Why We Need a Revolution in the United States of America
The amount of suffering, death, and destruction caused by the United States is immeasurable. The United States military drops bombs on the children of the world while carrying out wars of aggression in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Over 800 US military bases scattered in countries around the world threaten any people who dare rebel against American domination. These bases and wars primarily ensure that labor and resources in these countries enrich the ruling class of the United States. This economic relationship condemns billions of people in oppressed countries to unemployment or jobs that pay horribly in extraordinarily dangerous working conditions. The workers in these factories and fields are condemned to producing slop for the American middle classes instead of goods for the well-being of their own countries. These life conditions, in addition to causing violence and social chaos, force many to migrate to the US as the only way to survive.
Within the borders of this country, masses of people face poverty, displacement, homelessness, police brutality, and ICE raids. Black people, and other oppressed nationalities, face all these horrors at higher rates, as well as white supremacist violence. Patriarchy, deeply embedded in the function of this society, produces oppression over women, trans, and LGBQ people, subjecting them to people and networks that perpetrate sexual assault and physical violence at astronomic rates. The sex trade thrives on dilapidated street corners and in the halls of power.
The US ruling class passes down some of the tremendous wealth they plunder from people and resources around the world to the American middle classes, essentially bribing large segments of the population to go along with this system that produces incredible amounts of suffering. The culture of America poisons people with a selfish “me first” attitude that drains the masses of spiritual fulfillment and meaning. Media institutions and schools inculcate the population with American exceptionalism: the lie that the riches acquired by this country are based on enlightened morals, and the citizens of this country are superior to those of other countries. This selfish attitude and “American exceptionalism” divide poor and oppressed people, keeping us from seeing our common interest in coming together to make revolution.
These horrors are on full display in New Mexico. This state ranks among the worst five in child welfare, drug overdoses, education, poverty, and medical infrastructure. The New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD), the institution supposedly responsible for protecting children, subjects them to insufferable conditions in the agency’s custody. More than half of the children who age out of CYFD custody wind up homeless in just a couple of years.
Despite myths of “tri-cultural harmony” between Native people, Hispanic people, and whites, Native people in this state undergo immense oppression. The government uses Native people and their culture to attract tourists to galleries in Santa Fe, while tens of thousands of Diné people live without electricity and running water on the reservation. The nominal sovereignty granted to tribal governments does nothing to end the economic devastation and geographic isolation that Native people continue to endure at the hands of the US government.
The Democrats who currently run Albuquerque and the state government act as if they are against Trump’s deportation policy, but their actions speak otherwise. New Mexico is home to three infamous detention centers. In these camps, immigrants are tortured with physical beatings, disgusting conditions, lack of medical care or legal support, and rotten food. The City of Albuquerque claims to be a sanctuary city for immigrants, yet the city rents out airport space to CSI Aviation, a company that plays an integral role for ICE by chartering almost 80% of the agency’s deportation flights.
In recent years, homelessness has soared in the city of Albuquerque. Rent and the prices of homes skyrocket while wages remain stagnant and good jobs are hard to come by. The city government pretends they are fixing the issue by pouring money into a dysfunctional shelter system. The Albuquerque Police Department stops the homeless wherever they go and arrests them for sitting on the sidewalk or having too many belongings. The jail subjects inmates, half of whom are homeless, to abuse and denies them medical care. Vigilante men as well as larger networks make sexual assault, human trafficking, and violence daily threats to women and trans people, especially those on the street. Instead of investigating and stopping these crimes, APD spends their time harassing the homeless and murdering people suffering from mental health crises. Year after year APD ranks top among the deadliest police departments in the country, and New Mexico typically has the highest murder rate per capita by the police.
All of this plays out within an ecological system that has already collapsed. New Mexico and the rest of the Southwest have been in a mega drought for over a quarter of a century, making it the driest multi-decade period in 1,200 years. Precipitation levels fall dangerously low year after year, resulting in, among other horrors, the once-mighty Rio Grande regularly drying up north of Albuquerque. The governor, instead of doing anything about this, allows oil and gas companies to make massive profits in the southeast part of the state. As the water shortage becomes more dire, municipal governments green light data centers and weapon manufacturing plants, both of which accelerate water shortages and produce nothing of value for the people of New Mexico.
