The world comes from the ancient Greek word anarchos, meaning “without a rule.” It is one of those words that has been used so frequently as an insult, so reliably deployed to conjure images of chaos and destruction, that its actual meaning has become almost invisible beneath the weight of its misrepresentation.

Anarchism is not chaos. It is, at its core, a political philosophy built on a single, clarifying premise: the hierarchical authority. The state, coercive institutions, systems of domination in all their forms. is neither natural nor inevitable. That human beings are capable of organizing themselves, freely, and cooperatively, without being governed from above.

The modern form of that idea crystallized in the 19th century, though its roots run deeper. Traces of anarchist thought appear throughout history, from ancient Greece and China to Christian heretical movements of medieval Europe. But it was in 1840 that the philosophy found its first self-declared name. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French philosopher and economist, became the first political thinker to call himself an anarchist and invest the word with a positive meaning. His famous question, “What is property?” and his answer “Property is theft” announced a movement that would reshape political thought for the next two centuries.

The 19th Century: Building a Philosophy

Anarchism's 19th-century standard bearers were a beguiling, motley troop of globe-trotting intellectuals. Among them was Mikhail Bakunin, a russian thinker who developed the idea of collectivist anarchism: workers banded together as equals, wholly controlling the fruits of their labor. Bakunin also presciently warned against Karl Marx’s aspiration for a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” writing in 1868 that “socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”

Then came Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince turned revolutionary geographer whose most enduring contribution was the concept of mutual aid as a critique of social Darwinism and as an alternative to competing ideologies dominant in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. His argument was simple and radical: cooperation, not competition, was the deeper truth of how human societies survived and thrived. His 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, remains one of the most relevant to our current moment.

1871. The Paris Commune — a brief, radical experiment in worker self-governance that held the French capital for 72 days — became the defining event of the 19th-century anarchist imagination. Though it ended in brutal suppression, it proved that another way of organizing society was not merely theoretical. It had happened. It could happen again.

The 20th Century: From Revolution to Resistance

Alongside Marxism, anarchism was a significant part of the workers’ movement at hte ned of the 19th century. Modernism, industrialization, reaction to capitalism, and mass migration helped anarchism flourish and spread around the globe. The Spanish Civil War of the 1930s represented its most ambitious real-world experiment. Anarchist-led collectives in Catalonia briefly ran farms, factories, and schools on cooperative principles before being crushed by Franco’s fascist forces.

The mid-20th century brought a quieter period for anarchism as a formal movement, but its ideas never disappeared. They surfaced in the civil rights movement, in feminist organizing, in the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s. Anarchist groups and individuals became involved in a wide range of social and political movements, including the civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements. The Philosophy was less visible as a named ideology than as an animating spirit. The impulse toward horizontal organizing, direct action, and building outside broken systems.

Anarchism has never been one thing. It has been a current running beneath movements that didn’t always call themselves anarchist. Carrying the insistence that another world is possible, and that we don’t have to wait for permission to start building it.

THE 21ST CENTURY: MUTUAL AID REBORN

The modern resurgence of anarchist practice is less about manifestos and more about action. When the World Trade Organization met in Seattle in 1999, anarchists were at the forefront of organizing the mobilization against corporate globalization — a wide-scale anarchist renaissance that brought anarchist ideas and practices to large numbers of people. Networks of street medics, legal collectives, and direct action groups grew from those protests and have never fully disbanded.

Then came COVID-19 — and mutual aid networks proliferated across the country almost overnight. Neighbors organized grocery delivery for the immunocompromised. Community fridges appeared on street corners. Decentralized care networks emerged where official systems failed or never existed. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid has received increasing scholarly attention as a form of prefigurative politics. What Kropotkin described in 1902 was alive and visible in 2020 in a way that made the philosophy newly legible to millions of people who had never considered themselves anarchists.

Today, anarchism as a living tradition shows up in tenant organizing, prison abolition movements, decentralized mutual aid networks, and community care infrastructures built by and for people whom the state has consistently failed — including, prominently, trans and queer communities building their own health networks, housing cooperatives, and care systems in the face of targeted legislative attacks.

WHY IT STILL MATTERS

Anarchism has outlasted every prediction of its irrelevance because the problem it names — coercive hierarchy and the human suffering it produces — has not gone away. If anything, in 2026, it has sharpened.

