While the US-Israel war on Iran is a criminal tragedy, it is unlikely to become World War III. There are a few missing factors and a couple incorrect assumptions about the state of world. For it to become a world war, powerful countries would have to come in defense of Iran. That is not likely to happen anytime soon.

First we have to understand the scale of World Wars I and II. Both involved several dozen countries—around a hundred countries if you include the vast colonial empires that Europeans drew from—and occurred on multiple continents. This war, though it is already taking innocent lives in Iran, is unlikely to reach the global scale, for many reasons.

Lack of Alliances

In terms of World War I, there have been comparisons between the death of Khamenei and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the subsequent invasion of Serbia by Ferdinand’s Austria-Hungary. But there is no series of alliances to be triggered from the US-Israel invasion, aside from those already benefiting Israel’s government.

While the alliances preceding World War I were far from its sole cause, their mere existence illustrates a very different world. Alliances on the scale of the early 20th century were put into place to maintain a balance of power between countries with near equal military capacity. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has not yet been a force near equal to the United States in terms of military capacity, though China is challenging that norm.

There are still military alliances, like the Cold War relics of NATO and the post-soviet response to NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). There are some new military treaties, but almost none have been tested, and most would involve the United States Navy playing a central role in enforcing them.

The world is slowly exiting this era of near complete U.S. domination, so all of this will likely change in our lifetimes. But in the meantime, let’s focus on Iran.

Iran’s Allies, or Lack Thereof

Iran’s allies are a combination of militias and battered dual power governments (in the sense that they are still struggling for legitimacy against another government) like the Houthis in Yemen. They’ve been deeply weakened by Israel’s invasion of Gaza and a string of assassinations of key leaders. Allied groups in Iraq have spoken about receiving little communication from Iran, and declining support since the fall of Assad’s Syria and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who directed Iran’s allies.

Arab governments that might otherwise join a war against Israel have realigned toward the United States and Netanyahu in the last decade, solidified by the Abraham Accords. At best Iran may be able to force them into neutrality by attacking their oil production and plants that transform salt water into drinkable water for their populations.

Russia and China are also often seen as Iran’s allies, but that isn’t quite accurate. They lack the same defensive pacts that led into World War I, and that the United States and most of Europe has through NATO. Defense pacts bind governments to join any war that is waged on their allies. This is of course hypothetical, countries are always weighing conditions, and the world wars involved many countries, like the United States, who were not bound by treaty.

To maintain flexibility under the global dominance of the United States, China does not maintain military alliances, aside from the defense pact it signed with North Korea in 1961.

While Russia has signed a number of defensive pacts, it is not in any sort of formal alliance with Iran. Even if it was, it realistically would not have the capacity to provide much military support due to its own war against Ukraine.

Of course, countries don’t need to be in formal alliances to join in a war, but neither China, Russia, nor any other rising power has an incentive to back Iran.

Commitment Asymmetry

I find the term “commitment asymmetry” useful here. In simple words, the cost of the war against the United States and Israel would not provide enough benefit to be worth it. In even simpler words, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Though China gets a substantial amount of oil from Iran, the energy, diplomatic, and human, costs of the war are unlikely to be worth it. China is a pre-occupied with expanding its economic reach across the world, including Europe. And its military priorities lay within its own region, especially the reconquest of Taiwan, arguably the most strategic location on earth due its monopoly on advanced semiconductors (which play a role in most modern technology).

Russia also benefits from this war almost as much as it is losing. While Iran is an important economic partner and a key supplier of military drones, Russia has an opportunity to recapture the oil and gas deals that it lost by waging war in Ukraine. The United States has pressured countries in Europe and other major powers like India from openly purchasing Russian fossil fuels. Trump has begun loosening these restrictions. Russia also benefits from rising fuel prices. As of March 12th, Russia has earned over $700 million extra in fuel revenues since the start of the war.

This war, though vile on its own merits, shows little signs of expanding into a world war. That does not mean we should oppose it any less. We must fight to stop the use of our money, that should be funding education and healthcare here, from being used to blow up hospitals and schools. This world war is unlikely, but all over earth, the rich wage their war against us as the world burns in the background.

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Third Way, a centrist democratic think tank, is hashing out plans to secure a centrist Democratic Party candidate in 2026. This would be a mistake and an almost childish misunderstanding of how we got here in the first place. Even if a centrist seems “more electable”, it can only lead us back down the same road we’re currently on.

Third Way centrist democrats were firmly established by Bill Clinton and a series of conferences and articles in the 1990s. They embraced the neoliberal politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, cutting public services, empowering corporations, and expanding militarism, while wearing a mask of social progress.

Today, American politics can easily be understood as a multi-decade Reagan presidency, backed all the way through by centrist Democrats. Some seeds were planted by Jimmy Carter’s attempts to balance feel good politics with early neoliberalism and the backing of death squads. But Reagan’s neoliberalism solidified the modern model.

Reagan chipped away at the social welfare state established in the New Deal Era and LBJ’s Great Society programs, and demonized poor Americans for using services that their tax dollars paid for. He cut public funding for everything from school lunches to healthcare.

He launched covert operations across the planet to crush socialist movements fighting for the poor, and built friendly relationships with genocidal dictators like Guatamala’s Efraín Ríos Montt and Chad’s Hissène Habré, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Reagan smothered pro-democratic leftists in favor of forces that mirrored the anti-Communist and anti-feminist politics of his own Christian base. He also escalated the “War on Drugs”, while his administration supported the cocaine trade, radically expanding the surveillance and prosecution of poor Black Americans. Our modern lobby state also grew under Ronald. He vetoed key, bi-partisan, legislation to combat lobbying and it showed. In 1973 there were only 300 Political Action Committees in the country, by 1985, there were 12,000.

These politics continued under his vice president George H.W Bush, but did not suddenly disappear when the charming, likely pedophile, Bill Clinton was elected. Clinton saw himself as the “third way”, a balance of lofty ideals and the violent pragmatism of Reagan.

Clinton had the benefit of not having to fight the Cold War and was thus able to abandon much of Reagan’s foreign policy, excluding a currently consequential attempt to encircle Russia by expanding NATO.

Bill brought war home by backing the national push to lock up as many Black people as possible through the 1994 Crime Bill and an expansion of the war on drugs. In 1997, he signed into creation the 1033 Program, which moved billions of dollars of military equipment into local police departments.

Further, he bought into Reagan’s narrative of welfare queens and signed legislation that targeted single mothers, scaling back support they could receive and mandating that they work outside the home. This often forced already struggling mothers into low paying work.

He continued Reagan’s trend of helping the rich concentrate their power by signing the 1994 telecommunications act, which led to the consolidation of major entertainment companies down to the 5 (and likely soon to be 4) remaining companies we have today.

Bush continued much of the legacy of Reagan and his father, and used 9/11 to launch naked resource wars that his predecessors could only dream of. What was covert could now be overt, and he took spying to a new level with the signing away of American civil liberties with the Patriot Act.

Luckily, the progressive champion, Barack Obama, would cease this trend (kidding, obviously).

Despite selling himself as a progressive in his original primary, Obama was firmly a third way centrist who carried forth the worst of his predecessors. He blended covert with overt, normalizing drone warfare in a mask of accountability that neglected to mention that his guidelines treated all young Arab men as legitimate targets of public execution. He used billions of public money to bail out banks, a process actually began by Bush, that exploited working class people and crashed the global economy in the process.

Obama picked up the racist narratives of his predecessors, scolding Black families for eating fried chicken and wearing fancy chains. Obama embraced Bush’s Patriot Act and coordinated the crushing of Occupy Wall Street, a social movement energized by the same hopeful youth that brought him into power.

In many ways, Obama set the final precedent for Trump. He killed the 16-year-old American boy Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and paved the way for Trump to murder his 8-year-old sister a few years later. Trump too promised radical change and used his “honesty” and charm to win over Americans who were fed up with the perceived status quo.

Trump seized upon Obama’s detention centers and record number of deportations–numbers that dwarfed those of any modern Republican administration. He continued Obama’s drone program and slow expansion of the use of unaccountable mercenaries like the far right led Blackwater company. He is radically upgrading the surveillance state set up by his predecessors, and combining Nixon and Reagan’s War on Drugs with Bush and Obama’s the War on Terror in a naked attempt to continue the resource wars of Bush.

Trump has arguably moved us into a new era, one in which the empire proudly exposes its rotten genitalia. That stark nudity, and inability to navigate the economic challenges of COVID-19, may have been why he lost to Biden in 2020.

Biden, who voted for many of Reagan’s economic policies in the 80s, did little to undo the damage of Trump. His greatest feat was the Inflation Reduction Act, which essentially took the ambitions of the New Deal era and the Sunrise Movement and weaponized them to continue the anti-Chinese Trade War of Trump.

He did not honor one of Obama’s most humane acts, normalizing relationship with Cuba, and instead doubled down on hurtling the world toward another global conflagration by adopting Trump’s military priorities. He also slowed down the fight against climate change by pressuring countries to disengage from China’s renewable programs.

Centrist attempts to balance right wing policies with good talk are fundamentally unable to deliver on a good life for working people. This drives the masses into disillusionment, or worse, into the arms of the far right.

And here we are, unsurprisingly, back to Trump. And here Chile is, back to Pinochet. And here Argentina is, back to Videla. At least their economic policies have returned, we are now forced to see if their scale of domestic violence will return.

Electing what are essentially Clintonian (and thus Reaganian and now Trumpian) centrists like Newsom or Harris will likely continue the Reagan and Trump eras. We will have friendlier faces overseeing Israeli genocide and American invasions, half in and half out immigration, criminal justice, and climate reform. It is unlikely that either will walk back the use of AI in warfare, or scale back the new surveillance state being setup with the help of corporations like Flock and Palantir.

Even electing AOC in 2028 or Mamdani in 2032 may likely just put the United States on the same trajectory of European social democracy, unable to reform the capitalists they will inevitably collaborate with. They may be forced to enact the starvation and punishment of the working class amid the fallout of a likely coming economic crash. I would be the first to sign up for their presidential campaigns, so do not mistake this for pessimism or “ultraleftism”.

History and modern European examples point to the limitations of social democratic parties, which were part of the global third way movement to balance the needs of people with the unsatiable hunger of capitalists.

Both roads, without well organized revolutionary fervor from the ground, will likely lead back to another version of Trump.

Does that mean doom and gloom? No, it means we need to reckon with history as a whole and think long term. We need to consider what it means to meet angry Zoomers and Gen Alpha where they are at, and be honest about the failures of the Democratic Party. That journey does not begin by electing another third way democrat.

The age of neoliberalism cannot be undone through simple elections, and even the social democratic exceptions to Europe are beginning to crumble under the contradictions of capitalism. Democracy cannot serve both the working class and the billionaire class. By attempting to do both, the billionaires will always win, perpetually using their wealth and control of media to maintain control over political parties and absorb or crush social movements.

It will likely require a complete rewriting of the system, as seen by both the American and Russian Revolutions. Both had their shortcomings, but no reasonable person could argue that they were simple clones of their previous systems.

In the meantime, we must reject the idea that centrism is the answer.

*Various warnings about gore, racism, and not being allowed to be mad at the author, who is a lovely person.*

By Moses Morrow

My sneakers crunched against the lifeless turf as I walked the jagged aisles. The growing audience chattered in whisper hush tones, a soft rumble, as I shuffled past other bodies on my way toward the front row. I slipped my glasses into my purse and took a seat dead center, a few inches from the stage and its crimson curtain.

I glanced at the rest of the front row and bit my tongue. Everyone else was white, which made sense, and they were all looking at me. I was glad I brought my knife and the words my mother gave me.

Their eyes lingered for a second and almost in unison turned back toward their previous conversations. I tasted blood in my mouth.

I crossed my legs as I stared down at my playbill to escape the awkwardness. “Our Dream”, the title, pulsed in a vibrant red font. A list of reviews from local papers and one nationally syndicated publication covered the back side. I flipped through it quickly, but the words were difficult to make out with such poor lighting. I faked a yawn and stretch and scanned the few faces near me.

Fuck.

More grinning white faces. I knew there must have been a few people of color, I’d heard more and more came now.

