My name is Chris Dixon. I'm a white, middle-class, (mostly) straight guy originally from Anchorage, Alaska, which I still regard as my home. I'm also a longtime anarchist with a deep commitment to collective struggles for liberation. This site reflects my engagement, since my early teens, with radical politics and movements.
Much of the fabric of my life has been shaped by my relationship with public alternative schools, which has been shaped, in turn, by my relatively privileged social position. As I child, I went to an "open optional" elementary school, and for grades 7-12, I attended Steller Alternative School, where I was radicalized and had my first organizing experiences. In 1995 I entered The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in order to further my political education. During my years at Evergreen, I organized against the prison industrial complex, racism, US imperialism, and capitalist globalization. I also co-led a campaign to have US political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal as the featured speaker at my 1999 graduation.
The capstone of my work at Evergreen was my senior thesis, "Critical Hope: Youth and Social Change on the Edge of the 21st Century," a book-length work mixing critical analysis and memoir to search out prospects for radical social change among young activists. It has since served as the basis for several essays and articles, such as "The Roots of My Resistance" in the anthology Global Uprising.
In the spring of 1999, I graduated with a B.A. in Political Economy and Social Change, and I spent the following months as a core organizer for direct action against the World Trade Organization's Seattle Ministerial. In the three years following Seattle, I focused on organizing and writing, particularly in critically assessing the so-called "anti-globalization movement." Over the first decade of the 2000s, I did some of this work as part of the administrative collective of Colours of Resistance, a mainly Canadian and U.S. network which sought to develop feminist, multi-racial, anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist politics in the global justice movement.
From 2002 until 2010, I was in graduate school in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I worked closely with my primary advisor, Barbara Epstein, a radical historian of the left, and I was fortunate to have the support of Angela Davis and Paul Ortiz on my dissertation committee. Together, they supported me in writing a dissertation/book manuscript motivated by my political commitments. Through extensive interviews with organizers across Canada and the US, this research documents and discusses some of the really sharp organizing and thinking that is developing among anti-authoritarians involved in broad-based movements and also explores some of the big unresolved questions that we face. I am currently working to revise this manuscript, tentatively entitled Against and Beyond: Radical Organizers Building Another Politics in the U.S. and Canada, and find a publisher.
While in Santa Cruz, I organized "flying squads" and other rank-and-file initiatives as part of my union, struggled in solidarity with campus service workers, participated in direct action counter-recruitment work, and assisted with immigrant justice organizing. I also worked as a teaching assistant in the activist-inspired Community Studies department and informally mentored many younger student radicals.
In the summer of 2012, I moved to Ottawa, Ontario, with my partner Alexis so that she could take a teaching job. Here I work full-time on homemaking and writing while also participating in local organizing. I also am an active member of the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies and the advisory board for the activist journal Upping the Anti. In my scarce spare time, I enjoy baking vegan treats and long distance running.
Politically, I come out of a set of tendencies and formations which prioritize grassroots organizing, movement-building, coalitional work, and dialogue with other sectors of the left, all with the aim of acting from what is sometimes called "intersectional" or "anti-oppression" politics.
Contact me at chrisd [at] resist [dot] ca. Also check out my links and my CV.
