A Breath of Fresh Air:

The Rise of the New Left

By Zach Mobrice

Cover Art: The Bullfighter Dies" by Larry Torro

A Perennial Fist
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I.__ Raul Figueroa, 36, thinks back to some of his earliest childhood
memories. Such a process would usually garner a lightly glowing, nostalgia tinted image; the
scent of fresh air at a place of familial importance, a scrape on the knee from playing where a
child should not, ambiguous displays of affection from people whose faces cannot be
remembered. Rauls limbic system relays a starkly different recollection, one that stands in
solidarity with the posters of Che and Fidel Castro hanging in his office.
As a young boy living in El Salvador, Raul Figueroa would sit atop his fathers shoulders,
bobbing for air above a raging sea of people in protest. He used to put me on his shoulders and I
would carry a red flag, but sometimes if it weighed too much I would fall, said Raul.
Streaks of red, gold, and black the colors that historically represent the political Left
dressed the crowds of workers and scholars alike, whose instinctive and collective will for
meaningful stake in their respective livelihoods had been awakened by a movement.
My dad was a really active union member, so he was fighting against the government. He was
mostly involved in the revolutionary protests. Always very engaged and involved.
The Figueroas and the people around them were part of a long series of political and social
upheaval that characterized the Salvadoran Civil War. Beginning with a U.S. funded right-wing
military coup in 1979, the civil war caused the death of almost 90,000 people, 85 percent of
whom were killed by the military regime. Born in 1980, Raul Figueroa lived through all of it.
On the team opposing the government was a coalition of left-wing and all-around populist
guerrillas known as the Frente Farabundo Mart para la Liberacin Nacional. It was the FMLN
that Raul was floating on a sea of people in support for, though he did not know why at the time.
It was the FMLN that riled up an entire population with a working class, socialist message and
brought a victorious end to national militarism in 1992.
I grew up learning so much about the FMLN before I was capable of comprehending a lot of the
things that were going on. They would go in hiding places in our town and people brought them
food, Raul said.
Although he didnt quite understand what he was supporting at the time, as Raul looks around
the office and conjures an image of the coalitions starred red flag that commands a rebellious,
nuclear family-frightening attention, a safe confidence fills his expression.
Had it been today, he would still be in those crowds of people, carrying the red flag and fighting
for liberation.
While he cant go back in time, Raul continues the legacy of his memories and the message of
FMLN in his new home in Rhode Island. He moved to the United States in 2000 as a means to
find an economic foothold.
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There was no future for me [in El Salvador] after the war. [The government] used all our
resources, destroyed the country, and took what they wanted, Raul said.
Hopping from New York City to Boston to Providence, Raul finally settled into a job in the city
of Central Falls. Situated in northeastern Rhode Island, Central Falls is majority immigrant and
majority Latinx. For Raul, it serves as a comforting piece of his old life as well as ground zero
for the initiatives hes part of. He is the community organizer for Fuerza Laboral which
translates to Power of Workers an organization that works alongside unions to help
disenfranchised workers empower themselves and seek justice in the face of labor abuse.
We strongly believe that the only path for job security, competitive wages, competitive benefits,
peace of mind, and a bright future is through the union, said Raul. Thats why when the
workers express the need to have all of these benefits, we decide to contact the unions and
present the interest of the workers and the opportunity to organize.
At a quick glance, Raul and his organization seem like a minor but incessant bother for business
owners on their path to exponential capital growth. With more observation, they look more like a
business owners worst nightmare. Focusing mainly on undocumented immigrant workers, but
remaining open to all abused workers in the area, Fuerza Laboral is on a crusade to end worker
exploitation; they have campaigns to make businesses accountable for work-related injuries, to
end wage theft, to push for social justice for immigrants, to educate workers on their rights and
power sway, and (in true socialist fashion) to promote the rise of worker-owned businesses.
In their most recent campaign, Fuerza Laboral coordinated with a group of demolition workers in
Massachusetts who were looking for help in finding justice amidst abuse. These 14 workers
all from Guatemala came to us with various claims such as wage theft, discrimination, not
being able to grow in the company, humiliation, health and safety concerns, lack of benefits such
as affordable health insurance, etc., Raul said.
[So] we put them in touch with a law firm that is handling their wage theft complaint. We are
working with the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] to conduct an investigation on
the discrimination complaint. We are working with an investigative reporter on the heath and
safety issues, because these people work under some really harsh conditions under an intense
amount of stress, exposed to lead and asbestos.
The last point of Fuerza Laborals mission statement the push for worker-owned and
worker-operated businesses is the one that stands out against the other calls for moderate
liberal demands. A business devoid of business owners; the absence of the powerful suits at the
top, who make the decisions and work out the logistics for a company with little input from the
people at the bottom of the hierarchical structure.
Those working the counter, the machinery, the kitchen, the computer, etc. are the ones who
democratically decide what steps to take. With that, the interests of the business are thus not with
profiting exponentially, but instead benefitting the workers directly.
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As it states in the campaigns page on Fuerza Laborals website:

We envision eradicating poverty in our community by building
the power of workers themselves to control their economic
destiny. We seek to create an economic model led by impacted
members of our community that respects the dignity of all workers,
draws on workers' own strengths and skills, and puts people above
profits. A network of cooperative businesses founded with these
values will provide living-wage, quality jobs to those who are most
vulnerable to income inequality, thus changing the economic
power dynamic that had previously kept them poor.
Democratic control of the means of production by the workers. A call for socialist reform.
While not a political and social opinion ever held by those of the legislative and executive ruling
bodies of the federal United States, the socialist ideals of Raul Figueroa and his organization find
relative comfort in both the historical and modern arms of the left-leaning public. Within the
United States and especially outside its borders multitudes of poor workers, liberals upset
with the establishment, social justice advocates, cynics of big government, environmental
activists, weary economists, and enlightened scholars have reached a logical conclusion to their
collective plights.
We want all the means of production to eventually be publicly owned, said Jon Osborne,
chairperson of the Providence branch of the U.S. Socialist Alternative Party. They are to be
democratically controlled by the workers.
Capitalism is the cause, and its abolishment is the cure.
A Spectre Haunts
The front of the political and economic Left is one overwhelmingly and strongly misunderstood
by most in the ultra-capitalist world of the 21st century. Some Americans, upon hearing
keywords like socialism, anarchism, Marx, and worst of all communism,
immediately fall back to defense mechanisms predisposed in them from cultural warfare dating
back to the Cold War or, in some cases, earlier. In the public discourse, socialism is equated with
big government, lack of freedoms, the forced shift to collectivist thought; anarchism even more
treacherously seen as chaos, violence, a Walking Dead style world of every man for himself.
What is typically not seen are the true, non-perverted meanings of the terms, and the ideology of
leftist thought as a whole.
Karl Marx, born in Trier, Germany in 1818, is often attributed for creating the concept of
socialism and communism; this is wrong. Communism as an idea has existed for well over 300
years, toyed with by philosophers and thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment, and even in English
courts during the Renaissance. In fact, Marx even considered hunter-gatherer societies that
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predated modern civilization to be a primitive version of communism. Socialism, while a newer

