisons.
Read
There’s some leftist criticism of book clubs. Justified, as it shouldn’t be the only thing you do. But systemic issues require deep-rooted, multi-layered solutions. We need a “Yes, and…” approach: Yes, book clubs - and co-operative housing, free clinics, diaper distribution, and Naxolene trainings.
Reading is an integral part of our movements. In the United States, 54% of adults read below 6th grade reading level. Public schools are intentionally underfunded, forcing more parents to look towards charter schools for their children’s education and leaving other students behind. Meanwhile, MIT has already found that generative AI impacts students’ cognitive abilities, even reducing brain connectivity and long-term memory formation.
The oligarchy wants us stupid. They want our attention scattered. They don’t want us to engage in critical thinking or - god forbid - dialogue with one another.
Your relationship with reading is fucked up because burning books is a bad look. The empire utilizes overt, violent oppression like that as a last resort, because it makes it near impossible to seamlessly convince people they are not oppressed. - Ismatu Gwendolyn
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Glad to find you in these tormenting times. How did I find you? Internet search for an animated film I saw in '89 or '90 (last century!) while laying sick at home, The Man Who Planted Trees. Loved it so and later found the book. I am retired now. No much more for me to say these days. Thank you for writing "we could have it all". Be well always.