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Kickbacks, Ancestors, and
Wildcats

‘The Anarkata Turn

Nsambu Za Suekama

2/9/2020

“The pigs say, 'Well, the Breakfast For Children
program is a socialistic program. Its a communistic
program:

And the women said, "Well, I tell you what, boy... 1
don't know if I like communism and I don't know
if I like socialism. But I know that that Breakfast
For Children program feeds my kids... And if you
put your hands on that Breakfast For Children pro-
gram, I'm gonna come off this can and I'm gonna
beat your...”

- Fred Hampton, Power Anywhere There's People
“What did the untested militants,

and smug ideologues,

know of Truth

and Tubman?

Unlike Unruly Colored Women,

they failed to recognize that experience
was capable of opening up new ways,
yielding a thousand new forms

and improvisations”

- Saidiya Hartman, The Anarchy of Black Girls As-
sembled in a Riotous Manner

In September 2019 a group of Anarkatas set up a free store
ina park, and asked the kids there to help us out and tell their
friends and family about it. Not surprising to us, several young,
Black children, mostly little Black girls, began working out and
asking around on their own accord about who needed what
and how much they needed. They also started struggling with
each other about whether or if there was anyone who was tak-
ing more than they needed and should put some stuff back or to
give to someone else, and ultimately kept trying to make sure
anyone in the area who lacked got something they needed. The
kids, with these girls in the lead, were not self-professed anar-
chists. There was no pamphlet they read from and a lot of their
deliberations did ironically involve some poor shaming as they
weren't necessarily a politically conscious bunch. Yet, by their
hands alone, magic happened, and with no authority to manage
their activities buf their own these children themselves helped
our Back to School Kickback become a success.

‘We did not approach them with a speech or much theory at
all or pushing any ideology, although we had our canon and
thought with us. We simply acted in our principles, with the
material aid present, and it made room for the anarchy of
Blackness to shoot forth. By the end of the Kickback, bookbags
full of loose leaf, folders, pens, markers, pencils, index cards,

2
as well as comic books, food, water, toys, VHS tapes, CDs —
all things that local folk needed, had been autonomously dis-
tributed, and equitably so, without any outside interference.
And all from beyond the reaches of State management, NPIC
trappings, and philanthropic paternalistic/profiteerism.

In short: a group of kids in the hood did something anarchic
without being proselytized to about revolutionary theory. A
group of kids in the hood did something anarchic without
identifying as revolutionaries. A group of kids in the hood
did something anarchic without even knowing who or what
“the left’ or ‘Kuwasi Balagoon’ is. A group of kids ultimately
led themselves in meeting a community need, and did it in
a dedicated and thoughtful way, outside formal/mainstream
channels (government, business, church, school, nonprofit),
even amidst mistakes — and all because we were there facili-
tating an opportunity for them to fill a gap all Black working
class people in our region feel when September rolls around.
‘As Anarkatas, we were just there as radical extensions of
what is an organic Black tendency toward communal
self-empowerment. Taking care of our own is not just a
cultural necessity under colonialism and capitalism, but an
ancestral rite that still energizes through our spirits on the
daily.

‘This is how the Anarkata Turn situates itself. We're not here
to convert anyone; we just want people to rock wit, people to
collab wit, so we can build our communities by ourselves for
ourselves. We are revolutionaries, so we struggle tirelessly to
ensure that this mutual aid work can happen in an encom-
passing and intersectional way, in a way that frees the most
‘marginal from those trying to hoard resources and power and
clamber their way to the top of the ladder, who push the rest of
us into a barrel to fight desperately like crabs. We want to de-
stroy the barrel, and to destroy the ladder too, so that our peo-
ple will not be caged by colonialism, capitalism, cisheteropa-
triarchy. We violently oppose the authoritarians and the colo-

3
nizers and cishets and disablists invested in domination. We be-
lieve this ultimately requires eradicating the government/State
too, as well as any other form of hierarchy that exists. Like the
Anarkata Statement declares, liberation comes from “the ways
we ride for each other, and not from top down hierarchical au-
thority..”

