What’s your problem?

Capitalism is the root of all (systemized) evil.

We have been born into its abusive household, our planet entrenched in its generational trauma & systematic torture. Those most corrupted with privileges within it commodify & weaponize daily existence, playing war games with our resources while lacking of any regard for the lives & livelihood of every species on the planet, along with the ground beneath their very own feet. The rest become complicit in its oppressive impacts because participation is compulsory & prescriptive.

Capitalism’s house, Capitalism’s rules.

Today simply feeding, housing & caring for our own basic wellness almost fundamentally requires complicity in modern genocide, ecocide, eugenics, enslavement, trafficking & imperialism (among other daily human rights violations). Personal success comes at a great cost to ourselves & our community. To move beyond public critique towards public condemnation often garners death threats, unemployment, infantilization, federal monitoring & outright assassination.

It becomes monumentally difficult to even envision a version of life in which being #FreeToThrive & having meaningful, equitable choices in how We impact the world at large in our day to day choices is normal.

TL;DR: Capitalism is a shitty economic choice & it shouldn’t be the only one available to Us to make a living.

Who even are you & what is it you want?

To be brief, We’re a helper.

When We think about what life would be like for us in Our ideal world, time would be spent helping people, learning from them, loving them. It would look like consistently eating healthy food that doesn’t come with the aftertaste of consumer guilt around a table packed with folks we’ve been dearly loving & new neighbors we’re getting to know. We make art out in the sun whenever the planet captivates Our adoration, because We are free of that constant, nagging feeling that we are wasting our time every moment we are not trying to make things better or make more money. The news speaks of progress in climate change reduction, of cooperatives flourishing, of massive debt abolition. At night, in a home full of people who feel safe & strong together, We sleep soundly feeling perfectly content to die because every day is a loving indulgence of harmony with the Universe.

Any social media platform highlights the dystopic world We are occupying instead. Those who see the breadth & depth of injustices built into our historical foundations feel they lack the power to rectify them, often even in the course of working tirelessly to do so in their own communities. We collectively scream into its populated void, desperately seeking, among other things, freedom:

from working because to stop effectively means death
from always choosing which cause or community to damn with the dimes we spend to stay alive
from feeling forced to outperform against our governmental & corporate captors in the hostage negotiations for our individual & collective wellness
from inequality & oppression due to the bodies into which we are born, the soil on which we are raised, or the ways we tend to our spirituality
from being slowly, savagely, systematically & oh, so suddenly…annihilated.

More than that, we want the existence we deserve, one that provides us:

Healthy, delicious food from ethical sources accessed through ethical practices
Accessible, safe, sufficient housing we control for our self organized familial groups
Clean water
Equitable access to educational information while maintaining data autonomy & privacy
Accessible mental, physical & spiritual wellness services & resources
Outlets for our productivity that benefit us personally, our communities at large & the planet

TL;DR: We’re an everyday person who wants to be able to thrive without causing systemic harm to others.

How, sway?!

How can we liberate ourselves & each other from under the crushing weight of capitalism’s domain, with so many folks & factors working actively against us? How can we save, revive, & redevelop our world more equitably? What will it take to avoid perpetuating the same systemic inequality, violence, & ecocide threatening our existence? How do we get #FreeToThrive in our actual lifetime, with equitable, accessible opportunities for all our children to be born into that freedom in the future?

We #QuitCapitalism.

While this lofty and abstract concept may seem idealistic at first glance, its important to acknowledge that it absolutely is. We deserve to pursue an ideal world. One where participating in capitalist imperialism isn’t the only option available in our communities. We never know how much time we have, & a plan that requires more than our own lifetimes to accomplish & scale isn’t a very helpful one. So, more specifically, we will #QuitCapitalism over the course of the next five years (or less😅).

TL;DR: We can, & will, change the ways We make a living so that We don’t have to participate in capitalism anymore.

What does that even mean?

Individual liberation requires a lot of collaboration with friends, neighbors, community organizations & other activists. We expect to learn an awful lot more about interdependence, mutual aid & community wealth building in the process. There are many lessons to be had from the Lenape & Susquehannock people who were violently disenfranchised from this region that they cared for, the unique yet shared histories of resistance & resiliency in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods & the vibrant landscape of community advocacy & activism that keeps the city’s most oppressed from being trampled by economic corruption & exploitation.

We’re defining success as:

Meeting all basic & material needs outside of the existing capitalist ecosystem
Exclusively supporting anti-capitalist entities (those that are not profit driven or imperialist in nature or impact)
not consuming commodities that are still within the profit driven product life cycle, or engaging in financial transactions that disproportionately benefit one involved party over another.

TL;DR: It means making an independent, equitable living that positively impacts the community.

Where will you even start?

Manifesting Our ideal future means drastically reorganizing Our present. As an able-bodied relationship anarchist without any dependents, We are uniquely positioned to take advantage of a broad system of support while remaining autonomous in Our decisions & independently affected by Our material outcomes. As such, We’ve already started.

We’ll be documenting Our journey to liberation in this Medium series. If you know a better world is deserved, are no stranger to fatigue or burnout & still have room in your heart for hope, We are sharing this for you.

TL;DR: We already started & more details are coming in future articles!

Support Us by following Us on Medium, reading coming installations, sharing this article, & connecting with Us over Social Media. Talk to you in April!

PC: Beaumonde Originals