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anonymous Introductions August 31, 2007 10:56 AM

Hey everyone,

I just joined this group (thanks for finding me, Gavin!) and thought I'd introduce myself and invite you to do the same.

I just moved to Bournemouth and haven't got involved in anything locally yet. Before that I was in Edinburgh where I did stuff with the local social centre, did research on anarchist theory, taught sex education and organised various things.

My anarchism is inspired by feminism, queer politics and also my work with young people and reading of poststructuralist theory.

I also love cooking. :)

How about you?

--Jamie
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Good idea Jamie! August 31, 2007 12:04 PM

I live in San Luis Obispo, California. It is a small town right on the coast halfway between all the big cities. Of course, I could'nt care less, because I can't stand to be in a city for more than a couple of days. I am going to school right now to ensure that I never end up living in a cage city, riding the bus to a job I hate, waiting for retirement. Instead, I am studying sustainable agriculture and permaculture and I hope one day to own a large enough piece of land to begin building the type of world we anarchists only fantacize about. (The how and how much of that equation are yet to be worked out...)

I participate in a load of local activism, and hope to continue doing that until I decide to leave.

More than an activist, I am a gardener and aspiring cook. I am vegetarian, as is my girlfriend, and we cook everynight, often foods I can't even pronounce.
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Count me in, please. August 31, 2007 11:48 PM

Even though I've been around for a couple of days now, I haven't introduce myself: Hello friends! Gavin, Jamie... Greetings, and thanks for letting me be with you in this group.
I live in Puerto Rico, a beautiful tropical island in the Caribbean; in a rural area small community, with my six years son. I'm closed to retire from Art teaching, but I also paint and make drawings for my acquaintances. I used to write, but...not anymore.
I've always like to cook and now my little son is paying the consequences. No!, just a bad joke...But been that we all cook, It'll be nice to interchange recipes sometime, don't you think?
Theories haven't inspired my anarchism just as much as common sense, although I've studied the concept from many angles. It was after I finished my graduate studies that I realized that my higher degree had been always in plain ol' common sense.

Well, I'm at your order... Jon.

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 September 04, 2007 7:41 PM

I have experianced anarchism from several levels throughout my travels.  I have spent time with indiginous peoples in Ta'chira and also on the lapplands, and I am familiar with the anarco-primitivist movements in Argentina.

My political sensibilities are founded from the basic idea that we are all equal, and my interest is in supporting peer based non-exploitive and sustainable economic relationships.  There have been some efforts in this area, such as in establishing coops in Venezuela, and in fact I participate in a free knowledge coop there.  I also participate in the free software and free culture movements internationally, which arguably are the largest successful example of peer based non-hierarchical cooperative economics.

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I'm Tanya. September 04, 2007 8:51 PM

Just a quick  and goodnight.

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anonymous My introduction September 05, 2007 4:00 AM

Hello everyone.  My name is Kevin.  I joined a few days ago, but just got around to posting.  I currently live in Connecticut, but I have lived everywhere from Omaha, NE all the way to near Cambridge in the UK.  I am attending the University of CT for my bachelors right now, and plan on going to graduate school to get my PhD in Forestry and Environmental Studies. 

I would say that I am an anarchist in theory, but a pragmatist in today's political climate.  I doubt any of us believe that anarchism will sweep the world any time soon, however, I believe it is important to make what little, positive changes we can either on a local level, or a larger level - and if that involves working with the governments in power, so be it. 

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 September 05, 2007 6:31 AM

Hi all, I haven't introduced myself, except by writing about my beliefs, and I am not shy about how I believe.

I recently picked up Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays, and that started critical thought about many things that I had taken for much of my life. My anarchist experience had been in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the arson era of the 1980s, where real estate developers burned nearly all the buildings settled under the "homesteading" laws of NYC. In 1983 when I started with the homesteads and squats, there were about 200 "free" homes. Today there may be only five, and they have made a deal with the city to exist legally.

The types of thoughts I had as a teenager were more similar to the thoughts I have now, as a post-anarchist, which makes me think that I was in fact told how to think by anarchists.

As part of getting along, I got along with everybody, in including an anarchist named Jerry the Peddler. Back then I always respected everybody's privacy, but now that I have embraced the scientific spirit, I am more inquiring -- and even invasive.

Jerry and his friends have done narcotics as long as I knew them, despite my turing a blind eye out of interpersonal respect; narcotics are antithetical to effective change.

In 1989 I started networking for the enviroment through the Wetlands organization that worked out of a club venue of the same name. It was an easy bike ride from that club to the Lower East Side, or LES, so an interconnect seemed reasonable. I was easily able to interested the enviromental crowd at the Wetlands in LES issues, especially ganja legalization, but the reverse proved impossible. The LES anarchists made it clear to me that they were against animal rights.

As a result of this inquiry I think that I have had to discard many, if not all, anarchist ideas that I had grown up with. Certainly the concept of the rights of individualism have been challegned by the reality of narcotics abuse, and the abuse that narcotics abusers heap on their friends and communities.

My constructivist reading for my writing on empathy and education indicated very strongly that among political and economic systems, only anarchy resembles the tribal and family arragements that we evolved to form, especially amongst other intelligent species such as whales.

So anarchy is revived for me but from a far different perspective. It so happens that I bought the Kropotkin book, Mutual Assistance, in a now closed anarchist bookstore, and I found in his writing the connective traits humans have to the natural world that resemble the traits that humans have. This reading paralleled my constructivist reading, and also my studies of tribal natives.

To me anarchy is now about the reconstruction of society and community, and the development of connections between people -- the Anarchist individualist is dead, in my opinion.





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 September 23, 2007 2:20 AM

Hola everyone *hola*

Good on you for being anarchists *cheerleader*

I got into anarchism by listening to the Sex Pistols, and then visiting an anarchist bookshop (and their discussion evenings) to find out what anarchism is. Alot of people think that anarchism is the same as terrorism, but I found out in that bookshop that most anarchists are not like that, and that many anarchists even say that terrorism is contradictory to anarchism.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the documentary "Manufacturing Consent", and the films "Land and Freedom" and "Libertarias", then I heartily recommend them!

Long live the legacy of the Spanish Revolution!

Durruti vive! *pirateflag*

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