Now, for clarity’s sake, what hierarchy means is that some-
one is imposing their will on another. But there's more to it. A
parent telling their kid not to walk in front of a bus isn’t hier-
archy, for example; that is guidance and protection. Just like
an elder advising a spiritual devotee on the necessary duties of
their ancestral tradition isn't necessarily hierarchy either, but
rather is assisting them in their personal contribution to the
cosmic order. Guidance, protection, assistance, advice — these
can be understood as leadership, That's the role my comrades
and I played in the park with those kids and how Anarkatas
try to operate, Leadership is more like nurturance and re-
quires a lot of accountability to the success or survival or
growth and self-empowerment of the so-called ‘led’ — a
great deal of which means transferring skills and resources so
that people can guide themselves,

Leadership can become hierarchy when it fails to meet an
affirming end, and when it is manifested through abuse and
through exploitation, when it serves control and self-interest,
and when its mode of relation is rooted in methods of domi-
nation and born in oppressive ideologies. When a parent's ‘au-
thority’ is rooted in self-righteousness and personal catharsis,
as is often the case under colonial ideology, when parents can-
not be questioned and treat and beat their kids like slavemas-
ters did to our ancestors or like cops do to us all on the street
today, when parents threaten the growth of their children keep
them from properly learning to assess and express their emo-
tions and make decisions for themselves and form healthy re-
lationships and advocate for their needs—this is hierarchical
relation, When the religious leadership robs the people and

4
keeps them poor and ignorant, as is often the case unfortu-
nately, and when it prevents the faithful from affirming and
nurturing their full persons and their environments and one
another, when it polices and violates and justifies oppression
and brainwashes them into xenophobia ~ this is a hierarchical
relation. And even when the revolutionaries come around but,
they prevent the people from being able to organize to meet
their needs because they dominate all potential avenues for or-
ganizing, when they make everything about their own particu-
lar ideology or their own methods or venues or circles or affin-
ity groups in ways that people seeking liberation cannot access
materials or take power for themselves outside these myopic
channels, and when these channels fail to resolve the contra-
dictions of our suffering and even work to uphold or benefit
from them and stifle the expression of liberating energies in al-
ternative ways — this is all hierarchical. Hierarchy means that
there is a certain ‘will’ being imposed upon the masses, one
that subjects us to certain interests, despotic interests — inter-
ests that contradict the people's journeys towards autonomy
and safety.

When anarchic movements began to develop into explicitly
politicized forms, all the hierarchies they have sought to de-
stroy — disablism, transmisia, the State, racism, colonialism —
each involved a particular material interest (a capitalist one)
being forced onto the planet and the people. It was the ‘will’
of class and colonial rulers imposed upon us, creating a rift be-
‘tween us and our communion with mother earth, and which en-
acts a system of ‘organized, protected robbery’ as Fanon called
it. Land, labor, and more is stolen to produce and m:
tain wealth for the powerful captor-colonizers while ev-
eryone else and our lands is sucked dry resources and forced
to live under premature and actual death, disease, destitution
and deterioration. So first and foremost, destruction of all hi-
erarchies — which is Anarchy ~ thus requires actually and
unapologetically disrupting the imposed material interests of



5
Capital, disrupting settler and imperial colonial rule, distupt-
ing cisheteropatriarchal control, ending the ableist disposal of
whole populations written off as useless because of our disabil-
ities.

This is what makes mutual aid networks/initiatives — like
the free store my comrades and I put together — important.
‘The poverty that makes the back to school season an issue for
many Black communities is a direct consequence of capitalism,
of a system built on greed and enslavement and land theft and
exploitation and brutality. So when we work with people to
address the consequences of oppression concretely, we make it
easier for the vulnerable to survive and we open up potential
for us to prove to ourselves and the people that we can resolve
the structural causes of oppression concretely as well — not just
in theory, but in practice, We can demonstrate that anarchy
is not something far off, but that it can begin now. This helps
to both radicalize and conscientize, which basically mean that
people become more confident and understanding of skills we
have or can learn to use in meeting our needs and freeing our~
selves, and it means we become more aware of why autonomy
from the Man and white power is necessary, why it’s valid, and
to become more conscientious about the reasons why revolu-
tionary movements that fight for liberation are happening in
this particular historical moment and this geographical region
among this group of people. A revolutionary has to be devoted
to helping this process of radicalization and conscientization
happen, tirelessly assuring it comes to fruition, fighting to af-
firm and defend and hold ourselves accountable to the growth
of our revolutionary activity. tis the concrete work, actual mu-
tual aid, like our Back to School Kickbacks, which set the stage
for any of this to occur, because when it comes to Black people
the seeds for anarchy are already in our culture and spirit be-
cause we are a communalistic people. So all people need is
just the opportunity to enact it more fully outside the trappings
of capitalist, colonial, cisheteropatriarchal binds. This isn’t to

