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February 13, 2020, Aragorn! passes away. A year later, the words are hard to find, but a provocation of Making A!’s Anarchism «Our Own», in life and death it might include the words captious, whimsical, and zoetic. A! was a friend I paid attention to and is missed.

Due to covid-19, the wake for A! in the Bay Area was put on hold. In remembrance, friends of A! sent along one of A!’s tactical bags to me, which he joked about owning so many of. I have since used it many a time for adventures, and it’s pretty sweet! It’s kind of like a fanny pack, but more tactical and less hipster. This is the incomplete story of how A!’s anarchy has become my own.

I think I first chatted with A! around 2004 or perhaps a little earlier, somewhere on the previous instances of the Anarchy Planet Internet Relay Chat (IRC). I had found the IRC via the Anarchist News dot org website or something after Infoshop dot org moderators destroyed their website. Reset, alas, computer memories to the wind, now the anarchist ID bracelet just says the most beautiful idea.

I will always remember our first conversation over the IRC, that went something along the lines of – What kind of anarchist ideas are you interested in? My reply back then was “anti-civ” and I would probably write something similar today, although so much has happened since. We chatted a lot over the years, coming and going over time and space, we also met IRL when they visited my home in New York on a couple of different occasions, stopping by to say hello as they traveled around North America on various adventures. The first time we met IRL, we made homemade pizzas and hung out on the porch chatting all night. I think we both agreed that the only real demand is that of a pizza party! A! had a refreshing sense of humor and welcoming take on anarchist ideas that is the kind of thing for friends.

Some have said – as in life, as in death A! was known to stir the muck and critique all the things to a point where it seems many people had a difficultly accepting a commentary or critique of their ideas. Here I would argue differently, if you’re one of the many anarchists upset by A! in life and death, it’s because of a lack of acknowledgment to accept, understand, and properly digest critique. Certainly they could be controversial, as with hope, any anarchist by definition is, but I think much of this, especially more recently, is simply people failing to have meaningful commentary with other anarchists that blow stuff out of the water.

For example, who could forget the 2019 radio episode by John Zerzan, where they attack A!’s relationship to Anarchist News dot org or previous episodes of Anarchy Radio where Zerzan is heard yelling about how terrible A! is. A friend of Zerzan, Kevin Tucker then continued to comment on A! over the past year regarding their relationship to anti-civ and green anarchy ideas over Twitter. And, of course, William Gillis rounds out this example triad by rewriting anarchist His-Story and eliminating facts from their discourse surrounding A! and friends via social media. These are just a few that stand out over the past couple of years that have been far-off the mark critiques of A! and their life project. A few years even further back A! declared it the year of antifa, before many would learn the word as events of 2020 unfolded and the anarchists once again became public enemy number one. Many of the popular culture antifa writers and other anarchist projects took to deplatforming A! and friends in the most absurd and terrible of ways.

And yet here! It’s so heart warming to see so many friends of A! share their own stories of paying attention to each others lives.

Cheers.