Taking The First Step

Students in the US have organized hundreds of protests in 2026 to speak out against ICE and school boards that allow agents to abduct students. Their mobilization is partly a response to the city deportation sweeps and concentration-camp detentions, not to mention the filmed killings of Minneapolis protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti. More immediately, these sparks of mobilization come alive out of the palpable concern these students have for their “undocumented” classmates. ICE has kidnapped thousands of children, carrying them off to prison camps away from their families and any sense of enrichment. Families have described moldy, worm-filled food and undrinkable water. The trauma being inflicted against the kidnapped and separated families is unimaginable, and this is transmitted to their friends and classmates. Many radicalized students are now taking their first organizational steps and mobilizing protests against the deportation machine and their complicit schools. USU spoke to students in Connecticut who organized an “ICE OUT” protest from their campus to learn how students are organizing and what Decolonial Socialists can do to support them.

Many radicals can point to one specific world event or personal experience that permanently changed the way they see the world. For several of the Connecticut students, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti marked a turning point in their consciousness.

“Seeing the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti was a radicalizing moment for me. It’s clear that ICE is an org that does not even care about the law at all. We have to stick together.“

Even for children growing up in an environment filled with police propaganda, subjected to constant diseducation and adult surveillance, there are moments when the star-spangled banner slips, exposing the true character of the settler police and military. Their violence is classically limited to the exploited nations: the Black nation, the Indigenous nations, Puerto Rico, and the millions of immigrants who came to Occupied North America seeking an escape from their countries even as Amerikan capital attacks them. The law as we know it today is expressly designed to oppress these national groups; not merely for the sadistic pleasure of oppression, but because it allows the white nation and its ruling class to steal more of their labor. The student protester above is correct to say ICE does not care about the law, but they should question what purpose the law serves at all in a settler colony like the US. It is clear that ICE agents are untrained, murderous cowards, but that isn’t really what makes them bad. A hypothetical ICE agency that performs the same tasks, but in a respectable and courteous manner, would still be equally reprehensible. Instead of attacking ICE for being law-breakers, we should attack them for breaking up families to sustain the regime of unequal labor that we have here.

The Protest

The protest was organized over the course of several weeks with social media and in-person conversations. A date and time was chosen and broadcasted. The generalized message of the protest: ICE OUT – Out of campus, Out of (the city), and Out of Connecticut. The students knew that their school would take steps to discourage them from walking out, but they were surprised by the Machiavellian manipulation the administration was willing to engage in. Administrators started off with the typical threats; whispers spread that students would be suspended or expelled for protesting.

“Leading up to the protest, our School Advisory Board announced that students could be suspended if they decided to protest or walk off campus. They definitely scared a lot of people away from protesting with us.”

But their real trick didn’t come until the morning of the protest. Before the first period, the school announced that a two-hour assembly would be happening that same day. They conveniently scheduled this assembly right before the student protest was set to begin. Some students weren’t sure if the protest was still happening. It was a deliberate attempt to corral all the students in the school into one location in order to mis-direct the protest towards a school-sanctioned event. The students knew what was happening, but some who planned to protest definitely got caught in the trap. One student shared their experience of avoiding the assembly police:

“It was bogus that they did that. Before the assembly started I got up and left. I tried to avoid the teachers and walked out. Then, right next to our meeting place, campus security and principals were standing. It felt like they were trying to intimidate us.”

These tactics from the school provide a great lesson for these protesters and all other students: the school will do anything to disrupt your protest if they feel like it could gain steam. They will call their own events at the time of your protest to confuse others, and intimidate you from leaving the assembly hall. They do this to co-opt your message, or destroy it entirely.

The protest itself lasted the entire rest of the day and ended after the sun went down. The students chanted on campus for around 30 minutes, then walked off. They marched down the adjacent streets toward downtown, continuing their chants and waving signs. Many drivers honked in support. One white man revved his diesel truck to blow exhaust at them.

The protesters went to city hall first to speak with representatives of the city. The protesters wanted to know if the city had a plan in case ICE showed up, what the plan was, and if the city had any information they could share.

“The city official we spoke to was very nice. They said they would create a website, prepare some Know-Your-Rights materials, and speak to their boss about releasing more information.”

This is not a plan at all. This is a promise to release information that is already publicly available, and will unfortunately not prevent ICE raids. Government officials will often use a bait-and-switch to mislead groups demanding change. A bait and switch refers to an appealing offer that sounds good, but ends up being illusory. Organizers are misled into a sense of comfort, and the sweet-talking local official ends up betraying the cause and siding with the enemy forces. For example, look to the federal government’s shuffling of ICE officials in the wake of the Minneapolis resistance. Officials get replaced, tactics are revised, but their mission does not change. ICE’s new plan for Minneapolis will still require the city to submit to DHS requirements and support more raids. And this is at the time when the city is still in a rebellious uproar. The local government might act like an ally when confronted by dozens of students, but the city would sooner collapse than disobey the ICE kidnappers.

After city hall, the protesters marched to the center of the downtown area, taking position on a roundabout with their signs. The attitude from the community was generally very positive. One driver even stopped so they could give the students larger signs they had sitting in their car. They remained there for several hours in the cold until it got dark. The students reflected on the emotions they felt that day.

“I had never gotten in trouble before, and I knew I would at least get detention. But our message was so worth standing up for that I would risk it for those more vulnerable. It was an incredible feeling to give voice to others who are too scared, and be their voice for the vulnerable.” 

The school ended up giving the students two hours of detention for interrupting the school day and walking off campus. A worthwhile trade off for every student we interviewed. They were proud to receive the consequences of speaking up for immigrant families.

What Comes Next?