concept, still outdated Marx as well. Charles Fournier and other French thinkers of the early 19th
century were fully touting the kindling of modern socialism an ideal now called utopian
socialism, which has been cast out by the modern Left for ignoring a need for revolution
while Marx was still young.
What Marx did create was the foundation of Marxism, a critical, analytical thought process that
denounced capitalism and the ills it creates. He and longtime friend Friedrich Engels wrote The
Communist Manifesto in 1848, as a response to largely moot revolutions that spread throughout
Europe earlier that year. The piece reads like a mission statement, laying out the ideology of its
writers and the critique of capitalism that has still yet to be proven wrong. Marx also wrote Das
Kapital (or Capital), which is considered his magnum opus. It sought to be an immensely
detailed, research driven report on the workings of a capitalist economy, followed by a
philosophical critique that would ultimately offer a better deal: communism. Marx didnt manage
to finish Capital before his death in 1883, which is why the published work reads more like an
economic textbook than a thought piece.
Marxism is the ability to look at the world through class relations and class struggle, and notice
that most (if not all) conflicts both then and now within society arose because of class
exploitation. The essential point of the theory is that workers find themselves in an industrial,
subtle version of slavery. That is, slaves to wage-labor.
As workers, we do not own the workplace or the means to create product; the upper class the
bourgeoisie, the one percent, the CEOs, however you please own these things. We, as the
working class, are forced to create product (whether it be clothes, articles, music, art, buildings,
etc.; whether it is a product we desire to create or something we are doing just to get by) that, at
the end of the day, we cannot say ever belonged to us.
On top of this, workers are not paid the full extent of their labor; they are paid a set wage, worth
less than the effort put into work and the materials gathered for the product. The rest of the
money goes to the business in the form of profit, thus feeding the wealth of those not working
with the product directly. In the end, the workers are never truly compensated or fulfilled for the
work they do, and the capitalists get wealthier for exploiting those under them as much as is
legally possible.
This exploitation does not just refer to labor rights (or lack thereof) but also social and political
issues across the board. It explains to a considerable degree why the ills of our current society
seemingly persist without fail. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, renewable
energy sources only make up 12 percent of the U.S. electricity generation, while each person on
average produces 17.6 metric tons of CO2 emissions; immeasurable profits from oil, gas, and
coal industries show it is not in a corporations and thus lobbyists and thus governments best
interest to divest (at least, divest at an effective rate). According to The Economist, police
departments throughout the country continue to receive hefty grants at the federal level and
surplus military equipment from the Department of Defense despite the consistent fall in violent
crime rates and the media-saturated backlash of law enforcement brutality; and as Michelle
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Alexander author of The New Jim Crow makes clear, since large arrest numbers show
positive financial results for the police, and since both private prisons and defense contractors
see no positive financial point in scaling down, the problem sticks around.
Surely, if one were to buy into Marxist discourse, this is a bleak existence. The solution? At
some point, the working class dubbed the proletariat will spark a full-scale revolution,
overthrow the capitalists, and create a socialist state. Marxism is a means to get to socialism,
which is a social ownership of the means of production, meaning the working class directly
controls the workplace and thus decides what is created, how much is paid, and how a nation will
function. Socialism, according to Marx, will one day lead to communism: a worldwide existence
devoid of class and money, where people live in complete freedom. Utopia. As to how this
would be implemented post-revolution was something Marx felt was fruitless to try and predict.
He felt that it would be impossible to know the answer to a question that may be asked in a
period completely foreign to his, filled with technology and material conditions of a totally
different spectrum.
With that in mind, however, Marx pointed to the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871
which lasted just north of two months before French national forces overran them and left some
10,000 Parisians dead as an inspiring example of a socialist government for the time. In The
Civil War in France, written during the Communes lifetime, Marx praised the revolutionaries
doing away with traditional statehood for a dictatorship of the proletariat, or complete rule by
workers.
The Underheard Opinion
It is an enormous, almost humorously out of reach goal in the eyes of some people. The
hegemony of capitalism, of a world of commercial goods and competitive business, exists in
every daily routine for those living within it. It is hard to escape the advertising, the corporate
sponsors, the obvious political/economic partnership that the digitally developed world has
fine-tuned.
But for others, like Raul Figueroa, the challenge is accepted with an eager tenacity especially
now, in a United States post-2016 presidential election, which saw the rise to power of a
right-wing business mogul based on promises of anti-immigrant and anti-progressive change.
Those of the Left have risen up in large numbers periodically since its inception, and in the 21st
century political climate there is a feeling in the air of the next epoch of leftist upheaval. In the
United States, a new socialist movement is brewing.
Amidst the friction leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election the outrage generated from
Donald Trumps divisive rhetoric and the grassroots progressivism generated from Bernie
Sanders left-wing appeal gears began to turn within the mechanism of the Left. Parallels had
been drawn by many between Trump and fascist leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini, and it is
difficult to not notice them once they have been highlighted. Scholars like famed anarchist Noam
Chomsky have spoken on the rise of Trump and its similarities to the 1930s, right down to the
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existence of the Lion Guard, a pro-Trump mob that eerily resembles Mussolinis Brown Shirts
(they even go so far as to quote Mussolini himself in the heading of their website).
In reaction to what they felt was a dire situation, socialists the world over began organizing with
plans to educate the masses on their cause, to push for progressive reform locally, and even to
fight far right supporters like the Lion Guard in the streets.
This is what led a man known as Triangle to harken back to 1871 and create a modern commune.
The Commune for Direct Action and Protest was an online socialist collective that served to
gather Marxists and anarchists alike for the common goal of pushing public discourse leftwards
through a pronounced social media presence, educational initiatives, and civil disobedience.
Members would pool money together to be used in any meaningful way. The endgame was to
break through the hegemony of capitalism that people live with every day, and eventually inspire
leftist revolution.
Within just a week of its creation, the commune had over 100 members from all over the world;
Koba was from South Africa, Wound from Australia, Giza from England, Sophocles from
Austria. Everyone was anonymous.
By the end of April 2016, a group of socialist web developers within the commune had nearly
finished a website hosting scholarly arguments for socialism and against capitalism, all written
by the communes journalists and students. Graphic designers took old Soviet propaganda and
edited them to fit their modern cause, while others created their own artwork from scratch. A few
members from the Midwest started a weekly reading group. Podcasts where members discussed
current events from a leftist perspective were recorded and posted on YouTube. Ideologically
anti-capitalist non-fiction began being pumped out semi-regularly in the form of short stories.
One comrade Parade, from Sweden produced a documentary about Syrian refugees
escaping into Jordan.
To be as democratic and horizontal as possible, members were split into groups by time zone,
and said groups would meet online once a week to discuss commune-wide issues and pitch new
ideas; points would be debated, voted on, and eventually brought forth to the entire CDAP,
where they would be discussed again in a general assembly. The meetings utilized a unanimous
voting style and as much open, fluid discussion as possible, taking notes from the strategies used
in the Occupy Wall Street movement of the early 2010s. The only semblance of singular
leadership to be found was in the moderator for the weekly meetings, a position rotated amongst
the members of the regional groups.
Any form of racism, sexism, homophobia, or overall oppressive language in general was strictly
prohibited, and more than one member had been summarily voted out of the CDAP for this
reason.
By June 2016, there were talks of starting a leftist press that would publish triweekly. The
articles were to be posted online, on the CDAPs website, and spread throughout the Internet via
social media; funds would be spread out to allow desiring members to print the paper and hand it
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out locally. Triangle, a North Carolina native who had a direct and engaged hand in most of the
CDAPs projects, had already tried this routine earlier in the year, with widespread success. An
anarchist press he had started was being published online and spread physically throughout his
state; soon, he had a group of over 20 volunteers joining him, not only to write, but to engage in
political direct action.
A section of Triangles group even formed an antifa (shorthand for anti-fascist) group, which
serves to disrupt any far right organization that occurs in the area, with violence if they feel it
necessary.
One comrade named Flocka started a fund for an engineering class in a high-poverty area, whose
public budget was cut. Within a month, the CDAP managed to gather over $100 and get the
supplies that the class needed.
This led to perhaps the CDAPs biggest leap; Lingua and Cap two members from New
England brought up the possibility of an educational program for youth. One of the most
vital programs that the Black Panthers had was their educational programs, Lingua said. They
taught the children how to protect themselves, how to see through the fog of capitalist bullshit,
and how to make a change.
Triangle and Pinto a Chicago member were fond of the idea. Youre absolutely right. We
really need to look up to the BPP [Black Panther Party] as examples of community outreach,
Triangle said. People readily absorb the most when they are young, and this is our chance to get
break through that ideological barrier early on.
The Catalyst
If Marx and Engels are considered the screenwriters of the greater leftist saga, then Vladimir
Lenin is considered the director of its first film. Born in the Russian Empire in 1870, Vladimir
Ulyanov (who had later taken on the alias Lenin) was and remains to be a controversial and
polarizing figure throughout the world. While attending college, he became infatuated with the
works of Marx and was soon involved in revolutionary circles. It was Lenins quickly radicalized
ideals mixed with a potent and demanding personality that made the Tsarist government view
him as a potential threat; throughout his younger years, Lenin was removed from schooling,
jailed on more than one occasion, and even sent into exile in Siberia.
The aggressive nature of the Russian elites did little to cool Lenins drive, however, and soon he
had the ears of many workers who had long been trampled under foot. As Lenin aged and delved
deeper into what biographer Louis Fischer called the drive of a fanatic [with] a singleness of
purpose, he became an extensive traveller, forced to leave Russia as a political refugee on two
different occasions and squat in several European countries to write and direct his political
influence. Over a decade went by before Lenin could return to his homeland, and in that time, a
lot had changed.

The Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II looked grim for those who could not experience the
lavish conditions of the upper class. The recently freed peasant class had few options for making
a living, and rarely found avenues into a new way of life; minority ethnic groups became
increasingly agitated as the push for a Russian national culture left swaths of other identities
ignored and abused; the adaptation of early capitalist economics in a land largely stuck in a
feudal and despotic mindset created a weak and virtually unrepresented working class; and on
top of all this, the government historically had little patience for dissent and disobedience.
This last fact became painstakingly true in January, 1905, when a group of protesters led by a
priest marched onto the grounds of the Tsars Winter Palace to present a petition for improved
worker conditions and wages. Instead of being met by the Tsar as they had hoped, the crowd was
met with Imperial bullets. The event, known as Bloody Sunday, left 1,000 dead, and sparked
public outrage to the point of minor revolution. The Revolution of 1905 pushed Russia closer to
a European republic through the instillation of, among other things, a legislative assembly and
constitution by overwhelming demand of the citizenry.
Nine years later, the conflicts of imperialism and national identity plunged Europe into the
unprecedented chaos of the First World War. Russia joined in alliance with the Allied Powers
(consisting of France, Britain, Serbia, and, eventually, the United States) and quickly became
bogged down economically and socially as a result; the Tsar went off to fight, leaving his wife
and the famous Rasputin to rule in his place, and Russian citizens became increasingly agitated
at the countrys missteps.
The unrest sparked a full revolution in early 1917, backed by workers and military alike, which
led to a full overthrow of the Tsarist government and the creation of a full fledged Russian
Republic, ruled by a provisional assembly. The revolution also gave socialists considerable
power in the form of city-specific workers councils (known as soviets).
Meanwhile, Lenin had been bolstering the influence of his Russian Social Democratic Party
of which his followers became known as the Bolsheviks and writing an extensive critique on
the war, calling it and imperialism the highest stage of capitalism. Upon hearing the news of
popular uprising, he travelled into Germany and petitioned for allowance to cross the contested
borders and return home. The German government, who were fighting the Russians and were
aware of Lenins dangerous influence, allowed for his passage in the hopes that he could created
internal disruption and effectively take Russia out of the war.
That decision changed the course of history forever.
Ten Days That Shook the World
When Lenin arrived in the newly neoliberal Russia, he immediately began organizing and
rousing his extensive following of Bolsheviks. Their demands were radical: for the people of
Russia, led by the Bolsheviks and the soviets of the nation, to overthrow the new government
and push for a full transition into socialism.
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During this time, Lenin wrote The State and Revolution, a manuscript that outlined his
application and ideological extensions of Marxism, and what a functioning states role should be
in bringing socialism to the people. It serves as a sort of base for what has come to be known as
Leninism (or Marxism-Leninism), which calls for a one-party state under rule of a
Communist Party that serves to keep capitalist powers from regaining control and to gradually
wither away for the realization of a decentralized, directly engaged public rule.
It was with these ideals that the Bolsheviks and their supporters took to the streets in October
1917. Organized and armed socialists, aided by military deserters and common workers alike,
stormed and took control of several governmental buildings, telecommunication centers, and
even the Winter Palace. Railways and other transport hotspots were mainly run by workers who
were members of soviets and were sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. In just a handful of
days, the provisional government had surrendered to the momentum of the October Revolution.
No one was killed.
During the following days, the now-ruling Bolsheviks declared Russias removal from the First
World War and the intention of handing power over to the local soviets once the country had
settled in. Under the new, first ever socialist state, peasants were encouraged to seize the land
they had been working on and form cooperative, redistributive farms.
So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, a new
Russia was being born, said John Reed, an American journalist about the October Revolution.
John Reed entered Russia on the eve of the Bolsheviks rise to power, and reported extensively
on the entire event. Following revolutionary troops, interviewing several citizens representing a
number of factions, sitting in on soviet meetings, meeting Lenin, and even joining the fight in
one instance, Reed attempted to fully absorb the air of the October Revolution. Eventually
returning to the United States in late April 1918, he published his reports as a book: Ten Days
That Shook the World. In the book, Reed does not attempt to hide the leftist bias he held for the
cause; after the release, he became insistent that the United States would soon follow in Russias
footsteps. This, along with his anti-war sentiment, made Reed uncomfortably popular amongst
American law enforcement.
Reeds socialist leaning was not welcome in America, where the First Red Scare was in full
throttle. Wealthy white elites had begun begun pushing to forcefully silence issues of labor
abuse, immigration, and racism under the guise of protecting American democratic interests.
Between his return from Russia and his death in 1920, John Reed had been arrested five times,
for opposing the war, speaking out against the government, and inciting riots.
Progressive reform was not something that came easy, if at all, for Russia after the initial steps of
the October Revolution, however. The socialists of Russia became immensely preoccupied with
in-fighting on how to best implement the tearing down of capitalism, so much so that leftists who
did not agree wholly on the Bolsheviks strategies deserted the soviets and even called for
counter-revolution. To make matters worse, leaders of the fallen provisional government had
regrouped and began to try and once again claim Russia under a neoliberal flag.
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While the Bolsheviks managed to suppress most of the revolts and fully establish the country as
a soviet socialist republic, thus completing the revolution foreign powers soon found it
necessary to intervene and protect their interests. After the First World War had ended, the
United States, the United Kingdom, France, and others sent troops into the territory of their
former ally with the intent of reinstating the provisional government. The Russian Civil War, as
the bloody course of events came to be called, lasted until 1923 and claimed 1.2 million lives.
What the country lost in time and people, it also lost in reform.
Since Leninist theory stressed the importance of the ruling partys protection of socialist interests
against outer threats, and since Lenin himself was known as a generally uncompromising
individual, the fearful and somewhat reasonable desire to maintain order and structure
compromised the classic socialist ideals of unity. It became clear that even fellow leftists were
fair game for the Bolsheviks increasingly authoritarian fist, which saw any dissent as
threatening to the revolutionary cause. Lenin knew of the sectarian rift that was being created,
but felt it could not be stopped in the given material circumstances; a country could not transition
to a classless society of common ownership if it is constantly under attack, whether by foreign
entities or as he saw it by those within ideological reach.
The economic plummet that the Russians experienced as a result of the civil war left conditions
