I'm cursing in this one folks so keep cool it's alright, we're just angry today. I want y'all to think with me about what's going on around the world, for real. Look at the shit that we are dealing with, look at it squarely, don't shy away from it, don't ignore the suffering of others and yourself! I'm telling you, something has changed in me. I am finally at a point where I feel that there truly is no other option, no other step, no other possibility than constant and unrelenting struggle. But yet, I am so angry, so frustrated, because for as much as I can commit to that mentally, the difficulty sometimes of actually achieving that practice in my day-to-day life has become such a reoccurring self-critique that now I just feel pathetic.
Yet, while I feel pathetic, the world is struggling for its survival. Around the world billions of people are involved in daily struggles, for survival, for organization, for healthcare, education, democracy, or for power over their resources, their lands, and their governments- and what am I doing? Writing about that shit! Sometimes y'all, it really gets to me you know? Like what the fuck are we doing? What am I doing? What are we going to do? How are we going to keep up like this?
We all know this deep down but let me say it plainly, the world we have now is one based on exploitation, oppression, and profiteering. There's no doubt about it in your minds when you look squarely at the issues at hand, what are we facing? Immense poverty, hunger, war, homelessness, climate catastrophe, and among all of these things who tends to be the ones to suffer, and who tends to be the ones to benefit? We can't ignore reality this long! The wealthy, powerful factory owners, tech giants, land owners, CEOs, Wall St douchebags, bankers, militias, and think tanks run this country, and they run the world. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and here on Turtle Island, do you think its common folks, workers, unemployed people, like you and me who are truly in power? Would it be us who would say "yes, let's give all the wealth and power to the same small group of people who have stolen our lives, labor, and all we've created with it, to give us Colonialism, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the atom bomb, "the War on Drugs", Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, the bombings of Yugoslavia, and who've made trillions of dollars doing so"... NO! The ONLY reason why these folks continue to be in power is because there has not, in terms of physics, (wink wink) been a force equal or greater to their strength to overcome them as of yet.
We know that around the world there has been countless battles fought to put a stop to this suffering, in some cases there were victories, like in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere, and there were failures, betrayals, assassinations, and in some cases, new colonial enterprises set up under the mystique of "independence" or "national liberation" which simply shuffled the deck of leaders giving money and control back to the "mother country". If we study our own history, we also know that here on Turtle Island there have been immense struggles waged by the masses of oppressed Indigenous, African, Latino, Asian, Chicano, Mexican, and other peoples against Capitalism, Colonialism and Imperialism. Many have died, some are locked up like Leonard Peltier, Kamau Sadiki, Mumia Abu Jamal, and even young adults fighting for land and water protection, others have been social isolated, or, turned their backs on their own peoples' enemy to become a collaborator. But yet the struggles continue, because it is not one person or one group of people who makes a revolution, it is the entire mass of people rising up against their collective enemies and demanding once and for all that they are the ones, the people themselves, who must be in control, and must be in power. No matter how much they try, the ruling class can't stop the historical forces at play that are building, daily, on one another, and working towards an annhilation of the same common enemy: Capitalism-Imperialism.
This. Takes. Time.
We are not there, yet...it is growing, building, shifting, struggling and developing.
But folks, I'm angry because I ask myself every day, how come I am not a part of this? What am I dong?
What the hell are we supposed to do?
I've been organizing for 3 years now, and I still feel like I'm brand new to this shit sometimes, and I feel that that is because much of the work we've done has been empty, callous, ignorant, or unorganized, it's been simplistic, undefined and unprincipled, or at the very least, it hasn't been well-thought-out. That is because in real organizing, we have to not only deal with the present conditions, but also, history as to why, how, and by whom they came to be, and also, if these are the conditions and how they came about, we have to ask ourselves how we move from this point forward to where we want to be. This is what scientific socialism can give us the ability, tools, and skills to process and analyze in collective spaces, with others, and while looking clearly at the material conditions at hand, not getting caught up in ideas or mystiques, but looking right at what is happening on the ground every day, with the folks experiencing it directly.
From this point on, we need to coordinate. We have dozens of prisoner support committees for this or that prisoner, we have countless small "political parties" and "socialist groups", we have hundreds of mutual aid organizations, community fridges, medical handouts, collections, fundraisers, collectives, etc. and every day, every month, every year, each of these groups is focused on their own independent organizing, ideas, situations, and conditions- why? They won't be able to break them, not alone anyways. Why do we have hundreds of the same fucking newsletters and email chains going out, all saying basically the same thing, analyzing every fucked up thing happening but not taking action to put an end to them all once and for all? Why do we have so many webinars, demonstrations, conventions, etc. yet so little has come materially from them in the way of movements in the streets?
We have a constitution from 1787, do you know what other countries in the world do? Like, fucking none of them! We have a political and economic system created by slave owners, are you folks listening?! We have a judicial system where like a handful of unelected rich folks can decide the fate of 340 million, and we're told this is a democracy, you motherfuckers can't even vote! What's it worth? We know how the electoral college is a scam, we know the Supreme Court is a scam, we know Congress and the Senate and the House are all run by wealthy interests and individuals, we know all of this! But what are we going to do about it?
We have to fight for real folks, and I am sick of being a poser. So let's struggle, let's study, let's organize, experiment, and learn, and struggle some more.
All Power to the People!