The school continues its attempts to divert the students’ protest into a dead end. Less than a week after the walkout, school administrators announced they would be leading their own so-called protest in support of immigrant students. Yes, you read that correctly. The same people who did everything they could to stop the original protest from happening are now giving their “support,” so long as they can control the protest’s environment and limits. The students are facing a blatant attempt at co-optation: to adopt the students’ idea or tactic for the school’s use. This is a classic tactic of counterinsurgency, which we saw deployed time and again during the 2020 June Uprisings surrounding the murder of George Floyd.

People may question, “Why is it bad that the school is leading a protest? Won’t this allow the message to spread further?”

The staff-organized protest would claim the students’ action, strip it of all its radical content, and deploy it themselves for all to participate. The first negative effect is to completely remove the outside community from the protest. The school wants to rob the protest of any visibility off campus, as this would make it look like the school is losing control of its students. Visibility also risks more residents getting involved off campus, especially if the students make connections with outside groups. A social media post of the original protest generated over 600 comments. This kind of publicity is bad for the school; they’d much prefer to keep the protest contained on campus. The students have already shown their organizing capabilities by organizing a successful event on their own despite snares from the school, which can only hold them back.

The second negative outcome of the staff-led protest will be a gross distortion of the original protest’s message. It lets the school paint themselves as allies to the students, rather than their immediate enemy. It lets the same people who would threaten and intimidate students act as if they are on the same side, resisting against the Bad Guys in the federal government. The students’ protest sought to agitate against a complicit school administration and city government. The adult-led protest will be a performance, re-enacting the student-protest with a non-confrontational spin.

What Can be Sustained?

Bonds between students and the community

The students were correct to take their protest downtown rather than stay on campus. Many people in the city certainly heard of the protest and the committed attitude of the students. The next step is to follow up on this initiative by solidifying ties with friendly groups in the community. Immigrant organizations and progressive churches are one place to start.

Bonds with other students

Campus will remain a good place to organize as long as the school does not take any extraordinarily repressive measures. Flyers, speeches, and targeted conversations are some tools students can use. Ultimately, the students are in the best place to understand what works and what doesn’t work on campus. They should “cross the river by feeling for the stones” — take one step and look around before taking another. Don’t be afraid to experiment, fail, and get even better.

Organized Structures

As summer approaches, the students will lose the daily connection that going to school five days a week provides. To make up for this, and to take their organizing to the next level, the students could double down and create a firm structure through which to carry out any work they decide to take on. This would involve defined roles, basic rules, and regular meetings. For more guidance, we recommend Tend the Garden, What is Organizing, and The Study Group.

Political Education

Most of what we learn in school is either a half-baked truth or an outright lie. In order to unlearn their myths and stand with all oppressed peoples, we need to develop an internationalist consciousness. This kind of thinking ties our organizing to the billions of people living under the shadow of Amerikan domination; it does not come naturally to people living in the US. Anyone who disagrees probably hasn’t studied the material conditions closely enough. Development requires us to actively study political texts from a wide net and share our findings with others, like in a reading group. This is a form of collective learning; it is the mirror opposite of the top-down instruction students receive in school. Internationalism is, of course, already at the center of what the protesters are doing. They are standing up for students made to feel vulnerable by the state. Political development will be absolutely essential for avoiding the many traps that catch organizers seeking to change the world.

We leave you with the conclusion from a student’s speech on that cold afternoon:

“You just need to take one step; people are always saying that, ‘I’m just one person, I alone can’t make a change,’ but if we ever found out we all think the same way just think of the endless possibilities of what we could do. In writing this I am taking the first step for all of us. So now I will say: stay out of our schools, stay out of our communities, and stay out of our states.”

The dialectical method represents humanity’s most revolutionary approach to understanding the contradictory nature of reality and its potential for transformation. In order to understand something as it truly exists in the world, we need to study it from many angles and perspectives. Knowledge is a process, and it contains lower and higher stages; these stages of understanding proceed from shallower to deeper understandings of any given subject. The subject of our report is a single city in Occupied North America: the city of Hartford, Connecticut. We cannot expect to understand the city’s conditions based on what we as individuals can see and hear. On one hand, an individual cannot observe every occurrence in the city at once. On the other hand, our human sense perceptions are inherently skewed. Sense perception is biased according to an individual’s upbringing, class position, and other factors which tend to form different worldviews in different people. Since our perception of the real world is inherently skewed, we use investigation to develop our understanding from the shallowest to the deepest level; from sense perception, to abstract knowledge, to theory. The correct understanding we develop from investigation serves as a stepping stone for addressing the contradictions we find; before we can hope to change the world, we must proceed from a correct understanding. Our social investigation in Hartford, Connecticut is an attempt to better understand the city’s local contradictions beyond what we study in headlines and data. Regional history is summarized from a de-colonial perspective beginning at the time of settler arrival; this marks the beginning of the local settler-Indigenous contradiction, with indigeneity manifesting and receiving shape through its antagonistic relationship with colonialism. Current demographics and recent population changes are displayed through maps. Gentrification is occurring, as can be inferred from the 53% population increase in the Downtown area in the last 10 years, but more investigation is necessary to view how this economic displacement manifests across national (racial) lines. Our findings indicate that national (racial) contradictions continue to define the overall distribution of power and wealth in the city. Hartford as a whole receives unfathomable benefits from the US-led exploitation of the Global South, but the wealth which is stolen from the international Proletariat is not distributed equally among USians. It is distributed through the national, settler-governed hierarchy. This is one reason why the overall economic position of Black residents in Hartford has not changed in any significant way since the 19th century. Our findings indicate that state welfare programs are increasingly unable to manage the class contradictions between US workers and their capitalists. The number of homeless continues to increase at a steady rate. There were 9.5% more homeless people in Hartford in 2025 than in 2024. Since 2021, the number has increased by a striking 45%, primarily due to rising housing costs. One specific manifestation of the crisis is a new prevalence of tent-encampments in the city’s parks. We hope this social investigation of the Park St. area will lead to clear-sighted organizing efforts based on a correct understanding of local, national, and international contradictions. More social investigations are necessary in other parts of the city, especially the North End.

