#movilization

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

[rienfleche]

from “Life in a Polyrhythmic, Insurgently Evolving Cuba“

LESSONS LEARNED

Upon returning to New York City and becoming immersed in a new round of street actions, citywide campaigns and popular education events, I’ve been reflecting on how interactions across revolutionary traditions can be further developed in New York City, and with Cuba. In the process, endless squabbles between radicals up north can be converted into more amply utilizing our organizing liberties. I recognize that my critical views are from only two months of experiences in Cuba, and that they could easily be subsumed within a much larger momentum of critiques that intend to overturn the revolutionary achievements that have been made in Cuba. I also worry about how “normalization between Cuba and the United States” may be manipulated in already imbalanced negotiations under the shadow of a shared colonial history, as small autonomous Cuban movements struggle to assert their own visions and demands. I hope we can push beyond “normal” to something much more humanizing and revolutionary. In this process, here are some lasting lessons I’ve nurtured back here at home:

In-person extended dialogues, preferably with food and drinks, create more clarity and trust than words on a page or screen. Social change is neither solely linguistics nor a hasty sprint.

More often than not we inhabit multilingual spaces — exercise this strength or it will wither.

Quantity is not quality. Organizing 30 actions in 30 days doesn’t necessarily bring more people into movement(s), map strategic escalations, intersect struggles or build long-term sustainable power across communities. Our imaginative horizon should never be the end of the month, let alone the end of the action.

The digital divide is a real local/transnational issue. Don’t equate political commitment with up-to-date knowledge or Facebook post counts when for some it takes a day to download an article and for others news is instantaneous. Keep this in mind when making website platforms, data-heavy action announcements and complicated networks.

Beware the seduction of state power from above. Those who marvel at the possibilities of Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos should consider how leftist movements that won state power in Chile, Congo, Cuba, Ghana, Nicaragua, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and many other countries struggled to realize their goals in the face of opposition from U.S.-led imperialism, were brutally ousted from power or slowly ossified into a version their earlier revolutionary selves would have abhorred. Movements that feature electoral or state-from-above seizure strategies will always come up against these contradictions. The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house, nor is the master’s house where we should demand to reside.

[cartelogia]

c. 2013 Chile