Getting Tired of Reformists
“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio, 1964.
Have you noticed whenever shit things happen some supposedly radical campaign group comes forward claiming to speak for women or black people or whatever it is. They talk the talk and it all seems good radical stuff. They have us march to the top of the hill and then suddenly come up with some shitty reformist demand. Because they have no political imagination, because they are gutless and clueless when it comes to creating structural change. They all want “system change” but they would rather drop dead then actually do anything that will create it.
So after all the shouting and outrage and rhetoric, what’s the actual plan? More laws to protect women, repeal of the police bill – all “sensible” stuff which we all know means it’s shite. We don’t want to ask for stuff from the system – we want to get rid of the damn thing.
This is 2021!
125,000 have just died miserable deaths over the past year because the government is not interested in protecting working and vulnerable people. We have kids going hungry by the million. We have local government administrators slashing services while raising the most regressive of all taxes – the council tax so the rich don’t have to pay for Covid. And to top it all, the ruling class doesn’t give a flying fuck about stopping climate breakdown which is going to have the next generation slaughtered, raped and starved to death, if we want to call a spade a spade on what scientists have been saying for 30 years.
So let’s get real. Nothing is going to save us unless we bring down the government and replace it with assemblies of ordinary people making the decisions. We’re going to get hurt anyway right – worse than our worst imaginations. So there’s nothing to lose.
People and organisations who claim to speak for us don’t know anything about what it’s like to live with all the stress and despair and depression. They’re doing fine. They have skin in the game.
We need to say to all those self selected people who claim to speak on our behalf - get out of the way. Let’s come together and decide ourselves if we want to continue to be lied to, insulted, and then killed.
Valerie Brown is standing to be the last Mayor of London. To show the defeatists and reformists what the shining light of Revolution looks like. What courage and joy look like when you go for what you really want, rather than what we have been told is possible.
Those of us supporting her don’t care about winning some rigged election. It’s about not taking it anymore. It’s about living a life worth living. And that’s how we will win big time.
