interview with Andrew Lee

on community organizing and all that good stuff

For readers who are unfamiliar, what types of community organizing do you do?

I’m particularly focused on land and housing defense–working with urban communities fighting off gentrification and displacement. I’m into fostering the resistance of everyday people confronting some of the most powerful institutions around today, from tech companies to elite universities to local government and the police. Our enemies are powerful but not invincible. The only way to really internalize that lesson is to fight and win.

How has your organizing work changed with the new administration, and what's stayed the same?

I feel like there’s a lot of unfocused despair and anxiety. The Biden administration helped kill the George Floyd Rebellion and criminalized the Palestine solidarity movement while arming a genocide, so it’s no wonder that people are feeling burned out. Per the title of the excellent new documentary from subMedia, we’re “interrebellium”--in the interlude between uprisings. I think it’s actually an ideal time to start building networks, developing shared political analysis, and establishing relationships of solidarity and care.

Do you identify with any particular model of change (insurrectionary, prefigurative, etc) and why?

I’ve worked on an idea I’m calling the anarchism of praxis, or practical anarchism. It’s about building our anarchism out of the things oppressed and marginalized communities are already doing, not just the norms of a majority-white punk-adjacent subculture. Communities targeted by the state and exploited by capital have to have adopted anarchic practices in order to survive to the present, no matter how they’d explicitly identify their political ideologies. I think we should learn alongside and accompany communities in resistance while pulling on these liberatory threads. And I think we need to keep our eyes on the horizon: the revolutionary abolition of state and capital.

What local organizing projects are you part of, and how do they connect to more national/global efforts?

I’m based in Philadelphia, where I’ve organized with Neighbors & Communities in Solidarity to make sure our city’s Chinatown didn’t get gentrified for an inconveniently-located downtown basketball arena. We realized very quickly that our local fight is part of a global fight, too. Our city’s basketball team is co-owned by three real estate/finance billionaires who’ve made their fortunes off the exploitation and displacement of communities around the globe. And Chinatowns in particular around the country are being threatened in very similar ways, from New York to Seattle.

If you had to give new organizers one piece of advice, what would it be?

We can fall into the trap of thinking that organizers, activists, or revolutionaries are a special class of people somehow entirely different from everyone else. But you don’t need scene cred or a certain title or a degree to get involved in the fight for liberation. We’re all just regular people–freaks and weirdos included–fighting for a less terrible world. Find people doing good work and ask to plug in. Start organizing with people where you’re at. Get a crew of folks down to start causing trouble, and remember–you're not alone. We are part of a tradition of resistance spanning continents and generations. And we will win.

Any shameless plugs / organizing spaces you'd like to link?

You can follow my Substack, In Struggle, and check out my book on anti-gentrification resistance around the globe, Defying Displacement. I’m on the social media surveillance platforms as @xandrewleex (IG, TikTok, Bluesky) and I’m a member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, which promotes anarchist and abolitionist theory from frontline radicals around the world.

My biggest plug is to get (more) involved, whether virtually or IRL, with a group of people fighting for liberation. Join the fight for solidarity with Palestine or trans liberation or migrant justice or prisoner defense or wherever you can plug in to make a difference. We need you in the fight, now more than ever.