Local History

The Connecticut River Valley was home to many Indigenous tribes before European settler colonialism. The area now known as Hartford was held by the Suckiag Tribe until they were ethnically cleansed by Dutch and English settlers. Suckiag was valuable due to its prominent position along the Connecticut River. Ever since the displacement of its Indigenous populations, the city now known as Hartford has been a “rearguard garrison”¹ for settler colonialism in Occupied North America and imperialism across the globe. When English Hartford was founded in 1636, the Connecticut colony consisted of scattered settlements along the Connecticut River. These towns acted in self governance for the first time to declare war against the Pequot Nation, which governed what is today southeastern Connecticut. Settlers from the river valley towns sent delegates to Hartford, where the colonial court issued its decree to recruit 30 men from each town to commit genocide of the Pequot. The English also recruited hundreds of soldiers from the Narragansett and Mohegan Nations to assist in the war effort. Together, they killed most of the Pequot and forced the survivors into slavery, with the English seizing all their land. The English successfully took advantage of the competition between Indigenous nations in Connecticut, a tactic of exploiting existing contradictions the modern U.S. state now regularly employs to destabilize nations. Of course, the temporary allies, the Narragansett and Mohegan, also saw all of their land – at first slowly, then all at once – stolen by settlers in the ensuing, decades-long land grab. 

Hartford’s dominant industries at this time were agriculture and rum distillation. Both were dependent on slave labor; in Hartford, Black and Indigenous enslaved people worked the farms, while in the Caribbean they harvested sugarcane that was fermented and shipped up the eastern coast to Hartford and other northern cities. These Caribbean plantations were made dependent on such cities for food supplies, because even though the islands could grow ample food, sugar was the only crop produced on the land since it was more profitable to sell. The Caribbean experienced waves of manufactured famine that continue to this day. Census data for slavery in Hartford only goes back to 1791. In that year there were 263 enslaved people in Hartford out of 2,764 in the state. There were 430 “free persons” (free Black citizens) in Hartford who were members of the city’s proletariat and sub-proletariat. The first recorded murder victim in Hartford was a Black man named Louis Berbice, murdered by his enslaver in 1639. The enslaver, Edward Opdyck, faced no punishment. 

From Garrison Town to Inventor’s Workshop

Hartford became a manufacturing city beginning around the 1850s, when Samuel Colt opened the largest private gun factory in the world. Colt revolvers were key to westward expansion, used by both individual settlers and the U.S. army. A half century earlier, Eli Whitney initiated the local mass production firearms industry with the interchangeable parts design, developed out of a factory in New Haven. A year later, he would invent the cotton gin, kickstarting an exponential expansion of slavery production and New Afrikan misery. Additional companies, such as Billings and Spencer, Spencer Arms, Winchester Repeating Arms, and Smith & Wesson have bestowed a historic tie between settler militarism and Connecticut. 

The city’s role in colonial occupation did not change, but its form of service took on a new, advanced appearance. Amerika’s new settler armies needed advanced, mass-produced weaponry that could overwhelm the western Indigenous nations still fighting for their national territory. Tucked away safely in the Northeast and bolstered by several centuries of superprofits, Hartford was well-positioned to serve as an inventor’s workshop for the next era of military technology. 

We see the same transition fulfilled today by “israel” in Occupied Palestine. The zionist entity is both a garrison launchpad for the U.S. in Asia, and the empire’s principal inventor of military technology. Their weapons are primarily used against Palestinians to continue the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Their secondary purpose is that of testing and experimentation; advanced technology is exported from occupied Palestine to wherever in the world the empire needs them for asymmetric violence, including U.S. cities such as Hartford. 

From Inventor’s Workshop to Financial Hub

Hartford’s modern image as a finance center is characterized by massive insurance companies whose offices take up most of the city skyline. Connecticut’s capital is the birthplace of the insurance business itself. River captains, dealing in enslaved people and foodstuffs for slavery plantations, wanted to avoid the expectable financial hits from the dangerous sailing business; storms, piracy, and disease were threatening enough to the capitalists’ fortunes that it benefited the overall class to compensate one another when an individual merchant lost their investment. Thus, they created a system of profit and risk sharing among the merchant class. The financial logistics of slavery laid the foundation for the emergence of the insurance industry. Hartford is still considered the insurance capital of the world, although there are fewer actual insurance employees working in the city than in the past. 150 of these companies generate $16 billion a year combined. They are centered in the downtown area and housed in the largest office buildings. This industry is, of course, white dominated.

Lastly, Hartford and Hartford county continue to serve the U.S. war machine with several weapons manufacturers. In West Hartford, the Colt factory produces M4 rifles that are continuously sent to Occupied Palestine. The modern “inventor’s workshop” has moved across the Connecticut River to East Hartford, where Raytheon operates a five-story “research” facility to engineer new weapons systems like radars, missiles, and drones for the US and its vassals. A short walk away, Pratt & Whitney builds engines for the F35 fighter jet. While many of these weapons workers are commuters, it is also the perception among community members that the companies are too powerful and entrenched for anti-imperialists to challenge them.  Tracking the city’s development from garrison fortress, to inventor’s workshop, to financial hub of global imperialism, can we really say Amerika was ever not fascist? No, we cannot; it is only the form and proximity to genocide that has changed. 

Demographics

The city has 17 neighborhoods, which are more sharply segregated by national and class contradictions than the average U.S. city. Population maps show that the New Afrikan population is primarily segregated to the north end of the city. The New Afrikan neighborhoods are separated from the Hispanic neighborhoods by insurance offices and the I-84 highway, constructed in 1964 to connect the downtown offices with the white suburbs in West Hartford. As in many cities, the construction of the giant highway through the city devastated the “minority” neighborhoods it crossed over. 

