Archive for category: REVOLUTION
In Paths of Revolution, the leftist militant, journalist, political prisoner, public intellectual, historian, Adolfo Gilly bears witness to the tumult, triumphs, and defeats of the Left in the twentieth century in Latin America. Tracing a lineage from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Central America’s guerrilla movements, from Mexico’s Zapatista uprising to the indigenous mobilizations that swept Evo Morales into power in Bolivia, in these essays, Gilly captures what drives people to action under different forms of domination and what just might stand to illuminate the state of the Left in the Americas today.
Nicaragua and Bolivia: Two Paths (1980)
Twenty-four years ago, having just arrived in La Paz, I saw the Bolivian miners’, workers’, and peasants’ militias. It was my first sight of figures who up to that point had been mythical as far as I was concerned: workers and campesinos, armed and organized in their unions. A knot of emotion formed in my throat. The revolution of April 1952 was still fresh, the revolution that broke out in order to carry into power Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Zuazo—elected president and vice president in 1951 but prevented from taking office by a military coup. Insurrections in La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí defeated and dissolved an army formerly at the service of mining tycoons and imperialist powers, which the people had called “the massacring army.” Its weapons were transferred into the hands of trade-union militias.
In 1952 the mines were nationalized, and in 1953 the agrarian reform was launched (when peasants had already occupied many haciendas). After that, the revolution stalled; the militias’ weapons began to age and they ran short of ammunition. The professional army was patiently reorganized, first by Paz Estenssoro and then by Siles Zuazo, and equipped with high-caliber modern weapons supplied by the US. At the same time, the state began to promote capitalist accumulation, private enterprise, and imperialist investments. The new army and new bourgeoisie developed side by side until, with the coup of 1964, that army once again seized power, resuming its murderous history. Everyone remembers one of the most notorious massacres, which took place on the feast of St. John in 1967, only months before the killing of Che Guevara.
Bolivia has one of the strongest and most politically conscious mass organizations in Latin America: the mining unions and the Central Obrera Boliviana as a whole. But in the absence of a political party to counter the national bourgeoisie and lacking weapons against the massacring army, consciousness, combativeness, and organization may suffice for heroic resistance—with dynamite and last stands on the barricades —but not for victory. It was Juan Lechín, one of the prime movers of the policy that led to disarming the militias, who affirmed that a military coup would be resisted by means of a general strike and some roadblocks. In Argentina in 1955 and 1976, in Chile in 1973, and in other countries at other times, that old formula encouraged the most fateful of delusions: the idea that the workers might resist, after the fact and empty-handed, a military coup that has been technically and scientifically designed to slaughter them. Via the same disastrously passive policy, the Peronist union bureaucrats paved the way for the military dictatorship established in their country in 1976. And it was the Argentine military that provided advice and guidance for the [July 1980] Bolivian coup, with its methodical project of mass murder, according to denunciations recently made in Managua by Jaime Paz Zamora, the vice president-elect of Bolivia.
A few days ago, watching the Sandinista militias in Estelí, I recalled the Bolivian campesinos parading by just as these were doing, a quarter of a century ago, confident of their revolution and marching with the very same gait.
I saw the Sandinista army, and the militias, too, in Managua on July 19th. The old army has been destroyed right down to the roots, and, unlike in Bolivia, the leadership of the revolution has no intention of rebuilding it; only the counterrevolutionaries dare suggest such a thing. I observed the discipline, the supple, easy stride, the modern weaponry of the Sandinista armed forces. I recalled the Bolivians once again, presently being slaughtered by another coup, despite the indescribable heroism with which they have resisted and even dismantled so many others. And I not only saw but keenly felt the radical difference between the two. It’s right that the army should be Sandinista, despite the objections of [Alfonso] Robelo, the Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (Private Enterprise Council), conservatives, and others; it’s right for troops to train intensively; it’s right that this army should act as the shield of this revolution, until other, neighboring ones come to lighten its load and make the road ahead less arduous.
