Intergen. Movements
Changes An organizer reflects on dropping out, dropping in, and staying to true their values. by Anonymous
I
t’s coming on ten years that I’ve been participating seriously about resuming the degree I dropped out in anarchist struggle against systems of domina- of when I was 20 years old. But I haven’t managed tion. I find myself spending a lot of time reflect- to convince myself to move on it yet. ing on the past decade, which very often turns into I have a desire for stability that I didn’t feel thinking about the ten years ahead. As I think about five years ago. I feel critical that my first instinct where I want to go from here, I reflect on how dif- in responding to this need for stability is to “drop ferent the questions I’m asking now are from the back in” to a way of life that I’d previously tried to ones I asked as a teenager. How will I support myself reject. Why does my desire for stability get immediand my projects financially into the future? How do ately mixed up with talk of degrees and careers? My my increasing number of criminal convictions affect twenty-year-old self wasn’t wrong when I concluded my capacity for action? What kinds of projects do that an uncertain future was more desirable than I want to participate in during the coming years? the scripted life of mediocrity offered to me by sucHow do I stay engaged within an anarchist move- cess under capitalism. ment that typically sees few people stay involved Often, a decision to seek stability in this way into their thirties? is accompanied by a rejection of radical movements I’m calling it my late-twenties crisis, and a – the language of dropping out/in demonstrates this lot of my friends and comrades are experiencing binary thinking. Either you’re a radical and embrace it. There was a moment where it seemed everyone the permanent instability that comes with that, or I knew had either quit school or had no intention you’ve opted for a career and accepted an ideology of going, where we all supported ourselves with that valorizes that choice. It’s a legacy of the 70s odd jobs, busking, scams, and welfare. Now a lot hippy activism that radical politics is viewed as a of those same people are applying to college or to phase, as something to be grown out of and looked masters programs, and I admit I’m thinking pretty back on condescendingly.
40 The Peak Intergenerational Movements
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