It is now June, 2025. Much has changed in recent months but much more has remained the same. The mass death of Palestinians continues to be live streamed on social media as Israel continues to wage genocidal violence in both Gaza and the West Bank. The United States has continued to do everything in its power to ensure that mass death never be slowed. Within the last few days, and with the support of the U.S., Israel has intensified their attempt to draw Iran into a more direct war by committing nightly bombings across the country, especially in highly populated districts of Tehran. The U.S., ever drawn to the siren call of supposed “weapons of mass destruction”, seems poised to imminently take an active part in that war as well (beyond the obvious role of supplying Israel with nearly limitless armaments).
Back at home, ICE raids have grown more frequent, more ambitious in number of people detained at once, and more bold in location and tactic. Local police departments continue to aid with these raids both directly (offering personnel and resources to help conduct the raid itself) and indirectly (deploying riot squads to deter/prevent resistance against the raids). In response to these raids, Los Angeles has set itself apart as the site of the most direct, intense, and beautifully violent resistance yet (though deeply important acts have occurred in Newark, Portland, Seattle, NYC, Chicago, Omaha and many other locales as well). For their defiance, Los Angeles has been occupied by no fewer than two additional militaries (beyond the LAPD), the National Guard, and the Marine Corps. I will not attempt to speak on specifics of the struggle unfolding there (keep an eye on for ediciones ineditas on that front) but from afar, it seems obvious the powder has long been dry and the protests/riots so far are only the beginning of a long, hot summer.
Unfortunately, for every locale going hard there are a dozen in which things remain awfully, painfully quiet. Even in the hotter locales, daily life for the majority continues at devastating pace. Work subsumes all activity, all thought lingers on the next debt payment or commodity to acquire. Genocide continues abroad and at home, ecocide ensures every wildfire or hurricane to come will be more deadly than the last. The police kill, the prisons fill, colonial power expands. Despite this fact, I have seen many self-described radicals embrace a posture of waiting. What they are waiting for differs depending on the particulars of their political and personal orientation; the revolution, the collapse, a signal, a solar flare, an amassed arsenal. Despite the flavor differing, there is a sentiment that the moment of action remains ever on the horizon. Words like “organize”, “protest”, “resist” may be thrown around but they almost always presuppose a distinction between taking action within the context of daily life and some specialized location of resistance.
I fear that if we (anarchists and fellow travelers) cannot explicitly articulate the need for action, within the context of upending daily life as it is currently lived, the horrors that are the existent world will continue along with it. Even when protests become riots, if we find ourselves continuing to inhabit the position of waiting for specialized locations of resistance to make themselves known we will fail to meet the moment at hand, perpetually stuck in a reactive cycle of prairie-dogging into moments of rupture only to fall back in line when the tides subside. If we truly desire the end of this world of death machines, we cannot afford to wait and take action only once ruptures become clear. We must embody the constant state of rupture. But to do that, we need to recognize why we so often wait.
There are numerous positionalities of waiting, each with their own frameworks and justifications. It feels worthwhile to acknowledge some specific positionalities I have noticed over the years in hopes of encouraging each of us to reflect on how/why we may have inhabited those positions. I want to push us to honestly look at where we’re at and what is actually required to bring about the end of this hell-world.
— Waiting of Accumulation: This waiting is seen in the large formal “revolutionary” orgs in terms of amassing requisite members in order to have control over the tone/tempo/direction of “resistance”. Think PSL, CPUSA, or any of the other Leninist/Stalinist/etc cadres you’ve had the displeasure of interacting with. These groups may call demos but always do their best to ensure that no meaningful resistance actually occurs within their bounds. They will tell you to sign their petition, get on their email list, smile for their camera. They will tell you to do anything but to embody your own potential for resistance, for revolt. If you take meaningful action, they are as likely to call the police as any other liberal and then release a press statement denouncing you as an adventurist and counter-revolutionary. These groups are built to wait and raise money, that is their primary function. All that we can do is encourage those individuals with whom we have proximity who may have been drawn by the allure of a “real revolutionary group” to break out of these frameworks.