Those who prioritize democracy over class can say what they like: the unending martyrdom of Bolivia is their answer, the unfailing result of what they propose. The Bolivian Revolution was only able to hold out for so many years because it formed militias, implemented an agrarian reform, nationalized the mines, and was sustained by unions with a combativeness and a tradition of struggle beyond compare. If it was unable to hold out longer, it’s because all of this was interrupted halfway through, and the regrouping of capitalism and its army did the rest.
Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about Thanksgiving and his book “Our History Is the Future,” and the historic fight against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
By Kimathi Mohammed.
Iran’s protesters will neither submit to the fascism hidden behind the regime’s pseudo-anti-imperialism nor surrender their country to the hegemony of the United States or their economy to financialized capital. The Western left should learn from them.
Announcing a new collection of texts looking at the Wet’suwet’en struggle against industrial resource extraction.
Download and Print HERE
We have assembled this publication in solidarity with the ongoing Wet’suwet’en resistance to industrial expansion. This struggle for Indigenous self determination and land defense has become a landmark moment of rupture across the colonial nation of Canada and beyond. We felt the need to compile this zine in an effort to take a step back and witness the breadth and fierceness of these last few years – with a particular focus on the year that has just passed since the start of ‘Coyote Camp’ and the specific battle against the attempt to drill under Wedzin Kwa. Not to produce some stale collection for the history shelves, but to inspire and learn from these events as they continue to unfold.
As we go to print, CGL has just begun the drilling under the river that many have fought so hard to prevent. It’s a sad day and this part of their destruction will have devastating effects. But this doesn’t mean that this fight has been in vain, the project is not complete and opportunities for intervention abound.
Inside you will find an overview of Wet’suwet’en resistance from the emergence of Unistot’en Camp until the most recent endeavors on the Gidumt’en yintah, as well as the closely related Lihkts’amisyu actions and Gitxsan rail blockades nearby. We’ve included a centerfold map outlining the widespread scope of coast to coast solidarity actions from fall 2021 to summer 2022, along with communiques found online that offer reflections and analysis from people behind some of these actions. The topic of anti-repression and overturning the state’s attempts to isolate and criminalize us is also explored. A Well Oiled Trap introduces the history of the British common law, tracing it as foundational to the Canadian state, its justice system and colonial projects, outlining their incompatibility with our dreams. Lastly, we address another anti-pipeline fight brewing up in Gitxsan territory (Wet’suwet’ens neighbors and ancient allies); An analysis of the proposed related projects is presented in the article Face to Face with the Enemy: An Introduction to WCCGT line, PRGT line and Ksi Lisims LNG Terminal.
This publication is intended to be printed on 11×17 size paper, if printed using normal paper size its likely to become difficult to read.
photo: WikiCommons
As the nationwide protest movement in Iran enters its fourth week, the efforts of the regime to suppress it only appear to have had the effect of further agitating the masses and of drawing in new layers.
The youth on the streets and in the university campuses have now been joined by thousands of school students and bazaar merchants, as well as important layers of the working class. Most importantly, a series of strikes have started in the oil and petrochemical sector, the heart of the Iranian economy.
When the regime unleashed a new campaign of violent attacks on street and university protesters on Saturday 1 October, it anticipated strangling the emerging movement in its cradle. Those expectations have now been dashed.
While hundreds, potentially thousands of students have been arrested, and dozens of universities have been shut down, the majority of the more than 100 universities that heeded a call for a nationwide student strike have stood firm.
Meanwhile, the protestors have been joined by a powerful and inspiring movement of female school students, which has swept the country from end to end.
Since schools reopened, numerous videos have circulated every day of large groups of young girls erupting in protest at their schools, taking off their headscarves and swinging them in the air, while chanting such slogans as “Women, life, freedom” and “Death to the dictator”.
At one school in Bandar Abbas, the students took off their veils and ran onto the streets chanting slogans while being chased by riot police. Another video shows schoolgirls overwhelming a speaker from the basij paramilitary organisation who was invited to address their school with the chant “Basiji get lost!” while swinging their headscarves in the air.
