Chicago: Call-Out for An Assembly at the End of the World

From Ill Will Editions

The situation: our world, the only home we will ever have, is being hurled into the abyss by imbeciles and nihilists. A 72-degree Christmas and a Trump presidency; lynching and deportation of our neighbors by police and ICE; pipelines desecrate the dead, while poisoning the living; billions of selfies, while 200 species go extinct every day; the feeling of powerlessness enforced by governments everywhere and the management of each detail down to the smallest part of our hearts: everything calls for this to end.

What’s necessary: that a new historical force rise up to face our situation; that we organize to make a better, livable existence on this earth and put an end to the reign of those who would continue this catastrophic course.

Our ethos: a spirit that stands against the end of the world — revolutionary and driven by the desire to fight, carrying the recognition that power needs to be built and organized. Committed to strategy, not ideology, we have a faith in practice, of an openness to the world, of being moved by the event, not criticality that puts one outside of every situation. We believe in freedom and know we cannot have it if we simply react and define ourselves against the forces that seek to dominate us: we must make ourselves a power in our own right.

The strategy: build autonomy and revolution from the ground up by establishing the infrastructural and organizational basis for another way of life. We must immediately and patiently grow our capacity and power — starting from our reality, what we want, what we need, and where we want to go. Everything we do, each piece, each practice, must be part of a broader strategy of giving ourselves the means to be more powerful and to face up to the need for another way of life, reducing our dependencies and increasing our power over our own networks of food, health, transportation, shelter, or communications. As we see it, a historical force capable of confronting capitalism, government, and catastrophe has to be materially capable of living through their end, of breaking their blackmail of enforced dependence. That’s why instead of mourning this world, we’ve begun getting organized together, to help such a force come into existence, to be a part of it, to do what we think is called for in our single existence on earth. This is why we have created a space in Chicago for meeting, organizing, and strategizing—the first of many.

A tentative vision: a powerful, autonomous territory takes shape between a multiplicity of spaces and infrastructures –hubs, farms, clinics, hacklabs, cafes, workshops, print labs, gyms, mesh networks, foundries, and forests— in neighborhoods and small towns from Chicago to Milwaukee, to Detroit. Thousands of individual and organizational relationships are forged as fighters/builders/growers young and old find each other, experiencing a solidarity born of combining their capacities –skills, knowledges, resources, and passions— along shared trajectories such that they will become capable of actually supporting an exit from our current, untenable way of life. In short, a territory full of all kinds of forms of life, rich in diversity yet united in the belief that this fight is the only dignified and just response to our time. And who over time have developed the means to take care of themselves and others in a growing and deepening way. As the Zapatistas say, we are “walking while questioning.”

Our weekly assembly & potluck: we aim to bring together a wide group of people who are interested in building autonomy. By putting us all in one place together, by sharing food and thinking together, we hope we can give ourselves more interaction and consistency and open up greater possibility, whether that’s plugging into the existing tracks, proposing new initiatives, expanding skills and resources, or meeting others on the basis of longstanding visions and commitments. Let’s find each other, and get going!

Assembly and Potluck Dinner Every Wednesday, from 7:30pm on. 2306 S. Kedzie Ave