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Direct action meant that the goal of any and all of these activities was to provide ways for people to get in touch with their own powers and capacities, to take back the power of naming themselves and their lives. It was to be distinguished from more conventional political activity even in a democratic system. Instead of attempting to make change by forming interest groups to pressure politicians, anarchists insisted that we learn to think and act for ourselves by joining together in organizations in which our experience, our perception, and our activity can guide and make the change. Knowledge does not precede experience, it flows from it: “We begin by deciding to work, and through working, we learn … We will learn how to live in libertarian communism by living in it.” People learn how to be free only by exercising freedom: “We are not going to find ourselves … with people ready-made for the future … Without the continued exercise of their faculties, there will be no free people … The external revolution and the internal revolution presuppose one another, and they must be simultaneous in order to be successful.