In other instances, there have been reports of parents clashing with security forces after the latter have attempted to arrest their children.
در پاسخ اعتراضات دانشآموزان، مسئولین مدرسه از یک بسیجی خواستند تا برای آنها سخنرانی کند. دانشآموزان روبروی او ایستاده و شعار میدهند بسیجی برو گمشو.#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/Cz4NhUeaWB
— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) October 5, 2022
At the same time, traders of the most important bazaars in Tehran – the Grand Bazaar, Lalehzar, Sepahsalar Garden and Tajrish Bazaar – have also joined the movement, along with the bazaar in Shiraz, shutting down their shops as traders have done in the Kurdistan province and other Kurdish towns for several weeks.
Rather than stomping out the movement, the regime’s repression is whipping broader layers into action. On the evening of Saturday 8 October, in spite of a week of repressive action, the largest protests so far took place across the country, spreading for the first time to poorer working-class areas that had previously stood aside.
In Tehran’s working-class neighbourhood of Naziabad, videos showed relatively large marches, defying a heavy security presence and chanting anti-regime slogans. Similar events were reported across the capital and in many other cities.
In one noteworthy video from Naziabad, a group of riot police removed their helmets and marched alongside the protesters, with one of them patting a marcher on the back in solidarity.
This anecdotal incident demonstrates the degree to which the morale of the regime’s forces of repression has been affected by the relentless pressure of the movement. The rank and file of these forces are often drawn from the same poor conservative layers that in the past few years have exploded onto the political scene in radical, anti-regime protests.
Sensing the latent sympathy of these forces in some instances, protesters have approached them asking for their solidarity. While the moment has not yet come for the armed forces to break, these measures prepare the path for such an event in the future.
For that, however, what is needed first, is to prepare a movement powerful enough to pose a credible challenge to the regime.
Riot police join the protesters against the Islamic Republic.#IranProtests2022 #IranRevolution2022 #MahsaAmini #Mahsa_Amini #مهسا_امینی #IranRevolution #Iran #IranProtests #opIran #IranianLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/3ewhK1Dkk5
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) October 10, 2022
Stoking the flames of sectarianism
While state repression has been hard, it is also clear that the regime has (in general) attempted to keep the number of deaths relatively low. It has not yet unleashed the full force of its repressive apparatus on the protests for fear of provoking a larger movement – and probably also because it lacks trust in its own forces.
That is not the case, however, in the Baluchi and Kurdish areas, two of the most deprived areas of Iran.
In Baluchistan province, the regime has killed at least more than 110 people in the past two weeks, 97 of whom were killed on 30 September during a protest against the rape of a 15-year-old girl by a local police chief. This event has since been dubbed ‘Black Friday’.
The regime has falsely portrayed the massacre as a clash between regime forces and a local Saudi-supported Sunni insurgency, which has plagued Baluchistan for years.
The Kurdish areas, meanwhile, as we have previously reported, have witnessed scenes akin to civil war. These areas have hosted the most radical and advanced parts of the movement so far, with a high degree of participation and organisation, as well as a call for a general strike going back to the first days of protest.
Whilst it started with shop owners and merchants, reports indicate that the strike in the Kurdish-majority cities has also spread to parts of the working class. Radical street protests have, on several occasions, succeeded in pushing state forces out of several towns and large parts of the larger cities.
The regime has responded in the past week by stepping up its repression to the point of attacking protesters with artillery and drones. The steady sound of explosions and machine gun fire can be heard in videos emerging from the city of Sanandaj and Saqqez, and the death toll appears to be on the rise. The regime has also warned that it is preparing to make incursions into northern Iraq to attack left-wing Kurdish organisations that have bases there.
In regime propaganda, the false claim is continuously repeated that the present movement is organised by western imperialism in an attempt at regime change, and in order to break up Iran through support for secessionist national minorities.
While it is true that US imperialism – and its Saudi and Israeli allies – have indeed pursued a policy of regime change, and have supported reactionary groups amongst the national minorities, they have not managed to wrest control over the present movement.
