The goal has always been to engage in praxis, right? But what does that really mean? Praxis is when homeboy is going to school to be an EMT and is learning a lot of shit about first aid. You don't need to know how to cauterize a wound, but you need to know how to stop the bleed. You need to know how to give CPR, and you need to know how to use Narcan, among other things. He can teach a class. No one's asked him how to teach a class. You're the guy or girl who asks this person, Hey, would you mind teaching a class? There's gotta be like 20 people who would show up. And he's like, "Oh, I do it for free. Just to give back to the community." That's praxis.
“Man can affect his own development and that of his surroundings only so far as he has a clear view of what the possibilities of action are open to him. To do this he has to understand the historical situation in which he finds himself: and once he does this, then he can play an active part in modifying that situation. The man of action is the true philosopher: and the philosopher must of necessity be a man of action.” ― Antonio Gramsci
What's praxis? Like, for real though—be for real. What is this nebulous concept? Praxis is when your friend says, Hey, we want to do some kind of anti-American event for 4th of July, and you pivot to, Yeah, let's give the money to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and a local immigration organization. And let's tie the struggles back to the Global South and the imperial core because we're all ultimately oppressed by the same oppressors: the capitalists. That's praxis.
Praxis is the connections we make between people on individual levels as working-class individuals.
It's staying back after the show is over and asking, Hey, does anyone need any help cleaning?
Praxis is mutual aid in action. It's when you find out one of the homies hasn't been eating. You don't just say damn, that's rough. You start asking around. Can we get him on food stamps? Can someone help him navigate the Medicaid website? Can someone front groceries until we get it figured out? It's collectivized survival. It's pulling together the fragments of a busted welfare state and patching it up with your own labor and time.
It's when the plaza gets skate-stopped, so you grab a crowbar, a bag of Quickrete, and the homies to tear that shit out at 3 AM. It's when you say, Yeah, we're taking $5 off the $15 show if you bring two cans of food. They've got to be good cans of food, no scum shit. And then all that money goes back to a local pantry. That's real mutual aid. That's real praxis.
Stevie Williams- Switch Heel Flip at Love Park, 1997 Photo: Ryan Gee
“Culture is something quite different. It is organization, discipline of one's inner self, a coming to terms with one's own personality; it is the attainment of a higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in understanding one's own historical value, one's own function in life, one's own rights and obligations.” ― Antonio Gramsci
Praxis is when you remember that the revolution starts in your community first. It's building dual power. It's passing the mic. It's noticing who's always speaking and who never does, then figuring out how to shift that balance. Praxis is when the kids start asking questions and instead of dumbing it down, you level them up. It's making space for people who've been locked out their whole lives—and not acting like you're doing them a favor.
Praxis is developing your own internal barter economy. It's knowing who has what skill, who can fix a car, who can screen print, who can cook, who can mediate conflict, who can hold the room when shit gets tense. It's building a map in your head—not of hierarchy, but of capacity. Of mutual reliance. Of shared power. You start to see people not as consumers or competitors but as collaborators. As builders. As nodes in a living system.
That's the difference between charity and solidarity. Charity maintains hierarchy. Solidarity abolishes it.
Praxis is showing up. It doesn't matter how many books of theory you've read if you're not willing to go to the mutual aid meeting at the park on Saturday at 10 a.m. to hand out lunch to 300 people who desperately need the human connection.
“One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality.” ― Antonio Gramsci
Praxis is self-reflection. It's looking at your gut reactions and asking, Is this a trauma response? Is it white supremacy conditioning? Is it a result of the psychic warfare capitalism wages on us via algorithms? It's looking at your people and asking, How are we replicating the system we claim to fight? It's undoing liberal individualism in your bones. It's killing the cop in your head.
Praxis means rejecting the individualist fantasy that if we just educate or shame enough people, the world will change. It won't. You cannot abolish exploitation by appealing to the conscience of the exploiter. You cannot fix capitalism by asking capitalists to be nicer
Praxis is understanding that systems produce people, and people produce systems. You are not exempt from history. None of us are. The cruelty you see in the world—the greed, the apathy, the performative empathy, the exploitation—is not just a parade of bad apples. It's not some moral failure of individuals in a vacuum. These are logical outputs of a system designed to prioritize profit over people, extraction over relationship, competition over cooperation, alienation over community, isolation over friendship, death over life. Capitalism is the anti-life regime.
Jason Rogers
“The indifference operates passively, but it operates.” ― Antonio Gramsci
Praxis is the balance between knowing and doing. There are people with no theoretical knowledge who engage in praxis every day, and there are people with infinite theoretical knowledge who do not. The reality is, we need both. We need to forge stronger community networks and scale up the level of care we commit to within our communities. This is the only way we stand a chance against the future capitalism has planned for us.
Praxis is realizing the system isn't broken—it's working exactly as intended. It's when you stop appealing to it for justice and start creating alternatives outside its reach.
And finally—Praxis is recognizing that many in our communities are already living through their own apocalypses. The system has already collapsed for them. The eviction already happened. The water's already poisoned. The hospital already closed. The overdose already took someone they loved. The prison already swallowed their brother whole. The state already erased their name, their language, their land.
We must reject the Western fantasy that collapse is some sudden, cinematic event—one day everything works, the next it's chaos. That's not how empire dies. It starves people in phases. It breaks down block by block. It collapses for the poor long before the rich ever feel the cracks.
Praxis is understanding that we're not waiting for collapse. We're already surviving it. We build now. We resist now. We organize now. Because injury to one is injury to all.