An invitation to an abolitionist refusal of fascist imaginaries

Our world is on fire. Fascism is ascending globally. Climate collapse is here. Genocide is the new normal. Imperial wars rage and crisis and chaos ensue. We write from Turtle Island, where the US federal government is abducting thousands of people off the streets, building mass concentration camps, and attempting to consolidate a fascist regime rooted in racial and gender violence. They follow their own nightmarish plans and policy documents, including what they call Project 2025. In the face of such horrors, we are witnessing incredible resistance, solidarity and mutual care. In LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, thousands of people are braving tear gas and murder to confront ICE, protect their neighbors, and demand the fall of the regime. As they fight in the streets and plan in meetings, they evoke the possibilities of other worlds, revolutionary horizons, and new ways to dream.

Together, in 2022, we wrote a speculative fiction novel entitled Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072. In a collection of fictional oral histories, future communards reflect on the success of a global revolution that took down capitalist states, built new systems of care and work, and articulated in their lives the abolitionist desires of today’s radical movements. Our book developed an unexpectedly passionate following. It was taken up in dramatic readings at Gaza solidarity encampments. Chapters appeared as zines and posters. The manuscript was translated to French, Spanish, and Catalan. And most importantly, it inspired passionate debate in countless radical book clubs and organizing spaces.

Among the ways people put our book to use was to write in its world. In college class rooms, independent movement study groups, and writing workshops, people used the world of our book to articulate their own revolutionary desires. It inspired us to start Project 2052, an abolitionist refusal of fascist imaginaries, where we invite writers, poets and visual artists to create work set in the world of Everything for Everyone.

Now we have the first five stories of Project 2052 to share. From the week of March 23 to March 27, 2026, Common Notions will be publishing one new story a day. Then, on Saturday, March 28 we will be holding an in-person launch panel and party at Pilsen Community Books in Chicago with our publisher Malav Kanuga and two writers from the first batch of stories.

Our first five pieces include hawks taking down police drones and imperialist aircraft, the post-revolutionary restructuring of death and dying, drawing on traditional North African building-craft for a sustainable future of climate resilience, Mediterranean fishing boats taking down Frontex’s future slave labor colonies, Brazilian factory workers making NYC subway cars while arguing over arcane features of Marxist theory, and a ritual of holographic ghosts to mourn our martyrs.

All the stories and art of Project 2052 will be posted free online through Common Notions. We have paid contributors a small honorarium, funded entirely through individual donations. Moving forward, we hope to publish one new piece every four to six weeks. Please sign up for our email list for when we announce new stories, donate to support future honorariums and production support, read our stories as they appear beginning March 23, share with your comrades, and join us at Pilsen Community Books on March 28. But above all, join us in dreaming together, in fighting alongside each other, in together winning a new world beyond all these horrors.

— M. E. O’Brien & Eman Abdelhadi, series editors of Project 2052