There have not been any secessionist demands or chants, neither in the Kurdish nor the Baluchi or any other area inhabited by national minorities. Rather, it is the clear tactic of the regime itself to attempt to divide the movement by diverting sections of it down national and sectarian lines – an agenda that coincides with that of western imperialism.
Nevertheless, these attempts have not had much success so far. On the contrary, the movement has awakened a deep mood of solidarity between the ethnic groups in Iran, which the regime has deliberately attempted to keep divided against one another for decades as a means to maintain itself.
To overcome oppression of the national minorities, what is first and foremost necessary is a united struggle of all the peoples of Iran against their common enemy: the Iranian ruling class.
And crucial to this struggle is the entrance of the working class onto the scene as an organised force.
The workers begin to move
An important step in this direction was taken on the morning of Monday 10 October, when around 4,000 workers of Bushehr Petrochemical, Damavand Petrochemical and Hengam Petrochemical downed tools and walked off their sites in an indefinite strike in support of the movement. Furthermore, Sadara Petrochemical Company was preemptively shut down by the bosses in anticipation of strike action.
These contract companies operate in the Assaluyeh petrochemical complex – one of the largest such complexes in the world. After downing their tools, the striking workers blocked a highway leading into the complex with rocks and burning barrels of tar, while chanting slogans such as “Death to Khamenei” and “Don’t call it a protest, it is called a revolution!” Later on in the day, the workers also set fire to the local private security buildings.
اعتصاب کارگران عسلویه
اتوبان ها رو بستن
باقدرت پیش بسوی آزادی..#اعتصابات_سراسری #مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/G4CvVnd2hr— بیدار🏴🚩 (@M_d_808) October 10, 2022
فوری
بستن اتوبان منتهی به پتروشیمی عسلویه توسط کارگران با شرف در حمایت از قیام سراسری مردم #ایران#اعتراضات_سراسری #آزادی_آزادی_آزادی pic.twitter.com/GhG2mNIuHf— گلن اوجا (@GalanOoja2020) October 10, 2022
One worker filming the strike could be heard saying “Long live Iran! Long live Lurs, Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Bakhtiaris!”
This display of class solidarity across ethnic backgrounds is a response to the regime’s accusations that the striking workers represent separatist national minority movements. It shows the instinctive internationalist character of the working class; its potential to unite all layers of society behind it in the revolutionary struggle; and how such a struggle can overcome national oppression.
The workers of several other nearby companies also later joined the strike and rally. It has been reported that local security forces have been reinforced and have blocked the roads leading to protesting workers, so as to keep other groups from joining them.
But only hours after the strike broke out in Assaluyeh, workers also walked off in phase twelve of the South Pars petrochemical complex in Kangan – another huge petrochemical complex – and in the Abadan oil refinery, the historical epicentre of the three month general strike that paved the way for the overthrow of the hated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the revolution of 1979.
In Monday’s strike, phase two of the Abadan refinery was completely shut down, and the workers were joined by those of several freight companies.
These strikes, which are predominantly amongst casual labourers, were preceded last week by two warnings issued by the Council for Organising the Protests of Oil Contract Workers (COPOCW), an organisation which has led a series of nationwide strikes in the past years.
A similar warning has now also been issued by an unknown group of permanent contract workers, who operate the most essential parts of Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry.
After the start of yesterday’s strike, the COPOCW published the following statement on its Telegram page, which starts with a poem by a contemporary radical poet:
“We will strike: over scrapheap-ready buses, over a life worthy of an animal, over bed bug-ridden dormitories, over contaminated food, over surge hours, over the hour they announce that you have to work overtime, over waking up at ungodly hours, over the cheque that never cleared, over the unpaid [social] insurance, over the clock that shakes you more than than the shaking of a bus, over the ‘forces of the project’, over all of these we will protest tomorrow.
“The Council for Organising the Protests of Oil Contract Workers, calls on all oil workers – be they project employees, those on permanent contracts, or piece workers, fuel transportation and operations workers, colleagues working in national drilling, exploitation, refineries and petrochemicals – to join a nationwide strike in the oil sector in solidarity with the protests of the people.