I wonder if they’re all in the back. I chuckled a little, which seemed to alarm the blonde haired woman next to me.

“I’m sorry.” I said quickly, for no fucking reason. She smiled a wild smile, flicked her wrist and waved it off.

I nearly jumped out of my seat as the loud ringing of bells shook me from my neck and back, down to the cracks between my toes. The red velvet curtain suddenly swung open as dueling spotlights bounced toward the center. The audience hushed in anticipation. In seconds, a white man and woman holding hands stepped out of the shadowy corners to take their position in the spotlight. They were roughly the same height, dressed like a Sunday Brunch, and could have easily passed for siblings, but the wedding bands and intimately clasped hands implied a different story.

“We are so glad you all made it out here tonight!” The woman gleed. “Thank you all so much”. Her blue eyes popped brilliantly in the spotlight.

“This is going to be our baby’s last show for the season.” The man said, grinning, a block of white teeth cracked across his square jawed face. The remark drew scattered applause, awes, and playful boos.

“So with no further ado,” his head bobbed left and right, “OUR DREAM”

The audience burst open with applause and cheers. The couple bowed and disappeared into the shadows of the stage. The applause lingered for a moment, but soon withered into the darkness. The spotlights dimmed.

A pale white girl in a black dress stepped into the light. Sweat dripped from her blonde brow, her ankles twisted inward, her feet pointed at each other in accusation. Her face stricken with mortification, she spoke with a high, trembling voice.

“Thank y’all, thank y’all for coming to our show,” she said, head down. The audience awed in response. “This show means a lot to us folks in Memphis, and we hope any outsiders here like what we’ve cooked up for ya’ll tonight.”

The girl began tearing up. “And I hope we do y’all justice tonight! Because this country needs something good right now, something to heal all that pain and dividin’ those people are out there causin’!”

The applause shook me in my seat.

“And with no more to do, I introduce to you, the late, the great Martin Luther King Junior!”

The girl gave a bow and backed away into the darkness as the stage light dimmed. The light slowly bled back and then brightened into a singular spotlight focused on a lumpy presence behind the red stage curtain.

I don’t know if I can go through with this.

My hand slipped into my pocket, fingers running along the blade within.

With a crack, the national anthem began blaring from the speakers surrounding the audience. Blue white and red lights danced around the stage before reuniting upon the lump behind the curtain.

A slow creeping creak silenced the awaiting audience. The lump emerged from the darkness.

Upon that stage, stood the bloated corpse of Martin Luther King Junior. Hooks and ropes and pulleys grabbed at his puffy decaying body. His hollow eyes swallowed the light as his faceless off-stage puppeteers dragged him forward. I could see the little hooks in his mouth, pulling his mustache and lips into a scabby grin. Yellow and green dripped behind him.

And his smell. Damn his smell. He smelled like rancid meat and vomit and eggs boiling in port-a-potty shit.

“I have a dream!” the speakers blared a poor facsimile of his voice. The audience roared, they cackled, they stomped, they hollered.

“I have a dream that little white girls and little black boys.”

The white woman next to me looked like she was about to faint from joy, eyes gleaming, teeth sharpened as she rocked along to the words in her seat.

“Can sit together at the table of prosperity, having a good time together.” He stretched one arm out toward us.

The white woman passed out in her seat.

“I have a dream!”

I couldn’t help but to prick myself with my knife. Not enough blood, obviously, but I needed the pain.

“That the color of a boy’s skin is no more significant than the content of his character. That we can all reach the mountaintop together and move on from conflict and tension!”

Both arms raised above his head, flesh bulging beneath the stretching seams of his black suit.

“I have a dream!”

Men in white suits ran through the crowd, passing out tarps and bibs. The crowd stomped and screamed, some men, and two women, tore their shirts off and ran toward the stage, white chests shining in the moonlight.

“That I can DANCE!”

The lights switched to a colorful strobe as a thick drum and bass exploded from the speakers. Martin’s body twitched and lurched into a staggered two-step. The crowd erupted.

I slipped the blade from my pocket and with shut eyes and quick swing, I sliced open my right wrist. I put my head down as I grabbed forth to contain my wound.

Martin gyrated his hips as his head bobbed along. His body wobbled and shook with each step, pus and preservatives pushed through each pour. The suit stretched and stretched as his bloated belly trembled.

I put my head down and whispered “Dìde, Bàbá Dìde, Bàbá Dìde, Bàbá”.

“I have a dream! That I can DANCE!” he bellowed again. The front row stood in response, forming a mosh pit in front of me. The fainted woman arose like a porcelain Christ, and in jubilation she rushed the stage and grabbed at Martin’s suit from the edge.

Martin’s gut exploded, intestines and dead blood rained upon the crowd. The cheers continued as they danced on the flaps of belly skin. Martin continued dancing, baring rotting ribs for those close enough to see.

“Dìde, Bàbá Dìde, Bàbá Dìde, Bàbá” I said louder as I rose and approached the stage.

The formerly fainted white woman looked at me, with a piece of Martin’s small intestine leaking from her smiling mouth. She cocked her head and started chanting with me. “Deeday, Baba,” she said, laughing.

“Dìde, Bàbá!” I screamed. The crowd stopped. They all stared, frozen.

“Dìde, Bàbá!” I yelled again. “Dìde!” The crowd hissed and booed as they began approaching me. The fainting woman leaped toward me, nails scratching at my face while cackling “Deeday baabaa.” The white mass grabbed and pulled and kicked and spit at me. Blood poured from a fresh wound to my head as I collapsed beneath their blows.

“I had A FUCKING NIGHTMARE,” Martin’s voice cracked through his decayed mouth. The air froze as the white masses all turned to face the stage. Wire’s thwicked and thwacked as the lumbering corpse of Martin Luther King Junior slung his body in starts and stops toward me. He turned his face toward the sky and gurgled out.

“YOU HAD A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!”

Martin grabbed the nearest white man’s neck with one hand, with a quick squeeze the man’s skull and brains exploded into chunks. Martin flung one of the remaining hooks in his arm toward a man who’d began to run, tearing an eyeball then whipping back around a woman’s throat. She screamed as her neck cracked in unholy rotation. The corpse stumbled off the stage into the crowd of now screaming and scrambling humans.

His hands ripped and tore bodies into bloodied scrap. Waves of red spilled as King thrashed through bones and tissue. The quaking woman next to me was yanked away as her throat exhaled a crackling shriek.

One by one, Martin pulled apart the mountain of bodies, bunches and bits were launched into the air before him. A pair of blue eyes popped as he choked the white hostesses throat into a sliver. A blood soaked piece of a white man’s nose flew into my mouth. The taste of raw pork and metal danced on my tongue before I could spit it out.

Martin’s bloody corpse appeared through the carnage. He grabbed my neck with a single hand and began to squeeze. I kicked and gasped and clawed at his arm, rotten flesh piled beneath my fingernails.

“WHY DID YOU WAKE ME?”

Tears and blood vessels swelled in my eyes as I struggled to speak.

“White peo…”

“WHY DID YOU WAKE ME?” He squeezed, just a little tighter.

“Please…” I choked out.

He loosened his grip, just enough to let me breathe.

“White people are misquoting you on the internet!” I gurgled.

His arm dropped as I fell to the soaked grass beneath me.

Martin roared, grunted, and gargled, and disappeared into the night.

Trump has just accomplished the desire of many past U.S. presidents and successfully attacked, invaded, and then abducted the head of state of Venezuela. Many media outlets continue to repeat his claims that this was part of the War on Drugs and a mission of democracy. The fact that we tolerate these claims, claims that Trump struggles to even maintain publicly, is an embarrassment that should frankly have consequences for the outlets and journalists who give it credence.

This gross violation of international law, which arguably was never relevant in the face of the sheer weaponry of the American Empire, was absolutely not about drugs, and more about than just oil. Trump is seeking to completely dominate Latin America and reassert the Monroe Doctrine’s call for complete control over the Western hemisphere by any and all means. This is part of his plan to establish and support right wing governments across South and Central America, and it should be opposed with that additional understanding.

Trump’s claim that Maduro is leading one of the largest cartels in the Americas and responsible for the fentanyl crisis is fucking insane. The Cartel of the Suns has never existed, and at best is used to as a loose term to describe various members of the Venezuelan military that have been involved with drug traffickers, the actual “cartel” was a group of military officials who worked with the CIA to smuggle cocaine into the United States. The CIA same CIA who helped kickstart and expand the global heroin trade, the same CIA ordered by Trump to remove Maduro. And even then, it wasn’t a formal cartel, there is no evidence to imply that such a cartel has EVER existed.

Trump also clearly doesn’t care about drug trafficking. He recently pardoned an actual trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernández the former president of Honduras, despite him being convicted of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and accepting a $1 million bribe from an actual head of a cartel, El Chapo Guzmán. Trump has also pardoned the founder of the Silk Road online black market, Ross Ulbricht, and notorious Chicago and Baltimore kingpins Larry Hoover and Garnett Smith. If Trump is ever removed from office, we will likely discover the mountains of bribes he has received in this process. This year, Trump has also cut over $300 million from federal programs that support addiction and overdose prevention services.

In terms of the opioid crisis, there is no evidence that Venezuela plays any role in it. No fentanyl comes from Venezuela. And Trump’s previous actions shows he doesn’t really care about the crisis that took my best friend and many loved ones of those in Trump’s base. The Sackler family, which owns the pharmaceutical company understood to have pushed opioids on the American public, was facing up to 8.3 billion in penalties and fines in 2020, but Trump’s Justice Department settled with a meager $225 million payout.

The resource that Trump is actually after is oil (and other crucial materials). Venezuela has the world’s single largest reserve of oil, and Trump preceded his invasion with stealing oil and bringing it right to the United States. Media outlets subtly justified this by referring to these stolen oil tankers as part of a “shadow fleet”. These terms accept American sanctions as matter of indisputable fact, instead of seeing them as one nation’s foreign policy. Before the invasion, Trump explicitly claimed Venezuela’s oil as belonging to the United States, saying that it and Venezuela’s land were “stolen” from the US. Since kidnapping Maduro, he has said that the U.S. will now be directly involved with governing Venezuela and “very strongly involved” in managing its oil through what he called “the greatest oil companies in the world”.

Trump being explicit about controlling Venezuela is important, because it fits within another piece of his long term strategy. He has not denied the potential of a military occupation when asked earlier today. This is because he is seeking to reassert control over Latin America. He backed the newly elected right wing president of Honduras as he pardoned Juan Hernandez, a member of the same party. Across Latin America he has supported the far right, giving $20 billion to Argentina’s flailing fascist Javier Milei, fighting to free Brazil’s Bolsonaro–who was imprisoned following his attempt to establish a dictatorship in Brazil. He’s also coordinating anti-immigration policies with El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele–who has imprisoned almost 2 percent of his entire population and Ecuador’s Noboa, who has increasingly consolidated power in his own country.

This attack will destabilize South America and Venezuela’s leftwing neighbors in Colombia and Brazil, two countries who have openly challenged Trump’s regime on the international level. Creating a civil war in Venezuela will also disrupt Cuba’s access to oil as it faces an energy crisis.

Refugees fleeing Venezuela are being used to create anti-immigrant sentiments across South America, exemplified by Chile’s socialist coalition being replaced by a far right party helmed by the son of a literal member of Hitler’s Nazi Party. As Trump funds and backs the far right, he is also giving them more human ammunition to use to justify their increasingly authoritarian ambitions.

This isn’t exactly new, but a return to an older form of imperial dominance established first by the President Monroe in 1823, who sought to claim the Western Hemisphere as the property of the United States, in opposition to European powers. It was until 20th century that it was fully implemented, leading to invasions, coups and interventions in EVERY single country in the Western Hemisphere.

From occupying Haiti for two decades, to backing coups in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, Panama, the list goes on. But this being new does not make it any less egregious. Latin America has provided many shining lights in the last decade as a potential alternative to the politics of profit over people that have seized the world since the United States became the only real world power following the fall of the Soviet Union, and its people deserve the right to self-determination without the boot of Trump and a Latin American far right with a history of repression and genocide.

