How did you get involved in selling the magazine?  

Well, I was literally sleeping rough, and one of my friends, Claire, was doing the magazine and told me it was a good idea for me to make money to get into shelters and get interested in charity work. And I've always done charity work in Cardiff, where I used to work, and I’ve helped people in youth clubs and the Prince's Trust, where I met the Queen's husband…

Traditional capitalist businesses are dictatorships. Small groups of managers and shareholders make all decisions, and reap most of the profits. In contrast, a workers’ cooperative is a business where the employees own and control everything. Workers are members, which means they have an equal say in decision-making and decide how profits are invested.

The movement of people is as old as humanity. Countries are fundamentally invented shared myths; borders, immigration controls and passports are just a blip in history. For most of human existence, movement was free if you could afford it - although money to move was another problem. People flee war, starvation, and seek better economic prospects in other countries. This is especially true of people coming to the UK, where its rulers have historically looted the world's wealth, resulting in improved living conditions relative to the rest of the world. And these same elites continue to sponsor global war, genocide and invasion, increasing the need for people to flee their homes.

In January 1997, Friends of the Earth called a rally at the construction site of the Newbury Bypass. The plan was for a candlelit vigil, followed by speeches, and then a march to the building site to tie ribbons and messages to the fence. The event was billed as a one-year anniversary reunion for all the activists and campaigners who had spent the previous winter occupying tree houses, dodging vast armies of security guards, attaching themselves to barrels full of concrete and using many other inventive tactics in an attempt to slow or stop the felling of more than 10,000 trees to make way for the construction of the road. The eviction of over 30 different treehouse camps along the route of the planned bypass from January to March of 1996 had become a national cause celebre, attracting thousands of activists in freezing conditions to try and stop the clearances.

Inequality is harmful. People who are discriminated against experience physical, emotional and social effects, which worsen their long-term health and well-being. These are collective traumas. Suffering is experienced in similar ways across communities and social groups living with historical oppression or the injustice of capitalism. One-to-one therapy cannot treat these collective wounds. It is inaccessible for many due to cost, but crucially, individual treatment makes healing a personal responsibility without tackling the social and political sources. 

The Woodcraft Folk is a cooperative youth movement. It was originally established in the 1920s by young people who wanted to create an organisation that facilitated a relationship between children and nature whilst rejecting much of the hierarchy and nationalism of other youth movements at the time. In opposition to the authoritarian tendencies of the Scouts, the Woodcraft Folk aims at more horizontal structures. When the Woodcraft Folk started, children were generally expected to refer to their teachers and guardians by the titles 'Sir' and 'Miss'. However, at Woodcraft, these formalities were avoided. New names and titles were given to both young people and adult volunteers, linguistically signalling an aspiration, if not always a reality, of engaging with one another on more equal terms.

There’s little charm in the current US administration’s version of the American Dream. Look at the original model. Not even its populariser, the financier-cum-historian James Truslow Adams, tied it exclusively to wealth-creation and the accumulation of power. In his version, while the Dream included the promise of cars and high wages, it was underpinned by a Protestant ethic of hard work and a notion of individual flourishing. Adams pictured a people unrestrained by the old world’s fusty ways and class biases, pursuing their happiness by the exploitation of the country’s seemingly inexhaustible natural resources. Enrichment, born of industrialisation, was the Dream’s driver. Liberty and equality were its end. 

Just in the last 24 hours of writing this article storms have smashed both New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, while in Jamaica, government officials warned that as Hurricane Melissa intensified into a Category 5 storm, many impacted communities ‘will not survive the flooding’, and that no community in the Jamaican capital Kingston is safe.

The speed with which the hurricane intensified is no longer shocking. Scarcely a day goes by without multiple news stories covering the increasingly catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin is an American writer, activist and black anarchist. He is a former member of SNCC, the Black Panther Party and Concerned Citizens for Justice. Following an attempt to frame him on weapons charges and for threatening the life of a Ku Klux Klan leader, Ervin hijacked a plane to Cuba in February 1969. While in Cuba, and later Czechoslovakia, Ervin grew disillusioned with the authoritarianism of state socialism. Captured by the CIA in Eastern Europe, he was extradited to the US, put on trial and sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He was introduced to anarchism whilst in prison, inspiring him to write Anarchism and the Black Revolution in 1979. Released after 15 years, Ervin remains politically active.

