we are deep in empire and it is past time we let it go
There are many horrors among us, but the most dangerous horror is the one so invisible and so ironic that we face it, live in it, dance for it and fashion ourselves after it even as millions continue to die under its boot. This is the horror of neoliberal fascism. This is the horror in the belly of U.S. empire.
The liberal-left consciousness has emerged from a whole spring/summer of insurrectionary uprisings incited by Black youth against the police state, networks of mutual aid and community care, and a vision of liberation through abolition—only to shift its direction into electing yet another white supremacist to serve U.S. empire. Liberals, leftists and even so-called radical groups alike turned to civic engagement, when the option to organize a boycott of the elections altogether and focus entirely on mutual aid and community alternatives was literally right there.
What we can gather from this is that people trust the government more than they do themselves. We have not yet reached a point in this nation’s history where we have so much faith in each other that having faith in the U.S. nation-state is laughable, to the point of disengagement in and dissolution of any political or “policymaking” process. We are not all ready to consider civic engagement (local and federal) a waste of time and energy, and pave the way for a new democracy with restored relations—one that completely rejects hierarchy, bureaucracy, representation and settler colonial tradition. And we don’t have time. Fascism spikes at greater levels and climate collapse is upon us.
Feeling a mixture of disappointment, betrayal, fury, and grief, I write this to explore which direction my own radical compass is pointing to. Who can I trust, how do I protect and preserve my energy, and what changes do I need to make in myself and in my own life to support maintaining a revolutionary period?
We know that across borders, the logic of empire is entangled with cis heteropatriarchy, casteism, anti-Blackness and colonialism, and produces a logic of domination materially, socially and spiritually in order to maintain social control. Families are often the first place we learn domination and social hierarchies. We learn to normalize hierarchy, authority, obedience, waiting for permission—all values and attitudes reinforced in school to “prepare us for the real world,” a world where we spend the majority of our lives (often against our will) obediently working under someone or some entity with supposed authority and control over our lives, our bodies, our movements and our wellbeing. This creates a culture of dependence to authority. Because we are schooled into these dynamics, it’s easy for us to internalize and model them in other aspects of our life—in relationships, in organizing, and under the cyclical coercion and manipulation of neoliberal empire.
James and Grace Lee Boggs define revolution as the process of human beings creating new truths, values and norms needed to transform themselves and re-organize society. To me, this means literally breaking free from the logic of empire and dependence to empire in the process of cultivating communities of care, trust and interdependence. If we want to contribute to an emerging revolutionary period of this century, we must be prepared to challenge how domination shows up in our thinking and actions at every turn, and have the courage to imagine and build a different life—a different world—for our people, without empire, without domination and without permission.
Here’s the kicker: this responsibility lies not on the state, but on us. Why? Because an empire will never concede to a demand that calls for its own end.
Do you remember the first time you found the language, people, and place to call your radical home? My first radical home was in feminist theory, and in the past 6 years, I have found myself returning to it each time I lose direction. During college in deep study, what I appreciated most about feminist thinkers was our trust in the personal and the story to be “evidence,” practice of critique, commitment to challenging all types of colonial/patriarchal/binary thinking, and value in the labor of love, care and connection in the struggle to end violence. (Not to mention, this was the first time I enjoyed reading nonfiction!)
Of all the literature, I was most drawn to the carefully crafted analysis of gender, body and race by Black feminist scholars, Indigenous and Muslim authors who spoke on anti-colonial feminisms, and queer and migrant Latina and Asian survivors whose stories of abuse revealed and shed light to my own story. I left senior year with borders, prison abolition, Black liberation, global capitalism, neoliberalism, Palestine, indigenous sovereignty, disability and transformative justice all racing through my mind. By weaving the threads between them, I caught a glimpse of the fuller picture.
Prior to this moment, I had been moving through my life in a haze, not knowing who I was, where I was going, or my purpose thanks to a childhood shaped by obedience, instability, abuse and trauma under brahminical patriarchy. Feminism clarified a new purpose for me: to end all forms of domination and violence that contributed to my family’s suffering, and create the conditions for freedom in the truest solidarity with people facing the deepest of state oppression globally.