National Groups in Hartford according to 2020 census

Map of the I-84 Highway through Hartford

Although the downtown area saw the highest rate of population growth between 2010 and 2020 (increasing by 53%), this area is still notoriously empty at night and on weekends, when office commuters leave for the suburbs. Downtown is the only neighborhood with a majority white population in Hartford. Note that the North Meadows neighborhood has no official population, since the area contains the Hartford Prison and commercial businesses. (See below.)

Hartford Neighborhoods, Population Change 2010 – 2020

We began our social investigation at the intersection of Park and Main St. In 1969, this intersection was the site of an uprising of the Puerto Rican community against a white biker gang. As the story goes, a white man belonging to the Comanchero biker gang assaulted an elderly Puerto Rican, and the community decided they had had enough. The groups confronted each other in the streets, but Hartford police only arrested Puerto Ricans. This agitated the community even further. The cycle of protesting, followed by police repression, followed by even heavier protesting, would continue for weeks, until an even greater escalation occurred. On August 29, 1969, West Hartford police shot Dennis Jones, a 16 year old New Afrikan, to death. Two days after the murder, a slumlord tenement building burned down, killing three people. These two events were too much for the community to bear, and people took to the streets against both police and white-owned businesses in the north end. But unlike the “Comanchero clash,” this time New Afrikans and Puerto Ricans fought together. The protests spread from the Clay Arsenal Neighborhoods, through downtown, and into Charter Oak and South Green. By September 5, over 500 people had been arrested and 4 people were shot. 

1969 Hartford Uprisings, August-September 1969

This one and a half month period marks the most significant uprising of the oppressed communities in Hartford. Since then, Puerto Ricans have gained representation on the Hartford City Council, giving the community a chance for a larger “piece of the pie” of imperial superprofits. They now have a place in government to address economic inequalities and police oppression. Of course, representation in local politics has not smoothed over the glaring contradictions between different nations in Hartford. Puerto Ricans are still concentrated in specific neighborhoods that receive lower investment ratings than nearby white neighborhoods, and the contradictions of homelessness, drug addiction, and poverty are more present in the Hispanic neighborhoods than in the white-dominated West End. Puerto Ricans make up 74% of the Hispanics in Hartford, but there is a significant Dominican population (8%) now as well. 

Beginning each outing with a briefing of goals and logistics, we set out in both directions along Park Street and the surrounding area. Below are the major contradictions we observed. 

A Note On Methodology 

Methodology refers to a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity. As Scientific Socialists, our area of study is the material world. Our activity is Social Revolution. This means that we study the material world in order to apply the data we perceive — creatively and usefully — towards our material goals. In the context of a social investigation in Occupied North America, our methodology guides us to find those pockets of space and human groupings which could be the situs of a Communist beginning. 

In practice, this means we need to do a cursory study of the local area before committing to a social investigation on the ground. This introductory investigation may require more than just visual information (the phenomena we can see with our eyes in a community). Most often, we will need to study economic and political data as well. For example, studying that an area has an average household income which is significantly less than bordering neighborhoods could clue us in towards an investigation in that area.  

We chose Park St. for several reasons:

1. The area has a high proportion of nationally oppressed people, primarily from Occupied Puerto Rico, but also from the Dominican Republic and other Spanish speaking countries. 
2. ICE has kidnapped more immigrants in Hartford than in any other city. 
3. Most of our political education work occurs in Hartford, making it the best area from which to draw labor. 
4. Visibly, we observe a high degree of homelessness in the Park St. area. 
5. The street has a number of empty residential buildings, indicating ongoing gentrification.

Groups committing to social investigation may use a variety of methods depending on their local area. We conducted our investigation using face-to-face conversations on the street level. Local zoning is commercial-residential, with all residences contained in apartment buildings (which prevented us from knocking door-to-door). We chose not to use a questionnaire, opting for open-ended questions that would generate the most variety of opinions. This was our first investigation conducted in this area, so we wanted to garner the widest possible web of information before narrowing our scope of work.

Homelessness

Roughly one third of the people we interviewed were experiencing homelessness of some sort. Some were living in a shelter or a halfway house. Others reported living outside in parks or under building edifices. One person reported an incident of homeless displacement by the city. According to the community member, a group of people were previously sleeping in tents at Barnard Park. The city reportedly moved them and their belongings to a larger park elsewhere in the city, after complaints of drug use. Of course, these community members reported huge difficulties finding housing in Hartford and Connecticut. 

For every one homeless person, there are 28 abandoned properties. At the site of the Comanchero riot, a new luxury apartment building sits empty. Buildings just like it are being built in several neighborhoods, increasing rent beyond what people can afford. For example, in the North End Blue Hills neighborhood, aging and starved of government investment, the Bowles Park Public Housing Complex was torn down to be replaced with Willow Creek. The new development having fewer dwellings is part of the reason why the Blue Hills population decreased 13% between 2010-2020. 

Of the people we spoke to who did have housing, many reported homelessness as the biggest issue in the city. Some had been homeless previously themselves. We also spoke to people who disparaged the homeless, to varying degrees, for presumed drug use and lack of social etiquette. Most, however, assign blame in both directions; they might blame the individual for poor choices, while the government is blamed for not helping them. There was a common understanding that the shelter and post-incarceration assistance programs do not help people find permanent housing. To this, several people brought up abuse that takes place within the shelter system.

