Forgive this short introduction for there is much to cover; Hawai’i’s nature is certainly one of the most beautiful on Earth. If we want to keep it that way, we must do everything in our power to decolonize the Hawaiian islands that have been under U.S. occupation since 1893. But let’s start with some history. Let’s talk about the illegal occupation and annexation of Hawai’i.

While we should rightly begin where history begins — that is, from the initial Polynesian settlement of the islands to the establishment of the unified Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1795, this is not a history I would be able to tell, because it is not mine to communicate. I could not do justice to the millennia of Hawaiian history and  its language, culture and people. For that, I would instead point to Indigenous Hawaiian sources, such as the Ka Mooolelo Hawai’i — the first history of Hawai’i written by Native students in 1838 — or the Papaliko database which hosts a collection of data on historically and culturally significant events, curated by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, If you know more Indigenous resources, feel free to post them in the comments for our readers.

We will begin shortly before the pivotal event that cemented Hawai’i’s status to the United States: the overthrow of queen Lili’uokalani.

In January of 1893, the queen of the independent and sovereign kingdom of Hawai’i (which had been united by King Kamehameha I in 1795, putting all the islands under one monarch) was overthrown at gunpoint by U.S. Marines. She had ascended to the throne only two years earlier after the untimely death of her brother Kalakaua, and quickly set out to restore power to the monarchy and native Hawaiians with a new constitution after one had been forcefully passed just four years earlier. This effort, however, was quickly opposed by a group of U.S. and European businessmen and lawyers, known as the “Committee of Safety”, who favored annexation with the United States.

We have to understand the context surrounding the United States in 1893 to understand why the U.S. were interested in Hawai’i. By that time, most of the territory that now forms the continental United States had been settled and attached to the Union. In 1846, just half a century earlier, settlers had stolen Texas from Mexico, which led to a war in which Mexico relinquished control of what now forms the southwestern quarter of the United States territory, including California. With this, coast-to-coast imperial ambitions were  achieved.

The following years would be marked by rapid settler expansion to the west, and with it came industrialization — including the building of the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869 and of which 90% of the workforce was Chinese (on the western portion). They would later be expelled by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 passed by Congress. In Hawai’i, Chinese immigrants were instead welcomed (alongside Japanese immigrants) by Native Hawaiians, though plantation owners instituted a blanket 10-hour work day on plantations under harsh conditions.

This rapid industrialization didn’t please slaveowners in the south who saw their privileges threatened, and led to a civil war that marked the 1860s. The industrialized Union won, and with it came what is called the Reconstruction era: the final rupture of the slaveowning mode of production that remained in the South and towards a proletarianization of the labor force, which allowed manufacturing to become even more productive.

This laid the final brick in the foundation of the American Empire’s hegemonic ambitions, and they could start to look outwards. In 1898, the U.S. declared war against Spain and, in the peace deal, took the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam — the final colonies of the declining Spanish monarchy.

But the Philippines are far away, especially in the age of the steamboat. To pave the way to Asia, a base of operations was thus required in the Pacific, and Hawai’i was perfectly suited for it. In 1898, President McKinley declared “We must have Hawai’i to get our share of China.”

On top of that, Hawai’i’s climate made it perfect for growing cash crops — prior to annexation, U.S. businessmen had already established large sugar plantations on the island chain. And of course, Hawai’i also formed a shield against attacks from the west, seen as recently as the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

All of this leads us to the reasons the U.S. wanted to annex Hawai’i.

When queen Lili’uokalani took the throne in 1891, she had her work cut out for her. A few years earlier, the so-called Bayonet Constitution had been passed in the kingdom, imposed on King Kalākaua on July 6, 1887 by the aforementioned plantation owners. They called themselves the Hawaiian League (despite none of them being Hawaiian) and, through arms, forced the new constitution that they had drafted for the king. This constitution allowed foreign residents to vote — which, to this day, no country offers — and denied over two-thirds of Native Hawaiians from voting.

In 1892, the Legislature of the Kingdom of Hawai’i passed the Highways Act to protect public lands from privatization. At the same time, the monarchy was also trying to push forward a new constitution that would undo the Bayonet Constitution.

