Editor’s Note: While the press organization largely agrees with this article, there are three points for us to address. First, since the publication of the original version of this article, the “Kansas Communist Party” (KCP) has become the “Kansas Communist Association” (KCA).

Second, though we recognize the author’s “survival probability framework” as a progressive effort at wrestling with the problem of revolutionary subjectivity that is crucial for all communists and misunderstood particularly in the Imperial Core, here the author swings too far in her corrective; nuances of Mao’s theorization of the rural semi-proletariat and peasantry, for instance, are glossed over in ways that risk the framework being reduced to just identifying the “lowest of the low” and determining them revolutionary for it, rather than treating their immiseration and class fury as a subjective variable of the whole. What can be a useful tool for identifying our friends and enemies, against Right opportunist trends, may easily become a broken compass pointing us too far afield in the opposite direction.

Third, it is the position of Unity–Struggle–Unity that the article does not go far enough to condemn the deviation being demonstrated by the KCA. A fundamental error in the KCA’s position is that farmers don’t actually own their land because they are debt-burdened — but most capital comes with a debt-burden, and it does not make it any less capital. The debt-burdened farmer with a parcel so small they have to work it by themselves who is merely a few seasons away from being proletarianized is merely a downwardly-mobile petty bourgeois; this does not in any way change their fundamental class character or transform them into a generalized class-ally.

Indeed, the KCA absolutely ignores the settler-colonial basis upon which all land ownership of the Euro-Amerikan “white” settler nation is held within the US (excepting the sovereign territories of the Indigenous Peoples). To that end, the original KCA piece is not merely incorrect, it is dangerously wrong, substituting an enemy class as an ally and ignoring the actual revolutionary masses. It is no wonder; the KCA is an offshoot of the terminally opportunist CPUSA, and is thus clearly plagued with the same types of fatal deviations.

Unless and until the “Kansas Communist Association” corrects these errors, it is firmly in the same camp as the Big Opportunists. Indeed, we may label it a Little Opportunist without losing much sleep about a tactical alliance until its fundamentals have been sufficiently altered to purge it of this dangerous, enemy trend.

Why the Kansas Communist Party is Wrong About Farmers

The original article may be found here. [Ed: Note that within the article is an appended reply to Cde. Persephone’s criticism, linking her original article. Do not click that link, which leads to a site possibly monitored by the FBI.]

It is sadly a common idea that “farmers” represent some kind of revolutionary class in USian society. This comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of Marxism. I wish to dissect this specific article to demonstrate why this type of political revisionism is a fatal error which sands off the revolutionary edges of communism and to provide clarity in answering the question of who the revolutionary subject is within the context of Kansas agriculture.

Part I: The Farmer is Not a Revolutionary Subject

What Marxism Actually Is

What is Marxism, as a philosophy, all about? Simply put, Marxism is about labor — who creates the value in a society. Society is made up of multiple groups determined by their relationship to labor. Are they laborers who produce value, or are they expropriators of value from laborers? Communists are partisans of the laboring classes, which are the only classes capable of bringing about revolution.

In the course of class struggle we must determine who our friends and our enemies are. In the first paragraph of this article, the author stresses the importance of “the question of how Communists might recruit the people […] to our great cause.” This question is indeed perhaps the single most important question we must ask, which leads us to another question: What makes someone become a communist? Why do people go all-in on a revolutionary movement with no guarantee of success? By answering this question we can begin to construct an answer to the other question posed by the author, as to “how [Communists] can specifically approach the farmer [class].”

In my view, the answer is simple: People choose to throw in with a socialist revolution because they see and understand that their probability of survival is higher with the possibility (not guarantee!) of a successful revolution, than it is with the guarantee of the perpetuation of the actually existing social order.

Those who are part of classes which would benefit from the revolution are part of the revolutionary subject that Communists must organize first. The revolutionary subject is the protagonist¹ or driving, motive force of a revolutionary movement. Classes and not individuals, because individual members of classes can go any which-way. Engels, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool bourgeois, is undoubtedly a comrade and a friend to revolutionaries everywhere. Similarly, a working-class stiff who joins the police force for career advancement is a class enemy despite the fact that they come from a proletarian background and collect a wage for their paycheck. This may seem very obvious, but it is a common point of confusion I think exemplified by this article and needs to be stated explicitly.

With all that said: do farmers benefit from the existing order more than they would benefit from revolution?

Farmers as Landowners

According to one of the sources cited within the article, small, independent owner-operators hold 60% of the total farmland in the US. When the author writes that “[t]he personal interests of the farmer is the same as those of all the working class, being the basics of home, food, and the leisure [time] that comes from living in a peaceful society,” this has nothing to do with class interests. Humans, as a species of social mammal, generally have an interest in subsistence and play. But, it is class interests which determine behavior when you want to speak of classes.

Unlike proletarians and lumpenproletarians, the small rural landowning owner-operator farmer (or rancher) owns property. They have a literal investment in the capitalist system of private property. Whatever potential they have for anti-governmental politics is linked to their claim on their land, which belongs to them by right of being an “American.” (More on settler colonialism and how this “American” identity is built on the mass murder of Indigenous people later.) That is why the MAGA movement appeals to the rural landowner as an imaginary reclamation of the past far more than any liberation movement which challenges private property.

In the Grundrisse, Marx writes:

In history, other systems come before [the development of capitalism] and they form the material basis of a less complete development of value. Just as exchange value here plays only an accompanying role to use value, it is not capital but the relation of landed property which appears as its real basis. [emphasis mine]

Modern landed property, on the other hand, cannot be understood at all, because it cannot exist, without capital as its presupposition, and it indeed appears historically as a transformation of the preceding historic shape of landed property by capital so as to correspond to capital. It is therefore, precisely in the development of landed property that the gradual victory and formation of capital can be studied.

The relation between the industrial capitalist and the proprietor of land appears to be a relation lying outside that of landed property. But, as a relation between the modern farmer and the landowner, it appears posited as an immanent relation of landed property itself; and the [latter], as now existing merely in its relation to capital. The history of landed property, which would demonstrate the gradual transformation of the feudal landlord into the landowner […] would indeed be the history of the formation of modern capital.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse, pg. 252

Marx outlines two parallel ideas: 1) the historical development of the money form and the rise of the commodity, where its use-value is of a secondary concern to the exchange-value, and 2) the historical development of capital itself and its relationship to the land and who owns the land. In short, the modern landowners of the capitalist era descend from feudal landlords. The modern capitalist and the modern landowner are both aspects of the bourgeois class. There is nothing that farmers, as landowners, have in common with the oppressed masses of proletarians and lumpenproletarians insofar as the farmers are landowners. The farmer is opposed to the revolutionary masses because they own land. Their psychic anguish is because they fear proletarianization.

It is clear the article attempts to portray farmers as an untapped wellspring of revolutionary fervor, if only they could see the foolish error of their ways. It replaces the analysis of class antagonisms with an extremely condescending view of people — it assumes farmers are stupid and don’t know what’s good for them, that they’re being deceived and that’s why they buy into Making America Great Again.

People, broadly speaking, know their own material interests well enough. They know what they need and what’s good for them; nobody needs to tell a farmer (or anyone else for that matter) that a peaceful society of abundance would be a good thing for them. The farmers know very well what they need. Recall that farmers don’t have a natural solidarity with workers, but rather they revile them on some level because they have great fear and anxiety over becoming one of them. This is the root of why the MAGA movement appeals so much to rural conservative landowners. It’s not that the small landowners are deceived by the bourgeoisie — the farmers are extremely conscious of their status as landowners and they recognize that MAGA is their ticket to preserving their land ownership.

The Peasant Comparison is Historically Incoherent

The author explicitly and directly compares American farmers to feudal peasants. History from China and Guinea-Bissau — countries with actual peasant classes — can offer us a greater insight on not only what a peasantry is, but also why they have revolutionary potential, unlike farmers.

Chinese Peasants

Mao Zedong wrote the “Investigations of Peasant Societies in Hunan Province” analyzing the peasantry as a class and their revolutionary potential in semicolonial, semifeudal Chinese society. The historical context of this essay is one that is surprisingly applicable to our own discourse. Comrade Mao wrote this as a criticism of a rightist line led by Chen Duxiu’s faction.

Chen, much like the Kansas Communist Party, had a confused idea of the revolutionary subject. In a nutshell, Chen’s faction argued that:

1. China only had a fledgling proletariat of 3 million or so in a population of over half a billion at that time.

2. Karl Marx wrote that the proletariat is the revolutionary subject.

3. Marx did not write that the peasantry was capable of leading a revolution. His books state that it must be the proletariat who leads. (Ignoring that Marx did not closely study the Chinese context, which was very different from the European context Marx was in.)

4. Therefore, because the conditions went against what Marx had written, China must allow itself to naturally develop a proletariat. Only then can a revolutionary movement truly begin, because then things will be exactly as they were written about in a book.

The opposition to Chen’s line argued that the peasantry, although not the same as the proletariat, had a revolutionary character and could be drawn into an alliance against common oppressing classes.²

What gave the Chinese peasants their revolutionary character? Mao writes:

All those whom the gentry had despised, those whom they had trodden into the dirt, people with no place in society, people with no right to speak, have now audaciously lifted up their heads. They have not only lifted up their heads but taken power into their hands. They are now running the township peasant associations […] which they have turned into something fierce and formidable. They have raised their rough, work-soiled hands and laid them on the gentry. They tether the evil gentry with ropes, crown them with tall paper-hats and parade them through the villages […] Not a day passes but they drum some harsh, pitiless words of denunciation into these gentry’s ears. They are issuing orders and are running everything. Those who used to rank lowest now rank above everybody else…

Mao Zedong, Report on an Investigation of Peasant Societies in Hunan Province, The “Movement of the Riff-Raff”

Mao makes it clear that what gave peasants their revolutionary qualities was that they were the lowest of the low. Although it is true that within the peasantry there were strata of upper, middle, and lower peasants, the vast majority of peasants were “lower” peasants, meaning they owned no land and were worked to death by their landlords. They had a low life expectancy, of around 40 years of age. Most were illiterate and subjected to the brutal tyrannies of religious officials and spiritual clerics.

Compare this to the American farmer. Although the article makes it clear that Kansas farmers do face some struggles in life, as discussed above, the struggle of the farmer is the struggle to retain class privileges and thereby avoid proletarianization. Whereas with the Chinese peasantry, for them to be proletarianized would be an improvement in their lot of life and their material conditions.

In other words, American farmers stand to lose a lot in a communist revolution (their land and their privileged way of life) whereas for the peasants, the opportunity to be proletarianized was a blessing and an opportunity for improvement.

Peasants of Guinea-Bissau

The revolutionary Amilcar Cabral wrote a detailed analysis of the situation of Guinea-Bissau which offers us another point of comparison.³

First, Cabral outlines two social-ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau: the Fulas and the Dyulas. The Bissau-Guinean peasantry resides primarily within the Dyulas ethnic group. What does Cabral say about the Dyulas peasantry and their revolutionary character? He cites their itinerant qualities as lending them a proclivity to revolution. Landowning Kansas farmers do not have an itinerant nature. The closest thing in American society we have to a Dyulas peasant would be the migrant farm worker — a population that is completely absent in the KCP’s article.

Among the Balantes — the other ethnic group with a peasantry⁴ in Guinea-Bissau, social standing and economic class was in large part determined by how much farm labor a family could contribute. This stands in contrast to the American farmer which, by the KCP’s own words, is defined by their ownership of land and capital. Not their subsistence from their labor. Simply put, the farmer is a net consumer and expropriator of value. Farmers extract from the land and human labor; peasants are the labor extracted from. This is true by the article’s own admission.

In both the Chinese and Guinea-Bissau examples, another factor present which is absent in the case of American farmers is their victimization by a colonial power. The peasants of China and Guinea-Bissau were both subject to a brutal regime of colonization. In the case of the Chinese peasantry, it was at the hands of the Japanese. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, it was at the hands of the Portuguese. Compare this to the situation of the American and Kansas farmer, in which case the farmer is the settler and is the colonizer.

What Farmer Rebellion Actually Looks Like

The peasants in China were revolutionary because they demonstrated a willingness to subvert authority and a militant attitude. Can we say the same of the American farmer?

Actually, yes. But it looks a lot different than down-and-out peasants suffering from the oppression of spiritual clerics and noble landlords.\

What does the rebellious insurrectionary spirit of the American farmer look like? It looks like none other than Ammon Bundy, the famous leader of the 2014 Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation where Bundy led a group of American ranchers to take up arms against the federal government and successfully repelled the police.

What was the source of their complaints? Why did these ranchers and farmers decide to spontaneously rise up? It was because the feds had the utter gall to enforce environmental protection laws against illegal grazing on protected federal lands. These farmers wanted to effectively destroy endangered species and, in some cases, infringe upon sovereign Indigenous lands for the grazing rights of their cattle.

Is this really what the Kansas Communist Party wants to appeal to? The white chauvinists who ignore Indigenous sovereignty and who violate federal environmental protection regulations? This is what a rowdy uprising of American farmers looks like.

The Farmer as Settler

It is strange that in a discussion revolving around land, there is no mention of settler colonialism or colonization. Look at a map of Kansas’s counties to see how important the legacy of settler colonialism is to the state.

Notice how neatly the square territory is subdivided into equally neat square plots of counties. The landowning farmer this article sympathizes so heavily with exists within the context of the Jeffersonian system of land parcels, an orderly grid-like system where the principal concern is the apportionment and ordering of land-as-property rather than land-as-space.

We can consider this a symptom of the fact that farmers are settlers, just as the Boers were settlers and ‘israelis’ are settlers, who benefit from the genocide of Indigenous people and the continued expropriation of their land and their means of production. The American farmer has more in common with a zionazi settler manning a colonial outpost in occupied Palestine than they do with a downtrodden Chinese peasant suffering under the yoke of the Japanese Empire or a Russian serf brutally oppressed by the tsar.

J. Sakai details the connection between settler colonialism, whiteness and fascism in his book Settlers: the Mythology of the White Proletariat, but to recap: the settlers’ economic anxieties are rooted in downward mobility. They will do anything, and strike any bargain, to preserve what they have. This is in contrast to the lumpenproletariat and the genuine (non-labor-aristocratic) proletariat for whom authentic proletarianization would represent upward mobility and an improvement in status.

By pandering to the landowning petit-bourgeois settler farming demographic, what your organization has done in practice is to align itself with the mainstream “communist” organizations. What you are organizing is not the proletariat and its class allies, but instead the settler petit-bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. If you do not correct this ignorance and continue to refuse to confront settler colonialism, the end result, regardless of the intentions of your organization or membership, will be a social-fascist line.

A Note on Book Worship

Toward the end of the article, in footnote 38, the author writes “as we have seen throughout history and in to the current age, dogmatic adherence to Marxist values can often be a detriment to the overall goals of providing for the people.”

I would like to ask the author: in what universe is there an excess of adherence to Marxist “values”? Which values specifically are you speaking of? We know about book worship, the mechanical application of texts without regard for concrete conditions. But here, you adhere to a fabrication of Marx that ignores the method in favor of the conclusions. This article invokes “dogmatic adherence to Marxist values” as a mistake to be avoided with the purpose of abandoning class analysis altogether.

Chen Duxiu’s clique insisted that China must wait for a proletariat to develop because that’s what the European model described. Mao corrected this by applying Marxism — materialist analysis of concrete conditions — to the Chinese context. What KCP’s article does is book worship in a different key, distorting reality to fit into models taken from history. The article waves away the question of who produces value and who expropriates it, precisely because answering that question honestly would reveal that farmers are not the revolutionary subject the article wishes them to be.

The Marxist method would require asking basic questions about the political economy of Kansas’s agricultural sector. What are the material conditions of agricultural production in Kansas? Who performs the labor? Who owns the land and the machines? Who captures the surplus value? The answers do not favor the thesis of farmer-as-revolutionary. The article’s hedge against “dogmatic adherence” is therefore an evasion of the analysis that Marxism demands as a science.

Part II: The Migrant Laborer is the Revolutionary Subject

The Absent Protagonist

For an article about farmers, I thought that there might be some mention of the struggles of undocumented migrant workers, as well as migrant workers who have legal papers but are still subject to capitalist repression. Kansas might not be a border state, but it’s had its fair share of brutal raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I remember that when I still lived in Manhattan, Kansas, within a week of Trump taking office, the gestapo stormtroopers raided the community and hauled off dozens of people whose only crime was not having their papers in order. I don’t know exactly what these Manhattan residents did for a living, but I do know that in the US, many farm workers are undocumented. These are the people who grow our food and actually work the land.

There might be small farms owned by independent families, who have to work the land themselves, who could be drawn into an anti big-agriculture struggle. But it is also true that farmowners, big or small, employ and therefore exploit peoples’ labor. More times than not, these farmhands are part of the most vulnerable class in the US — undocumented immigrants. But the migrant laborers, who actually produce value in agricultural production, are completely absent from the analysis. This alone speaks to the settler viewpoint of the author.

The Material Conditions of Migrant Labor

Let’s apply the survival-probability framework I established earlier:

Consider the material conditions of the undocumented migrant farm worker. They own no means of production. They sell their labor under extremely precarious conditions. The state can snatch them from their homes, workplaces, and communities, and deport them to countries they might not have seen since they were a kid. Their wages are tiny because their undocumented status makes them vulnerable to coercion. The law ensures they cannot organize openly, appeal to the courts, or vote. They are less than proletarian, denied even the minimal legal recognition afforded to citizen workers. Revolution offers them the possibility of human dignity. They have nothing to lose but their chains.

What about the material conditions of farmers? The farmer fears losing their land and becoming a worker. The farmer desperately clings to their privileged position — the hope that MAGA or some other reactionary movement will preserve their petit-bourgeois status against the concentrating dynamics of capital. Compared to the migrant farm worker, the farmer has many things to lose.

This is what the article fundamentally misunderstands! When the author writes about farmers facing crushing debt and corporate consolidation, he fails to realize they are phenomena occurring within the bourgeois class, not between the bourgeois and the proletariat. The farmer being squeezed by Cargill or Monsanto is a small capitalist being squeezed by larger capitalists. Capitalism monopolizes over time, and trying to turn back the clock to a society comprised entirely of petit-bourgeoisie is definitionally reactionary.

Revolutionary Praxis

I established that migrant farm workers are revolutionary, as a class. What does their revolutionary consciousness actually look like? Unlike the Bundy rebellion, which was a reactionary defense of the right to exploit public lands and destroy ecosystems, revolutionary action by migrant workers is directed at their actual class enemies: the farmers who exploit their labor, the corporations that depress their wages, the state that terrorizes their communities.

The historical United Farm Workers, despite its later degeneration into a reformist organization, demonstrated that migrant and seasonal farm workers are capable of militant organization. More recently, strikes and work stoppages by agricultural workers during the pandemic, “essential” enough to risk their lives but not essential enough to receive protection or fair wages, show that this kind of workplace organizing is still alive. The networks of mutual aid and sanctuary that emerge in migrant communities in response to ICE raids demonstrate spontaneous forms of solidarity and resistance running ahead of the “communist” organizations.

On the Question of Tactical Engagement with Farmers

A Contradiction Worth Noting

Having established that farmers are not a revolutionary subject, and that migrant laborers are, I want to address what I think the KCP article wants to do: find some basis for engaging with farmers as an important element of the rural population, no matter how theoretically contorted.

There is a real contradiction in the situation of the landowning farmer. The farmer relies on migrant labor to work their land and harvest their crops. The state, through ICE and Border Patrol, periodically raids these communities and removes this labor force. This disrupts the farmer’s operations and cuts into their profit margins. The farmer therefore has, at least on this narrow issue, an interest that conflicts with the enforcement arm of the state.

Mao analyzed the national bourgeoisie in anti-colonial contexts. The national bourgeoisie, while still a capitalist class, had contradictions with imperialism that made them potential but unreliable allies in the anti-colonial struggle. They could be incorporated into a united front, but only under proletarian leadership and only on terms that did not compromise the fundamental class character of the movement.

However, this analogy can’t be stretched too much. The national bourgeoisie in anti-colonial contexts faced an existential threat from imperialism. Their contradiction with the imperialist powers was terminal. On the other hand, farmers can survive deportation raids. They simply face reduced profits and operational disruptions. They can hire new workers, or mechanize further, or sell their land to larger operations. Their survival as a class is not threatened by immigration enforcement.

This means any alliance with farmers is even shakier than the already shaky alliance with the national bourgeoisie that characterized New Democratic formations. The farmer’s commitment to opposing immigration enforcement extends exactly as far as it is profitable for them to do so. The moment it becomes more convenient to side with the state, so long as it preserves their land ownership, they will do so without hesitation.

The Conditions for Any Engagement

If the Kansas Communist Party (or any other Communist organization) insists on attempting engagement with landowning farmers, the following conditions are the minimum requirements for such engagement to avoid degenerating into tailism and class collaborationism:

First, the farmers’ contradiction with ICE is shallow. Farmers are a petit-bourgeois class with a narrow, temporary, self-interested reason to oppose one specific state apparatus. This must be stated openly. Tactical engagement on one specific issue does not transform the farmer into an long-term ally.

Second, any engagement must be premised on farmers providing concrete material support to migrant workers. This means: using their property to shelter migrants from ICE raids, contributing to legal defense funds, bail funds, mutual aid networks, refusing to provide information to ICE, refusing to allow ICE on their property, public advocacy, etc. Farmers must give actual useful aid.

Third, farmers cannot lead in any formation that emerges from such engagement. The migrant workers and their organizations must lead. The farmers’ role is subordinate and contingent on continued material support.

Fourth, the moment farmers begin to waver, to prioritize their property over the safety of migrant workers, the engagement ends. The farmers will betray the alliance when it becomes convenient. Plan for it in advance.

I am skeptical that even this can produce meaningful results, based on the class analysis outlined above.

Conclusion

The Kansas Communist Party’s article represents a fundamental confusion about Marxism and revolution. By misidentifying the revolutionary subject, the article veers into revisionism of the most dangerous kind, social-fascism. It is the kind of error that, if uncorrected, leads toward tailism, class collaborationism, and ultimately the evacuation of any revolutionary content from communist politics, as it has already done so within the mainstream “communist” organizations.

I have attempted to correct this error by going over basic Marxist principles, by which it’s obvious that farmers aren’t a revolutionary class. This doesn’t mean farmers aren’t useful, but the vast majority won’t be allies to any serious Communist organization. Farmers who wish to contribute to revolution have to offer material support for migrant farm workers. And even then, they’ll be short-term tactical alliances subordinate to the leadership of the revolutionary classes.

The Kansas Communist Party should immediately issue a self-criticism acknowledging the erroneous line of the original article, explain the theoretical confusion that led to this error, and rectify itself by studying the struggles of the undocumented immigrants and migrant laborers who produce the value that farmers expropriate. Investigate their conditions and their praxis. Build relationships with their organizations. Offer something real to support them in struggles they are already waging. That is where revolutionary potential actually exists, with undocumented immigrants and migrant laborers who face the full wrath of the ameriKKKan state, and who have every reason to fight for a different world.

1. I use this word, “protagonist” with some hesitancy as it creates a temptation to view class struggle through moralistic lens. A protagonist drives a plot and sets things into motion but that has nothing to do with being the “good side” in a Marvel superhero comic-book-movie. ︎
2. How do we know that the opposition was correct? We know it was correct because it succeeded in creating a revolution. The line opposed to Duxiu won. That is the evidence. Reality is the ultimate arbiter of whether or not a theory is correct. ︎
3. It is true that Cabral was initially dismissive of the peasantry’s revolutionary potential. Cabral and the Guinea-Bissauan revolutionaries also demonstrably failed at revolution — therefore we can say on some level that although Cabral came much closer than most others, it is nonetheless true that Cabral’s analysis on some level was systematically wrong. This in no way is meant to degrade or slander the legacy of Comrade Cabral, who by all means was a committed and serious revolutionary whose works and legacy are worth engaging with. What matters is that Cabral had a thorough analysis of the peasantry’s material conditions which will offer great insight into why calling American farmers “peasants” is wrong. ︎
4. The Dyulas and Balantes both have a peasant component, but by Cabral’s account, the peasantry composes a much greater percentage of the Dyulas than the Balantes. ︎

As a result of his stay, John Doe was charged with misdemeanor sexual assault after one of the psychiatric nurses called the police on him. To be clear, a psychiatric nurse, in a psychiatric hospitalization setting, called the police on his own patient, who was exhibiting signs of mental health distress. Sadly, this is all too common.

