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The writings of those living amongst these Elder trees come from the daily reality of occupying private property, land which doesn’t belong to us, land that is a common treasury for all. Within this existence, we work clandestinely, employing direct action to expose the fragility of capital and its upholders in our locality.

Our politics is one that attempts to prefigure the world we want to see, creating alternatives to waged labour, capitalist logic and ecological destruction. At the same time, we see the benefit of organising on an antagonistic footing, with targeted strikes against capital, using the mainstream media as well as our own to inspire debate and empower anti-capitalist struggles around the world. Living in, against and beyond this economic system, a balance must be struck in dealings with capitalist or state institutions.

Rather than create political identities and thus drawing lines of division, we seek connections and similarities with ordinary people who rebel against the logic of money in their daily activity. We draw inspiration from mothers who do not wait for the abolishment of private property, but occupy vacant
buildings to make homes and crèches; school teachers who, over worked and fed up with the commodification of education, foster moments in the classroom that illuminate a world beyond the pursuit of money or a career; residents who do not accept the closure of their local library after exhausting legal, conventional civic means, and so instead occupy it and run it themselves. Without waiting for permission or making demands we simply assert our vision of the world.

This vision of the world is against any idea of a totality, but rather a future of alternative post capitalist worlds. The drive towards self-determination for those living amongst the Elder is exploratory, drawing inspiration form the Zapatista principle: ‘preguntando caminamos’, ‘asking we walk’. We don’t have all the answers. We are still learning and always will be. Employing horizontal structures using consensus decision making, we acknowledge our democracy is a dynamic, evolving process, always to be worked and reworked, always ready to accept we took the wrong
direction.

This land, inhabited by Elder, one of our most cherished native trees, for healing and nourishment, provides a spiritual protection for humans and nature alike. Much like the interconnectedness of life on earth, our words, our creative doing is interwoven with their being; an eviction would spell the same fate for our community and the Elder. For now, the Elder are flourishing, growing through the remnants of derelict structures; inspiration for how we must search for light amongst the rubble of
capitalism.