North Macedonia: Manifesto of the Anarchist Collective Smokva

The Anarchist Collective Smokva (lit. "Fig") is a group of people who gathered with a strong will for a space that's social, political, and friendly, as well as a more humane model of living.

Driven by the desire for mutual aid, horizontal friendship, and direct action, we have gathered, not to represent, but to act; not to talk in someone else's name, but to talk together; not to imitate what exists, but to experiment and create possibilities.

We live in systems that feed on war and alienation, while the politicians offer empty promises. We live in the midst of stacked debris, which still pretends to be a form of order. Around us, the old systems of power, capitalist, as well as patriarchal and imperialistic, keep reproducing themselves, unable to exist without war, alienation, theft, and despair.

We see how every progress in gender equality is being diminished, we see our friends from the multitude of sexual freedoms being pushed to the margins, we see the air we breathe is getting poisoned by pollution, we see how the mere survival echoes like an impossible future, while the streets are plastered with the excrement of infinite consumption.

To this, we answer with an experimental action, creating new forms of togetherness.

Solidarity and friendship are not merely slogans for us - they are an everyday practice: in the decisions we make together, in the meals we share, in the care we give to one another, and to the streets that we are taking back. We believe in friendship without roles and equality without masters.

We reject the delusions of representative democracy and its hierarchies. Freedom is not delegated, and equality lives in diversity, not in similitude.

Smokva is a constellation of friendships and experiments, imperfect, fluid, and alive. A symbol of life that grows, branched and free, a try for peace in an unpeaceful world, that grows between what is, and what could be.