“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. “Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. . . . “. . . Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” – Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” reprinted in SISTER OUTSIDER (1984) http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-March/000794.html

Compiling a small list of not-too-ancient state atrocities for a friend. What do you think is the worst-but-hardly-ever-talked-about atrocity committed by state forces (especially the U.S. government and its wholly owned subsidiaries, but doesn’t strictly have to be) in the last couple centuries?

To-day @ Rad Geek People’s Daily [radgeek.com]: http://radgeek.com/gt/2013/03/23/really-social-safety-net/ Toward a Really Social Safety Net

To-day Rad Geek People’s Daily [radgeek.com]: http://radgeek.com/gt/2013/03/23/into-the-briar-patch/ In which I am told that Sheriff Joe Arpaio “can’t continue to fight without my immediate help.”

Sometimes when I’m diving into my research materials, and trying to transcribe an article on Mutualism, suddenly I realize that oh, actually, 3/4 of this entire article is really just going to be a rant about Jury Nullification. And then I get the sudden eerie feeling that I’ve run a long way only to end up in a place I’ve already seen too many times before.

Received an e-mail earlier today from MoveOn marking the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. “Hey everybody, remember back when we used to be an anti-war group? Boy howdy, that was a time.”

is preparing page images of Clarence Lee Swartz’s and Charles T. Sprading’s early 1920s magazine, THE LIBERTARIAN, for reviewing online.

“Your book is a menace! A danger to human life! A disgrace to not only your species, but your phylum!” http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/3286

Auburn: More caffeinated philosophy tomorrow night (Wednesday, March 20th, 5:00-7:00 p.m.) at The Gnu’s Room — panel discussion on philosophical issues of “gender, sex and love.” http://aaeblog.com/2013/03/19/coffee-tea-or-gender/

Dear Internet anarchist flame-warriors: Even if your dogmatic assertions that “Anarchism has always been X,” or “Anarchism really just means Y” were true, it would not matter — because anarchism had better be full of innovations and experiments, if anarchy is going to be worth anything at all. This is supposed to be a constantly evolving, periodically self-revolutionizing body of thought and social practice, not a fixed litany of traditional unchanging formulas. But that said, your dogmatic assertions that “Anarchism has always been X” or “Anarchism just means Y” are also probably not only false, but really kind of embarrassingly ill-informed, for almost any possible values of X or Y. Anarchists are weird, and we’ve already tried out lots of combinations of ideas, including a lot that you might not have expected, and a lot that you probably should not like at all. The “tradition” is large; it contains multitudes.