In connection with the lack of housing, another major contradiction we observed is the dominance of slumlords. Just about everyone we spoke to who had housing was a renter. Most, if not all, complained about their rents going up every year. We could have asked more follow up questions about people’s specific living conditions, such as whether repairs are made, whether security deposits are returned, etc.  At times, our investigators were too focused on getting a general sense of the neighborhood’s problems, and this likely caused us to leave certain wells of information untapped. One reason for this error was that we were looking for broad themes of oppression, themes that could take center stage in a future agitation program. But any possible theme would depend on the experiences of individuals in the Park St. area, therefore we should have sought a detailed explanation of exactly why housing access is such an issue in the neighborhood. The individual and the whole are two ends of the same dialectic, and we should ruthlessly investigate both if we expect to organize in any community. Going forward, we have a better idea of when we need to ask more follow-up questions, and we declare our intention to do so in the future. As part of our investigation process, some of our investigators created a hotline for community members to report incidences of abuse by the structures that be. People can now report slumlords, police brutality, ICE activity, and other instances of oppression to this hotline. This reporting would not only continue the investigation process, but refer us toward material injustices which could form the basis of a future program. A future program could take on one of several forms: agitation, Mass Meetings, Community Defense or CopWatch, Red Aid (Communist form of Mutual Aid), or another experimental program that solidifies our contacts with the masses. 

Police

Several community members reported feeling a sense of danger on and around Park St., especially at night. They reported high rates of crime and heavy drug use. When asked about solutions to these problems, several responded that more police were needed. This was a relatively prominent idea of a solution for many people. A slightly lower number of people had nothing but bad things to say about the Hartford police. They reported corruption, harassment, and a lack of material assistance from the police. Based on these conversations, the contradiction between police and the oppressed communities is not the sharpest contradiction in this part of the city, currently. However, this is an issue that needs to be “brought back” to the people in subsequent outings. Hartford currently has 3.42 police officers for every 1,000 residents, while the national average in cities of similar size is 1.6. Hartford already has over twice as many police officers as comparably sized cities. The city spends 8.8% of its budget on police. Hartford is happy to throw as much money as possible into the police force. 

However, the community either does not perceive this outsized number of police, or the police do not prevent crime in the way community members expect. We know that the latter is the case, and that police do not prevent crime. In order to bring this issue back to the community, our investigators need to explore some tactical questions that get to the heart of the fundamental antagonism between the community and the police force. Some questions we may wish to put forward are: 

• What kinds of crime do you perceive most in the community? 
• If the current number of police is not enough to prevent crime, how would increasing their numbers address the problem?
• How could the community itself perform the task of protecting local residents?

We should also bring forth the current statistics that show an already outsized police force to cast doubt on the idea that more police would reduce crime.  

Occasionally, the people we were interviewing would ask us about our ideas for solutions to these contradictions. We generally responded with a critique of state institutions and the fact that they do not help the people. We highlighted the need for grassroots organizing that did not simply participate in the election cycle. Most responded positively to these ideas, and were happy to share their contact info to keep up with our progress. On this note, we could have done a better job at seeking the community’s participation in the social investigation itself. A common goal of social investigation is to recruit those you are interviewing – the people who actually live there – into the project itself. 

Individualism 

Individualism was a very common outlook among the people we spoke to. In regards to problems in the city, one person phrased it as “caring but not caring.” We have heard nearly verbatim reports from other social investigations in the past. Previously, someone phrased it as, “It’s like I give a fuck but at the same time I don’t.” This tells us that community members perceive the contradictions around them, but do not believe there is any movement currently capable of addressing them. The result is a recognition of existing oppression, and perhaps feeling bad about it, but not yet taking the crucial step of organizing the community. 

Mutual Aid Groups

We encountered one mutual aid/ charity group, Food4Lives, conducting a free lunch program in Barnard Park. The organizers were from a different area, considering the large amount of cars they brought. They serve meals once a week, drawing crowds of over 50 people each time we see them. We did not interact with the group, mainly because all of the members were busy serving meals to the large crowd. We were also somewhat skeptical of what information the organizers could provide on the local community. In hindsight, this was an error on our part because we should not neglect interacting with organizers who may be from outside the community, especially considering we are also not residents of the Park Street neighborhood. We did speak to some community members who were waiting in line for food, who reported that the group has been serving meals consistently for several months. 

Based on their website, Food4Lives does not appear to have a firm ideological standpoint besides feeding the homeless through regular meal services. Their vision is “a community where homelessness is addressed with compassion, empowering every individual to rebuild their lives.” We will make sure to interact with the group the next time we see them in person. In the meantime, our investigators should brainstorm ways in which we can constructively struggle alongside existing charity groups such as Food4Lives. 

From Investigation, to Agitation, to Organization

Social investigation is an important first step to community organizing, but we cannot investigate forever. Once enough information has been gathered and the key contradictions are identified, the organizers should collectively synthesize this information before returning to the community with the “new” information. To “synthesize” means to combine a number of things into a coherent whole. By synthesizing contradictions, we are taking the reported issues and connecting them to the capitalist system as whole. Therefore, when we return to the community with this synthesized information, it is not “new,” but it is being presented in a different form.  

The agitation stage can take the form of speaking with people, posting flyers, or other creative means of propaganda. Whereas social investigation is primarily about listening to the concerns of community members, agitation requires a more mutual conversation. Social investigation is listen, listen, listen, while agitation is listen, respond, listen, respond. It is a conversation in which we expose the contradictions in their barest form, while gauging the community member’s own opinions and political consciousness. 

For example, we know that homelessness is a fundamental law of capitalist development, that this sub-proletariat serves as a reserve labor pool for the capitalist, and that the Amerikan welfare system tries to paper over this contradiction with a small percentage of imperialist superprofits. In the social investigation phase, we hear all varieties of opinion on the homelessness question. We hear both sympathy and chauvinism from property owners. In the agitation phase, we may push back on chauvinist ideas from the petit-bourgeois, in order to investigate which, if any, progressive causes can be used to organize small property owners. For example, a renter may say something along the lines of, “I feel bad for the homeless and I know pushing them out won’t solve the problem, but I hate it when they trespass on my property.” A statement like this shows at least some level of consciousness on the homeless question, but there is still a clear element of respect for private property and a short term interest in labor discipline against the homeless. This sentiment is also another example of individualism; empathy for the homeless person is subverted because they are being personally impacted in a negative way. While we may not fully challenge these ideas on a social investigation, we should challenge them when we return to the community for agitation. 

