Building a Post-Capitalist Future Through Organizing and Mutual Aid

The grip of fossil capital seems inescapable. [rapid succession of oil ads] We've been under its grasp for so long that we rarely pull away and see the broader strokes of history. A history which teaches us that capitalism, and more specifically capitalism facilitated by the engines of fossil fuel, a fossil capitalism, is not inevitable. It only exists as a tiny blip on the geological timeline. Even across human history, economic modes have risen and fallen. Empires collapse. Thee everyday people of Russia toppled the absolute and divine

rule of Tsars. Chinese peasants wrestled off imperialist shackles. Great change can and does happen. And in this time of deep planetary crisis-a crisis instigated and perpetuated by fossil capitalism-we must make great change. We must completely upend our destructive systems of extraction, ecological destruction, racism, colonialism, and violence to build a system that truly cares for the well-being of all people and the planet. Indeed, this is the directive climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have laid out for us. ["our world needs climate action on all fronts everything everywhere all at once"]

But it's not as easy as flicking a switch. Building an ecological revolution will be a long struggle. One that will take organizing, relationship building, and radical imagination to be successful. So, today we dive into the wisdom and theory of organizers and activists who are actually building that revolution. Here's how we end capitalism and build an ecological world on its rubble. This video is made in partnership with givedirectly. Stick around until the end or go to givedirectly.org/occ to find out to how you can take part in a direct cash transfer campaign trying to alleviate the harm of capitalism.

How do we organize a revolution? We cannot solve climate change without ending capitalism, and we can't end capitalism through reform or half-measures. We've seen time and time again that reforms, whether through social democratic measures-while crucial for the working class- eventually are co-opted and hacked away at by the capitalist class. We saw this with Germany's Green Party, who were fairly radical before taking office. Still, as their tenure in power stretched on, their policy and actions were swallowed up by capitalist forces, like when they green-lit the destruction of the hamlet of Lützerath to make way for the

expansion of a lignite coal mine, or when the co-chair of the party resisted "raises of minimum wages in the agricultural sector because it 'hurts the competitiveness of the country." Working within capitalism fails because capitalism demands the exploitation of workers and planet through the lever of fossil fuel, which I explained thoroughly in this video. The only path forward then, is to topple capitalism. And to end capitalism and build an ecological world, we need some form of revolution. To be effective in that revolution, however, we must be organized. This means that revolutionary organizing is crucial

for charting the path forward. We must build a movement of movements with the core goal of toppling capitalism and building an ecological world in its stead. Because after all, climate change will affects everyone to some extent, everywhere. To get from where we are now, especially in the imperial core where fossil capital seems to hold absolute power-where surveillance, police and military states crack down on any dissent [play protest crackdowns]-- to some form of stateless, classless ecological society seems inconceivable. In part this is purposeful. Capitalism has been terrifyingly effective at

waging a war on our imagination. As author Ashley C. Ford reminds us, "The goal of oppressors is to limit your imagination about what is possible without them, so you might never imagine more for yourself & the world you live in." Capitalism has alienated us from both the very products our work creates and from the communities and friends we need to feel joy. We sit behind keyboards and screens most of the day as our close connections dwindle away. The inertia, then, to build and organize radical and effective movements can feel even more difficult. Especially

when we face a choice between the numbed comfort of scrolling through TikTok or getting out into the streets, engaging with others, and finding common ground to topple capitalism. If this is the case, if we are constantly being numbed and tranquilized to the horrors of capitalism, how do we actually do it? How do we build a movement to end capitalism? To be clear I by no means have the answers, I can only look towards those who have dedicated their whole lives to building radical movements to beat back the destruction of capital.

