Because you know
That pain is not
Our motherland

That suffering 
Is not our
Divine right

That heaven is
What we make 
On earth

Like houses
Love 
And bread

Because you come
From the heart
Of the soil

And do not sprinkle us
With holy water
Pie-in-the-sky lies and
Ashes to ashes dust to dust

Because you know 
That your big mouth
And your curly hair

Is African
And your brown skin
And dark eyes is Indian

Because you don’t point
To Europe for
Beauty or salvation

Because you know
As Che and Fidel and 
Maurice Bishop and Roque Dalton

And Walter Rodney
And Neruda and Allende
And Patrice Lumumba

That life is what
We make with our 
Hands

Because you know as Jesus 
That it is not difficult to
Multiply bread and fish

That oil is not 
The lifeblood
Of the earth

That it should not 
Run through our veins
Like fear

Because you are David
In the shadow
Of Goliath

And know that 
The price of freedom
Is love

© 2006 Tony Medina

A comrade and I are heading to Nepal in three days to report on the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal [Maoist], and we urgently need funds in order to be able to cover the costs of travel and subsistence for the 3-5 weeks that we will be there. We will be communicating the developments of this weeklong congress, and other observations of the revolutionary process, in articles, photographs, and videos through our Winter Has Its End site, and also through the Kasama Project site. I will also try to post periodic updates on this blog and also on the tumblr of our Kasama collectivity in Seattle, Red Spark.

The CPN(M) is the left split from the Unified Communist Party of Nepal [Maoist] (I know, not very creative in the naming category), which formed after much of that Party’s leadership, including top leaders Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, took the capitalist road and effectively disarmed the revolutionary forces. The 7th Congress, despite its name, is the first congress of this new communist party in which it will, for the first time, convene its membership to make decisions on strategic orientation for the renewal of the revolution in Nepal.

I aim to provide on-the-ground news and analysis to convey what a living, complex revolutionary movement looks like, to raise our sense of radical possibilities, and to heighten our confidence in the power of communist ideas. To reference Chairman Mao, we think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well; help us to show the world a glimpse from the top.

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it’s kind of like when you go to a store and the clerk or salesperson is sort of a jackass

and is telling you things like “it’s store policy” and “there’s nothing i can do”

yeah, that person is probably sort of unpleasant

and is making your life more difficult than it needs to be

but they also didn’t create the conditions that led to your awful experience

the policy was created by the higher-ups

even if the salesperson applies it more zealously than was intended

the salesperson probably hates their awful job

even if they don’t quite understand that they do, or why

and they’re taking it out on you

so when we do politics, we can think of non-bourgeois reactionaries kind of the same way

their dickishness is still dickishness

but it has a material basis in the kind of society we live in

which they didn’t create

and from which they actually suffer

albeit in distinct and uneven ways

the actual people that are screwing you over in this situation

are sitting in corporate offices with $10,000 bottles of scotch in their cabinets

playing golf with politicians on weekends

earning record profits while cutting salaries because of “shared sacrifice”

who have an actual interest in ripping you off

who have an actual interest in the salesperson being seen as the problem

rather than themselves

so if you have beef with white folks

or men

or heterosexuals

or ‘cis’ people

that’s your prerogative

but that doesn’t make them the enemy

that doesn’t make them your ‘oppressor’

that doesn’t mean that they should ‘die in a fire’

and believing that you can make your revolution

while basically wishing death upon the vast majority of the US population

because they are ignorant

without educating the masses of people fucked over by capitalism

because it’s “not your responsibility”

without winning over tens of millions of people to your cause

because they are ‘scum’

is not even a fantasy or an illusion

it is an indication that you are not serious about changing anything

that it is more important for you to be correct than to actually win

that your self-righteousness is more important than creating a new society

dear social justice bloggers

please

i don’t wish death upon you

i don’t wish harm upon you

i wish that you would engage more with ideas

and less with identity

more with politics

and less with trivialities

that you reflect on how you relate to the world around you

that you reconsider who the enemy is

hay que cambiar tantas cosas camaradas

pero primero el poder

la propiedad

nosotros

y después

aire fresco y maiz para todos

aire y flores para todos

ricardo’s words are not for nicaragua alone

they contextualize everything that a revolutionary should do:

how to transform the relations of power

property

and ourselves

and how to create a world

of fresh air and flowers for all.