Among those already displaying a revolutionary, or at least anti-state, consciousness, we can take the conversations much further, and even begin to approach the person’s thoughts on organization. 

We should expect the politically advanced individual to hold unacknowledged contradictions in their ideology. For example, a person may agree with the need to organize the community, and to hold mass meetings outside the electoral framework. In this same conversation, the same community member might express the long term goal of setting up a non-profit organization, applying for grant money, and other forms of integration with the state. We would agree with the need for grassroots organizing and mass meetings, but would almost certainly disagree with the notion of embedding ourselves in the non-profit complex. Those grants generally come with strings attached. The agitation stage is the correct time to pose these problems to the community member, to start a conversation around correct organizing models. 

The agitation phase should be used as a precursor to more grounded and collective forms of organization. We have identified the mass meeting as one possible method having significant potential in many oppressed localities. The mass meeting is not a new concept, having been utilized by Indigenous nations for centuries, as well as among the “heretics” in Medieval Europe. In more recent times, both the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) took their original forms through a series of mass meetings. For more information on the Mass Meeting, read The Mass Meeting by the Red Clarion. 

Investigation Never Truly Ends

While we emphasize the need to create organizing models that extend beyond the initial investigatory phase, there is also the need to continuously analyze the situation through a dialectical lens. The contradictions are fluid; they may be exacerbated or reduced by a number of factors, especially the state, which may or may not make concessions depending on the situation. To say that the investigation never truly ends means to affirm our role as dialecticians, always looking to criticize and improve our past analyses. 

The All-Empire Worker’s League encourages all its member organizations to conduct propaganda among the masses with revolutionary potential. If you or your organization are interested in beginning or refining a social investigation, do not hesitate to reach out. 

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!

1. A garrison refers to a fortified location from which military campaigns are planned and enacted against outside groups.
   ︎

DO NOT CHEER FOR GENOCIDE!

Stand with Palestine and all international proletarians!

REJECT CPUSA’s 2025 “Amistad Award” for the imperialist trade unionists of Pratt and Whitney.

Pratt and Whitney’s “strong union contract” means that the workers building F-35 engines will have continuous wage increases. The contract protects Connecticut’s long-held role in finance capital’s worldwide imperialist death machine.

The only correct role for a weapons-manufacturer worker is to organize their fellow workers against the imperialist federal contracts of their employer. NOT to organize for better wages and benefits for all eternity.

This means working OUTSIDE AND AGAINST the captured Business Unions like International Association of Machinists Local 700.

CPUSA Comrades who speak in good faith are silenced and blacklisted from their local clubs without any hearing or struggle.

If you feel that your club is spinning its wheels, you are not alone.

Reject the revisionist rot in CPUSA. Reject their embarrassing award for the Pratt and Whitney Local.

Those comrades with anti-imperialist hearts and minds should band together to ditch the CPUSA’s corrupt central leadership. Democratic Centralism and inter-org criticism are the lifeblood of our movement. CPUSA abandoned these fundamentals decades ago.

At a time when the fury of the popular classes has manifested such actions as the daring execution of Brian Thompson, it is curious that the many leaders of the two hospitals have not considered what is happening right now in homes across Connecticut. Parents are being told that their children are likely to suffer, perhaps even kill themselves in the coming years. There are names and faces associated with this suffering, and they aren’t some distant faceless bureaucrats in Washington, protected by the many miles and layers of red tape.

Oh, yes, the executive order that set this tragedy in motion came from Washington. It was drafted by some staffer in some back room. It was signed by the inhuman flesh-puppet Donald Trump. The blame for his election can be equally shared between GOP members and Democrats. So yes, there is plenty of blame to go around.

But gunmen and bombmakers aren’t likely to be interested in them. At least, not for now. The untold legions of parents that found out on July 24 that their children have been sentenced to suffer and perhaps to die aren’t likely to be hunting for figures in Washington to punish.

They will be looking for the people in their community that caused this tragedy. And they will find them.

Curious that these people haven’t built bunkers, hired private security, and gone off the grid.

Because they should.

1. CEO: Christopher O’Connor. ︎
2. CEO: James E. Shmerling. ︎
3. YNHH Board Members: Thomas Balcezak, William J. Aseltyne, Gail W. Kosoyla, Pamela Sutton-Wallace, Alan Friedman, Anne Diamond, Frank Ciminiello, LIsa Stump, Michael Angelini and Pam Scagliarini; CT Children’s Board Members: Bill Agostinucci, Jonathan M. Carroll, Bob Duncan, Paul Dworkin, Matthew Farr, Bridgett Feagin, Christine Finck, Paulanne Jushkevich, Sarah Matney, Lawrence Milan, James E. Moore, Deb Pappas, Lori R. Pelletier, Juan C. Salazar, and R. Moses Vargas. ︎

The college students of Connecticut participated wholeheartedly in April’s student intifada, despite the police violence and state repression brought to bear against them. No fewer than 46 Yale and 26 UConn students are now facing criminal charges in Connecticut state courts as a result of their organizing. Prosecutors, who have wide latitude to pursue, change, or drop charges, have been clear that they have no intention of backing off.

This is a clear signal that the business interests of Connecticut want the matter concluded. They don’t want any further outbreaks of student unrest. State Prosecutors are letting the movement know that, in Connecticut, the buck stops in the courthouse. The message is that, although this first spin through court won’t hurt too much (defendants are mostly being offered a court program called Accelerated Rehabilitation, or A.R., which will result in the charges being dismissed as long as they don’t pick up any more in the next year or two), they’ll be watching for “repeat offenders.” Today, A.R.. Tomorrow, a conviction.