for some not much more preferable than they were pre-revolution, and freedoms became more
and more restricted within what had become the Soviet Union. The goal of a truly socialist land
became a far off one in the USSR, which had resorted to a system of state capitalism, or
government control of the economy and industries. Lenin had been in sporadic periods of illness
throughout his leadership role in the Soviet Union, and on his deathbed in 1924, he was not fond
of the direction his country had gone. The now infamous Josef Stalin was quickly gaining
influence in the government, and Lenins pupil and more classical socialist Leon Trotsky was not
(despite Lenins wishes that Trotsky take over his role as leader after his death). Lenin saw Stalin
as a danger to the Soviet Union both politically and socially, and pleaded that he not be given
power. Sure enough, however, Stalin, after Lenin had passed, used his military connections to
aggressively take leadership and eventually assassinate Trotsky, who became his political
adversary.
The world knows and felt the rest of the story all too well. Stalins was one of the most brutal
and authoritarian dictatorships to ever rule in the modern history of the world. With him came
the loss of basic human rights, some 20 million lives, and the last vestiges of actual socialist
practice remaining in the Soviet Union.
The State and Revolutions final chapter, titled The Experience of the Russian Revolutions of
1905 and 1917, is ominously left unwritten. In a postscript published after the pieces first
edition, Lenin explains this mystery.
This pamphlet was written in August and September 1917. I had
already drawn up the plan for the next, the seventh chapter, "The
Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917". Apart
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from the title, however, I had no time to write a single line of the
chapter; I was "interrupted" by a political crisis--the eve of the
October revolution of 1917. Such an "interruption" can only be
welcomed; but the writing of the second part of this pamphlet ("The
Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917") will
probably have to be put off for a long time. It is more pleasant and
useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write
about it.
The Author
Petrograd
November 30, 1917
Even on copies printed in the modern day, the bold words of that title remain, a trailing thought
never explored or unravelled for the reader to know.
The Dominoes
The events which transpired in Russia through the first half of the 20th century saw the creation
and destruction of the worlds first socialist state. The quake of Lenins leftist uprising sent
tremors across the world; Marxist and anarchist movements sprung up in high intensity both
immediately following the days of the October Revolution and even in the decades after.
Two of the Lefts most prominent and popular feminist figures rose during the end of the
Russian Revolution: Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman. Luxemburg lived in Germany
throughout the First World War and heavily protested the nations involvement in it. She also
criticized her fellow Social Democratic Party of Germany for supporting the war despite the
leftist denunciation of imperialism. Her distaste for German affairs led Luxemburg to form the
Communist Party of Germany (known as the Spartacist League), where her unique blend of
Marxist and other socialist ideals preached acceptance of all leftist ideologies. When Germany
was defeated by the Allied Powers, the Social Democrats rose up in revolution to create a
functioning republic; at the same time, Luxemburg and her followers sparked the fight for a
socialist German state. The Social Democrats saw her as a massive threat; she was assassinated
by paramilitary troops and her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal in Berlin.
Goldman was a Russian-born American immigrant her family moved to New York when she
was 16 years old and a staunch anarchist. Anarchism is a socialist ideology that calls for the
direct elimination of the state (instead of the Marxist preference for the gradual dissolution of the
state) and creation of a horizontal, cooperative community based structure. Goldmans activism
was furious and unafraid; she protested the First World War and its draft system, distributed
information on birth control (which was illegal at the time), and called for workers in the
struggling New York boroughs to rise up. These actions had left a sour taste in the American
governments mouth; an immigrant Jewish woman was preaching anti-war, socialist ideology to
workers and discussing sex in the open. In 1919, she was deported to Russia, where she
witnessed firsthand the construction of the Soviet Union. Since the Bolsheviks had resulted to
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sectarian oppression, the birth of the nation was not one Goldman and her fellow anarchists
welcomed.
In British-controlled Ireland, a full year and a half before the Russian Revolution had even
begun, socialists, trade union workers, and a female republican militant group forcibly seized key
government offices in Dublin on Easter weekend and claimed independence. Although the
British government was preoccupied with the war effort, they managed to send enough troops to
put down the Easter Rising and execute all its leaders. It was the intense British reaction to these
events that greatly inspired the Irish War of Independence in 1919.
In Mexico, an arduous and muddled liberal revolution had been dragging on since 1910.
Emiliano Zapata, an agrarian revolutionary who utilized anarchist ideals to try and solve
community issues, led the Liberation Army of the South against the several regimes instilled in
Mexico during this period. Fighting against government, counter-revolutionary, and even
American forces who became involved in the conflict before their entry in the First World
War to protect business interests the Zapatistas, as they came to be called, trudged an uphill
battle that came to an end when Zapata was assassinated in 1919.
A lull in socialist revolutions lasted for the next decade and a half, as much of the world focused
on rebuilding rather than reforming. This all came to an end with the rise of fascism in Italy and
Germany. Fascism, the antonym and historical nemesis of socialism, calls for total government
control of life, strong nationalist and militarist priorities, and institutionalized and violent
prejudice towards a scapegoat community. At the head of fascism is personality figure, a person
of strong and commanding character who can manipulate an entire population. This force of
manipulation is used on the unheard working class of a neoliberal nation, wrongly convincing
them that their plights will finally be heard and mended by an authoritarian shift.
In 1936, the fog of this far right movement reached the streets of London, where Oswald Mosley
of the Britain Union of Fascists called for a large-scale march protesting the immigration of Jews
and other minority groups. When he and his followers reached Cable Street an area known for
its frequency of minority and immigrant residents they were greeted by barricades and
agitated citizens. Jewish demonstrators and leftists alike clashed with Mosleys fascists and the
British police who were assigned to protect them, eventually causing the latter group to flee.
That same year, nationalism swept through Spain, and a fascist movement led by Francisco
Franco rebelled against the republican government. Aided by Italian, Portuguese, and German
forces and artillery, Franco and his followers managed to capture a majority of the nation in just
one year. Those loyal to defending the establishment received help from the Soviet Union
which, under Stalin, was more concerned with being on the good side of the capitalist West than
promoting socialist reform and Mexico. Over 59,000 foreign volunteers entered the fray to
stand against Franco, a collective that came to be known as the International Brigades. Among
these fighters were a few famous names, such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, the
latter a historically ardent socialist.