To date, John’s case is still pending in Hartford, a year and a half later. John was subjected to what’s called a 54-56d examination and forced to attend meetings with the Office of Forensic Evaluator to determine whether or not he was “competent” to stand trial which, in Connecticut’s particular legal parlance, means whether he could recognize the different court personnel, knew the facts that were being alleged, could understand the court system itself, and could help an attorney prepare a defense.

His appointed attorney, a contractor with the office of the public defender, applied him for Connecticut’s Supervised Diversionary Program, which is designed for individuals that have mental health issues that cause the underlying behaviors complained of in a criminal case.

Since the initial arrest, John has been unable to work. He has been ordered to take medications that he doesn’t want to take. What John experienced – and continues to experience – is merely one example of the numerous cases where individuals in psychiatric hospitalization settings are charged with crimes, through the collusion of psych nurses and police. In 2022, this number was estimated to be 1,948 (according to the Connecticut Hospital Association) out of the roughly 5,532 “violent incidents” that occurred across the state that year according to the Connecticut Senate Democrats, meaning that over one third of “violent incidents” reported in Connecticut that year were psychiatric patients interacting with psych nurses or other hospital staff.

In that same year, Black people in Connecticut were arrested at a rate of 5.3 times higher than white people; they were the victims of crimes at a rate of 3.2 times higher than white people. Those arrested were disproportionately poor, and those who were convicted and incarcerated where even more so. Despite making up only 12% of the state population, Black people constitute roughly 45% of its prisoners. There are presently 10,698 incarcerated people in the state, which leaves us with almost 5,000 Black prisoners of a Black population of roughly 500,000 – 1% of the entire Black population of Connecticut is currently in prison. One out of every five Black boys today is expected to go to prison at some point in their life.

Nurses and Police: Bedfellows in Class Warfare

Nurses are petty bourgeois professionals. Despite the fact that they work to support themselves, they are required to obtain an advanced nursing degree and to pass through a guild-style board system in order to be permitted to practice. Registered nurses in Connecticut make a median salary of $102,740 per year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We can assume that most are owners of real property, given this income rate. All of this is reflected in their petty bourgeois class consciousness and the way they behave around and with police.

Indeed, nurses and police often work together as a team, particularly in acute psychiatric facilities. Studies have shown that nurses and police “develop a trusting, respectful alliance” in the psychiatric setting, according to “Nurse-Police Coalition,” a scholarly article in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services (Vol. 52, No. 9). A Canadian study in the Archives of Psychiatric Nursing (Vol. 35, Is. 5) found that “all nurses saw police officers as fellow colleagues.”

Nurses are integrated into the system of property and property-maintenance through their petty bourgeois class background, which is itself partially the result of the western settler-colonial system. However, this petty bourgeois consciousness is not the necessary outcome of their class position and they could, if there were a decolonial mass organization capable of acting as an anchor, be persuaded to break with the police.

As it stands, however, nurses are in league with the police; they are an adjunct arm of the system that protects property and the “property rights” of the owning classes. When it comes to mental health arrests, many nurses do not take seriously their duty to the patients, but rather, like police, prioritize their own convenience and passing mental and physical welfare over that of their patients. In instances of mental health prosecutions, nurses cease acting as caregivers, and take on the role of Junior G-man in a prosecution.

Targeting the Vulnerable

Those subject to arrests because of mental health crises are among the people least capable of fighting back. Someone who is arrested in a mental health crisis is already likely to have limited access to resources; if they had more resources, they would rarely be placed in a position to be arrested in the first place. Private treatment facilities discourage the intervention of police; money smooths over many problems.

Of those who are arrested, those who continue to be prosecuted are once again those without resources. After an arrest, if someone with mental health problems can show a stable housing situation, good income, and what lawyers often call evidence that they are “productive members of society,” the prosecutions are frequently dropped or blunted. Those who continue to have housing insecurity, job insecurity, and are not “productive members of society” – which can be read as either workers capable of being exploited or exploiters capable of doing exploitation – their prosecutions continue unabated.

Managing mental health crises would require putting resources toward a social system of care. There is no comprehensive system to assist those who are suffering from either acute or long-term mental health crises. Like most everything else in the US, the management of mental health is left to private corporations as a source of profit. This means that anyone who does not have the free resources to be extracted by a treatment corporation is left to fend for themselves and that when crises do occur, they’re shuttled into overloaded treatment centers where they are treated as pieces of meat in a packaging system or simply arrested. If and when they object to such treatment in these overcrowded hospitals and facilities, or if and when their mental health crisis manifests in a fashion that is less palatable, particularly when they’re Black, the police become the mental health system of last reserve. This, despite the fact that there really is no system of first reserve.

Dismantle the Criminal Mental Health System

This is a front in the class war, and one that is particularly acute in and among communities of the nationally oppressed. The cry must be taken up against the collusion between psychiatric treatment facilities and the police; to continue to subject those among us who are in crisis and need help to a punitive system designed to extract money (through court fees and criminal fines), break up labor solidarity (through imprisonment), and protect property (through prosecuting low-level property crimes directly, or by physically removing and warehousing those members of society whose presence is uncomfortable for the propertied elements, thus improving the property values) is itself a crime.

If you’re a Connecticut resident who wants to be heard in the fight against this two-sided system where nurses feed mental health patients in to the meat grinder of the criminal legal machine, please reach out to Hartford Community Legal Aid, care of the Sonthonax Institute, at sonthonaxinstitute@gmail.com or call us at 401-215-0375.

We are fighting for a better tomorrow.

On Saturday, July 18, 2026, so-called New York City (occupied Lenapehoking)’s incumbent mayor Zohran Mamdani was interviewed on a New York Times podcast and was pressed on his campaign promise to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, as what seems to be the perfect opportunity had arisen: Netanyahu’s plans to attend the United Nations General Assembly in NYC in September 2026. Mamdani answered the interviewer’s pointed questions while staying cool, calm, and collected. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” Mamdani said.¹ “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Then, on July 21, the NYC mayoral office released a two minute video of Mamdani, assumed to be following his team’s work and research of trying to see if arresting Netanyahu is possible. The answer was a defeated negative. The video looks like any other state sanctioned statement, including Mamdani’s usual self-assured, confident composure, sitting in front of the all-but-blood-soaked u.s. flag. A transcript of the short press release is provided below:

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people. He is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people, for the maiming of tens of thousands of children as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia. For the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live. For the countless people he starved as he blocked food and humanitarian aid from reaching them. For the gunning down of hundreds of aid workers and journalists.

And just last month, the UN confirmed that Palestinian children continue to be deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli armed forces, more than eight months after the so-called ceasefire. The list goes on and on. All as we, as Americans, pay for the bombs that do the killing. There is a reason the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest. As human beings, we have spent generations building a shared understanding that there are crimes so grave they offend all of humanity. Anyone with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience, should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law.

As I’ve said, I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC. My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.

The federal government, however, does— and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant.

And I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large. While we cannot end the genocide on our own, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon, and we can examine every tool we have to defend the humanity and dignity of all people. That is my commitment to you.²

In his typical fashion, Mamdani strategically uses rhetoric that seems progressive and promising while offering no material solutions. Taking Mamdani at his own word, assuming that yes, his legal team (which is definitely not just a collection of starry-eyed 22-year-old NYU Law interns) explored every avenue possible to see if they could arrest Netanyahu, it should be no surprise that the laws of NYC, the largest city in The Most Successful Genocidal Settler Project In Human History does not allow for the arrest of the PM of israel.

It should come as even less of a shock, but with no less disgust, that Mamdani had no problem ordering of the arrest of over 100 protestors by settler Gestapo (NYPD) during Netanyahu’s speeches at the U.N. General Assembly on September 25, 2026.³ Not only did he not arrest Netanyahu, but rather, he stuck the NYPD on Pro-Palestinian protestors who were chanting some of the exact same taglines that Mamdani himself used in his July statement. All while allowing the NYPD to provide elite protection to Netanyahu, and slyly discouraging protesters in NYC.⁴

So that we may be sure just exactly where he stands on the Palestine question, just five days later, Mamdani took to socials again,⁵ unveiling his “new strategy against Antisemitism,”⁶ citing the NYPD that Antisemitism specifically accounts for over half of all “confirmed hate crimes”⁷ (NYPD decides what is and isn’t a hate crime, of course) in New York City. The plan includes increasing “hate crime prevention” funding by $26 million (guess who handles hate crime reporting and statistics – NYPD) and the revitalization of what’s called the “Interagency Security Infrastructure Working Group” which increases partnerships with the NYPD and other city commissions such as the City Commission on Human Rights and NYC Public Schools specifically for the increase of technology surveillance to “identify threats and protect Jewish New Yorkers before a hate crime occurs.”

As a member of the All Empire Workers’ League (AEWL) and an affiliate of USU, my comrades and I are not surprised by Mamdani’s choice not to arrest Netanyahu (among many other campaign promises). This is due to the fact that Mamdani and the DSA are specific and highly visible examples of immense, fundamental issues among the Four Opportunists’ (FO) strategy and tactics, which ultimately lead the masses – and the organizations themselves – nowhere.

Popular liberal attitudes towards Mamdani/DSA’s “new flavor” of zionism

Bourgeois reporting and western journalism has an extensive catalog of genocide denial and sentiment for the Zionist entity of israel, which of course includes liberal news outlets. Since Mamdani’s press release was strictly in video format, I’ve pulled the three most popular (most liked) comments from the videos of the press release that were posted on Youtube by USA Today, The Guardian, and the NYC Mayor’s Office:

1. USA Today:⁸
   1. Rare to see a politician who actually believes in what he says
   2. I haven’t seen something in the political news cycle that’s given me hope in humanity in so long.
   3. This is how I want my President to act. Is that too much to ask?
2. The Guardian:⁹
   1. Bro better have elite security after this
   2. About as much chance of the Federal Government arresting Netanyahu as the UK police have of arresting Alistair Campbell.
   3. I’m gonna make a prediction: On the back of this, Trump will invite Netanyahu to the US and specifically New York. Just to tick-off Mamdani and the rest of the ICC. Red carpet and all
3. NYC Mayor’s Office (See footnote 2)
   1. Bro hitting the presidential aura than the actual president
   2. Remember this guy isn’t suicidal
   3. That’s not my mayor but THATS MY MAYOR

To reiterate: Mamdani said blatantly that he’s not able to (in fact, not willing to) do genuinely anything about the ongoing genocide. And the popular reaction among the average amerikan viewer any further left than neo-Nazis is to celebrate.

These nine comments are obviously not a large sample size, and as we know, corporate algorithms dictate viewership and interaction. However, these comments generally encapsulate several of the popular “left” and liberal attitudes towards Mamdani in the U.S, and can help us attempt to categorize these left-liberal attitudes so that we can analyze them for the time being. These mainstream attitudes towards Mamdani can be categorized as follows, based on our sample:

1. Mamdani’s actions spur a resurgence of hope that has since been lacking in amerikan values and politics / a desire to return to the Time Before Trump (1A, 1B, 1C, 3A, 3C)
2. Fear for Mamdani’s safety because his statements are “too radical” / implication that the government will assassinate him (2A, 3B)
3. Pessimistic / realist conclusion that within the current system, there is no real avenue for actual change or action (2B, 2C)

Mamdani gives the amerikan liberal (Group 1) a hope that they so desperately need. Since the relations between u.s. politicians and the masses is so backwards and corrupted, Group 1 confuses empty promises with real progress.

Group 2 has no real understanding of what radical politics even consist of. The ideological depth of Mamdani’s statement is a simple surface level analysis, especially not fit for a “leading” figure of the socialist movement, let alone the Marxist left. Mamdani’s statement cannot even be described as ideologically socialist in the abstract, which would require highlighting precisely why he is structurally powerless to oppose imperialism. If Mamdani’s safety is truly at risk, this only further exposes the essence of this entire political system. How could we ever actually win within such a system?

Group 3 has recognized that moralistic yet empty gestures are not the avenue to liberation and the destruction of settler colonial violence and genocide, but there is currently no viable alternative to turn to. Those in Group 3 might theorize that while a DSA win in a big city is a good step in the right direction, more needs to be done. The issue with this line of thinking is that it neglects the fact that any action or policy, especially on such a huge scale as in NYC, that preserves capitalism or imperialism any longer is not revolutionary, and certainly not socialist.

Many in DSA (especially the so-called Marxists) see a Mamdani win as an avenue towards achieving revolutionary struggle. With a mayor promoting himself as socialist doing some things to improve day to day life, more people will ideally turn to towards the ideology and see DSA’s win(s) as popularizing the struggle. The issue is only the middle classes (labor aristocrats, Petite Bourgeoisie, Artists, Intellectuals, etc.) meaningfully benefit from these changes, which in turn means reproducing those classes as the base for “socialist” organizing. This ensures this base as counter-revolutionary so long as they get what they want — they’ll fear the end of their negative peace. (See Triumph for the zionist left by Cde. Winter¹⁰)

These three groupings (#1-3) are not stagnant nor mutually exclusive, and someone can fall into these ideological liberalisms at any time, and so it is something we must constantly combat. Surface-level, metaphysical analysis of current historical circumstances is extremely common among those of us educated by white supremacist liberal institutions in the u.s., and learning to think and act dialectically is a skill that must be practiced. In their article, “Electoralism is the New Opportunism”, author Proletarian Polemics states that rather than a personal or moral failing, even the most well-meaning comrades can fall into reformist errors, and on a large scale this tactic irreparably damages progressive societal movement as a whole:

The opportunist is most dangerous because they appear as dedicated, loyal comrades, and it isn’t their loyalty that we call into question! It is their inconsistent, short-sighted, and unprincipled strategies that sacrifice the long-term project of proletarian revolution by getting lost in reacting to the current moment. While no serious communist would argue against responding to the changing political tide, by Lenin’s own standards this responsiveness is opportunistic if it isn’t grounded in a consistent long-term strategy and vision.

The damage this produces is often irreversible, once the opportunists have unconsciously guided the party toward short-sighted small wins and reforms, Lenin tells us, it is likely impossible to correct course. Those who would be most likely to aid in the change of course have either left, been worn down, or been gradually shaped by the new revisionist norms.¹¹

DSA tendencies and logical fallacies

When DSA candidates’ catchy slogans inevitably fall short, electoralists breach into the room and say, “Those were campaign pledges, not promises!” They suggest that if their electeds fail on implementing “socialist” policies, it’s because both Democrats and Republicans stand in their way, and is further indicative of the issue that the two party system is corrupt. However, if this is the ideological line of a party or an individual, why participate in elections at all? The solution of the DSA is to apply band-aid solutions to problems without taking into context the material conditions and contradictions surrounding it. This is, in essence, utopian socialism at best, and national socialism at worst. Without addressing many issues including the historical progression of society, class relations, or particularly in the u.s., the land question, this strategy is doomed to failure.

It is somewhat understandable, on a surface level, for an individual or an organization to look at a problem, for example, high cost of living, and think: “Why don’t we make the employers pay their employees more?” or, “Why don’t we just put caps on rent prices?” These “solutions” are misled at best and outright counter-revolutionary and enable fascism at worst. Rent caps and wage increases are surface level solutions demonstrative of the exact trend of “trade union consciousness” that emerges in every acute period of capitalist struggle: these are the sense perceptions, the first impressions of a class that has not yet taught itself to see critically.¹² Most importantly, these solutions ignore the most essential contradictions inherent in u.s. society, particularly that of settler-colonialism.

It is always the most colonized, the most oppressed, who bear the brunt of u.s. imperialism. In this, the DSA’s golden boy has found the perfect solution for a demonstrably counter-revolutionary organization: drop all pretense of materially “standing in solidarity” with Palestine, with just enough “controversial” “leftist” buzzwords for the satisfied liberals to keep cheering. Then, when our money continues to fund the murder of entire family lineages, we can feel a little better about it, because, well, we tried. This is quintessential liberalism. The intersection of DSA and u.s. imperialism in this instance shines a light on glaring issues among the u.s. “left” and it is important that we inspect this image very thoroughly. Palestinian liberation is one of the single most important litmus tests for any Marxist.

The last several years have been one blatant mockery of the so-called rule of law after the other, at home by the right-fascists in Washington, and abroad by the genocide. DSA’s poster child somehow does not have the same powers to break and make their own laws to make actual change. Why is this so? We see almost every other politician doing this. Yet Mamdani and the DSA choose to “go high” in terms of rule-following when it means not resisting the genocidaires who go so far low as to scrape the basement floor of Hell. They choose to act within the bounds of the settler order, while politicians across the country break laws to hunt down immigrants, indigenous peoples, the nationally oppressed, and trans people – all so that they can get another win a few states over and do the same thing all over again: more spoils for the first world.

Even if Mamdani is able to follow through on his other campaign promises such as free bus fare, free childcare, and rent freezes (no mention of defunding or restricting the NYPD by the way – quite the contrary), it would not lead to a revolutionary movement, as there is no revolutionary theory tied to the DSA’s political demands. This is communicated quite succinctly by Lenin, who understood that spontaneous action is not enough:

“[Spontaneous revolts and strikes in Russia in the 1890s] show that the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began… I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle.”¹³

DSA’s strategy is not, nor will it ever be, paired with the genuine study, understanding, and comprehension of the underlying principles and concepts that drive revolution. “Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.”¹⁴

When DSA members finds out their candidate can’t send Hitler 2 to the Hague, they are not heartbroken – on the contrary, they are filled with ecstatic hope and joy. They can’t be bothered with the fact that there will be no reprieve for families in Gaza and the West Bank. Those in Group 1 will applaud the release of hot air because it’s the same rhetoric as their own; rather than shaken from the dream, it’s clear now more than ever that this is their representative. Those in Group 2 will project their conspiratorial “awareness” that if Mamdani keeps this up, the powers that be will destroy him, as they use the victims of empire’s ruthlessness as camouflage for their own cowardice. They can both feel good about things now, now that nothing has been done, the right words were said by the right guy, and now everything’s going to be OK. This was a tiny win and maybe in four more years we might get another.

Left-wing zionism

This tendency of ideological underdevelopment leads to many “leftist” types ultimately holding a political analysis which masks itself as progressivism, but is in fact zionism. Left-wing zionism, or feel-good zionism, is propelled by moral reasoning only, not material solutions. As a result, these zionists have general contempt for most capital-D Democratic politicians, especially those who accept money from AIPAC, and are vehemently “pro-Palestine,” even owning symbols to mark themselves like flags, keffiyehs, and buttons. They know that “the system is corrupt,” and they have read or maybe even written articles, papers, or even entire books on how laws outset and perpetuate inequity and how societal systems keep the poor and colonized sick and miserable. Yet they still can’t see that the entire thing needs to be done away with.

Being “Pro-Palestine” has unfortunately become almost meaningless, and even worse, it is being conflated with anti-zionism. We must be very clear: these two things are not the same. Feeling empathy and sorrow for a population being genocided is a natural and moral reaction, AND as Marxists we know that morality alone will not bring one to correct ideas or solutions. Correct ideas arise through struggle and material historical analysis. Rinse and repeat. The moral, sentimental stance toward israel and Palestine is of indignant fury for such atrocious violence. However, this will not change the situation in Palestine. The struggle in Palestine, that of a settler-colonized land and people, is resolved by violent resistance and overthrow of the Zionist entity and its rabid army. That is why anti-Zionism has emerged as the ideology and practice in which the Palestinians achieve liberation. Palestinians fighting for their own liberation don’t hold rallies or leave voicemails for their elected representatives. They build weapons and underground bunkers; they name their children after their martyrs; they give their family members the gun. They study the enemy in order to destroy them. They tactfully analyze the political situation and are unwavering in who their enemies and who their allies are.

Feel-good Zionism wants a peaceful resolution to one of the largest acts of violence history has seen. This also means that when the amerikan left-wing zionists get a little bit more treats waved in their face, they are thrilled to watch the state do absolutely nothing to materially change the conditions for the Palestinian people. They have their cool mayor who watches the Knicks with them and froze their rent for a year. We get to keep more of our imperial spoils, isn’t that great? Who cares what we are doing abroad, because we are making things right at home. That’s what amerika is all about.

Conclusion: kill the zionist in your head

As demonstrated, extreme miseducation among almost all populations of the u.s., particularly as a result of settler schools (primary and secondary) leads to a general deficit in intellectual capacity to understand politics, history, and particularly dialectics. It sadly remains true that the u.s. left has a real problem: most of them fail to recognize that they are in fact zionists, this is not a rare occurrence, but the default amongst the swath of described “leftists”. It is imperative that any individual or organization that claims or strives to be scientific, decolonial, socialist, and materialist not fall into this trap. It is the easy and intellectually lazy solution to see the shallow routine of the Mamdani administration and paint this as genuine wins for the Left, let alone for colonized and oppressed populations worldwide. Settlers of all stripes have a vested interest in maintaining these systems, even if it “sickens” them. They can say that israel is wrong in its actions, but to struggle against it would require that they also struggle against themselves.

Anti-zionism, real anti-zionism, makes or breaks your ideology. There are no half measures. You support the Palestinian resistance or you are not a part of the movement. As amerikans, the decolonial question is of utmost importance, here and abroad. The single most important thing you can do for Palestinians aside from giving direct funds when you are able is to support the Axis of Resistance and do your part – meaning everything you possibly can – to bring the empire to its knees. As demonstrated by their decades of inaction and meaningless “wins,” it is clear that the Four Opportunist parties will not bring us there.

Endnotes

1. Campbell, Lucy. 2026. “‘He’s a War Criminal’: Mamdani Exploring Whether He Can Arrest Netanyahu If He Visits New York.” The Guardian, The Guardian, July 19. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/19/mamdani-netanyahu. ︎
2. NYC Mayor’s Office. 2026. Benjamin Netanyahu Is a War Criminal. YouTube. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZuV5L0QL04. ︎
3. Bauman, Ali, and Christina Fan. 2026. “More Than 100 Arrests at NYC Demonstrations as Netanyahu Appeared at U.N. General Assembly.” CBS News, CBS New York, September 24. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/protests-nyc-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-united-nations-speech/. ︎
4. Jacobson, Roni. 2026. “NYC Braces for Multiple Daily Protests as World Leaders Arrive for UN General Assembly.” New York Daily News, September 17. https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/09/17/nyc-braces-for-multiple-daily-protests-as-world-leaders-arrive-for-un-general-assembly/. ︎
5. Mamdani, Mayor Zohran Kwame. 2026. “The Talmud Teaches That Anyone Who Sustains One Soul, Has Sustained an Entire World. For Generations, Jewish New Yorkers Have.” X, September 29. Post. https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/2104949847421796398. ︎
6. Office of The Mayor of New York City. 2026. Tackling Hate: The Mamdani Administration’s Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. https://www.nyc.gov/content/dam/nycgov/mayors-office/downloads/pdf/press-releases/2026/2026-09-25-moca-report-interactive-5.pdf. ︎
7. New York City Police Department (NYPD). 2026. “Power BI Report.” Powerbigov.Us. https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiNTAwY2MzZWUtZTFjMy00YjQ3LTk1YWEtZGE0MDhkN2UzYTRhIiwidCI6IjJiOWY1N2ViLTc4ZDEtNDZmYi1iZTgzLWEyYWZkZDdjNjA0MyJ9. ︎
8. USA TODAY. 2026. Mamdani Calls Netanyahu a “War Criminal and Architect of Horrific Genocide” in Palestine. YouTube. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip_zLWJLbxk. ︎
9. Guardian News. 2026. Mamdani Urges US Government to Arrest Netanyahu If He Visits US. YouTube. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6UiRNi8-6k. ︎
10. Cde. Winter, 2025. “Triumph for the Zionist Left – The Red Clarion.” Unity-Struggle-Unity.Org. 2019. https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2025-12-17-triumph-for-the-zionist-left/ ︎
11. Proletarian Polemics. 2019. “Electoralism Is the New Opportunism – the Red Clarion.” Unity-Struggle-Unity.Org, Unity Struggle Unity Press. https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2026-7-8-electoralism-is-the-new-opportunism/. ︎
12. Vladimir Ilyich, Lenin. 1902. “Lenin: What Is to Be Done?” www.Marxists.Org, March. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm ︎
13. Ibid. ︎
14. Ibid. ︎

    On November 3rd, 2023, the Ready Reserve Force’s ship, the Cape Orlando, left Oakland for Tacoma, Washington, where it would be loaded with weapons for its final destination: the Zionist entity. In Oakland, after hours of picketing, protesters had noticed that the gate to the dock was not fully closed. They took advantage of this opportunity to storm the boat to keep it from launching. Eventually protesters were detained and the Orlando was permitted to continue its journey. At both West coast ports the ship was met with resistance, and in both cases this failed to block the boat.