6
say all Black people are anarchists or even that all Black people
are here for Black people (cuz all skin aint kin); or that commu-
nalist social life is inherently anarchic or free of oppressions.
‘What I am saying tho is that Anarkata is simply a process or
phenomenon or method or paradigm for stretching the poten-
tials of natural/organic Black anarchy whenever and wherever
they manifest. We call it an ‘Anarkata Turn; because it is like
with Sankofa; the movement progresses because it is rooted in
us going back to fetch what's before us, going back to fetch
what we have already been carrying with and in us. Those chil-
dren at the park that day proved this thesis, because again they
led themselves, outside the State, in a dedicated and contextu-
ally devised, systematic manner, to meet a community need —
due to the interaction of both revolutionary commitments on
our part, and due to their own ancestrally-inherited, culturally-
reinforced Black conscience.

Now there are revolutionaries who reject the Anarkata
Turn, There are revolutionaries who would overlook those
young girls as not anarchists for lacking a political tract, or
who would even say we Anarkatas are not revolutionary for
failing to preach to those kids the gospel of whoever's ideol-
ogy. They also would never even hold such an action as a back
to school ‘Kickback? and even if they did they would quietly
insist that the people they share resources with and provide
mutual aid for to be other anarchists who share their ideology.
‘They spur comprehensive survival-program-style mutual
aid praxis because it fosters “dependency”, in their minds,
from undeserving populations who aren’t radical enough to
qualify for their graces. Even where this isn’t the case, the
only people these types of ‘revolutionaries’ talk to are those
who share their radical ‘lifestyle’ and aesthetic. And often
times, because what they do materially is so conditional on
ideology, the people they end up sharing resources with and
for are other bourgeois/white folk who claim their particular
brand of radicalism. So what we have is people who got much

7
to give by virtue of their class position, but who circulate it
all among themselves, and when they ‘organize’ they create
opportunities not for building the community (because how
can you when you isolated to your ideological social club?)
but for indulging only themselves mentally and materially. The
material consequence of this type of ‘anarchism’ is to never
truly challenge oppression or its effects. And, to be honest,
these people aren't real radicals and are just as much partaking
in hierarchy and robbery as the enemy. They are, after all,
powerful and privileged folk hoarding resources at the end
of the day, cloaking themselves in radical talk. They have
their own interests, whether it’s in a certain political clique
(or cult) or moral high ground over competing ideologies.
‘Though they claim to ‘lead’, they don’t nurture or guide or
affirm the oppressed’s organic activity. Instead, they impose
their self-interest onto the oppressed’s activities, subjecting
or hindering them in a way that doesn’t challenge their class
participation in larger contexts of displacement and carceral
endangerment of the locals.

‘Anarkatas have witnessed this hierarchical charade known
as (white) anarchism time and time again, and that is why col-
lectives like mine decide to do Kritical Kickbacks like the Back
to School one I mentioned before. What we prioritize is engag-
ing the community without requiring anything of them.
You don’t have to declare yourself Anarkata to work with us,
or to be Anarkata for us to collab with you on what serves the
community's betterment and community's defense. And when
you rock wit us, it aint all theory or baseless, performative sub-
versions. No, issa vibe and it’s fun as hell, wit music and food
and we strive to make it that because we tryna resonate wit yo
Soul and do this revolution stuff for the culture too, And we are
dedicated, we are principled, and we are serious about revolu-
tion. We are adamant about mutual aid, about trans liberation
and disability justice, about community defense and political
education, about abolition and true accountability, about food

8
sovereignty, about freeing the most marginal and knocking
the people clambering to the top right on down, about spread-
ing leadership capacity and nurturing that which already is at
work — even such that bears no ‘politic’ (like with the kids at
the park). It is central that we be out here as radicals funneling
resources to those who need it and facilitating their capacity to
meet their needs and help one another and themselves — and
that we do so in a genuine, principled (not flaky), and unselfish
way.