This is how movements are broken. The state learned this lesson in the 1960s and 70s. Repeated arrests exert a pressure that is hard to resist. They bring charges and push them, so they can eventually burn radicals out of the movement. They want college students to think twice about protesting. Sure, one arrest doesn’t seem like much… but the second arrest will violate that A.R., and now you’re looking at a conviction. The third time will be probation, or worse. This is the state playbook. They’ll turn around and give a sad-faced press conference: “These darn kids. They just aren’t getting it. We have no choice but to take a hard stance.” And then all of Fourth Reich middle America will eat it up, and cheer the prison buses as they cart kids off to jail.

We can help delay the strategy of our clever little clave of Connecticut Goebbels’ by putting pressure on them, and forcing them to reconsider whether or not they really want to pursue charges against the college students arrested for protesting genocide.

How do we do that? Well, at the end of the day, a prosecutor is just a pig in a suit, and like the pigs, prosecutors only understand force. So the time has come for us to use it, to force them to drop the charges. We need to exert the pressure of public opinion. Signing petitions is a good start, but it doesn’t stop there. The next stage of organizing and escalation must be directed against the courts where these charges are being pursued.

Here are some petitions and campaigns to get you started.

Now go out and organize.

Students and workers discussed geopolitics, painted signs, and worked on a massive olive-tree sculpture while onlookers filmed them from beyond the encampment border. Following the trend of militarizing student camps, the Yale Liberated Zone has erected a physical wall of fabric and tents on three sides of the camp and, using a sandstone wall as an anchor, enclosed a sizeable square within. They have selected marshals, posted Community Guidelines, and provided a schedule board for each day. Food and drinks have been made available, and encampment health and sanitation is taken very seriously.

The Connecticut Radical Reading Group has established ties with the encampment, and word is that they are forming a standing reading group in the Liberated Zone.

The press is making every effort to begin connecting the students and workers at the Liberated Zone with the progressive elements in the city of New Haven, and we urge all of our readers in the geographical area who can to lend their assistance.

The encampment has asked for the following items to any that can donate them:

• Tarps
• Tents
• Folding tables
• Sealable plastic storage bins
• Masks and water
• Cleaning supplies (wipes, paper towels, etc.)
• Compostable utensils and plates

They badly need more storage: simple shelves,and organizational materials to help sort food and drinks as well as medical supplies.

Onward, to victory!

[New Britain, CT] – We are inviting any and all media to our rally at Central Park in New Britain on April 22nd 2024 at 3:30 pm to bring attention to the gentrification unfolding in New Britain and around CT, as well as the gentrification yet to come. It is also to call out one luxury developer in particular, Jasko Development LLC and its CEO Avner Krohn. He and his company have been described as leading New Britain’s “comeback” (translation: bringing rich people in and kicking poor, homeless, and long time residents out). Like all luxury developments that have been built in once poor and underdeveloped areas across the U.S, the 3 luxury developments Jasko is building downtown will release the floodgates of gentrification. As more wealthy people, who can afford Jasko’s $1650 / month rent for a studio, move to New Britain, as more landlords in the surrounding area speculate that they can charge more for rent with the influx of rich people, the homeless, poor, and long time residents who can’t afford the rent increases and housing costs will be displaced. They will either end up homeless or be forced to move to an area with cheaper housing. It’s a process and story that has unfolded in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Boston. Look at the changes in New Haven over the past 10-15 years!

We are here to say enough! Jasko Development LLC and Avner Krohn are the face of gentrification in New Britain whether they intend to be or not. If they want to be helpful to the New Britain community, where plenty of people are desperate for housing they can qualify for, then they should meet the following demands from the community:

1. Cut the rent in 1⁄2 and don’t raise it
2. Remove 3x income requirements, disregard prior evictions, credit history, and criminal records,
   no application fees
3. Prevent police harassment, especially of homeless and poor people, on your property
4. Only rent to New Britain residents, employ residents of New Britain with a living wage
5. Subsidize rents with your estimated $7.5 million tax break

If they are unwilling to do the above, then they make it clear they are not for the people of New Britain in these desperate times, they are only about their money, and we need to evict them before they evict us!

Speakers from teachers’ unions, faith organizations, and care-workers’ unions took the podium to air their frustrations with a government that refuses to hear the cries of a suffering public. This was the “Rally for a Moral Budget,” called by Recovery for All, a statewide coalition of liberal organizations pleading for the lives of working people in Connecticut.

Right now, even after the devastation of a global pandemic, Connecticut has an unprecedented 3 billion dollar surplus. Instead of investing this surplus into much needed social programs, Millionaire Governor Ned Lamont is absolutely giddy with his plan to start cutting taxes across the board. The state government claims that the tax cut will “provide tax relief to working men and women and families across the state.”

It won’t.

Any money going back into the pockets of working people will come right back out again as payments to the wealthy ruling classes. Tax cuts are fantastic propaganda. Yes, the government is going to take less of your money! But that’s all we heard from Lamont. What didn’t we hear?

There is no talk from the state house about the housing crisis. Not a word about the sudden and ignominious discharge of a huge number of the state educational workforce. Lamont has nothing to say about families who can’t afford food or the fact that Connecticut is the state with the highest income gap between the poor working class and the rich ruling class in the entire United States Empire.

As the rally began, each speaker rose to vent their suffering. They shouted the frustration of the working people at the uncaring marble edifices of Connecticut’s halls of government. It wrenched the heart to hear the cries of the working masses, thundering to their supposed representative that they were not only forgotten, but drowning. Even more heartbreaking, however, was the fact that not one of those speakers recognized why their cries fell only on deaf stone walls, on ears that will never hear them. The cause of their sorrows, the origin of their misery, is, of course: Capital.

As long as the working class is forced to sell its labor to the capitalist class in order to survive, we will be reduced to begging them on hands and knees for our survival while they grow rich from the fruits of our labor. They will continue to string us along by occasionally instituting reforms (that will be quietly rolled back) and convincing us that we have a say in this farce of a democracy. 

