Hello my name is Susan and I'm an anarchist.

Well, a good percentage of you just looked at me as if I'd said I'm the anti-christ! Another large group raised their fists and said "YEAH". A few of you scratched your heads and said, "She's WHAT?"

Well, honestly, who, as a free thinking college student could read Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin and NOT believe in the power of anarchy? Who could sit around in deep discussion in the dorm lounges, where we plotted to save the world and overthrow the government and NOT feel the thrill of knowing with absolute certainty that each and every one of us was going to change the way things were? No more telling US what to do!

Anarchy to us was not just that the only good government was no government, but rather the absence of all authority. We applied anarchy to our dorm curfews, to our class attendance, to parental rules and to anything we determined was not allowed.

Although the word anarchism is understood by many simply by its definition, the word is very often misused and misunderstood. Anarchism, because of the threat it imposes upon established authority, has been historically, and is still, misused by the media, critics, and power holders as the precursor of violence and chaos. It is made up of two Greek words meaning 'absence of' and 'authority or government'. Anarchists prefer 'order without authority'.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Anarchy, in fact in its basic form, it makes more sense than any other form of government. In a state of Anarchy, we have no organized government, we are our own absolute authority, living in a world absent of military competition, no police states, and no terror.

In today's world, modern anarchists still diligently seek to maintain its validity and history. Anarchism today is being used to find solutions to the problems of power, not just government power, but corporate power and all manner of domination among individuals and organizations. Anarchists have formulated newer ideas such as existential individualism, while others remain loyal to its application to class struggle. Anarchism has also been spread worldwide through music by bands such as Crass, introducing anarchism and urging self-sufficiency among workers . Other anarchists are introducing new means of organizing and directly challenging racism issues, while this thinking has also become integrated into ecological issues by virtue of eco-anarchist ideas.

Alexander Berkman was instrumental in defining the word 'anarchism'. He wrote a book called _ABC of Anarchism_ which is popular even today. Berkman wrote, "Anarchism means you should be free; that no one should enslave you, boss you, rob you, or impose upon you. It means you should be free to do the things you want to do; and that you should not be compelled to do what you do not want to do." Hey, who can argue with that?

I grew up in the time when 'you can't fight city hall' was the buzz phrase, attended college when I wanted to prove them wrong, then actually worked in City Hall and found out how unfortuanately true that saying was.

Anarchy requires commitment to your beliefs, black and white, no gray areas. You cannot call out for the dissolution of authority and then stand in line with your hand out for a government subsidy. A true anarchist cannot pick and choose among the workings or nonworkings of the powers that be. A farmer cannot sit about and chew straw at the checker table and rail against taxes, then accept payment for NOT raising whatever crop the government deems excess.

I begrudge every penny the government sucks from my paycheck, because I don't have the authority to tell them how to spend it. I am applying at present for every scholarship the government is offering for my daughter. I see a problem here.

Am I REALLY an anarchist anymore?

Anarchy has been around for nearly one hundred years and continues to thrive. I have been replaced by a new group of people quoting Trotsky and Goldman who don't understand that without government, we'd be bringing home more than 60% of our paychecks, without government intervention we'd never have been able to weed out the population with war, and we'd never have had Bill Clinton to teach us that oral sex 'doesn't count'.

I don't know...maybe I still am.