from Anarchist News
From Sachio Takashima (facebook)
Clarissa Rogers
Nov 12th 1967-March 17th 2024
Friends and loved ones of Clarissa,
On this day, she has made her transition. And her work lives on!
Two years ago, due to long Covid, Clarissa fell into a coma. She awoke, but with no memories. She later described this time as akin to a process of writing a detective novel of her own life. She started to remember in bits and pieces, looked through old photos, found out more and more by researching her own life. Accompanying this process was an eerie feeling of all of these events happening to someone else, but that someone else was her.
She remembered friends, and asked to find out who they were. She remembered tastes, re-discovered that she was a foodie, and investigated which foods excited her. She came across a picture of herself at the Opera! She remembered advocating for a friend years ago, saving them years from a prison sentence. She found out she loves writing, and that she’s a poet! She found out she loves photography, that she has a camera and a collection of serene nature pictures and pictures of little wild creatures. She learned that she loves the Simpsons, and especially loves using episodes to talk about anti-capitalism.
She remembered she’s a working class anarchist, involved in supporting workplace struggles, and the struggle against racism, and ultimately found out that she’s involved in the world’s oldest Anarchist International! Perhaps most meaningfully, her detective skills revealed a whole community across the country, and around the world that supports her and adores her.
She remembered more and more, and figured out quickly that in her own hospital experience as a poor working class woman, she witnessed the health inequities shaping her own journey. While still hospitalized, she took up Disability Rights of working people as a central part of labor organizing. She started to regain her capacity for organizing and theory, so she started what became an international reading group of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. And she facilitated the first meeting from her hospital bed at the Critical Care Unit! Her comrades were inspired by this, called her their hero for this, and will always remember this remarkable commitment to the movement.
As her memories and capacity increased, she found herself right back in the thick of the movement. Like a Phoenix, she found herself, miraculously, at the height of her achievements. She recovered her abilities not just for writing, but for editing, and even contributing to theoretical conversations about what anarchist editing ought to be. She was working with authors again, providing help and guidance for their articles. She started a series of interviews and a possible book, giving it the SO Clarissa title: “From Comma Girl to Coma Girl and Back Again.”
She came to facilitate one of the most difficult meetings of her life, and did so brilliantly. In this meeting she helped bring about a feminist revolution within the country’s oldest Anarchist-Syndicalist national organization.
Clarissa Rogers–lover of puns, connoisseur of wacky adventures, fiercely loyal friend, quirky builder of community–we love you! Coming from so many walks of life, our collective support has poured through for you from our hearts, as we feel a profound gratitude for all you have given us. Clarissa, you have made your transition, and we will carry on your work, for…
the wacky adventure continues!
Long live the planarchy!
Clarissa, rest in power!
We love you!