We’ve seen what happens when the far right dominates Latin America, things like Operation Condor, a US backed series of coups and assassinations that led to the deaths of over 60,000 people between 1975 and 1983.

This era of doctrine isn’t aimed at Europe, which has long become a servant to the United States, but at China and Russia, who have become important trade partners with many Latin American countries. It also continues the United States’ long commitment to dismantling leftwing opposition to itself anywhere on earth.

We must oppose Trump’s invasion and the establishment of a US backed coup government in the Venezuela, even those who oppose Maduro and desire a different country. Growth in inequality and mass death is what the world got last time we allowed this to happen. We must join “Hands off Venezuela” protests and hold accountable any politician who is backing this or refusing to speak up.

I was in the 5^th grade, or it could have been 4^th grade, I’m not sure. I know it was before 9/11 because everything after 9/11 has this odd layer of ash and xenophobia to it. I was the only Black kid at an all-white elementary school 30 minutes west of Manhattan, and I wasn’t just Black, I was African Black. So I got a lot of jokes and the occasional racial slur.

My first teacher actively refused to pronounce my name correctly, my best friend affectionately called me “fuzzy wuzzy” because of my hair, and I was sometimes asked about the pet lion that some kids insisted I had.

One teacher even loudly let me know that she thought my skin was dirty, and I was given detention for being called a nigger by another student. The principal believed I must have also done something wrong to deserve it.

And worst of all, most of the girls never looked at me long enough to truly appreciate how cute and demure I was.

I was a nerd who liked to whisper to himself in public, but was decent at sports and funny enough not to get bullied as much as the other weirdos.

I occupied a precarious place between the social haves and have-nots. I was especially good at track, which proved useful when the cooler kids came to collect what was owed, my self-esteem. This athleticism also helped craft a defensive layer of coolness around me.

So I don’t know if you had to do this in elementary school but we had something called the Four Forty, a 440-yard race. It was a long run for most kids, but everyone had to participate so we could be judged on our worth as children and potential future cannon fodder for the War on Terror. The top two runners would also attend the coveted Bloomfield Track & Field Meet and represent the school in a town-wide Four Forty.

So one thing you have to understand about Bloomfield is that it’s really segregated. The more south you went, the more people of color you had, while the north was wealthier and whiter. I imagine this was due to the same history of housing and job discrimination that has plagued much of the United States and helped build the vast emptiness that we call suburbia. My parents chose our new neighborhood—we’d just moved from a community of multiracial immigrants—not based on race, but on the best schools in the area, which, lo and behold, were in a white part of Essex County.

This segregation was exemplified by the elementary schools. Where I was the only Black kid in my school, there were other schools with only a smattering of little white children, who probably grew up to love Eminem and decry any claims that racism exists because of the one time they got called cracker on the playground, but I digress. So this Track & Field meet was a convergence of the town, a meeting of the tribes. And racial stereotypes aside, the white kids were the slowest of the tribes.

I had already secured my place as a sprinter, but the Four Forty seemed an untamable beast. I could run fast, but I had no stamina, and a race like this was long, real long. The kind of race that separates the kids from the slightly more athletic kids. All my credibility was on the line here.

I don’t remember much about the race, but I knew something went wrong. And this isn’t the part where I try to paint you a clearer picture, I literally have no clue what the fuck happened. I just know I was temporarily relieved from doing the Four Forty and I was free from the embarrassment of potentially passing out or shitting myself–I’ve seen it happen–from exhaustion.

As I sat in class the next day, I was approached privately by my teacher who told me that I would have a chance at rerunning the Four Forty. He was surprised by my lack of enthusiasm. I imagined the embarrassment of me running out there with the other hard breathing nerds, truly cementing my place among the losers. I begrudgingly accepted this, partially because it was mandatory, and partially because I figured maybe I could just run away halfway through it and find a new home, a new family that wouldn’t put me in sitcom-like fish-out-of-water scenarios.

I’ll never forget that moment, the moment I stepped out on the playground for the race and realized there was no race. There was only me and the sweatpants-donning, baseball cap-wearing, accessorizing-stopwatch-clicking gym teacher. At least no one but this subtly queer-coded underpaid public employee would see my embarrassment.

As I leaned forward behind the starting line my eyes washed over the window of my classroom. Behind that thick pane of plexiglass were the eyes and smiles of twenty or so white children, all watching me. My heart jumped out of my chest and made a beeline for the parking lot. The taste of blood met my tongue as I braced for the signal to go. The signal came. And I went.

It was pure ecstasy. I burst through the track, feet pounding for social survival. Each lunge plunges me further down the track, knees nearly cracking against my chin. My world melted away into a blur of nothingness, no race, no kids, no family, nothing.

My anxieties dissipated with each droplet of sweat. Fuck the cool kids, fuck the track meet, fuck this gym teacher, fuck white people, fuck George Bush. Ok this may have been after 9/11. Reality swirled and spiraled as I wound around the track again, and again. I didn’t even realize when I’d finished. The coach came up to me, grin shining from ear to underpaid ear.

“Congrats kid! You just set a new record for the Four Forty. You’re gonna be running in the Track Meet!”

“Fuck my life,” is how would I have responded if my lungs could have afforded the air.

Foley Field was a decent-sized football field with a track running around it. A few years later, the entire thing had to be redone due to the crumbling stands and arsenic found in the ground beneath the field. There is probably some allegory about the deep wounds of racism and blah blah blah.
But before the arsenic was discovered, shit was poppin.

It was the early 2000,s and no one gave a fuck, we survived Y2K, we were invincible, the crowd was hype. Team White had arrived at the field, we’d packed into a minivan and arrived together. It was mainly the cooler athletes, plus me and two other kids who played that dangerous middle game of athletic nerdom.

We mingled near the sidelines for most of the evening, occasionally popping into the stands to talk to our parents or chat up some track groupies. I’d run my sprints and done decent, scoring some silver and bronze along with some of my team.

Our eyes occasionally glanced at the scoreboard, we were doing the best our team had done in recent memory! The other teams seemed to have noticed that too. A team of primarily Black students came up to me, at first I thought they were there to congratulate me but the closer they got, the more I saw their displeasure.

“What’s up man? Why are you running for these white kids?” One of them said as others moved closer around me.

I didn’t know how to respond. A part of me thought of detailing all of the circumstances that led me here. Maybe I could start in Nigeria and the 1914 merger of the Northern and Southern British protectorates and trace my steps forward from there. But I didn’t say anything. It was as if my entire existence was called into question, or as if I was suddenly asked to answer for the segregation of a town I didn’t even want to live in.

I wish I could have told them who I was and what I go through on a daily basis, to let them know that I understood their frustrations, that we would probably be friends and nerd over Toonami and Yu-Gi-Oh cards if I’d only lived on the other side of town.

I wish I could have told them that I cared, I saw them, I knew their struggles, and I felt their anger too. But I knew they just saw me as a traitor who was going to help the white side of town win in the one thing it always failed at.

I was nearly surrounded now. Once you’ve been jumped a few times, you start developing an “Oh, I’m about to get jumped again” sense. Fight or flight kicked in and then politely packed its bags and headed out without leaving a note (you should always leave a note). I prepared myself for a public ass kicking. The groupies were going to hate this.

“Leave him alone!” My white knight screamed as he and the rest of my team crossed the sidelines towards me. My potential attackers backed away a bit to form a wider front against the new caucasian formation approaching them.

One of the Black students picked up a stick and swung it at me, I caught it with one hand and pushed him away with the other.

Guns drawn, both sides stood facing each other waiting for their opponents to make the next move. Tumbleweed drifted past my feet as my finger leapt for my pistol. This Track Meet wasn’t big enough for the both of us.

“The fuck are you kids doing?” An adult voice erupted over the scene. I looked over as one of the other coaches approached. We all scrambled towards our respective stands and disappeared into the night.

As I sat down with the kids from my school I couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of camaraderie. I’d always known I couldn’t ever really fit in with them, but for one minute I felt like a part of something. I felt like people cared for me and I cared for them.

We finished up the races for the evening, all leading to the final event. The 440. My name was called and my heart did jumping jacks between my ribcage. I rushed to the starting line with a teammate and got a few stretches in. All the other teams were present on the line. These were the fastest kids in the town, the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the Michaels of the Jackson 5s. But I was ready to do this. I was born to do this.

The race kicked off and we all dashed off in our lanes. I started in second place, pushing past my own teammate and all others who dared oppose the Nigerian Cheetah in his natural environment. The crowd roared and the race was on.

I closed my eyes as we wound around the first corner. My lungs were screaming. I dropped into third place.

The second corner came and my knees began to buckle and two runners passed me.

By the third corner I was in second to last place. I could barely run anymore, my body howled and pleaded for me to stop. I couldn’t be in last place.

As I crossed the finish line I nearly collapsed. I found a seat on the sidelines as my brain and body quivered from exhaustion. My team surrounded me, looks of shame and disappointment covered their faces.

My eyes panned over to the scoreboard and saw our school’s name slide down the list to a meager 4^th place. Better than most years, but not the athletic revolution that they had expected. They looked like I did when I later discovered cheetahs weren’t even native to Nigeria.

I went home that night deep in my feelings. My own people had attacked me, and white kids had come to my rescue. The same kids who stared at me when we would discuss slavery in history class. The same white people who would make me feel small and isolated the next day at school and for the next couple years of my life.

I lay in my bed wondering, what world did I really fit into? Would I forever be tainted and hated by my own people for being associated with white people? Would white people ever see me as my full self? Would I ever find happiness or a sense of belonging?

*Narrator Voice*

“He never did.”

Created for the Forge Writing Workshop to help writers who want to build good relationships with the people who edit their work. Based on my 15 years of experience as an editor and 20 years as a very annoying writer. Special thanks to Lara Witt, Editor in Chief of Prism, and Laura Ablast, Senior Editor at Palestine Square, for their input.

1. Ignoring Edits - If your editor makes a direct change, don’t just ignore it. Sometimes, an editor may indicate when something is more of a suggestion than a necessary change, so you may have some wiggle room. Regardless, if you disagree with an editor’s decision or suggestion, explain why. They may be receptive! But in general, trust your editor, especially on punctuation preferences.

2. Ignoring Word Limits - It is okay to go a little over, but submitting 2,000 words when the limit is 1,500 is going too far. This creates a lot of work for the editor or might lead to an outright rejection.

3. Not Doing Your Own Editing - While editors are here to give you feedback and help you sharpen your work, you should also be doing that on your own. At worst, you should proofread and catch basic mistakes or have someone else read it first. Using an app that reads your article aloud is a good way to overcome some of the stress of reading your work. Hearing a weird robotic voice can help you catch mistakes you may otherwise miss.

4. Not Providing Sources - Unless you’re writing a piece solely based on your personal experience, you should be providing sources for your big claims or facts that may not be common knowledge. Check to see if the publication prefers links or a works cited section. A good editing process involves fact-checking, and this makes the process easier. Even personal stories should include sources if you’re referring to events like unionization victories or passing legislation. Lean into providing sources, not away from it.

5. Sending a Reminder Too Quickly - Don’t bug your editor and bump an email about your pitch within 24 hours of sending it. You should send a reminder based on the urgency of the article (if the publication doesn’t publish frequently, you may want to wait for up to a month and a half). Editors are, for the most part, humans and may lose track of things or be overwhelmed. Be patient and know they are likely getting back to you as soon as they can based on their capacity and the priorities of the publication (they may temporarily be prioritizing articles about a specific topic, for example).

6. Making Things Up - Should be obvious, but like the other entries, it wouldn’t be here if it didn’t come up regularly. Don’t make up fake quotes, and don’t reference events that didn’t happen. Lastly, make sure that your sources actually say what you’re claiming they say!

7. Take it Personally - Don’t take edits personally; they almost always aren’t. Editors are trying to make your piece worthy of you and their audience. Trust them, and if you need to push back, do so gently and with an open mind.

8. Pitch Many Publications at Once - Some publications may not mind, but many editors will be frustrated to pick up an article by you just to find out that another publication has already accepted it. I would recommend pitching one publication at a time.