The philosophy is not a blueprint. It does not offer a five-step plan or a party platform. What it offers instead is a way of seeing — a lens that asks, consistently and without apology: who does this system serve? Who built it? And what might we build instead, if we started from the premise that people are capable of caring for each other without being forced to?

That question, first asked seriously in the 1840s, has never been more worth sitting with than right now.

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The word chosen family has always carried more weight than it appears to. And for LGBT people, it has always been more than a preference. It has been, for many of us, a matter of survival.

There is a particular kind of love that doesn’t come with paperwork. No certificates, no legal definitions, no boxes to check on a form at the doctor’s office. It arrives quietly, in a phone call that comes at exactly the right moment, in a friend who shows up at your door without being asked, in the people who learn your pronouns and never get them wrong because they actually care about getting them right.

The numbers tell you a story that many of us already know in our bones. Research from the Newport Institute found that 70% of Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth experience rejection in some form from their families of origin. For transgender and nonbinary adults, that figure climbs to one in five. And a landmark study published in PLOS ONE confirmed what years of research have suggested: homophobic messaging from family increases, so do the rates of depression, anxiety, and internalized shame among LGBT adults.

1 in 2. Half of all LGBT people are estranged from at least one of their family members. For trans and nonbinary adults, one in five experiences that estrangement. Chosen family isn’t a lifestyle choice. For many of us, it is the infrastructure of our survival.

But the research doesn’t stop at the wound. It tracks what happens when chosen family fills the space that biological family left behind. Social support from chosen family, studies have consistently found, is directly linked to better health outcomes, greater well-being, and a more integrated, positive sense of LGBT identity. The love we build for ourselves is not a consolation prize. It is medicine.

And in this political moment, medicine is needed more than ever.

We are living through a sustained effort to legislate LGBT people, and trans people in particular, out of public life. Healthcare access is being restricted. Legal protections are being dismantled. The message being sent, loudly and repeatedly, is that we do not belong. That our families are not a real family. That the people we have chosen to love and be loved by do not count.

Chosen family has always been an act of resistance. In this moment, it is also an act of defiance. A declaration that we will build what we need, love who we love, and refuse to disappear.

Culturally, chosen family is having a moment in the spotlight. And not a moment too soon. From the enduring legacy of the ballroom scene immortalized in Paris is Burning to the quiet intimacy of trans community care networks operating right now in cities across the country, chosen family is everywhere once you know how to look for it. It is the group chat that never sleeps. The friend who drives you to your appointments. The person who remembers your birthday when your parents have stopped calling.

It shows up in healthcare, too, in ways that matter enormously. When a trans person walks into a medical setting with a chosen family member by their side, someone who knows their name, their history, and their needs, they are more likely to receive affirming care, more likely to advocate for themselves, and more likely to return. Chosen family is not just emotional support. It is a health intervention.

I think about my own chosen family often — the people who found me, or let me find them, in the spaces where I was most fully myself. The ones who didn’t need me to explain myself before they showed up. The ones who taught me, by example, what it looks like to be loved without conditions.

That love is what this magazine is built on. Not just the data, not just the advocacy — the actual, specific, irreplaceable love of people who chose each other. That is the story I want True North Star to keep telling, in every issue, in every form it takes.

Because chosen family is not a gap-filler. It is not what you settle for when the real thing falls through. It is the real thing — built by people who understood that love, at its most honest, was never about biology. It was always about showing up.

Rina Sawayama knew it. Most of us who have lived it know it too. Now it’s time for the rest of the world to catch up.

Pass it on

Share this with someone in your chosen family — the ones who show up, who remember, who never get your name wrong. They deserve to know they’re seen here too.

The social movement and affiliated I will be the community fighting back against Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Affiliated group that helped. People Grow is the Immigration Defense Network, and it’s important because it teaches us our rights and what we can and can’t do when protesting and helping immigrants in the community.

The immigration Defense Network was founded in 2025 as a network of immigrant, labor, faith, and community organizations (Protest the human rights and dignity of every Minnesota, n.d.). This group was needed because of the sharp uptick in the current federal administration’s treatment of the community. You can see how President Trump is trying to use ICE to clear people out who are actively working on becoming citizens.

The City of Minneapolis reports that $189.2 million in wages were lost due to Operation Metro Surge (City of Minneapolis, n.d.). This is vital to the lessons we’ve learned about the community because immigrants or people who look different are shown to be afraid to go out in the neighborhood. The fear of the immigration and Customs Enforcement is real and still happening months after Operation Metro Surge supposedly ended.

