Some Set Their Hearts on a Rocking Chair

or: I went and saw Boff Whaley from Chumbawamba and I'm glad I did

Some set their hearts on a rocking chair
the better to sleep out the days
but I’m looking for a reason to kick and scream
I don’t want to fade away

--chumbawamba, fade away

When I was coming up as a young anarchist, I didn’t know a lot of anarchists in their 30s, 40s, or older. There were a few folks I’d meet here or there, especially when I made it out west and started hanging out with Earth First!ers who’d been fighting clearcuts since the 80s, but overall, I had a sense that we were going it alone. Most of the folks I saw as mentors were maybe three or four years older than me.

A year or two ago, at an anarchist bookfair, we had a gathering for people who’d been in it for decades, and we filled the room to overflowing. Anecdotes aren’t data, of course, but I have this general impression that my generation of radicals is doing a better job of staying involved.

I’m not trying to blame anyone here. In the queer movement, one reason we don’t have so many elders is that an entire generation of gay men were murdered by medical neglect during the AIDS crisis. So many of the Black radicals who led the more inspiring parts of the late 60s and early 70s movement wound up in prison or dead. The white radicals from that era, though, many of them drifted first into counterculture and then away from politics, particularly as the economy picked up in the 80s.

Now, to be clear, there are probably tens of thousands of movement elders who got their start in the 20^th century who are still around. There is a lot of continuity of both projects and people. I just didn’t have as strong of a sense of it when I first started going out into the streets.

There are so many reasons why this might be changing. Certainly, with the terrible 21^st century economy, it’s harder to sell out. With global temperatures and global fascism on the rise, there isn’t really a safe comfortable retreat available to anyone.

As people age, they tend to shift their focus away from street protests and towards other forms of organizing that might not be as visible to younger radicals. As I read about countercultural radical movements of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I also get a sense that they were more rigid and less flexible, so rather than giving people a chance to grow and change and seek out new communities, people felt like they had to make a clean break.

Take punk, for example. Anarcho-punk was a massively influential counterculture in the UK in the 1980s, and it (ironically, I know) had a lot of rules. Like, for example, don’t sell your music to mainstream record labels. If you do, were you ever even really a punk? Were you ever even really an anarchist?

The answer to those questions is of course “yes,” because fortunately, anarchism has seemingly gotten the fuck over itself in the past few decades. That which is rigid will break. The brittle sword has no use in battle.

Which brings me to the point of this story: on Monday, my friend and I drove for hours through the mountains and the rain to get to The Beautiful Idea, a trans-owned bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia. The store is about a block and a half from whether the antifascist Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi on August 12, 2017.

We parked, waited for a break in the rain, and went into the store. Boff Whaley, from the anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba, played a solo set while telling us stories and reading from his newest book.