In order to make real, lasting change, there needs to be an understanding that the liberal strategy of reform can only ever take us so far. 

One of the primary flaws of liberal ideology is the inability to understand that the purpose of the state, i.e., the government, is to advance the interests of the capitalist ruling class. The plea to inject “morality” into a budget fundamentally misunderstands the nature and function of a system that can only ever work for the benefit of the wealthy and the powerful. 

Capitalism is not an apolitical, amoral tool. It is a system driven by the need to maximize profit above all else: above justice, above freedom, above life itself. The capitalist is driven to expand profits, to accumulate and hoard more and more of the wealth of the earth. It reduces all things to commodities — products to be bought and sold at a profit. It transforms every relationship into a profit-generating opportunity. Policies for the safety of the working class, social safety nets, are temporarily won by the victories of an organized working class — or they are implemented as a stopgap to delay social revolution for another week, another month, another year.

These social safety nets cut into the profits of the big capitalists. They will never voluntarily reduce their own income without something in return, so instead they siphon off the wealth of the entire world to make sure the U.S., their “home base,” the central bastion and bulwark of the world-imperialist order, is safe. They send the military to bomb and destroy other countries and raid them of their wealth, to force them into economic subjugation so cheap goods can flow back to the U.S. working classes. But this devil’s bargain can only work for so long. Eventually, even those benefits will be sacrificed on the altar of profit. There is no way to satisfy the insatiable hunger of Capital.

Liberal idealism imagines a world in which the lofty goals of justice, equality, and freedom are the driving force behind legislation and enforcement. This is not how the world works.

Historical materialism, in contrast to liberal idealism, analyzes the world on the basis of what actually happens in material reality. By studying history, even the recent past, we can understand that the wealthy capitalists make and enforce laws that maintain their power over us and make them even wealthier. 

For too long, the ruling class in the U.S. Empire has successfully suppressed the ideas of socialism and communism. They rightfully fear what will happen if these ideas proliferate. They rightfully fear what will happen if the masses look to the material reality of the world we live in, and understand the power of the people to take control of the means of production. They rightfully fear the truth that a Historical Materialist analysis reveals: we neither need nor want their chains.

The power of ideology is strong. The media, educational system, and legal system only speak the language of liberal idealism. It’s no wonder that the language of socialism and communism has been absent from popular discourse for so long. 

This is starting to change. Polling shows that, especially among the youth, capitalism is losing people’s approval while socialism is being seen in an increasingly positive light.

As the horror show of neoliberal capitalism spirals into greater and greater contradiction, the drive towards freedom and equality must take a path of freedom and equality. This path can only be tread by a united working class that stands guided by the roadsigns of historical materialism, scientific socialism, and Communism. Even now, that path is being paved by the workers who refuse to be hoodwinked by liberal reformism — our class is uniting. 

In Connecticut, the misery of the working people has a voice. Soon, it will have a name.

Well, not over over… they just aren’t going to be helping the workers of Connecticut deal with it anymore. That’s on us now!

Yesterday, Lamont announced that the services and programs put into place to support the residents of Connecticut during the state of emergency are being canceled as of May 11, 2023. 

He makes it very clear that this does not mean that the danger has passed, “I continue to urge Connecticut residents to take actions to protect themselves from the spread of COVID-19 and all respiratory viruses – stay home when you’re sick, get vaccinated and boosted to limit your risk of contracting viruses, and listen to the advice of medical experts on ways to stay healthy.”

Hey, Ned? How are working people expected to “stay home when sick” when they can barely afford to put food on the table as it is? Especially when emergency SNAP benefits are being canceled along with every other program! We have no sick leave, no medical coverage, and no way to provide for ourselves when we get infected. We are being set up for economic disaster for the sin of protecting our fellow workers.

Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani adds, “Residents still should get vaccinated, get the updated vaccine, use at-home tests, stay home when they’re sick, and based on your own medical conditions, consider wearing a high-quality mask when respiratory viruses are circulating at high levels in their community.”

Unfortunately, in addition to eliminating the emergency food relief, the state is also transitioning all vaccination, testing and therapeutics to the broken for-profit insurance system. Even the most “up-to-date” vaccines are obsolete, and much less effective against the viral strains currently circulating; if more effective updates ever get released, how will we afford them? The available tests are expensive, and fail to detect new variants with increasing frequency; what worker can afford to take them over and over as a precautionary measure?

Also, if you are amongst the nearly ONE MILLION Connecticut residents covered by Medicaid, you will need to pay extra close attention to your insurance because continuous enrollment is being canceled as well. 

KFF, an independent health policy research organization, has outlined the devastating effects that the abandonment of the continuous enrollment program could have. Especially vulnerable are “…immigrants and people with limited English proficiency (LEP), and people with disabilities.” 

This entire process of rolling back programs and services highlights a few important facts:

1. The government is run by and for the wealthy capitalist class.
2. They do not care about the working class, especially the most vulnerable and least empowered sections of the working class.
3. Any reforms that the government is forced to put in place to respond to the inevitable crises caused by capitalism can and will be taken away as soon as these monsters have the slightest excuse.

The ultra-wealthy elite that run this country did not face this pandemic the way that the working public was forced to. They have always been able to protect themselves, with round-the-clock testing, the ability to stay home whenever they wish, unmitigated access to effective treatments, and comprehensive protection measures at their events. While workers continued to put their lives on the line, the corporate vampires that run this country funneled more profit than ever into their greedy maws, all on the backs of a working class who is still struggling to survive.

Today, as Lamont rips away the meager concessions that were put in place for workers’ safety in the face of a continuing global pandemic, we are reminded who we can rely on: each other. The ruling class is not going to protect us. It is up to us to come together to protect each other from the deadly virus that still rages around us. It is up to us to come together to protect ourselves from the tyranny of these capitalist exploiters. It is up to us to come together to create a world where people come before profits.