When we look across history, the times when movements have succeeded in bringing about the end of the capitalist mode of production, at least in some manner, have been revolutionary socialists [play clips of socialist revolutions]. These movements often adhered to the theory and practice of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Mao. [play clip of Lenin talking] There is much to learn from the struggles and writings that came out of these revolutions, but let's narrow in on a few crucial lessons. The first is that, when the conditions are ripe,

the working class, the people, the masses will be the ones to bring about revolutionary change. As the authors of a manifesto on Ecosocialist Revolution write "the working class is the largest group of people on the planet with the greatest social weight. Industry, commerce, healthcare, transport, local amenities, nothing could function without working people." As such, the working class has immense power over capitalists. They can directly affect their bottom line through walkouts, strikes, or even sabotage. The exploitation of the working class is

a major reason why capitalists can make profits. Sp, without a radical working-class movement, capitalism can't be challenged. This means building awareness within the working class about how capitalism exploits our labor and time- in other words, raising class consciousness. Here is where the second crucial lesson comes in. To build power amongst the working class there must be a group of politicized and radical organizers lending direction and structure to movements. A party of agitators that concentrates the demands and ideals of the masses

into an actionable path. Lenin described this as a vanguard party. One made of organizers who are dedicated full-time to the logistics, education, and actions of the movement. But crucially, these people are not separate from or hold more power than the people on the street, or any movement or group for that matter. They must constantly understand the needs, desires, and wants of people through deep relationships, formulate plans and actions based on those needs, and then bring those plans back to the movement in a constant cycle of iteration. This is what Mao calls the

Mass Line. Demands and knowledge must come from the people, be distilled, and returned back to the people. What this means, is that mass protest on the street is not enough to upend capitalism. We need political education and direction. We need plans and organizations that bring us from the streets to the ownership of production. Because the ultimate goal of any ecological revolution, any overthrow of capitalism, has to be the seizure of production. We eventually need to wrest control of what gets made and how it gets made from the hands of the ruling class and place it

into the hands of workers who are integral to the production process. If all we ever do is shut down a highway and raise awareness, we will forever be on the defensive. Forever trying to hold back the tide of exploitative and fossil fuel destruction. So, we must plan and actually build that future. Part of this planning and direction comes with drawing people in and keeping people engaged in the movement. As Dante Strobino, a union organizer from North Carolina explains, ["We gave people a winnable demand something that they could immediately seize upon that could help

them build their confidence and the desire to continue to be involved in a protracted struggle for the long haul."] Building working class power is a constant balance of addressing immediate issues to keep people engaged while also building towards a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Small victories on the road to larger ones are especially crucial amid the climate crisis. We need to reduce harm and eliminate carbon emissions right now. So that means achievable wins like speeding up the shuttering of coal plants, pushing for electrified and free public transit,

and more. These are non-reformist reforms to build power on the path towards toppling capitalism. But until we are building and putting these lessons into practice, none of that matters. It's all good to claim that we need a working-class revolution that seizes the means of production, how do we create strong organizations to create that moment? Luckily, there's so much we can learn from organizers on the ground right now, like abolitionists Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes. Their book Let This Radicalize You is an essential

resource for potential organizers seeking to build anticapitalist and care-based power. They reveal that organizing and creating movements to topple capitalism is about building strong relationships. For them and their co-struggler Ejeris Dixon ".relationship building is as much of a politic as [their] commitment to abolition is, or [their] commitment to anticapitalism." Building deep connections so that when crisis hits, you and your comrades can respond and support each other and your surrounding communities is crucial. But building relationships also means

connecting with those that you might not see eye to eye with, as Hayes and Kaba remind us, we are trying to "create movements, rather than clubhouses…" This means being generous to yourself and others, releasing cynicism ["Ditch cynicism! Ditch cynicism.cynicism is like turbo fuel for the opposition."] and embracing the messiness and mistakes of building something. Because the reality is that we'll need a vast array of people coming from all different walks of life to come together to topple capitalism. As Kaba and Hayes go on to explain:

"Put simply, we need more people… organizing on the scale that our struggles demand means finding common ground with a broad spectrum of people, many of whom we would never otherwise interact with, and building a shared practice of politics in the pursuit of more just outcomes." Unfortunately, under capitalism, we've been coached, through pervasive narratives of individualism, racism, and constant alienation from work and community, that we should fear others. Overcoming this fear and diving into movement work is a radical act: ["I think people need to experience the power of solidarity in order to understand that other

people who we've been coached to fear are actually our best hope."] When we create a mutual aid organization that works with workers' movements and direct action groups, we are building a culture of belonging and support that bucks the norms of capitalist individualism. Kaba and Hayes urge us to build strength through deep connection, not divisiveness. Much like a tightly knit wool sweater, movements thrive when those within it actually care about each other and the demands they're fighting for. If we aren't building power with those strong foundations-if we've neglected the sweater-the weave of the sweater loosens and

the wind cuts right through- the movement becomes brittle and can easily fall apart. Ultimately though the best thing we can do is just start. Don't let perfection get in the way of action. We should approach the process of anti-racist anti-capitalist ecological world-building with a stance of curiosity, not perfection. ["I'm gonna move from kind of armchair critiquing everything and I'm just gonna dive in to doing some stuff getting messy making mistakes using those mistakes to build the other thing in a better stronger way."] Joining up with

organizations and movements in your area is the only way to achieve and post-capitalist planet. The world will never change through Twitter or the YouTube comment section. But if you are sitting behind a keyboard wondering where to start, the good news is you don't have to start from scratch. There are already movements and organizations doing the work. Movements that you can plug into to start building toward an anticapitalist, ecological future. Movements Already on the Path The sun blazed high in the sky and smoke clouds billowed from nearby power plants as a mass of bodies clad in all-white jumpsuits headed

to block a future of devastation. In Germany, the insurgent climate movement Ende Gälende, or "Here and No Further" in English, is storming lignite coal fields straight out of the apocalypse. Across the country, the group connects the horrors of fossil capitalism to the destruction of climate change with their direct actions and climate camps. ["hundreds of climate activists have broken through a police line and stormed one of germany's biggest lignite coal mines."] What began as a collection of leftist climate-oriented activists dedicated to a

direct action campaign to shut down coal mining in the Rhineland region of Germany has now blossomed into a powerful movement wreaking havoc on German fossil capitalist's bottom line. [play clip] Ende Gälende is a powerful example of anti-capitalist climate justice organizing. In many ways, the scope, planning, and actions of the climate group reflect the lessons and radical theories we just learned about. The group plans roughly one major action a year, like blockading a brown coal excavator in 2019 [play clip] or the defense and occupation of Lutzerath in 2023- a German hamlet

condemned to destruction because of a proposed coal field expansion ["the plan is for the town to be demolished as soon as Wednesday to make way for the expansion of a mine that produces 25 million tons of lignite every year the most polluting of all coal types."] And it seems that part of the success of the movement has come from its use of climate camps. Months beforehand, actions are announced, and climate camps are built to not only plan out tactics and logistics, but to also forge bonds, develop politics, and learn from others. Much in the same way that the college encampments that rose up across the world for Palestine were

nodes for young organizers to test ideas and develop relationships, these climate camps are convergence points for the German and international anticapitalist climate justice movement. These camps are just as crucial for building power as blockading a coal excavator is. But Ende Gälende's camps and blockades would not happen without their thorough planning and decision-making process. Every few months, the group holds big, open alliance planning sessions, where activists from all over Germany come together to discuss the course of the movement. Open to all, these planning sessions rely on smaller

working groups to develop logistics and more specific agendas to then bring to the broader coalition for final decisions. These working groups tackle areas like finance, actions, camp logistics, media and messaging, and more. And when it comes to time to make decisions, Ende Gälende strives to create plans through consensus. In a pamphlet outlining their organizing principles, Ende Gälende note that they "take a lot of time to make decisions." At the large-scale alliance meetings, they open up decision points and agenda items for debate,