There are two distinct rights here for immigrants and constitutional observers. The main thing to keep in mind is that the Constitution grants some rights to the immigrant community, but it does not grant them the same rights as citizens until they become citizens. Coming from a handout on the Immigrant Defense Network (Protect the human rights and dignity of every Minnesotan, n.d.)

1. Due Process: The 5th and 14th amendments state that all persons, regardless of their status as citizens, must be given the right to a fair and speedy trial.

2. Equal Protection: The 14th Amendment states that everyone, regardless of where they are born within the United States, must be treated equally

3. Right to Legal Counsel: The 6th Amendment states that everyone has the right to legal counsel

4. Freedom of Speech and Religion: The First Amendment states that immigrants have the right to free expression as much as citizens do.

5. Protection against unreasonable searches and seizures: The Fourth Amendment states that you have the right to be private.

6. Right to a fair trial: This is covered under the 6th amendment. The government can’t just take you into a room and put you on trial. You must be given equal rights and be treated fairly.

7. Protection from Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The 8th amendment is where we see that the time must be equal to or less than the crime. You are protected from anything that will not fit the amount of crime that you committed.

Keeping these rights in mind can help make interactions with ICE agents more bearable and not have a problem.

The implications that a citizen should take note of the people they are protesting. That is something that citizens should always be aware of. In the article Type Winds of Winter in Minnesota there was a general strike. This was the reason President Donald Trump sent 3,000 federal ICE agents into the Twin Cities: his dislike of Governor Tim Walz and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (Kelly, 2026). This was one of the biggest protests in Minnesota history. Videos began to circulate of what ICE agents were doing in Minnesota. People were explaining what their rights are and who could fix it.

Some effects my neighbors face include about $203.1 million in lost wages within a month (Schoening, 2026). People were scared to go out into their neighborhoods to make them safe. Still going through the metro area after the federal ICE agents have decreased, the fear remains. People are still going through. So, the implications of something on a massive scale like this aren’t just going away because someone decided to decrease the number of armed agents on the streets.

Not everyone views Operation Metro Surge as a bad thing. Republican State Senator Steve Drazkowski alleged that some Democratic colleagues were part of a paramilitary organization that caused the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti (Minnesota Reformer, 2026). This shows how different the political parties’ views are on this. It’s something that has divided families as well. It also shows that this could play a huge role in the upcoming midterm elections this year.

Part Two: Effects of Change

The impact of culture on perceptions of the Immigration Defense Network’s Operation Metro Surge strengthened the divide between Democrats and Republicans alike. The Republicans have said that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were tragic, but they did it to themselves. Meanwhile, the Democrats, including Representatives Angie Craig, Ilhan Omar, and Kelly Morrison, have called for accountability.

The persuasive strategies that people on the left and the immigrant defense network could use include appeals to the voice and morality of keeping families together. “Immigration agents experience many emotions at work – fear, contempt, frustration, suspicion” (Vega, 2018). By remembering that these agents doing this work are human, we can help immigrants and remind people what empathy is.

Figure 1

Examples of posters by Immigration Defense Network

Note. (Protect the human rights and dignity of every Minnesotan, n.d.)

There are plenty of biases people hold when we talk about immigration. Some people believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement is too far gone. That we should abolish them completely. Democrats even went so far as to shut down part of the government and withhold funding for the Department of Homeland Security (Ma, 2026). This shows how partisan this has become.

From everything that I’ve been through and witnessed, the group consensus coming from the left is that the agents are just becoming a Gestapo. Secret police for the government’s use. Cultural awareness shows that we can continue to demonstrate how people are becoming more accepting of change.

Part Three: Advocacy

Actions we could take to address the inequitable conditions identified by the Immigrant Defense Network are: (Protect the human rights and dignity of every Minnesotan, n.d.)

1. Know your rights

a. 4^th amendment gives you the right to privacy

b. The 5^th Amendment gives you the right to remain silent and refuse to sign documents

c. The 6^th Amendment gives you the right to seek legal counsel

2. Observe and document law enforcement

a. With this, know what you can and what a Judicial warrant looks like. An administrative warrant is filed directly with ICE. This kind of warrant doesn’t allow ICE to go into private spaces or homes.

b. Identify yourself verbally as a Constitutional observer

c. Stay at least 8 feet away and avoid physical contact

3. Inform individuals about civil rights and due process

a. One thing people need to be aware of is that constitutional observers must NOT touch an ICE agent. This can cause them to get arrested themselves.

b. Stay calm and don’t say anything you would regret

c. Don’t run or resist

d. Ask “Am I being detained?” and “Am I free to go?”

e. If arrested, say “I want to remain silent and speak to a lawyer.”

