Who we are
We are a group devoted to the liberation of working-class and oppressed people from capitalism and imperialism. We oppose the structures of exploitation, conquest, and supremacy that make up our society. Our aim is to end or abolish these systems that harm and kill working-class and oppressed people so we can bring about a new society based on care, cooperation, and need.
While many seek to reform our capitalist-imperialist society, we are not interested in compromising with a system that seeks to destroy us. It’s not practical to compromise with a society in which wealth and property take precedence over human well-being and life itself. We love and care for the people targeted by capitalism and imperialism. Our commitment is to them. Anything less than liberation is not acceptable. This is why we are dedicated to abolition as the movement to dismantle from the ground up our current capitalist-imperialist society in order to form an alternative system that ensures freedom for all people.
We organize in the Alleghenies region of so-called Central and Southern PA. It is a rural, mountainous area where white nationalism, prisons and policing, war industries, landlords, business owners, and the professional-managerial class hold power over poor and working people. We recognize that the lands of this region are stolen and located within the territories of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Lenape Nation. The Alleghenies also contain a long history of multi-ethnic abolitionist and labor organizing. Nineteenth-century radical abolitionists saw the Alleghenies as an important area to liberate in the fight against white supremacy and capitalism. We seek to carry on this tradition of waging struggle to free this region through building communities of care, mutual aid, and self-defense. We know that challenging capitalism and imperialism here supports and strengthens people all around the world fighting the same system.
In this goal, we move in solidarity with Native and African liberation movements. These are the frontline class struggles cutting a path toward liberation for all exploited and oppressed peoples. Our commitment is to be useful comrades to Indigenous and African revolutionary organizations and communities waging these struggles.
What we Do
We build autonomous or dual power among working-class and oppressed people as a tool for struggling against the exploiter classes and those who enforce their interests in the region. Landlords, wealthy property- and business owners, white/right militias, the police, and bourgeois politicians seek to exploit and control poor and working-class people. We initiate and develop self-directed programs that provide people the power to care for each other and defend themselves against these forces.
We meet people where they are at in their daily struggles to live in the face of being forced to go without and abandoned to die. We listen and learn from them. We organize according to the needs of people. We also are humble, patient, and consistent in our work. Where we are told there is no hope for something better, our programs enact liberatory alternatives to the present state of things.
We aim to facilitate the proliferation of these self-organized programs, projects, networks, and communities, generating deep and widespread autonomy for working-class and oppressed people. This autonomy serves as a necessary instrument for working-class and oppressed people to free themselves from our current capitalist-imperialist system. This work of serving the people and organizing the power to abolish what seeks to destroy us is called anarchism and communism. As anarchists and communists, we’re putting into practice now the world we seek to win where we act collectively to ensure all people are valued, have their needs met, and enjoy a life of dignity and creativity.
Principles of Unity
We are anti-capitalist
Capitalism prioritizes the accumulation of wealth over human need. Those without wealth are forced to work for wages or die. Workers create everything in our economy but are denied access to the fruits of their labor. Most people are under-paid or unemployed and can’t afford to live. Capitalist governments treat poor and working-class people as disposable. People who aren’t able to sell their labor to live the state abandons to die or sends the police to incarcerate for trying to survive without wages. Capitalism directly opposes people working together collectively and democratically to ensure everyone’s needs are met. Capitalism is against people building communities based on care and human need. People and the planet are forced to suffer and die for capitalism to exist. For people to live and thrive, we must end capitalism.
We are anti-imperialist
Our society was created through the violent conquest and attempted elimination of Indigenous people. The United States is a settler or colonizer nation that exists on stolen land. The US government along with other European nations continue to wage war against Indigenous and colonized people in North America and around the world to ensure capitalist corporations have free or cheap access to lands, resources, and labor. We oppose these imperialist wars and economic sanctions targeting colonized peoples and nations. We support Indigenous and colonized people’s struggle to reclaim their land by dismantling colonizer societies.
We are abolitionists
We seek to dismantle the institutions of policing and prisons that enforce white supremacy and capitalism. Together with the dispossession of Indigenous people, our society was created through and continues to depend on the exploitation of African/Black labor, lands, and resources. While policing and prisons target all working class people trying to survive and resist capitalism, they serve an even more fundamental task for capitalism of directly controlling Black working classes and repressing African/Black liberation struggle. This is why policing and prisons cannot be reformed. We must abolish prisons and policing to free the communities these institutions target.
Abolition is also creating ways of caring for each other, ensuring people’s safety, and resolving conflicts and addressing harm without criminalization and punishment. Where we weaken and dismantle the institutions that harm people in the name of profit and white supremacy, we construct new ways of relating to each other based on care and cooperation.
We are anti-patriarchy
Patriarchy is the systemic oppression of women and gender non-conforming people by men. Capitalism and imperialism depend on gender and sexual oppression. Women, gender non-conforming people, and children are disproportionately forced to do the unpaid care and reproductive work that upholds the global economy. Sexual and gender violence have always been used as tools of colonization, enslavement, and labor exploitation. We reject all forms of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. We support, participate in, and are accountable to the class struggles of Feminist, Queer and Trans liberation movements.
We practice mutual aid
We develop mutual aid projects and networks that help people meet their needs in opposition to the state and market that have failed to do so. Mutual aid is when people self-organize ways to care for each other, particularly in the face of being forced to go without. That is, mutual aid is collectively organizing ways to share food and resources to make sure people’s basic needs are met. When our needs are better met, we have greater power in our struggles for liberation. Mutual aid and care work also model the kind of society based on solidarity and human need we seek to build in place of capitalism and imperialism.
We prioritize political education
Political education is the study of how our society actually works and what are the best strategies for creating a better one. Through political education, we develop a knowledge of our material conditions, learn from others who have successfully struggled against the systems of oppression we continue to face, and develop new knowledge from the struggles we’re currently engaged in. The knowledge we gain through political education shapes our strategies and tactics. We also provide community political education that gives people the tools to understand systems of power and how to wage struggle against them.
We practice community defense
Community defense is any effort that encourages the solidarity, resilience, and physical security of working-class and oppressed people. Such efforts allow people to defend themselves against white/right violence, misogynists, and the state. We believe working-class and oppressed people don’t have to ask permission from government leaders or experts to defend themselves and ensure safety in their communities. We self-organize the capacity to provide security and safety in our work because we know we can’t depend on the police to do this. We help any and all communities targeted by racist, misogynist, or state violence to self-organize ways to defend themselves.