13

George Orwell joined the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (its original Spanish translation
abbreviated to POUM), a communist faction that stood for the loyalist cause but separate from
Stalins influence. POUM, along with the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the
Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) two anarchist groups based in northeastern Spain also
spent immense energy creating a socialist region free from the imperfections of the civil wars
competing ideologies.
In the regions of Catalonia and Aragon, this partnership of leftist parties used the chaos of the
nations situation to inspire popular uprising. Seizing all businesses, communication centers, and
most upper class properties, the citizens of the area created a horizontal society where unions
replaced parties, democratic workers councils replaced business owners, and necessity replaced
profit.
During Orwells time spent fighting for POUM, he ventured into Barcelona while it was led
under anarchist ideals. In the first chapter of Homage to Catalonia, his personal account of the
anarchist fight in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell describes the experience:
It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the
working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any
size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags
or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was
scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the
revolutionary parties. Every shop and cafe had an inscription
saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks [people
employed to polish shoes] had been collectivized and their boxes
painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the
face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Seor'
or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade'
or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'.
Despite anarchisms call for the elimination of the state apparatus, the people of Catalonia and
Aragon had notably decided to not seize the governmental assemblies in the region. For a while,
the local government and the anarchists lived in the relative peace with each other, the former
not willing to challenge the power of the latter. In May 1937, however, the Soviet-aligned
Marxists and republican forces feared that Catalonia and Aragons relative sovereignty
weakened the anti-fascist fight; as a result, they felt they could halt Francos successes by
dragging the region back under mainstream Spains rule, by force if necessary.
Within the first eight days of that month, the large group of loyalists struck a deal with the
regional government, taking assembly power of the anarchist stronghold and seizing back all that
was claimed in the name of the public. This sent the anarchists into full retaliation; fighting
sparked on the streets of Barcelona and other major cities, with leftists firing upon one another
over the fate of a capitalist nation. CNT, FAI, and POUM were quickly overrun and exiled, and
the short period George Orwell had treasured was over.
14

Despite republican forces regaining such a considerable area, celebrations were short. By 1939,
the fascists under Francisco Franco had conquered all of Spain and began a regime of
authoritarian rule that would last until his death in 1975.
The Spanish Civil War and, to a greater degree, the Second World War that immediately
followed, represents for many leftists the great existential struggle between the Left and the
Right, with moderate capitalist entities standing in the middle influencing the fight in a way that
benefits themselves rather than the people.
The capitalist state doesnt want fascism, it prefers the masque of democracy to enforce its
rule, said Bobby Working-Class (a pseudonym to protect his working class life from
reactionaries), a chairperson for the Providence sector of the U.S. Socialist Alternative Party.
But in all the fascist examples Italy, Germany, Spain they took power amidst huge
workers movements and social unrest. The ruling class feared a working class revolution like
the one seen in Russia, and that is when they threw all their support behind the fascists.
In all the aforementioned fascist nations, the ruling class elites pandered to the authoritarian
powers in exchange for safety and the avoidance of true working class uprisings. In Italy under
Mussolini, the aristocracy and big industrialists refused to fight against the new totalitarian state,
seeing that its existence would diminish any true populist reform and thus sustain their interests.
In both Italy and Spain, the Roman Catholic Church refused to challenge the new powers,
especially in the latter, where Francisco Franco promoted Christian and monarchist ideals. In
pre-Nazi Germany, President Hindenburg gave Hitler the position of Chancellor in an effort to
appease his loud and dangerous faux-populist following and stop the possibility of revolution. It
was from this position of power that Hitler quickly became the totalitarian ruler he is now known
as.
With the end of the Second World War came another massive socialist revolution that helped
shaped the modern world. In 1946, Marxist scholar Mao Zedong led the Communist Party of
China along with millions of regular Chinese citizens in revolt against the nationalist,
imperial government under Chiang Kai-shek.
In 1949, governmental forces were thoroughly exhausted and surrendered to Maos forces; by
the end of the year, all of China had been transitioned to live under socialist rule, becoming a
self-proclaimed Peoples Republic.
Though the revolution was popular among the Chinese working class and modernization of the
country was largely successful, several factors turned Maos China less into a populist nation and
more into a failed capitalist one. Movements like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution were ill-planned attempts to rid China of bourgeois influence and give power to
lower classes; the result left some 20 million citizens dead through famine and persecution (as
accused counter-revolutionaries). The faults of these programs set China back economically and
socially, forcing the leadership to open up the business market in a desperate attempt to keep the
country from starving; socialism would have to wait. Since then, the wait has continued.
15