Unfortunately, the waiting of accumulation also exists outside of the formal org, though less often in the form of waiting for requisite numbers. This waiting also exists with those who feel their revolutionary potential is dictated by the number of firearms they have acquired or tactical training they have undertaken. Individuals caught in this web of waiting will share memes stating their refusal to be “taken to El Salvador” while sitting on the sidelines as real people are taken from their loved ones and community, locked up in the prisons that exist only in the abstract for these “radicals in waiting”. They will practice room clearing drills like they’re auditioning for the marines, miming a positionality far closer to the abductees than the abducted.
At best these radicals mistake their hobby for radical action. At worst they (knowingly or unknowingly) embrace castle doctrine and continually reinforce the commodity relation as they train to be the next police. Either way, they wait, gun in hand, for some signal to act that will never come
— Waiting for “The Masses”: Not wholly dissimilar from the waiting of accumulation, the rhetoric of “waiting for the masses” is almost always expressed by formal orgs of the state-communist variety. They will speak towards the need for a discreet stage of political education before any meaningful revolutionary action may be undertaken, often while attempting to undermine the present insurrectionary actions of the supposedly yet-to-be-educated “masses”. This waiting is about control over the context of resistance, it is about ensuring that if action is to be taken, it only be taken in service of the specific, prescriptive, desires of the org intending to lead this “education”. The material may differ slightly from org to org but if someone tries to tell you that you need to read State and Revolution before you are wise enough to build a barricade, that same person will likely use their next breath to explain why the prisons need to be kept around or how cops in socialist states are actually really good and you should kiss their boots when you get the chance.
This type of waiting also reinforces an idea of “the masses” as some monolithic bloc waiting for divine salvation. The formal orgs envision themselves messianic actors who will usher this monolithic bloc from damnation towards that salvation. They say they “serve the masses” (or similarly “the people”) reifying their self-perception of messiah. But there is no singular “masses”, there are only communities of individuals all of whom have their own orientation towards the existing world. If our aim is to break with the existent world and its horrors, we do not need messiahs and we do not need divine deliverance, we need to help one another to articulate our specific experiences of suffering and to strike against the institutions of that suffering.
— Waiting of “Tactical Advantage”: This waiting is less associated with a specific ideology or group and more something that we all may struggle with. This waiting posits that there exists some way of analyzing the world such that particular moments make themselves known as the “right” time to act from a tactical consideration. Obviously, tactics are something we should think about, but the decision to act is distinct form the consideration of which tactics to employ in a given instance. Fundamentally, I believe the world as it exists is entirely unbearable and it has been unbearable for a lot longer than I’ve been around. Thus, it is always the time to act against it, to act towards its end. Specifically, it is always the time to act against a daily life that reproduces this unbearable world. Meaningful consideration of tactic can only come after the decision has been made to act.
— Waiting of “Safety: Similar to the waiting of tactical advantage, I’ve seen many discuss “safety” in regards to when one should resist/act against the horrors around us. I am sympathetic to these expressions as I think they are often borne of fear of repression (physical, social, legal, etc), a fear I am also familiar with. Unfortunately, I do not believe the concept of “safety” holds much meaning at the present moment, if it ever had. For the most marginalized, safety has only ever been an illusion held just out of reach by power to keep rebellions at bay. For those who are not marginalized, their assumed safety (as much as it can exist) exists solely at the expense of the marginalized. Either way, the concept of “safety” (both its pursuit and defense) encourages a protection of the status quo. Waiting for when it is “safe” to act will mean waiting in perpetuity, and demanding that others wait as well.
There are undoubtedly many more categorizations of waiting that we could (and likely should) interrogate. I encourage you to consider the types of waiting you see around you, but especially within you. Interrogate where those positionalities come from, what they serve, and how you may move beyond them, on your own but especially with the help of others. Once we understand why we wait, we begin to understand how to move beyond waiting. And in moving beyond waiting, we make is possible to push, extend, embolden insurrectionary potential.
