Unmanageable: Part 2

On What We Build

The coffee is cold again. I do not reheat it. Cold coffee is honest about what it is.

People wrote to me after the first essay asking the same question in different words: I am not going to manage myself anymore. Now what?

I have a vision of what comes next. Not a plan,plans are too rigid, too much like the managed resistance Trump expects. A vision. Let me tell you what I see.

I see power revealed as the magic trick it has always been.

The emperor has no clothes, but he has convinced everyone that noticing his nakedness is treason. Autocracy is not sustained by force,force is expensive and admission of failure. Autocracy is sustained by the willingness of the governed to govern themselves according to the autocrat’s interests.

Trump’s power is not real power. It is borrowed power. Power we loan him through our fear. Power we maintain through our willingness to manage ourselves.

I see what happens when people stop loaning that power. Not all at once. Not through some revolutionary moment. One person stops being manageable. Then another. Then ten. Then a hundred. Recognition spreading like fire through dry grass.

And Trump has no defense against this. He can threaten people who are afraid. He cannot threaten people who are not afraid. He can manage people who want something from him. He cannot manage people who have recognized that what he offers is worth less than what it costs.

His power dissolves. Not because we defeated it. Because we stopped believing in it.

I see forty people in a church basement on Thursday nights.

They are not organizing a protest. They are building something simpler and more dangerous than resistance. A network that moves resources from people who have them to people who need them.

Someone mentions a family that cannot pay for heat. In the official system, this family would fill out forms, prove eligibility, wait weeks for processing. Maybe denial. Maybe just enough help to not freeze but not enough to be warm.

In the network, someone asks: how much do they need?

Eighteen hundred dollars.

The money appears by Friday. Cash. Hand to hand. No forms. No proof of deservingness. No official record. Just: you need this, we have this, here it is.

This is not charity. Charity is what happens inside systems that create scarcity and then congratulate themselves for alleviating it. This is mutual aid. This is recognition that what hurts you today will hurt me tomorrow. That my safety depends on your safety because there is no such thing as individual safety under autocracy.

I see this multiplying. Forty people in every town. Every neighborhood. Networks forming in the gaps where official systems fail. Money moving. Resources flowing. People taking care of each other not because the system tells them to but because the system has made clear it will not.

I see official systems becoming optional. People turning to networks first and to official channels only when networks cannot meet the need. Trump’s machinery of control becoming irrelevant not because we destroyed it but because we built something better.

I see the difference between resistance and refusal.

Resistance is reactive. It opposes what they are doing. Says no to their policies, their actions, their consolidation of power. Resistance is necessary. It keeps them from moving faster.

But resistance operates on their terms. It accepts that they set the agenda and our job is to oppose it. It keeps us focused on what they are doing rather than what we are building.

Refusal is different. Refusal does not oppose their power. Refusal acts as if their power does not exist. Builds the systems we need without asking permission or waiting for acknowledgment.

Resistance says: we will fight your policies.

Refusal says: your policies are irrelevant to how we organize our lives.

I see what this distinction makes possible. Resistance keeps them at the center. Refusal makes them irrelevant. Makes them peripheral to the actual work of survival and creation.

They can outlast resistance. They can exhaust resisters. They can make resistance so costly that people eventually surrender.

But they cannot outlast refusal. They cannot exhaust people who are building systems that make official systems optional. They cannot make refusal costly enough to stop it when refusal is the only way people are surviving.

I see infrastructure rebuilt from the ground up.

Not physical infrastructure. Relational infrastructure. The networks of trust and reciprocity that determine whether resources flow to where they are needed or accumulate in the hands of people who already have too much.

Trump is destroying trust in official systems. This is strategic. Destroy trust and people become desperate enough to accept anything. Create enough chaos and people will trade their freedom for the promise of order, even if that order is fascism.

But I see something else. The destruction of trust in official systems creating space for different kinds of trust. Trust between people who recognize that official systems have failed them and their survival depends on each other.

Two people decide to trust each other outside official channels. Agree to help each other without keeping score. Without contracts or proof. Just recognition that their safety depends on each other’s safety.

