Hello and welcome to THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES, a podcast for and about children, especially queer and neuro-divergent kids and teens, living out anarchy and youth liberation.

by Anarchist Educator Jordan on 1st Oct 2o24 at Anarchist News.org/ fromthefreeonline – https://wp.me/pIJl9-Eck (on T’gram: t.me/thefreeonline )

From The Child and Its Enemies An anarchist educator talks GEDs, queer youth organizing in schools, how to navigate academia as an anarchist, free schools, homeschooling, unschooling, and other queer insurrection .

The Child and Its Enemies

Here at THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and Development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives, and kids, teens, and everyone else affected by anti-child ageism are at the center of this form of oppression.

Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for kids and teens that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create neuroqueer, feral, ageless networks of care.

I’m your host, mk zariel. My pronouns are they/them, I’m fifteen years old, and I’m the youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of the blog Debate Me Bruh, and organizer of some all-ages queer spaces in my city and online.

https://www.self-directed.org › tp › from-deschooling-to-unschooling

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More episodes

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4. Cate Moses, Artist and Housing Advocate

20:23|Tuesday, May 7, 2024|Ep. 4 “We were organizing and enacting mutual aid without having the words to call it that. Again, I credit my parents. They were hella organizers. Their tentacles reached way beyond our backwoods area. Without the internet.

So I actually did know at an early age that resistance was not only possible but necessary. 

When the school told us asinine things like girls can’t wear pants or salute the flag or there are different rules for poor and less poor; for different colors, when we figured out that our local volunteer fire dept. was the KKK, I knew what to do. Organize and fight back. 

Burn the flag, walk out of school, stand up on a desk and yell, sing, take to the woodswith your comrades. The possibilities are more numerous today, with digital media to amplify us, and youth so savvy and informed and using it to organize.”

11. Tom From Its Going Down

33:21|

Thursday, September 5, 2024|Season 1, Ep. 11

Join us and Tom from Its Going Down, one of the more successful anarchist news organizations in recent years, to talk about what got them into this work, how its going now, and thoughts about what people should be doing in this moment. Music is “Wrecking Ball” by Mother Mother. Enjoy

10. Madeline Lane-McKinley and Childhood as a Concept

48:27|

Friday, August 9, 2024|Ep. 10

An episode on Madeline Lane-McKinley and their work. We get into how it intersects with youth autonomy and liberation efforts. Heck we even talk about what childhood even means and where it comes from. Is children’s literature even possible? This and more on a long one, double interlude, let’s go!

9. Shuli Branson and The Breakup Theory Of Anarchism

30:56|

Thursday, July 25, 2024|Ep. 9

“We don’t seek to create forever institutions or parties. We acknowledge that we need to retain the flexibility to move with conditions and to counter the tendency of power to collect and stay in certain places.”

8. Pearson, Host of Coffee with Comrades

59:34|

Thursday, July 11, 2024|Ep. 8

Fuck theory, do shit.To change everything, start anywhere.Don’t ever be deceived into thinking that you and a small group of your friends can’t change the world. Stay wild. Stay young. Stay free. 

7. Lola Bloom, Transfeminine YouTube Influencer

41:41|

Tuesday, June 18, 2024|Ep. 7

Lola Bloom on being trans online: “I think the space I aim to create would pave the way for trans kids to do similar work in an environment that isn’t so hostile or alienating. I also think that giving people a space to exist and to be authentically themselves while they share skills and grow is integral to helping our community heal. It’s incredibly difficult to transition and providing people the encouragement and resources they need is always my biggest success.”Lola’s Discord: https://discord.gg/aDMWFZMtz2

6. Vicky Osterweil, Author of THE EXTENDED UNIVERSE

46:00|

Tuesday, June 4, 2024|Ep. 6

Vicky Osterweil’s book, as she puts it, seeks to answer two questions: “why are all superhero movies the same?” and “why did Disney lobby the Biden administration to stop them sharing the COVID vaccine with the third world in 2021?” THE EXTENDED UNIVERSE, her upcoming book, is all about the role of Disney in the nuclear family, ageism, and the state. On this podcast, we talk about media, trans health, and (yas) our childhoods projecting transness onto various Disney characters.

5. Jennie Bastian, founder of Communication

26:59|Tuesday, May 21, 2024|Ep. 5

No, Jennie Bastian did not invent communication as a concept. But she DID start a really cool punk venue by that name! Interested in riot grrl, political art, and social justice since her teen years, Jennie makes art about disability liberation, creates all-ages art spaces, and is a youth-liberationist parent of a five-year-old. In this episode, mk and Jennie chat about age inclusion in the punk scene, the role of art in social movements, and so much more.

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From Deschooling to Unschooling: Rethinking Anarchopedagogy after Ivan Illich…

The anarchist capacity of deschooling may lie, as Richard Kahn suggests, “in our scholarly capacity to opt-out of the excited drive to reconstruct education once again in the hope of a better world and to recognize the programmatic suffering of our institutionalized existence as students and teachers” 22.

This article is the last of a four part mini series. It is an except of a chapter from the collection of essays, Anarchist Pedagogies, Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. Many thanks to the publisher, PM Press and the editor, Robert H. Haworth for allowing us to reprint these excerpts.…..

Read HERE.. https://www.self-directed.org/tp/from-deschooling-to-unschooling/.