Naturally, anti-imperialist feminisms sparked my first inner fire. I quickly joined the United Students Against Sweatshops chapter on campus after attending an event that hosted Bangladeshi working women, and dived right into what was considered “international solidarity” organizing that centered the demands of working class people (often women) in the Global South exploited by U.S. corporations. I learned about grassroots movements, strategy and tactics, and the power of the people to “get the goods” through direct action. I learned what a “win” was. I also realized, much later on, that many students committed to liberation were often too sick or tired to want to organize, especially at such a conservative school. I failed to prioritize healing and care.
So much of the “pressure” this and that lingo of student organizing was riddled in “holding the school accountable” to workers rights, with a few “lead” organizers working hard to get a mass base to turn out to actions. I thought genuine relationships were secondary to the more important strategy of tasking people to get them to stay active in the organization. Sadly, I placed more value in “the movement” than in my friends’ actual lives, needs, hopes and dreams. I did not know who I was outside of my own oppression, and I was often depressed and unmotivated any time I hung out with friends or did anything that wasn’t “the work.” This was both a trauma response and an example of how I embodied the exact oppression that I thought I was fighting, very much against my own feminist principles.
Thankfully, I have been taught in the past few years by many good friends and comrades the importance of healing justice and autonomy. Now I am quick to notice whenever healing or care is seen as something we do to be more productive, or in nicer words, to “sustain ourselves” for “the work.” (I have realized that this nation is obsessed with work.) This mirrors the “rest and recuperate” in ableist work culture—also antithetical to feminism as it detaches work (or “action”) from care and selfhood. Not to mention, organizing “action” is reduced to pushing demands that pressure institutions to deliver on what the people need (often via policy), which enables institutional grip on power and authority over the people. We find this seemingly inescapable contradiction between “ending the state” and “holding the state accountable” located deep in the nonprofit sphere.
Nonprofits and social control
Many nonprofits and nonprofit activists across the board love to declare “the nonprofit industrial complex” as some sort of catchphrase, or even say they are “aware” of the limitations of the NPIC, without truly examining how our active role in the NPIC literally prevents revolution and furthers our collusion in state and social control.
Neoliberalism, as explained by Henry Giroux, “functions pedagogically in multiple cultural sites to ensure no alternatives to its mode of governance can be imagined or constructed.” Nonprofits are a prime example of this. We know if the U.S. military and law enforcement represent the white man, then nonprofits, social services and NGOs represent the white woman. Nation-states like the U.S. entrenched in patriarchy need a separate, “nurturing” arm to quell the “troublemakers” (read: youth) by appeasing the people with state-controlled care, coercion and dependence. In fact, it may have been due to radical movements of the 60s and 70s resisting the logic of empire that nonprofits began to emerge in the 70s as a response under neoliberalism. Dylan Rodríguez writes in “The Political Logic of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex”:
“Indeed, the US state learned from its encounters with the crest of radical and revolutionary liberationist movements of the 1960s and early 70s that endless, spectacular exercises of military and police repression against activists of color on the domestic front could potentially provoke broader local and global support for such struggles–it was in part because they were so dramatically subjected to violent and racist US state repression that Black, Native American, Puerto Rican, and other domestic liberationists were seen by significant sectors of the US and international public as legitimate freedom fighters, whose survival of the racist state pivoted on the mobilization of a global political solidarity. On the other hand, the US state has found in its coalition with the NPIC a far less spectacular, generally demilitarized, and still highly effective apparatus of political discipline and repression that (to this point) has not provoked a significant critical mass of opposition or political outrage.”
Note the detail in why Black, Native American, Puerto Rican and other domestic liberationists were seen as legitimate freedom fighters, and not just an proponent of assimilation and reform (hint: it has to do with questioning the authority of this nation).