As we’ve already seen, all of this came crashing down in 1893. Shortly after the new year, queen Lili’uokalani made her intentions to push the new constitution clear. Immediately, the Annexation Club — composed of six citizens of the Kingdom (specifically not recorded as being Native Hawaiian) and seven U.S. and European foreigners — carried out their counter-plan: with help from the U.S. government, a fully armed warship anchored in Honolulu harbor (a tactic that the U.S. would use several more times in the future, including in 1974 in Portugal). This move initially scared the legislature who withdrew their support for the new constitution.

Lili’uokalani tried to ease tensions by walking back some of the changes she wanted to make, but it was too late and annexation was within reach for plantation owners. On January 16, 162 U.S. sailors and marines landed in Hawai’i and illegally occupied the sovereign and independent nation.

On January 17, the Committee of Safety — the descendent to the Annexation Club — announced martial law and the deposing of the queen. Specifically, they also declared a provisional government until a union with the United States could be achieved.

Queen Lili’uokalani surrendered to the U.S. government and thus came the end of the long-standing Kingdom of Hawai’i.

Before we continue with this important piece of history, we should take some time to understand what life in Hawai’i was like prior to the coup.

The imperial core’s own institutions recognized Hawai’i as a sovereign nation. By 1843, Hawai’i became the first non-Western nation to receive full recognition as an independent state by Western powers. By 1893, the kingdom maintained over ninety consulates and legations (which served the functions of an embassy) worldwide, including in the United States. Only sovereign states maintain embassies abroad to serve as their representatives on foreign soil.

This fact cements that prior to the deposing of the monarchy (and arguably even prior to the Bayonet Constitution), Hawai’i was a fully sovereign nation in the eyes of the imperialists. Thus, logically, the occupation by U.S. Marines on January 16 was an illegal invasion by a foreign state, and annexation by the U.S. was a coup.

By the mid-19th century, Hawai’i had achieved a 95% literacy rate, the highest in the world. The Constitutional Monarchy established in 1840 guaranteed equal voting rights regardless of race, gender or wealth — the first of its kind in the modern world; at the time, most Western countries were still limiting voting rights to landowning males, if they had any at all. The constitution came about on the impulse of king Kamehameha III himself (also known as Kauikeaouli), as part of efforts to modernize the kingdom.

In 1859, the Queen’s Hospital was established and provided free healthcare to all native Hawaiians. Electric public lightning came to the streets of Honolulu in 1888 — before even the White House had electric lightning. Laws on land distribution made by the Declaration of Rights (1839) guaranteed virtually no homelessness. Affordable mass-transit made travel between islands possible for everyone.

All of these achievements were instantly reversed after the foreign coup in 1893, which turned Hawai’i into a plantation colony for the United States.

Hawai’i became the 50th state of the “Union” in 1959. What happened between 1893 and then?

Immediately after the queen was deposed, a provisional government was set up. This government immediately sent envoys to Washington to seek a treaty of annexation — manifesting their desire for the complete destruction of an independent Hawai’i into an occupied colony of the United States. The treaty was delayed by the inauguration of Grover Cleveland as U.S. president however, and stalled there. Because of this, the Republic of Hawai’i was proclaimed by the Committee of Safety in 1894. Sanford B. Dole, a white man born in Honolulu, became its president. He was approved for a six-year term and if the name Dole is familiar, that is because his cousin James D. Dole is the one who started the Dole fruit company (then called the Hawaiian Pineapple Company). James Dole came to Hawai’i in 1899 and developed the pineapple industry which he had started there in 1851 — pineapple, which is used on “Hawaiian Pizza”, is not native to Hawai’i.

The new constitution accompanying this puppet temporary state required voters to swear allegiance to the republic. Strict property requirements prevented most Hawaiians from voting. The U.S. quickly recognized the coup government, despite president Cleveland publicly criticizing the involvement of U.S. Marines, as is usual — to this day we see the same performative criticism of the particular forms brutal occupation takes, but not its end result.

A counter-rebellion was attempted in 1895 to restore the sovereign kingdom, but failed. In 1898, the situation had stabilized sufficiently that then-president McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution, which annexed Hawai’i to the United States. A petition signed by over half the Hawaiian population was presented to the U.S. government protesting the move, but was ignored.

In 1900, Hawai’i became a territory of the United States — the same status that Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and ‘American’ Samoa have today. Stanford Dole, previously the president of the coup republic, was named governor of Hawai’i.

At that point, everything that existed under the late constitutional monarchy was broken and rebuilt. There was no more President or king in Hawai’i, but a U.S. governor — and with it, the laws of the occupier came along too, which is illegal under U.N. Occupation Law.