9. Threaten to Take Your Article Back - It is okay to let an editor know when a pitch is so time-sensitive that you may have to send it to others within a time limit. But threatening to take back an article or pitch because of a disagreement with an editor or a delay in publishing, especially if they’ve done work on the article to improve it, is the nuclear option. It risks burning the bridge with the editor and the publication. Articles are a team project, and editors become collaborators once your pitch is accepted. If your piece is being distorted too far from its initial aims, then it's worth letting them know and discussing moving on elsewhere.

10. Be Rude - Be gentle and respectful; you’ll likely get it back. Don’t be condescending because you have more degrees than your editor or feel like you must have some higher command of the language because they are an immigrant or a person of color or didn’t go to a fancy school. Be confident in your writing but humble in the feedback process.

Along with the advice here, you should always read the submissions pages of the publication before pitching–and ideally read articles that they’ve published that are similar to the one you’re pitching. Some publications only accept pitches and dislike receiving already finished pieces.

Send your pitches and believe in yourself!

The blame game for Trump has begun, and it has been a bit frustrating to witness.

While it may feel like a waste of time, it is necessary to understand what happened so we can ensure that such a thing never happens again. What isn’t necessary is hating on other working-class people or our friends and neighbors. It will exhaust us and isolate us at a time when we really need each other. Regardless of your analysis, this is a time to love on our comrades and make at least temporary peace across the leftwing political spectrum. And while I blame some on the left, that does not mean I hate them, I just believe they need to re-evaluate their current strategies.

I believe there are correct people to blame, and incorrect people. The real blame lies with our political system, the democratic party, the republican party, the wealthy ruling class–especially the new tech-brominati, and the progressive wing of the nonprofit industrial complex. The blame does not lie at the feet of third party voters, non-voters, and even many of those who voted Trump. I believe that almost any other analysis will mislead us into the wrong conclusions and create poor strategy moving forward.

Our political system, created by a bunch of relatively smart men who enjoyed owning human beings, was flawed from the start. The first past the post system and the existence of undemocratic bodies like the Senate and the Supreme Court set us up for the kinds of presidential dictatorships that we’ve long propped up in Africa and South America. And it also limits us to a two-party system that prevents third parties from gaining seats and building momentum like in countries with more modern political systems that give parties guaranteed seats based on how many votes they get or allow voters to rank their choices or vote in multiple rounds so that they can risk voting for a third party and know it will count for something.

The two major parties we’re stuck with are also clearly to blame. The Republicans have been moving to the right for decades and these sycophants have now fully embraced Trump as their overlord.

The Democrats deserve just as much flack. They too have moved to the right, first with the beloved Jimmy Carter who embraced the neoliberalism that Reagan would master. And then later with Bill Clinton and Obama. They hollowed out the political imagination of the American people and filled it with charter schools, budget cuts to public services, and infinite forms and bureaucracy to access the kinds of welfare that other countries give for free. Instead of fighting for political reform to ensure that the likes of Trump would never be elected, they doubled down on spending billions for elections and moved further toward him on issues like immigration and military expansion. Instead of responding to a new generation of progressive and socialist young people they literally backed far-right candidates to make themselves look better and worked with conservatives to shut down the careers of progressives like Cori Bush and India Walton. Instead of responding favorably to the movement for Palestine, they fought it by creating a new Red Scare, destroying the lives and careers of American college students with one hand while engaging in genocide with the other. They set up the culture of fear that is now being used by Trump to justify the targeting of pro-Palestinian activists.

I believe progressivism is an ideological mistake (it is historically and practically about reforming capitalism enough to prevent socialism) and that the Democratic Party needs to be shattered. But both forces had a role to play over the last, and they failed. A smart liberal party would have found ways to co-opt the Palestine movement, and a real progressive movement would not have allowed Biden to run for president without opposing him in the primary. The cowardice of large progressive nonprofits and foundations–and politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)–is to blame for Biden’s, and eventually Kamala’s failed campaign. The fear of Trump created a hush among the progressive movement, few people wanted to acknowledge Biden’s old age until it was too late, and instead of fighting for a competitive primary, progressives allowed Harris to ascend with barely a whisper.

AOC is particularly disappointing, she has a role to play as a voice of dissent within the party, but spent most of the last year bowing to Biden and corralling support behind the mainstream wing of the party. I understand that politicians must play a different game than movement leaders, but I believe she is making a miscalculation. Trump didn’t win because Americans yearn for fascism, most Americans yearn for a different political system, and everyone knows Harris wasn’t going to deliver that. And the more progressives go to bat for people like Harris, the less credibility they will have in moments of great crisis when the masses seek leaders who appear unblemished by the corruption of the status quo. I cannot speak for the American people, but I have lost confidence in AOC and any progressive who participated in the public ruse that Harris or Biden should have gone unchallenged without a primary.

I struggle to blame the wealthy ruling class because they are simply doing what they will always do, trying to expand their wealth by any means necessary. The new tech elite seems less scrupulous than past capitalists, but it has always been bad. Henry Ford supported Hitler much like Elon Musk wants to become him. Zuckerberg and Bezos are just as bad, bowing to Trump upon his election and flooding his inauguration with money. But even the Trump opposing billionaires like Bill Gates–who has used his ill-gotten gains to reshape global healthcare around his image–are to blame. Their mere existence and fixation on infinite growth ensure that we working people are treated as tools that need to be made cheaper and cheaper to maximize profits. Now they also control our brains through algorithms and platforms that seem to prefer fascist propaganda over useful content (remember when the internet was mainly cat pictures and oversharing?).

This is where the blame lies to me. I do not blame third-party voters who had almost no statistical impact on the election. I do not blame people who expected the Democratic party to at least temporarily stop supporting a genocide. I do not blame most Trump supporters. Like the wealthy, we are all trapped and given a very limited range of options for living within our class-based society. It is those with actual political power and political vehicles who can alter this system or appropriately respond to the demands of the masses. The only option we have is to replace the current system, and unfortunately the closest thing on the ballot to that was voting for Trump, though it will clearly deliver a worse society than what came before. I do think that those who believed that Trump couldn’t be significantly worse than Harris were operating from a place of desperate delirium and that needs to be acknowledged. I do not blame them for that, but it simply was never true and if we cannot see clearly in the future, we have no chance of victory.

I believe that moving forward we, those who seek a beautiful world worth living and dying in, must reject the Democratic party leadership with the whole of our hearts–even while some of us may run as candidates within it. Trump showed what it looks like to engage in a hostile takeover of a party. He did not win his initial primary by pretending the system or the Republican party was okay and needed some tweaks, he moved with a clear sense that the whole thing was rigged and the “swamp” needed to be drained. We must build movements that are in clear opposition to this system, and build power that can elect candidates, mobilize masses, and challenge the wealthy. We have spent too much time trying to do those things without building the power that can sustain them, which is labor. But that is for another article.

The computers were right at the end, we deserved it all.

Hands clenched, eyes closed, with hope for the future, against the wall.

He was at the end of his rope, and that is where they found him.

Her coffin was a little bit lighter each time.

“This is no place for little boys,” Osu hummed. A single candle illuminated Emmanuel’s face amid a blanket of black. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness but only silhouettes stood where fully formed beings should have been. He squirmed as tears rippled down his golden armor. His eyes swelled as he met Osu’s cowled face.

“I don’t want to go,” He responded with a whimper.

“This place is not for you Emmanuel. You must be with your own kind.” A man’s voice rose from the darkness.

“You are my kind! You’ve always been there for me, no humans have.”

“Be brave child, your time has come. The living belong with the living, the dead with the dead.” Osu responded.

“Then I don’t want to be alive,” Emmanuel cried. He struggled to say more but the tears stifled his speech.

“Don’t say such foolish things,” Osu said.

“But I thought you said you needed me!” The flame shook.

“I do need you, we all need you. You’ve brought joy to all of us, you are hope, you are love, you are a blessing.” Osu’s voice grew faint. “But others need you. You can do great things for mankind, your power can save them all.”

“But I don’t want to do great things, I want to stay here.” He said, clenching his armored fist.

A gruff voice erupted from a corner of the darkness. “You’ll always be part of the family, no matter what.”

“Others need you now, there are children out there just like you who have no one to protect them, there are people in chains, and families that will never eat again.” Osu said.

“But why me? Why do I have to go?”

“You’ve always known!” A voice cracked somewhere to the left of Emmanuel.

“Things have changed, the Victory is growing larger by the day, and it brings death wherever its soldiers march. ” Osu leaned closer to the flame. Her skull gleamed with embers as smoke poured from her eyes.

“Won’t someone else do it, there must be more heroes in the human world?” The boy said as he used his bright red cape to swipe away a stray tear.

“The heroes stand before you, we once were but are no more. You are the last of us, and you are blessed beyond bounds. We have sheltered you long enough.” The flame grew gently brighter as Osu’s words trailed.

“The world of man awaits you, each moment is precious child,” A new soft voice spoke, closer than the last. “Go to earth, cross the sea, find Ezekia, he will tell you what do. Emmanuel, you must go.”

“Will you still love me?” He whispered.

“Always,” Osu said. Her words lingered in the air as the candle faded into smoke. Darkness swallowed the room whole, and light hastily spit it back out.

Emmanuel stood alone in the center of a gold and white cathedral, eyes still stained with tears. He rubbed his hands vigorously through his mountain of curly black hair and hung his head down, quaking with bitter breath.

With a sniffle and a huff, he puffed up his chest and shuffled forward with a large golden sword dangling on his back. He pushed gently against the large door behind him. With a slow creek, a new darkness consumed him. The room shook into a swirl of stars and space as Emmanuel was shot forth. A tiny blue orb shimmered in the distance.

Chapter 2

Emmanuel stumbled through crowds of humans, they wore clothes less impressive than he was used to–if he was being polite–and the air had a smell that shouldn’t have belonged to anything alive. While his armor shined beneath the rising sun, those around him were covered in tattered rags and clothing in need of a good wash. He felt as if he had stepped into another world, and he supposed, that was quite literally what he’d done. Ahead of him was a vacant blue sea, but an ocean of noisy chattering people stood in his way.

Beyond the waves of his kind he could see the sails of a ship, he had learned of them from the books Osu had read to him as a child. He dived and ducked between awe-struck couples and hopped over beggars and small children who did not yet understand the impoliteness of staring. Wading through his fellow humans would have been more difficult back at home, but moving was much easier here, even in his armor.

The boy maneuvered his way to the plank as men and women as hairy as any beast he’d ever seen heaved closed crates into their arms and carried them aboard the ship. One man in a large blue overcoat towered over the rest and barked orders as the others went about ignoring him and committing to whatever acts they were previously doing.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack Flanders! For the love of all that is good and righteous, lift with your legs, not with your back!” The man said as he shined an apple on his overcoat. Emmanuel approached carefully and tapped the man on the back of the knees.

“Excuse me sir, but is this your ship?” Our hero said as the man turned around.

“Indeed it is, what is it you want?” The man replied.

“I need passage to the Capital so I can free the people from evil. I don’t have any gold yet but I’m sure my friend will pay you once we meet him,” Emmanuel said confidently.

A sailor passing by dropped a crate he was carrying and broke out in heaving laughter. The tall man snorted and spat. “I don’t care if you’re the King of First Son, if you don’t have any gold you’re not getting on my ship.” The balding man said between noisy chomps of his apple. .

“I need to get to the Capital, ooo and I have a friend to meet first.” Emmanuel said.

“I don’t care for your friends, friendship doesn’t pay for ships,” The balding man chucked the apple core and looked down at the dark skinned boy before him. “Look lad, I don’t mean to be rude to you, but we’re the last ship in harbor, we’re packed to the brim with goods and any extra weight can throw everything off.”

“How will paying you make the boat any lighter?”

“It won’t, but it’ll make the risk a little more worth my while.” He grinned with rotten teeth.

“I don’t have anything but what I have on me.”

“And what you have on you isn’t too shabby, is it, ” the man said as he stared at the golden armor encapsulating the boy before him. “That sword looks a bit too big for you, and with all that armor on you don’t need much protection now do you?”

“I suppose not sir,” Emmanuel said as he glanced around nervously. All the people working at the harbor had stopped to watch the exchange between this strange boy and the clearly questionable captain.

“Well tell you what, I’ll let you on board, give you good food and free passage, in exchange for that sword,” the man said with an outstretched hand.