So I was really lucky, it was my 30th birthday, now I’m 38. Two days later, this guy was unloading the van (of DOPE magazine). And he said “you know what guys, you guys might like this, this is cool stuff, this is DOPE, man. And we’re just giving it out to people so they could just earn something.” For free like, you know and get by. He was so kind, one of the kindest people. We helped him unload some stuff, and then he was like “Hey guys, look, I’m okay. I got other guys to help me out here take it in, so just take some”.

In the cockpit of the Hawk Jet lay a number of unusual objects: a VHS tape, an A4 pamphlet, and a calling card with the names of four women - Andrea Needham, Joanna Wilson, Lotta Kronlid, and Angie Zelter - under "Seeds of Hope: East Timor Ploughshares" and the words "Women Disarming for Life and Justice”. The control panel of the jet had been smashed by a single blow from a hammer.

For the past two years, the UK has been in the midst of an invisible health crisis caused by nitazenes, a group of powerful synthetic opioids which can be up to 500 times stronger than heroin and ten times stronger than fentanyl.

When Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman and self-described democratic socialist, decisively won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City in June 2025, the entire liberal establishment lost their shit. The authorities reached for their fainting hankies, and the insinuation (if not the exact words) of the rulers and their enablers was unmistakable: 'Bolsheviks take over NYC!'

As I write, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militants have stormed the Zamzam refugee camp, home to over 400,000 displaced people, setting fire to shelters and systematically dismantling one of Sudan’s largest camps. It marks yet another atrocity in a civil war where the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have carved up the country. As is so often the case, those without guns are the ones to suffer most. According to the UN, in 2025, over 30 million people, approximately two-thirds of the population, will require humanitarian aid. Of this, 16 million are children. Around 12 million women and girls (and a growing number of men/boys) are at risk of sexual violence. Since the start of the major escalation in April 2023, more than 12 million people have begun a grim life fleeing war.

T

he downstairs two floors of the global bank UBS's 13-storey headquarters lie empty. In the City of London, this space – dubbed a 'double-height reception' – is barren of activity. Except for the morning, lunch and evening rush hours, this space's predominant captives are bored-looking security guards and receptionists. These voids mainly function as walk-through areas between outside and lifts or escalators. The architect's blurb says UBS resembles a machine, a well-oiled money-making machine. Yet many elephants could roam this bottom room, with space priced at £75/foot. 30% of the building's total floor space (1 million square foot) is not offices. These non-office spaces cost tenants over £22 million/year in rent. Sure, buildings need hallways. But why not put the stairs near the doors? Why let space lie idle?

In an era marked by using social media and instant messaging to talk to each other, there is something quite beautiful about sitting with a group of people writing letters. What makes it even more beautiful and important is that we are writing to prisoners.

Masafer Yatta sits at the southern edge of the West Bank. Spread across multiple villages and hamlets, the rugged landscape, characterised by deep swaying valleys of limestone rock and topped with little vegetation, is home to just a few thousand Palestinians. As a rural community, many residents live off the land, relying on the produce they raise as farmers and shepherds. Olives, wheat, milk, and cheese are harvested for flour and olive oil production, while various vegetables are cultivated in small quantities. Chickens are also part of most households.

My parents brought me to a dingy Council building in Lanarkshire for my first assessment. I’ve been disabled since birth, but prior to turning 16, the questions were directed to my mum and dad as my primary caregivers. Now, as an ‘adult’, according to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), I had to endure a 90-minute interview where all aspects of my disability and life were interrogated as if I had committed a crime.

On the 4th of September 1976, the Sex Pistols made their television debut, performing Anarchy in the UK on a late-night music show. Before the first chords were even struck, a young Johnny Rotten, all nervous energy and bile, stared directly into the camera and screamed, 'GET OFF YOUR ARSE!" - an act unleashing a cultural shock-wave that still reverberates today. For thousands of youngsters watching TV that night, it was as if a bomb had detonated in their living rooms—a call to action that demanded an immediate response. 

On 7 September, 2024, fascists in Glasgow staged their most successful demonstration in decades, gathering a few hundred flag-waving and Hitler-saluting specimens of the 'Aryan race' under Union Jacks, St. Andrew's Crosses, Red Hands of Ulster, and even a single, lonely, Irish Tricolour. Fascism in Scotland has never been particularly successful as a movement compared to the rest of these isles, whether the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, the subcultural "brown wave" of the 1980s-90s, or the present day. But is this demonstration a sign that things may be starting to change? And if so, what can be done about it?