    Working on intel reportedly leaked from a worker of conscience aboard the Orlando, organizations including Arab Resources and Organizing Center (AROC), Falastiniyat, Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) Seattle, Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return University of Washington (SUPER UW), Samidoun Seattle, Resist U.S. Led-War, and The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Seattle announced that they would continue in Tacoma the fight Oakland had started. The Orlando’s docking was delayed, bumping it to Monday morning. Whether this was done in hopes of reducing the number of protesters able to join, as a way of pre-loading weapons onto the dock and staging police in advance, or both, remains uncertain.

    On the morning of November 6th, 2023, a crowd gathered hours before dawn at the Port of Tacoma to block the Cape Orlando. Despite the risks many working people may have faced from missing shifts, hundreds of people turned out at 5 AM in the frigid rain. Pickets were set up at multiple entry points to the relevant dock. Longshoremen refused to cross the picket lines, leaving the military to load its own boat. As the day wore on more people joined, with some estimates putting the turnout at around a thousand participants. On the water, Puyallup Water Warriors, an Indigenous movement focused on restoring Indigenous relationship to and law of land, launched a small canoe blockade in an effort to prevent the ship from leaving. The protest continued with an outpouring of support from the community in the form of delivered food, drinks, and supplies. Around midday, a protester at the northwestern picket spotted people moving weapons along the dock. After a frustrating conversation with an on-the-ground organizer, marked by a yellow safety vest and megaphone, the protester left the demonstration broken-hearted and demoralized.

    Unfortunately, despite massive turnout and early indications the boat was already being loaded, tactics remained much tamer than in Oakland. Between the layout of the port putting the ship approximately half a mile from the gate and police having staged in advance behind the gates, storming the boat wasn’t viable. Worse, the effort to block the boat from the shore had been outmaneuvered by pre-loading weapons onto the dock. Despite this early failure, there was no adjustment in tactics, no effort toward escalation. Instead, on-the-ground organizers announced victory late in the day, and told everyone to go home.

    In the days that followed a number of public criticisms circulated, primarily through anarchist publications and private social media accounts. (For publicly available accounts see Shutting Down the Port of Tacoma: Reflections from the Salish Sea, Critical Reflections on Recent ‘Block the Boat’ Actions in Tacoma, Another reportback from the Tacoma Block the Boat action, and Reportback from the Port Blockade in Tacoma.) Conflicted and confusing information circulated. There was one consistent through-line in every critique, however, which we firmly agree with: the declaration of success voiced by on-the-ground organizers, distinguished primarily by safety vests and megaphones, was a false declaration in the face of a clear and decisive loss. Though accounts vary on what was or was not loaded onto the boat, the fact is that tools of genocide were loaded onto the Orlando that day, bound for the Zionist entity. As the protester who spotted the weapons being loaded said between sobs: “I am seeing tools for killing people going on that boat, I’m seeing it with my own eyes. What the fuck are we doing here?”

     People had come to block the boat, not delay it an additional twelve hours. To hear loud declarations of victory while their own eyes told them they had failed left people feeling betrayed. The degree of demoralization that followed was a blow to the movement.

    Though the effort to stop the boat ultimately failed, this remains one of the largest direct actions for Palestine in the Puget Sound since the Al Aqsa Flood, both in terms of community turnout, support, and duration. For this reason it’s worth analyzing and learning from its successes and failures as we continue developing not only the movement for Palestinian liberation, but anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements everywhere.

    As we move through this critique we want to acknowledge the amount of conflicting information that has circulated. Furthermore, the time elapsed since the action has resulted in foggy memories with limited ability to confirm finer details. Paired with a stark lack of transparency from organizers, this makes a robust critique difficult. There may be missing details in some areas and an inability to corroborate details in others. Nonetheless, we feel a study of this action can provide valuable insight despite gaps. This action was significant in the region’s movement for Palestine, and sits within the context of the region’s long history of port blockades and direct action. There were also social-cultural elements present that have proven to be recurring barriers to building sustained and sustainable movements for liberation more broadly that we feel are important to better understand. To glean important insights from this action we wish to celebrate the successes we did see, and provide constructive criticism to improve future actions.

    Liberation will not come without collective action that effectively mobilizes the will of the people, whose labor power sustains the economies of genocide we’re fighting against. Participants dragged themselves out of bed before dawn not to work in service of capital, but to march into the frigid and cold Puget Sound autumn. In the wake of the George Floyd uprisings of 2020, it was uncertain what would unfold or what level of police repression should be expected, and still people came. Unfortunately the tendency to prioritize the symbolic over the material was on display in the false declaration of victory. This left participants visibly distraught at being unable to do more and vocally infuriated at being misled. The will exists, yet many people remain uncertain where to begin or how to become engaged with more meaningful action. As such, they are easily co-opted into liberal actions that primarily seek symbolic rather than material wins.

    Energy and passion such as that seen at the Block the Boat action must be effectively stewarded, organized, and directed. This is best done by a well-organized revolutionary vanguard party with a strategy accounting for regional particularities in culture, material conditions, and needs. Our goal in writing this critique is to contribute to a body of knowledge drawn from direct experience and critical analysis, a body of knowledge which we hope will support the strategic elements of building just such a party.

Mobilization

    Much of the success of this action was in mobilization. Riding high on Oakland’s courageous attempt to stop the boat, the people of the Puget Sound were eager for their chance to take direct action against colonial imperial forces.

     Despite delays and fairly miserable conditions, around a thousand people turned out to stand up for Palestine. Given a deeply ingrained risk aversion that limits the capacity of many mass actions, and an uncertainty about how police would respond, this is a win. Actions such as this can be seen as opportunities to begin developing much needed risk tolerance. In addition to the value of building theoretical knowledge and experience via praxis, building risk tolerance is crucial in moving the masses toward greater revolutionary potential. No clash happened that day, but it remains significant that people were undeterred when police donned riot gear. Even more so, those experienced in the brutality of the George Floyd Uprisings were observed talking less experienced participants through ways to navigate violent escalation. This kind of cognitive practice can be effective in eroding risk avoidance and building confidence in those otherwise inexperienced in such risks.

    The longshoremen’s respect for the pickets led to an additional twelve-hour delay and forced the military to deploy their own personnel to load the ship. This was widely understood as the primary success of the action and demonstrates clearly the strategic utility of keeping up-to-date knowledge about local union protocols. Identifying points of union influence in key industries and developing an understanding of how to apply pressure to these points can bolster our actions with minimal additional effort. Wherever we can build working relationships with local union members across diverse industries, all the better. Given the sharpening contradictions locally, nationally, and globally, building these inroads now may create future opportunities to re-capture union power that has been co-opted by neoliberal imperialism.

    An additional success to be noted is the cost that both the delays and the need to bring in the military to load the boat must have incurred. While no hard numbers are available for assessment, the raised cost of business is important in sabotage-oriented strategies, which we’ll return to later.

Indigenous Leadership

    The day prior to the action there was an impromptu pre-brief facilitated by the Water Warriors. This came about due to community members missing updates about delays to docking and arriving early. The Water Warriors demonstrated exemplary leadership by calling all who had arrived together, namely representing Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Unity–Struggle–Unity Press as well as some others who were unaffiliated.

    The Water Warriors laid out a detailed plan while avoiding over-disclosure to preserve security. Their outlined plan for a water-based canoe blockade prioritized concrete, material impact and demonstrated strategic foresight and a commitment to effective communication, collaboration, and action. They shared their plan to take their canoes into the bay and hold the line for as long as possible. They also shared with the group how they could be supported, including keeping watch from the land and sharing pre-brief information with comrades so other protesters could plan accordingly. The meeting was brief, perhaps twenty minutes or so, before the Water Warriors departed for a prayer ceremony, which meeting attendees were invited to join.

    Despite the explicit request of the Water Warriors to communicate information from the pre-brief to comrades, concerns later arose about a lack of effective communication and coordination between organizers and the Water Warriors. Many protesters on the ground had no idea that the Water Warriors were going to be conducting a water-based blockade. While it’s not always necessary for every protester to be kept in the loop about every move, the request of the Water Warriors that information be passed along clearly indicates a desire for as many people as possible to be kept in the loop. (While this author recalls reading a critique focused on this subject, it has since proven elusive so we’re unfortunately unable to provide additional citations. If any readers are familiar with this critique we ask that you share it.)

    Here we again see a need for improved communication, as well as an increased attunement to Indigenous leadership. There is also a clear indication for non-Indigenous organizers and participants to ask Indigenous leadership how to best support their action(s). We must endeavor to gauge the willingness for escalation as well as the degree of violent retaliation oppressed parties are willing to bear. This is key not only to following Indigenous leadership but to centering the most oppressed and therefore most affected among our ranks.

    The lost potential of this pre-brief to improve collaboration and communication reminds us of the importance of pre-briefs. Pre-briefs have repeatedly proven to be vital to participant coordination and collaboration as well as action success in other instances. For this reason, we should always strive to coordinate an accessible and well-communicated pre-brief as an expected part of praxis. This is best done with a structure that facilitates effective communication and cooperation not only between participants but also between participating groups, and even across ideological lines. This creates opportunities for improved collaboration toward a much-needed united front.

    The settler-colonial relation continues to determine the form of advanced capitalism we organize against. The sovereignty of Indigenous nations everywhere is routinely violated to bolster capital and facilitate further violations elsewhere: the sovereignty of Adivasi nations in India is violated to plunder resources that fuel weapons production. The Puyallup nation’s sovereignty over their own land and water is violated by the transit of military weaponry made using those same resources. All this for the purpose of violating the sovereignty not only of Palestine, but of West Papua, the Philippines, La Guajira, and many, many more. For this reason it is vital that revolutionary groups and movements build solidarity and coalitions with the Indigenous nations whose territories we are collectively struggling on. Colonialism and capitalism are symbiotic, violent, extractive dynamics which threaten us all, regardless of skin color or national origin, due to rising fascism and the worsening climate crisis. As such, revolutionaries must build strong coalitions with all of their natural allies. The success of the social revolution hinges on the liberation of all oppressed people.

    An apparent lack of intentional and direct collaboration with the Water Warriors fundamentally weakened this action. A parallel failure to broaden the scope of the struggle for Palestine by centering the relationship between Palestinians and the Indigenous nations of so-called America was a failure to bring to light the underlying causes of genocide faced by both peoples. Explicit and intentional collaboration with the Water Warriors undoubtedly would have strengthened this action and elevated both its material and social-cultural impact.

    Bearing in mind that Indigenous communities are not a monolith, those of us who are settlers must endeavor to connect with and build good relationships with the nations whose lands we occupy. No opportunity to engage with Indigenous nations should be missed. Social investigation to not only better understand the priorities of Indigenous nations and leadership, but also to locate and build coalitions with the most politically advanced individuals and groups within these nations, is necessary. Their knowledge and perspectives should shape the struggle against imperialism in the belly of the beast. This is especially vital given that this struggle is unequivocally a struggle against the foundations of settler colonialism as embodied and enforced by the so-called United States both locally and abroad. Even if Indigenous peoples aren’t able to participate in the action itself, inviting an opening ceremony led by representatives from local nations (as seen in Seattle’s Marches for Palestine collaboration with radical members of the Duwamish nation) supports the building of these much needed relationships and coalitions.

Community Care

    There was an abundance of care on display at this action. Car shuttles, coordinated autonomously in some cases and with support from Democratic Socialists of America in others, decreased worry about parking, walking long distances, towing, or surveillance by police. Overall this increased accessibility. Hot drinks and food were coordinated, as well as supplies such as umbrellas, dry socks and gloves, and hand warmers. Community members made multiple supply drops and participants helped distribute these across pickets.

    This coordination additionally provided an avenue of participation for community members otherwise unable to directly attend without undue risk (parolees, for example). Such care-taking and socially reproductive labor maintains momentum and morale not only in one-off actions but for revolutionary movements more broadly. The importance of this often overlooked labor cannot be overstated: this socially reproductive labor is the backbone upon which sustainable and effective revolutionary movements are built. Without this labor, actions such as these become non-viable, and networks of communication, including organization relationships and coalitions, disintegrate. This is the work that can and should move us from spontaneous action toward long-term, structured organizing that sustains movements. This is the work that, when strategically and intentionally undertaken, can close the gap between who can and can’t join us in struggle.

    However there were notable strategic and structural gaps in care. For example, while chants and rousing speeches are important parts of keeping people engaged at actions, we’ve spoken with many who report that these become draining and redundant at longer actions. While plenty of people on the ground encouraged one another to rest, there weren’t concerted efforts to create rest zones. Providing intentionally structured time and space for people to rest and recover also opens opportunities to invest in education and agitation. Similarly the construction of small fires to serve as warming stations supported participants to stay longer on a very wet and cold day. With improved structure and organization, such spaces could easily have been utilized toward social investigation and much needed coalition building.

     Small educational groups bolstered by hot food and drinks could have elevated rest zones into spaces for reproductive labor in support of broader movements for liberation. As Mao said in The United Front in Cultural Work, the cultural and educational work required to “to transform the thinking of the masses” cannot be undertaken in haste, and must primarily center the needs of the masses. Meeting the basic human needs of food, drink, and rest at an action where the masses are present and already politically engaged is a prime opportunity to initiate this work. Pairing the tending of basic needs with education and agitation has a long history in revolutionary action globally, from the free meal programs of the Black Panther Party to the cross-caste Communist organizing of post-colonial Kerala, India and beyond. The potlatch of Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples, of which sharing feasts and giving gifts are important aspects, were long banned in part due to their potential to facilitate the organizing of Indigenous resistance to occupation. These historic lessons should not be forgotten.

    We must constantly ask ourselves, who are we implicitly excluding from our movements? Better understanding who we implicitly exclude and how we do so is vital to building a robust foundation for revolutionary care and reproductive labor. This must necessarily go above and beyond ensuring meals and water are available during lengthy actions. Increasingly working people don’t have the resources necessary to support taking time off work to participate in the struggle. If we’re not finding ways to address this, our actions and our movements will stagnate or shrivel. To this end we must consider what our organizations can do to support worker participation in our actions. What is needed to make our actions more accessible to workers who can’t afford to take the time off work? How can we organize to address those needs? In collaborating with Indigenous and other oppressed peoples, how do we ensure that we are safe and principled collaborators? Taking considerations like this seriously demonstrates that we do care about these communities and will devote time, energy, and labor not only to addressing their needs but also to making our movements accessible to them. This is key to building the foundational trust required for building meaningful relationships and effective collaboration.

        At actions like these plenty of people deeply entrenched in liberalism will be content to march in circles, chant, and go home. What we saw on the ground demonstrates that these are not the only people showing up. The despair we witnessed as people realized weapons were being loaded, and the rage, bitterness, and even disgust expressed as people realized the failure of the action and dishonesty of on-the-ground organizers, tells us that there are many, many people whose passion needs a home. Even more than this, they deserves competent, professional leadership that is able to effectively direct that passion toward revolutionary ends. This means on-the-ground leadership capable of discerning these dedicated individuals from those entrenched in liberalism, who are able to conversationally engage them without succumbing to the pitfalls of lecturing or proselytizing, and get them plugged in to revolutionary organizing above and beyond the event that brought them into the streets. (We recommend Secrets of a Successful Organizer for specifics on what this can look like.) Vitally, we must ensure that our organizations are already well-structured, with clear programs outlining immediate goals and work. This will prepare us to meaningfully direct the time, energy, and labor of these individuals toward gaining material victories, enabling them to see the strength of their own impact sooner than later. This is necessary not only for getting buy in, but for meaningfully developing these individuals’ political consciousness and revolutionary potential.

        As contradictions continue to sharpen, we must see it as our responsibility to connect with the people who are willing to put their bodies on the line, but may not know where or how to begin. These are people who are primed to develop a revolutionary analysis of current conditions and a robust understanding of what needs to be done to make meaningful change. With well-developed, experienced, accountable leaders and a well-structured party, we can be the leadership they deserve and prevent them being co-opted by liberal and/or reactionary forces. Too often we’ve seen Communists and Communist organizations regarding the politically underdeveloped masses with something like pity, or worse, disdain. These attitudes result in missed opportunities for meaningful education, agitation, and effective organization that can build out a revolutionary base in the pursuit of escalating revolutionary action. This is crucial as contradictions sharpen toward a breaking point.

    Care for the people in our movements also requires honest and transparent communication. A false declaration of victory triggered rightful feelings of demoralization and grief. It prompted significant suspicion from those who had given their time and energy: were the organizers even on our side, on the side of Palestine? Some of the organizations involved here have been involved in other direct actions, such as AROC Bay Area organizing the more militant Oakland Block the Boat, or SUPER UW’s short-lived occupation of a Boeing-funded engineering building at the University of Washington. JVP Seattle is well known for their civil disobedience and non-violent direct action, including blocking the doors to Seattle’s federal building, and have supported more militant actions such as those conducted by SUPER UW.

    However, it was unclear who the on-the-ground organizers were. Whether those individuals who carried radios, megaphones, and marked themselves with safety vests were members of the organizations who made the call remains unclear. While the spirit of community care would indicate a need for the kind of honest communication and effective critique that builds bridges rather than burning them with regards to the orgs that called for the action, it remains unclear whether on-the-ground organizers were “on our side.” We wish to treat these organizers not as enemies of the people, but as individuals with good intentions who were and are still learning how to most effectively translate those intentions into meaningful impact (as most of us are). Yet the lack of clarity with regards to on-the-ground leadership makes effective discernment here difficult to impossible. This indicates further the absolute necessity of ensuring leadership transparency. This isn’t only an essential aspect of ensuring that accountability is viable, it’s also essential to preventing the very real risk of infiltration and sabotage. The security risk of being unable to verify the affiliation of on-the-ground organizers cannot be overstated.

    Without assuming association or alignment of on-the-ground organizers with any of the named organizations, the failure of these organizations to engage in critique of on-the-ground organizer conduct is important to note. This avoidance of critique in symptomatic of an organizing culture that prioritizes friction-less “unity” and relationships without tension. This betrays an internalized liberal tendency described by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail as a preference for “negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” We need more than just friction-less relationships at the next action. We need a sustainable, long-term movement capable of learning from its mistakes and growing into a force that can stop a genocide. This is not possible in the confines of a negative peace. It requires generative tension, and leadership mature and experienced enough to navigate such tension without allowing it to devolve into infighting, drama, and movement fracturing.

Goal Construction and Considerations

    Unclear or unattainable goals and ineffective strategy leads to confusion, failure, and disillusionment, and will negatively impact participants, actions, and the movement as a whole. As organizers we must ensure our goals are realistic and achievable, have sound strategies for achievement, and clearly communicate them to participants.

    The prominent belief among protesters was that they were stopping weapons from being loaded onto the boat, which turned out to be non-viable. Even if weapons hadn’t been pre-loaded onto the dock, it’s important to be realistic about the military’s willingness to escalate against civilians standing between them and their weapons. A goal of fully stopping weapons loading with a blockade was likely a nonstarter – unless, that is, protesters had been ready and willing to escalate. In light of this we have to ask: were protesters prepared to escalate, and to what degree were they prepared to escalate?

    This is incredibly challenging to assess on the ground, especially when you’re dealing with hundreds of people coming together across a range of ideologies and levels of political development. While there were those in attendance whose readiness and willingness to escalate was on full display, these individuals were in a stark minority. Realistically, a significant portion of new allies to the Palestinian cause in the Puget Sound are, by the nature of the region’s demographics, white and middle class. While these demographics are experiencing increasing politicization under fascism, worsening climate change, and increasingly sharpening economic contradictions, it’s important to understand where the political development and consciousness of these demographics is and the ways in which they’ve been historically shaped by liberal and reactionary politics. Despite their willingness to come out in the cold and rain and face police in riot gear, it’s safe to assume that the majority of protesters weren’t prepared for a violent escalation, let alone leading or participating in such an escalation themselves.

    There were additional, physical factors curtailing the possibility of escalation without militant organization. The layout of the port made charging the docks difficult without individuals able and willing to scale fences, or alternatively cutting through the fence. Beyond the fence, the distance to the dock was such that making it to the boat without being intercepted was unlikely. The port overall is also particularly susceptible to kettling, and this would have been especially true on the dock.

    Given these material realities, blocking the loading of weapons onto the boat was probably not achievable, even if it was an admirable intention. It’s clear in hindsight that there was a gap in understanding between many protesters and organizers on what blocking the boat meant exactly. Specificity would have set clearer expectations and may have prevented or reduced demoralization over the outcome. It could also have provided a clearer roadmap to what needed to be done to meet goals and what strategy and tactics would have best supported a successful and effective action. For example, a better understanding of what it would take to meet stated goals may have highlighted the tactical value of a water-based blockade, and thus the necessity of effective collaboration with the Water Warriors (though, as previously stated, this would ideally already be on the forefront of organizer’s minds).

    Furthermore, establishing a clear metric for success would have better enabled organizers to assess and communicate the state of things. This would additionally have supported protesters in interpreting the outcomes on their own.

​Setting the Terms of Engagement​​​​​​

    Under the above conditions “blocking the boat” simply wasn’t tenable, but that doesn’t mean all disruptive action was a lost cause. Making something as costly and inefficient to do as possible is a useful mechanism of sabotage, made clear by the CIA’s own Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Successfully undertaking such a strategy requires first and foremost an honest assessment of our capabilities and limitations. In our assessment, a core factor undermining the ability to effectively execute such a strategy comes down to this simple fact: organizers allowed the enemy to set the terms of engagement.

    The public call to block the boat in Tacoma allowed authorities to coordinate a preemptive response, as evidenced by pre-staged police with riot gear and advanced loading of weapons onto the dock. When delays were announced, organizers also delayed the onset of the action. In other words, the state was permitted to set the day and time of the encounter, which enabled them to pre-load weapons onto the dock and put cops in place to guard them. This ensured any attempt to block loading couldn’t be successful.

    While it’s safe to assume there was planning behind the scenes during delays, there were tactical adjustments that could have been made during this time which were overlooked. Again, explicit collaboration with Water Warriors during this time may have brought to light alternate approaches, including a better supported and more robust water blockade. There are certainly more than enough people in the Puget Sound with their own canoes and kayaks who could have been recruited for deployment of a water-based blockade under the leadership of Water Warriors. On land there was significant risk of kettling, with the layout of the port providing little option for tactical withdrawal in the case of police or military escalation. Scouting during delays could have supported the development of more robust strategy including more tactically effective deployment locations, courses of action, contingency plans, redundancies, etc.

    One alternate approach could have seen a blockade of railways leading into and out of the port (taking inspiration from the 2017 railway blockades in Olympia) deployed on the intended day and hour, refusing to capitulate to the state’s delays and endeavoring to prevent the weapons from being loaded onto the dock. With this approach, protesters could have been alerted to and prepared for a multi-day blockade. The community networks that mobilized could have additionally prepared for supporting a long-term blockade.

     Bringing more tactics to bear would also have strengthened the action. There was functionally one tactic at play: a picket blockade. Without a robust strategy for escalation utilizing diverse tactics and an ability to adapt to changing conditions on-the-ground, this approach is extremely limiting. We’ve seen through other actions that multiple tactics can be deployed at once or at a steady escalation, reserving the ability for those unprepared for escalation to remain engaged at a tactical level matching their ability and risk tolerance. What we saw at this action was functionally a “green” picket with mass-mobilization, but this could (and should) be expanded on. While those ready to participate but not yet ready to escalate could continue participation in a green picket, a “yellow” option could have formed a buffer between “green” and “red” roles. Yellow roles could have occupied space in the form of die-ins or sit-ins, retaining the option to comply or refuse cooperation with dispersal orders. In this formation, “red” teams could build barricade structures (such as those built using pallets and other debris sourced from the port itself) and establish body-based blockades utilizing chains, sleeping dragons, and other tools to hold space for a much longer duration. In tandem with a water-based blockade, these different tactical approaches would have supported one another for a more deeply entrenched and militant action. As noted in our A15 critique however, it’s important to research the capabilities of local state actors when it comes to “apparatus removal,” and adapt accordingly. It would also be necessary to have contingency plans in case of preemptive arrests and suppression.