During that time, sugar production expanded from 289,500 short tons in 1900 to 939,300 short tons in 1930 in plantations owned by white Americans and toiled by native Hawaiians. Pineapple grew from 2000 cases in 1903 to 12 million cases in 1931. Tourism, which plagues Hawai’i to this day, started in 1901 with the opening of the Moana hotel. By 1958, tourists amounted to 171 thousand in one year compared to 25 thousand in 1940. All the while political control remained largely in the hands of the Haole — non-Native Hawaiian, specifically white.

In 1896, the Hawaiian language was banned in public schools — that ban remained in place for 100 years, until 1986. Today, UNESCO still classifies the language as critically endangered.

U.S. businessmen were not the only ones scrambling to the newly-acquired territory, of course. The government immediately set out to fulfill its ambitions and established a dozen military bases in Hawai’i between 1898 and 1922. Since it now considers Hawai’i part of their territory, military presence has only increased, and with it came many scandals and destruction. The military occupies 6% of Hawai’i’s land (illegally), and these bases have displaced many Indigenous Hawaiians and destroyed sacred cultural sites. The U.S. military contributes heavily to environmental crises in Hawai’i, being responsible for example for the Red Hill water contamination crisis.

The effects of the colonization of Hawai’i are still felt today because the U.S. government still considers Hawai’i to be their playground for tourism, army and the mass distribution of pineapple.

Native Hawaiians face higher rates of poverty compared to whites — 15.4% versus 9.6%. Cost of living has soared in Hawai’i with the introduction of a tourism industry (owned by white businessmen); 40% of Indigenous Hawaiian households are cost-burdened by rent prices, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on rent. Indigenous Hawaiians form only 10% of the population of Hawai’i, yet make up 51% of the homeless population. 50% of Native Hawaiians live outside of Hawai’i. The tourism industry pays pittance wages with most of the profits going to the white owners.

More than a quarter of missing girls in Hawai’i are Indigenous, and the average profile of a missing person is a 15-year-old Indigenous girl. Hawai’i is the state with the eighth-highest rate of missing persons in the United States, and 84% of Indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime. In Operation Keiki Shield, 38% of those arrested for soliciting sex from a 13-year-old online were active-duty U.S. Military personnel. 

The tourism industry in Hawai’i has put over 60% of plants and animal species in the ‘endangered’ status, largely due to deforestation to build resorts that make a parody of traditional Hawaiian culture. 44.7% of water on the Big Island (the island of Hawai’i) is consumed by hotels and resorts.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military causes crisis after crisis, and never cleans up after. They pollute potable water through mismanagement. Over several months in 2021, fuel tanks failed one by one at U.S. navy bases at Red Hill (Oahu island) and released tens of thousands gallons of fuel into the island’s drinkable water supply. The U.S. military controls 30% of the land on this island and used it — and the sacred cultural site at Kaho’olawe — as a bombing range for decades. The issue was compounded by the fact that the leaks happened over several months, raising the question as to why the fuel tanks were not inspected and fixed after the first leak. Petroleum contaminated the public water supply for 1 million residents, and the U.S. Navy both refused to help fix the problem and did not notify the authorities when the leaks happened — the problem was reported far too late, when local residents noticed the leak in their tap water. Instead, the Navy ‘promised’ to close the facility by 2027. Today in January 2025, 4,000 gallons of fuel and 28,000 gallons of sludge still remain in the pipes and tanks. In the first weeks after the leak, colonial authorities in Hawai’i even said that the water was safe to drink, leading to the poisoning of thousands.

Pearl Harbor, which we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, was known as Wai Momi (Pearl Waters) by the Hawaiians, and got its name from the pearl oyster diving trade that took place there. The pristine and shallow waters were perfectly suited for that activity, as well as fishing to feed the population — and they did so faithfully for over 600 years. 27 fishponds lined the shores of the Pearl Waters. In 1887, after the Bayonet Constitution, the U.S. gained exclusive rights to the lagoon as a coaling and repair station and from there built their naval base. Today, the water at Pearl Waters is polluted with arsenic, lead and mercury.