“In this solidarity strike, the organising council demands the immediate and unconditional release of those recently arrested and all political prisoners, the clearing of the forces from the streets, an end to all repression, and the trial of those authorities and perpetrators responsible for the killing of Mahsa Amini and all those who have been murdered by regimes forces of repression during this period.”
Immediately after the outbreak of the strike in the petrochemical sector, the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Company Workers’ Union, a union that is now very popular, and which has stood out for its radical strikes and demands, such as nationalisation and workers’ management in industry, issued a powerful statement calling for a nationwide political general strike.
We publish the full translation of their statement here:
“Comrades! Oppressed people!
The protest and street uprising of the girls of the sun and of the revolution has entered its fourth week.
Fighting girls and boys have shaken the streets and alleys with the slogan, “woman, life, freedom,” in order to achieve freedom and equality through their glorious struggle: freedom from oppression and exploitation, freedom from discrimination and inequality.
Our children on the streets need solidarity and support in order to get rid of oppression, suffocation and discrimination.
In such a situation, in which the blood of our children has coloured the pavement of the streets, the beginning of the workers’ strike in various oil and petrochemical sectors has breathed new life and hope into the body of this struggle.
It could only be expected, for the sake of justice and for the sake of the children of labour and toil, that the fathers and mothers, the exploited sisters and brothers, stand by their side, and stop the wheels of production and wealth from moving.
Today [10 October], the first spark of this unity and solidarity was ignited with the enthusiastic presence of project workers working in Bushehr Petrochemical, Abadan Refinery and Asalouye.
The solidarity of workers in support of their children, brothers and sisters on the street, is the urgent need of this movement.
The Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Workers’ Union for its part, congratulates the workers’ strike in various oil and petrochemical sectors in support of the street protests.
Our children, sisters and brothers expect that other sectors of services and production will join the nationwide strike, because freedom from oppression and exploitation, from discrimination and inequality, is only feasible with unity and solidarity.
Honest and knowledgeable workers and toilers;
The uprising of the girls on the street needs support. The girls of this land have decided to make a huge change, a change that will bring the liberation of women in other areas.
This great and laudable uprising should be linked with the strike of workers everywhere in this land.
To get rid of discrimination and oppression, to get rid of poverty and hardship, to have bread and freedom, let us not leave the girls of the sun and of the revolution alone.
Girls of the sun and of the revolution;
On the day of victory, the whole world will take off their hats in front of you – you gave everyone a lesson in standing up and resisting.
Long live the union and class solidarity of the workers for liberation!
Towards a nationwide strike in the services and production sectors!”
The entrance onto the scene in an organised manner of the working class – in particular in the oil industry – is a decisive turning point.
The revolutionary youth have shown an inspiring amount of bravery and will to sacrifice. But that in itself is not enough to bring down the hated regime. Their position in production gives the workers the power to bring the whole country to a standstill and to stop the regime’s repression in its tracks.
More importantly, a political general strike inevitably places the question of power on the agenda. Who are the masters of society? The ruling class, that maintains itself solely on the exploitation of the workers and poor? Or those whose labour produces all wealth?
The regime is acutely aware of this fact. Those in power now have a clear recollection of the general strike of the 1979 revolution. That is why they have always enforced a zero-tolerance policy on labour activism in the major industries, especially in the oil sector, which is by far the most important sector of the Iranian economy.
Reports are surfacing of worker activists being arrested and security forces being mobilised to important industrial areas to crack down on strike activity. But such repression, as we have seen of late, could have the opposite effect of inciting more layers of the working class to enter the struggle.
The role of the youth
The idea of a national general strike has already captured the imagination of the youth on the streets, in schools, and in universities. The task now is to support the workers and assist them by all means in the spreading of the nascent strike movement.
Such efforts are already underway in many areas. In Isfahan on Monday night, an anonymous group put up leaflets inviting workers to join a general strike on walls and on car windows in parts of the city. Another statement by a university in Tehran was shared widely on Telegram, praising the historical achievement of the strike and calling it an example to be followed in the revolutionary struggle.
