Full-Stop Magazine Interview

The beauty of anarchism comes in the doing of it, as imperfect as that will always be. And we need each other to do anarchism, because it’s nothing if not the ongoing practices of proactively engaging in what it means to be free people in free and ecological collectivities.

We also need each other to bring those experiments to life—and remind each other of the ways we do that.

I’m grateful to @shaneburley not only for asking if he could chat with me for an interview in the lovely @fullstopmag, which uplifts small presses, and not only always being such warm, insightful conversationalist, but also for his observation that “I know you best as a real collaborative writer. … Why do you choose to do your work in such deep collaboration with others?”

I hadn’t really reflected on that impulse—and ever since, I’ve thought about it more deeply, so as to better and more intentionally embrace it, recognizing it (thanks to Shane letting me think out loud) as an anarcha-feminist practice.

For the full interview, see:

https://www.full-stop.net/2023/08/01/interviews/shane-burley/cindy-milstein/

Here’s an excerpt from the section on collaboration:

“[Collaboration] is also why I’m so committed to forms of self-governance, direct democracy, and self-organization. Even if sometimes it is actually much harder, it is more generative when more people try to create something together. People push each other to see things that they couldn’t otherwise see on their own. Collaborative projects challenge one to think differently. They make our creations feel richer, more beautiful, and more expressive, and offer different vantage points that one [person] couldn’t see on their own. In this case, the collaboration is the 26 drawings of Circle As that each try to embody some beautiful element of anarchism. … If I’d had one artist draw all the Circle As, it wouldn’t have resulted in the depth and breadth of anarchism’s beauty that one reads on the pages of ‘Try Anarchism for Life,’ because of 26 artists, two graphic designers [@eff_charm and @house.of.hands], and me—all literally illustrating that anarchism manifests in countless differentiated and beautiful ways.”

(photo by artist-contributor @daisy.lotta; quote from @fullstopmag; book published by @tangled_wilderness)