Margarita Ortega- Mexican Anarchist Revolutionary
Margarita said in 1911 to her unconscious partner: “I love you, but I also love those who suffer: and I fight and risk my life for them. I don”t want to see any more men and women giving their energy, their health, their minds, their future to enrich the bourgeoisie. I don’t want men to command men any longer. I’m resolved to continue fighting for the cause of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, and if you’re a man, come with me to the battle. If that’s not the case, forget me; I don’t want to be the partner of a coward.”
Margarita Ortega was born to a family of bourgeios and proletarians who aspired to be bourgeios. For her life she chose to disconnect and join in the struggle of poor Mexicans who she felt brotherhood/sisterhood with. Along with her daughter Rosaura she fought and aided the Mexican Revolution with anarchist values and a hope for a day when Mexicans could be free. She was tortured and assassinated after her capture in Baja California after refusing to offer any information about the insurgency. Even to her death she remained committed to Mexican Anarchism and refused to participate within the sphere of politics that needed dismantling and not reform. Her hopes and the hopes of the Mexican Revolution never came to fruition but all over the world the Spirit of women like Margarita and her daughter Rosaura survive with the possibility of a freedom not far off.
Preaching Peace is a Crime
“Liberty or death” ought to be our cry, and upon hearing it we should rise first to crush the cowards who preach peace, and then the tyrants.
Ricardo Flores Magon
This is a excerpt from a essay by Flores Magon where he challenges the idea of whose benefit the peace movement is working for. A movement that he critiques only sustains the environment of white supremacy by leading masses of people directly into its system. It’s just a critique!
People of Color Organize: Who is Oakland: Anti-Oppression Activism, the Politics of Safety and State Co-Optation [#Feminist Friday]
An extensive criticism of anti-oppression politics, their relation to non-profits, capitalism and the state, as well as how they play out in movements such as Occupy.
This pamphlet – written collaboratively by a group of people of color, women, and queers – is offered in deep…
This is a great article that dives into a handful of issues relating to radical organizing. There are good critiques of the Bay Area and the Occupy Movement. My favorite section is on non-profits. ‘Radical in form, liberal in content.’
People of Color Organize: “If We Have Rice, We Can Have Everything”: A Critique of Khmer Rouge Ideology and Practice
Long read but very well worth the time.
The Khmer Rouge have become synonymous with the terror of ‘communism’. Regardless of the context in which someone today makes the case for a different society, Pol Pot and his alleged ‘stone-age communism’ is always invoked as a counter-‘argument’, along with the KGB and the Berlin…