This campaign must be put on an organised and systematic footing in order to achieve maximum effect. The revolutionary youth must find ways to approach the workers and help them in all the practical and organisational challenges of organising strike action. They must also listen to the demands of the workers and incorporate them into their own programme.
To systematically carry out this effort, revolutionary committees of struggle need to be set up in every school, university, neighbourhood, and workplace, working to spread the agitation of the strike and to plan the next steps for the movement. This is already happening in some areas.
In the Kurdish-majority city of Marivan, a group of revolutionary youth published the following statement, which has been circulated widely on social media:
Resolution of the revolutionary youth of the neighbourhoods of Marivan
Resolution number 1
Fighting people of Marivan!
Your mass uprising started in protest against the tragic death of Shalier Rasouli and continued along with the nationwide protests of the Iranian people, which were triggered by the government murder of Mahsa Amini.
Today, 23 days after the Mahsa uprising began, more than 100 cities, 50 universities, and dozens of schools have joined the popular protests. Students and teachers have joined the mass uprising of the Iranian people in various forms, and once again the students at Sharif University of Technology became the bastion of freedom.
The youth of the neighbourhoods have been fighting since the first day. The people of Kurdistan have combined the tactic of the general strike with street protests. Meanwhile, the Islamic terrorists killed dozens of people in Sistan and Baluchistan on Black Friday. Parts of the oil workers have gone on strike and workers across the country have threatened the government with wider strikes. In a word, the continuation of protests has gradually provided the necessary opportunity for organisation.
Friends! Iran’s political situation will never return to before the Mahsa uprising. The vanguard women are walking ahead of the rest of society as trailblazers of protest. Women who, after years of suffocating and tyrannical rule, have found an opportunity to shout for their rights, have smelled a breeze of freedom, are dancing and chanting on the streets with enthusiasm. They have nothing in common with the women that existed before the uprising and never will.
So, we, the revolutionary youth of the neighbourhoods of Marivan, have decided to advance our struggles in a more organised way, like our comrades in Tehran and Sanandaj. In this way, we ask all the revolutionary youth of the neighbourhoods of Marivan to join this movement and assist in continuing the protests.
Let us continue the protests with every method and initiative we can. By maintaining our own security, we can continue the protests and gradually prepare more serious struggles and wider organisations.
Another very interesting statement was issued by the students of Isfahan University:
Resolution number one: another step forward, a huge gathering of the public and the conquest of the streets; what are the next steps of our revolution?
Considering that these days, student protests are like the blood flowing in the body of the revolution, keeping the revolution alive and constantly changing the situation; First of all, we need to emphasise the continuation of protests of students all over the country!
The government is currently in a very weak position. Today and tonight, in cities such as Tehran, Karaj, Arak and Kurdistan (Sanandaj and other cities); the government lost a number of city streets and had to retreat temporarily.
Certainly, despite the ups and downs, these victories will soon enter different phases, and with the mistakes caused by the fatigue and incapacity of the repressive forces, we will undoubtedly be able to significantly change the balance of political forces between the revolutionaries and the murderous government.
In this regard, the second point is the urban organisation of people in the form of neighbourhood protest councils. By creating secure platforms for collective action over secure networks such as Signal or Telegram, the protesting people and the protesting youth of the neighbourhoods can make the necessary arrangements for providing food, plan protest actions, weapons of protest and whatever they need. It is only in this way that we can continue the protests and achieve significant successes on the streets.
The third thing, which is very important, is a supplementary element called the expansion of nationwide general strikes throughout society. At present, street protests have recorded significant progress. With nationwide and general strikes, protesting groups in the streets feel more supported. When the strikes reach the industrial mother centres of labour and transportation, the wheel of repression of the government will practically cease to work. No army or corps can survive without heavy military expenses that are directly financed by the country’s oil and petrochemical industries.
Finally, it is necessary to mention:
By keeping the protests alive in the university and outside the university, the students have confirmed their serious and firm decision for a humanistic revolution in Iran. We will win victory and in this way we will destroy every source of oppression and tyranny.