Hasta Siempre
While the global East was collectively experimenting with leftist politics, the United States and
its longtime allies in Western Europe had spent decades expanding their capital and enjoying a
relative safety with a West devoid of large scale populism. Besides a failed revolution in
Guatemala one that passed progressive, influential reform until the United States directed a
right-wing coup that led to a bloody civil war things had largely been in corporate control.
Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara changed that in 1953, when they sparked a popular
revolution in Cuba that eventually ousted military Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Castro, a native
Cuban, took the reigns of leadership on the island nation, steering it towards socialist reform;
Che, an Argentinian who had made a life of travelling throughout the world to inspire revolution,
made a temporary home of Cuba, using his popularity to spark a successful literacy campaign
which led to the countrys 99 percent literacy rate and a sweeping agrarian land redistribution.
Che, who had also fought in Guatemala in an attempt to defend the country against the
U.S.-funded coup, left Cuba in 1965 to continue his goal for international revolution. In 1967, he
was executed in Bolivia by CIA operatives while leading a small group of rebels against yet
another U.S.-funded government. His last words were: I know you've come to kill me. Shoot,
coward, you are only going to kill a man.
Meanwhile, Cubas development had been rocky. The United States sent forces into Cubas Bay
of Pigs in 1961, in an attempt to bring the country back into right-wing control. On top of this,
countless assassination attempts had been made on Castro himself, resulting in a paranoid and
overprotective leadership; military service was mandatory, free speech became limited in an
effort to quell any counter-revolutionary expression, and the resource-scarce island had to rely
on the now authoritarian Soviet Union as an economic partner. Fidel Castro held onto power
until 2011, when his brother, Raul, took over. Despite these hardships, however, Cuba became a
country with a higher life expectancy than the United States, with a medical system that has been
looked up to internationally. On November 26, 2016, Fidel Castro died at 90 years old.
The leftist movement taken in Cuba inspired undeveloped countries globally notably in Latin
America to follow suit. In 1970, socialist Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile,
with the mission of modernization and spreading the nations wealth. In 1973, the United States
sponsored a coup that ousted Allende and installed Augusto Pinochet as a militaristic dictator,
ending 40 years of democracy in Chile. Allende died of suicide the day of the coup.
Nicaraguas Sandinista rebels led a socialist revolution against the military regime in 1978 after
over a decade of popular unrest. The revolution was successful, but the rebels inherited a nation
destroyed by the war, and were forced to spend considerable time repairing rather than
reforming. To make their plight more difficult, the Reagan Administration funded right-wing
rebels to undo the victory of populist uprising; fighting lasted until 1990, but the Sandinistas
managed to retain control.

16

It was in these latter years of the Latin American leftist wave that El Salvador saw its entry into
the greater struggle. It was in these latter years that Raul Figueroas entire youth would be
shaped by class struggle and a peoples desire to fight for their liberation.
Living on the Frontlines
I remember seeing a lot of burning buses and tires. There were shootouts almost every week.
For a long period of time we didnt have any water, any electricity, and there was a curfew;
nobody was allowed to be outside after dark, Raul said. It was a really tough time for the
workers youd have to go to sleep worried that something would happen to your dad. Every so
often youd hear that someone was dead; youd just find people dead on the streets all the time.
And my town [Metapn] was one of the safest at the time.
In Metapn, the FMLN held considerable influence and favor, controlling the area for much of
the war. According to Raul, the guerrilla fighters held the confidence of the people through the
conflict. They felt safe in FMLNs presence. We knew they were good people; I was never
scared of them. But [the media and government] wanted you to believe that they were the
enemy, Raul said. I knew people that actually had ammunition at home and they would go and
fight just join with the FMLN and just come back home after.
People will do anything to protect their town and their family.
There were periods throughout the 12 years of Rauls wartime childhood where the government
forces seized the town. Using an extensive network of informants, the rebel groups would always
be prepared and notify the town when regime troops were nearing their territory. If the militarys
numbers were too large to fight, the people would have to prepare for a few days or months
of occupation.
It was hard to differentiate in that time who was really who. It was hard to trust somebody; the
adults figured that stuff out and you just followed their lead, Raul said. You didnt know who
were good people and who were bad until you saw them do something.
The violence and struggle that narrated Rauls entire childhood directly affected his family on
several occasions. Because of the Figueroas involvement in revolutionary activity, they were
subject to routine house sweeps by the military when they entered town.
The army would come, search for guns and ammunition, but basically we were just being
targeted because my dad was a union member, Raul said. They just needed a reason to go and
destroy the whole house. We had to move a lot within the town. They would just kick you out
and youd have to stand outside and watch.
Despite the countless abuses that the Figueroas faces at the hands of the military government,
Raul still manages to look back on those years with nostalgia. During that time even though
the country was at war there was a freedom I felt that hasnt been compared to any other time
[in my life], Raul said. He recalls secretly listening to the FMLNs illegal political radio station
17

that would change frequencies every so often to avoid government crackdown. He recalls the
entire neighborhood being together, living for one another.
We could still be outside, even at night; man, that used to scare my mother so much, he
continues. You would follow the music, you know? Everybody had a guitar, so people would
just sit outside and start playing and youd gather at somebodys house as they were playing and
just drink coffee and eat.
The community Raul was part of served to aid one another in any way possible. Solidarity
amongst the townspeople meant safety and much needed inclusion in the midst of a war.
Everybody was a big family; everybody knew each other. That was a great thing everybody
knew their neighbors. That was the only weapon you had I only know this now to know
your neighbors, Raul said. Everyone was so united during that time. There would be these big
cookouts, and wed just cook for the entire block, without expecting anything in return.
Raul Figueroa feels that a strong community is essential to accomplishing political and social
goals, an opinion grounded in the framework of socialisms cause. You need the community for
national activism, said Bobby Working-Class of the U.S. Socialist Alternative Party. Our
model is a democratic centralist model, where discussion happens from the bottom-up, and all
elected officials are recallable at any time.
By bringing the decision-making process directly to the workers, the goal becomes that of
cooperation instead of competition. This cooperation, Raul says, prevents people from isolation
and hopelessness; his experiences in El Salvador can attest to that.
On January 16, 1992, that sense of community solidarity culminated into the end of the
Salvadoran Civil War. The FMLN was victorious in ousting the military regime and, under UN
observation, restored the democratic processes of the government.
Kids from all around the block were jumping around and celebrating, but we had no idea what
we were celebrating. We didnt know what was to come and how complicated the whole topic
was, Raul said. But that was the beauty of it.
More than 20 years since that victory, Raul Figueroa finds himself on another battlefield. With
the rise of far right movements and the ever-extending hand of capitalism, however, he worries
that the strength of the community is dwindling.
Its happening everywhere its understandable; you cant really trust everybody. Back home,
its the same thing. Everybodys so concerned on the defense everybody thinks that
someone is out to get them or hurt them. But in reality, youre only hurting yourself.
Raul partially attributes Donald Trumps rise to power to this forgotten gift of communal
support. In fact, Trumps prominence is what led Raul to entering his job at Fuerza Laboral in
18