“Do you promise to get me to the Capital, and my friend’s island?” Emmanuel responded as his mailed hand grasped that of the balding man.

“Sure, sure,” the man said as he led the boy towards the ship. “Not many want to go near the war when they have to, let alone travel there of their own free will.”

“Why's that?” Emmanuel asked.

“I swear everyone’s a king now, there’s too many sides to count,” the man said flabbergasted. “What have you been living under a rock?”

“Something like that,” Emmanuel responded.

“The only people that dare travel to the Capital are fools, pirates, and smugglers.” The man said grimly.

“Well which one are you?” Emmanuel said laughing. The man smiled with his large decaying teeth.

“A little bit of each.”

Chapter 3

“How did he die?” Emmanuel said as he leaned over the dead body of the captain, his teeth still smiling, still defiled by years of neglect. The entirety of the ship was on deck and huddled around the deceased body of their former captain. The night air was littered with the soft rumble of crew members pushing and shoving to see the body. Closest to the corpse was the captain’s daughter named Ife, she was only a few years older than Emmanuel, but her height reflected that of her father’s lineage. A young smuggler from the docks, Flanders, turned to Emmanuel and whispered.

“He was just yelling at one of the crew and all of a sudden he was grippin his heart and twistin all about, he soiled himself and collapsed. No one’s had the heart to move him, and his mute daughter ain’t moved since, just keeps staring at the stars.”

“Why is everyone-,” Emmanuel was mid-sentence when the crew’s rumbles turned into spiked outbursts.

“We need to head west round the blockade; the fool has been leading us the wrong way!” Yelled one man.

“Who are you calling a fool? The man’s body is barely cold!” Responded another.

“I don’t care if he’s dead, we need to get these goods to the Capital, and I’m not trying to die at sea with you lot!” The man stepped forward into the circle, his long dreaded hair reached his knees, and a black patch sat where his left eye should have been. “Let’s get moving west,” he said as he gestured to the distance.

“That’s not west you fool.” The ship fell into silence. The captain’s daughter spoke. “That is west,” she said as her finger shot toward the opposite direction of the dreaded man’s suggestion.

“How do you know?” the dreaded man snarled.

“The sun just set, the sun sets in the west, the sun was over there. So that’s west. How long have you been a pirate?”

“Well I don’t really like the term pirate, it gets a bad rap it does.” The dreaded man responded.

“Oh shush. We’ve wasted enough time already, everyone get back to work. This is my ship now. Anyone that has a problem with that can call for a vote or leave at the next port.” The daughter said as she placed her father’s sword on her hip.

“Her father never led us wrong! She shan’t either!” bellowed a young woman holding a trumpet.

Eyebrows and eye patches were raised as mumbled conversations passed between crew members. A few minutes passed while Emmanuel stood in silence, toeing the deck. He thought of plantain sandwiches and how he would never have them again. He doubted such an odd planet would have plantains.

The dreaded man’s hand shot up.

“The whole sun thing really won me over, and I’ve always been saying we really need to connect better with the kids.”

“I’m not a kid, and unless anyone opposes, I’m your Captain, so I wouldn’t make that mistake again if I was you.” The daughter responded with a slight snarl reminiscent of her father’s.

The ship erupted in applause and hooting at the quick response. The crew chanted her name, “Ife! Ife! Ife! Ife! Ife!”

“Well, then let’s get this boy to where he’s going,” Ife said as she waved one finger in the air. The crew turned back toward their duties as Ife descended into the lower deck of the ship. A cowled figure approached her in the darkness of the ship’s belly.

“What are you planning with the boy, have our plans changed?” The figure crackled.

“We’re going to take him to his friend, and then keep on course. The rest will be revealed in due time, Wu, in due time,” Ife responded with a smile, as she forced back tears in the darkness.

---

They’d sailed for two sunny days before reaching their island destination. Ife and Emmanuel stood at the front of the ship as the sun rose behind them. The shoreline was black sand dotted with swarming tiny pink crabs crawling busily back and forth, unaware of the ongoing struggle between good and evil. Beyond the shores of black was a looming hill with a stone fortress atop. Beyond that was thick jungle that may have stretched for days.

“How long have you lived on this ship?” Emmanuel asked as he shuffled around in his armor.

“My whole life. I was born here you know? I’ve barely left since. ”

“Why? It doesn’t seem that great to be honest. Does it always smell like this?” Emmanuel asked softly as his face puffed into a scrunch.

“It’s home, it’s where I’m loved. It’s where I feel safe.” Ife said as the ship slowed to a creaking creep. “And you get used to the smell.”

A man vomited grey chunks a few feet behind them.

“Well, kind of.” Ife smiled with rounded buck teeth, her dark skin glistening as the sun broke between the sails.

“Why are you helping me?” Emmanuel asked plainly. Ife startled for a second and laughed.

“I want your armor, and I want your weapon as payment. And maybe you can help us rowdy rascals find a treasure or two,” Ife said smiling and nudging.

Archer, the dreaded man, who ironically was not very good with a bow, stepped forward with a small bow towards Ife.

“Captain, the boat’s ready. Do you need anyone else to come with you?”

“No,” Ife responded quickly. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said as she walked towards the captain’s quarters. She returned with Emmanuel’s golden sword. “You might need this.”

Chapter 4

Emmanuel chopped at the vines with his great golden sword. Green and brown flew into the air as the vines exploded on impact. In an instant the vines flew back together from the cut end-pieces. Emmanuel hacked and hacked again, his blade flashing like lightning through the air. Again and again the vines danced back together in a swift mamba. Sweat poured faster from his afro with each swing, drenching the interior lining of his armor. He huffed and puffed as he planted his sword into the ground and leaned on it for support.

“I don’t think- this- is- working,” Emmanuel said between breaths.

“Thank you Captain Obvious,” Ife responded dryly.

“I thought you were Captain?”

Ife sighed.

“Would you vines please just get out of the way?” Emmanuel asked in exasperation.

The vines sprung to life, they shook and shuffled before the adventurers. Slowly they unraveled and revealed the path.

Ife spat on the ground with her arms on her hips. “Pull my leg and call me Betty.” She slapped Emmanuel’s hand as he reached for her leg.

“Sorry Betty” he frowned, confused.

“You should ask before you touch people. It’s rude”, she said, sticking her tongue out as she ruffled his hair.

---

The massive stone door creaked open as Ife pushed gently forward. The darkness of the hall swallowed Ife and Emmanuel as they entered. Emmanuel was used to the darkness and it brought him a certain calm. He scratched his head and called out.

“Ezekiaa? Is Ezekiia here?”

“NO!” called out a high raspy voice deep within the darkness.

“Who are you?” Ife said, drawing her sword.

“Ezekia!” responded the voice.

“I thought you said Ezekia wasn’t here?” Ife replied as her hand gripped the sword tighter.

“Yes, Ezekia isn’t here. I’m over here.” Ezekia responded. In the same instant an ember burst forth at the tip of a nearby torch. A massive flame flew out towards Ife and Emmanuel, lighting up a series of torches along the wall. The duo braced themselves for a fiery end, but it didn’t come. The flames disappeared and withered into smoke.

“Welcome Emmanuel!” Ezekia said, the bearded human limped slowly towards them. They moved like a ghost through the smooth stone hallways. “Welcome, welcome!” they said, spit and loose teeth bouncing in their mouth. “WELCOME, welcome,” they said as the smell of garlic and tea tree oil lept towards Emmanuel’s nostrils. Ezekia grasped Emmanuel’s mailed hand and then spun to Ife.

“And who is this love interest?”

“My name is Ife and I’m no one’s love interest.” Ife snapped back.

“Well, who knows where this story is going,” Ezekia responded. They straightened their back and let out a loud “Hmpph”. “So let’s get to it then!” Ezekia led them down the lit hallway. At the end of a hallway was another dark room. With a flick of their wrist, a flame erupted on a large torch, and just like before the flames bounced from torch to torch, revealing a large circular room with three couches and a dresser. Ezekia waved them towards their seats muttering “Sit sit sit..sit..sit..”

They sat in silence. They continued to sit in silence. Then they sat in silence for a little while longer.

Ezsekia spoke.

“So! Now that we’re done sitting in silence.”

They were, clearly done sitting in silence.

“So,” Ezekia said, stroking their beard. “The hero has come to the great guide! The great mystic! The magnificent wizard.”

“A little full of yourself aren’t you?” Ife said, leaning back in her seat.

“So, the plucky comic relief sidekick then?” Ezekia retorted. “But back to business, or should I say, the Story,” they leaned forward and rubbed their hands together. “So this is the part where the great hero, meets the spiritual, almost god like-
Ife groans.

“Character who helps them learn some sort of truth that saves the day,” they said, stroking their beard madly, appearing to have more than two hands. But definitely not more than eight. That would have been absurd.

“How would that have been absurd?” Ife asked aloud.

“What!?” Ezekia asked.

“You said something about how having eight arms would be absurd?” Ife responded, turning to Emmanuel. “You heard that right?”

Emmanuel shrugged. Ezekia shrugged. The dresser shrugged.

“So Emmanuel!” Ezekia continued. “Are you and your plucky sidekick ready for your great adventure?”

Emmanuel paused, looked at Ife, who seemed flustered at the whole situation.

“Yup, I was pretty much born for this actually,” Emmanuel said cheerfully, adjusting himself in his armor. “What advice do you have for me?”

“Oh, oh I already told you boy, this is the part that the Wizard tells you about the important thing you need to know.”

Emmanuel paused. “Well see, that’s the thing. You haven’t told me anything”.

“Yes I did!” Ezekia’s finger flew into the air in indignation.

“No you didn’t!” Emmanuel responded.

“Yes I did!”

“No, you did not!” Emmanuel said loudly. The room shook in response.

Ezekia lowered their voice to a whisper.
“Well I suppose I didn’t, but I told you I would tell you something. So that counts.”

Emmanuel groaned. Ife sprung up from her seat and grabbed Emmanuel by the armored glove. “Let’s go.” Emmanuel leaned forward and plopped to his feet. The duo’s footsteps echoed as they walked down the hall. Emmanuel’s armored boots thudded and clinked, while Ife’s leather boots clicked rapidly.

“Waaaaait!!!” Ezekia screamed, dragging their long cloak along as they ran to catch the two. Emmanuel and Ife waited at the entryway of the stone building. Emmanuel moved to meet Ezekia halfway but Ife’s grip held him back. Ezekia gave up mid-walk, breathlessly heaving out words. “There’s a village down the road from here. They have a nasty dragon problem going on and.” The Wizard coughed for a second, bringing up a thick phlegm. They wiped their mouth quickly. “You just might be the two to help them solve it. Classic hero stuff Emmanuel!”

Emmanuel looked at Ife, they shrugged and let the stone door close behind them.

If Iowa was in Bolivia, the United States government would be in the process of organizing a coup. The Iowa caucuses were a mess, and much of the blame lies on an app with ties to the Democratic party establishment, including the eventual winner of the Iowa caucuses, Peter Buttigieg. If the idea of a sudden crash in a vote counting system leading to the announcement that an establishment figure was on the way to a presidency sounds familiar, it’s because it is what played out in Bolivia last year. Evo Morales, a socialist reformer, was forced out of office, despite winning an election, due to claims of election fraud tied to the temporary crash of the nation’s vote tallying system. Despite evidence to the contrary, the United States and members of its South American sphere of influence jumped at the opportunity to remove the indigenous leader who had been celebrated throughout his term for lifting a significant proportion of the country out of poverty.

Four days have passed since the Iowa caucuses concluded, and the full results still aren’t in. The fault lies at the feet of a vote counting app that was, ironically, supposed to produce faster results than the traditional method. The app was developed by a company called Shadow Incorporated, and heavily backed by a newly created Democratic establishment organization named ACRONYM. It all sounds like something out of a poorly written spy novel. If that wasn’t questionable enough, Peter Buttigieg gave Shadow Inc. a total of $42,500 earlier in July for services. On top of all this he forced the stifling of polling numbers from Iowa’s most prestigious poll the night before the caucuses, reportedly because a single supporter claimed that his name was missing from the poll. There isn’t yet clear proof of a conspiracy, but the United States has never really needed such clear evidence to justify the initiation or support of a coup.