The statements above offer a glimpse of the enormous creative power of the youth, the workers and the poor. The self-organisation of the masses is a hallmark of all true revolutionary movements.
We saw this with the rise of the soviets in the Russian Revolution, and the factory and neighbourhood Shuras (meaning ‘councils’), which for a brief period competed for power during the 1979 revolution in Iran. These structures form the embryo of a future society fighting to be born.
Revolutionary leadership
But in order to reach that potential, they must, first of all, reach all layers of the masses, in particular the working class. It is imperative that the committees of struggle are spread as widely as possible, and are connected on a local, regional and national level so as to become the organised expression of the will of the movement itself.
In this way, the as-of-yet unsolved problem of leadership can also be addressed.
The Iranian youth, and young women in particular, have shown enormous revolutionary power, resilience and will to sacrifice. Without any help, any organisation, and with little experience, they have brought about the biggest crisis in the history of the present regime. Their struggles for an end to dictatorship and oppression echo the yearnings of the vast majority of the Iranian masses.
For these, the present regime has nothing to offer but more misery. In a country brimming with talent and willing hands, and with vast natural resources underneath its soil, millions of people are forced to endure chronic unemployment and biting poverty.
Even for those who are lucky enough to possess a job, wages – if they are paid at all – rarely cover more than the bare necessities of life, if that. For the workers, the future only holds increased exploitation and desperation. For the youth, there is no future.
Meanwhile, the sole occupation of the mullahs who run the country, and who preach piety and modesty to everyone, seems to be a ceaseless looting frenzy, leeching off the labour of the workers and poor.
This is not just a reflection of the dead end of the present regime, but of the dead end of Iranian capitalism altogether. It displays the utter inability of the capitalist class to provide a path forward for society. Unable to offer anything but continuously declining living standards, it can only sustain itself by the most inhuman oppression, and by dividing society along gender, national, and religious lines.
The only way for the Iranian people to raise themselves above the present barbaric conditions on offer to them, to achieve true liberation, is to fight against the capitalist system itself; to take power into their own hands, and establish a socialist society free of bosses and clerics, and of oppression and division – where universal equality and solidarity will lay the foundations for a better life for all.
Capitalist measures to fix the climate have not worked, as two recent books show, so the key is to link working-class and ecological movements, argues Elaine Graham-Leigh
The myth of U.S. democracy is on the verge of shattering.
In the region where cotton was king and prisons have succeeded the throne, this myth’s falseness is particularly evident in the U.S. South, the epicenter of the nation’s plantation and chattel slavery economy where the majority of Black/African-descended people still exist today. This region is also the land where Jim Crow law/segregation law once ruled and whose specter determines how resources are still allocated today. It’s also the region in which workers are least unionized and often hyper-exploited, with community members disproportionately subject to state violence such as incarceration or deportation.
Given these deathly conditions, the seats of power in our region are filled by those who benefit from these systems and uphold them, oppressing Southerners both historically and presently. In response, Southern freedom fighters have been fighting to build a grassroots democracy that is directly informed by the needs of our region, beginning at the local level. In so many ways, the efforts of Southern freedom fighters are an extension of freedom fighters in the Global South who share experiences of exploitation in the workplace, state violence and increased rates of incarceration, and have led organizing fights that inform strategies in the U.S. South. Formations like the Southern Movement Assembly are uniting U.S. Southern grassroots organizations with comrades across the Global South, particularly Central and South America, to develop a people’s democracy across colonial borders.
The Highlander Research and Education Center, where I work, is a Southern movement school, building democratic participation in the U.S. South and Appalachia through grassroots organizing, leadership development, and movement building. Highlander, which was established 90 years ago, has helped fuel the Southern fight for liberation against white supremacist capitalism.
Highlander supported the integration of labor unions in the 1930s and 40s, was a meeting place for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1950s and held trainings for civil rights activists during the sit-ins of the 1960s, and Highlander’s Education Director Septima Clark initiated the Citizenship Schools that expanded access to voting rights for Black people.
