We have to love people — fiercely — as a matter of politics.

We have to care and show up for people first to have any right to demand other conditions or share any ideology.

If you are an anarchist, people have to matter to you. Not The People™ or even “your people”, but actual people, real humans, folks as they are in splotches and phlegm.

If you don’t love people, you can’t believe in them. If you don’t love people (people, people), you can’t work toward people having say in their own lives.

It’s not enough to hate the bastards. It’s not enough to yearn to see billionaires thrown down and ripped apart by dogs. That may be morally defensible, but it’s still just targeted sadism. You have to love people to be an anarchist.

You have to talk to people and understand them — including when they say and believe things you hate and materially oppose — to be an anarchist.

You have to love people, have faith in them, and understand yourself always to be among them. But love them as yourself (and love yourself).

There is no one else but us. There is no savior but us. There is no answer but what we answer. And we must answer with love fiercely. We must answer with love unwavering.

“We are what we do repeatedly; we become more of what we practice at.”

The spite may start us, but it cannot sustain us. The hate may be righteous, but it does not fulfill us. Showing up for one another, including in our darkest and weakest moments, is our strength. Our potency is in our concern for people as people, as whole, full persons deserving of baseline affection and care.

We must do it because we all deserve it, and we are increased by showing up for everyone regardless of who “deserves it”.