The world is changing with new openings and a new radicalizing generation. And with that, our own tasks and presentation are changing too.
Kasama is moving to transform itself, including the development of a new website.
Many of you read this site regularly. Many appreciate our work so far. Help us take a major leap together.
Funds are needed — immediately 2,000 to 3,000 dollars, and more (in the tens of thousands) will be needed soon for a major restructuring of our project. Please consider contributing generously.
Kasama began as a relatively simple blog during a period of relative lull. It worked in a beginning way. It has created one space to regroup revolutionaries and start to re-conceive communist theory.
We have been hastening while we awaited — together.
A significant break is opened up in the political terrain. We need to adapt. Seize new opportunities. Build on what we’ve done — while we refine our presentation, while we adjust our focus… quickly.
Everything about Kasama must change, and so too must Kasama’s web presence. I have sketched out a general outline of what is being envisioned.
We need to expand the team behind the site itself. We need more designers, developers, moderators, and regular writers. We have to move beyond ad-hoc.
The entire look and feel of the site is going to receive a complete overhaul.
The site needs to grow beyond the blog format to a center of communist publication that expands its columns, bloggers, media, and horizontal discussion.
Facebook and Twitter need to be integrated into every aspect of our site. Conversation streams on those networks need to be integrated into this site.
We need our own social networking capacity. We need individuals to be able to create their own profiles, make their own posts and share them on each other’s walls, as part creating of a broader center of radical discussion.
The various blogs and their posts that have been initiated by the Kasama project can be integrated into a unified site.
And these are only the first immediate steps…
Again, to accomplish these things we will have bills to pay and it will take new volunteers stepping forward. Contribute with the Make a Donation line, send an email to kasamasite (at) yahoo (dot) com to volunteer, and let’s do this together.
Forty-two years ago today, Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago Police Dept. with FBI cooperation.
As Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party’s Chicago chapter, he brought about a truce between various street gangs in Chicago, organized weekly rallies, worked with the BPP’s local People’s Clinic, taught political education classes, and launched a project for community supervision of the police.
He was twenty-one years old when Chicago police gunned him down in his bed, after he had been drugged by his bodyguard, who was an FBI operative. Despite their attempts at a cover-up, Chicago Police Dept. were exposed in the documentary “The Murder of Fred Hampton” which we have provided below in its entirety. This film does not only reveal the lengths to which Chicago PD, along with the FBI, went to kill Fred Hampton, and destroy the Black Panthers, but also portrays his talents as a speaker, organizer and thinker who was tireless in his efforts to fuse revolutionary politics with the people.
With the recent government crackdowns of occupations in major cities across the country, it appears that the Occupy Together movement is in a period transition. We are all pondering what the next wave of our movenment will look like. In many parts of the country as Occupiers prepare for the winter one idea has been to take the occupations indoors, into foreclosed homes, corporate headquarters, etc. The following call for a national day of action on foreclosure including the call for sit-ins at foreclosed properties may be a glimpse of what our winter of resistance may look like.
December 6 will be a big day of action for the Occupy Wall Street movement. #OWS will join the struggle of families and communities that have been on the front lines of a struggle for economic justice. We will stand in solidarity and ask our fellow occupations to join us for a national day of action on the foreclosure crisis. We are fighting Wall Street’s reach on every block, every farm, every house in America with sit-ins at foreclosed properties to right this moral injustice.
The Occupy movement is born of the simple belief that humanity could meet our common needs if not for the predation and greed of the very few. Nowhere is this disparity of wealth and power more evident than in the struggle to secure the human right to housing.
In a nation that puts the right to housing at the center of its founding dream, millions of people have lost their homes or fear that they soon will because of the foreclosure crisis. Wall Street created this crisis with lies and greed. And Washington, instead of investigating Wall Street and banks, is cutting back room deals to let bankers escape justice for their crimes.
Wall Street turned a fundamental human need into a badly rigged casino game with fraudulent lending practices and corrupt securitization. They destroyed our economy, kicked tens of thousands of people illegally out of their homes, and are now using a small fraction of the money they stole to buy off politicians and settle for far less than they owe.
We post our major milestones to give readers a sense of the audience for Kasama. Today we passed 4 million page views. So it seems like time for a brief report.
The chart above starts in February 2010, when our traffic rebooted after a domain-name change. On December 2010, it crossed the 100,000 a month line. October 2011 (last month during the outbreak of Occupy Wall Street!) our traffic crosses the 150,000 a month line for the first time.
The details are easy to quantify:
4,002,649 page views since we went live four year ago (in December 2007).
3,623 posts — which includes crossposts of interesting material and a section of original material by our own authors
31,890 comments in threads — which is a ratio of almost 9:1 (comments to posts) and suggests an engaged community of people.
Popular posts often have more than 1,000 hits in their first 24 hours. Very popular posts sometimes get 2,000 hits.