I have seen it stated recently that “the insurrection” does not arise from the accumulation of individual acts of sabotage. I agree with this statement, given that insurrection (at least within the framework from which I operate) entails a complete rupture of the existent ways of relating to the world around us, however I would like to push that while accumulation of discreet acts may not make an insurrection, it is because there is no singular insurrection towards which acts could accumulate.
Intimately tied to the willingness to act, insurrection is first and foremost embodied within the individual will to break with the existent. Every single person who desires more or different for themselves (and those around them) and moves to disrupt daily life towards that end is already participating in their own insurrection. They may not be permanent, only existing so long as the will to disrupt exists, but they are insurrections all the same. What we typically refer to as capital “I” Insurrections are, in many ways, the proliferation of these discreet, individual insurrectionary wills made visible through their size and explosiveness. Courage is contagious, bravery perpetuates itself, and being near others who desire more and who are willing to act towards that desire can cause will and focus to align such that incredible moments of rupture spontaneously arise. But it all begins with the desire for more and a willingness to act.
For this reason, while individual acts of resistance may not be legible as Insurrections in the capital “I” sense, they are the foundation of broader insurrectionary potential. Specifically, they form this foundation when they are internalized and understood as both whole and piece. For the individual, in the discreet moment of resistance, to act is to embody the will to disrupt, to fight against, to reject and refuse. This is a whole insurrection itself. Even though discreet moments pass, and this whole will fade, for the duration of the embodiment of that will, insurrection is present and alive. Not only is this moment a whole unto itself, it is also a piece of a broader insurrectionary current. These discreet moments of individual rupture can be weaved together to form a much broader upheaval either immediately (think of the first stone being thrown that kicks off a riot) or over a prolonged stoking of the flames (think of the thousand cuts against police that have led to understaffing at many of the largest precincts in the country).
If we desire to break with the existent, to really fight against the horrors of this world, we must recognize that there will never be a singular moment in which a neon sign lights up reading “The Insurrection is Here”. Insurrection is ever present and ever fleeting. There are as many insurrections as there are individuals who cannot bear the weight of this world and who refuse it with the entirety of their being. There are as many insurrections as there are moments of connection between the fighters, inspiring one another to be brave, to hit back instead of simply waiting in death.
These insurrections die, constantly. There is only permanence so long as there is will to reject and refuse daily life. But even as one dies, that it existed at all opens space for the next, and the next, and the next. Every tagged wall, every ICE raid fought, every cop shouted out of a coffee shop, every parking meter glued, every prison window smashed, and every act far more explicit than those listed here opens space for more and for others to join with their own contributions.
To contribute is to act, to resist, to refuse. Our canvas is the world around us and our paint is our embodiment of the ruptures we desire. Insurrectionary potential is at its most potent when it cannot be neatly contained by a programmatic list of demands or communicated through a catchy slogan or chant. Insurrectionary fervor is best uttered as a guttural scream in a crowded public space as a brick meets a bank window, but it also is contained in the hiss of air being let out of a tire and the smell of smoke coming from a few blocks away. I am drawn to the insurrectionary current because I know, to the marrow of my bone, that either we strike against the entirety of the existent or we suffer its continual propagation. Every oppressive structure of our world feeds and supports every other. Either it all goes or it all stays the same. Either we find life in our will to fight, or we die waiting.
So, while no individual act of resistance makes The Insurrection, every individual holds the potential to foment insurrection and rebellion within themselves. It is through this fomenting that we grow capable of recognizing meaningful ways to strike and grow willing to act. Every action we take towards revolt helps to bring about the next. Every action we take towards revolt helps to carry the distant comrade who has been beaten down, imprisoned, deported. We carry those who have been taken from us in every swing of a hammer or threatening gesture made towards the riot line. No matter how quiet your locale, there will always be others looking for ways to fight back. So long as there are fighters, insurrection lives. So long as insurrection lives, it is always a good day to bring about the end of the world.
Don’t die waiting.