In the mid-20th century, the U.S. military detonated nuclear weapons as part of tests in the Pacific, not far from Hawai’i. At the Pacific Proving Grounds — Johnston Atoll, Bikini Atoll, and Enewetak Atolls — nuclear bombs were detonated. As part of Operation Fishbowl, a nuclear test was conducted in high-altitude, which caused an artificial aurora visible from Hawai’i and an electromagnetic pulse that damaged electrical infrastructure on the island chain. Over 100 nuclear detonations were made in the Pacific between 1946 and 1962, and the fallout caused — and is still causing — cancers in Hawai’i and other Pacific Islander populations. Residents of Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands chain, still cannot grow food locally.

In 2023, deadly wildfires burned on the island of Maui, becoming one of the deadliest natural disasters in Hawai’i’s history. The fires were caused by sparks from broken power lines that ignited dry vegetation. 102 people were killed by the fires, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in history. As of 2025, only three homes have been rebuilt, out of 2,200 structures destroyed. Landlords immediately sensed a good business opportunity, and rent rose by 44% on the island, further displacing Indigenous Hawaiians from their ancestral home. The only help from the federal government was a FEMA loan that will stop in 2028.

In terms of land ownership, some 200,000 acres have been set aside by the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to be distributed to Indigenous Hawaiians, but long waitlists persist. The U.S. Federal government, in comparison, owns 531,000 acres which are used for military bases and national parks. National Parks in the U.S. (under Roosevelt), as in “Israel”, were mainly established to drive Indigenous tribes away from their homelands — Yellowstone Park, for example, is located on the ancestral homeland to the Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfeet, Crow, and Nez Perce.

Mark Zuckerberg has also been acquiring land on Kauai since 2014. He now holds over 1,400 acres including beachfront and agricultural properties. In 2016, he initiated lawsuits to force owners of kuleana (small parcels with ancestral rights enclosed in ‘his’ property) to sell their property, dragging them in expensive lawsuits that the families could not finance. He is not the only one: other U.S. tech figures such as Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) own mansion compounds of their own in Hawai’i. Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, owns 98% of Lanai island, one of Hawai’i’s eight islands. Meanwhile, Indigenous Hawaiians pay $3,000 per month in rent for an average of $18 per hour, which is twice as low as the occupation state’s average wage of $32 per hour.

Again, all of this is technically illegal, not only under U.S. law, but also under international law. The U.S. is illegally occupying Hawai’i, an occupation made possible only by their military might and the putting down of independence movements. In effect, the Kingdom of Hawai’i is under occupation and U.N. Occupation law applies to it — similarly as it does to Palestine. More and more organizations are recognizing this occupation status, including U.N. bodies, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the National Lawyers Guild. Under Occupation Law, the occupied population has the right to resist occupation, including by force.

Indigenous Hawaiian groups have been very clear about the effects tourism has on their homeland, and have thus requested that tourists refrain from visiting Hawai’i — not just U.S. tourists, but all tourists. I can only echo their voice and make you reconsider visiting Hawai’i as long as it remains a U.S. colony. 

Like many other countries and territories, Hawai’i is not spared by the effects of ongoing colonization; and all of this is still happening in the 21st century. The only just solution for Hawai’i is the complete expulsion of the U.S. army, the recognition of a sovereign Hawaiian state and nation by the U.S. government, and the relinquishing of its status as a U.S. state or dependency of any kind.

The time has come for all principled Marxists to engage directly with the student movement and aid it in its self-organization. The student movement  must now adapt and advance to address the new needs it has called forth. The state is using  a two-pronged assault on the movement: the first prong is the use of the legal repressive apparatus — the courts, the police, deportation — and the second prong is the use of the civil institutions acting  as state agents (in this case the universities) which are expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of student radicals.

As repression intensifies, it becomes clearer and clearer that we Marxists have not learned the correct lessons from the initial attacks on the movement (see our prior article, “Join the Student Movement!”). The movement must become organized to a high degree. Organization must develop in a particular direction and particular fashion to address the attacks the movement is now suffering.

That means the movement must develop to address:

• Organizational safety from the university system’s discipline;
• Physical safety from federal and state agents of repression (police, ICE, etc.) as well as paramilitary responses from private citizens;
• Anonymity of the leadership cadre and opacity of plans of action;
• Open lines of retreat after actions, and cessation of all action that results in identification or arrest.

To the purpose of addressing these issues, we have put together the following plans that Marxists involved in the movement should pursue. As always, we encourage to the strongest degree that any Marxists involved form separate, Marxist-Leninist organizations that are not directly integrated into the student movement and that can guide and coordinate the actions of the individual Marxists involved.

