Propaganda of the Deed
Yesterday I joined my friend Beatrice Adler-Bolton on her podcast Death Panel for a really wonderful conversation about my piece Let's Get Started, to talk about the launch of CAW, and to discuss the assassination of the UHC CEO by the increasingly folk-heroic Luigi Mangione. You can listen to my appearance below, and if you don't already, you should subscribe to Death Panel, which is one of the best (and sometimes only) news sources, let alone podcasts, that covers the ongoing pandemic, the inequities of our health and social support systems, disability justice movements, trans liberation and much more.
Our discussion was mainly focused on how to organize and get started in the face of the coming disasters. As readers of All Cats Are Beautiful know well, I'm a huge advocate for the effectiveness of small groups doing autonomous project work in distinction to large non-profit/paper membership style organizations, and we get into both strategic and historical explanations for why. And, as Bea pointed out, the murder of Brian Thompson is the first time the health insurance industry has faced real consequences, and points to the fact that small groups and individuals, if they do the right thing at the right time, can have an outsized impact on the world.
Underlining the point, this morning I logged onto Bluesky and saw this video below. I really really encourage everyone to watch it, I think it's really important.
holy fuck it's not just health insurance Luigi Mangione is also making news anchors and normies treat prisoners like people capable of communication across the walls honestly THIS STORY DOES NOT QUIT
— Vicky ACAB (@vickyacab.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 7:29 AM
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In 15 years of doing prisoner support and prison abolition work I don't think I've ever seen news reporters conduct live communication through the prison walls like this. It is genuinely shocking in this political moment which ideological shibboleths are collapsing. You can see the media class struggling desperately to reinstitute order among us unruly classes: today liberal-red-pilling rag The Atlantic published a piece arguing that the celebration of Mangione represents a "de-civilization" in process. Ah, if only!
Earlier this month I also appeared on the podcast Radicals in Conversation with Peter Gelderloos, to celebrate the launching of his new book They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us: Forcing Nonviolence on Forgetful Movements. Peter's work on non-violence, movement history, tactics and strategy has been deeply influential on me and it was an absolute honor to join him in conversation about this exciting new book, which reflects on the way that state repression leads to, well, psychic repression of our own learned and lived experience.
Radicals in Conversation, run by Pluto Press, is another great podcast and has featured CAW murder-mate Shuli Branson more than once! Thanks so much for listening and, as ever, if you can please support CAW's fundraiser as we work to build a sustainable, worker-owned and run autonomous journal.