     It’s important to critically reflect on factors that may lead to early arrests and how to mitigate these in order to hold the barricade for as long as possible.* Inspiration should also be taken from strategies and tactics such as those that allowed a 2021 blockade of the Port of Seattle to block unloading of an Israeli-operated cargo ship for nearly two weeks. This will help shape a more effective disruption of economies of genocide via more effective disruption of supply chains these economies depend on.

    In consideration of alternate strategies, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that sabotage may have been the most effective means of blocking the boat. While we’ll leave the specifics of what sabotage could mean to the imagination, this does highlight again the necessity of considering the balance of willingness to escalate and risk aversion. This is a long-term and widespread strategic barrier which we should all endeavor to find ways to address according to the resources and limitations of our regionally-bound cultural and material conditions, in preparation for moments like these.

    Any of these approaches to improved preparedness and setting the terms of engagement would have required significantly improved structural coordination between organizing groups and their leadership. Similar to concerns we had about the structurelessness of the A15 movement, a lack of structure here posed serious limitations. These include limitations on effective reconnaissance, strategic planning and implementation, and effective management of the forces that were mobilized, not to mention collaboration between participating groups and organizations. These are all necessary components of setting the terms of engagement and positioning ourselves with as much strategic strength as possible, and are best established through long-term, well-structured organizing.

Reflection and Feedback

    In the face of serious criticisms related to declaration of false victory, poor communication, and lack of transparency, a member of ILPS offered to host a call via Signal to provide space for people to voice concerns and brainstorm improving future collaborations.

    It’s unclear whether any on-the-ground organizers were involved in this session or not. It appears that, aside from ILPS, the organizations that made the initial call weren’t responsible for calling or hosting this meeting. Whether or not they had representatives present is unknown.

     Nonetheless, the invitation to discuss criticisms and facilitate learning for future implementation remains a good model to use for all direct actions, not just those that go south. Creating spaces such as this for open discussion of critiques, facilitated with humility, are vital to maintain ongoing learning and growth. This is in turn vital to maintain an effective, adaptable, and ever-evolving movement in the struggle for liberation. We can’t improve without feedback, so we must always strive to ensure space and humility to receive it.

     In that spirit, debriefs should always be incorporated into every action plan. They should be announced in such a way to ensure all participants are aware and have the ability to join if desired. In other situations we’ve seen debrief dates and times announced during pre-briefs or otherwise in private communications where all participants are present. Depending on the size of the action, multiple de-briefs at different dates and times to accommodate a variety of scheduling issues is effective for ensuring maximum participation and by extension, maximum feedback to learn from. In this case an announcement could have easily been made at the same time that loss was announced or via the announcements chat set up prior to the action. Planning in advance for debriefs would have supported the facilitation of multiple debriefs accounting for varying scheduling needs.

    Unfortunately, barring notes from a comrade who was able to attend the meeting, it seems the results of this debrief weren’t made public. (If any readers are aware of published critiques from this session we invite you to share a link.) Given the highly public scrutiny of this action, criticisms and lessons from this reflection should have been shared publicly to support collective learning and growth. This would have also demonstrated improving communication and transparency. It may not have fully repaired the ruptures that occurred but it would have been a good start. Of course any such sharing would need to be done with optimal opsec in mind, with more sensitive information being shared through private communication networks between associated organizations. The lack of any public self-reflection or self-critique perpetuates the mistrust incited with the false declaration of victory and the ineffective communication surrounding it.

Final Thoughts

    Tacoma’s Block the Boat action started as a potent, rich moment of empowerment for people across ideological lines and levels of political development. It failed to deliver on this promise, leading instead to substantial disillusionment, frustration, and broken trust. 

    Clear and direct communication is not optional. Poor communication between organizers and participants laid the way for demoralization and mistrust. Ineffective communication of goals led to significant misunderstandings and confusion. Failure to disseminate information discussed in the pre-brief left many out of the loop and resulted in a poorly-supported deployment of the Water Warrior’s blockade. Effective communication is best supported by clearly defined and understood structure, roles, and task delegation, all of which will ultimately improve action efficacy and movement sustainability.

    Any success in revolutionary struggle requires exemplary coordination, collaboration, and communication, as well as heightened strategic and tactical consideration. It also requires that organizers have a good idea of what is required to escalate an action, in this case from a picket to an entrenched blockade, or potentially even sabotage. The capacity of the people to escalate, to meet the violence of the enemy, ebbs and flows. It changes with changing material conditions, which are rapidly evolving in the so-called United States, creating a moment ripe for revolution which we must not fail to meet. The revolutionary is a role emerging from the necessity of escalation. This role is fulfilled not only through the explosive and sometimes violent nature of revolutionary action, but also by educating, agitating, and organizing wherever we can during the lulls between escalations. As Communists in the belly of the beast, we must be both looking for opportunities to increase risk tolerance and political development in the people, while navigating the need to build a robust, revolutionary movement making use of current material and social-cultural conditions.

    Finally, our actions and movements should, wherever possible, follow Indigenous leadership and take cues from Indigenous liberation movements and freedom fighters. Especially as settlers occupying Indigenous land, it is our prerogative as communists to elevate radical and revolutionary Indigenous leadership and consistently assess how best to struggle alongside and bolster our Indigenous comrades. We cannot effectively collaborate with our natural allies if we allow unconscious colonial bias lead us into the trap of co-opting or sidelining radical and revolutionary Indigenous leadership, actions, and movements. This is as much about the efficacy of action and sustainability of movements as it is about deconstructing colonial systems through our own actions on the ground.

    We call on all radical organizations to earnestly assess their relationships to the Indigenous nations whose lands they occupy, and determine practical courses of action to build on or improve these where necessary. It’s additionally vital to assess our practices of communication, community care, utilization of revolutionary strategy and tactics, and political education. These assessments must be done regularly to ensure we are maintaining the most adaptive and revolutionary praxis. Only then can we begin to achieve real, material wins rather than the shallow, performative demonstrations our movement has historically tended towards.

*Endnote: Some resources for consideration in planning such actions include Instructions for an Armed Uprising (1868), Joint Doctrine for Barriers, Obstacles, and Mine Warfare (last updated in 1999), and Field Manual 3-90: Tactics—also see Guerilla Warfare and Marxist Revolution Index on Marxist Internet Archive. Information in these resources may need to be adjusted to account for changes in material conditions since the time of publication, but may provide some tactical inspiration.

Editor’s Note: This is a republication from a piece by Marissa Sanchez on Substack. The original can be found here. We agree with the author’s analysis, that PSL stifles dissent and operates as a parody of democratic centralism. To hide abuse is the symptom of a structure that must operate anti-democratically by design. The careerist, opportunist tendency displayed by PSL’s leadership, by their org’s guiding strategy, is one which must shield abusers and isolate survivors to sustain itself. To do otherwise is to invite self-reflection and accountability, which will implode their organization like a breach in the hull.

This is not a issue that is unique to PSL, it emerges from all of the top-down, franchise models of the fake “parties.” We called it out in FRSO, and the same structures of anti-democracy perpetuate themselves in virtually all structures of settler socialism. Though it is contained in all of the larger opportunist sects, it is not limited to the big groups, nor does it emerge spontaneously from all organizing at scale. The complicity is an outcome of the logic of the way these orgs are built, from the cell to the body. There are even some local organizations that are in the early stages of reproducing exactly this dynamic under a cult of leadership. This is the churn and burn model at play, that disregards reproductive labor and the safety of membership.

Content note: Please note that this essay discusses sexual assault, rape, suicidal ideation, and organizational misconduct.

Introductory note: In recent months, divisions in DSA and PSL have triggered debates over when it is justified or unjustified to leave an organization, to call for others to leave an organization, or to air problems in an organization. My vantage point has been of someone who quietly left the PSL many months ago based on a private experience with the organization’s systemic problems. In many people’s view, I dealt with my issues with PSL “the right way.”

The way I left did not create any damage to the left. It also denied the left the opportunity to grapple with some very real problems. I am seeing the issue with this as I watch the PSL color themselves as victims and readily labeling people who were formerly their trusted comrades as misogynists and racists and wreckers, without any real interrogation of their claims, and as the protest, fundraising and recruitment machine of PSL continues on uninterrupted.

I, like most serious leftists, do not believe in carelessly tearing apart our own organizations. I also don’t believe good organizations are built by evading accountability. My own experience with the PSL shows the stakes of long-term evasion, the damage it can cause to the movement, to organizations, and to the real people in them.

I also believe that no one can make an informed decision about joining or remaining in an organization if they are deliberately shielded from the actual character of its leadership and structures.

My assault within PSL and its mishandling

Reporting

I called Ben the morning after I was assaulted. I hadn’t slept. I’d spent the night crying, shaking, staring at the ceiling and feeling like the entire room was spinning. By the time I sat on the couch and made the call, I was numb. Through tears, I told Ben what had happened the night before at the holiday celebration we had both been at with comrades. He said he was so sorry. And then, almost in the same breath, Ben said, “Eugene might just want to resign.”

I remember pausing, the words landing somewhere far away from me. It felt strange to be thinking about what would happen to him while I was still trying to understand what had just been done to me.

At that moment, the morning after being violated by someone I thought I could trust completely, someone I considered a comrade and a friend, I said, “I’m not sure that’s what I want to happen.”

I knew instantly that was the right answer. I was commended for being so measured.

After that, the days blurred together. Conversations with Ben about responsibility. About protecting the Party, the projects, the work. About ensuring that nothing would “roll downhill” onto others.

In a meeting led by Ben, I sat down across from Eugene. It had only been a few days since he had put his hand on the most private part of my body without my consent. Eugene said he had been too drunk at the celebration to remember sending me texts asking about how I was getting home before putting his hands on me. He read from a letter he had written, saying he wished he hadn’t hurt me.

The three of us had that conversation in a room at The People’s Forum. The same space we had all been working in together for months. I was sobbing. Self consciously, I reminded Ben and Eugene I wasn’t unraveling just because of what Eugene had done. I reminded them that I have a history of experiences with sexual violence from before Eugene, that in the past I had been violently raped. That I had lived the experience of begging someone to stop. I tried to explain that, while I knew this wasn’t the same as before, to my body the violations felt connected, and that I could feel myself spinning out.

Ben helped suggest a plan. Eugene would apologize. He would spend a month in Baltimore “for health reasons.” He would not chair Central Committee meetings for a while. We would all move on. I agreed.

Over the next few weeks, I spent more time outside my body than in it. I felt panic, my body’s primal response to being harmed in a place I had believed was safe, and an overwhelming sadness. But woven through both was something else; an excruciating sense of responsibility.

It was that feeling of responsibility, more than anything, that felt familiar to me. That I realize now is why I was so quick to agree to Ben’s plan.

It is a feeling I have returned to after every experience of sexual violence. The instinct to search for the point where you went wrong. To locate the cause for harm within ourselves. As if assigning ourselves blame might restore some sense of control or safety.

To be honest about it, people seeking to take on the responsibility of our own harm is not just internal. It is reinforced from the outside. We all know the type of questions that are asked of women who have been sexually violated. “What was she wearing?”, “Was she drinking?”, “Was she flirting?”

In left spaces and organizations, locating responsibility becomes entangled with a different kind of pressure. The pressure of responsibility to the collective. The question shifts almost immediately from what was done to you to what should be done about it? And if there aren’t trauma-informed practices already in place to be followed, that question is then handed back to the violated person to answer. What do you want us to do? As if the burden of response belongs to them, the person who was harmed.

I did not cause harm. Yet I was expected not only to manage my own pain, but its implications for the PSL.

And of course, I did want to move on. To forget. To go back to feeling safe. To think that the PSL was still what I had believed it was when I joined.

Joining

My go-to line was always, “I didn’t join the Party for Socialism and Liberation to be part of a cool-kid clique. I joined because I hate capitalism, and I want to destroy it.” That was my personal maxim. The line I lived by. Because long before I joined the PSL, I had already lived a life that made something unmistakably clear to me. Capitalism is killing our families, and socialism is the only real alternative.

I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a working-class family with a single mom, two brothers, and a grandmother helping raise us. My mom worked constantly. She did everything she was supposed to do. She worked hard, showed up, and took care of her kids. Like millions of other parents, it still wasn’t enough to build anything beyond survival.

We had food. We had places to stay. Most importantly, we had each other. But there was no safety net, no savings account, no sense that the future was something we could plan for. And despite my mom’s best efforts when we were small, there were generational traumas that haunted us. Mental illness, religious abuse, domestic violence, sexual trauma. These weren’t abstractions. They shaped our lives in immediate ways.

By the time I was 15, I made a decision that felt like the most stable option available to me. I left home. I decided to take full responsibility for myself because staying felt more chaotic than leaving. My mom was experiencing a mental health spiral, and I believed I could create more stability on my own than I could within that environment.

So I did. I got a job. I dropped out of traditional school and found an alternative high school program that would accept my pay stubs as class credits. From then on, I worked full-time. In fast food, retail, hotels. I depended on every dollar I earned and I spent too damn much of what little I made just to keep a roof over our heads. Mine. My brother’s. My various girlfriends and boyfriends, and just plain friends.

For years, I was hyper-focused on our survival.

I hustled hard all through my teenage years. But the truth is, hard work never scared me, and I don’t often mourn how quickly I grew up because that work did create a lot of stability. I’m proud of the home I built from very little.

But living that life, watching my mom work herself to exhaustion, then doing the same myself, left me with questions that never went away. Why is it that no matter how hard people work, some of us are always just barely scraping by?

When I found Marxism at age 16, it didn’t feel abstract. It felt like recognition. Like someone had finally put language to what I had already lived and understood. Marxism gave me a framework for something I had known all along. We weren’t struggling because we didn’t work hard enough or didn’t know how to “get ahead.” We weren’t traumatized because our family was simply made up of broken people.

So when I joined the PSL in 2015, at 22 years old, I wasn’t new to political thinking. I had already been working for nearly a decade. I had been a Marxist for years. I already identified as a communist. I had gone deep into studying Marxist theory long before it became trendy or visible online.

I joined the PSL because I believed I was joining something historically necessary, because at my core, I believed the highest calling of a working-class girl was to organize for the overthrow of capitalism. That belief shaped everything I gave to the PSL over the next decade.

Organizing

From the moment I joined, I jumped in deep. I organized my whole life around the Party. By 2017, I was asked to come on Party staff and help to build up branches amidst the post-Bernie surge in interest in socialism. I was paid a small stipend each month to organize full time. I drove around the country in my car, surfing on comrades’ couches going city to city, helping branches get their start. I organized protests, mentored new comrades, taught candidacy classes, joined countless meetings, spoke at demonstrations, represented the Party in coalition spaces, and recruited dozens upon dozens of other people to join.

I was soon an invited observer to the Central Committee, then elected to the Central Committee for two terms. I served at points as an observing member of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee, at the time that that body was a real thing.

Eventually, I was asked to move to New York City to help plan the 2019 Congress. Once there, I spent every day with Ben and his family. We organized out of his apartment. We cooked and I helped care for his young child. In those years, I was one of only two party staffers. I did everything from liaising pre-branches around the country, to organizing Congress logistics, to mediating interpersonal issues. My life was building the PSL. There was no one more loyal than me.

All of those years worth of experiences is why being assaulted by a trusted Party leader and friend at a holiday celebration in a comrade’s apartment in November 2020 was so wildly disorienting. And why the way it was handled by Ben and Brian Becker was so hard to reconcile.

After the assault, I was told repeatedly by Ben not to tell anyone. Ben warned me that if I told anyone we might lose connections and projects. He told me that the only people he had told were Brian, Ben’s father, and Karina, Ben’s wife. But neither of them once spoke directly to me about it.

This also meant that out of the five-person Executive Committee, one person, Eugene, had assaulted me. And that two other members, Ben in consultation with Brian, were handling the response. The other elected members were left in the dark, including the one female member, Gloria La Riva. (An aside, I spoke to Gloria after resigning from the PSL in March of this year, and she confirmed that she had never known about the assault until I told her, six years later. Terrifyingly, Gloria also told me on that call that she knew Ben and Brian had mishandled other cases of sexual assault in the past, and that in her opinion they could “destroy the Party” due to their neglect and that she planned to confront them. However, I have since been made aware that Gloria was dispatched to speak with and reassure the few comrades who became aware of my experience after I left.)

The remainder of the Central Committee was also not informed.

Ben explicitly told me that this level of silence was necessary, because if not maintained we could lose the growing relationship with The People’s Forum. We could lose the budding project that was BreakThrough News. That my friends, the comrades I was in a small COVID pod with could lose their jobs. And so, out of an intense sense of loyalty to the projects I had already spent years building, that I had organized my life in service of, I didn’t say anything to anyone.

Except, one person. I had immediately told another member of the Party, my recruiter and mentor, my then best friend, Chris Banks.

When I told Ben that I’d already told Chris, he responded with disappointment. “I wish you hadn’t.” Ben told me he worried that Chris would now be upset because Chris himself had once been suspended for over a year over much less severe allegations, whereas Eugene was getting a much lighter response for a full-on assault.

I explained to Ben that I told Chris because I needed someone to know what had happened. I needed support. I wasn’t okay. Ben recommended that, if I needed someone to talk to, I speak with Nathalie, another woman on the Central Committee. He called her first to explain the situation, then I was allowed to call her.

I remember crying over the phone, telling her how badly I was spiraling, and asking whether she thought all of this was okay. She told me to trust Ben. In every conversation we had afterward, I was encouraged to accept Ben’s plan for how my assault should be handled. I had hoped she would help me make sense of what had happened and advocate for my wellbeing. Instead, our conversations consistently led back to why I should trust Ben’s judgment and move forward with the plan he had already laid out. Looking back, I don’t think I was being connected with a source of support. I was being directed to someone who reinforced Ben’s approach.

A few short weeks later, Eugene was back at work. Comrades working with us, having no reason to suspect that his absence was for any reason sinister, celebrated his return. I told Ben again that I wasn’t alright. That I felt terrible.

The day Eugene came back to work, I threw up in one of the office bathrooms.

And at the lowest part of what I now know was a months-long mental health spiral, caused by being sexually assaulted and receiving no trauma informed support in the aftermath, in February of 2021, I called Chris, the friend Ben said he’d rather I hadn’t told, because I was prepared to take my own life.

I wept and told Chris that my life felt valueless and too painful

Fight, flight, or freeze – I rolled flight

After Eugene came back to work, I asked to be moved. To be re-assigned away from New York City. I was willing to go anywhere. I couldn’t keep seeing Eugene every day. I couldn’t keep pretending I was alright. That was when Brian asked me if I’d like to go to Los Angeles. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But I was willing to try anything.

Three months after being assaulted, on March 8th, International Women’s Day, 2021, I landed in LA.

Shortly after moving to LA, Brian had $8,000 dollars sent to me to buy a car. I felt an unspoken message with that check: that I was lucky, that I had nothing to complain about, and that I should stick to the plan, keep quiet and move on.

In LA, I tried to keep up. To get back to normal. To keep being a “good comrade”. Of course, I was also internally just trying to hold myself together, which no one else knew.

Once in LA, I asked to be taken off Party staff. At the time, I couldn’t fully explain why. Looking back, I’m grateful my brain was protecting me. My subconscious knew I needed distance from the people who had manipulated me into silence, even if I couldn’t yet name what had happened. It took another year, but by 2022 I was finally off the Party payroll.

Even though I needed a break, I never stopped organizing. In LA I was elected to the Steering Committee, and was re-elected to the Central Committee at the 2022 Congress.

However, when it came to my relationship with Ben and Brian, I stopped feeling like a respected comrade and started feeling like a problem to be managed. When I would talk with them, I felt them caught between two impulses: keep me happy, and keep me at arm’s length. The warmth I had felt in the past had disappeared, or it seemed to come in artificial, strategic spurts. When I sought their advice they were quick to dismiss any of my concerns, place blame onto me in conflicts, and called me “competitive”. Which was stunning to me, because I knew competition with comrades was never a motive of mine. They stopped seeking me out for assignments.

At one point, I called Nathalie to seek her advice about how I was feeling. I described to her my struggle to get along with leaders who had a different approach than me in Los Angeles, and how I was now struggling to gain access to consistent areas of work nationally. I told her I couldn’t help but wonder if things had shifted so dramatically because of what had happened with Eugene. She told me she didn’t think that was the case, but offered no other explanation.

At the same time that I was fighting, seemingly now by myself, to move forward inside the organization, I was also starting to build a relationship with myself that I had never had before.

Growing up as fast as I did, my identity had been shaped by survival, caring for others, and then by the Party. For years, who I was, what I valued, how I made decisions, it was all filtered through what the PSL needed, what was disciplined, what served the work.

But as I moved closer to being in my thirties, that began to change.

I started to pay attention to myself in a different way. To my limits, my emotions, the quiet signals in my body that I had spent years overriding. That the experience of rape will suppress in anyone, because in order to protect yourself, you shut off feeling your own body and emotions, and then that survival mechanism can echo for years.

Underneath the California sun, I started, for the first time, to develop a sense that I deserved care. Not just as a comrade, not just as a worker, but as a woman, as a person.

And that shift made something else happen. It made my experience harder and harder to explain away. To keep taking responsibility for. The more I respected myself, the harder it became to reconcile what had happened with the story I kept telling myself about Ben and Brian. I wanted to believe they cared about me. That they were mentors who had made mistakes but ultimately wanted what was best for me and for the Party.

But believing that required me to distort my own experience.

It required me to ignore the fact that when I was at my most vulnerable: crying, disoriented, asking for help, I had been managed and silenced, not supported. That what was actually obvious, be it painful to admit, was that their decisions had not been made based on care for me or our shared project. That what happened was totally lacking in transparency, accountability, or even the basic recognition that what had happened was truly wrong and not something that could simply be explained away by “too much alcohol.”

Looking back now, I don’t think what I actually needed then was particularly mysterious. I needed time with people who loved me. Time away from organizing without worrying that I was letting anyone down. I needed the comrades I worked beside every day to know enough to understand why I was struggling, so that I was surrounded by support instead of silence.

I think this kind of paradigm shift is something nearly all women experience as they move from their twenties into their thirties. There is a process of reflection, of looking back at the relationships, the institutions, the organizations, the choices that shaped us and asking, sometimes for the first time: Was that okay? Was I treated with care? Did I deserve better? Was I just numb the first time around?

As my identity became more defined, more grounded in my own sense of self rather than in what was expected of me, I couldn’t bring the developing version of myself into alignment with what I had lived through.

Something had to give. And eventually, it wasn’t my growing sense of self respect.

I started to look in a new way at the organization I had committed my whole adult life to building, and allowed myself for the first time to actually question it.

Disillusionment

My disillusionment with the PSL didn’t come all at once, but a big piece clicked for me in 2025 with the 6th Party Congress.

Before the Congress, knowing I would again spend days in the same room as Eugene, Ben, and Brian, I realized I needed to talk to someone. Not Ben, not Nathalie, but someone I could trust cared about me. Even if it meant I was breaking discipline. I called a comrade in Albuquerque who is like a sister to me. I told her what had happened, what I was feeling. This time, I wasn’t assured it was okay. She didn’t say, “trust the comrades”. She was outraged. She cried. She was disgusted.

That conversation helped confirm for me that I wasn’t crazy, or weak, or responsible for what had happened to me. I had been wronged.

At the Congress, watching Eugene and Ben and Brian speak in session after session, I felt sick and trapped. On the third night of the Congress, I broke discipline again. I asked another woman on the Central Committee, someone who I had helped to recruit years before and who had been in very similar positions in the organization as me, if we could talk. We sat down on a curb in the dark and I told her everything. Again, it wasn’t assured away. She recognized in what I told her the patterns of the organization. She understood intimately how this could have happened. We reeled together at the reality of the organization we served. I asked her not to tell anyone and she didn’t.

While at the Congress, another situation unfolded that left me reeling. I watched leadership attack another woman comrade who I had known for years; who had also dedicated her life to building the Party.

During a session on artificial intelligence, this woman leader, an engineer with deep expertise, raised political concerns about the highly positive orientation on AI that was being presented. She had already submitted thoughtful written criticisms through the official pre-Congress process. It didn’t matter. Later that day, Brian pulled her aside and loudly berated her in view of people walking by.

