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Mark McInerney's avatar

I’ve read Justin McAffee’s Collapse Curriculum more than once. It’s sharp. Angry. Disciplined. It lays out a doctrine for resistance that feels militarized in tone but monastic in practice. And in a time of crackdowns, surveillance, and corporate feudalism, some of his counsel is damn useful. He’s trying to give people a backbone made of systems instead of slogans.

But somewhere in that field manual, something got left behind—something human, messy, democratic, public. Something that can’t be planned in Notion or executed like an op.

I don’t mean hope. I mean faith in people acting together—not covertly, but out loud.

McAffee says protest doesn’t work. That marches are digested by the system, metabolized into noise. That activism today is a performance the empire enjoys watching. And yet:

Just this weekend, millions marched. Across more than 2,000 cities, under a banner that said No Kings, Americans came out not in ones and twos, but in wave after wave of bodies. Portland to Philadelphia. Denver to D.C. Not for clicks—for conscience.

Was it enough? Of course not. Nothing ever is at the start.

But was it futile?

Too soon to tell.

That was Zhou Enlai’s answer when asked about the French Revolution. At least, that’s how the story goes. Maybe he meant 1789. Maybe he meant 1968. Doesn’t matter. The wisdom holds: no moment reveals its meaning while the dust is still falling.

So anyone calling June 14 a failure—or a triumph—is talking like a pundit, not a builder.

Movements take time. They stall. They splinter. Then they rise again. That’s not dysfunction. That’s the human condition in motion. The Civil Rights Movement wasn’t one speech or one march—it was a decade of slow, hard scaffolding. Churches doubling as strategy centers. Children trained in nonviolence. Lawsuits. Bail funds. Songs that made people brave.

So no—protest hasn’t failed. What’s failed is our capacity to sustain protest beyond the moment. What’s failed is the absence of follow-through. And that isn’t a flaw of the people. That’s the price we’ve paid for decades of disinvestment in public life, civic imagination, and democratic muscle.

McAffee’s error isn’t in his tools. His mistake is one of framing. He’s fighting the wrong war.

You don’t counter creeping fascism by fantasizing about becoming a cell. You do it by becoming a citizen who stays in the light. By organizing not just your pantry—but your block. Not just your exit plan—but your city council. You face the machine not by ducking underground, but by standing in public long enough that others start standing beside you.

He wants precision. So did the people who planned Montgomery. He wants protocols. So did Ella Baker. But they weren’t fighting to survive—they were fighting to govern. They were training people not just to resist the old system, but to shape the next.

McAffee dreams in tactics. That’s fine. Tactics matter. But if you want a future worth surviving for, you need more than survival. You need vision. You need people. You need messy, public, democratic motion—bodies on bridges, voices in courtrooms, fists and flowers alike.

He warns against fatigue. So do I. But I also warn against solitude disguised as strength. Against private resistance that never becomes public power.

So let’s take what’s useful. Let’s build systems, sure. Let’s win the hour. But not because the war has already come—because it still might be avoided.

And if it can’t? Then let our systems be systems that can scale. Systems that don’t just preserve the self—but hold space for the many.

I don’t want to live like I’ve already lost. I want to act like I’m still trying to win. Not for myself. Not in silence. But for the republic we have not yet buried—and may still rebuild.

McAffee wrote a survival guide.

I’m writing this because I’m not ready to surrender.

We need doctrine, yes. But we also need daylight.

We need discipline. And we need democracy.

Win the hour.

But don’t mistake it for the world.

We still have a world to fight for.

And we’ll know what yesterday meant—but not today.

Like the statesman said:

Too soon to tell

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Susan Harley's avatar

This is most uplifting, sensible and practical article I have read in a while. Thank You.

There is much to do , breaking it down into a hour is doable.

Even short bursts help, like my weekly Poetry of Resistance 🧡

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