Although Highlander may be best known as the place where Rosa Parks trained before the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and where Martin Luther King, Jr. attended workshops that contributed to being red-baited as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, we know that many of the same issues these freedom fighters battled continue to face our communities today.
My work as Highlander’s electoral justice researcher and educator seeks to build capacity for today’s Southern freedom fighters and their communities to govern themselves as we move toward building a truly democratic world beyond capitalism and white supremacy.
This work goes beyond maximizing participation in the U.S. electoral system. This work seeks to build Southern communities’ capacity to collectively define their problems, learn and understand current power structures as they exist, and develop collective solutions based on the experiences and abilities of each community member.
There is strategic value in engaging elections, but strategies for grassroots democracy must extend far beyond Election Day. While we understand that participating in this U.S. electoral system is presently inevitable, we also understand it is equally, if not more, vital to build parallel systems that are truly democratic and accountable to every community member.
Southern freedom fighters have been fighting to build a grassroots democracy that is directly informed by the needs of our region, beginning at the local level.
This work is reflected when we see People’s Movement Assemblies being utilized to build political power in cities such as Nashville, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi; Lexington, Kentucky; and so many more Southern cities.
People’s Movement Assemblies are grassroots, democratic gatherings inspired by the World Social Forum in 2003, where collective decision-making spaces facilitated action plans that sparked international protests, leading to the Global Day of Action that year with millions of people worldwide taking to the streets to speak out against the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. These assemblies are used by communities to collectively assess their problems, determine their strategies, assess who has the power to materially change their conditions, and create grassroots solutions to bring their vision for a life-affirming world into reality. The Southern Movement Assembly, a regional formation that has been seeking to build grassroots democratic power across the South for 10 years with Southern freedom fighters and their communities, is inviting Southern community organizations to utilize People’s Movement Assemblies in their work throughout Summer 2022 to build collective power, community governance and action plans for organizing throughout the Global South.
In the midst of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections for gubernatorial and legislative seats, Highlander has developed the People Practicing Power workshop intervention. During this workshop series, organizers and their community members are learning methods for self-protection during Election Day from racialized, fascist terrorism; the process for developing a policy demand into a law; and creating or joining efforts to build democratic institutions rooted in solidarity economy principles.
“Solidarity economy” is an umbrella term for institutions and practices that are grounded in mutualism, cooperation, democracy, pluralism and building a world beyond racial capitalism.
Examples of this include worker-owned cooperatives, time banks, participatory budgeting and community land trusts that place decision-making power and ownership directly in the hands of workers and communities that have been historically stripped of agency under white supremacist capitalism.
The U.S. South is often seen by those outside the region as a right-wing stronghold and a recipient of charity. Our practice of rooting our work in the creation of solidarity economies acknowledges Southerners’ long history of not only surviving under white supremacist capitalism, but leading the charge to develop people-centered democracies and economies within the U.S.
We invite anyone who is interested to plug into the workshops Highlander offers around solidarity economies, join us at our annual Homecoming event September 30-October 2, 2022, where we will celebrate 90 years of Southern movement building, and follow Highlander online for updates on upcoming workshops and learning spaces where Southern freedom fighters will build strong relationships and learn with each other to build a true democracy rooted in community governance throughout the U.S. South.
The U.S. empire is crumbling due to the destruction created by capitalism. As this empire takes its last breaths, it doubles down on its centuries-old fascist violence domestically and abroad. From the ashes of this empire’s burning, people are using tools of community governance and solidarity economies to build a world beyond colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. There is a new world coming, we’re building it together, and the time is here to usher it in.
Kohei Saito’s book Capital in the Anthropocene has become an unlikely hit among young people and is about to be translated into English
The climate crisis will spiral out of control unless the world applies “emergency brakes” to capitalism and devises a “new way of living”, according to a Japanese academic whose book on Marxism and the environment has become a surprise bestseller.
The message from Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, is simple: capitalism’s demand for unlimited profits is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.