RE-EXISTIR BULLETIN
Issue #2 Refuse to be a Citizen
Spring 2025
native lands “inland empire”
spring into action bitchez
Stay tuned for Issue #3, Summer 2025!
“Revolutionary change is something immediate… something that we need to do today, right now, wherever we are, where we live, where we work or study. It implies to begin right now to get rid of all the authoritarian and cruel relations, between men and women, parents and children, between different kinds of workers. This is not an armed uprising. It happens in the little corners which cannot be reached by the powerful but clumsy hands of the state. It is not centralized or isolated: it cannot be destroyed by the powerful, the rich, the police. It happens in a million places at the same time, in the families, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the work places. Suppressed in one place, it reappears in another until it is everywhere. Such revolution is an art. That is: it requires the courage not only of resistance but of imagination.” — Howard Zinn
EDITORIAL: REFUSE TO BE A CITIZEN
Today, Trump and the 1% are escalating a campaign of war; we must name it for what it is — ethnic cleansing. Deportation = human trafficking. Family separation = mass kidnapping. Detention centers = concentration camps. Removal of due process = war-crime enablement. Indefinite detention = precursor to genocide. With this unfolding trend, our neighbors and communities will be jailed and expelled in great numbers, and those that remain will be ever more subjugated.
It is time to acknowledge the truth — immigration reform will never come.The history of “positive” reforms and “rights” attained by law will always result in reaction from fascist groups, as we see today. From here on out, the system will only take away our rights, than grant rights or recognitions; the removal of birthright citizenship is only the beginning. At no point in history has the rising tide of fascism been stopped by compromises with elites or by “changing the system from within.”
In the face of this inevitable state violence, the time has come to create new forms of life that can abolish the need for citizenship. Why must we endure the insurmountable obstacle of getting everyone legal rights and recognitions, when what we desire is the direct abolition of obligated deference to authority? Abandoning our dependence on citizenship — by constructing networks of mutual solidarity and material independence — can also undo the institution of citizenship. The survival of our communities lies in our ability to reject the stockholm syndrome of citizenism.
To all who oppose Trump, this is our call to action — withdraw all support of America. The capitalist 1% who owns America has created a situation of no return — either we ally ourselves to the growth of fascism, or we remove the chains that bind us to this system through resistance. By divesting from attempts at “reforming” America —by refusing to be citizens— we can instead focus on building up resilience in ourselves and autonomy in our immediate communities. The time has come to rebelliously foment a point of no return on our terms — let’s dream and strive toward better horizons of existence without walls or borders.
PROACTIVE RESISTANCE WILL WIN
“The guerrilla is mobile and avoids direct conflict. This is because the guerrilla cannot afford the narcissism of political activists who fight only for moral victories. So accustomed to losing, some activists invented a way of winning that parades their weaknesses in front of a higher authority to secure their pity. The theory of guerrilla, in contrast, pinpoints a weakness that can be made into a decisive advantage and compensates for the rest… the guerrilla should engage the enemy only at a time and place of their own choosing, and only if success is guaranteed.” — Andrew Culp, from A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal
THERE IS A common issue being grappled by communities who have experience with previous cycles of social movements: How can we effectively disrupt the coming fascism? We share the collective sentiment that groups must shift popular resistance away from the habits of reactionary tactics, towards actions that are grounded in proactive strategy. Within this popular moment of outrage towards the authoritarian regime, we offer the hard-earned wisdom of previous cycles of movements.
We all want the regime to fall, but we must understand that there are effective ways and non-effective ways of accomplishing this. Reactive action is that which is non-effective: today, we see this through instinct, outrage-based protests taking place without regard for goals or actual disruption of fascism. Simply marching in circles is just performance and symbolism: what does it accomplish? Fascism is typically unaffected by reactive behavior; and when the march’s scheduled time is over, the enemy seamlessly continues their reign of authoritarianism. This is why mindlessly following around the Left — such as the socialist political parties or non-profit leaders — has made no gains in stopping ethnic cleansing since before Trump’s first presidency. In fact, the Party for Social and Liberation (PSL) has been documented to cooperate with police and rat out risk-takers who take real action at their marches.
Proactive strategy pushes us to challenge conventional protest rituals. In contrast to reaction, proactive resistance consists of collective goals, calculated actions, and evaluation of effectiveness. Instead of knee-jerk reaction to the latest atrocity made by a shitty system, the proactive approach empowers us to be the ones who decide on our goals, our cause, and our timing.