and voting doesn't come down to just agreeing or disagreeing, "Instead, there are six levels to which people can assign themselves," These range from full scale agreement, to agreement with major concerns, all the way to vetoing the measure. The goal is to reach some form of consensus among everyone before moving forward. All the while, Ende Gälende strive to minimize exclusionary barriers to the decision process like "male-dominant speech behaviour, rooms that are not wheelchair accessible, a lack of awareness for racism in our structures, academic

language, dependency on translation, plenary sessions that are too long, and many more." This is the scaffolding holding up those more public-facing and flashy direct actions. 6,000 people could never have blockaded a coal mine without organizing, decision-making agreements, and logistics teams. So, as much as we need to be directly attacking fossil capital through blockades, direct action, and sabotage, we also need to understand that the slow work of building relationships and organization through climate camps and planning sessions is just as, if not more important. Ende Gälende is by no means special, however. Again and again we've seen the power of encampments, strong organization, and deep relationships when it comes to direct

action and building anti-fossil capitalist power. The Dakota Access Pipeline encampments and the broader #NoDAPL movement are another example of how anti-capitalist and anti-settler colonial power can be built. In Our History is the Future, scholar-activist Nick Estes describes the extensive organization and beauty of the Oceti Sakowin camp, one of three encampments on the front lines of the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline blockade action. He writes: "The main camp was a fully functioning city… At its height, there were about thirteen free camp kitchens and half a dozen

medic tents… a fully functioning day school. Education-centered treaties, language, culture, and land and water defense, there were nonviolent direct action trainings hosted daily" and even a "legal tent." Two-Spirited people and women held "leadership roles in all aspects of camp life." But importantly, this camp was there to disrupt the construction of the Dakota Access Oil pipeline. To directly attack the bottom line of settler colonial fossil capitalists. To protect the water and land of the Missouri River. At the peak of the camp's resistance, actions were organized almost every day. When there were actions the Eyapaha,

essentially the town crier, "rode through the camp on a bicycle, a horse, or in the back of a pickup rousing people from slumber. 'You didn't come here to sleep. This ain't a vacation. We came here to stop a pipeline.'" And for many months they did. Bodies on the line, braving attack dogs, chemical weapons, rubber bullets, and grievous wounds those Indigenous to Standing Rock and their comrades successfully delayed the construction of the pipeline. Unfortunately, the power of fossil capital eventually prevailed. Trump took office in 2017 and greenlit the proposed section

of the pipeline. Within six months of it coming online, the pipeline had already leaked 5 times. While defeats and setbacks abound, each action, each encampment is a lesson learned, a comrade met, and power grows. This is at the heart of building strength to topple capitalism: forging relationships and infrastructure, so that when the conditions are right, organizers, comrades and activists can be on the scene to provide a beautiful alternative to the destruction of capitalism. Building Tomorrow: In the fall of 2023, after a hard-fought battle against the Big Three US auto companies, the United Auto Workers union

announced an ambitious plan. One that hasn't been seen in countless decades of US labor organizing. The UAW will spearhead a massive general strike starting on May 1st, 2028. ["we invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our Collective muscles."] Calling on all US labor unions to join them, the United Auto Workers aligned their most recent contract to end on May 1st and with its cessation a strike on an unprecedented scale in modern US labor history. But what makes this action so

promising is that while the UAW set the vision, soon after the American Federation of Teachers heeded the call. And now climate groups like the Sunrise Movement are aligning themselves with the 2028 general strike- spearheading a student strike for climate across the country as well as assuring that the demands of the general strike foreground the climate crisis. This is organizing in action. It's a concrete goal that organizers across the country and even the world, can work towards. And you can take steps to join in this fight right now. If you're

already in a union, join its Rank and File Caucus, figure out when your contract ends, and begin organizing to change that date to May 1st, 2028. If you're not in a union, consider organizing your workplace so that you all can be ready to strike for change in 2028. If you're searching for a job, perhaps consider going into a field with unionized workers like driving for municipal transportation or becoming a dockworker. The general strike in 2028 is a perfect reason to start the needed work in your area right now. Even if it's just connecting with and organizing