4. Share support resources.

a. Share with others the resources that the immigrant defense network gives out

b. Help translate documents for those who might not speak English.

The results that I hope will make an impact are that people stand up for those who need it. This is something that people can show a sense of community. To make the immigration court work with people instead of against them. A positive impact of people being able to work with people and make a positive impact. One thing people can do is help with groceries, bring more people to eat, and help get kids to school. Food, housing, and education should be basic human rights.

Another thing people can do is help at immigration courts by translating documents for immigrants who don’t speak English. This is a language that is hard to learn as a second language, and translators can be volunteers if the judge and the court agree.

Legal and ethical implications are important to remember. While we can help with language translation, we just can’t go out and give people the chance to have an actual legal authority give the legal advice. This is something that people can interrupt but can’t give. The attorneys and lawyers have sent the student to study law. Let’s leave the legal advice to them.

Another ethical concern is when people try to physically interfere with a law enforcement agent. They are still federally recognized agents and need to be respected as such. Yelling and chanting wouldn’t do much harm, but physically assaulting a federal agent can cause legal consequences for you.

The position in social change is to work with people to build a better country. To help immigration bring forth actual, real ethical change. This is something that people can do without being in power. Many people who disagree with ICE have seen an uptick in running for office. The legislative branch is a more powerful branch than the Executive. Even though the three branches of government are equal. One branch can’t just go and do whatever they want.

Making this more powerful when we get passionate people. The United States Government was meant to be changeable. It took an act of Congress to create Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so it will take an act of Congress to change it. This can be a way to make it easier for people to see the change they want.

We’ve also seen a dramatic shift in politics as we approach the midterms. Democrats across the country have been winning primary elections and special elections. This will be an interesting thing to see when the November general elections come. Will the will of the people want to change the course of the country, or will we see that people work to find something that the will of the people likes what was happening.

References

City of Minneapolis. (n.d.). Community impacts from operation metro surge. Retrieved June 18, 2026, from https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/minneapolis-forward/community-impacts/

Kelly, K. (2026, May). A general strike by any other name. Shapiro Library. Retrieved June 18, 2026, from https://research.ebsco.com/c/ix3dnl/search/details/xtynb66ouf/details?q=Operation+metro+surge+implications+of+protesting

Ma, J. (2026, January 11). ICE shooting sets up budget standoff before shutdown deadline as deeper reforms eyed. ‘We must dismantle it and build it from the ground up again. Fortune.com. Retrieved June 19, 2026, from https://research.ebsco.com/c/ix3dnl/search/details/7ibb3a7g3z?q=Should%20ICE%20be%20abolished

Minnesota Reformer. (2026, March 26). For republicans in the Minnesota legislature, operation metro surge was the DFL’s fault. Retrieved June 18, 2026, from https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA880180686&v=2.1&it=r&sid=ebsco&u=nhc_main&p=STND&aty=shibboleth

Protect the human rights and dignity of every Minnesotan. (n.d.). Immigrant defense network [Press release].

https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/

Schoening, E. (2026, April). Preparing for ice. Shapiro Library. Retrieved June 18, 2026, from https://research.ebsco.com/c/ix3dnl/search/details/xl4evnc4sz?limiters=FT%3AY&q=effects%20of%20protesting%20Operation%20Metro%20Surge&searchMode=enhanced

Vega, I. I. (2018). Empathy, morality, and criminality: The legitimation narratives of U.S. border patrol agents. Journal of ethnic & Migration studies. Retrieved June 19, 2026, from https://research.ebsco.com/c/ix3dnl/search/details/l25fzpr5j5?limiters=FT%3AY&q=Persuasive%20strategies%20from%20the%20immigrant%20defense%20network%20%20in%20Minneapolis&searchMode=enhanced

I know that silence well. As a trans writer, I’ve spent time inside it. Wondering whether my voice was too niche, too specific, too much. Whether the story I was carrying had a place waiting for it, or whether I’d have to build the place myself. Piece by piece, and brick by brick.

It turns out the data has something to say about their silence, too.

