By the League of Revolutionaries Basic Needs Electoral Committee
Millions of Americans are preparing to resist attacks from the newly-elected Trump administration and are building grass-roots movements, based on mutual aid and support, for housing, health care and other immediate needs.
The League of Revolutionaries for a New America and the Hip Hop Congress recently co-sponsored a vivid, intimate, Click Here, conversation on zoom, addressing what we need to do after the elections.
(Quotes have been condensed and edited for clarity.)
What is the revolutionary work that is needed now?
- “Moving beyond blaming each other. We base our work on listening, on empathy, and on the patient building of enduring relationships, beginning with youth and the most vulnerable and dispossessed people in our society.” Melinda Lavon, DSA, Vote No Kansas, Kansas Democratic Party.
- “Being on the ground level, and empowering other people that feel that they don’t have a place in it, that they can’t help out. We have to show them that they can make this movement much stronger. They need us to be out there, touching and interacting with them.” John Janosko, Oakland’s Wood Street Commons community.
- “Building survival projects that help people secure housing, healthcare, food, through mutual aid networks, paired with a clear revolutionary political program demanding basic economic human rights for all, as well as an emphasis on political education.” Adam Gottlieb, organizer and poet, Chicago League of Revolutionaries for a New America.
- “Gathering folks, a balm for the soul that works against all of the divisiveness so that we can see each other as the same people. Our faith has to be stronger than our fears. We need the artists and the healers at this time to remind us we are full human beings…the art, the music, the poetry…” Liz Gonzales, South Bay Community Land Trust and Silicon Valley Debug.
- “Bringing people together to fight for collective liberation. We are here to develop a strategy to create the cooperative society that distributes resources based on need. The League is here to help develop the class consciousness that is necessary to achieve that vision.” Genie Sullivan, Wood Street Commons, Oakland
Where do we start?
- “Our political work, at the most basic level, is a form of “emergence,” a word that describes the way complex patterns arise from simple interactions, as the flutter of birds’ wings causes murmurations of the air.” Danny Park, Skid Row People’s Market.
- “Every person can do a self-reflection on the resources and experience that they have access to, and how they can turn that experience, like living on the street and understanding what your needs are, into a resource for creativity and political action.” Rahman Jamaal, Hip Hop Congress.
- “We talk about unity, but what does that mean? I think it means never forgetting that, just because I’m solving my problems doesn’t mean you don’t need help solving yours.” Danny Park, Skid Row People’s Market.
What does it mean to have a long-term, revolutionary view? How can we support hope and action in young people?
- “Some of the most important things that we can teach our young people at these early stages of their life is about relationships, and how to navigate their feelings, their emotions, and develop a sense of empathy that becomes natural later on in life. And if you’re not raised in an environment or you don’t have people in your life that are able to show you that type of love and that type of care, then you end up growing into this doom and gloom kind of mentality. Trauma can do that to us. So it really forces me to get laser focused on setting that example for every young person that I come across in my life, giving them this sort of hope that we do have the power.” Rahman Jamaal, Hip Hop Congress.
What is class consciousness, why is it so important, and what are other aspects of our identity? What is the League’s mission and how can you participate in its work?
- “It’s important to clarify that class is not necessarily the only experience that impacts a person’s well-being. A variety of experiences like racialization, gender oppression, citizenship, language, education — all of that impacts our well-being…. What it means to be class conscious today is to recognize that the ruling class uses its control over the wealth that all of society creates to divide people, divide our class and to ultimately have an outsized influence over politics to maintain power. We saw this in this election and we are here to call people in and really say that only united we can find liberation and bring an end to all forms of inequality…. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is committed to that unity and we really would be happy to have you become part of the League.” Genie Sullivan, Wood Street Commons.
LAND-BACK
By Mack Wilson (Program Moderator)
to understand the longstanding history
that has brought us / to reside
on this land
to seek to understand
our place / within that history
global colonization,
lands stolen,
languages, history, cultures
lost / artificial borders and walls
economic devastation
people who have
who have had
to migrate
even now / finding themselves
to be stateless
99% of us fighting
for breadcrumbs / while
the other 1% / squanders
the wealth
we have created
we may not know
exactly what land-back looks like
in the aftermath
of such devastation / we will
push through
the dying of capitalism / the white
supremacy
liberate means of production
give / to the working class
learn how to be stewards
the land that we inhabit
follow the lead of who’s come
before us on these lands
learn / from them
how to live together
Published on December 19, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
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