Not a single nonprofit, no matter how “grassroots” or “radical” they claimed to be, dared to organize against the elections and against the U.S. nation-state, even during the emergence of mutual aid, even when presented with two very explicit white supremacists on the ballot. Many didn’t even sit back until the political theatrics were over. In fact, nonprofits and celebrity activists pushed the hyperfocus on Trump, voting campaigns, civic engagement and a protest to “restore American democracy” (read: colonialism) further. It is clear just how deep colonization and the logic of empire runs through this country and impairs our psyches, and it is clear that no nonprofit is committed to ending imperialism and colonialism.
In addition, there is a danger when nonprofit culture enters “radical” movement building, and vice versa. The fact is, many radicals are attracted to nonprofits because they fulfill our longing for purpose and sense of responsibility to social transformation. This is quite advantageous to the U.S. Not only are nonprofits responsible for surveilling and monitoring social movements, but they also entice us to stay because we find value in its mission or in its resources and of course, because they pay our rent and put food on the table. In my opinion, this kind of existential coercion is damaging to the soul.
Many liberals, leftists and radicals enter professional, nonprofit organizing spaces with a false hope that this is where they’ll do “the work” towards collective liberation. This “work” is often paper and email shuffling, co-opting and watering down visions of liberation to “policy change,” and making “demands” of the state in ways that keep the state intact. Even radicals who know better spend so much time into their working lives that, by the end of the day, they might have little to no energy to join any underground/fugitive movements (this is true for anyone who works even outside of nonprofit organizing) (also, relatable). To the satisfaction of the state, nonprofit work becomes a distraction for those who would otherwise be taking direct action, creating alternatives and committing to total liberation.
Work culture—specifically ableist nonprofit work culture—keeps us under surveillance, distraction and control. And by the time we’re done, mass media, consumerism, celebrity culture and the attention economy follow us home. More often than we’d like, we bring work culture to radical spaces, too, because that’s all we’ve been taught. So much to the point where we call revolution making “the work”—a kind of state of being that sanctifies “doing” and is removed from rest, connection, play, pleasure and care. All of these dynamics operate in tandem to prevent radicals from committing to a true revolutionary struggle and social transformation.
From this, organizing can become professionalized: trainings led by “expert” organizers, jobs that call for organizers and activists, activism as performance, organizers who would otherwise be critical of the state becoming wrapped up in electoralism, workaholism and “holding the state accountable to our demands.” (Wow, I did not know we could hold white supremacy accountable! And here I was thinking our goal was to end it.)
Firstly, we know the state shapes and re-shapes itself to suit white supremacist interests. There is little use in asking corporations, elected officials, political parties and the state to give us what we want. We can hold each other accountable because humans are relational beings, but the idea of “holding the state accountable” implies that we consent to a relationship with it in the first place. For example, even if students organized to hold their university accountable, and their demands are met, the university does not reduce in power and stays in place as an institution of authority. More than likely, the university will re-shape itself (i.e. begin forming “task forces”) to prevent any more civil unrest. Wouldn’t the goal be to end the university? To end centralized, “higher” learning altogether, define a new purpose for learning and create new spaces for accessibility? And wouldn’t this goal be met by students themselves, as it is one impossible for the university to meet?
Why would we “demand” the state or any of its institutions for things that require their entire existence be put into question?
Secondly, the idea that from formalized, nonprofit workplaces, “experts,” “leaders” and twitter celebrities (organizers, journalists, scholars, etc) can point us to liberation is ludicrous—nonprofits are part of the exact state we want gone, and by this logic, ordinary people outside of these circles (i.e. those who do not have the time, ability, desire, emotional or physical capacity to do “the work” required by nonprofits) would not be leading a revolution. And nobody needs to be leading a revolution for anybody else.
Grace Lee Boggs warns us that if we don’t act soon to meet what’s ahead of us, we will be the first species in documented evolutionary human history to be the cause of their own extinction. To avoid this, those of us committed to liberation must take matters into our own hands rather than expecting anyone, any expert, celebrity or any entity with supposed power to do it for us. The first step is letting go of our dependence on this nation and its nonprofit wing, and trusting in the self-determination and interdependence of its people.