early 2016. In the current political situation, Rauls concerns and the concerns of the global
Left have only deepened.
Losing Ground
It is 3 a.m. on Wednesday, November 9, and though the frigid night of mid-Autumn is quiet,
everyone is awake. From every glance into a nearby window, a lit up television screen shows
pundits and analysts from CNN discussing the once highly improbable and arguably more
unexpected results of that night.
One of the CDAPs members is outside in that quiet air. Sitting on a bench with a friend, an unlit
molotov cocktail hidden in their pocket. Waiting for an oppressive force to suddenly appear like
a spectre and immediately swallow up any liberty or forward progress that has ever been created.
Be careful, Lingua, Biscuit says.
Lingua is one in the group that tends to naturally pour out his thoughts like poetry. It gives him
the influential aura of a public speaker, like Malcolm X.
I am so beyond frustration. I have nothing to throw this at. There are no parades. No buildings.
No cheers. No glee. I just have this bottle. And nothing can make it hit its target. And it makes
me so fucking mad.
Donald Trump had become the 45th President of the United States of America.
Triangle puts into words what everyone is conversationally walking around. I love you all. The
U.S. has picked fascism, and now we are all in danger. If you don't have a gun, get a gun. If you
don't know how to use a gun, learn to use a gun. And organize your fucking asses off. Get into
your communities now. Now. No more waiting, no more anything. There is no priority above
this. Be safe comrades, and be brave. Everything is different now.
Practice OpSec [shorthand for operational security], share only want needs to be shared with
who it needs to be shared with, and don't trust new faces right off the bat. Understand: we are all
at risk. In the next four years, I could be arrested or dead. That is now my reality.
I'm ready to accept that, said Lingua.
Then youre good, comrade.
Satellite enters the discussion. If you get killed then you're doing something right. Rest in
power, Comrade Hampton, she said, referring to Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers, who was
assassinated by Chicago police in 1969.
By the end of summer 2016, a lot had changed for the CDAP. For one, it was no longer called
the CDAP. A new movement had evolved from it, one that would seek to agitate rather than
influence.
19

Swaths of members had given up on doing work for the commune, which contributed to an
overarching disheartened attitude. A large majority of its base left over time, leaving roughly 30
to keep up the numerous and now over-extended duties. After about a month of essentially zero
progress, the core members of the CDAP now at just over a dozen decided it was time for
the commune to die.
But, what Ive gained in experience and knowledge from the attempt has been completely
invaluable. If it ends up being the case that I have to start again, then very well, Triangle said in
closing remarks. Ill start back at zero, but a higher consciousness of zero.
Though the structure, drive, and size of the original commune had dissipated, there remained a
handful of now directionless members who had grown to treat each other like family over the
span of 6 months. Spending half a year with like-minded people, pushing towards a common
goal, is bound to create a sense of community. Combine that with the lack of hierarchy and an
inclusion that broke down conforming social pressure; it was truly run in a socialist fashion, and
created a feeling of equality that is impossible to match in the day-to-day of capitalist living.
Many of the members saw the commune as a safe space for them; those who were transgendered
socialists living in the Deep South and Midwest have experienced countless hardships in their
daily lives and escaped to the digital solidarity of the CDAP when they needed a shoulder to lean
on.
It was frustrating, but it was one of the best things Ive ever participated in, Cap said,
reflecting on the commune. Loving, supportive, and caring, no questions asked.
Coupled with the CDAPs disintegration came the continued rise of Donald Trump as a serious
and popular right-wing presidential candidate. A sense of urgency swept through the close knit
group of leftists from the commune, and it was decided that a new group should be created. This
time, education and art were deprioritized; militancy and recruiting became the prime concerns.
Sophocles pitched Generation Phoenix as the title of the movement. It quickly stuck with
everyone involved. All member discussion was moved to encrypted messaging apps, complete
with self-deleting forums. Everyone was assigned homework within the first week of Generation
Phoenix's creation: read The Coming Insurrection, an anarchist pamphlet that dictates, among
other things, how to properly incite local revolution and seize towns from the government.
While the reaction from Generation Phoenix was certainly laced with visible intensity, they were
by no means the only ones on the Left caught off guard.
I was a little surprised [about Trumps win]. I was anticipating a Hillary Clinton win just
because Wall Street and the media was behind her. I guess it has to do with the fact that a lot of
people are just angry with the political system we have, and they wrongfully see as an outsider
even though hes part of the ruling class, said Jon Osborne of the U.S. Socialist Alternative
Party. Even though he isnt political establishment, hes still a major capitalist and has had sway
in the government.
20

For Raul Figueroa, the news held a deeply personal sting. Trumps rhetoric involved a heavily
critical view of Latinx immigrants, a group which Raul is proudly part of. With promises of
deportations and stricter immigration control, Raul finds himself in a state of worry.
I had a really bad Tuesday, November 8. I didnt even go to sleep. I was devastated. Hes
making us a lot more vulnerable than we already were. It scared me. A lot.
This Land is Our Land
The struggle that leftists like Raul or those in Generation Phoenix are fighting in the United
States seems like a hopeless one. The far right has gained federal power and no strong Left
movement holds any tangible control. However, history (albeit, a history frequently undiscussed)
may be on the side of the leftists.
During Marxs era, several socialist theorists believed that the first major, successful socialist
revolution would spawn in the United States, given that it was a major industrial capitalist power
at the time with a working class frequently abused by a lack of labor laws; unions were illegal,
children worked the factories, and 35,000 industrial workers were dying a year by 1900. As a
result of these abuses, Marxism and anarchism became increasingly popular. In 1886, riots broke
out between Chicago police and labor protesters at Haymarket Square, resulting in police
shootings and a bombing.
Famous figures of the American story were ardent socialists, a fact which goes underreported in
the textbooks. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Black rights activist and author W.E.B. Dubois,
and suffragette Helen Keller all advocated for the fall of capitalism and the rise of workers
republics. Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist known for his time spent at Walden Pond,
was an anarchist.
While the socialists of Marxs day made an obvious misstep in predicting America as the
premiere red nation, something did eventually happen in the country that brought on a popular
leftist movement.
It was the presidential election of 1912. Theodore Roosevelt had finished his presidency in 1909,
handing the throne of the Republican Party over to his protg, William Howard Taft. Taft won
the election of 1909, and led a largely unpopular presidential rule, one most certainly not in line
with the Roosevelts ideology. After Tafts first term, Roosevelt decided he would run against
his onetime friend; since the GOP didnt allow him to run within their party, Roosevelt created
the Bull Moose Progressive Party.
On the other end of the political aisle was Woodrow Wilson, an academic running as a
Democrat, promising mild reform and isolationism (a red flag for the Bull Moose). Yet another
candidate was Eugene Debs, the democratic socialist representing the Socialist Party of America.
A four-way battle between two conservatives one of which a massively popular figure a
democrat, and a socialist.
21