What Kasama has created is a space defined by very radical, revolutionary and communist politics — and that space has become host to a many-sided discussion of key controversies of revolutionary change, and become home to a community of people who create that discussion.
Panda’s laptop helped securitymen lay trap for Kishenji
Nov 25, 2011
A laptop confiscated recently from a top Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda’s hideout in Odisha is believed to have helped the security forces carry anti-Maoist operation against Mallojula Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji.
According to sources, the laptop was analysed by top analysts in Delhi to locate the whereabouts of the no 3 leader in the Maoist hierarchy.
According to sources, security forces including the CRPF had surrounded Kishenji and a few other top leaders in the forests of West Bengal on Wednesday itself. However, Kishenji managed to give police the slip only to land in the middle of yet another ambush. An encounter for half an hour resulted in his killing.
Panda’s laptop is believed to have provided several important clues about the whereabouts of other leaders including another politburo member Akkiraju Ramakrishna alias RK. According to soruces, RK was earlier spotted in the Andhra-Orissa border. However, a miscommunication among the security forces in cornering him allowed him to escape the police net recently. Though unconfirmed, sources said the next target would be RK since his location has almost been confirmed.
We received the terrible news that the leading Indian Maoist Kishenji (AKA Mallojula Koteswara Rao) was murdered in by government forces in a “fake encounter.” Kishenji was a leading figure and spokesman for India’s Maoist (Naxalite) movement — and reportedly the military leader of their embryonic popular armed forces.
The following is one of the more recent accounts of outrage and exposure.
Our hearts are with the brave communist fighters of India and the hundreds of millions of oppressed people who dream of liberation.
Varvara Rao:
Maoist leader Kishenji was tortured before being killed
Telugu poet and Maoist sympathiser Varvara Rao Friday alleged that top Maoist leader Kishenji was tortured before being killed in a fake encounter and demanded a white paper from the West Bengal government.
“Kishenji was subjected to inhuman torture as his body bore marks of several injuries and he was killed in a fake encounter 24 hours after being nabbed. I demand a white paper on the killing,” Rao told reporters at the state secretariat.
Jose Redfox suggested that this be posted to craft and share a critical response together.
Jose said this piece had played a role in “peace police” actions during various occupations. Let’s also share, if we can, what kinds of actions and assumptions such a piece has been used to justify (whether it was the intention of the author or not).
Violence is what the police use. It’s what the state uses.
If we want a revolution, it’s because we want a better world, because we think we have a bigger imagination, a more beautiful vision. So we’re not violent; we’re not like them in crucial ways. When I see a New York City policeman pepper-spray already captive young women in the face, I am disgusted; I want things to be different. And that pepperspraying incident, terrible though it was for the individuals, did not succeed in any larger way.
This piece is available as podcast. It is part of our larger Kasama offerings on peoples’ history.
The Puritan colonists of Massachusetts embraced a line from Psalms 2:8:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
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by Mike Ely
Intro to that first occupation
We are talking widely among ourselves about “occupying” Wall Street — taking the center of an empire back for the people of the world. We are talking about “Occupy Everything” — sharing our dreams of taking all society away from banks, police, and the heartless authority of money. We hope this moment marks a beginning of the end for them.
And yet, just such a moment cannot be understood without remembering that other occupation — the one that marked the beginning of their beginning.
Arrogant invaders occupied a land using the most naked forms of genocide. They invented new forms of slavery, slave trade and profit making. They arrived with their high-tech arms and bibles. They declared all was theirs by divine right, while they took it all with raw force.
Put another way: That first occupation was a sweeping nightmare that starts with Columbus. It has continued for 500 years. For the Native peoples of today (and therefore for us too) it remains an ongoing story of domination and removal. The nation-state who today labels millions of indigenous descendants “illegal aliens” arrived in boats with only royal decrees and their holy book as documents of legitimacy.
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England.
Here is the true story of that Thanksgiving — a story of murder and theft, of the first “corporations” invented on North American soil, of religious fundamentalism and relentless mania for money. It is a story of the birth of capitalism.
This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time.
Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing.
This is what it looks like when the deliberate, routinized acts of authorities concede the high moral ground to us. This is how a whole generation learns about who is listening to the people, and who coldly treats the people like cockroaches needing sprays from a can. Acts of power meant to assert and enforced the norm — now expose that norm to vast audiences (including internationally). This is what awakening looks like. This is what delegitimization emerges from. This is the platform of consciousness upon which a new revolutionary movement can be built.
One million views and climbing — at youtube. The video is viral, the mood is viral.
In the aftermath, the students confront UC Davis Chancellor Katehi with a stunning silence. Everywhere the camera pans shows how many faces there were in the huge crowd — silent watching and indictment. In answer to “students as threat” and “occupations are unsafe” — they displayed their unity, their discipline, their utter distance from the authorities.
