What Is True Autonomy In An Increasingly Fascist Society?

How Octavia Butler & America as a whole made me a "prepper" & taught me about the dire need for community.

Last summer, I read Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower for the first time and was both terrified by its resonance as well as inspired by the concept of Earthseed. Through the book, Butler underscores the idea that even and especially during apocalyptic times, we can only survive by leaning on one another’s gifts and skills.

Then, earlier this year — though it seems like ages ago — wildfires raged across California leveling some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country and decimating predominantly Black communities that were hard fought for. People fled the fires with little preparation or guidance on best practices. This wasn’t the first time I imagined how I would survive an unexpected disaster. I watched from afar as the willful neglect of Black NOLA residents during and following Hurricane Katrina led to unspeakable loss in the gulf. I’ve lived through Hurricane Sandy which destroyed schools, homes, and infrastructure across New York when I was just starting college. I saw my beloved North Carolina be turned upside down in 2024 after Hurricane Helene. But something about the wildfires made me get serious about having a plan that didn’t depend on the federal or local government stepping in to save the day.

I’ve begun almost obsessively researching survival packs and what we needed to live. I didn’t buy everything all at once but over time I began acquiring waterproof book bags, solar powered radios, the highest quality masks, first aid kits, medicine, water filters, batteries, flashlights, foraging guides, hunting knives, and more just in case. My hope is to never need these bags. But my family’s odds of survival will be dramatically higher if we ever did.

My sisters joke that when things get truly bad, they’re coming to me and my in-laws here in Georgia because we are the most self-sustaining family members and are best equipped to survive. Behind their jokes are truth. For the last few years, my wife and I have raised chickens for their fresh eggs. We’ve also gardened off and on growing squash, strawberries, asparagus, spinach, tomatoes, potatoes, and a host of other fruit and vegetables. I want to be clear that this work has not been easy for us as NY and Chicago-born millennials. And we’re not yet doing enough to consider ourselves homesteaders but we wouldn’t be starting from scratch if we needed to feed ourselves. We have the seeds, the chicken coops, and — most importantly — the community needed to pool our resources and live.

Octavia Butler and real world crises haven’t been my only inspiration. I’m drawn to the work of Fannie Lou Hamer who organized sharecroppers knowing that if they were dependent on white racists for food and housing, then they could never truly work towards their own freedom. Before she could focus on voter registration and political training, she needed to meet their basic needs and teach interdependence on one another in order to be independent of the people they were up against. Hamer launched the Freedom Farm with the objective of running a farm that housed and fed its members, without the economic burden of the farm falling on any one person or family. Members were able to live on the farm in exchange for their labor to keep the cooperative going. The Freedom Farm pig bank produced thousands of pounds of meat and became a signature program of the farm, with pigs becoming widely known as “Sunflower Pigs.” Education, too, became one of many investments by the farm. “Hundreds of participating families,” says Monica M. White in her book Freedom Farmers, “received health and dental care, early educational experiences, and supplemental nutrition.”

In other words: Never let your enemy control your livelihood. If they are the ones feeding and housing you and your loved ones, they will always dictate what you can or cannot say or do.

When writing and researching my book ROOTED: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership, I spent endless hours studying programs like Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm, communities like the maroons, and organizing efforts like those of the Black Panther Party. Radical community was the common thread that made these initiatives so successful and transformative.

Assata Shakur recently passed away and so many have been reconnecting with her words and legacy as a result. If you’re someone thinking, “what would Assata do,” never forget that her vision was for a world free of capitalism, fascism, and white supremacy. She didn’t go toe to toe with the powers that be while depending on them for a paycheck or meal ticket. She coordinated free breakfast programs for Harlem children, clinics for New Yorkers, and political education independent of public school curricula. Autonomy. Not waiting for the government to do for her community what she could and would do for them.

In the face of far right extremism and the Trump administration’s war on anyone non-white, non-male, and non-conservative, we must not be deluded into thinking we can wait out tyranny. As Assata Shakur said, we must be “weapons of mass construction” and create a vision that is more humane, more beautiful, and more loving. “We can’t afford to be spectators while our lives deteriorate,” she also stated. We must be active in calling forward the things we need and want which means becoming less detached from the process of growing our own food, making our own clothes, and otherwise surviving.

I understand not everyone has the land or means to begin homesteading this very moment. But you can grow herbs and vegetables in your window sill. You can volunteer at a local urban or community garden and offer your time and labor. You can take up knitting, crocheting, or sewing. You can align your professional life with your projected values. You can boycott misaligned companies and build new habits like becoming comfortable with longer shipping windows in order to funnel less money into Amazon and the hands of billionaires like Bezos. You can volunteer niche skills for small businesses. You can barter with friends and loved ones. You can talk more with your neighbors and learn how to be part of a village showing up for the most vulnerable nearest you when it matters most. You can buy banned books and host book clubs or other spaces for collective reflection.

There’s so much we can all do to resist going with the flow at this moment in time because the flow is deadly.

How are you building more autonomy into your life?