Two becomes three. Three becomes ten. Ten becomes forty. Forty becomes a network that can move resources and share skills and provide care and do everything official systems claim only they can do.

This is not naive. This is how humans have survived for most of our history,through mutual aid that existed long before states and will exist after states collapse. Trump wants us to forget this. Wants us to believe that only official systems are viable.

I see us remembering. The oldest human technology,taking care of each other,becoming new again.

I see a restaurant that operates on two registers.

The official register tracks transactions for tax collectors and health inspectors. The unofficial register is everything else. Meals that do not get rung up. Money that moves hand to hand. The family sleeping in the storage room. The woman who leaves with groceries she did not pay for.

The owner has been unmanageable her entire life. Not by choice but by necessity. She crossed a border. Built a business without papers. Survived for decades in the spaces between official systems because official systems were never designed to include her.

She does not think of herself as political. She is just feeding people who are hungry. Housing people who need shelter. Doing what needs to be done.

But everything is political under autocracy. The choice to feed someone without checking their papers is political. The choice to house someone without filing official records is political.

One restaurant operating as a mutual aid hub is an anomaly. A hundred restaurants operating as mutual aid hubs is infrastructure. A parallel system that makes official systems optional.

I see this spreading. Not through organization but through example. One person seeing what is possible and building something similar. Networks recognizing each other through simple awareness that we are doing the same work.

I see people discovering a particular kind of freedom.

The freedom of recognizing that the things we were afraid of losing were never protecting us. They were the mechanisms of our management.

Your job. Your reputation. Your place in society. These were supposed to be security. But they were also chains. They made you calculate consequences before speaking. Moderate your resistance. Participate in systems of your own oppression.

I see people letting go. Not everyone. But some. The ones positioned to sacrifice official protection without catastrophic consequences.

They make the trade. Lose the job but gain the ability to speak without calculation. Lose the status but gain the ability to build alternatives. Lose the illusion of security but gain the reality of acting as if they are already free.

They become nodes around which networks form. Because networks need nodes. Need people who are stable not through official protection but through having already paid the cost of being unmanageable and survived it.

I see skills moving outside official channels.

Doctors providing care without billing. Lawyers providing help without charging. Teachers teaching without credentials. Every skill that official systems try to keep credentialed and regulated,I see these skills being used anyway.

Not to replace official systems. To create alternatives. So when official systems refuse to serve people, there are other options.

The doctor who provides free care receives food from the farmer. The lawyer who provides free help receives child care from the teacher. Networks of exchange that do not require money, do not create official records, do not depend on systems designed to extract.

This is refusal. Refusal to let credentials determine who deserves care. Refusal to let official channels be the only channels. Refusal to participate in scarcity when abundance is possible.

I see all of this connecting.

The forty people in the church basement connect with the restaurant operating as a mutual aid hub. The farmer teaching people to grow food connects with the medic providing care outside official systems. Networks recognize each other. Begin coordinating. Begin sharing knowledge and strategies and resources.

Not through formal organization,formal organization creates targets. Through informal recognition. Through trust built over time. Through doing the same work and recognizing others doing the same work.

This becomes infrastructure. Real infrastructure. Not the kind built by governments. The kind that emerges when people take care of each other. The kind that exists in the spaces between official systems.

It moves resources. Shares knowledge. Provides care. Does everything official systems claim only they can do. And does it faster, more efficiently, more humanely because it is not designed to extract profit or concentrate power. It is designed to meet needs.

I see what happens when enough of this infrastructure exists.

Official systems do not disappear. But they become optional for more and more people. People turn to networks first. To mutual aid. To systems of reciprocity and trust. They turn to official systems only when networks cannot meet the need.

This is how autocracy collapses without being overthrown. Not through revolution. Through irrelevance. Through people building systems that work better than the systems designed to control them.

Trump will try to stop this. Try to criminalize mutual aid. Prosecute people who provide care without licenses or house people without reporting. Make examples intended to terrorize.

But I see this failing. Not because he cannot punish individuals,he can. Because there are too many individuals. Too many networks. Too much infrastructure in spaces he cannot see and cannot control. By the time he figures out who to target, the network has already moved, already reformed, already adapted.