The vote tally delay that led to Morales’s forced removal lasted 24 hours, which seems relatively inconsequential given the over 72 hour delay with the Iowa caucus results. After the delay, the votes were counted and Morales was declared the winner. Morales was already under threat for being an elected socialist in South America seeking to lift the masses from poverty at the expense of foreign and corporate interests. International forces had long began to rattle their sabers at Morales for daring to seek reelection after having transformed the country and elevating the status of the urban poor and rural indigenous communities. With the window of oppurtunity provided by the tally delay, members of the Bolivian military, with the backing of the U.S government, overthrew the democratically elected Morales. According to the coup plotters and their supporters in the United States, he was violating the constitution by running in the election in the first place and breaching presidential term limits, on top of the fraud committed during the delay. This would be a legitimate concern, if the Supreme Court of Bolivia, which has the power much like in other democracies to interpret their constitution, hadn’t already decided to allow him to run.

It is not the job of the United States to enforce the constitutions of other nations, nor should a country in which a candidate can become president despite losing the popular vote by millions be in a position to question the Supreme Court of another nation. Yet the United States proceeded to threaten and then support the coup that removed the once beloved democratically elected president of Bolivia.

The main evidence against Morales was presented by the Organization of American States, an organization that has functioned as a puppet of the United States for decades as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine era of U.S. imperialism in South America. That evidence was flimsy at best, and made even more suspicious given that Morales was in the midst of calling for another election before he was overthrown by ultra-conservative members of the Bolivian military. While the debacle in Iowa may very well not be a conspiracy, it is certainly more suspicious than what happened in Bolivia, especially given the context of the 2016 elections in which the Democratic party establishment, the Democratic National Committee in particular, fought tooth and nail to prevent the election of self-proclaimed socialist, Bernie Sanders.

If Iowa was located in Bolivia, U.S backed military leaders would be in the process of arresting members of the Iowa Democratic Party, Buttigieg, and all others involved. Buttigieg would be forced to flee for his life after being replaced by a more suitable puppet. Yet here we are, a few op-eds here and there, but the media and most of the current political establishment remains silent on the matter. Either we need to increase our standards for what we consider a democracy, or we need to cease intervening in the political affairs of other nations. To be frank, the United States is and always has been an oligarchy, and we will remain one until we are at least as willing to fight for a democracy here as we are willing to topple democracies elsewhere.

Zionists raised nearly $50,000 to influence the student government at the University of Michigan in November. A fundraiser, created by the campus’s Hillel chapter, aimed to put money behind an effort to block the student government from passing a pro-Palestinian resolution. Instead, they sought to back a Pro-Israeli resolution that claimed neutrality and framed itself as simply anti-Hamas. The resolution named the deaths suffered in Israel on October 7th, yet said nothing about Israel’s ongoing genocide in both Gaza and the West Bank.

While this is the largest amount of money I’ve seen spent on the internal workings of a campus student government, it isn’t the only interference I’ve seen from Zionists in campus organizing, nor the first attempt by a right wing organization to influence or take over a student government. Student government may seem irrelevant to some, but they are training grounds for potential leaders, of any ideology, and can often control large amounts of resources. My own student government commanded an annual budget of over $1 million, which allowed us to do everything from running our own ambulances, to unfortunately sending right wing students to receive special weapons training for their future military careers.

The votes on the University of Michigan student government’s resolutions were cancelled by the campus administration, an undemocratic overstep that curbs the powers of one of the few democratic institutions most Americans will ever belong to. According to students at the University of Michigan, this decision was the result of pressure from Pro-Israel groups, including state politicians, and is part of a larger pattern of Zionist activists trying to claim college campuses for themselves. The administration also sent out an email validating unfounded claims that pro-Palestinian students had somehow sent out an unapproved email using the University’s system. This validation gave more fuel to external Zionist organizations, who proceeded to dox Muslim women on campus and equivocate student organizations to terrorists.

These kinds of actions from Zionist organizations is not new nor rare.

In 2014, the Hillel of UCLA raised money, including a $1,000 from Adam MIlstein, a real estate developer and Israeli-American Zionist activist, to help pro-Israel candidates “prevail”. The same year, the current student designee to the UC Board of Regents–from my experience, arguably the most powerful student position in the state if not the country– was accused of receiving donations from Milstein and his wife. The student regent ran on a slate, basically a political party, with other students, each spending over a $1,000. While the developer’s foundation did not include such donations on their tax filings, they did donate $10,000 to the campus Hillel. The same Hillel directly connected to funding that year’s pro-Israel student candidates.

Oved, the student regent, advocated for pro-Israel policies within the student government, and before becoming regent, a screenshot was leaked with him describing his desire to sit on the Board of Regents for the sake of being able to influence the direction of investments–currently worth $164 billion with a capital “B”. I was not kidding when I said this is likely the most powerful student position in the country.

UCLA’s Hillel is not the only right wing or Pro-Israel organization vying for power over student government. TurningPoint USA, a far right organization that holds the Christian Nationalist tension of being both anti-Semitic and unabashedly in support of Israel, has worked to seize control of student governments across the country.

According to their website, TPUSA currently employs over 350 student organizing staff and has made many attempts to install right wing student governments across the country. I can’t imagine there are that many paid leftwing student organizers in the United States combined, excluding temporary voter registration and turnout campaigns.

Zionist organizations have not only fought to control student elections, they have spent quite a bit of time fighting against student government leaders who support the pro-Palestinian Boycott Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. The BDS movement aims to end Israel’s apartheid by cutting off all forms of international support to it by primarily engaging in the three tactics listed in its name.

Student governments are routinely attacked for their support of BDS, in 2016 Vassar college threatened to outright end its student government for endorsing the movement. In 2017 Fordham University moved to block its Student Government from approving the creation of a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on campus. This was overturned due to a lawsuit, but actions like this, largely ignored by the broader left, set the precedent for the current banning of SJP chapters happening across the country.

Student government leaders are included in the thousands of people doxxed by the Zionist website Canary Mission, also funded by Adam Milstein. Milstein also funds the Israel on Campus Coalition, which targets and spies on potentially pro-Palestinian students, especially Jewish students and progressive Hillel chapters. His foundation has given over $100,000 to fund this work since 2010.

Milstein also funds Act.IL, a social networking service created by Israeli spies with support from the Israeli government and the far right funder Sheldon Adelson. Act.IL gives missions to its members to spy on and harass individuals it has deemed as pro-Palestinian. One such target was Adam Daraldik, a Palestinian student government president at Florida State University. Republican legislators joined in on the attack and threatened to cut funding from the university. He was eventually removed from his position after city council members joined in with Zionist students to petition for his removal. 

I experienced this firsthand as part of the now dead national student government, the United States Student Association (USSA). Each year during our annual congress, Pro-Palestinian student leaders, representing their campuses, would fight to get our organization to join the BDS movement.

Our organization initially struggled to support it due to the active organizing of Zionist student leaders within the organization, but by 2012, their influence was minimal. I thought supporting BDS would be simple from then on, but instead our leaders received messages from Hillel chapters and politicians, threatening everything from occupying our local student government offices to outright fighting to destroy our statewide affiliates, whose budgets were often under the purview of state governments.

Since my time at USSA, I’ve watched the left, especially left wing foundations and unions with resources, completely abandon student organizing, and student government especially. The right wing, especially evidenced by Milstein and TurningPointUSA, do not seem to suffer from the same illusion that often plagues the left: that campus organizing is not real or important. 

College campuses not only serve as centers for the development of weapons and the training of future capitalists and imperialists, they serve as legitimizing forces for whatever voices can speak the loudest, on top of being locations of ideological development that can last a lifetime.

It is time we fought back, even if we lack the resources of the Israeli and American government backed Zionist movement, we can provide trainings and boost the struggles of those struggling against Zionism on campus. We must keep our eye and our efforts towards the ongoing genocide, and we cannot let vital movement infrastructure continue to be seized and bought out by those that support the genocide.

Part of the Who Killed the Student Movement series, my attempt at identifying which external forces have weakened the U.S. student movement on the national level, and the impact on the local level.

Research assistance provided by Xavier Thomas.

The Final Spiral is how I believe the world as we know it will end. What comes after that world is unpredictable, and likely rather a bit sad. I will leave that work for future me to scribble in his prison cell.

The Final Spiral is a series of almost inevitable events that will trigger a continuous self-reinforcing cycle toward death, environmental collapse, and fascism.

Climate collapse is here and we are not on a path to avoid the worst of its capitalism-made consequences. Listen to the desperate whisperings of climate scientists and you will hear that we are likely to miss the benchmarks necessary to avoid an absolute shit show.

Unless something changes, it is likely that climate change will continuously drive immigration to the countries best able the weather the storm. There will likely be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Most of the countries that people will flee to will be Western nations that have fortunately spent the last century looting the rest of the planet of resources. The Wild White West will of course not be immune to environmental immiseration. Internal immigration shall too occur, and exacerbate growing tensions between states like Florida and New York. But the external immigrants are what will be presented as a threat, even more than how we—I am an immigrant after all—are already presented. 

Florida has already given a glimpse at this from the Republican side, if the party had gotten its wish, housing an undocumented immigrant would land you and your best buds in prison. It's as if the right heard our chants of "no human is illegal" and responded, "you wait and fucking see!"

On the Democratic party side, you already have over a decade of child detention centers and armed raids as a signal as to where they are going. This precedence set up Trump’s administration to engage in the quiet sterilization of immigrant women. I believe the Democratic party will continue this path, one increasingly adopted by center right parties in Europe like France's En Marche! and Germany's Christian Democratic Union—and now even liberal parties like the Green Party—as a means of boxing out their right wing opponents and ensuring that the labor force stays cheap and terrified.

Environmental collapse increases, immigration increases, right wing politics increase. And thus far it seems that adopting right wing politics–adopting is a generous word here, much of this already exists within the politics of liberals–is not sufficient enough of a strategy to keep the ever growing far right out of power. Liberals–due to their inherent marriage to wealthy capitalists–are simply unable to deliver enough wins to working class or middle class people to keep them out of the clutches of their white robe kin. And this fascism will change and adapt, as it always has. I use fascism here as a shorthand of terrifying governments that are prepared to kill millions, not just for profit like liberalism does, but for societal catharsis. I believe American fascism will be a multicultural affair, with white Latinos being the first to join our current white supremacist in carrying the burning cross.

That same marriage to capitalists will slow down liberal attempts to stem the literal rising tides of climate disaster. And their conservative kissing cousins will do even worse, Biden will restart the oil drills, and President Marjorie Taylor Greene will reopen the coal mines. This will drive further immigration for decades–or centuries if we're both lucky and unlucky–and drive the ever growing home grown fascism here and everywhere else that has the capacity to survive the floods, famines, earthquakes, droughts, and hurricanes.

This will drive liberals and conservatives further to the right. The concentration camps will grow, their purposes may change, new populations will be scapegoated to distract the public—likely some combination of trans people, queer people, refugees, Jewish people, and Muslims. I believe women will be scapegoated and men of all colors will move to the right in response to their alienation from others and the dearth of organizations aimed at combating that.

Left wing candidates will be blamed for Democratic party losses, the party will lurch to the right, the right will lurch farther into cruelty for cruelty’s sake. The left will continue to stumble, caught between protecting the Democratic party–our daddy–and remembering what it looks like to build revolution.

So on and so forth. Unless we build a movement now. Something beautiful and sweet and kind and vicious. Something that can be a home for the immigrants and the workers who already call here home, something that will strike at the heart of both political parties and break up their little dance.

This is why I organize. This is why I don't yet have children. This is why I'll be late to my nieces’ birthday parties. This is why I might miss your funeral. This is why I need to find a better balance so that my own funeral is later rather than sooner.

This is why we need a revolutionary movement, sooner rather than later. There are so many birthdays and funerals that I would like to attend.

