It was a cold and rainy Sunday--Mother's Day-- and before I made the short drive to the town over planned to stop at an AORTA Anti-Oppression Training at the Collective A-Go-Go for a few hours. My shop-mate and temporary boss, Scotty Guzman, was the event organizer, having contacted AORTA, or the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance, and, most importantly, fronted $500 for the cost of the 8 hour workshop. Scotty was exiting a particularly traumatic bout of social castration following a number of sexual assault confessions by women in the scene. The Collectives fed on him like sharks as he was immediately banned from damn near every space he had called his home for the past six years. Labels such as "serial rapist," "sexual predator," and (my personal favorite) "monster." The scene (a term I use for the hippies, the activists, the social justice clique, the white woke, the rads) was putting him on the cross. Scotty was the dart board for the sex crimes of his fellow men, known and unknown, preceding him and he accepted it. Putting on an anti-oppression workshop focused on patriarchy and misogyny was the least he could do.

The circle was full of good vibes, man. Here we were sitting in a cozy living room of a certainly rotting house on the edges of Worcester. Anarchist mumbo-jumbo, organizing slogans, and dried herbs dripped from the haphazardly painted walls. These organizing events always start with awkward conversation; coy grown up nerds and fringe folk who were never particularly gifted with the social graces needed to feel relaxed in a group of more than... one. (But, shit, honestly this is coming from the extrovert that hates meeting new people. I'll talk to a stranger all day but please God don't put me in a room with acquaintances I'm supposed to like.) Folks were smiling, catching up over vegan stuff and fruit, some anxiously checking the Facebook event and a few quietly staring at either the floor or ceiling from the ripped couches. The facilitator, donning a leather motorcycle jacket over a graphic crew neck over a flannel, happily called us all in to fill the mismatched chair and sofa circle. With impressive ease (she/her/hers) breathed out calmly to start and welcomed the room.