Organizational Defense Against the Universities

The universities are the second rank of defense for the state against the advent of student radicalism. In particular, elite universities like Columbia serve as the center of social reproduction for the ruling class, and thus are very concerned with the needs and demands of that class. These universities obviously have a class-character and a class-standpoint; their faculty are overwhelmingly high petit-bourgeois or bourgeois and their class standpoint is direct adherence to the haute bourgeois imperialists.

Despite the fact that they are “private” institutions, the university system is very malleable to the wishes of the government (and thus, the ruling class through its government agents). They have traditionally been the seat of reproduction for the reactionary vanguard, the CIA, and have always acted hand-in-glove with the state itself. Thus, we should not view the university system as separate from the state, but rather an extension of the state’s power into the social life of society. The university is the agent of the state. In this way, they act as machines of repression like the courts and prisons.

Columbia in particular has increased its repressive activities against student radicals: they have fired the leader of a student-worker union, issued expulsions, suspensions, demanded in-class attendance despite the threat of federal agents prowling the campus to deport radicals, private hearings with students, etc.

Defense against these tactics cannot arise spontaneously; it must be coordinated. The universities, as de facto agencies of the state, are too large and powerful to bend to pressure unless that pressure is exerted on a mass scale. Even the student population itself may be too small to draw the necessary concessions. Thus, the defense against the universities requires the utmost in organizational advancement and will also require the development of direct ties between the student-radicals and the masses of workers in their immediate area. Luckily, even the petit-bourgeoisie is likely to be outraged at the encroachment of the universities on the traditional “liberties” (as liberals understand them) of the students, particularly those who are members of the petit-bourgeois or bourgeois ranks of society. This represents a contradiction which must be exploited, a wedge which must be leveraged against the universities to the greatest degree possible.

1. Internal Solidification and Resilience

Resiliency is the order of the day. Withstanding legal or quasi-legal pressure requires resilience, specifically the organizational resources to ensure that everyone involved in the radical project stands in solidarity with one another. There are several components to a resilience of this type. The first is organization.

Organized groups are more resistant to repression. By organization, we mean a determined set of relationships and rules by which decisions are made and authority is delegated. The student-radical groups must be democratic, they must have defined membership, and they must have defined leadership and delegated channels of authority. This is the first step toward resisting the quasi-legal pressure being brought to bear by the universities.

This organization should then proceed to hold meetings with all involved and ensure that everyone understands the necessity of absolute solidarity. These meetings can boost morale, bring everyone on the same page as to strategy, and collect reports of issues being faced by the student-radicals.

The second component of this resilience is support. Once an organization is functioning, it must begin to garner material support for the radicals being targeted by the administration. This works in concert with component III of this proposal, the existence of Safehouses. In essence, those targeted by the administration should be assured of 1) housing, 2) income or essentials, and, where possible, 3) paid work. In order to achieve this, the organization should pool the resources of its individual members and solicit resources from outside in an effort to prepare for the necessity of material support. This should be done before it is necessary to draw on these resources, but that moment may be behind us.

2. Aggressive Legal Defense

The student-radical organizations must also prepare to strike back in the bourgeois courts with an aggressive legal strategy. The maneuvers currently being undertaken by the administrations are quasi-legal at best, and are subject to challenge. They can be slowed by entangling them in preliminary injunctions and litigation, particularly in federal courts where the local federal judiciary may be seeking to prove its independence from the central government.

This arm of the strategy should be carried out by trained movement lawyers who understand the necessity of militancy in the face of the current repression. We would recommend speaking with the National Lawyers Guild in detail about the potential for pro bono representation.

3. Prepare Plans for Tuition and Labor Strikes

The prior two stages should prepare student-radical organizations for the next stage of escalation: tuition and labor strikes. Unlike regular capitalist businesses, the universities have a flow of income that is independent from their labor-force. This often comes through the state apparatus itself (witness Washington’s attempts to interfere with Columbia’s internal operations by threatening to withdraw funding). However, there is a reliance upon both tuition and student labor in the allocation of university resources.

Tuition and labor strikes must be highly coordinated to be effective, and a large minority of student-workers and tuition-paying students must be prepared to expose themselves to the potential repercussions before they can be successfully carried out. However, given a high degree of organization, they can be extremely effective in bringing the administration to the bargaining table and forcing concessions. 

