Ask a Crow

Hi CAW!  As a long time leftist activist who is against colonialism I am feeling a bit confused about this moment in the US. The state seems to be collapsing, yet I feel strangely upset... I guess I am wondering: Can you be anticolonial and still believe in the state? Thanks! 

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Dear confused,

There was a recent release of the information that Eve Tuck, the Indigenous scholar most known for the co-authored essay, “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” has been married to a NYPD lieutenant for the last fifteen years—even when she was writing this essay. Apparently she doesn’t think it’s paradoxical to call for the end of settler colonialism and go to bed with the settler state’s enforcer. But what about us in less grand positions than a tenured professor at a well-funded research institution? We've been finding lately that the confusion and havoc that Trump and Musk have been causing within the US has made us reconsider how much we rely on state services for survival. Some of us receive food stamps, which also gives us half-priced transit fare, and basically free bike rentals for commuting. Some of us receive medicaid, which pays for all of our medical visits, prescriptions, some of which provide mental-health medicine to help us leave our homes and engage with the world, as well as cover the incredibly expensive infusions of immunosuppressant every six weeks to keep one of our autoimmune diseases in remission. 

If the state is dismantled from a right wing reactionary coup, then these forms of support will not be substituted with any other accessible options, except what we create ourselves. Of course, we have been working on this for years, but we have also worked under conditions where many of our basic needs are still met by the supply chain and state programs. There have been ongoing examples of communities deepening autonomy and breaking off from the state  in many areas of our social lifes, but when it comes to concrete care for disabled and chronically sick folks, it’s been harder to materialize, or sustain. Part of the reason our efforts are constantly being thwarted is because the state and its institutions are designed to gatekeep the access to either the supplies or the knowledges required to have the resources or skills to truly provide care for each other. Now all this is to say that, while we don't believe in the state as a good form of social organization, and we do consider ourselves to stand against colonialism and empire, our lives are imbricated in these systems. In fact, the history of capitalism and state has been a long process of forcing populations into reliance on the state for survival—it’s hard to grow webs of intimacy and support in a world that has privatized so much of our lives, instead of sustaining any kind of autonomous subsistence. 

In the end, no, you can’t be anticolonial and believe in the state. The state form as we know it today was forged in tandem with and as a result of European colonialism (there have been other historic states). The (colonial) state is designed to weaken our social bonds and capitalism intensifies these ruptures between us. To oppose colonialism and all of its effects we also must take aim at the state form. The history of decolonial movements that took over the state has not been a good history, not simply from internal issues of power and violence, but also from the external threats of the continuing imperial powers. But perhaps as the world crumbles, we can think about the complexities of survival in the given situation. We would like to hold onto a profound trust in ourselves and our communities that, if the medical system is destroyed, people would still practice medicine. But where would some of our  particular medicines come from without the capitalist supply chain? What do our loved ones who receive chemotherapy in advance of surgery do? These are immediate pressing issues that can’t be answered by blithe utopian beliefs. Fundamentally, this shows the limits of most of our movements in relation to disability and chronic illness. We have no sufficient answers here, though there are people who have been working on some basic necessities because resistance to the colonial state has been in movement since its inception. We need to make all illness less isolating (body and mind), just as we need to make being a victim of assault less isolating and punishing. Sure, most people’s immediate needs are simply to have food and shelter and to be able to protect themselves and their neighbors as the state crumbles under fascist forces. But this can’t be done from an ableist perspective that makes no room in survival for those of us that rely on the current system to survive, even though that same system is what makes us ill and is always trying to kill us. 

So yes, the colonial state and empire have always been killing many of us, so let’s keep finding ways to #SmashTheColonialState! But as we are in the middle of a collapsing state at the hands of corporate-fascist-greed, we need to double down and resolve to keep creating concrete ways to do mutuality and solidarity for each other where our modes of material support must include care for our disabled and chronically ill communities. 

xo CAW