Publishing has made visible progression LGBTQ+ representation in recent years. The Manuscript Academy’s 2025-2026 trend report found that LGBTQ+ themes now appear across the vast majority of literary agents’ manuscript wish lists, with requests climbing sharply over the past year. On the surface, that sounds like the door swinging open.

But wanting stories about us is not the same as centering us in the telling of them. As writer Pheolyn Allen has put it plainly, the publishing industry has long allowed queer stories to flourish. While quietly prioritizing versions of those stories written by people outside of them experiences. The appetite for trans narratives have grown. This infrastructure for trans writers to tell those narratives on their own terms is still catching up.

100+. That's the number of debut books by trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming authors tracked by the Chicago Review of Books in 2025 alone — many of them self-published or released through small independent presses. Trans writers are not waiting for permission. They are building their own rooms.

That number matters to me. Not because self-publishing is a consolation prove. It isn’t, and the landscape for independent authors in 2026 has more credibility, reach, and possibility than ever has. It matters because it tells you something about will. About what happens when writers who’ve spent years in that quiet silence decide the silence isn’t worth keeping.

Writing as a trans person in spaces not built for you requires a particular kind of stubbornness. You have to be willing o write toward an audience that might not fully exist yet, on a platform that might not have anticipated you, in a voice that the market hasn’t quite learned to categorize. That’s not a complaint, its an observation. And increasingly, it’s also an opportunity.

Because here’s what I’ve learned, and what the data is starting to confirm: the readers are there. The hunger for authentic trans storytelling for writing that doesn’t explain us to outsiders or flatten us for palatability is real and growing. What’s been missing isn’t the audience. It’s been the infrastructure for trans writers to reach them directly, on our own terms.

That’s exactly what platforms like this one exist to change. Independent publishing, newsletters, Substack - these aren’t workarounds. They’re the room we’re building ourselves, one issue at a time.

The silence is still there sometimes, when I sit down to write. But it’s gotten quieter. And the writing gotten louder!

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True North Star publishes essays, cultural criticism, and affirming care coverage centered on trans voices. If this landed with you, subscribe and share it with someone who needs to read it.

I didn’t find it. What I found was coverage that filtered trans life through someone else’s lens. Political, sensationalized, or quietly erasing. When we did appear, it was usually as a subject, not an author. A story to be told about, not a voice doing the telling.

The data reflects what I felt. According to GLAAD, only 20% of non-LGBTQ Americans say they personally know a transgender person. That means for the majority of the country, media is where they form their understanding of who we are. And the Trans Journalists Association’s Trans News Initiative, which tracked 190,000 articles across five years. Found that most of that coverage centers on political battles, not on the full texture of trans life: the resilience, the community, the joy, the work.

7%. That’s the share of LGBTQ characters on television who are transgender, according to GLAAD’s 2024-25 Where We Are on TV report. Of those 33 characters, 61% won’t return next season due to cancellations. Visibility that disappears isn’t representations. It’s a door that keep getting closed.

True North Star exists because I got tired of waiting for someone else to open it.

This is a trans magazine. Not a magazine about trans issues through we’ll cover those, honestly and without flinching. Not a newsletter that treats our identity as a communications challenge to be managed. A magazine with all that implies: cultural criticism, personal essays, affirming healthcare coverage, spotlights on the writers and activists and everyday people building something worth reading about.

I’m a health copywriter by trade, and work that shaped how I think about language. The way that the words either open a door or quietly close one, the difference between a sentence that includes someone and one that merely tolerates them. That professional lens shows up in this work, too. Every issue is written with the belief that how we talk about trans lives matters, and that we deserve to be the ones doing the talking.

I have to be honest about something, though. This almost didn’t happened. Not because the need wasn’t there. Believe me the need was there. But because I hadn’t yet found the words. It was my instructors at Southern New Hampshire University who helped me find my voice as a writer. They gave me the tools, the encouragement, and the space to figure out what i actually had to say. Without them, I’m not sure I would have believed this was something I could do. I’m not sure The True North Star would exist at all.

So here we are. A new platform and don’t get me wrong I’m going to still post on LinkedIn but this is a new chapter and the same commitment I’ve had since I first started writing: to put trans voices at the center of the stories being told about us. To show up, to keep writing, and to build something that didn’t exist before because we deserve that, and because now I can.

I’m glad you found your way here. This is where we begin.

Pass it on

If this resonates, share it with a trans writer, a curious reader or anyone who believes the stories we tell about themselves matter. This magazine grows one reader at a time.