About Peter Gelderloos
Surviving Leviathan
For pretty much my entire life, I’ve been participating in struggles and movements against ecocide, gentrification, the police, neoliberalism, prison, patriarchy, militarism, and other threads of this world-devouring machine we could call the State, capitalism, Leviathan…
Social centers and Copwatch groups in smalltown Virginia; squatted houses and urban gardens in Barcelona; illegal street parties in Athens; soil remediation, collective olive harvests, and neighborhood assemblies in smalltown Catalunya: there is an abundance of joy in our struggles. But life isn’t always sustainable, inside or outside these movements. Living hurts, and the oppressive structures that make up Leviathan damage us, every day.
There’s nothing abstract about a father’s fists, the door of a principal’s office, a bulldozer’s blade, a prison guard’s keys, an unhealthy work environment, an open wound and a hospital bill you couldn’t hope to cover, manic depression and the stigma wrapped around it like razor wire, friends you can’t get out of prison, loved ones with chronic illnesses you can’t cure, cops who come to cut off your electricity and leave an eviction notice. The drought. The wildfires that tear through a forest that had just started to heal.