The Challenge of Autonomy: Prospects for Freedom Going Into 2021

1. Intro: Do For Self Politics vs. Hypothetical Radicalism

“And i prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight…”

– Harriet Tubman

“Freedom is something that you have to do for yourself.“

– Malcolm X

[see pdf for full text]

Young people getting active in the streets today are entering a desert of political options and conversations. A degenerate political left represents the only well-known alternative to openly fascist Democrats and neo-nazi-courting Republicans, a left that has grown so petty bourgeois (middle class) in its class character that it has very little relationship to the physically existing world, as outlined in section 1. For those of us who actually want to make this thing materially viable, we need to focus on building the actual material infrastructure for self-determination, independent of police and State assistance…

[see pdf for full text]

We put this together in three parts: 1. an introduction 2. an analysis of the events of 2020 and how they show us the limits and “prospects for freedom” available in the foreseeable future, and then 3. a list of concrete, tried and tested baby steps that serious comrades can start from scratch with. We speak from generations of experience and successful communal structure – not from our own personal opinions, left-wing jargon, dreams, theories or books alone…

[see pdf for full text]

No one is going to get us ready for what’s coming except ourselves. No one is going to get us free except each other…

Let’s each and every one of us, wherever we are right now, whatever we’re working with no matter how few or how poor, analyze our situation, form a plan, and start right now. And let’s see it through!

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Black Lives Matter Boston speaks out on the recent FBI/police killing of ‪UsaamaRahim‬

From Black Lives Matter Boston

“We, at Black Lives Matter Boston, are sickened to once more have to call out in grief over the violent taking of another community member at the hands of the white supremacist state. To his loving family and many friends: We offer our sincerest condolences. We honor Usaama’s life and mourn his passing.

We also say, together, that, regardless of what is alleged, that it was improper and egregious that the confrontation which was instigated by agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force ended with the murder of this this son, this brother, and this spouse. We want to call direct attention to the callous efforts of both the Boston Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to, once again, distract from their misconduct by casting suspicions against the dead in order to back-fill cause for the targeting and very public execution of another Black person in these United States of America. The swiftly circulated claims about Rahim’s supposed terrorist-affiliation and purported plans to do harm to others which have been floated by law enforcement in place of their admissions of guilt are rooted in a larger pattern of racist and Islamaphobic fear-mongering that both agencies have deployed against the most vulnerable among us for nearly two decades. These lies are killing us.

Black America’s State of Surveillance

Originally Posted In Progressive.org

By Malkia Amala Cyril

Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of sickle cell anemia. Weeks before she died, the FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would be watching her. They didn’t get to do that. My mother died just two weeks later.

My mother was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying. Files obtained during a break-in at an FBI office in 1971 revealed that African Americans, J. Edger Hoover’s largest target group, didn’t have to be perceived as dissident to warrant surveillance. They just had to be black. As I write this, the same philosophy is driving the increasing adoption and use of surveillance technologies by local law enforcement agencies across the United States.