Izra ascended the pearl staircase on the tips of her toes, every sweeping step a swirling haze of blood as each challenger flew to pieces beneath the arc of her blade. With the rhythm of a twisted dancer she reached the final step, only looking back to clean the scimitar with a flick of her wrist. The air tasted sweet with the richness of fresh corpses. Izra’s light armor clicked and clanked with the stiffness brought on by the rust of the battlefield, her bloodied cape sashayed as she lifted the helmet from her head and flung it down the staircase from which she’d come.

Large pearl doors steadied in front of her, their plain innocence had known nothing of the butchery outside.  Despite their heavy appearance, a small armored touch revealed the glory and splendor of the entire kingdom. The throne room was as beautiful as she’d once known. Pearl pillars stood next to a pair of well suited guardsmen, ornaments prepared to fall for their King. Izra cascaded the gold carpeting in silence as the court stood in whisper. Courtiers glanced at the bloodied black armor that encased the warrior. Izra raised her sword and shook the room with a bellowed pronouncement.

"It is I, Izra the Third, daughter of Queen Harki, granddaughter of Queen Irma, and Duchess of South Armina. I have traveled many nations to return to my throne, and my road has been paved with the bones of my enemies." She pointed her sword forward to the glimmering golden throne before her. "Shall you follow your queen, or remain loyal to this usurper and his puppeteers?"

She stepped towards the King. His bald head bowed forth in boredom. His guards took two steps forward and unsheathed their long pretty swords. Izra smiled and with a flick and a daring dash forward her opponents exploded into fountains of blood, their flesh plumping within their armor.

The King applauded, drool dripping from his chin. The court's whispers had slowly curled into screams and pleas as courtiers pushed past one another to escape.

Izra reached forth among the chaos and placed her hand atop the King's head. The baby cooed as Izra rubbed his little chin and proceeded to sit him on her lap, as she sat on the throne.

Note: This is a work in progress and involves broad strokes for the sake of brevity! This is for popular consumption and was designed to be easy and quick to read, not made for academics of any sort. This was originally formulated in 2019 but has been updated as recently as April 2022.

Introduction

Capitalism, simply put, will end humanity in our lifetimes. I fundamentally believe that the only way we can successfully bring liberty and justice for humanity, and survive the coming century, is through replacing the capitalist system instead of just reforming it. Capitalism is all consuming and has masterfully transformed itself in the face of real opposition. It transformed slavery into wage slavery and the prison industrial complex. It transformed much of the revolutionary movements of the 30s and 60s into the non-profit industrial complex and the meagre labor movement—and the labor aristocracy—we have today.

Many progressives and liberals critique radical anti-capitalists as non-pragmatic, which can be true. But not understanding the dangers in allowing capitalism to continue to grow and fester while enslaving much of the planet is not pragmatic whatsoever. It is a system that is fully contrary to democracy, it is fundamentally about the private concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few. This concentration allows capitalists to perpetually reshape the political system to their benefit, while also using their command of wealth and politics to influence media and education as a means of reshaping our minds. Much like feudalism did to capitalism for quite a bit of time, capitalism is able to keep any new systems and reforms under its control.

It is quite unfortunate that the profit-driven nature of capitalism is destroying our planet on top of stealing precious hours and years of every working human on Earth. Immediate continuous profit requires short-term and mid-term self interested thinking, which is fully incompatible with the kind of thinking it will take to prevent further climate collapse. Climate collapse will drive more migrants to Western nations that can weather the worst of the impacts, which will likely drive further anti-immigrant sentiment among not only the ever growing far right but the many liberals who are willing to sell out immigrants in moments of crisis and appease the companies who profit from the incarceration and low wage immiseration of immigrants.

To break capitalism we must observe successful revolutions that were able to completely or nearly completely remove systems. Two of the most successful revolutions, in terms of almost completely removing the previous system, were the American Revolution and the Russian Revolution. In common, they both involved creating alternative systems and essentially began creating their own nations within the dominant empire before actually overthrowing the system. They practiced internal democracy that allowed them to develop legitimacy and steer the ship of the revolution and had wealth somewhat independent from the system they sought to overthrow.

The Americans were wealthy plantation owners and businessmen who built their Continental Congress. The Russians practiced mutual support that allowed for the existence of professional revolutionaries and developed their Soviet councils, while they raised money from supporters or through more nefarious means like robbery. They also engaged in full delegitimization of the system they fought. Once their future potential became clear, they did not ask for a nicer king or czar, they demanded a full break from the current state.

Immediate Strategy

We must strike at American capitalism’s greatest contradiction, the sheer lack of democracy in both our political and economic systems. A Pro Democracy movement that includes an anticapitalist framework could unite disparate movements and make all of our goals ever more likely, while setting the ground for new fights that can continue to target key points of undemocratic decision making, from schools to work places to city hall budgeting sessions.

We should work for things like ballot initiatives and removing money from politics, efforts that would allow us to escape the traps of two faced elected “champions” who we have to constantly pressure to ensure that they aren’t bought out by liberal and conservative funders like Maxwell Frost was in Florida.

Liberals will try to do this inevitably and will do so without critiquing capitalism, any rigorous understanding of the system would reveal the apocalyptic futility of such efforts. Such a movement would also allow us to rearrange the debate and the alliances we have, it would force liberal organizations and politicians to either follow us or reveal their desire to preserve some form of economic authoritarianism. A fight that is simply antifascist, or single issue, would either force us to play on the game board that the right is creating for us, or force us perpetually in coalitions in which we follow instead of lead. And if we follow liberals for the next few years, we will likely be led into the abyss.

A pro-democracy movement waged over the next two decades, with a correctly timed uprising, could develop the infrastructure to rival the state and serve as an alternative to it in a moment of great crisis. The next twenty years will be rife with opportunity, and this coming election and the economic crisis that will likely accompany it will be a great first opportunity to spark an uprising and absorb masses of people into a real organization. This would allow us to either completely replace the government or to be positioned to lead the crafting of a new one.

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Structure

We must create an organization that can serve as a political party, a guiding hand for the rest of the country, and a democratic administrator of a nation we will build in the midst of our own. We must build revolutionary schools, book clubs, dance parties, cooperative businesses, tech companies, printing labs, and farms. We can do this by creating a new national or preferably international identity and organization that people can join and deeply feel a part of, and a broader coalition that is able to connect already existing organizations and programs and stitch them into a force that can seize power and manage a large number of resources for the sake of redistribution. The core organization does not need to an explicit political party in the U.S. sense, but likely will

There is much to be learned from early communist and socialist parties in terms of this. The non-profit industry has chopped up leftist infrastructure into competing silos and convinced us that our work must be separate and cannot exist under one umbrella. We must unite under a single banner (or a small handful of banners) and develop an organization that can function its own political ecosystem with a series of institutions that serve the people and expand working class power (like tenant unions).

All of this while taking over the institutions that we can, like labor unions, credit unions, and even large Facebook groups.

I believe that we must build organizations that can control real power and believe that much of that will lie in labor, the development of new political machines—for lack of a better term—and students. Social movement organizations and community organizations seem to only be able to develop temporary power, we must concentrate that power into real organizations that are mechanically built to easily mobilize specific groups of people who already have something in common (a workplace, a fandom), command money, or control some sector of the economy, including knowledge production. In terms of labor, we must be strategically placed at critical locations, from tech to trucking and teaching, that will maximize our power and influence. Students and labor can also serve as vital funding for our movements and operate the electoral machines we seek to build.

We must also recognize that the non-profit industrial complex is our enemy, though not all non-profits or potential funders are. They exist to control and manipulate movements. This was made clear by Ford Foundation’s support of Black Lives Matter and their explicit statement that they did so to prevent violence and escalation after the murder of police officers in Dallas, as if the only issue mattered to them because of the threat to police, the protectors of capital and the system that allows the Ford Foundation to exist in the first place.

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Story

We must also delegitimize the system. Even if we are to run for elections, we must do so in a way that allows people to understand that we are in opposition to the electoral system. We must cease upholding liberal and pro-capitalist candidates. The masses barely vote and don’t believe in the system, if we legitimize the system, we may become irrelevant to the masses for working with the institutions that they do not have faith in, especially as we enter an era of continual crisis. We must not repeat the mistakes of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and fall prey to being seen as part of the system in the inevitable waves of crisis. If we are to run for office, we must do so explicitly in a way that tells the public that we understand the system does not work and needs to change.

Tactics

As we create our own nation, we must also engage in protest that grows our numbers and legitimacy. We must engage in both base building and seek to spark moments of mass protest, or at least support those moments and the organic leaders that rise from it. We cannot fall into the trap of Egypt and engage in mass protest without having the institutions large and strong enough to absorb the masses of people and carry through a successful revolution.

I’m still working on the specific phases on what exactly this would look like and encourage others to contemplate where their organization and ecosystem are at to best chart a course forward.

Media outlets have finally stopped fanning the fictional flames of war between the two groups and have resigned themselves to treating both generations like the same kooky entitled brats that millennials were once collectively perceived as. This is a huge turn from only two years ago when TikTok trends were being used as clear evidence of two generations at odds with each other. One VICE headline read “Gen Z is Roasting Millennials for Their Side Parts and Skinny Jeans'' while Buzzfeed unsurprisingly chimed in, declaring “Gen Z Is Telling Us To Stop Wearing Skinny Jeans, And Millennials Are Not Having It”.

This was nothing new for these millennial-focused outlets, a large part of their identity was formed around catering to and reporting on those born somewhere between the early 80s and late 90s. These stories had the public believing that there is a war raging between two of our youngest generations, but the war, like how we understand generations, is nonsense. Conversations about generations often lack important nuance, like racial dynamics, and leave us with a very limited understanding of the world. And those that have been named Generation Z and millennials do not disdain each other as much as it might appear. They have quite a lot in common due to the economic conditions in which they exist, and a shared investment in tearing down a system that would rather sell them targeted goods than provide them with a meaningful existence.

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Despite earlier declarations of war, there isn’t any real evidence that the generations actually hate each other. Surprisingly, there isn’t much actual polling or research on this but YPulse, the leading marketing research firm focused on millennials and Gen Z, released some numbers in a January 2020 report. When asked to associate certain words with millennials, Gen Z did have a few negative things to say, roughly a quarter of those polled found millennials to be “lazy”, “moody”, and “anxiety-ridden”.

This may sound bad at first, but it’s worth noting that Gen Z described themselves in similar terms, their top three self-descriptors were “anxiety-ridden”, “lost”, and “moody”. They also had a lot of positive things to say about millennials, the term “hard-working” ranked number seven on their list, and “liberal” was the highest ranking descriptor according to the poll--important given Gen Z is the most liberal generation in U.S. history. Millennials in turn saw Gen Z in mostly positive terms and described themselves pretty much in the same ways that Gen Z perceived their older counterparts.

These descriptors are grounded in the harsh economic realities that both generations are facing, but like the memes that seem to be dividing the generations, there is quite a lot of racial nuance missing. The experiences of Black millennials and Gen Z are remarkably different than those of their white counterparts. Most of the conversation about the generations seems to be dominated by white Gen Zers on TikTok, which makes sense given TikTok’s preference for white creators and the history of suppressing and even outright censoring Black creators.

At the same time, Black millennials and Gen Zers are living a different economic existence. Black millennial households earn about 60% of white households. Black millennials are more likely to take on student debt, less likely to be able to pay it back, and are twice as likely to be unemployed after college. Even after finding work, they are less likely to receive employer benefits like retirement and healthcare. This all adds up to Black Millennials holding a median of $5,676 in wealth compared to $26,109 for white millennials. Gen Z is also having a rough time, Black youth had an unemployment rate of nearly 30 percent during the early months of 2020 while white youth unemployment sat at 21 percent. While youth unemployment may seem inconsequential, it has a long-term impact on future employment prospects and pay, a terrible portent considering Gen Z as a whole is already reporting higher rates of depression and a staggering majority feeling unable to plan for the future.

The conditions driving millennials and Gen Z into anxiety and depression, and disproportionately impacting Black millennials and Gen Zers are being caused by the same economic order. Both generations are growing increasingly wary of capitalism and the majority--unlike members of older generations--believe that the system is working against them. Both generations also support the ideas of socialism and Marxism at a significantly higher rate than generations that came before. And while anti-communist organizations like the Victims of Communism--which is currently fanning anti-Chinese conspiracy theories on its website--claim that both generations are too ignorant to understand what these things mean, it is at least evidence that a bulk of Gen Z and millennials are united in rejecting the current status quo. 