This, quite strangely, makes the Anarkata Turn unique,
pethaps even ‘incorrect’ to many anarchists. That's why I
declare that perhaps Anarkata is to anarchism what a
shadow is to a glass. Both are not something you can clearly
see or grasp with the eye, but that is the only real connection
between the two. Glass can go invisible and shadows fade and
don’t have form, but they are distinct phenomena and only
one has hidden Black people running from slavecatchers in
the woods (cuz if we did rebellious stuff under a glass we'd
be visible enough to be caught or burned by the light of a
thousand suns like ants!) Anarchy and Black life have much
in common, yes, and Anarkata is just about extending that
to its most revolutionary form. It is akin to Kwame Turé’s
reminders that the ‘unconscious’ already seek freedom, will
quickly mobilize for it, and that revolutionaries need really to
just be helping a ‘conscious’ understanding of unconsciously
rebellious behavior develop — through radical organizing. But
(orthodox) anarchism looks past this, often instead requires
that niggas trade their Blackness for some dead white man’s
philosophy, as if we need something from them in order
to transcend our fallen ways, and give the impression that
this simple formula is the Way and the Truth and the Life,
that if we simply meditate on and convene around and try
to individualistically apply the insights of some European
man’s book, we'll all rise to the liberation hilltop. Anarkata
and traditional anarchism are therefore not the same. Perhaps



9
anarchism and Black struggle aren't incommensurable, but
what my comrades and other Black Anarchie Radicals (BARS)
do know is that until the ‘genre’ of anarchy we strive for
is rooted in Afrikan-centeredness/Pan-Africanism, rooted in
concrete Black histories and concrete practices and concrete
‘material struggles, it will not resonate and it will not change
anything.

It was disabled, mentally ill Black queer and trans women
and nonmen who really felt this most viscerally during the last
decade, Our communities were forced to choose between ‘iden-
tity’ or ‘anarchy’ as if there was ever really a way to have one
without the other while living at the ‘bottom of the lowerarchy”
as Assata once called it. As radicals, these communities on the
‘margins and front lines of violence already had to fight for each.
other independent of dominant channels, autonomously. So we
spent the 2010s re-observing as much revolutionary theory as
possible and studying Black history and culture and spirituality
and struggle and kept being reminded that anarchy was oozing
all through it and that we needed to just carefully, in a dedi-
cated, organized fashion, go out and concretely nurture those
fires until the plantation was set ablaze. Anarchy, the death
of hierarchy, is at hand, we were sure. Black History Month
of 2019 came; 2019, the year some faiths prophesied we'd get
free; 2019, the year of global uprisings, “the Year of Revolt”, as,
the Ready for Revolution crew called it — and Anarkata an-
nounced itself like a cat that had already been prowling, de-
ciding to make its presence known. Quite simply, Anarkata
‘meant we would just work to synthesize the things about Black
liberation that already tend toward anarchy, while struggling
to remove impediments (the forces of domination) by building
our power and fighting to undermine and overthrow the strue-
tures in our way. We'd have hurdles to face, and the tide of
reaction from our adversaries to deal with and suppress at all
costs, including our own internalized oppressive b.s. But we
would also have the will of the masses and our ancestors help-