Thousands of acres of earth are no longer fit for life in New Mexico due to uranium mining and nuclear fallout from the Trinity Test–the world’s first nuclear bomb which was dropped in New Mexico. The results from this are entire bloodlines of mostly rural Native and Hispanic people being poisoned, causing high rates of cancer and other illnesses. The legacy of nuclear production in New Mexico continues with the Los Alamos National Labs ramping up the production of plutonium pit cores that are used for nuclear bombs.
Revolutionary Action New Mexico’s Role in Building a Revolution in the US
Capitalism is the economic system that the entire world lives under today. It’s a system with a ruling class, the bourgeoisie, that controls what is produced, how society’s institutions are run, what politicians get elected, and more. This class of people hoards resources and political power for themselves, and in the process oppresses billions of people around the world every day.
In order to end the oppression and the environmental collapse that capitalism has created, we need a revolution in this country. A revolution is not just something that happens. It’s something that must be consciously forged and fought for.
Revolutionary Action New Mexico seeks to build the forces for revolution by:
- Going out to the proletariat in our state, the people who have no means for survival besides selling themselves to a job or the hustle for most of their life, and bringing them forward to fight back against their oppression.This means gathering the ideas of the people we meet, bringing them up as leaders, working with them to understand their struggles in the context of regional, national and global motions of capitalism, and building a fighting movement around these struggles that sees revolution as its ultimate goal.
- Bringing the masses into confrontation with those responsible for their oppression. Whether these enemies are landlords, politicians, police or ICE, how can we expect to be prepared to take on the ruling class if we redirect, contain or neutralize the manifestations of the righteous anger of the masses? We strive to be in lockstep with the bold ones who understand that these confrontations will invite repression and setbacks but that we cannot win without them. The more we learn from these experiences, and the more we all become more capable leaders, the greater our ability to up the ante. We put this forward in contrast to the popular currents among the established Left in the US. Often we see Leftist protests mobilize large numbers of people, only to lead them away from defiant confrontation of the enemy, prioritizing the safety of a few activists over the masses of oppressed people.
- Popularizing revolutionary ideology, theory, and history through our campaigns, along with broad exposure of injustices. Despite great numbers of people being open to the idea of the revolutionary transformation of society, the vast majority of people don’t think it is possible, don’t know how to make one happen, or are unaware of the history of revolutions, particularly those led by communists. We are dedicated to introducing increasing numbers of people to this history and theory so that we can learn from and build upon it.
- Training people up to become revolutionaries. This requires developing a wide range of skills, like developing original political analysis based in our work on the ground, communicating our ideas through writing and speaking, building and leading mass organizations, and guiding political struggles. It also requires a dedication to advancing our work in every way possible.
What it Means to Be a Member of Revolutionary Action New Mexico
Members of Revolutionary Action New Mexico are deeply involved in an area of political work, maintain a rich intellectual life through collective study of revolutionary history and theory, with a focus on the communist journal Going Against the Tide, contribute to our writing projects, help chart the strategic course for the organization, carry out decisions made by the organization, and act with respect and integrity in all aspects of their life.
Our Exceptionally Serious Responsibility
In 2022, members of Revolutionary Action New Mexico started a weekly food distribution in a small New Mexican town. We hoped to use this food distribution as a way to organize the people we fed against the horrors they faced. Though we made genuine connections with homeless people, and recruited some incredible people into the organization, we failed to do more than give out free food. In 2024, we attended Dare to Struggle’s national conference, which inspired us to go to the masses and organize collective struggles. Eventually we started Dare to Struggle New Mexico. For the next two years, across Taos, Albuquerque, and other parts of the state, we organized people to take on Section 8 landlords, killer cops, local governments neglecting and criminalizing the homeless, and the mass deportation machine.
We learned a tremendous amount in these two years. We confronted all kinds of challenges, and we had to constantly criticize our own efforts to grow stronger. We have come to understand more of what it takes to be revolutionaries and to dedicate our lives to the people. As Dare to Struggle we committed to “going to the masses” on a weekly basis, but now we commit ourselves to making revolution by any means necessary. We want to inspire others to make the same leap.
We don’t get to proclaim ourselves as revolutionaries without backing it up, day after day. We commit ourselves to constantly push forward and discard ideas and methods that no longer advance the revolution, even when it feels impossible. We will not rest until oppression is rid from our earth.