Immediately afterward, leadership introduced an AI resolution and manufactured a “debate”. Comrades were pulled aside and instructed to speak in support of the AI resolution without being given access to read it before the session. Consensus was manufactured in real time. Kei Pritsker spoke out against this maneuvering and manipulation from the Congress floor. (Kei and the woman engineer have since resigned from the PSL)

Watching this unfold confirmed a fear I had resisted for years. Inside the PSL, genuine, thoughtful, political disagreement is treated as a threat rather than part of collective development. Even when it’s coming from trusted comrades who have proven their loyalty to the project from years of dedication.

Ultimately, it was at the Congress that I finally saw the organization from a perspective I could no longer deny. I was no longer looking at it as someone eager to prove herself or willing to explain away its contradictions. I was looking at it as someone who had given it everything, been harmed by a trusted leader, been left to navigate that harm alone, and yet still desperately wanted to believe the organization was capable of political honesty and growth.

What I saw instead was a leadership clique around Eugene, Ben and Brian that had consolidated its authority and would not tolerate meaningful criticism, even in the very spaces where criticism was supposedly being invited. And given my experiences with these specific men, I could no longer believe that the immense authority they commanded was justified by respect they had earned within the Party. I knew too much about how they exercised that authority behind closed doors.

After the Congress I talked a couple of times in the year since with the woman comrade I had confided in there, and I told her I was debating leaving the organization. I told the woman comrade from Albuquerque who I first confided in the same. Out of a sense of loyalty to our friendship, I also decided to tell Chris, who at that point had been quietly moved to a different state after becoming involved in another sexual misconduct scandal himself.

Chris went to Ben behind my back and told him about our conversations.

Ben began messaging me, expressing concern that I was unhappy with how my assault had been handled. He told me he would fly out to see me.

I couldn’t imagine having to sit in a room with Ben to discuss my assault again. I couldn’t imagine being asked what I wanted to make this all go away. I didn’t want to participate in figuring out damage control again, six years later. I knew the Party still had no processes in place to give me the care I needed then, let alone now. So I decided it was time for me to leave. I texted Ben back that his offers to fly out and see me didn’t address the harm that was done. Then I left the dozens of PSL chats I was in, and that was it. I was out.

I was soon called and texted by another leader, this time a woman. She informed me that Eugene had offered his resignation and the Party had accepted, as they found my feelings that my assault had been mishandled as “legitimate”. I was told the Party was taking this very seriously and was “reconstituting” and “systematizing” the Party’s processes through the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC), so this would never happen again. I had to laugh, because the comrade texting me and I both knew the truth about the NDC.

The lesson PSL refuses to learn

The PSL learned in 2020, both from my case and another sexual assault allegation, that it needed better protections, not real protections against assault, but PR defenses for the organization. That was when the PSL established the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC). I was asked to be part of its creation, just two months after my assault, when I was actively spiraling.

From the beginning, the NDC was a performance. It was guided by Ben, with three women of color there to legitimize it with our identities and our experiences with sexual violence.

The NDC was sufficient as long as it existed conceptually enough to be pointed to. No process was ever concretely developed or implemented. Certainly there was no clear process ever distributed to the membership or local leaders, no process that members know to follow. I truly challenge any member to cite evidence otherwise. In reality, allegations of misconduct continued to be dealt with through loose processes, typically handled by women who would call themselves members of the nonexistent “NDC,” operating as intermediaries for Ben or Brian.

I looked back and found the draft document we developed, in January 2021, which never became a real thing. What it outlines is far from a set of trauma-informed practices. It’s a set of protocols for damage control. It’s irrelevant anyway. Real processes for the NDC were never actually researched or developed beyond the one draft document. The point was that there was a document that carried the names of three women, including mine, which allowed the Party to say, “Women built our process, women who themselves experienced sexual violence, women of color. Question that and you question them.”

When in March of this year, Dolores Huerta and so many brave women came forward about César Chávez, PSL members in many of the branches that I liaised asked questions about our processes. In response to such questions from members, an internal orientation pointed to the NDC as proof of the safety and accountability for women in the PSL. It was just a few weeks later that I finally quit, and was told that the NDC would be “reconstituted” and “systematized:” an open admission that it had not actually been active, even though it had literally just been pointed to in response to concerns about Chávez that the PSL takes SA seriously.

To this day, nothing about how this was handled reflected care for me or concern for accountability. I didn’t ask for Eugene’s resignation. If what happened truly was a terrible drunken mistake, I do not believe it has to define the rest of his life. I never wanted punishment. I always wanted care.

When I was assaulted, I needed to be allowed to simply be the person who had been harmed. Instead, I immediately was handed the full burden of protecting both Eugene and the Party’s reputation. There needed to be a process that allowed me space and protection, allowed both of us to confront what happened honestly, and define a way to move forward collectively.

At the same time, their lack of process, and transparency means we still do not know whether I am the only person he has harmed. I carry the fear that there are other women who could say, “Me too.” And that for years, while I tried to be a “good comrade,” my silence may have betrayed not only myself, but them as well.

And that is what makes watching this unfold so painful. Once again, Eugene quietly leaves Party chats under the explanation of “health reasons,” while unsuspecting comrades send him heart emojis and well wishes. The pattern has not changed. The leadership remains committed to protecting its own reputation rather than confronting harm with accountability, and it still does not reckon seriously with what sexual violence does to the people who endure it.

Eugene’s resignation six years after the fact is nothing but a sacrificial offering to protect Ben, Brian, and the organization’s reputation. It’s a strategy. I anticipated from the moment I decided to leave that the Party would panic and want to put on record actions that can be referred to if they ever had to own up publicly to their mismanagement.

What their response has proven to me is that, despite every opportunity to learn their lesson, nothing fundamental has changed. Still the only thing that determines the process is the insulation of the organization. Not me, not what I want, not what will allow for reconciliation and healing, not what best protects women in the organization, not what corrects problems in the organization, but what protects Ben and Brian and the PSL from facing scrutiny.

What now?

I know what the response to this account will be: that Marissa never expressed any dissatisfaction with the “process”, that we did the best we could, and we’re learning now.

As a longtime organizer in a young and evolving organization, I have ample sympathy for the growing pains and inevitable shortcomings of an organization striving to do a lot with a little. But is this a good excuse?

It’s true, at the time of my assault, the PSL had no formal standards for handling such matters. The organization had also existed for 16 years. Numerous situations requiring navigating allegations of sexual misconduct had already come up. Ample resources on best practices existed to support the development of clear, trauma-informed processes in any organization. The PSL just did not use them. It instead opted for whatever informal secret resolution best served minimization in each case. And the truth is, if I sat down with Ben earlier this year when he offered to fly out and see me, I would have only experienced more of the same.

Unfortunately, my expectation is also that I will be more vehemently condemned by PSL leadership for my choice to share my experience than Eugene will be for assaulting me, or Ben and Brian will be for how they handled the situation.

This reality gets at the heart of something fundamental. What does it mean when someone who has been harmed is held to a higher expectation of perfection and discipline than the men who harmed her? Why are her choices considered more harmful to the movement than theirs?

An organization that cannot meaningfully hold its own leadership accountable, that must protect one or a handful of central figures at all costs, is not going to last.

If its members can substantially change it, great. For me, I no longer believe staying in the PSL is the principled choice. Nor do I believe the PSL can lead the kind of change our class needs. I don’t say that out of bitterness, but after eleven years of trying to build the PSL and watching it fail to correct itself at every opportunity.

Our class doesn’t need perfection. But it does need better leadership than this. It needs honesty. It needs accountability. It needs structures that can face harm without collapsing into denial or control. It needs organizations whose principles apply to their own leadership as much as anyone else.

It’s not good enough to keep telling us that we have a responsibility to a bad organization just because organizations must exist.

I still believe in fighting for a socialist future, but I believe we must do this with eyes wide open. I hope my story will help others to open their eyes and see.

Two peaks of Communist organization in the US are typically identified in the historical record: the CPUSA in the first half of the ’30s and the Black Panther Party (along with the New Left in general) in the ’60s and ’70s.² The first peak coincided with the Great Depression. The CPUSA’s success in the Deep South must be credited to the fusion of Communists with the Black national liberation movement, which itself was a line attributed to firstly Black revolutionaries themselves and secondly the Comintern and its intervention in CPUSA supporting the Black Belt Thesis.³ The second peak was in many ways a reaction to the class collaboration and liquidation of CPUSA by Browderism and McCarthyism, and the disorganization of the party by internal revisionist lines and Soviet revisionist “peaceful co-existence” policies, in particular the abandonment of the Black Belt Thesis and the liquidation of the Black national liberation struggle and Southern CPUSA branches. The second peak was characterized by theoretical eclecticism, adventurism, and the failure to consolidate all Communist forces into a unified revolutionary party to wage class war. The material basis for these errors, of course, lie in the original settler-system itself and the later development of a burgeoning labor aristocracy within the US Empire.

Owing to these factors, there hasn’t been a successful Communist revolution in the so-called United States to this day. The CPUSA was routed by its own internal enemies (arguably, stemming from its foundation as a forced merger of two settler-chauvinist groups and the Comintern’s complete failure to deal with the Indigenous land question) and became a reformist social-democratic organ; the New Left, which failed to build the united front against settlerism and therefore did not survive state repression, was shattered into various remnants and cults and erased or recuperated into the “nonviolent Civil Rights Movement” narrative in US history books. Therefore, it is of interest to me when there is history to be relearned that is not the stereotypical “crazy revolutionary age where students committed terrorism” depiction of the New Left.

Contemporaneous with the Black Panther Party for its brief three years, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (1969 to 1971) was consolidated out of spontaneous Black worker’s uprisings after the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the flowering of Black-led auto unions, student unions, and neighborhood organizations thereafter.⁴ Disagreements on whether to nationalize the revolutionary unions throughout the country or to consolidate and train members in Marxism-Leninism, and longstanding class tensions between workers and intellectuals led to a split, of which one faction merged with the California Communist League, later reforming into the Communist League, the Communist Labor Party, and finally, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America of which both authors of Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers are members of.

The bulk of Motown‘s contents is based on interviews with people who actually lived through the formative events that gave rise to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW). What the authors of this book hope for, clearly, is that this book will be more than a historical curio for niche specialists, and that the knowledge of generations past will contribute meaningfully to the present struggle. In this sense the book operates more as a collection of testimonies about the Black revolutionary worker’s movement in mid-1970s Detroit than a critical movement post-mortem. This is a weakness of the book, in so far as it is minimally editorialized (and where there is analysis, points of sharp disagreement arise for me).

It is also important to note that previous works about the LRBW were composed by outside academics whom rank-and-file workers refused to speak to, as is addressed in the first chapter. This book, published through the University of Georgia Press, is based on the testimony of those who actually lived through the events. That it exists at all is both something sad and hopeful; we are merely reading a radical history in place of living through the revolutionary changes that the members of the LRBW hoped for. But we can be glad that this knowledge has not been consigned to the dust bin of history, as much as the bourgeois state would like it to be, and is part of our inheritance as Communists that will arm us for future struggles.

Motown generally moves chronologically. Since all people start off as children, that is where the book starts. It accounts for the origins of LRBW leading members as immigrants or children of immigrants to the Midwest from the Southern US (or in another view, New Afrikan diaspora) and their paths to political activity, whether born into it as the children of the advanced masses or through personal experiences with capitalism and national oppression. These children grew up in a US that won the Second World War and reaped the profits of the imperialist (re-)redivision of the world, that was organizing a globalized White Terror to massacre Communists (and leftists of all stripes), and had already “cleaned up” at home with the domestic innovations of Browderism and McCarthyism.

With the disembowelment of the CPUSA (where it was not already insufficient in addressing the national question in the US Empire) and the disruption of institutional Communist memory, new organizers were left with the task of essentially developing mass organs from scratch in a hostile landscape dominated by state-controlled collaborator unions. Fortunately, the actions of the state itself gave workers the impetus to organize themselves in defense against repression. The Detroit Rebellion of 1967 was touched off by the police raiding a blind pig (unlicensed bar), one of the many that served as a node of social reproduction for factory workers. The heavy-handed state repression that came down, principally on Black workers, kicked off their self-organization in Revolutionary Union Movements (RUM) the following year, principally through the use of the wildcat strike, against both the auto corporations and the settler UAW. These RUMs were consolidated into the LRBW.

What I find useful about this section of the book is the descriptions of practical mass activities and tactics that organizers took on to mobilize not only the sections of Black workers within the factories themselves, but also to mobilize the households of striking workers. In the context of the struggle of Black workers against white-chauvinist and class-collaborationist unions, the wildcat strike was their primary weapon, as the disproportionate placement of Black workers in the most difficult, unsafe, and tedious jobs gave them control over specific choke points in the supply chains of major automobile manufacturers. Wildcat strikes were publicized and made into mass actions by the use of printed materials (especially the newspaper format, directly inspired by Lenin) circulated by high schoolers and use of existing cultural forms like music and poetry. The mass movement also had the services of radical lawyers on hand to defend workers from legal repression, though these intellectuals would later contribute to the split of the LRBW.

Specific material conditions (such as the proximity of bars to factories as an after-work socialization nexus) facilitated the mass movement, but in particular the effectiveness of the wildcat strikes and the RUMs themselves were based on the density of industry in the city. This tactic lost effectiveness as bourgeois counter-measures like offshoring and automation removed Black workers’ jobs and leverage. The wildcat strike cannot be repeated uncritically today (a point that is repeated again and again in this book), but must be related to organizational strategy under specific conditions at particular historical moments. Still, it is important to understand that previous generations of organizers did not fall into a stereotyped and mechanistic class-only or workplace-only style, but instead brought in all aspects of society possible to exert targeted pressure on specific contradictions.

Exemplary of creative organizing is how the RUMs brought in students and other non-workers into the movement, effectively supporting the workplace struggles by organizing entire neighborhoods for propaganda and logistics and to truly extend the RUMs into a mass movement. The book dedicates an entire chapter to the involvement of high school students (through the Black Student United Front) in the League and to the role of women in the day-to-day operations of the mass movement and especially in running Black Star Publishing. The LRBW conducted outreach to wives of striking workers to explain why their husbands were not working; the wives mobilized to support their husbands and organized themselves to take on many logistical tasks to support strikers (Scott and Katz-Fishman 2025, 82). The self-criticism on the treatment of women (especially the lack of women in the leadership) in the LRBW also is worth highlighting, though it appears that misogynistic men had not been quite as successfully weaponized by the state in the same manner that it was against groups like the Black Panther Party. In terms of obvious pitfalls that will destroy Communist organizations (or at least demonstrate their lack of internal democracy and inability to rectify themselves), the improper handling of patriarchal chauvinism and gender oppression shares the top spot with settler chauvinism.

On the topic of the split that led to the demise of the LRBW, the authors remain perhaps far more restrained than should be warranted (if I had to guess, to have those on the other side of the split consent to be included in the book at all). Though there are doubtless many sides to the narrative, it is commonly agreed on that there were two major factions of the split. The first faction, consisting principally of intellectuals, wanted to scale up the League and export its model to other cities in the USA, uniting revolutionary unions of Black workers nationwide in the Black Workers Congress (BWC). The second faction, consisting principally of workers themselves, wanted to develop and educate themselves in Marxism rather than nationalize the League. Importantly, the LRBW won workplace concessions around desegregation in the workplace and unions but did not fundamentally affect the exploitative class relations that workers experienced daily (Scott and Katz-Fishman 2025, 109).

These irreconcilable views led to the BWC faction resigning from the executive board and the education faction having to look afar for teachers themselves. They eventually found it in Nelson Peery of the California Communist League (CCL), and the remainder of LRBW was brought in to merge with the CCL, which (with many factions and organizations dropping in and out) eventually transformed into the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA).

The authors of this book remain cordial when discussing the other side of the split. Since I don’t need to, I will state that in my opinion, the intellectual elements who walked off the board were an opportunist faction who wished only to replicate and spread the LRBW model to other cities so that they could benefit from the larger movement personally as well as politically, with little attention to the burden this placed on workers in the organization, who themselves opposed it because they were already having difficulties maintaining the pace of organization in Detroit alone. Peery himself remarked on the fact that the LRBW had a lot of resources at its disposal thanks to its independent, self-funding Black Star Publishing press and the large amount of voluntary labor it was able to draw from Detroit’s Black working-class community. These were crucial resources to move the headquarters of the fused organization from California to Chicago.

Opportunism does not necessarily blatantly look like “selling out” because opportunist goals can align with revolutionary ones, even if the basic motive is unprincipled self-gain. Had the BWC plan been unanimously agreed upon by the Executive Board, the result of pursuing pure quantitative increases at the cost of educating organizers and workers to a higher level of theoretical understanding would have been the growth of a theoretically underdeveloped mass movement, unable to mount a challenge against its leadership clique and thereby reduced to following the clique’s whims instead of being able to sum up and readjust revolutionary strategy in a rational manner. The example of PSL and its literally idealist Socialist Consciousness Thesis, and the recent wave of resignations by principled Communists from that party is instructive for what consequences arise from pursuing quantity over quality, though the errors of the Mensheviks and their disdain for qualitative party-building predate the PSL. These were errors that should have been obvious to the intellectual faction and it is likely that intellectual petit-bourgeois prejudice against workers also played a role in fomenting the split.⁵

Related to this lack of editorializing, perhaps in reaction to the rampant sectarian nationalism (one might be reminded of the Jewish Labor Bund’s insistence on the exclusive right to organize Jewish workers, which was correctly repudiated by the RSDLP and other internationalist Social-Democratic parties at the time) in New Left, oppressed-national, and Communist organizations of the ’60s and ’70s, the analysis of the Multi-National Working Class is the one which shapes the entire book.⁶ In short, the thesis that the revolutionary class in the US Empire must be the “multi-national working class” ignores the stark fact that settler workers, as a class, subjugate colonized workers whenever they are united in class organs and that white supremacy is not a one-sided invention of the settler bourgeois class, but rather, a two-sided gentlemen’s agreement between the settler masses and the settler rulers. The formation of the new revolutionary vanguard party in the US Empire will not be guaranteed unless this reality is understood for what it is and all backdoors for white supremacy to sneak in through are hermetically sealed shut.

Nonetheless, the impact of practical experience in the LBRW integrated with Marxist education (as described in the last chapters of Motown) shows clearly in the lifelong dedication of individuals to the revolution (whether they are organized in the mass movement or in the LRNA and other organizations). At the same time, the failures of all revolutionaries up to the present day demonstrates how deeply embedded settler consciousness is even in those who truly do desire revolution. But, consciousness is a subjective factor that can be changed. Today, where the US Communist movement barely qualifies as a movement and continues to harbor red liberals and chauvinists of all stripes, and the advanced masses are drawn to ineffectual anarchism and adventurism because no current Communist organization has the ability to actually lead them to revolutionary action, reconstituting the party by principled, disciplined struggle and dialogue is the most urgent task to be taken by serious Communists.

I write this review as part of this disciplined struggle; there is no time to waste. As is emphasized in the final chapter of Motown, the working and oppressed masses are already on the move: the Communists must lead the way and not drag at the tail of the mass movement. With the climate apocalypse on the horizon, it is no longer a choice between socialism or barbarism; it is a choice between socialism or extinction.

Despite its editorial mutedness and disagreeable analysis of present day conditions, Motown is a book that should be read especially by those who are already familiar with the New Left and those seeking precedents for neighborhood and workplace organizing in oppressed-nationality communities. To pull a quote from Motown itself:

Survival of humanity and the earth requires all us to take up this revolutionary work. The revolutionary horizon is within our grasp. Make it happen!

1. The first chapter of Motown makes this exact same point about the academy and bourgeois media in general. ︎
2. The following summary of US Communist history relies on “A True Accounting of the CPUSA In Its Members Own Words” by G. Gracchus and Settlers by J. Sakai. ︎
3. The book Marxist-Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism by Frank Chapman covers the history of the intersection of Black nationalism with Communism; it specifically credits the Comintern’s outside intervention as a kind of “adult in the room” into intra-CPUSA debates to the correct line taken up by CPUSA during this time as regards the Black nation in the United States. Chapman was personally involved in politically lynching a member of Chicago FRSO who questioned the mythology of Black internationalism in 1935 around the Ethiopian-Italian war and advocated for the support of national liberation struggles within Ethiopia. J. Sakai also lauded 1935 as an example of Black internationalism in Settlers. ︎
4. There is a brief section that describes the LRBW forming their own Panther chapter to avoid conflict with them. This speaks to a lack of political stringency on the part of the Panthers and to the issues with a purely numerical view of organizing. Unfortunately the book does not opine so much about the different versions of Black nationalism promoted by the Panthers and other groups such as Nation of Islam. This was a missed opportunity in my view. ︎
5. If I had to speculate from the account of their behavior (specifically their disapproval about workers educating themselves while proclaiming Marxism to be the guiding ideology of LRBW), it appears that the intellectual faction drew upon an opportunistic reading of Kautsky’s political consciousness thesis as expounded on in Lenin’s What Is To Be Done. In essence, Kautsky’s thesis states that no class struggle in of itself is revolutionary; workers on their own can only develop trade-union consciousness and organize towards reformism. Socialist, revolutionary, political consciousness must come from the outside. This political consciousness originates from petit-bourgeois revolutionary intellectuals who fuse with the worker’s movement, providing political consciousness to the advanced ranks of the workers, realizing the proletariat as a conscious class-for-itself, and orient it towards the goal of social revolution. Shifting the meaning of words, one could argue that it is not the place of workers to be educated but that workers need to be under the firm and enlightened hand of a small elite of revolutionary intellectuals. ︎
6. Informing the bulk of political-economic analysis and thus strategic orientation is the thesis that automation, robotics, and AI/LLMs are developing a “new mode of production,” which is overstated in my view. I would point to the chief driver of the weakness of the Communist movement in the US and extending existing weaknesses caused by settlerism from the ’80s to present day, being the increased exploitation of the Global South (through industrial offshoring) resulting in the extension of the labor aristocracy and its settler unions, and the atomization of remaining proletarian workplaces through techniques such as digital securitization, external contracting, gig work, and other technological and organizational innovations on part of the imperial settler-bourgeois. However, even with all of their tricks, the bourgeois cannot outrun the law of the falling rate of profit and the fact that the machinery of society still remains in the hands of the colonized working class worldwide. ︎

Peoria is an average, mid-sized city in central Illinois that boasts the largest park district in the state.¹ Any resident of the city will tell you that these parks are used extensively for public events, by local clubs, associations, and anybody who wants to hike and/or bike through nature; all carefully maintained by an army of 144 full-time staff and around 1,400 part-time employees during the summer.² Considering the benefit these lands bring to the public, it is no surprise that there would be public outcry when a case to facilitate the O’Brien Steel company’s purchase of part of Detweiller Playground was rushed through courts last November.³

O’Brien Jr., a trustee for the nonprofit in charge of (supposedly) maintaining the park property, is also the executive vice president of O’Brien Steel company.⁴ A man so principled in duty that he is selling the land to himself. It is no wonder, then, that such secrecy clouded the court case last year; the media exposure of these backdoor deals has put the company in a bind and raised citizen environmentalist opposition to the sale.

The citizen opposition to the deal, consisting of concerned local residents and activists, gets to the point: this was a shady deal done out of sight of the news media and the public. The citizen opposition makes the argument that this land is useful and good for the public, and this is true. Even on an overcast day with cool temperatures, anyone can sit at the picnic tables and observe ordinary families use the playground, take the trail, wander around the fields, or go down to the docks. Not only do humans derive enjoyment from the playground and marina, but other animals live there and enjoy the park too. The citizen opposition is correct in every sense of the word to oppose this deal.

The mysterious confluence of private for-profit and nonprofit interests we see is not exceptional to Peoria, or even to Illinois. This is how, on a fundamental level, capitalism works. And it functions excellently. It is well known that members of Congress trade in stocks in a lively manner, that hankering Wall Street investors and hedge fund managers watch Trump trade stocks to inform their own decisions, that elected politicians often end up on corporate boards after their term is up, that insiders and fraudsters of all types make bank on cryptocurrency and Polymarket gambling rings, and there are too many examples of backdoor deals that go on daily and hourly to list here.