Interrogating our relationship with the U.S. nation state
“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” Assata Shakur
“Decolonization is, in essence, a subversion of border imperialism as it requires us to reimagine and reconfigure our communities based on shared ideals and visions.” Harsha Walia
I come from an uppercaste and working class Nepali family. Since the time I first dipped my toes into feminism 6 years ago to now, the analysis and stories that felt salient were of working class South Asian women, Asian survivors of familial abuse, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist feminists, and any critique of brahminism and hinduism written by Dalit and indigenous people from South Asia and especially from Nepal. Overall, I did not find that much writing by radical Nepalis at first, and I especially did not come across anything written by Nepalis in the diaspora. Because Nepali people came into the U.S. in waves starting in the 90s, there wasn’t that much to go on just from internet sleuthing.
Sometimes I would glance jealously at Pakistani, Korean or Filipino comrades, who have a deeper and more accessible revolutionary history, whether in the U.S. or in their own nations, or both. I wondered where my ancestors came from, in what ways they were oppressor and oppressed, what they did or didn’t do to end oppression. I wondered if anyone in my lineage was like me, who woke up from the brahminical brainwashing and made an active choice to cut ties with hinduism.
What I do know about now is the fall of feudalism and monarchy in Nepal, and the rise of a communist struggle that led to a civil war just only over a decade ago. I was too young to remember this. Li Onesto, a comrade from the U.S. who went to document the struggle from the perspectives of Nepali Maoists (note: I am not a proponent of Maoism, but it is important to understand revolutionary processes of countries outside of the U.S.) tells us:
“The US doesn’t have lots of investments or sweatshops in Nepal and there aren’t any significant oil fields in this small Himalayan country. So what’s behind this high-level concern? Why is the US providing the Nepalese army with millions of dollars, thousands of weapons, and military advisers and trainers?
Since September 11, the US ‘war against terrorism’ and the aims and ambitions of the US crusade to attain unrivaled world hegemony have been setting the terms for much of international relations, including how the US (and other powers) look at their necessity and freedom to intervene in Nepal. As part of the US quest for world domination, the ‘war on terrorism’ serves as an all-purpose umbrella under which numerous interventions are being justified. The political and ideological program of the Maoists in Nepal clearly has nothing in common with the reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism of groups like al-Qaeda. But this hasn’t stopped the US from using the pretext of ‘combating terror’ to justify military action against any and all insurgencies which threaten US interests − including genuine revolutions aimed at overthrowing oppressive governments.
The US, Britain, and other imperialist powers have provided the Nepalese regime with political and military support exactly because they know that a Maoist victory would reverberate throughout the Indian subcontinent and the world.”
I share this because while we know the U.S. isn’t the center of the world, it’s important to recognize the devastation U.S. imperialism has brought to the rest of the world, including South Asia, ensuring money and weapons go to oppressors to prevent the possibility of a revolution. The end of U.S. empire holds great significance for local and global solidarities.
By learning about the communist movement in Nepal, I realized that I’d been tricked by nonprofits about what “organizing” and “movements” looked like. One thing that really stood out for me was that as part of their strategy, Nepali freedom fighters got their own locals to boycott the election. I felt a wave of joy reading that even if it happened years ago in another country. This taught me that there is no revolution in any “movement” that actively legitimizes an oppressive government. What makes a revolutionary period strong is when people organize to dismantle the state at all levels and create the life and world they want.
I also found out about a couple of feminist freedom fighters (now ancestors) who left their families to join this struggle. Both share my relatives’ names. I am not sure if we were related, but it’s uplifting to know that there were others from the same uppercaste backgrounds who refused tradition:
“Sabita Sapkota was 21 years old when she became a martyr and had just graduated from high school. She had to rebel against her family to join the People’s Army and after she went underground she didn’t see her family again because they would not support what she was doing.
