Actions may be legal, or they may be illegal. Whether they are moral or not is a totally separate questions. (When the law is wrong, lawbreaking is the right thing to do.) But while actions may be illegal, people are not. A person’s existence and life and worth aren’t reducible to the papers that they carry or the legal or political status that they have, and referring to people by their legal status alone is dehumanizing and insulting to them, as well as coarsening and brutalizing to the person doing it. It encourages the worst in those who do it and justifies inhuman reactions to those it is done to. No human being is “illegal.”

Good God I have so much butternut squash soup right now. I feel like a hipster restaurant.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November 2014 is the third anniversary of the publication of Markets Not Capitalism. Many happy returns and countless thanks to my co-editor Gary Chartier, and to our publishers, Stevphen Shukaitis and Minor Compositions and the Autonomedia Collective, for helping to recover and renew a vital conversation within the Anarchist tradition, as well as doing so much to help start so many fascinating new ones; to all of our contributors, living and late; to Stephanie Murphy for her amazing work in preparing the audio book, to Alan Furth for his amazing, ongoing work in preparing a Spanish translation; to Jason Lee Byas and to all the participants in the SFL Past & Future of the Libertarian Left VRG who have been hosting a fascinating study and dialogue around several of the essays this fall; to James Tuttle and C4SS, who have indefatigably and very kindly promoted the book and helped to get it into many new hands; and to all of the contributors, readers, reviewers, interlocutors and everyone else who’s made this such a fascinating exchange. http://ift.tt/19Zb3kZ

We got to Libertopia. (Thanks!) Now let’s get to ISFLC too.

We got to Libertopia. (Thanks!) Now let’s get to ISFLC too.

Man, it has been a while since someone “by that logic…”’ed me.

Hey y’all so I am looking for a place to crash in or near New Orleans this upcoming weekend when I go there to bring the ALL Distro market anarchy for the upcoming New Orleans Bookfair (Friday night 11/7). I would be arriving in the evening, and out of your hair by Saturday morning. Just need a couch, I am not at all picky. Anyone got a place where I could crash, or know someone who might be willing to let me crash there?

In more important news, the weather here is finally perfect for the hot apple cider at Coffee Cat.

“Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views – what then? “The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. “And how if he did not vote at all? “Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. “So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted – whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! “A rather awkward doctrine this.” —Herbert Spencer (1851), “The Right to Ignore the State” http://ift.tt/1tWG2pV

http://ift.tt/10pjGBL I have not voted for any candidate for political office in 8 years. Today, I’ll be voting for nobody again. I am boycotting the election. I hope that you will too. I will not vote for any candidate for political office, Democrat, Republican, or other, no matter what promises they make, and no matter what party they come from. I do not support them as candidates, and I do not support the oligarchical political machine they represent. What they promise is mostly terrible. But even where it is not, if the last few election cycles prove anything, they prove that power-plays beat promises every time. It’s not just a few radicals who have noticed that something is deeply wrong; it’s not just a handful of malcontents who know that we need a radically different direction, away from the insane and destructive Beltway consensus — away from this government’s wars, this government’s bail-outs, this government’s borders and deportations and secret surveillance, corporate health-insurance cartels, PATRIOT Acts, runaway police powers, catastrophic economic policies, shameless fear-mongering and constant, unremitting power-grabs. But people have HOPEd and parties have CHANGEd and if it all accomplished anything at all, it was only to prove that we’re never going to get anything but more of the same as long as we maintain a false hope in electoral politics. If what you want is social progress, there is no shortcut around principled agitation, grassroots social movements, community organizing, civil disobedience and direct action. There is no low-calorie political substitute for D.I.Y. social transformation. Elections and party politicking are no way to make a revolution. They’re not even a way to make small change. No matter who you vote for, the winner is always the government. #DontVote