This is the advantage of ungovernable systems. They cannot be destroyed by destroying the center because there is no center. They cannot be stopped by stopping the leaders because there are no leaders.

I see the timeline.

Not tomorrow. Not through some dramatic moment. Gradually. Over years. Through accumulation of small acts of refusal. Through networks forming and connecting and becoming infrastructure.

Five years from now: networks in every city providing mutual aid that official systems refuse to provide.

Ten years from now: significant numbers of people turning to these networks before official systems.

Twenty years from now: official systems as one option among many, and not the most reliable option.

This is not utopia. This is people taking care of each other in the gaps where official systems fail. This is infrastructure built from trust and reciprocity. This is what survival looks like when you cannot count on institutions.

I see the challenges too.

This is not easy. This is not safe. This is not guaranteed to work.

Networks require trust and trust requires time. Mutual aid requires resources not everyone has. Alternative systems require skills not everyone has learned. Refusal requires courage not evenly distributed.

I see people trying and failing. Networks collapsing. Initiatives ending in burnout. Trust being betrayed. Resources running out. Courage faltering.

I see the state cracking down. Prosecuting. Arresting. Auditing. Making examples. Creating costs intended to be unbearable.

I see some people stopping. Returning to official systems even when those systems are failing them. Managing themselves back into compliance because the alternative seems impossible.

But I see others continuing. Learning from failures. Adapting. Building more carefully. Building with the understanding that this is not optional, that official systems are collapsing whether we build alternatives or not.

Here is what we need.

People positioned to go first. People with enough privilege that they can stop being manageable without catastrophic consequences. These people need to build the infrastructure that makes it possible for others to follow. Need to demonstrate that alternatives are viable. Need to pay the costs that prove the costs are survivable.

People with skills to teach those skills outside official systems. Medical skills. Legal skills. Teaching skills. Every skill that makes survival possible,we need these spreading through networks rather than hoarded behind credentials.

People with resources to move those resources to networks. Not all their resources. But some. Money. Space. Equipment. Access. Whatever they have that networks need.

People with courage to demonstrate that courage is possible. To speak without managing their language. To build without asking permission. To refuse without calculating whether refusal is strategic.

Because courage is contagious. And we need it spreading.

Here is what I am asking you to do.

Stop asking permission to build alternatives. Stop calculating whether it is safe. Stop waiting for the right moment or the perfect plan.

Find the people in your community who are already doing this work. They exist. You have not seen them because you have been looking at official systems and they are working outside official systems. Find them. Ask what they need. Provide it.

Build the networks. Learn the skills. Move the resources. Use every advantage you have,every privilege you have accrued,and turn it toward building something else.

Do this now. Not tomorrow. Not when you have more time or resources or clarity. Now. Because the window is closing. Because official systems are being dismantled faster than we are building alternatives.

The coffee is cold. The smoke is thick outside. The sun through the smoke is red.

I write this knowing it might change nothing. Knowing Trump might win. Knowing autocracy might consolidate too quickly. Knowing I might be wrong about all of this.

But I can see it. I can see what becomes possible when people stop being manageable. The networks forming. The infrastructure emerging. The alternatives spreading. The official systems becoming optional. The autocracy collapsing not through overthrow but through irrelevance.

Forty people in a church basement. Two people trusting each other. One person using their skills outside official channels. One person redirecting resources. This multiplying. Connecting. Becoming infrastructure.

This is my vision. This is what I see.

The question is whether you can see it too. Whether you can imagine what we build together in the spaces where their control ends. Whether you can act as if this vision is real, as if the alternatives already exist, as if we are already free.

Because that is how visions become reality. Not through careful planning. Through people acting as if the thing they envision already exists and discovering that their actions make it real.

I am not afraid and therefore I am not manageable. This is not just my freedom. This is the foundation of everything we build.

The wind never stops here. But we are still standing. Still building. Still refusing.

This is what comes next. This is what I see. This is what we create when we stop asking permission.

This is how we beat him.

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