Binda Sharma, a 25-year-old woman, killed in 1998, also had to rebel to join the People’s Army. Her husband didn’t, and still doesn’t, support the People’s War and in fact now works as a police detective in Kathmandu. For over six years, Sharma had been in this arranged marriage. But then one day, after she began working with the local Party, she ran off and joined the People’s Army.” Li Onesto
I still don’t know about people in my own lineage—understandably, my grandparents don’t like to talk much about Maoism due to the fact that they were on the other side of the civil war, sided with the royal government. There is probably a lot of additional trauma that Nepali people across the board experienced due to feudalism and war.
I can only assume that I was not the only person in my entire familial lineage who questioned everything, gave the middle finger to brahminical tradition, wanted a different life and escaped family pressures to get there. Reading about Sabita and Binda, I felt a strong sense of familiarity. My approach to life has always been this: if something is repeating the same patterns of dysfunction, find the courage to understand where it comes from and if it’s toxic, let it go and try something new. Sabita and Binda apparently did, too. (Let’s hope that this time, community can keep us alive.)
The U.S. nation-state is toxic and oppressive, and I don’t need to explain that further. What will it take for us to let it go?
There exists literally every other option out there besides voting and dependence to the state. I see so many posts, threads and memes nowadays about how “the fight continues,” or “organize your communities so that we don’t end up in the same place after 4 years.” While well-intentioned, this quick call to action fails to define what “organizing” means. Does it mean civic engagement? Does it mean “holding the state accountable”? Does it mean entrusting our livelihoods into “mass movements” that flirt with policymakers and do not abolish the state? We need to first understand the logic of domination and logic of empire that brought us here in the first place. We need to consider that perhaps ending our relationship to voting, civic engagement, nonprofits, social services, school, and the workplace (i.e. any institution that promotes assimilation and obedience into U.S. empire) by building real alternatives is our revolutionary responsibility in the 21st century.
We need to realize that while the state manipulates us into dysfunctional cycles year after year, it’s up to us to recognize our complicity, hold ourselves accountable in perpetuating its dysfunction and make a collective choice to end our participation in it. It is up to us to help each other break free from this cycle and start anew. If we don’t, who will?
What youth development can teach us about social transformation
“The power to stop with a collective no is a different kind of power than the power to start with a collective yes.” Aaron Goggans
What does building that “yes” look like?
In order to remove ourselves from state and social control, we must also be in principled personal and social transformation together. I believe this is where healing justice and community care comes in.
I was once a teacher at an elementary after school program for Asian youth that linked teaching and positive youth development. I entered the space thinking this was just another depoliticized direct service (which in some ways, it probably was). Critiques of nonprofits, state-run direct service programs for “at-risk youth” and positive youth development aside, I came in feeling unmotivated but left with a completely changed worldview and a greater respect for healing justice. With young people and after-school teachers doing their part to shape their own community together, I witnessed a microcosm of what a different world could be like—at least on an emotional and spiritual level. This alone is a part of social transformation. Many teachers and mentors saw the value in rest, joy, play and creativity, and how all of those led to spiritual fulfillment. It was all about relationship building, experimentation and centering youth needs, hopes, and dreams—which as I mentioned earlier, I did not do in my student organizing days. This is, in full effect, a feminist approach to revolution.
This experience also taught me how to approach conflict and harm from a trauma-informed practice. We were introduced multiple non-punitive, non-confinement strategies to de-escalate conflict: separating a youth away from what makes them feel unsafe or triggered, having a "calming space" to go to, observing and encouraging youth to take care of physical needs, being able to identify one's emotions and where they're coming from, challenging youth to see how what they did affected other youth, allowing (not lecturing) youth the space to articulate for themselves what they need, and making agreements that felt good together. Most importantly, the practice of intervening (not ignoring or pushing back on) even the smallest occurrences of harm with care and resolve to prevent escalation aligned with the theory behind “pods,” pod-mapping and transformative justice.
We saw youth in their full humanity and potential to transform with each other. In our little space, we tried our best to prevent harm at every step, without resorting to punitive/policing measures (lecturing/threats) and confinement/caging (time-outs) to solve problems. Young people and adults across generations defined safety, created space for rest and play, and were grounded in love.