Millennials and Gen Z may take the occasional shot at each other on social media, but they have more in common than different, and 2020’s youth-led George Floyd Uprising is evidence that they are already in the process of becoming a force for the kind of social change that can upend this system and create a truly just one. They have the numbers, the votes, and most importantly, the commitment to social movements necessary to do so.

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On one side, tears are streaming down faces, life stories pouring out through dry tired mouths. Dreams of parents and grandparents, sacrifices made so that a child may have access to an education that they could never have. Signs clenched in hands express a vision of a better world. Hopes and dynastic aspirations crammed into 2-minute speeches interspersed with chants and cheers in support.

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On the other side, suits shuffle back and forth. Glazed eyes dash between ceiling and cell phone, mouths agape dripping with impatience. Hands folded in boredom. Millionaires and aspiring millionaires forcing smiles. Decisions already made in their minds.

This is a Board of Trustees, Governors, Regents, whatever the fuck your local bureaucracy calls itself, meeting. This is happening across the United States right now, usually behind closed doors until the public is allowed to speak its piece with no response from the Board.

I am exhausted of these meetings. I am tired of watching people plea and beg for what is rightfully theirs, access to a quality affordable education. Each year, students pile into these rooms, bodies pressed forth in hopes that their voices may summon the humanity from minds locked in mumbled absolutes about how “this is all out of our hands”.

No, they are not completely responsible. State governments have a lot more to do with the current state of funding for higher education, state funding in most states was once the majority of all funding for public colleges, today they represent far less than half of funding for public schools in New Jersey. But Trustees are complacent in this, high-level administrators are complacent in this. Decades of prioritization of prestige over practicality and admin over faculty has led to a bloated bureaucracy that must be well maintained and funded, fundraisers fundraising for more fundraisers to fund old fundraisers for funds that should be coming from the state. And of course, prestige isn’t cheap, nor is the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods to make room for more high-rise dorms and apartments. 

So what can be done? Shall we continue to beg and plead each and every year?

They say cut backs, I say fuck that.

I think it is time we escalate. The student movement in New Jersey is locked in 2 to 3-year intervals. Each generation struggling to find its ground, each generation going from 0 to 60 from testimonies and letter deliveries to disruptive actions at the most.

I say fuck that.

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We have a history of decades of struggle against the creeping privatization of higher education. From the New Jersey Student Association letter deliveries in the 70’s to the occupation of the Rutgers Call Center by members of the United Students of New Jersey in the 90’s. We are not the first, nor shall we be the last. So we must remember, truly remember, and seize the history and our place within it.

We are inheriting a movement and we do a disservice to allow our administrators to think differently. We must engage our students and communities, and while I do not have time to prescribe the means to do this, I can prescribe the following. We need to raise hell on our campuses and at the capitol. And I don’t mean that we must hold temporary occupations or pass student government resolutions, we must create long-term strategies for change, craft the means to maintain knowledge gained, and most importantly act with the urgency and intensity that does justice to our forbearers.

To be less vague, I think we must rebuild a statewide structure, one well-equipped with an online database, paid trainers, organizing guides, and written histories to remind us of the legacy we rest upon. In terms of strategy, we must think big, analyzing our perfect world, what phases we must move through, and what campaigns we must engage in to show our bases that we not only can we win victories but can win victories that will alter their day-to-day lives. We must engage in actions that not only educate but disrupt business as usual for those in power. We must be ungovernable.

This is why New Jersey United Students is calling for a summit this summer. Not to build our organization, not to freeze tuition, and not to beg trustees for their permission, but to radically transform student organizing in New Jersey and win. We must win, we have no other choice.

Share Akin and the Radical Time Machine

Worth noting I originally wrote this when I was drunk in 2015, but I think it holds up. The next essay will be brand new, a reflection on what killed New Jersey United Students in the first place.

I'm writing this because I'm the only one left. Neither of them can tell our stories. I realize if I am to pass, there will be no one to tell my story. The whole story anyway.

I met Govinda in middle school, I think. Maybe it was early high school when we first got to really know each other. It's all hard to remember, we did a lot of drugs together. We met in a math class, neither of us particularly good at math. He worked harder than I did. He always did. And got better grades, though I was definitely smarter. Which isn't important to note, but for my teenage ego, yes it is. We were both hopeless romantics, emphasis on the hopeless. He was very short and often became the adorable little brother to his many heart's desires. I was just an odd fuck, de-emphasis on the fuck–I wouldn’t even make out with anyone until I was 17–and had a chip on my shoulder that often convinced me that I had no chance before I even spoke.

I didn't know it at the time but Govinda was essentially a child slave. His parents birthed him in Guyana, despite already having been to the United States, and while they became citizens, he remained undocumented. He'd spent all of his teenage years, and much of his childhood, working full time—unpaid—at a bar owned by his parents. Bordering Newark and Bloomfield, the bar was a home for Guyanese gangsters and drug dealers. It was eventually shut down after what I believe had been the fourth shooting inside the bar. The place seemed to be a spot to resolve beefs, but Govinda capitalized on it to gain access to the New York drug market.

Well, capitalized is a strong word. He didn't seem to benefit from it much. Much like his parents, his friends, myself included, exploited Govinda for his kindness. I hate that I'm included in this, but I am. For my 18th birthday, he gave me 50 ecstasy pills. Green Atlanta Braves. I was supposed to sell them and help recoup some of the cost. I barely did. I hustled some to the cool kids and jocks. But I mainly just blew lines with Govinda, Joe, and anyone I wanted to impress.

Joseph Rodriguez. The Neal to my Jack Kerouac. My curly-haired Peruano. My confidante, my road dog. My self-absorbed self-destructive, and sometimes simply destructive, best friend. He was so brilliant in his own way, a planet living within a boy. He always listened to me, and tried to understand me often when no one else could or bothered to. He’d let me rant about Nietzsche, would let me ramble about my parents and supported most of my decisions, while always letting me know how he felt about them. He, ironically, was always concerned about my health and ensuring that I was safe and relatively responsible about my drug use.

By my senior year of high school I was spending every day with Joe. While my drug use started organically, doing cough medicine to help me talk to April LeStrange, the Avril Lavigne of my high school, Joe was the fuel to the torch. We smoked pot, did mushrooms, and discovered the wonders of Triple C's and codeine. We chugged my grandmother’s promethazine and saw ourselves in 3rd person. I remember blacking out on a bus one day and waking up 8 hours later in my bed, having hallucinated a completely different day in the mean time. I saw God with Joe and I wondered if he was the devil sometimes. Or if I was.

Joe is hard to grasp. Neal Cassady does help me understand him. He had a certain madness to him, a creativity for drug use. If you had a dime bag, he had a dream. I used drugs to escape the pain of feeling alone and to heal from a belt and prayer-driven childhood that left me in constant fear of those that loved me. And eventually, I was using them to sprint toward the new me. An enlightened, philosophy reading, intellectual who thought a full understanding of existence was only a few squares of acid away. I don't know what Joe was running from, or running towards. He had a girlfriend, younger than I was fully happy about, that seemed to bring him joy and anguish. But that was the nature of Joe, everything he loved also hurt him. His parents seemed decent, like they wanted to give him so much, but he didn't seem to want it. Or maybe there was a side I didn't see. I think we both struggled from a certain burden of thinking too much, feeling too much. I had the benefit of a stricter up bringing, and I think a certain subtle clarity of my own limits. Joe didn't have that.

Joe started doing heroin. I don't quite remember when. I just remember. Things suddenly started going missing. Scooter's grandmother couldn't find $100. Joe lost the money he was supposed to use to pick up acid and molly for us in Manhattan. My bike, my precious silver Rhino hybrid mountain BMX, disappeared a week after I left it in Joe's garage. "Someone stole it," Joe said. I believed him. I've always been a little more trusting than I'd like to admit. But I loved the kid.

I went off to Rutgers somehow after high school. I didn't study for my SATs, at all. I took a prep course after my first test, but then got too high on the day of my second test and spent the day doing lines of ecstasy on death certificates at an empty funeral home with Joe and Govinda. Much like the day I chose to trip mushrooms for the first time with Joe, instead of losing my virginity to April. I never had another chance with April, which was probably for the best considering she had a racist boyfriend who had been expelled for cracking a kid's head open with a locker door.

I didn't talk to Joe or Govinda as much as I could have once I went to college. I see old messages from AIM and Facebook that showed we stayed in contact better than I'd originally remembered. Our conversations were the same as high school. Joe and I talked drugs and a scratch of philosophy. G and I talked girls and somewhere between metaphysics and nonsensical ramblings of a child who was slowly realizing he was bipolar. I visited once or twice but don't recall seeing Joe. I'd heard he started doing more heroin and fell more in with the xanie kids, a crew always adjacent to our own little family of mediocre skaters, graffiti artists, and drug dealers. I'd heard a rumor he owed money to some people. I wondered if it was the Bloods from Bloomfield Ave that had tried to recruit us to sell under them the year prior. Which didn't fully make sense, they'd been rather nice when we declined.

I don't remember the day I'd heard about his death. It was a rumor if anything. First that he simply OD'd. Then that a dealer laced his shit to send a message. Then that his parents smuggled him back home to Peru. I didn't accept that he was likely dead for years. I can’t find any record of it. I never got an invite to his funeral. I don't recall his parents ever liking me, which I'd found ironic. I was Joe's best shot at a good life at the end of the day, I wanted him to go to college and to find himself far from home. I both saw him as he was and cared for him. I'm not convinced that many other people cared about him, and some days I wondered why I did so much. But I did. I loved him as a brother.

Ten years later I found out that Govinda too had died. It was through a Facebook status of a friend, commenting that he and G were supposed to play a game that day but that he was dead. I couldn't believe it. But in a whirlwind 24 hours I drove from Philly back home, with my girlfriend Lily, and arrived at Govinda's funeral. His immediate family did little to regard me, but his extended family took note of this interracial couple—okay, worth noting I did date nonwhite women between April and Lily, eat a dick—at what was an exclusively Guyanese affair. Govinda's brother was there. I grew up loathing the child. He was what Govinda should have been: carefree, callous, a citizen, a beloved child. But he was a teenager now, and I saw the weight he carried. I think he knew who Govinda was too. I think he cared too.

At that point Govinda had somewhat, and I say this only because I'm a crass piece of shit, lost his fucking mind. He didn't seem to be taking his medication and slipped between alcoholism and stints in jail as a result of out of control behavior. Admittedly the main incident was the smashing of a police car. Which is the sanest thing any American can do, especially one that grew up watching dead Black boys laying on concrete for hours, smoke pouring from state-sanctioned exit wounds.

This essay, memorial, article, whatever, is an injustice and does a disservice to both of these men. How odd it is to call them men. I never do. They were boys. They never had the chance to grow up. And I did. What am I to do with that?

I guess I'll keep on living. As much as I can. Through the pain, the depression, the regret. I can't say I'm living for them. I tried to fight for them. I worked on drug policy, I worked on the Dream ACT, which let Govinda go to school and begin a path to becoming an astronaut, his childhood dream. It eats at me that the bar was the limit of his life. The bar he grew up in. The bar I imagine he died in. I don't know how Govinda died. I dared not ask his brother. I just gave his brother an old business card and an assurance that I could support him with college. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized the card had the wrong email on it. I hope he didn't email me and get a bounce back. I hope I didn't let him down like I let Govinda down.

I had 10 years to save his life. I know I can't blame myself, I tried up until his last days. But I can't help it some days. I let my little brother die. I tried to save the world but couldn't save this dopy little kid who thought the world of me when he wasn't convinced that I was secretly out to get him.

But the systems at large killed my friends. They needed mentors, they needed drug counseling. Govinda did not need a jail cell. He did not deserve to be a slave. He did not deserve to grow up in a fucking bar surrounded by violence.

I'm sorry. When I invent time travel I promise I will come back for both of you. I promise I promise. I swear on that damn death certificate.

And I know it’s not my story to tell but I can’t help but say RIP to Goblin. I know his death hit a lot of people who would have cared about Joe and Govinda.