Apologists for the free market insist that these are exceptions and surface blemishes on the ideal of capitalism. But to the contrary, we insist the only version of capitalism that exists is the one that is put into practice. People and things are not free-floating ideas in the consciousness of individuals; people and things are engaged in real situations and real relations. They must be judged from their practical results. It is only by starting from analyzing objective reality that we can discover how something works.

We must investigate: What are the practical results of capitalist society on this land? What are its peculiar characteristics?

The Settler Colony

In the so-called United States, capitalism is intertwined with settler colonialism. Capitalist development in Europe, kickstarted by the looting of overseas colonies and human trafficking, dispossessed massive amounts of peasants of their land and diminished prospects for the offspring of the artisan and merchant middle classes. Those who could not live off of the land or off their small crafts or off of trading had to go begging for jobs in workshops that expanded into factories. They made less than the money they needed to live, and when they did live, they lived in cramped, squalid conditions.

The conditions of proletarian poverty drove waves of land-hungry settlers to the “New World.” That meant rampant land speculation, the “clearing” and subjugation of the Indigenous peoples already inhabiting the land, and their reduction of numbers by genocide and the trafficking of enslaved (primarily, West African) labor to replace enslaved Indigenous labor. In North America, these processes resulted in the creation of the settler nation, glued together by the invention of “whiteness” and common experience in colonial conquest. The settler-colonial system ensures that the settler nation lives off of the exploitation of the Black nation (and other national minorities) and the remaining Indigenous nations which, starting from the New Deal onwards, have been given paper governments which primarily facilitate neocolonial resource extraction. Neocolonialism means that, despite paper promises for Indigenous sovereignty in the form of federally recognized tribal status and governments, the US government and the settler-corporations still dominate the lives of Indigenous people, politically, economically, and environmentally.

Running a settler colony is not easy: when people are oppressed so extensively, they will resist with whatever means are at hand. Within the US Empire’s borders, domestic discontent by propertyless settlers and, more crucially, by the colonized working class, had to be pacified; imperial loot was redistributed to the former and repression was enacted upon the latter. Internal conflicts of settler colonialism are, in essence, exported via imperialism, which means rape and genocide across the whole world. Imperialism lowers the cost of labor and raw materials in the Global South by force; this stolen wealth bolsters the working class wages of the US Empire. The imperialist distribution of these kickbacks itself is stratified on class and national lines predefined by settler colonialism.⁵ This is, fundamentally, how our society functions on a day-to-day basis. It is no question that settler colonialism and imperialism inform every granular detail of politics within the USA.⁶

The foundation of our entire government and our entire idea of what constitutes “private” or “public” property rests on the conquest of preexisting Indigenous nations, the enslavement of the Black nation, and the exploitation/liquidation of oppressed national minorities (like the Chinese workers who died building California’s railroads, or the Latine laborers who work in the fields and factories). The foundation of settler society is the betrayal of every single promise made to peoples deemed non-human or “uncivilized.” These are facts that will not change with a simple land acknowledgement, nor they are privileges that will go away with piecemeal reforms to make settler society “more inclusive.”⁷

That is to say, no matter how correct the citizen opposition is in its stance against the subversion of public interests, no matter how militant it is in the fight to preserve a public good that is used by the working and oppressed masses regardless of nationality, the citizen opposition is also limited by its own views and existence as a progressive faction of settler society itself. When it is said that this deal undermines democracy and this deal takes away a public good, we must ask, whose democracy is it? Who makes up the public?

The answer is simply the democracy of the masses of settlers and the settler public (plus, the national minorities graciously granted use of public facilities). Our democracy is a paper democracy where in theory everyone is equal before the law and in practice it is economic power which drives political power.⁸ Our paper democracy allows us “protest” and “freedom of speech” for the stolen “public.”⁹

What is the specific history of Detweiller Playground, the Detweiller lands themselves, and how does it relate to the history of the settler colony?

Thomas Detweiller’s Gracious Gift 

Here is the story of how the Detweiller lands got into the hands of the public:

Let’s start with Captain Henry Detweiller, […] He was born in Larraine, France in 1825 and as a teenager found himself living here in Peoria, Illinois in 1837. He had a few jobs as a teen, but his heart and soul belonged to the Illinois River. He finally landed a job on one of the steamboats he loved so much and spent his life working on them, from deckhand to pilot to owner, becoming a local hero during the Civil War. In 1874 he finally retired from the river and went into the ice business here in Peoria, Illinois. […] Henry amassed a sizeable fortune as well as a lot of valuable land. His son and two daughters inherited all of the Captain’s assets, and set out to donate most of it to charities and the City of Peoria.

Thomas Hunter Detweiller took over his father’s business, and in consultation with his two sisters donated Detweiller Park to the Peoria Park District on July 23, 1927. The total land grant was 745 acres, and today the park board lists Detweiller Park as 601 acres. The gift later included some valuable riverside property where the old ice business once stood and an area set aside for a playground for children. Today there is a Marina within that land, and historians tell us that that was not the intended use of the Detweiller property.

Another source tells us:

The notable Illinois Riverboat Captain Henry Detweiller (d1907) had a deep love for the river, navigating riverboats up and down the Illinois. Upon retiring from navigating the river, he opened an ice business at the foot of Caroline St. The Captain was a successful businessman and accumulated wealth he left for his children. After his death, his son Thomas noticed “industry” was quickly taking over the Peoria riverfront and there was no place for the community to recreate and play along the river. As a legacy from the Detweiller family, Thomas set aside a piece of property that would belong to “the people” and be used for “public recreation and playground purposes”, in perpetuity.

Upon Thomas’ death in 1947, he gifted the land, the location of the Detweiller’s former ice works business, to the ‘People of Peoria’ through a trust—the “Detweiller Playground” (& Marina). A board of trustees and a trust fund was established in 1948 for care and maintenance of the land.

A classic American story! Henry, a young man from France, immigrates to the New World for a better life and becomes part of the working class of America. By hard work and ingenuity in running his small business he acquires land and a fortune to pass down to his son, who chooses to donate it to the public so that everyone can enjoy it.

Who were the workers who ran his ice business? From where did he acquire his land? What of the original inhabitants of the land, the civilizations that existed prior to Thomas Detweiller’s “gift”?

After the Taíno people encountered the bloodthirsty rapist Christopher Columbus in 1492, the European empires began to send colonists, soldiers, and traders who wished to make a fortune in the Americas. The nations that lived in what would become Illinois were related by the common Algonquian language family, including the Peoria People, whom the city is named for. The French gave these nations the name of the Illinois Confederation. Through germ warfare, trade, trickery, intermarriage, and divide-and-conquer tactics, the French colonizers staked out a vast claim on what would become the American Midwest and the interior of the American South. The purpose of this conquest was to secure a market for manufactured French goods in exchange for colonial raw materials, to boost nascent capitalist accumulation in Europe. This was no benign “natural market” but the seedling of imperialist domination.

This seedling would blossom fully into rampant settler colonialism with the inter-imperialist “French and Indian War,” after which the British Empire was “given” the French-claimed land in 1763 to expand their settler colonies. Decades before the land claims were transferred on paper, the nations of the Illinois Confederation already faced war and pressure from eastern nations, including the Iroquois Confederacy, who were themselves displaced by settlers. Disease and warfare from European settlers further slaughtered whole sections of the nations of the Illinois Confederacy. Although British defeats during the Seven Years’ War and the costs of garrisoning the colonies in general led to the empire restraining colonization and reserving the lands west of the Appalachian mountains for the Indigenous peoples, settlers continued to flaunt imperial law through murders and land-grabs no matter what their distant monarch said.

Two decades later, the inter-imperialist war of 1776, motivated in part by the class pressures of unlanded (and working class!) settlers seeking to breach the treaties set up by the British, would result in the independence of the US Empire. Unrestrained liberty to colonize what settlers viewed as “their” land, having already preemptively settled it in many cases with the accompanying violent means. The combination of unfettered colonization and knock-on effects from other nations facing settler aggression led to genocide waged on the Kickapoo People and other nations in Illinois, land concessions and displacement in 1819, culminating in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The act enforced the eviction of Indigenous peoples remaining in the area, resulting in mass deportations and forced marches to reservations in Oklahoma, essentially clearing out “living space” for white settlers.

Not every single Indigenous person left. Those who were able to stay on their land often were digested into settler society as marginalized national and cultural minorities (whether recognized by the federal government or not in the form of tribal status or NGOs), benefiting later from reformist measures and carve-outs won by radical Indigenous movements. However, the bulk of their nations were removed due to the genocide, leaving the remainder a tiny minority in the territory west of the Mississippi River.

Indigenous resistance to colonialism existed at every juncture of this history in the form of guerilla warfare, espionage, and diplomacy. The pan-Indigenous alliance formed by Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa across so-called Indiana and Illinois drew in nations from north and south to militarily resist the US Empire from 1812 to 1813. The sum effect of Indigenous resistance delayed the bulk of dispossession until 1830. Continued guerilla warfare prevented settler control over swaths of territory for several more decades. The Seminole Nation, formed from the remnants of several Indigenous nations and escaped African slaves, was eventually fractured and dispossessed, but a small group in the Everglades was able to fight the US Empire until 1858.

Taking this history into account, we find that Henry Detweiller entered the scene just in time to benefit from decades of targeted ethnic cleansing and freshly opened-up lands ripe for settling and capitalist exploitation. He would have been part of the economy that serviced the masses of settler-soldiers and their garrison-towns up and down the Illinois river. His workers would have been fresh immigrants escaping European conditions, likely from Ireland or Germany, or “native-born” settlers seeking upwards mobility through land and capital ownership.

Was the land truly gifted for everyone? No, it was not, we can say. No matter how much the story is repeated over and over again, with the enshrining of yet another white man’s name on Indigenous land, the truth still lies at the bottom of the pile of settler mythology.

Why does this historical blindspot exist?

Environmentalist and conservationist organizations have historically gone hand-in-hand with unfettered colonialism and imperialism.¹⁰ How else would you secure the lands you must “preserve” other than by military conquest and garrisons? How can you imagine preserving land “unused” by humans in any other way than denying Indigenous inhabitation and subsistence on that land? Moreover, despite the promises of old conservationism to preserve natural resources for “future generations,” the liquidation of the natural world, piece by piece, is inevitable, as long as capitalism exists. As long as our entire society is ordered around the pursuit of profit, public parks and public lands will not exist in perpetuity but as banked resources to cash in when the going gets tough. The future generations are nothing compared to the present needs of unlimited expansion, which is the organizing logic of cancerous masses.

There is the root of the injustice and inequity we see before our eyes. It was not gifted to “everyone.” It was in fact taken away from its previous inhabitants, then declared to be special and set apart for the settler public to enjoy, neglected by rapacious capitalists through the instrument of the nonprofit board, and now, it is in danger of liquidation and conversion into capital, merely storage space, for the profit of a private company. From being a living thing, home to many other living things, it will be transformed into a dead space to pile on dead metal to furnish the conversion of more living things into dead things.

The Revolution Against Ecocide

Since the establishment of the first colony of the thirteen colonies that would eventually form the US Empire, the basic industries of the United States have been, in aggregate, an engine of Indigenous dispossession, Black slavery, and ecocide, the murder of the environment and the eradication of the ecosystems that make up this continent. What may happen to Detweiller Playground is yet another murder in a long spree of murders taking place all over the country, spanning more than two and a half centuries.

The citizen opposition to ecocide may succeed against capital. They may earn a stay of execution with their arguments even as the agreement hangs in limbo.¹¹ Much like the struggle against the imposition of data center construction onto towns, which are the most egregious example of how even settler democracy does not give capital any pause, they might win.¹² However, without opening the question of land and our human relationship to it as part of nature itself, without considering the aspects of class and nation, the only path of opposition to ecocide is incremental legalism, ineffectual protest, or occasionally, individual adventurism. The opposition, with their tools arising from settler-democratic norms and practices, may never need to reach for anything else for this battle. Peaceful protest and petition to the local settler government may be enough.

But capital and the profit incentive insists on growth for its own sake, like a cancerous mass, and the immune system cannot hold it back forever. The fundamental metabolic rift of capitalism is that the alienation from the land we live on, at the behest of increasing accumulation, has irreversibly disrupted ecological cycles and processes. The metabolic rift in the form of climate change manifests most severely: the earth is on track to surpass the 1.5°C average global warming benchmark as this year’s El Niño may herald even more warming in 2027 and bring more natural disasters. The imperialist genocide of the Palestinian people, fully supported, aided, and abetted by the US Empire, is an ecocide that is directly responsible for the acceleration towards climate disaster.

More than crude surgery, we need the most sophisticated forms of radiotherapy and chemotherapy to save the patient, our planet.

Our prescription is revolution. Revolution means the dismantling of the settler-bourgeois government and its privileges, the return of “public” lands and “private” property not to settler “public” ownership but to Indigenous stewardship and care. Revolution means that those who bleed and sweat every day in service to maintaining the vital functions of human society will have control over it. In short, revolution is the end of all forms of exploitation, of not only human but non-human living things, and the restoration of a relationship to the land which protects and nurtures the land, and each other as human beings. Revolution means dissembling the US Empire and the imperialist army, to give Palestine back to the Palestinians, to relinquish control over Indigenous land and make reparations to the oppressed nations of the world. Then, and only then, may the healing start at last.

“But the Indigenous people who live in Peoria are a tiny minority of the population and highly integrated into settler society,” one might say. “There is no war here to fight against settler colonialism, when the frontline is in Black Hills and Pe’ Sla is seven hundred miles away.¹³ How can we fight against settler colonialism in a place where it has already won?”

This is a small perspective. Peoria, like every other capitalist society, is sustained by exploited labor. The stratification of labor on national lines (Black and Latine workers, especially immigrants, face the sharpest class-national oppression) creates the conditions for the “middle class” indeed, settler society itself, to carry on as normal, while the labor of the petit-bourgeois and labor aristocratic middle classes furnishes imperialism at home and afar.¹⁴ The “middle classes” find their interests pulled both above in line with the capitalists and below in line with the lower working class; many of them become radicals from a combination of practical experience and Communist education.

Even settler workers, as a class actively bribed by both imperialism and settler colonialism, can find reasons to be dissatisfied with their current way of life. Pay attention to the numerous complaints of unsafe working conditions, abusive management practices, and racial abuse at O’Brien Steel itself! Do these workers support the expansion of their dangerous and exploitative workplace and more profits for their bosses, or are these workers the key element in stopping the deal, who can be drawn by the issues of workplace safety and disrespect from management and united with the citizen opposition to the land sale? It is Black and Latine workers here, who are forced to take the worst, most dangerous, yet the most important and critical jobs, who have the most leverage.

The settler nation, already full of fractures, must be further divided on class and gender lines.¹⁵ The settlers honest enough to see through the facade of settler society and to determine that their true interests lie in defection must be brought into the fold (by the truth and not by deceit!) of revolutionaries, and further developed into comrades and accomplices to the colonized peoples of the world. What we require to remake discontented settlers into freedom fighters is the political discipline that can only come from the Communist party with its roots in the class-national liberation struggles of the colonized working class, not a “Communist party” that represents the interests of colonizers.

If the US Empire’s early political economy was an engine fueled by Indigenous liquidation and Black exploitation, it quickly overflowed its borders to parasitize the rest of the world the moment its external fetters were loosened by the inter-imperialist war of 1776. Today the engine is one that profits handsomely from not only its internal colonies, but from international death and waste, and sustains its bourgeois class and its labor aristocratic working class on the dual pillars of the oppressed nations within the US Empire itself and the Third World peoples that global imperialism enchains. The very same machinery that drops bombs in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran, and other “far” places is the one that is paving over the land within US borders.

To stop the engine, by any means necessary, is the highest political imperative of anyone who has continued interest in living on a habitable earth.

To the settler in opposition: motivated by your love of nature, your genuine commitment to democracy and the common good, however misled by settler society, we say that it is not too late. Commit yourself to landback, to Indigenous liberation, to decolonization and communism. Link your arms with the decolonialists and Communists and fight for their liberation. Betray your class and your nation and in doing so you will merely liberate yourself and the entire world.

1. Peoria is so average that there was even a phrase coined: “Will it play in Peoria?” This refers to performing arts shows previewed in Peoria. As of 2024, the park district has 29 parks and 66 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. ︎
2. As of March 2026. ︎
3. The Detweiller Playground Board was actually working on selling off part of the land as far back as April 2025, but the plan was approved by the Illinois Attorney General in November 2025. O’Brien is listed on the board as of 2024 tax filings. Of note is the amount of assets that the board owns and the yearly expenditures. If the park is dilapidated and unsuitable for use, why is it not being maintained with these funds? The playbook is clear: take a “public” good, neglect and degrade it, then use its poor condition to justify its liquidation! This is the same tactic that conservatives call “Starving the beast” whereby reducing expenditures on social services by cutting taxes, those services perform more poorly, thus justifying more cuts. ︎
4. As of January 2025. ︎
5. As according to statistics collected by the US government itself, Indigenous people consistently report nearly twice as much unemployment as do non-Indigenous people. This statistic worsens with Indigenous people who live on reservations, which are neglected by the US government when not seized in pursuit of resource extraction or to develop industries for the benefit of settlers and the Indigenous collaborationist bourgeois. Indigenous reservations and Black neighborhoods are also disproportionately food deserts. The key distinction between oppressed nationalities within the imperialist countries and oppressed nationalities outside of them is that the former can enlist in the imperial military and thereby benefit from imperialist rape. That ex-military members from oppressed nations in the USA are easily discarded once their usefulness runs out demonstrates that no amount of individual collaboration with the imperial armed forces is enough to save anyone. ︎
6. See J. Sakai’s Settlers for a more or less comprehensive history of settler society. ︎
7. The following section of Indigenous history draws upon this article as well as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. ︎
8. The Civil Rights movement, itself torn with internal factions but united on the question of Black integration into settler society, existed on the right of national liberation movements (exemplified by the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party) in the heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. The organizing of this era won concessions from settler society against legal segregation and public lynch terror. Nonetheless, economic and spacial segregation still exists deeply in Peoria, lynching remains a mainstay of police terror all over the country, and persists in the private sphere. ︎
9. Working people have little free time to engage in electoral politics and oppressed nationalities are actively prevented from exercising even paper rights. The recent gutting of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which used to (somewhat) prevent racial gerrymandering, will accelerate the latter trend even more. We are permitted to have “protests” in the form of liberal parades and rallies as managed by 50501 and the liberal-resistance complex. Protests that cause disruption or are escalated by the police are called riots instigated by “domestic terrorists.” Freedom of speech, especially of the kind proscribed by NSPM-7, is also on a contracting trend. ︎
10. Theodore Roosevelt, arch-imperialist and general showboater, was also a great outdoorsman and committed conservationist. ︎
11. As of April 25th, 2026, the issue would be revisited in mid-May, but this did not happen. ︎
12. The rush to build data centers to resource more and more energy-intensive large-language models goes hand in hand with the monopolization of computing power and the apocalyptic Silicon Valley “General AI” ideological project. Of course, the boom in construction jobs satisfies the collaborator unions who represent the labor aristocracy and their hanger-ons. Incidentally, this represents the true face of trade-unionist consciousness held by these workers as they are unable to see past the short-term gains for their workplaces for the long-term negative effects of the increased energy and water usage of data centers and the monopolization of computing capacity under the control of a few corporations. Labor aristocracy is obviously associated with settlerism but is not a complete correlation— many degree holders imported from outside the USA become part of the labor aristocracy regardless if they are white or not. ︎
13. As of May 4th, 2026, Indigenous youth successfully defended the Lakota sacred site Pe’ Sla from a mining company in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. ︎
14. “Middle class” refers to the petit-bourgeois and the labor aristocracy, which in the context of the USA have porous boundaries. The petit-bourgeois are people who derive their income from owning the means of production and employing workers and usually also work themselves because of the smallness of their business. The labor aristocracy refers to the upper layer of well-paid workers who have good benefits and lead reformist trade unions and other groups which prevent the development of revolutionary working-class organizations as well as a “peripheral” labor aristocracy, a kind of unorganized reactionary flotsam whose inflated real wages and access to credit exceed the costs of living (healthcare, housing, transit, retirement, etc.) thus making their immediate interests the preservation of imperialism. ︎
15. Simple exposure of settler workers to colonized workers in their workplace results in the subjugation of the interests of nationally oppressed workers to settler workers. Rather, there must be revolutionary, decolonial, conscious unions that aim to construct the Communist party as well as other organs which unite students, disabled people, and the unemployed population together. Gender oppression refers to both the oppression of women and to the oppression of LGBTQ+ people in general. The current exterminationist stances taken by the federal government against trans people means that, if organized properly, trans settlers will become an important asset in the fight for decolonization and for communism. ︎

I live in the Twin Cities. Most anti-ICE spaces you find here don’t mention anti-imperialism in their organizing. In general, the Twin Cities is dominated by two backward political tendencies. The first is a vague “abolitionist,” anarchistic tendency that lacks principled anti-imperialist analysis — these spaces do not express support for the Iranian government, Hezbollah, the other Islamic resistance groups in Palestine, or any perceived state or state-adjacent entities. Most groups of this tendency simply distance themselves from the responsibility to take a stance, and do not seriously consider the contributions made by the Islamic Resistance groups in the global anti-imperialist struggle, theoretically or practically. The worst will outright slander these movements, if pressed.

The second backwards tendency is led by the Four Opportunists (primarily FRSO in my locale) who largely tail other local opportunist figures of the NPIC in the Twin Cities. What both tendencies have in common is imperial chauvinism. This chauvinism is borne of their class position on the global stage and their programs reflect that. Actually winning a new world would mean they’d lose a lot in the process. How does this play into the general anti-ICE movement in Minneapolis? Why do we need an anti-imperialist, anti-ICE movement?

The principal contradiction of our time is still that between rich and poor nations, parasite nations and nations deemed exploitable and even erasable. Global migration today is a system of restricted mobility that benefits rich countries at the expense of poor countries. This system benefits workers within the core, not just a select few bourgeois. Lorenzo Delgado Araujo, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, and countless others were murdered by ICE and complicit federal agencies for the maintenance of the global imperialist hierarchy. Global North states and their mostly euro and euro-settler populations seek to cage Global South workers in their home countries where they can be superexploited by multinational corporations, their partner states in the North, and their neo-colonial allies. Deportation, rape, and internment all function to say to these workers, “STAY IN YOUR PLACE.” The miserable wages paid to workers in a country like Mexico, end up subsidizing 25-40% of the wages paid in the North.¹ Pulling from the same source, we can truly see just how much value drain there is from South to North as a result of these massive wage differentials:

“In 2023 alone, a staggering $135 billion was siphoned off from Mexico due to the underpayment of labor in the export sector. This figure is not merely an abstract number—it represents 7.5% of the country’s entire GDP and an astonishing 37% of its manufacturing GDP.”²

There is no productivity difference between a Mexican factory worker and an amerikan factory worker. Why would there be? The notion that there is some inherent value difference between Mexican and amerikan labor is a racist one. This national chauvinism undergirds the global division of labor.³ There is no economic law that says that these two people should earn different wages, it is instead a reality decided by global class struggle.

When compared to remittances,⁴ the $135 billion in drain is more than double what was sent home by migrants in the same year.⁵ The World Bank and other neo-liberal international institutions often claim that these remittances are a key factor in economic development for poor countries, but this is a lie. How can these meager remittances (in total $63 billion in 2023) compare to the amount of value drain in just the export sector alone in Mexico? What these institutions like the World Bank want is to perpetuate the myth that migration is good for poor countries, when in fact it only drains them of their labor force, stunts national development, and keeps them stuck in a cycle of unequal exchange which benefits a bourgeois-settler class alliance in places like amerika. The results of this are higher infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy, little to no government services, and malnutrition in the Global South.

Those who do make it North are sequestered to essential industries where they face horrible working conditions. There is little to no institutional support for migrants during periodic capitalists crisis or pandemics like COVID. Many can’t leave their initial employer due to laws around temporary work visas. This restricted mobility in the destination country allows employers to depress wages.⁶ Those who opt for more mobility without the sanctioned paperwork are put into a dangerous position, only made more visible since Obama left office, but with the same violent border apparatus at work.

