NationsInsubordination

This Is Not Chaos—It’s the Refusal to Die Quietly

Listen.

There are people all over this world who are still waiting for somebody to give them permission to be free. I am not one of them.

No one at Thrive International asked for permission. But we are building something that has no blueprint in the modern world—because the modern world did not intend for people like us to thrive. The modern world was built for extraction, for domination, for silence. And we will not be silent.

This is anarchy. Some people call it madness because they don’t understand anything that isn’t rooted in control.

But you see —

What we are building at Thrive is not the end of order. It is the return to something deeper, something older—order rooted in care, not coercion. A sanctuary that remembers what it means to be human before we were told we had to prove our humanity.

Anarchy is not chaos. And revolution does not have to be violent.
Anarchy is care that refuses complicity in cruel, efficient systems that kill. Chaos is living in a world where people die alone because they can’t afford to heal.
Revolution is refusing to accept a world where survival depends on suffering. Violence is watching cancer-stricken four-year-old babies deported to a country they have never been.

The idea of anarchy terrifies some because it suggests we might actually be able to care for each other without being forced or paid. That we might learn to live without supervision and regulation. That we might not need their cages, their cruelty, their corruption or their crumbs.

Let me make it plain:

We do not believe in domination.

We do not believe in saviors.

We believe in each other.

We believe in the land.

We believe in choosing life again and again and again.

What does that look like?

It looks like people coming together — not to hoard, not to dominate, but to feed, to listen, to build, to protect.

And to laugh. And take naps.

It looks like twenty-one acres of rainforest in Belize, held not as property, but as promise.

It looks like a woman — disabled, discounted, disrespected — refusing to give up on herself or people like her. Not because anyone told her she mattered, but because she knew she did.

That woman is me.
This place is Thrive.
And this work — this revolutionary, quiet, sacred work — is not chaos. It is the refusal to die quietly.

Because if we are going to survive, we must build something more beautiful than what is trying to break us. And if we are going to thrive — truly thrive — we must do it on our own terms.

You can find out more about my hidden disability and Why I have to Go Now, Like Right Now on my shanda site.

And click here to find out about Thrive International, our flagship project in Belize.

I write with assistive technology while living out loud with the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. If my rhythm or rhym faulters, I simply ask for your grace. ~ Grounded in healing, shared care, and interdependence.

Sources

1. Amber Butts of Black Youth Project, Mutual Aid is Inherently AntiFascist: “This is not just theory, it’s lived history. Mutual aid has long been a vital tool of resistance, practiced by those who understood that survival couldn’t wait on systems that are designed to fail us. Mutual aid says, unequivocally: Black lives, queer lives, disabled lives, undocumented lives, marginalized lives — are sacred. We will keep each other sacred and at the heart of everything we do. We will not lose sight of each other.”
2. Fatima Shaik’s, “Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood,” explores the history of Black mutual aid societies in New Orleans, revealing their significance in providing social and economic support within the Black community. She examines the role of mutual aid in navigating the challenges of slavery and the post-slavery era.
3. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, author, educator, political economist: Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice “One development strategy for marginal, disadvantaged, underserved, and oppressed groups is to use economic cooperation and group solidarity to create businesses that will provide meaningful work and income, greater control for workers, and the possibility of wealth creation.”
4. bell hooks, author, educator, theorist: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope: “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. A body of critical theory is now available that explains all the workings of white-supremacist thought and racism. But explanations alone do not bring us to the practice of beloved community.
   When we take the theory, the explanations, and apply them concretely to our daily lives, to our experiences, we further and deepen the practice of transformation.”
5. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, PhD, author, abolitionist, educator: Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, “Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.”
6. Dean Spade, lawyer, writer, trans activist: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), “The only thing that keeps those in power in that position is the illusion of our powerlessness. A moment of freedom and connection can undo a lifetime of social conditioning and scatter seeds in a thousand directions.”
7. Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) — Black feminist statement emphasizing collective care, survival, and liberation as a shared political practice.
8. Zapatista communities in Chiapas and historic Maroon societies in the Caribbean and the Americas as examples of anarchic, land-based self-governance.