4. Connect with Unionized Workers on Campus

Other workers on the campus — faculty and staff — should be brought into the movement. Any student-radicals that are not yet in deep dialogues with the unionized workers on their grounds are cut off from the wider pool of labor solidarity and the above-listed labor strikes under C will be far less effective. The survival of the student movement relies on it connecting with the broader struggle of working people and uniting both of those struggles together.

At this stage, with many imperialist unions disclaiming Palestine solidarity, it is important that the student-radicals carefully assess whether the union leadership on their campus is friendly. If they are not, the radicals must bypass union leadership and instead establish connections directly with rank-and-file union members. They should be prepared to explain the manner in which the struggle of the student intifada is connected to the struggle of the unionized workers.

Student Self-Defense

In order to preserve their physical safety from state agents, the student-radicals must adopt modes of self-defense. We propose four steps or stages of heightening intensity to the student self-defense efforts:

1. Identifying the most vulnerable student-radicals;
2. Establishing a phone tree and lines of communication and warning;
3. Designating an on-call schedule for phone contacts; and finally,
4. Forming on-call defense brigades for physical confrontations.

1. Identifying the most vulnerable

The radical organizations, once fully formed, should reflect carefully on who is the most vulnerable to state action. Foreign nationals or anyone who could presumably be deported with a minimum of legal fiction should take precedence over others. Those who are being monitored by the state for any reason — plea bargains, court programs to get rid of cases, etc. — should also be considered. The organizations should privately draw up secret lists of those who must have the highest level of security.

2. Establishing the phone tree

An emergency phone tree must be established. Everyone in the organization should provide two phone numbers and at least one email address. The organization should then establish the call protocol in the case of any threat to an individual or group of student-radicals. Each person should have at minimum two other individuals to contact when an emergency begins. Once someone is contacted, they should immediately contact their listed “downstream” individuals. In this way, the entire organization can be alerted in very short order.

3. Designate an on-call schedule for the phone tree

Optimally, there will be one or two points of contact for the phone tree at any given time who make certain they are available. Anyone experiencing the threat of physical repression should call the on-call numbers; the on-call members may then communicate with the organization’s sitting body for self-defense to determine what actions are appropriate and then begin activating the phone tree. In most cases, physically assembling at the site of the emergency should be considered first.

4. Forming on-call defense brigades

Once the organization reaches a certain degree of development, the decentralized phone tree method should be transitioned to the formation and training of on-call defense brigades who can be called up to respond to emergencies. These defense brigades should be armed with some hand-held striking weapon (bats are a perennial favorite) and trained in defensive tactics. They will be called to rapidly assemble to sites where individuals find their safety threatened.

Safehouses/Underground

The student movement has called forth the need for a functioning underground. Those exposed leaders who now stand subject to vigilante threats or state action must have somewhere safe to retreat to until the crisis subsides. The construction of an underground now will provide the infrastructure for underground actions in the future and will heighten the degree of development of any student-radical organization.

We propose the following phases or schedule of establishing an underground:

1. Establish the network of safe locations available for long-term occupation;
2. Establish safe practices for moving between locations;
3. Prepare retreat plans for people who have been identified under II(1) above;
4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning.

1. Establish a network

This requires drawing up the names and addresses of everyone with space that can be used to hide people moving into the underground. A network of 5+ locations is required for this to be effective. These people must be trustworthy and developed, and must realize that they may be seriously inconvenienced for an extended period.

2. Establish safe practices for moving

The organization must establish a protocol for the safe transfer of radicals from safehouse to safehouse. This includes communication between safehouses (to be done in person at pre-arranged locations) as well as what physical routes will be taken and measures taken to obscure the identity of the people being ferried between safehouses.

3. Prepare retreat plans for those identified as most vulnerable

Everyone on the high vulnerability section of the organization’s vulnerability chart should have immediate emergency plans in place should they feel their safety is compromised, with predetermined signals and safehouses to arrive at.

4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning

No actions should be planned on any electronic media. All actions should be planned face to face and in person. Communication by digital media should be minimized as much as possible.

This is the Hour

We do not have much time. The student movement is under threat and must radicalize or it will be excised from the universities. Trained Marxists should endeavor to teach themselves the skills necessary to perform the tasks outlined above and should integrate themselves and offer their services to the student movement immediately. If you have resources or access to spaces that could be used as safehouses, you should make that known and contact student-radicals with that information immediately.

A luta continua!