10
ing us push back and unleash what has been stirring here upon
the world. It is this whirlwind of Black life that got us to make
an Anarkata Turn and that would keep us turning and spin-
ning in the circle and eypher of revolution: the ballrooms and
other alternative homeplaces that Black trans and queer folk
create; the grandparents’ living rooms in which every family
member across generations has lived in or slept in while on
hard times; the ‘two dollar ride, two dollar ride’ finesse in the
subway as fares go up and kiosks fail us, and the various infor-
‘mal group/cooperative economic practices by which we done
taken care our hair, watched our kids, schooled each other, pro-
tected each other, cleaned up for each other, raised rent and
medical expenses for each other; the ‘five finger discount’ and
underground railroads and other illegal means to which we've
sought our basic needs and our freedom: the ‘text me when you
get home’ check-ins because you know it’s real on these streets
and some man or pig or fascist could kill or disappear one of
our siblings for no reason at all; the ‘say hi to the elders you
know when you see them’ unctions from our parents because
‘we know we should be a community and social organism and
have kinship; the casual declarations of “f**k the police’ on a
daily and in every song because we deep down recognize that
them and 911 alike are a joke and aint here for us; the ‘save
this’ reminders from our parents when it comes to plastic bags
and plastic containers and cooking oil because even if we aint
on some green politic we know that wastefulness is not okay
and we should use every part of what we got instead of throw-
ing it away; the spirit and power of Marsha P Johnson and
Assata Shakur and Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and
Kimpa Vita and Malcolm X and Martin and Frances Beal and
Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral and Queen Nanny and other
maroons and palenques and quilombos and each of the vari-
ous units that took on the name Combahee and many others;
the words and work of Moya Bailey and Kimberlé Crenshaw
and Miss Major and Angela Davis and Cece MeDonald and



uw
Sylvia Wynter and Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore
and countless other even unnamed or not-well-known Black
sheroes, theyroes, and heroes, whether ancestors or the every-
day this-world niggas who got us hip to all this with just a look,
a touch, or their care; and its the plants we grow and tend to
and it's the creatures we pet and feed and take care of and its
the waters we commune with that hold our dead and its the
mountains where our ghosts and guerrillas are hiding in and
carrying out struggle from and its the skies our folklorists used
to say we could fly upon like angels on Jacob's Ladder and the
stars above that guided niggas off the plantation over a cen-
tury ago; and it's the Divinity we call upon, and the inSpir-
ited religious experiences that free us up from rigid colonial
and gendered limitations on how we inhabit our bodies and ex-
press our emotions; and it’s also the very expanding and black-
colored universe itself. It’s all these wild and wayward Things
and more that inspire us before it’s ever Kropotkin, or Malat-
esta, or Bookchin or Marx or Mao (if they ever even come into
the picture). Not discounting the left’s insights, because some
of it is useful, but we just saying that first and foremost we are
BLACK before we are anarchic, not the other way around, the
latter proceeding from and never taking us out of the former.
Revolution for us is a



consolidation, not a conversion,

‘As such, it will come as we studiously and reverently inte-
grate a range of Black radical contributions and praxis with
our cultures of resistance and rebellion. It will come as we
wholeheartedly operate under guidance of Black revolution-
ary (trans)feminist principles and true intersectional analyt-
ics that provide a ‘roadmap to areas of need’ and center the
most marginal. It will come as we tirelessly build via princi-
pled and even ecumenical dedication to radical community or-
ganizing. It will come as we ground ourselves in establishing
and defending and being accountable to viable and comprehen-
sive networks of autonomous community support + mutual aid.
And it will come because our people are daily struggling to

2
make Black liberation more possible by their own means, It
will come because our people work to make genuinely radi-
cal conscience more widespread for our communities on our
‘own terms. Leaders and formal or mainstream or dominant po-
sitions and channels need not dictate; we simply require nur-
turers and reminders and defenders for everyone and ourselves
that we have the capacity to alter conditions, and that only we
— not anyone's authority or institutions or superiority — got
us. It is by our collective strength we will get free.

“To educate the masses politically does not mean,
cannot mean, making a political speech. What it
means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to
teach the masses that everything depends on them;
that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and
that if we go forward it is due to them too, that
there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there
is no famous man who will take the responsibility
for everything, but that the demiurge is the people
themselves and the magic hands are finally only
the hands of the people”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

1B
The Anarchist Library
Anti-Copyright

Nsambu Za Suekama
Kickbacks, Ancestors, and Wildcats
‘The Anarkata Turn
2/9/2020

Retrieved on 20/02/2021 from https://redvoice.news/
kickbacks-ancestors-and-wildcats-the-anarka



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