The federal government’s continued murder of migrant workers feeds a bloodthirsty white supremacy born of these global class hierarchies. As imperial countries utilize genocidal terror to enforce these class divisions, the racist superstructure becomes an end in itself, beyond any purely economic motive. Samir Amin explains this as the genocidal solution to the global reserve army of labor.⁷ Pushed off their land in the countryside, displaced to urban centers within their home country, where employment is not guaranteed, many make the decision to emigrate North. Contrary to what liberal yard signs might tell you, migration is not beautiful under imperialism. The migrant worker must leave their home and by foot or boat, make the perilous journey to amerika or europe. Many hundreds of thousands die in transit and all this is by design.⁸ There is a killing for killing’s sake. Without understanding this dimension, we will fail to grasp the totality of the system in power. It operates on both an economic motive and a purely racist, genocidal logic endemic to amerikan and european nationalisms.

Amerika was born as a euro-settler slave empire and no matter how much people (even on the left) want to play 4d chess to recuperate some idealized vision of amerikan “values,” this effort will always be counter to anything oppressed people have actually experienced. This is anti-materialist and revisionist. The amerikan empire has for centuries maintained a system of unequal exchange between North and South, where wages are depressed and governments that seek to undo these unequal relations are overthrown. Resistance movements are ruthlessly hunted by neo-colonial state forces and amerikan backed paramilitaries like the contras in Nicaragua or the Grey Wolves in Turkey. The amerikan empire has never been a “nation of immigrants” or a “grand social experiment” in democracy. It has always been and always will be a settler-empire which sucks the global proletariat of its time, labor, and life. Failure to understand this fact means we will continue to seek false solutions or reforms within the amerikan framework. People will endlessly protest and campaign for things that cannot be achieved because the contradictions at hand are so antagonistic that the level of struggle proposed is wildly insufficient to attain them. Otherwise, they will claim false victories as they continue to underestimate the ways in which the empire can absorb their paltry demands while staying in the driver seat. Therefore, principled anti-imperialism must be anti-amerikan and we should not hide from that, but rather unfailingly push that line forward in mass organizations and pre-party formations.

While continuing to refine our means for resisting the imperial border apparatus (ICE, CBP, DHS, etc.), to make the anti-ICE movement truly anti-imperialist will mean that we Center the South in our organizing. What does “Center the South” mean? No materially backed internationalism is practiced in any meaningful way by USians. Not paying attention to the global situation means we miss the key ways the US empire reproduces itself. In the case of anti-ICE organizing, the situation within migrant’s home countries is only ever a footnote in anti-ICE spaces. When it does come up, its only ever a passing comment on direct military intervention in X country or coups orchestrated by the CIA and State Department. Unequal Exchange is never identified as the primary force motivating migration. This is due to the inconvenient implications such an analysis presents to people with a vested class interest in the amerikan standard of living. Ecuadorians make up the majority of Latin American migrant workers living in Minneapolis, yet there is little to no talk of how we can integrate an analysis of the revolutionary situation in their home country, into our solidarity organizing. Can Twin Cities leftists explain the recent history of Ecuador? Not only does this have implications for our strategy, but it affects the way we engage with migrant workers. You need to meet people where they are at, and part of that is understanding where they’ve been. There are complicated internal contradictions within the home countries of migrants that have implications for organizing with migrant workers in the imperial core. In addition, those workers are still connected to their home countries. Many send remittances home and at the very least they keep in contact with their families who stay behind. They have a vested interest in the well being of their home country and so should we if we are in true solidarity with migrant workers.

We must create a two-pronged approach to anti-ICE organizing. Centering the South in our anti-ICE organizing would look like us making deep, committed relationships with Global South liberation movements and asking them what they need materially to support their movements. I hear a lot about centering the oppressed in Minneapolis organizing spaces, but without any real efforts to practically center the most oppressed, much less the oppressed people geographically distant from people in the room. This must be support without stipulations as to their tactics, but it also needs to be support that is intentional. Understanding that there are likely many different groups trying to bring about a new society in any given country, it makes sense to take the time and effort to evaluate their specific political vision. Solidarity should be scientific, not paternal or savioristic. Therefore it is incumbent that those in solidarity do not shirk their responsibility to do a proper study of conditions in Global South countries, understanding that the best sources will be from these regions. Some questions for investigation might be: Is there a revolutionary situation in this country? What objective and subjective forces are involved? How do the revolutionary forces relate to the masses? What are their programs and general strategy?⁹ The more countries that are able to de-link from imperialism, the weaker the social bribe will be for workers in imperial core countries, creating more potential for a revolutionary situation.¹⁰ Unequal exchange must be addressed on a practical level and geographic distance must not limit the relationships we build.

Of course making a revolution in the imperial core is the most effective way to do internationalism, but that has not been so simple. Part of the reason has been the high living standards of large swaths of the populace. Revolutions do not happen just because someone wants it. People have to need it and simultaneously understand their agency in the matter. The other reason has been the subsequent revisionism which has confused the movement with regard to class struggle in amerika. The original class struggles were that of the slave v.s. the master and the settler v.s. the indigenous. These contradictions remain central antagonisms in the core of settler-empire. The workers movement has always sided with imperialism and yt-settler chauvinism. Ask Samuel Gompers or the CPUSA of the 40’s and 50’s. The principal struggle here in amerika is that over land and autonomy for the colonized. It is essential to develop international support for Global South revolutions, while also remembering that the internal colonies here are some of the weakest links in the imperial chain. As the state and settler masses continue their genocide of New Afrikans and Indigenous nations, we must also center these struggles in our overall strategy, rather than some vague “multi-national working class” struggle.

All who are active in anti-ICE work should make Spanish language learning a matter of organizational policy. There has been and remains a gap between the direct recipients of this pig terror and those in solidarity. Part of this is a lack of commitment towards personal relationships with these people. Something that will help is active work to overcome this language barrier. It will not be the only thing needed, but it will help. Even knowing some Spanish is better than nothing, but I implore you to take study seriously. Language adoption as an organizational policy should help negate the difficulties of language learning access barriers if you were to just go in on it alone. All migrants are under attack, so if your locality seems to have a higher percentage of people speaking something other than Spanish, then by all means dive into that language! Understand it will take a lot of time and you will often plateau, but that is the nature of organizing in general.

We must continue to combat ICE, DHS, CBP, and other federal agencies while understanding the very serious war we are in with amerika as a whole. These agencies play a crucial role in enacting the violence that maintains a global division of labor which creates the amerikan standard of living. This must be a war without terms, not because we want it to be, but because these agencies are essential to the current imperialist order. They will not be disbanded by politicians or well articulated speeches. The progressive aspect of the anti-ICE movement here in Minneapolis has been the elements who have put their bodies on the line to physically confront the enemy forces. While continuing to resist internment, deportation, and murder, we must also develop a holistic strategy to end the united states. The people of Minneapolis should know this from 2020. Politicians who promised to abolish the police were merely trying to demobilize an insurrection, and they fulfilled that task well. The same promises will continue to be made and broken by the settler state until the oppressed take matters into their own hands. The police, ICE, and CBP will exist until they are crushed.

“The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.”¹¹

1. Crossa, Mateo, and Álvaro de Regil Castilla. “Value Transfer and Labor Arbitrage Based on Unequal Exchange: The Case of Mexico–USA”, Journal of Labor and Society 28, 2 (2025): 157-182, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10183 ︎
2. Ibid. ︎
3. I use the term racism and national chauvinism interchangeably here, and while they are related, they are not the same. I merely do this as a colloquialism. Race and nation are important to differentiate because race obfuscates clear political objectives that national liberation demarcates more clearly, i.e. land as the basis of decolonization/economic autonomy and political autonomy. ︎
4. Any portion of wages sent by migrant workers in destination countries to their home countries. There is an extensive infrastructure built around fees and services related to sending remittances. This usually degrades the original amount workers send home. ︎
5. Ibid. ︎
6. In general, wages tend to equalize within countries due to the fact that most citizens can move freely from employer to employer. This is not the case for migrant labor living under a border regime which follows them even once they’ve crossed these fictious borders. Again, restricted movement is essential to global wage differentials. ︎
7. Samir Amin, “World Poverty, Pauperization, and Capital Accumulation”. Monthly Review 55, no. 5 (October 2003). ︎
8. Iker Suarez, The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle. https://anti-imperialist.net/blog/2025/08/15/the-migrant-genocide/ ︎
9. Torkil Lauesen, Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism.1986. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/68ed338d2e083114d762ecb7/t/6970c175092eb26a3852f785/1768997238857/Iskra+Books+-+Unequal+Exchange+and+the+Prospects+of+Socialism+-+w.pdf ︎
10. I do not mean to narrowly imply that conditions alone make revolution. I believe that many of the insights articulated by Grace Lee Boggs in Organization Means Commitment still ring true. There is a cultural backwardness in amerika, produced by these parasitic economic relations and white cultural imperialism, that we must fight internally. Objective and subjective forces must align for us to bring about the world we want. ︎
11. CLR James, The Black Jacobins. p. 78.1938. ︎

The Kebra Negast

In the 14th century, the ideological foundation for Ethiopia was written. This text, borne in the ancient clerical language of Ge’ez, was known as the Kebra Negast, or the Glory of Kings. This 900-page epic framed “Ethiopia” not simply as the highlands of Abyssinia but as the biblical and universal land of Cush. This was an ideological construct, an Ethiopian Zionism, that would be wielded to justify imperialist claims over the entire Horn of Africa. The Kebra Negast became the pillar of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and the Solomonic Dynasty that reigned from 1270 AD through 1974, facilitated the fusion of church and state, and most notably, served as the basis for Abyssinia’s European-backed crusades at the end of the 19th century that would lead to the formation of modern Ethiopia as a prison house of nations.

The Kebra Negast, in essence, named the leaders of “Ethiopia” as the direct descendants of the biblical Ancient Israel. It appropriated the name Ethiopia from the Bible’s Psalm 68:31, which proclaimed that “princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” 

As the epic is told, on a delegation to Israel, the Queen of Sheba (of “Ethiopia”) was wooed by King Solomon of Israel, and they had a night of passion. Back in Ethiopia, she had his child. She named that child Menelik, and when he grew up, Menelik traveled to Jerusalem to meet his father, Solomon. Solomon then recognized Menelik as his favorite child and tried to convince him to stay to be his heir. Menelik refused, opting instead to return to his mother. Resigned, Solomon sent Menelik away with a large company, including the first-born sons of his nobles and a congregation of Hebrew priests. Resentful that they were forced to leave Jerusalem, the priests smuggled with them the Ark of the Covenant, a gold chest that bore the very tablets that God himself inscribed the Ten Commandments in. When Solomon discovered the theft, he attempted to pursue them, but the ark’s divine power miraculously flew Menelik and his entire party to Ethiopia unscathed.

According to the legend, since then, the ark has been held in the Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, located in modern Ethiopia’s northern Tigray province. Today, a constant stream of the devout huddle in the cathedral or congregate outside to bask in its glow. However, nobody besides the Guardian Monk (the highest ranking priest tasked with watching the ark for life) is allowed to enter the Holy of Holies where the ark is housed. All others, according to the Hebrew Bible, are strictly forbidden from looking at the ark lest they be struck dead by God.¹ Ethiopian Orthodox churches across Ethiopia and throughout the world are constructed as models of Solomon’s temple and contain within them symbolic replicas of the ark.  

Thus, Ethiopia’s mythical relationship to Ancient Israel is consecrated through Menelik I, the Ark of the Covenant, its Orthodox churches made in the image of Solomon’s temple with replicas of the ark, and the distinctive Hebrew traditions, practices, and language imbued within Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity itself.

The story of the Kebra Negast, placed alongside an excerpt from the Jewish text Midrash Tanchuma, shows clearly how Ethiopia as the holder of the ark meant it could best Ancient Israel and situate itself at the center of the universe:

As the navel is set in the center of the human body, so is the land of Israel the navel of the world; it is situated in the center of the world, and Jerusalem in the center of the land of Israel, and the Temple in the center of Jerusalem, and the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, and the Ark in the center of the Holy of Holies, and the foundation stone before the Holy of Holies, because from it the world was founded.²

Wielding the Kebra Negast

In the centuries following the Kebra Negast’s completion, the Abyssinian aristocracy, priests, and nuns acted as if they were descendants of the Ancient Israelites. Kings and emperors viewed themselves as Kings of Zion and they invoked Solomonic descent through their names and titles. Zara Yaqob of the 15th century wrote theological treatises that framed Ethiopia as the Ark’s resting place. Emperor Yitzhak (Isaac), took his name from the Hebrew Bible’s Isaac, a founding figure of Judaism. And centuries later, there was Menelik II, the emperor that carried out the European-backed crusades against the Oromo, Somali, Sidama, and other nations at the end of the 19th century to establish the foundation of modern Ethiopia. 

The significance of Menelik II’s name was that, while wiping out the people in the south and east,³ sending Black Abyssinian settlers from the north into their lands to enslave them,⁴ carving out his gains alongside the European powers in the Berlin Conference,⁵ and mass–converting the survivors from their Indigenous religions and Islam to Orthodox Christianity,⁶ he was legitimizing his claim as the direct descendant of Menelik I, the prized child of King Solomon of Ancient Israel. Thus, contemporary with the genocide of Palestinians and occupation of Palestine by Jewish Political Zionism was the genocide and occupation of the Oromo, Somali, Sidama, and other nations by Ethiopian Zionism.⁷

The Ethiopian Jews

All of this is to say nothing of the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews who reside near Gondar in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara province. The Beta Israel are both a source of legitimacy to Ethiopia’s claims to descent from Ancient Israel and a source of revulsion, given that Jews are viewed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians as the betrayers of Christ.

To the Ethiopian Zionists, possession of the Ark, the Beta Israel’s habitation in Ethiopia, and the existence of Ethiopia as a bastion of Orthodox Christianity is proof that the Jews of Ancient Israel were “restored” and perfected through their religion. In contrast to European Christian Zionists who played a crucial role in establishing ‘israel’ in Palestine (such as Arthur Balfour and Reverend William Hechler), who believed the world’s Jews must return to Palestine to eventually convert to Christianity and usher in the second coming of Christ, Ethiopian Zionism already proclaims itself the final, perfected version of Israel. Zion, not in waiting, but already fulfilled.

As the Kebra Negast reads:

The daughters of Jerusalem suffered disgrace, and the daughters of Ethiopia were held in honour; the daughter of Judah was sad, whilst the daughter of Ethiopia rejoiced; the mountains of Ethiopia rejoiced, and the mountains of Lebanon mourned. The people of Ethiopia were chosen [from] among idols and graven images, and the people of Israel were rejected. The daughters of Zion were rejected, and the daughters of Ethiopia were honoured; the old men of Israel became objects of contempt, and the old men of Ethiopia were honoured. For God accepted the peoples who had been cast away and rejected Israel, for Zion was taken away from them and she came into the country of Ethiopia.⁸

The Beta Israel endured brutal conditions in Ethiopia. Many of them looked to the Yishuv (early Jewish settlements in Palestine) and later, the newly emerging ‘israel.’ Over time, they saw it as their promised land and in small pockets began to “make Aliyah” — to flock there — undermining Ethiopian Zionism’s narrative of the perfected Zionist entity and bolstering israel’s claims to embodying Eretz Israel, the land of return for the world’s Jews. Given the Beta Israel were considered the world’s oldest practitioners of Judaism, their allegiance lent gravity to whoever could win it.

In fact, on his first visit to Jerusalem in 1924, Haile Selassie (at the time known as the Crown Prince Tafari Mekonnen under Empress Zewditu) rebuffed an inquiry by the Chief Rabbinate of the Yishuv into improving the lot of the Beta Israel. “The history of the Ethiopians and Israelites indicates that these two nations are similar in race… in regard to the Jews known as [Beta Israel] and located in Ethiopia, we will always try to give them our help and protect them from every evil,” he replied.⁹ Holding fast to its Zionist claims, for many more decades, Ethiopia would refuse to give its stately blessing for Beta Israel migration despite ongoing israeli pressure.

Simultaneous Crisis Draws Together the Twin Zions

In October 1935, the Italians unleashed a full-scale attack on Ethiopia as a prelude to World War II. Oromos, who since the era of Menelik bore a deep resentment for Abyssinian rule, seized the moment to reclaim their lost freedom. In 1935, the Raya and Azebo Oromos attacked the Abyssinian armies traveling to and from the Battle of Maichew. In 1936, the Oromo of Jimma attacked and expelled Amhara officials and thereby demonstrated their rejection of colonial rule. In western Abyssinia, the hereditary rulers of the Oromo declared their independence and formed the Western Oromo Confederation (WOC), offering themselves as a mandate territory of the League of Nations.¹⁰

The same year the WOC was formed, Emperor Haile Selassie, by then known as the “Lion of Judah,” fled Ethiopia, avoiding Raya and Azebo Oromo land as he left. In his crisis, the first place he went was to Jerusalem. He arrived just as the Palestinians had initiated their general strike and began their armed struggle in what would be known as the Arab Revolt.¹¹ Selassie, who only years prior had codified in the 1931 Ethiopian Constitution his descent from Solomon and Sheba,¹² arrived to a wave of sympathy from the Zionist press.¹³

The struggle of the Oromo and Palestinians had created their respective antagonists’ crises and made their need for unity apparent. Even then, Selassie still held fast to Ethiopia’s ancient claims to the Beta Israel and Judaism while casting the Yishuv as simply a nascent phenomenon. In a prepared speech to the Hebrew press, he asserted:

I visited the Land of Israel in 1924, and I find that there is great progress in this country. I know that the Jews are quiet people and dedicated to peace. Of course it is also known to you that in Ethiopia there are Jews of an ancient race who live in complete harmony with all others. They preserve their religious traditions and no one hinders them. Please know that we appreciate the support that the Jewish people have expressed for Ethiopia, and we hope that the Jewish press will continue to support us.¹⁴

Of course, such struggle between Zionisms coexisted with a necessary unity imposed by heightening struggle from without. David Ben-Gurion, later the first prime minister of israel, recognized that the crisis in Ethiopia was also a crisis for the Zionists in occupied Palestine:“We knew that what is going on in the world has an impact on what we do in the Land of Israel. That beginning of the crisis should be seen not as April 19th [the outbreak of the Arab Revolt], but in what happened a few months earlier in Ethiopia.”¹⁵ 

A resolution was worked out. Orde Wingate, the same Christian Zionist British captain who formed the Haganah (the precursor to the israel Defense Forces) that crushed the Arab Revolt, a hero to the architects of the Palestinian Nakba,¹⁶ would enter Ethiopia in 1940 to lead the force that defeated the Italians and restored Selassie to the throne.¹⁷  In Wingate’s own words, it was “for the sake of Zion.”¹⁸

The Beta Israel Exchange

Decades later, when the military government that deposed Selassie had its back to the wall, owing to the national liberation struggles of the Eritreans, the Oromo, the Somali, and the Tigray nations, Ethiopia would begrudgingly use the Beta Israel as a bargaining chip. So long as it was done in secret, to avoid tarnishing Ethiopia’s Zionist claims and undermining its credibility to the oppressed world that had taken up anti-Zionism, israel could receive loyal new Black Jewish settlers, who themselves gained in escaping their oppression in Ethiopia. In the act itself, Ethiopia laundered the racial cover it received on the world stage to israel — and conveniently at a time when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had made inroads into Black Amerika¹⁹ and israel faced the wrath of the world for its support of apartheid South Africa. The Beta Israel then settled Palestinian lands, filled the ranks of the occupation army, and took up highly visible political and cultural posts. In return, Ethiopia received weaponry, security expertise, and economic aid to crush the rebellion of the oppressed nations within itself.

Ironically, the brutal, racist israeli state would come to treat the Beta Israel just as poorly as the Ethiopians did. Given that many of the Beta Israel fled persecution to a promised land, they were unquestionably loyal to the israeli Zionist cause. It meant that, even if most of them would come to face abject conditions — from forced sterilizations, to staggering poverty, and rampant police killings — their propensity for revolt was quite low. Thus, while Ethiopia could acquire from israel the means to extinguish the oppressed — primarily the Oromo — the Beta Israel were a useful dumping ground for antagonisms borne from the struggle of the oppressed — particularly the Palestinians. In this regard, the two entities quite literally reinforced each other.

Tewodros’ ambition

The Deir-al-Sultan Monastery

Though Abyssinia (the northern entity that preceded modern Ethiopia) had all the makings of Zion, the one thing it lacked was direct control over the holy city of Jerusalem, which it claimed descent from. Since Christianity was embraced in Abyssinia as early as the 4th century, Jerusalem held a special place in Abyssinian culture, with monks and pilgrims flocking to the city and dwelling there. In the late 12th century, King Lalibela built his own version of Jerusalem in his capital of Roha. Exchange flourished for centuries until Abyssinia’s decline upon defeat by Ahmad Gragn of the east, who occupied its highlands beginning in 1527, as well as the rise of Ottoman rule in Palestine. In this period, Abyssinian presence in Jerusalem became reduced to one monastery known as the Deir-al-Sultan.

The Deir-al-Sultan sits on the roof of the Chapel of Saint Helena that was part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City. For some time, Abyssinia’s claim to the Deir-al-Sultan served as a powerful symbol of its historic ties to the city. However, in 1838, a plague wiped out its monks, and with permission from the Armenian Patriarchate, the Egyptian Coptic monks in the neighboring monasteries moved in and laid claim to the Deir-al-Sultan.²⁰ Three years later, a new group of Abyssinian monks arrived and accused the Copts of unfairly seizing the site. This marked the beginning of a long-term conflict.

The Rise and Fall of Tewodros II

In this period, a man by the name of Kassa rose to power, inheriting a weak, divided Abyssinia. An ancient prophecy, known as Fekkare Iyasus (The Explanation of Jesus) foretold that a king named Tewodros would save Ethiopia from destruction and rule for around 40 years.²¹ Kassa harkened back to this prophecy and took the name of Emperor Tewodros II.

Upon taking power, Tewodros II wielded this divine mission to grease the wheels of his imperial ambitions. He revived vigor around the Kebra Negast and sought to reclaim the Deir-al-Sultan, on which the Ottoman Turks sided with the Egyptians.²² This was considered a great humiliation and drove Tewodros II’s burning desire to take Jerusalem by force.²³ While ensnared in war on all fronts, in October 1862, he sought sympathy from Queen Victoria as a fellow Christian monarch and a self-professed descendant of Ancient Israel and wrote to her:

Since my ancestors, the kings, have until now offended our creator. He had handed their kingdom over to the [Oromo] and the Turks. But now, ever since I was born my Creator has raised me from the dust and given me power and placed me over the kingdom of my ancestors. By the power of God, I have dislodged the [Oromo]. But when I told the Turks to relinquish the soil of my fathers they refused; and so, by the power of God, here I am about to struggle against them.²⁴

Before Tewodros II could even dream of Jerusalem, he faced many obstacles, including Oromo militias in Wollo, rebellious nobles in Tigray, Egyptian pressure from Sudan, and Ottoman expansion along the Red Sea coast. He could not defeat them all. In fact, the Foreign Office in London failed to even pass the letter to the Queen,²⁵ given it sought appeasement with the Ottomans who occupied Jerusalem. Evidently, Tewodros II was not an ally but a nuisance. As a last ditch effort, Tewodros imprisoned missionaries and representatives of the British government. In response, a British expedition led by General Richard Napier faced Tewodros II in the Battle of Magdala in 1868. The British defeated his forces and freed the hostages. Rather than surrender, Tewodros II committed suicide, ironically with a pistol gifted to him by Victoria.²⁶ His dream was to remain unrealized.  

In Lieu of Conquest

Licking their wounds, subsequent emperors and rulers would have to abandon direct conquest of Jerusalem and opted instead to shore up Abyssinian presence elsewhere in Jerusalem to lend credence to its claims of having direct, holy ties to the city. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Abyssinians acquired houses and lands in west Jerusalem. Meanwhile, a succession of emperors built Solomonic churches and monasteries, such as the Debre Genet monastery, and many other buildings. By 1905, the Ottoman authorities designated this part of Jerusalem as Haret al-Habash, what is known today as the Ethiopian compound centered on Ethiopia Street, a lasting imprint of Ethiopian Zionist claims to descent from Jerusalem.

