ProdigalFrog

First of all, that’s not what direct democracy means.

That is a misuse of the term, my bad.

but no army is going to hold an impromptu election for a new General as artillery shells are raining down around their ears. When the shooting starts, you stick with the chain of command you have or all hell breaks loose and you get routed.

I thought it would be obvious that 'immediately' wouldn't mean in the context of mid-battle (unless the officer is like, going rogue or something), but in the context of outside of an active battle, where there isn't a huge bureaucracy to go through to remove a bad commander, since that commander is directly responsible to the people who elected him.

I don't think that assessment lines up with historical events. During the Spanish Civil War, the anarchist militias/army were hierarchies, but directly democratic ones, where soldiers would vote on who their commanders would be, commanders would vote on who their generals would be, all with the ability to immediately revoke that power if it was abused or performed badly.

That form of structure was still considered Anarchistic, and historically performed very well with the limited resources they had, and garnering the public respect of even the fascist generals from their capability.

Nester Makhno's Anarchist Army also was extremely effective during the Russian revolution, without which the Soviets wouldn't have been able to beat the White Army (and thus survive to then turn on the Anarchists and attempt to kill them all).

So the examples we have available don't really show Anarchists unable to make quick decisions or lack military might, they usually are defeated by allies (Marxist-leninists) betraying them, lack of foreign logistical aid (since there are no other countries that would ever ally with them, and often outright refused to help), and the opposite, where their enemies are given an abundance of aid from friendly fascist powers.

A state is a hierarchy where the top dictates what you will ultimately be subjected to.

Imagine if rules and laws were directly voted on and decided by the people themselves, instead of by a corporate captured elite. Imagine if you and your community directly elected who would enforce those rules upon themselves, with possibility of immediate removal if they abuse that power or perform badly.

Anarchism is making it to where power is coming from the bottom, not the top, and where the power that does exist is more distributed and decentralized so that it cannot grow into authoritarian centralized power, as always seems occurs in centralized power structures throughout history without fail.

At least with with the Spanish Civil War (not familiar with how the Zapatistas do it, and would have to read a refresher on Rojava's), those military structures were bottom up direct democracies where soldiers voted who their commanders would be, and those commanders voted on who their generals would be, etc, with the option of immediate removal.

So even there, there was not a top down hierarchical structure, and historically they performed quite well militarily and logistically with the few resources they had available (and before the Soviets did their classic stabby stab move).

Trillium Notes is a great open-source alternative that doesn't have the odd bullet point nature of log-seq.

Updated and revised printable version available here in PDF form: https://seattleiww.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/how-to-fire-your-boss-2022.pdf

Cheers for confirmation ^^

Easier said than done.

The ultimate goal of joining those types of groups is to find individuals that share your values who you can make connections with.

The more rural the area and sparsely populated the area, the harder it will be to find those types of existing groups, making churches, food banks, and non-profits or charities the only realistic options in the beginning.

If you live in an area where you're not able to find any existing group that deals with a particular issue in your area, the only option at that point would be to create your own group to tackle that issue, becoming the mutual aid you seek.

An example of what the latter could look like is to create a community garden or open a community fridge to help with creating food stability for your community, possibly by working with local businesses who have excess food to give away/write off, or by working with your local food banks or churches.

If you have a local DSA chapter, that can often have people interested in joining up with you in mutual aid.

Did you get any results from using a search engine to search your town/city plus the word mutual aid?

Just to be sure; when you click that link, does it take you to a guide on how to find like minded people, or only a comment below the guide that says nonprofits are sellouts? It seems to bring me to the guide, but that's only a sample size of one.

I ask since food pantries and churches are some of the places it recommends looking, among others.

If you have a Food Not Bombs chapter near you, that'd be a good group to visit and talk to as well.

This blog is clearly AI slop.

Short of going there as a medic or for humanitarian aid, the most powerful thing we can do to help is to organize ourselves in our local communities to better prepare ourselves for resistance and build up grassroots movements to demand our governments stop assisting in the genocide.

What that actually looks like:

1. finding those local communities and getting involved to make connections
2. We can effect things drastically with a general strike. This targets their income streams, and can bring a fascist government to its knees if done on a large enough scale.
3. Contact a union and attempt to unionize your workplace, so that the general strike is even more effective.

Suggestions:

• 🌍 Global: IWW (Français) - (Español)
• 🇦🇷 Argentina: FORA
• 🇦🇺 Australia: ASF-IWA
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: FOB
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: ARS, CITUB
• 🇩🇪 Germany: FAU
• 🇬🇷 Greece: ESE
• 🇮🇹 Italy: USI
• 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Netherlands & Belgium: Vriji Bond
• 🇪🇸 Spain: CNT
• 🇸🇪 Sweden: SAC
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: UVW

4. Continuing to participate in publicly visible resistance demonstrations like 50501 to encourage others to stand up with you and prove to them that there are hundreds of thousands of others who will join them in the fight. A large part of Nazi Germany's success in taking over the country was a lack of massive public demonstrations against the new regime, making people feel helpless and afraid to take a stand.

If we put in the work, we can resist this and we can win, and that would be the best way available to us to help the Palestinians being genocided right now, as well as speaking out about what is happening.