Existing in the Cracks

Tangible ways in which we seek alternatives, not to win, but to thrive within broken systems.

I had the pleasure of attending a conversation between Vanessa Andreotti and Bayo Akomolafe last Friday evening. If you’re familiar with either of those names, you’ll understand the rare privilege it was to see them both in person, sitting together on a stage in my small hometown of Guelph, Ontario, discussing how we navigate these times and hold space for ourselves as modernity comes to a close.

Both Vanessa and Bayo shared some deep, complex ideas about how they see the world, and their perspectives are rich and thought-provoking. Their language is both poetic and precise as they explore culture, politics, and the world we live in. It was an incredibly captivating experience to watch them in conversation, but it’s taken me some time to really process their abstract concepts and figure out how they translate into tangible, nitty-gritty, on-the-ground action.

My biggest conceptual takeaway from the lecture was this: we do not need to win. We are misplacing our energy in trying to win. Because the game is not one that we wish to continue. Winning means that we climb the highest tower and place our flag on the top. Instead, we need to find ways to exist within the broken system—to move into the cracks and occupy them fully. In doing so, we do not win the game; we make the game irrelevant.

Okay, so let’s take a minute to break down those ideas: we know from the critiques of first-wave feminism that we do not want a seat at the table. Winning a seat at the table means that we get to lead the corrupt, broken system, and that is not at all the same as dismantling or fixing that system. If our goal is only to win, we are actually buying into the oppressive systems themselves—capitalist, colonial, consumerist, carceral, etc.—when the goal truly needs to be building new from the ground up, to re-evaluate the founding principles of our social and economic systems and ensure they are grounded in collective liberation.

But what does it mean to occupy the cracks? The mental image sits clearly in my mind: water filling up the cracks in the concrete and solidifying, dissolving the hard stone from the inside. Beautiful imagery, yes? But not so clear on the tangible direction we need to take…

What does it mean to exist in the cracks? My first thought is about queerness.

“Queer not as being about who you're having sex with—that can be a dimension of it—but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” - bell hooks, Liberating the Black Female Body

One of the reasons that I love queerness is because it’s inherently uncontrollable. From a hierarchical, power-over standpoint, queerness cannot conform. It is wild and variable and almost defies categorization. It cannot be tracked or turned into a binary. This is why so many people are afraid of queerness, afraid of gender non-conformity, afraid of people who are different. This fear is born from a lack of ability to be controlled.

“The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what's really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.” - Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

One of my favourite anarchist sayings is “Become Ungovernable,” and I think this lends itself well to the metaphor of existing in the cracks: when we find ways to thrive within the brokenness of the current system—even despite the current system—not only does it show that the system is no longer needed, but also that in defying the process of the system, we render it obsolete. When we find more ways to resist control and governance even from within an oppressive state and when we welcome more and more folks to exist in that space, we begin to operate outside the systems that are designed to control us and build new infrastructure that is ideally centred around the collective liberation of all.

What are other tangible, on-the-ground ways that we can thrive in the cracks of the system?

Alternative Economies: Barter. Trade. Exchange. Work shares. Trash Nothing Groups. When we can get our needs met without having to make purchases inside the capitalist system, a few magical things happen. Not only do we diminish the returns of corporate overlords, we also don’t pay taxes! Governments can’t track neighbourhood food shares and take their cut. Amazon’s stocks drop when we all decide to swap our secondhand goods. Building out robust local alternative economies helps us connect with our neighbourhood communities, tightening our local ties and building localized resilience.

Skill Shares and Radical Education: Radical education and skill-sharing flip the script on traditional, top-down ways of learning by focusing on critical thinking, self-directed learning, and valuing knowledge that's unique to your community. Unlike the rigid, institutionalized education systems that often reinforce social hierarchies and control, skill-sharing encourages mutual aid and horizontal relationships, where everyone has something to teach and something to learn. By passing on practical, non-commercialized skills—like growing your own food, basic health care, or fixing things around the house—we not only empower individuals to live outside exploitative systems but also challenge the very notion that knowledge should be controlled, commodified, or gated by institutions. These practices foster self-sufficiency and solidarity, creating spaces where people can learn without the need for formal institutions or capitalist agendas. In this way, radical education becomes a form of resistance, dismantling the power structures that seek to monopolize knowledge and control our ability to meet our own needs.

Local Food Production: We all need to eat—no matter how much money we have. By coming together to build resilient, local food systems, we can opt out of the damaging global systems of monocrop agriculture. When we grow and share our own food, we’re no longer at the mercy of rising prices from big grocery chains or the exploitative systems behind them.

I could go on. But you get the point.

The more I reflect on Bayo and Vanessa’s words, it becomes clearer that existing in the cracks isn’t about "winning" in the traditional sense. It’s not about toppling the system with a single blow—it’s about slowly and steadily creating alternatives that make the system irrelevant. As these alternatives like barter, skill-sharing, and local food production grow, they carve out space for collective liberation, autonomy, and self-sufficiency.

By thriving in the cracks, we build a world that doesn't need to rely on the broken systems we currently exist within. The cracks become a space where we live fully, outside the structures that try to control us. It’s not about playing the game—it’s about creating something entirely different, something that can’t be co-opted or contained. In that space, the systems of control lose their power. And that’s where we thrive.