95: The Solidarity Episode: There Are Decades Where Nothing Happens and There Are Weeks Where Decades Happen

I'M THE VILLAIN

In a continuation of last week's conversation, we talk with Sean Emery about the larger picture: not the specifics of Israel and Palestine, but about the larger global movement going on amongst the working class.
It's an exciting time to be a revolutionary. We just experienced the largest protest movement in American history. Just this week, as this episode is being released, we have major news organizations finally covering the Tulsa massacres, 100 years after they occurred, and we saw the last 3 survivors testifying before Congress last month. Human Rights Watch, a pretty centrist organization, has formally classified the Palestinian occupation as an apartheid crime against humanity.
All of this is incredibly exciting to watch as many activists have waited for decades for this kind of recognition. And a lot of people have been activated by these recent events and are wondering what to do if they want to act in solidarity. We start this conversation talking about what a revolution looks like in the modern day, because most people likely think of violence when they think of revolution. But we talk about how we can spur social revolution by putting in place the education and institutions to allow for a global watershed moment and put workers in a position where they can truly leverage their power. And to create these conditions for change, we need to activate the human impulse towards collective action and solidarity instead of ingrouping and outgrouping.
As Lenin once said on the topic of social revolution: "There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen." And it's hard to say, but something in the air seems to suggest that those watershed weeks could happen any day now.

Note: In this episode, Sean refers to the Sinovac vaccine as a Russian vaccine, when in fact it was developed by China.

Links:

Philadelphia Free Palestine Coalition: https://www.instagram.com/freepalestinephilly/?hl=en

Socialist Alternative: https://www.socialistalternative.org/

Article on Human Rights Watch classification of the Israeli Occupation as apartheid: https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

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