In contrast to reaction’s short-sightedness, proactive resistance takes planning seriously, anticipates repression, and models the realistic threats. It is long-term oriented and honest about the facts of the situation: which is that fascism won’t be overcome with one march or 100. Resistance requires an elaborate trajectory that is collectively shaped by equal participants. For this reason, proactive strategy emphasizes longevity, because it depends on sustainable, long-term commitment to resistance. It creates intentional plans that channel collectively constructed goals, whether that’s as an affinity group, assembly, or coalition. In sum: movements must evolve beyond marches and protests, towards direct actions that cause direct damage and disruption.
It should be reiterated that this discussion is not new, and is the product of decades and generations of resistance movements; of the collective knowledge created by those that have rightfully realized that we cannot get concessions from the government — that government itself is the problem; that we are on our own but that we are our own saviors; that the people are the only ones that can free themselves. These are the lessons and tactics that have been tested by time, and with patient cultivation can one day put an end to the operations of the authoritarian enemy. Anarchists and autonomists have exercised proactive strategies for a long time, and have developed an impressive body of knowledge on how we can cultivate a proactive resistance:
— Nurture complicities within our communities that destroy the curse of American individualism that separate us from each other, that keep us dependent on bosses and broken institutions
— Encourage a culture of hostility and indifference for the law, to disrupt its attempts at colonizing our minds and bodies, and collectively kill the cop in our heads in order to do what is necessary
— Naming the enemy: the United States’ structure composed of networks and webs of infrastructure, personnel, and logistics that make ethnic cleansing possible on the ground.
— Evolving beyond the protest, towards insurgency: to research the tangible targets of the sytem in our midsts and to circulate this knowledge freely in our communities, and move our tactics beyond easy-to-repress marches into intentional direct action against enemy vulnerabilities using decentralization and surprise
— Proactive defense strategies that depart from simply reacting and waiting for the oppressors to arrive to our door; instead to foment action that can incapacitate the enemy directly at their source
Research the material targets and shut down the enemy’s operations:
— Airports used for deportations
— Freeways for transporting people
— Personell offices and public information records release
— Maintenance sites and facilities
— Shut down recruitment events and offices
— Make colleges and universities divest from police academy/“national security” programs
Tactics of migra defense:
— Normalize non-collaboration: know-your-rights info-sharing with community/circles to build a culture of no snitching, suspicion towards all state agents
— Community patrols
— Proactive monitoring
— Target and infrastructure mapping
— Sit-in, occupy, blockade, night time sabotage of enemy facilities and infrastructures
Lastly, some final advice from Capitan Marcos on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the EZLN armed uprising, to the youth and young people:
“Organize your desperation. You will confront despair. Look for others who are also outraged. Organize this rage. And perhaps you will fail. But you will have had the satisfaction of kicking the system in the groin. And, trust me, this is very satisfying. Be attentive to your reality. Perhaps you see that is possible to confront and transform everything. There, you will see that there are others striving for this, too. Do not look to create or be part of the majority. Look for the minorities: the new day will sprout from the minority. Look for someone else who has the same desire to resist, to destroy the mirror which is not a mirror, but a deformation of reality. Do not be afraid of being wrong. We all make mistakes. You will fall on the gravel, and it will hurt: reality hurts. But, this is how we to learn to live. Do not be afraid and do not obey; because my last tip of advice is to not pay attention to advice, much less the advice I give you today.”
WISE WORDS FROM NOPALITO
In war, the U.S. will not distinguish us between friend or foe; we are all suspects. Through all the recent executive orders, society has been pushed into a point of no return.
“But I am a citizen, why should I care?”
The white nationalist base that brought Trump to power is expecting that you be deported; American history will show you that the U.S. government has already deported millions of Latin American U.S.-born “citizens,” as they did in the 1930’s and 50’s. You are no longer “legally pure,” you are now a suspected “illegal” simply for being brown or Latin American.
“But I have contributed so much to America?”
The system does not care about the billions of dollars contributed to the economy by immigrants in the past and present — the system prioritizes white power. Since the birth of America, whiteness is granted more value than the value produced by labor.
“But I have no criminal record and am pro-law?”
Recent statistics report that people without records are being deported in record numbers, and now face the possibility of deportation without due process (i.e. no trial before a judge) and may be sent to prisons in other territories with known human-rights violations. To believe that being an “upstanding citizen” is a shield from a war of ethnic cleansing is an illusion: citizenism and innocence are the system’s tools of division. Let’s free our minds from the chains of law and order that only serves the powerful.