Any ideas on how to meet other anarchists?

Question

I've recently discovered that I've always been an anarchist, although I never labeled my desire for real freedom as such until recently.

I now find it is very important to me to connect with others who are anarchists, or at least believe the idea of anarchy and who are wanting to move their lives more and more with actions that reflect the anarchist way of thought.

Any suggestions on how to find or meet others are appreciated. While I realize anarchism is a do-it-yourself process (and I'm certainly working toward taking more action all the time based on my own thoughts), I believe it is important to have a community of people who have the same awareness and desires - in order to foster creative approaches, for camaraderie, and to have close relationships that seem almost impossible to have with those who accept the cultural norms of domination as inevitable.

Comments

Here are a couple of questions with answers or comments that might be helpful:
http://www.anarchy101.org/7243/how-do-i-meet-post-left-anarchists

http://www.anarchy101.org/7235/where-could-i-meet-fellow-anarchists-in-florida

I think there are some other related questions from further back, but hopefully that is a start. Good luck!

---

Thank you, ingrate. I did review those other questions, although I really don't have much clearer of a picture of what I could do next to meet people....although this online forum is certainly a start, at least in cyberspace!

One thing that interests me a lot is the Really, Really, Free Market concept, as I've been reading about (and participating in to some degree) gift economies, and I have a strong desire to continually move away from the monetized life as much as possible. But so far, I haven't found a way to locate where upcoming events might be in the U.S. (I'm in the west), so any leads in that regard would be helpful.

---

A few more links with some good ideas:

http://anarchy101.org/2663/how-do-i-find-other-anarchist-in-my-area

http://anarchy101.org/2271/how-can-i-find-ways-to-get-involved

http://anarchy101.org/4709/interact-other-play-socialize-outside-context-consumerism

http://anarchy101.org/4919/what-are-some-ideas-for-long-term-anarchist-projects

The west is a large region, but there are several annual anarchist book fairs in the west. They are usually posted about on anarchistnews.org. Aside from the (much more sporadic) demo-convergences, the book fairs are the most attended anarchist events I've experienced. Some towns have their own anarchist websites where events are posted. For example, pugetsoundanarchists.org. But it seems like the very unfortunate trend of late is that many or most events are posted only to Facebook.

If you're interested in gift economy type projects, I'd say give it a try. A friend of mine did several projects involving public gift exchanges, while avoiding the usual everyone-brings-their-pile-of-undesirable-stuff thing through creative strategies, and it seemed to go pretty well.

---

Thanks so much, amok. Very helpful stuff, and I'll check the links you provided.

I'll be living on Whidbey Island for the next 4 months, so I'll be sure to visit the Puget sound site. That is unfortunate about FB.

If there's a way I could contact (or pass info to/from) your friend at some point regarding a public gift exchange or something of the sort (I've read about Freeconomy Festivals, RRFM, etc), that would be great. I'd like to go to some and eventually help create one near where I live. What I've done so far has amounted mostly to Gift Circles (10 to 20 people getting together once or twice a month), and I've really liked the experience (I learned how to play the piano through one).

As far as the West, I'm spending some months in Puget Sound, and others in the mountains of San Diego county, with a couple of treks through Oregon along the way.

Again, the help is appreciated. I'm glad to have found this site.

---

people can of course do what they want, but i do NOT recommend anyone sharing friend information with someone who they have only met on an online anarchist forum.
(this seems obvious to me!)

i am perhaps paranoid, but better to be sorry about that than to be sorry about other things.

(but i am of a pre-facebook generation, so what do i know.)

---

dot, are you referring to the information I've already shared about myself, or my request to share information about a gift economy project?

Perhaps I'm naïve, but it seems pretty harmless to me to pass back information about creating a Free Festival...

I was thinking it was obvious that my intent is to ask and receive information about a specific idea in any way the other person feels comfortable - using this site could be one way - rather than looking for personal information about someone. In other words, I'm asking for information that the friend has about a subject, not information about the friend!

edited for clarity :)

---

The software on this site unfortunately doesn't allow private messaging. In this case it wouldn't be useful to pass along my friend's contact info anyway (and I agree with dot on this MO, not for Security Culture reasons per se but for related reasons), but it has been a limitation of the software in one or two cases that I can remember (probably there have been other times when people would have continued a discussion/debate via PM, but the ones I remember were questions like this one--how do I meet other anarchists in my area--one person even posted their email address to the site).

---

I understand what you and dot are saying, amok.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm open to information being relayed to me in ANY way...

for example, even if you're just willing to talk to your friend to give you a list of ideas they felt were most important to the success of the gift economy projects they were involved in, and then you writing them in your comments here. You mentioned some "creative strategies", for example, what were some of them? How did they find other people to work with them, etc. It's not like I need name, address, and serial number...just one anarchist trying to pass along anything they can to help another.

Of course, maybe you (or they) are not willing to do that, which I understand and accept if that's the case. I didn't really want to get into a discussion about whether messaging is desirable, safe, etc. Just trying to hear some stories from other people about what ideas and strategies worked for them, and what type of problems seemed to pop up, and so on, within gift economy projects. I'd like to be creative in the approach to passing along information - I'm not trying to ask anyone to give out personal info they're not comfortable with.

edited for clarity

---

Here are a couple events in the bioregion you are in that might be of interest:

http://seattleanarchistbookfair.net/
http://victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca/

---

I checked the links, and they are of interest to me. I'm very grateful for your assistance, ingrate. :)