The fate of Deir al-Sultan’s keys remained in flux for another century after Tewodros II’s death. Diplomatic struggle over the monastery occurred throughout, including on Selassie’s 1924 tour when in Cairo he submitted a request for the keys directly to the highest level of the Coptic Church and the Egyptian Prime Minister.²⁷ Of course, he was resoundingly rejected and would not see success until the later period of his reign. In the meantime, he sought conciliatory measures, such as an arrangement with the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem where he acquired a room in the monastery of Abraham which was connected by a door to the Deir-al-Sultan — among other backroom deals.²⁸ These were, of course, token arrangements.

The Forging of Twin Struggles, 1960s-1970s

The Naksa

Palestine and Oromia would see a new period of converging struggle. At the end of 1964, the Palestinian national liberation movement’s Fateh began launching guerrilla offensives against israel under the front organization Al-Asifa. Al-Asifa’s first communique proclaimed:

From our people, steadfast to the limit, and from the conscience of our battling homeland, our revolutionary vanguards burst out, believing in the armed revolution as the way to Return and to Liberty, in order to stress to the colonialists and their henchmen, and to world Zionism and its financiers, that the Palestinian people remains in the field; that it has not died and will not die.²⁹

In this mounting struggle, israel retaliated against the guerillas and neighboring Arab states. Syria and Jordan especially were caught in the middle and vacillated between supporting the Palestinians and fighting against them. This escalated into the Six Day War in 1967 and culminated in the Naksa — the day of setback. Here, israel, in conventional warfare, defeated Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq in six days. It captured the Golan Heights, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Sinai. Up to 325,000 Palestinians were displaced. Though 1967 was a setback, it opened the way for the Palestinian guerillas to take leadership of their own struggle and break away from the humiliated Arab armies.

Macha-Tulama and Bale

Along with the Palestinians, Oromos had their own developments in the 1960s. In 1963, Oromo intellectuals, army officers, soldiers, students, and merchants used a loophole in Ethiopian law to form the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association. In its constitution, the Association established two objectives: First, to establish schools, health clinics, and roads in Oromia where they were needed. Second, to build churches and mosques while provisioning financial and legal assistance for disabled and unemployed people.³⁰ In essence, “the first set of objectives aimed to improve the welfare of the Oromo nation; the second sought to mobilize the Oromo people toward a common goal by undermining the colonial policy of divide and rule based on religion, class, and region.”³¹ The Association achieved such widespread popularity that within three years, membership reached more than two million.³² It was effectively operating as “a government within a government.”³³ And among its membership were not just Oromos but were 26 leaders from other colonized nations brought to heel under Menelik II, including the Afars, Sidamas, and Walayitas.³⁴

During this time period, Oromo peasants in eastern Bale began a massive armed rebellion against land alienation, heavy taxation, maladministration, and Ethiopian occupation as embodied in the presence of Amhara landlords. In the rebellion, the movement’s leaders united the Oromo with Somalis under the banner of Islam to fight the Ethiopian state. Together, they mounted decimating attacks on landlords concentrated in the local towns.³⁵ The landlords were no match for the peasants, who used guerrilla tactics and at one point held 75% of the Bale region while encircling the provincial capital of Goba.³⁶

The two movements in Bale and Macha-Tulama weren’t only simultaneous, but actively linked up and coordinated with each other. Ahmed Buna, a schoolteacher and member of the Association who would go on to co-found the Marxist Oromo Liberation Front, smuggled the leaders of the Bale armed resistance to Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) in 1965. While there, the leaders discussed how best to coordinate their activities. Mamo Mazamir, one of the revolutionary members of Macha-Tulama involved in the discussions, lucidly analyzed the Oromo struggle and pledged solidarity with the rebels of Bale:

The history of mankind shows that a people who rise in the struggle for freedom and independence, in defiance of death, are always victorious. The life and death struggle of the oppressed masses in the Ethiopian Empire against the hegemony of the Amhara and their allies headed by American imperialism is a sacred liberation struggle of millions of oppressed and humiliated people. That struggle will surely intensify in the course of time, as the oppressed peoples organizational means and consciousness become deeply rooted. As learnt in discussions, the Macha and Tulama democratic movement, which was created to raise the consciousness of the Oromo people is in the present situation working day and night to put in hand coordination activities that are within our reach. In fact, the militant members are working now on the means of organizing a nationwide people’s movement which is based on realizing the aspirations of Oromo people. Please, keep up your heroic armed struggle, defending every inch of the Oromo nation to the last drop of your blood. The decisive war of resistance you are conducting in Bale will, despite the maneuvers of imperialism, Zionism and local reaction, be victorious. We shall continue doing everything we can to keep in touch with you.³⁷

The communique from Al-Asifa and these words from Mazamir demonstrate that the Oromos and Palestinians were two fronts of the same struggle. They were both conscious of themselves as nations with a right to self-determination and they knew that their enemy was imperialism and Zionism. And in the exact same moment, the two fronts were unleashing a struggle to the death to liberate themselves from Zionist imperialist oppression.

Eventually, Ethiopia, whose intelligence by that point, according to an israeli historian, was “literally run” by israel,³⁸ were able to crush the Macha-Tulama movement by framing, torturing, and killing its leaders.³⁹ With the help of the israeli counter-insurgency and Anglo-American demolitions experts, it defeated the Bale Revolt,⁴⁰ and left over 700,000 dead.⁴¹ From this defeat, the Oromo peasantry suffered; 36.5% of the administrated land in the district where the rebellion emerged was confiscated by 1968. By 1970, the leaders of the Bale Revolt negotiated amnesty for themselves and ended the revolt.⁴²

A Resolution Between the Twin Zions

That same year, the israeli government, newly bolstered by its spoils from the 1967 war, marched in, changed the locks of Deir-al-Sultan, expelled the Coptic monks, and handed the keys to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, even defying a ruling by the israeli Supreme Court to return the key to the Egyptians.⁴³ That lock-changing marked a resolution in Ethiopia’s century-long pursuit of the Deir-al-Sultan key that spanned multiple emperors and rulers. And by doing so, the two powers did not just merely resolve a monastic dispute, but through defeat of Palestinian and Oromo resistance movements, and the conquest of their respective lands, consecrated formal unity between the Ethiopian myth of Solomonic descent and the israeli Zionist myth of Jewish return.

Of course, the driving force of their convergence was not conspiracy, but the struggle of the Oromo and Palestinians that drew them together. The two entities were forced to an agreement that could accommodate both Zionisms, a necessary qualitative leap in unity between the two oppressors.

Meanwhile, capturing Jerusalem brought sheer ecstasy for the israeli Zionist project and gave it a base to further expand its territorial ambitions. In Ethiopia, the access to the Deir-al-Sultan similarly brought celebration and helped cement its spiritual claims to Ancient Israeli descent. With this arrangement, when israel strengthened, it could only legitimize Ethiopia more. It was in Ethiopia and israel’s utmost interest to band together to crush the Oromo and Palestinians.

In the diplomatic realm, such mutual interests of Ethiopia and israel were referenced through incessant overtures to an “ancient” relationship stretching back to Biblical times.

The Birth of the Oromo Liberation Struggle and Contact with Palestine

The embryo of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was within the Macha-Tulama movement. Its primary founder, Baro Tumsa, became an active member of the association as a student, where he served as a legal advisor while also coordinating the youth wing.⁴⁴ Goaded on by the government’s escalating violent suppression of the Macha-Tulama movement, Baro and his comrades formed clandestine study circles while secretly distributing propaganda.⁴⁵ They established relationships across Oromo society within and without Oromia, including with Oromo students at Haile Selassie University who played a central role in the student movement that toppled the emperor in 1974.⁴⁶ Similarly, they established relations with other colonized nations, such as the Sidama and Afar, and other liberation fronts, such as the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF).⁴⁷

At the same time, Oromo revolutionary Elemo Qilxu, who was living in Aden, Yemen, established relationships with the Yemeni, Syrian, and Iraqi governments, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).⁴⁸ Other Oromos received military training in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iraq, and Syria. They opened offices in several Southwest Asian and North African countries already aiding Palestine, most notably in Damascus and Beirut.⁴⁹ In 1969, Abbaa Gadaa Jaarraa and others went to Iraq to receive guerrilla training for seven months.⁵⁰ Then, on their journey to Hararghe in East Oromia, Jaarraa and 38 other fighters were captured, disarmed, and imprisoned by the Somali government for five years.⁵¹

In 1972, Baro sent Getachew Baissa, Mitiku Terfassa, and Yusuf Bakar through Somalia to receive military training in Vietnam, the DPRK, China, and throughout SWANA where they learned from Palestinians. The Somali government, then led by Siad Barre, which at the time possessed its own Pan-Somali ambitions in reuniting Ethiopia’s Ogaden region and East Oromia with itself, refused to help the three. Only Bakar was able to make it to Yemen, while Getachew and Mitiku returned to Oromia.⁵² Years later in 1975, Baro sent a second delegation of six Oromo university students to Somalia to receive training and secure support for the Oromo national movement. These were Muhee Abdo, Aboma Mitiku, Demisse Techane, Zakariyas Hassan, Hashim Gobana, and Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil. The Somali government rebuffed them and advised them to go to Aden to work with Bakar. [53]

Unperturbed by the Somali government’s arrest of Jaaraa, Elemo persisted on, traveling to Finfinnee to link up with the emerging Oromo political group led by Baro Tumsa, which formed the central coordinating body of the OLF in 1974.⁵³ From there, Elemo moved east to begin the armed struggle against settler colonialists between 1973 and 1974. In these early battles, Elemo and five others were killed, causing the group to disband. But, not before they killed or wounded several enemies.⁵⁴ Out of this early armed struggle, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) was formed.⁵⁵

In 1974, the Ethiopian emperor Selassie fell to a tidal wave of discontent. In the power vacuum, the Derg military government seized control, while two Ethiopian political parties, the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) and Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), contended with the burgeoning Oromo national movement. And though they called themselves socialists, what they both had in common was their rejection of the Oromo right to self-determination, decolonization, and the Oromo colonial thesis that stated that Ethiopia colonized the Oromo with the help of European imperialism, and imprisoned the Oromo and other nations during the Scramble for Africa.⁵⁶

While the OLF considered that the colonial question was principal, requiring either full separation of Oromia from Ethiopia or the establishment of a democratic multi-national federation or confederation, the Ethiopian socialist parties liquidated the Oromo question into a larger class question. They simply treated the Oromo land question as indistinguishable from the feudal question without the need for political self-determination for the historically oppressed Oromo nation. Given that many Oromo students and intellectuals were either thoroughly imbued with Ethiopianist ideology, or themselves possessed their own personal interests intertwined with Ethiopia, they joined these Ethiopian parties while deeming the OLF “narrowly nationalist.” MEISON would ally with the Derg and EPRP would lead the opposition to it. Both, unable to shore up the colonized majority due to their own chauvinism, would eventually be savagely liquidated by the Derg.

Thus, surrounded on all sides by a hostile military government, obstructionist neighbors, and settler “socialist” parties, in their May 1975 pamphlet, titled “The Struggle of the Oromo People Against Ethiopian Occupation and Amhara Despotism,” the OLF clearly placed its liberation struggle right alongside the Palestinians. At the time, the Palestinians were similarly facing down Zionist occupation, betrayal from Arab regimes, and relying on allies ensnared in bourgeois state building.

In the pamphlet’s closing, the OLF resoundingly stated:

The enemies of our revolution are many, and they are organized under different banners of reaction, which could very easily be related to the root of settler colonialism. Hereby, we call upon all progressive Organizations and Democratic Forces to hear our battle cry for our political independence, progress, and Socialism. Thus, our struggle to deface the colonial aims and imperialist reaction will continue until victory. World progressive forces, unite and struggle for worldwide total victory. Long live the world struggle against imperialist forces and colonialism. Long live the Oromo people’s revolution. Long live the Palestinian revolution. Long live the Eritrean, Afar, Somali, and other oppressed peoples’ revolutionary struggles. And down with Abyssinian and Zionist settler colonialism. Down with imperialists and reactionaries. Ever forward with victory.⁵⁷

In sum, the OLF, the highest expression of the Oromo nation’s aspirations, saw itself as an inviolable pole in the anti-Zionist struggle, inseparable from the struggle of their comrades in Palestine.

All of the above, then, induces a series of questions. What could Zionism be but the mythological ideology of settler colonialism? What could support of Ethiopia be but support for Zionism and the occupation of Palestine from the rear? What could be the negation of Zionism but the struggle of the Oromo people, consciously and inviolably fused with that of the Palestinians?

References

1. 1 Sam 6:19 (English Standard Version). ︎
2. Midrash Tanchuma, Kedoshim, Buber ed., trans. John Townsend (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1989), Kedo. 10, https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tanchuma_Buber%2C_Kedoshim.10.2?lang=bi​​​​​​​ ︎
3. Harold Marcus, “Motives, Methods and Some Results of the Unification of Ethiopia during the Reign of Menelik II,” in Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Haile Selassie University, 1966), 269–280. ︎
4. League of Nations, “Perpetual Servitude Resulting from Defeat,” Report of the Committee of Experts on Slavery, C.240.M.171.1935.VI (Geneva: League of Nations, 1935). ︎
5. Bonnie Holcomb and Sissai Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1990), 103. ︎
6. Ibid, 289. ︎
7. Ibid, 71–125. ︎
8. The Kebra Nagast, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), chap. 87, 147–48. ︎
9. Haggai Erlich, Alliance and Alienation: Ethiopia and Israel in the Days of Haile Selassie (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2014), 28. ︎
10. Ezekiel Gebissa, “The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936,” Northeast African Studies 9, no. 3 (2002): 76. ︎
11. Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 32. ︎
12. “The Constitution of Ethiopia,” 1931, https://ethcln.com/system/files/ethiopian-constitution-of-1931.pdf. ︎
13. Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 35–40. ︎
14. Haaretz, May 19, 1936. ︎
15. David Ben-Gurion, lecture to the Council of the Histadrut, February 1, 1937, Ben-Gurion Archives, Item #88003. ︎
16. Ghassan Kanafani, The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, 1972), 58–59. ︎
17. Simon Anglim, Orde Wingate and the British Army (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 57–144. ︎
18. Avraham Akavia, “Orde Wingate,” in The Friends of Israel (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1950), 94. ︎
19. “Jackson and Arafat Confer in Lebanon,” New York Times, September 30, 1979. ︎
20. Stéphane Ancel, “The Ethiopian Orthodox Community in Jerusalem: New Archives and Perspectives on Daily Life and Social Networks, 1840–1940,” in Ordinary Jerusalem 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, ed. Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 50–51. ︎
21. Ras Iadonis Tafari, THE EXPLICATION OF JESUS [Yeshua]: FIKARE IYESUS: A Raw Translation in English (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012). ︎
22. “The Amharic Letters of Emperor Theodros of Ethiopia to Queen Victoria and Her Special Envoy,” Journal of Ethiopian Law 14, no. 1 (March 1989): 115. ︎
23. “The Ethiopian Community in Jerusalem from 1850 to the Conference of Dar-el-Sultan 1902: The Political Struggle for Independence,” in Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference, Tel-Aviv, 14–17 April 1980, ed. Gideon Goldenberg and Baruch Podolsky (Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1986), 487–500. ︎
24. “Amharic Letters,” 115. ︎
25. British Museum, “Maqdala Collection,” Contested Objects Collection, accessed July 8, 2026, https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/maqdala-collection. ︎
26. British Museum, “Maqdala Collection.” ︎
27. Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 28. ︎
28. Stéphane Ancel and Vincent Lemire, “Across the Archives: New Sources about the Ethiopian Christian Community in Jerusalem (1840–1940),” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 71 (Autumn 2017): 109. ︎
29. Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyah, Al-Watha’iq al-Filastiniyah al-’Arabiyah li-’Am 1965 (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyah, 1965), 1. ︎
30. Asafa Jalata, Fighting against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 75. ︎
31. Mohammed Hassen, “Islam as an Ideology of Resistance among the Oromo of Ethiopia,” American Journal of Islam and Society 26, no. 3 (July 1, 2009): 103, https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v26i3.385. ︎
32. Asafa Jalata, Baro Tumsa: The Principal Architect of the Oromo Liberation Front (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 131. ︎
33. Olana Zoga, Gizat na Gizot: The Macha-Tulama Association (Addis Ababa, 1985 Ethiopian Calendar), 37. ︎
34. Asafa Jalata, Fighting against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 75. ︎
35. Mohammed Hassen, “The Oromo Nation under Amhara Colonial Administration,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44, no. 3 (1981): 36. ︎
36. Mohammed Hassen, “Islam as an Ideology of Resistance among the Oromo of Ethiopia,” American Journal of Islam and Society 26, no. 3 (July 1, 2009): 104, https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v26i3.385. ︎
37. Borana Tullu, “The Bale Oromos’ Armed Struggle, 1963–1970: A Basic Lesson for the Oromo National Liberation Movement,” Saba Oromo: The Journal of Oromo Students in Britain 1, no. 1 (1980): 25–26. ︎
38. Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 137. ︎
39. Norma J. Singer, “Ethiopia: Human Rights, 1948–1978,” in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, ed. Robert L. Hess (n.p.: [s.n.], 1978), 663–678. ︎
40. Mohammed Hassen, “Islam as an Ideology of Resistance among the Oromo of Ethiopia,” The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26, no. 3 (2009): 104. ︎
41. Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868–2004 (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005), 184. ︎
42. John Markakis and Nega Ayele, Class and Revolution in Ethiopia, 1st American ed. (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1986), 53. ︎
43. Erlich, Alliance and Alienation, 189. ︎
44. Asafa Jalata, Baro Tumsa: The Principal Architect of the Oromo Liberation Front (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 90. ︎
45. Ibid, 31. ︎
46. Ibid, 101–110. ︎
47. Ibid. ︎
48. Ibid, 181. ︎
49. Ibid, 155. ︎
50. Ibid. ︎
51. Ibid, 131. ︎
52. Ibid, 155. ︎
53. Ibid, 132. ︎
54. Ibid, 181. ︎
55. Ibid. ︎
56. Ibid. ︎
57. Oromo Liberation Front, “The Struggle of the Oromo People Against Ethiopian Occupation and Amhara Despotism,” 9 May 1975. ︎

I love Iosif Stalin. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to write about Iosif Stalin. Not even Stalin himself knew how to write about Stalin, though he knew that Stalin the Figure was not Stalin the Person and behaved accordingly. In terms of the person, he left no diary or journal for his innermost thoughts, his personal letters were carefully guarded, and he was generally not one to doubt himself or write about doubting himself. Into this hole has flooded a deluge of words about Stalin’s personality and psychological makeup, like the nonsense spouted first prominently by Trotsky and Khruschev, and then remixed in a thousand variations by the liberal academic publishing complex. Needless to say, there are abundant biographies about Stalin, and few of them are serious and even fewer are good.

Most of the English-language biographies are on the level of Sebag-Montefiore’s orientalist Young Adult historical adventure fiction.¹ In terms of serious study, Stalin’s tenure in the USSR has gotten a better shake than the man himself, with the rise of the revisionist school of Sovietology in radical liberal academia (surprisingly, one man did not have absolute power over an entire society!).² And even from the Communist side, historical biographies of Stalin published during his rule took care to buff out his sharp points and polish his face smooth — as much as Stalin himself did not enjoy it, he resigned himself to becoming an idol for his people.³ Post-de-Stalinization defenders like Domenico Losurdo and Ludo Martens are much more concerned with Stalin and the USSR more broadly, than they are with the man himself, as a person.

Who the hell was Stalin? No one knows, I’m afraid. But there might be a good guess.

In 1987, Ronald Grigor Suny set out to write another Stalin biography to add to the pile of Stalin biographies in the world. It took him until 2020 to finish the project, as the Soviet Union collapsed in the interim. But besides the unpleasant fact of the capitalist holocaust, this cracked the former government’s archives open to Western scrutiny. Dr. Suny had a field day, digging through pretty much all documentary materials available on Stalin’s pre-revolution life, and produced a 896-page tome of Stalin’s life before the October Revolution. Good for him! He was lauded and attacked for his book, by the peanut gallery of respectable socialists and rabid anti-Communist dogs.⁴

Move over, Stephen Kotkin. Suny’s on the scene!

Suny’s book, based on his excessive archival trawling, makes the argument that the young Stalin can be divided into three phases of his life: Soso, the faithful seminarian, is not Koba, the unseasoned rebel, is not Stalin, the Marxist professional revolutionary. Suny, unlike pretty much every other Stalin biographer, actually has a wide breadth and depth of knowledge of the revolutionary Caucasus, which he exercises to great effect, filling pages on the nuances of Georgian Social Democracy and the various environments that Soso, then Koba, then finally Stalin moved through. He lays out in fine-grained detail how those environments shaped Stalin’s development, his personality, his preferences, and ultimately the man who would be the Stalin we all know and love (or hate) and how Stalin in turn impacted Georgian and Russian Social Democracy as an activist-organizer-revolutionary. How dialectical!

I imagine the book will be tedious for the reader who just wants to know what hijinks our buddy Koba is getting up to next. As an avid hoarder of facts, I really enjoyed those tangents on politics and culture. As distant as the Tsarist-Russian revolutionary milieu seems to us today, filtered through time and historical mythology, it is helpful to remember that these were ultimately just people trying to figure out how to win against their oppressors and then build the first long-lasting socialist experiment in human history. In other words, they had their own version of inane discourse and difficult personalities. The young Koba, too overconfident, kind of an asshole and schemer, is either relatable because you’ve been a Koba or you’ve had to deal with a Koba.

Though Suny is hostile to the later Stalin in power, he treats the young Stalin with a rare amount of care and empathy. Stalin’s personal life (or, whatever existed of a personal life for a professional revolutionary) is elaborated based on actual documentary evidence instead of the sensationalist rumor-mongering that Stalin biographers often indulge in and the real friendships that Stalin had at the time are named for what they were, even if they later ended very badly.

Where the book is weakest is towards its end, where Suny forecloses Stalin’s trajectory into the revolution eating its children, typical of academic petit-bourgeois pessimism. Trillions starved, etc. But arguably what is most valuable about this book is less than what it details about specifically Stalin’s early activities and personal development, but much more about what it details, through those long tangential passages, about the revolutionary Tsarist-Russian underground, about the cruel reality and life-or-death stakes of fighting an autocratic regime in a peripheral region of a reactionary empire, the nagging national question and the various ways that Communists reconciled (or didn’t) with national liberation, and yes, what it details about the nuances of party-building in Tsarist Russia and its borderlands. Suny commentates from outside these internal splits and dynamics within Russian Social Democracy with more than a century of ironic hindsight, but these are debates that the revolutionaries took seriously at the time and so does he. And so should we.

It would be preposterous to suggest that Tsarist Russia is a mirror of the modern day US Empire– and yet, the challenge remains the same for all Communists: how do we build the party to seize power from the bourgeois state? After all, if the particular characteristic of Tsarist Russia was the autocracy, then the particular characteristic of the US Empire is settler-colonialism, a kind of decentralized autocracy. Perhaps Stalin’s experiences in the underground organizing reading circles with students and workers, his brief stint with legal union organizing, his leadership of armed militias during the height of reaction, his activities as a Bolshevik traveling agent always one step ahead of the Okhrana, and finally his role as a tribune of the people in the interim between February and October provide a clue as to what Communists should expect from their work as the US Empire crumbles. Perhaps we should have a closer look at what it actually took to sustain an underground network and an aboveground movement and draw appropriate lessons from it for today, while keeping in mind that our adversaries are just as well-studied as we are.

In lieu of a numerical rating, I’ll tell you who I think should read this book: Baby Communists who only know the myths of anti-Stalin, obsessive enthusiasts of Soviet revolutionary history, active Communists engaged in the hardest questions of national liberation, and anyone who’s read any other biography about Stalin at all.

1. The clearest example of this is his Young Stalin (2007). This critique of Montefiore can be found almost verbatim in the pages of another of the Big Stalin Biographies, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power by Stephen Kotkin. ︎
2. Sheila Fitzpatrick’s On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously is a group biography that argues that the functional dynamic of the top Stalinist leadership was as a team. Stalin was the team leader who delegated responsibilities and had final word on team inclusion or exclusion, but relied on the loyalty and agency of his teammates to carry out day-to-day governance. Stalin’s team did not mindlessly bend to his will; he had to argue his case convincingly and rely on a combination of argument and intrigue to get his team members on board with certain strategies or tactics. ︎
3. Briefly, for more on this, there are these two letters: (1925) and (1938). ︎
4. Funnily enough, Suny wrote about the reception that his book got in third person about himself. ︎