Here too the world is watching, here too the video has now reached a million views on youtube (and uncounted more in other venues).
Whatever lies the mainstream media whips up for those who still watch it, there is another answer captured in real time and shared through channels that are not yet controlled.
A lot of liberal groups, political parties, have made compromises with the military council in these last 10 months in fear of the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise of the Islamists and somehow taking over the country and creating an Islamist state, or taking away a civil state. And so, they made compromises with the military as well. So, you have this, kind of, this politics going on, and what’s forgotten is why people went into the street in the first place. The calls were for bread, freedom, and social justice, human dignity. People feel this has not been achieved, and so they say, “es-sawra mustamirra,” the revolution continues.
Egyptian Revolution Enters New Phase As Thousands Brave Violence to Protest Military Rule
Activists in Egypt are holding their fourth day of massive demonstrations to demand an end to military rule and a transition to a civilian government. The protests continue amidst a massive crackdown and an offer to resign from Egypt’s interim cabinet. Reports from Cairo’s main morgue said at least 33 people have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded in the military government’s crackdown. The turmoil comes as Egypt is scheduled to begin holding parliamentary elections on Monday. “I can’t see how a legitimate election can take place when you have such state-sponsored brutality happening in the heart of the capital city of the country,” says Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who joins us for an update from Cairo. “What many Egyptians have been seeing over these past 10 months has been that the revolution has been abused and stolen and deformed, and that the military council in Egypt has really not lived up to any of its promises in this transitional period, from human rights abuses to just their complete grip on power.”
“When words are spoken that (suddenly! finally!) invoke that idea of negating a whole system or structure (i.e. “Occupy Everywhere!” “All power to the General Assembly!” “Long live the Oakland Commune!”) — every nerve should go on alert. We should tune in intently to the reception.
“Who is speaking? Who is listening? Who is answering back?…
“We should take note as the stone hits the pond, and read the ripples. Because we are wanting to generate waves.”
Any complex human task, (any!) that you speak the words quite a bit in advance of the actual moment, in order to be able to act when the actual alignment of stars is “just right.” And you often have to speak them with poetry that won’t hold up to lawyerly textualism (“We want the world and we want it now!” or one of my favorite Pantherisms “Blood to the horse’s brow, and woe to those who cannot swim.”)
If you think about it: Any revolutionary cause needs contagious agitational slogans the preconfigure in the mind the visions and goals that will (eventually, hopefully) give rise to action slogans.
That is how ideas change matter: When revolutionary ideas become grasped (understood, taken up and creatively morphed) by large numbers of people, matter itself is changed (meaning that social relations are overthrown and their defenders are challenged and defeated).
Here’s a statement from Mexico, addressed to the Oakland Commune. November 13, 2011. Spanish version
To the Peoples of the World
To the Occupy Movement
To the Oakland Commune
To Our Sisters and Brothers in Struggle on the Other Side of the Border
We don’t need to remind you of the deep connections between Wall Street, Gringo Capitalism and our Mexican misery. From Imperialist wars to the initial experiments in agrobiotechnology, Mexico has been the principal landscape for offensives by northern capital. We have participated and continue to, in the uprising of the Zapatistas against the neoliberal attack of NAFTA. The uprising which set the spark for the movement against neoliberalism. We met each other at the summits of Seattle, Prague, Genoa, Miami and Cancun. We met each other through a great global conversation.
It’s been a long time since we fought together in the movement against neoliberalism and the world has changed since those times. Today the narco war is devastating our society. As two sides of the same coin, on one side we have the narco and on the other the militarization of the country. These two faces are crushing us from both sides. Although it seems like they fight, they are both at the service of capital and in the modern world local capital is connected in a strong fashion to global capital. In the last few months we have learned these connections between Wall Street and narco money. According to one analysis, narco money was the liquid capital necessary to rescue the banking sector from the initial hits of the financial crisis in 2008 [1].
Connect people with Kasama’s rich offering of pamphlets. This two-sided handout describes key Kasama publications. And describes the two ways that people can get them: by ordering a printed version, or by downloading and printing a PDF. Print this and share it.
“99% / MIC CHECK! / LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / #OCCUPY MOVEMENT / OCCUPY WALL STREET / list of cities, states and countries / OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE.”
A few hours later I spoke with Mark Read, who organized the “bat-signal” project. He tells Boing Boing why and how he did this, and what technology he used.
With the recent government crackdowns of occupations in major cities across the country, it appears that the Occupy Together movement is in a period transition. We are all pondering what the next wave of our movenment will look like. In many parts of the country as Occupiers prepare for the winter one idea has been to take the occupations indoors, into foreclosed homes, corporate headquarters, etc. The following call for a national day of action on foreclosure including the call for sit-ins at foreclosed properties may be a glimpse of what our winter of resistance may look like.
The following article appeared on the 