community institutions like your church, mosque, or even mutual aid group to be prepared to provide necessities and care for those affected by a mass strike. And if you're lost or don't know where to start, you can link up with 10 friends or coworkers and sign up for the free Organizing for Power training using the link below before the registration deadline on February 2nd. The reality is that an end to capitalism and a truly ecological world cannot be built without immense organization and personal struggle. We need to challenge ourselves to escape the comfort of Netflix and TikTok and get out into the real world and start

building something. ["Build something try put it out there in the world be brave be courageous understand you're gonna come under fire. It's okay do it with other people don't be a Lone Ranger."] It's wonderful to talk about and imagine what an ecosocialist or Solarpunk future could look like, but until we start getting out there and building, those dreams will continue to exist in our heads. This isn't easy work, and putting yourself out there can be incredibly scary. Doubts about whether you're good enough, know enough, or virtuous enough abound. But as much as it

can be scary to put yourself out there and plug in, it can also be liberating. Liberating from the grief of a dying world as you commune with comrades. Liberating as you find support in a time of need from others in your organizing space. The reality is that there are so many different ways you can bring yourself to this struggle. The world needs you and your talents. That local organization needs you and your passion. Whether you're a writer, an extrovert, or an artist ask what needs doing and see how you can apply yourself to those tasks. And if you're

ever confused about where to start, consider these guiding questions from Kaba and Hayes: "1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself? 2. Who's already doing the work? 3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support and help them? 4. How can I be constructive?" You don't have to be Sisyphus. You don't have to push that boulder up the hill alone. We are here. Together we are not only stronger but more resilient than when we are siloed and alone. The world, the environment, and our communities are much more joyous places when we are linked.

To end capitalism then, to build a future based on the needs of the people and planet, we have to organize a movement of movements-one built by and for working people across race, ability, gender, and identities. One whose deep connections and relationships show that it is possible to building infrastructures of care is building power. That a future without extractive violence, ecological destruction, and alienation is not only possible but essential to ourselves and our planet's well-being. While that future is bright and inviting, we also need to focus in on immediate harm-reduction

strategies in the here and now. And, in my opinion, one of the more useful tools in our toolbox to alleviate suffering and show solidarity is direct cash transfers. While nowhere near the level of systemic change that we need to actually solve underlying issues pulling people into extreme poverty, giving money directly to people who need it, with no strings attached, is one way to empower them to lift themselves out of poverty while we work towards changing our broken system in the long term. That's why I've teamed up with GiveDirectly alongside a group

of fellow Nebula creators like Simon Clark, F.D. Signifier, and Princess Wekes to facilitate direct cash transfers to a community in Baringo County, Kenya. By the end of the year, we're hoping to raise $155,000 to distribute to the 690 people in the community. The way it works is quite simple. Everyone who wants to enroll in the village receives a SIM card and a phone if they don't have one, then a first payment is transferred to everyone's mobile wallet, then the GiveDirectly team checks in to make sure that there are no issues, before the rest of the cash is transferred

with another follow up after. That money can be used for whatever needs or wants- whether it be for chemo treatments, home repairs, buying goats, or starting new businesses like beekeeping. The unfortunate reality of living under capitalism is that cash is essential to survive. As a result, these direct money transfers help build community and climate resilience. This is exactly the case in the neighboring village of Bolasian in Baringo County, which also received large cash transfers. Those payments helped people like Joseph not just survive punishing drought conditions but also allowed him to expand his grazing operations. ["I

used the money to buy maize in bulk and 8 goats which I am rearing."] Those direct cash transfers meant that the community had enough funds to build adequate housing and water tanks so that a lack of rain wouldn't immediately spell disaster: ["Almost everyone built a house from the money received and a water tank…We could not have accessed water if that money was not available to us."]. Since 2009, when they started, these large cash transfers have improved mental health and child health outcomes as well as increased household income by 34%. So, if you're interested in reducing the harm of climate change and global capitalism, consider directly funding

resiliency by going to givedirectly.org/occ or clicking the link in the description.