Debs, who eventually co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World (an international union
that pushes for socialist reform), inspired an immense rise in class consciousness throughout the
United States, holding speeches for railway unions, strikes, and settings of the like. He was
heavily involved in anti-war protests and the push to end the still-controversial Espionage Act of
1917 (the act that allowed for many of journalist John Reeds arrests), a commitment that
eventually had him arrested. Despite this, and despite the heavy criticisms he received by the
ruling powers, Debs garnered 1 million votes from within a prison cell. Upon his eventual
release (which did not come until 1921, well after World War I and well after his threatening
influence lost its momentum), he was welcomed by 50,000 citizens cheering his name and
parading the streets.
A candidate who was openly and unashamedly calling for a radical transformation of American
society albeit, not through violence but through gradual reform and pre-existing voting
processes became a popular face and rallying voice for the working public, as well as an
inspiration for politicians down the line.
According to Jacobin Magazine, a popular socialist publication, some 500 socialists held small
offices from mayor to state legislators to sheriffs within the 50 states between 1897 and
1960.
In 1934, Leon Trotsky Vladimir Lenins old apprentice wrote If America Should Go
Communist, arguing that the United States had the material working class conditions necessary
for popular revolution, and that if such an event were to occur, there would be little in the way of
stopping its success. With the Great Depression at its height, articles such as this helped to
spread anti-capitalist sentiment.
That sentiment began to quickly seep into many aspects of American pop culture. Musicians like
Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly sang pro-working class anthems; authors like John
Steinbeck and Jack London took similar themes to the pages of their novels.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Marxism took a front seat in the national
discussion. Several of the popular figures of Black liberation espoused socialist ideology. Rosa
Parks regularly attended local Communist Party meetings; Malcolm X preached on how racism
and capitalism comfortably went hand in hand; even Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed a desire
to alter our economic system to one more equal (troublingly enough, King was assassinated soon
after a speech promoting solidarity between the races and a uniform struggle against poverty).
The Black Panthers took the loudest stance against capitalism during that time. Angela Davis,
Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and Fred Hampton were among the Panthers most famous leaders;
the latter two were killed by police. Taking up arms against law enforcement, forming
community strongholds, and actively pushing for insurrection, the Panthers created a radical
branch of Black culture that permeates even today. Rappers like Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur,
Run the Jewels, and Kendrick Lamar have and continue to carry on the ideals set by the Black
Panthers.
22

As time went on, leftist scholars like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Richard Wolff became
increasingly well-known outside of just academic circles, paving the way for the Left to once
again take the microphone.
Enter: Bernie Sanders and the campaign for the 2016 presidential election. While not a socialist,
but rather a social democrat (politically calling for a sort of bandage for capitalism through
government intervention, akin to the policies of European countries nowadays), Sanders utilized
Debs-esque populist rhetoric that inspired a movement that has yet to simmer, despite Sanders
dropout from the race after the primaries and Donald Trumps victory.
In the wake of Sanders popularity, a 2015 poll constructed by Gallup revealed that 47 percent of
respondents would vote for a socialist president; yet another poll in 2015, by YouGov, found that
59 percent of responding Democrats held a favorable view of socialism, as opposed to 37 percent
holding a favorable view of capitalism. Though control is currently in the hands of the Right, a
progressive movement is coming. A feeling is in the air, one of tension, one of nervous
excitement.
Workers of the World
The day after the election, nothing radical had happened to those within the commune. Linguas
molotov was left unlit, and no one had yet taken up arms. Another sort of fire had been set,
however. People had already begun protesting en masse across the country.
My phone has been blowing up with people interested in our events not even 24 hours after
the election! People are taking to the streets and it can only help build us, said Jon Osborne of
the U.S. Socialist Alternative Party.
For Generation Phoenix, it became time to organize as many people as possible and turn each
respective members region into a hotspot for socialist discourse. Comrade Marley pitched a goal
for everyone: by the end of that week, a local direct action group should be formed by each
member. Each of these groups will do what they feel necessary, while also organizing through
Generation Phoenix to make the movement somewhat centralized.
Triangle briefly chimes in, as he does often, with important news.
Lets make this a reality; it cant fail like CDAP did. Our goal is January 20. Inauguration Day.
Thats when the anarchist general strike is happening in D.C.. Were going to help make it
nationwide.
The decision must have been made quickly within the leftist community; sure enough, socialist
social media accounts were saturated with posts bringing word of a black bloc, a protest where
demonstrators don themselves in black and crowd the streets.
This is it, everyone. He cannot be allowed into office.
23

The popularity of socialism had grown so much over the 2016 election season that talks of
uprising sprang up where none had been found before. Revolution became something discussed
out in the open on social media sites like Facebook and Reddit, with Inauguration Day become
ground zero for many.
Training had begun. Biscuit, an older member of Generation Phoenix, had decided to travel to
Syria with a group of local comrades. There, they would join the socialist Kurdish forces in their
seized territory known as Rojava to help fight ISIL and gain community-building expertise.
Lingua, a New England comrade, decided to spend the coming summer in southern Mexico with
the Zapatistas (named after the Zapatistas of the early 20th century), a socialist, largely Mayan
group that has claimed considerable land in the state of Chiapas.
With so much direct action and preparation taking place, it becomes difficult to imagine the
extent that this movement will take itself. Will it follow the trend of the Occupy Movement,
sparking and fading over a short period of time? Or will it continue to grow and bring the
country to the ideologys logical conclusion: revolution?
January 20 may come and go with no movement at all, or it may bring on parades like the ones
Raul Figueroa attended in his youth, riding on his fathers shoulders. Regardless, he understands
the importance of what is happening here.
Right now, people live in such fear the message Im getting from them is: be scared, dont
trust anybody, dont talk to anybody, dont do anything, Raul said. But the worst thing we can
do right now is to isolate ourselves. We are the power.

24

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2. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print.
3. Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs-- The Election That Changed the
Country. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.
4. Debs, Eugene V. Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs. St. Louis:
P. Wagner, 1916. Print.
5. Evans, Kate, and Paul Buhle. Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg.
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