Tribal Futurism

(optional pre-read)

thrive / die

we must thrive

they "must die."

Curtis Yarvin (a computer scientist and entrepreneur with connections to JD Vance) wants to turn nation states into corporations with the king as chief executive officer and the aristocracy as shareholders

One of Project 2025’s lead authors, Russell Vought, said  he wanted civil servants to be “traumatically affected” by the purge he envisioned. “We want their funding to be shut,” he said. “We want to put them in trauma.”

ok, but what brings me joy?

enter: tribal futurism

Fred Hampton in the 1960s would refer to Chicago's gangs as "unorganized street tribes"

 "Unorganized" in the sense that they lacked proletarian consciousness and political purpose 

Social circumstances forged futuristic ruminations of classless societies driven by the vision, discipline, and imagination of leaders such as Hampton (e.g. the "Rainbow Coalition"). 

The fact that many of the Black Panthers' platform points remain unfulfilled leaves open the possibility of postulating a society where Black and Brown tribes (organized or not) stake new claims to building the future.

At the heart of Tribal Futurism is a recognition that for many of us, we don't know where we belong, and that in search for belonging we manifest our destinies.

Tribal Futurism vis-à-vis Afrofuturism

Saul Williams:
"I think [Afrofuturism] comes from a Western gaze"

Tribal Futurism expresses similar speculative visions of the future imagined, not just by culture makers of the African diaspora, but also by others marginalized by similar and interconnected multi-generational systems of oppression.

Key Upcoming Dates

2025 May 6   :  Mark Zuckerberg at Stripe Sessions (SF)
 

2025 Sept 8   :  Vaughn v Tesla jury trial (Oakland)