There is revolutionary potential in intergenerational communities of learning and care. Of course, this was just one piece of that collective “yes.” Constrained by the limitations of the school and the state, this experience did not allow for full youth autonomy, youth self-determination and a non-hierarchical youth-adult partnership to build entire community-run alternatives (such as community gardens, community kitchens, public space/housing, etc) to new world(s). To create a world without police, prisons and empire, it will take a refusal at multiple levels. It will take restored faith and trust in ourselves—family, friends, neighbors, comrades—and a complete divestment from colonial traditions and the anti-Black carceral state.
I am guided by a belief that another world and another way of life is possible
“Understanding the world through a Relationship Framework . . . we don’t see ourselves, our communities, or our species as inherently superior to any other, but rather see our roles and responsibilities to each other as inherent to enjoying our life experiences.” Zainab Amadahy
“While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” Eugene Debs
Many comrades I have spoken with are sharing sentiments of anger and grief similar to mine, and a fear that a neoliberal Biden presidency will return most people (especially liberals) back into their comfort zones. While that is likely true, I would also point out: what did a plainly fascist Trump administration inspire for liberals besides signing more petitions, tweeting Cheeto memes, funneling their time and energy into voting, feeding celebrity activist culture and parroting what they say, blaming this nation’s “problems” on Trump and gluing their eyes to the screen to watch the spectacle that is U.S. politics?
At least now, we are presented with the opportunity to expose the failure of the U.S. as a settler colonial, anti-Black, imperialist nation-state that goes far beyond an individual or party. While this election period may have pushed the door to abolish the U.S. to a tentative close, there are still cracks in the system, cracks in the walls that keep us from the world and life we want. I believe anarchist and abolitionist feminists across the world are more than ready to keep breaking through. I believe a revolution will begin with a refusal to vote, refusal of the state, refusal in nonprofits, refusal in ableist work culture, and refusal in empire.
A revolution will continue with a trust in “small is all,” transformation, critical reflection, imagination, rest, collective care, direct action, and all kinds of transnational solidarities to build the community resilience we need in order to prepare us for inevitable climate collapse, protect one another, and restore relations that render settler nations obsolete.
For me, it will begin with a type of decentralization akin to the center of a mandala that grows and overlaps with other mandalas: myself, my close relationships, (care)pods, neighbors and various informal networks. My anxieties do not lie in “educating” liberals—my priorities lie in nurturing love, trust and transformation with friends, family and comrades, supporting anarchists who take direct action, sharing stories, holding space for learning, reflection and emotional care, ending my relationship to work, tending to the land, taking responsibility in conflict, harm and violence, and cultivating new ways of living via art and play. This may not happen all at once, but this fall, I start with new intentions:
I will continue to disengage from U.S. political theatrics. I was not giving it my energy anyway, and I will keep it that way.
I no longer trust nonprofits and all their nonprofitry shenanigans, no matter how “radical” they seem. I might however, download toolkits, attend workshops etc if they feel meaningful, but will always keep in mind that nonprofits are agents of the state.
I refuse to participate in any “organizing” that receives funding from the state and/or takes action that legitimizes the state.
I refuse to engage in any organizing culture that mirrors ableist work culture.
I will tend to my ability to support the hopes and dreams of people around me, including anarchist comrades and youth.
I will keep participating in community resiliency-building outside of the state that not only prepares for disasters ahead, but allows people greater autonomy, imagination and world-building.
As someone with Asian ancestry, I will continue engaging with my own people’s revolutionary history, and connect with other anti-imperialist, anti-caste Asians. I will explore the ways in which materialism, borders and binaries dissolve when we shift away from traditions of caste, class and nationalism, and towards true love, solidarity and healing.
Another world is absolutely possible. Are you personally willing to let go of the logic of domination and the logic of empire in order to ensure, and not prolong, its arrival?
In other words, are you ready to break up with the USA?
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