Related: an account of evolving tactics in “Fighting for the future in occupied Minneapolis” by Pranay Somayajula. Loved this bit in particular:
My comrades and I often make reference to the idea of “developing mass protagonism,” a concept with roots in Latin American Marxist thought that expresses an understanding that successful organizing means helping people see themselves not merely as passive subjects of history, but as active agents with the collective power to bring about revolutionary transformation. I have become increasingly convinced that rather than asking people what radicalized them — a familiar question for anyone who has spent time in left activist circles — a better query would be: what protagonized you? Over the last several weeks, whether or not they realize it yet, thousands of people across Minnesota have found an answer to that question.
One of the great tricks of late-stage capitalism is to convince the mass of us humans that we are powerless in the face of the machinery of state power and capital. But in fact it is nothing more than our collective decision to believe in authority and numbers in a ledger that allows these systems to persevere! As Ursula K. Le Guin famously said,
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality… We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
