Well, some highlights from my observations from this past year. Some things that I still enjoy looking back on:
That magic moment in March, when a New York Times article exposed that Democrats were hesitantly admitting that they did in fact drop the ball during Obama’s administration in regard to his rescue package, that really wasn’t. Democrats were angry at the consistently cheap Republicans who didn’t want to give any assistance to struggling Americans during the Coronavirus pandemic, but they also admitted that the rescue package from Obama’s first term was woefully lacking, too cautious and too deferential to those stingy Republicans, something they said they didn’t want to repeat with Biden’s legislation in his first term amid another massive financial end health crisis.
But look at where we are now. I love how we scooped corporate media in March on the World Health Organization’s four-month investigation with 34 scientists from around the world, into the origins of the Coronavirus and reported that no, it most likely did not originate in a lab in Wu Han. Talking about it on this show before NBC new, published the story and getting the facts out against allegations that China leaked the virus from the lab, in contrast to false allegations from not just Trump, that they did not just his appointee to the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, but also in contrast to this idea that came from old Saint Fauci himself, that China must have been less than transparent somewhere with something, although he couldn’t really point to what. We did that in March. And here we are in December and people are still believing that lab leak story.
Back in April. I told you that the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill wasn’t enough, but that bill wasn’t anything close to a leftist agenda, as people were accusing it of being from what I could see at the time, it did some pretty basic common sense stuff toward putting band-aids on the crumbling and outdated infrastructure of this country.
But you want to know what a real “leftist” agenda is? I reminded you then that real socialism and infrastructure is the Venezuelan project for housing. That’s right, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro completed the Great Housing Mission Venezuela Project, which built 3.5 million homes, since the launch of the project in 2011, despite unrelenting crushing US sanctions. Or how about China drastically reducing extreme rural poverty by spending hundreds of billions of dollars between 2016 and 2020 to move rural villages from desperately poor regions of the country into homes built by the government. And there were also offered night school classes that taught job skills and matched with jobs in the regions where they were relocated. The number of registered rural poor in China fell from 98.99 million in 2012, to just 5.51 million in 2020 as a result of China’s efforts. And they’re still not done.
There was the murder of Adam Toledo by Chicago police. The guilty verdict in the Derek Shovan trial. The assault of journalists and protestors in Portland, Oregon. The murder of Makia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio by Columbus police. I talked about Plan Colombia and its legacy that laid the groundwork for the massive national strike and the violent state repression against it in Columbia in May, not knowing that I would be in Columbia talking to some of the Afro-Colombian organizers and participants in that uprising and visiting the very important point of resistance in the Afro-Colombian city of one of Ventura months.
Back in May, I also told y’all that the Build Back Better Plan was actually a Build Back Better Let Down that was already being whittled down to nothing because by then the student loan forgiveness that “Battlin'” Joe Biden promised the millennials, who didn’t entirely trust him anyway, when he was campaigning, well, that had already been axed from the bill in May.
Abdus and I were so very proud to participate in the global demonstrations around the world in June in support of the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation. People poured into the streets in cities all over the globe, and here in DC, after the horrific 11 days of terror that Israel rained down on the open-air prison that they created in Gaza. And here we are in December and Israel is still bombing Gaza and killing Palestinians, and there seems to be no end to the slaughter.
I have enjoyed how Kamala Harris has collapsed like a paper tiger in a soft breeze every time she spoke publicly, starting with her weird comments on “Not visiting the border”, or “She did visit the border”, or “Maybe we don’t know” on her first Vice Presidential trip to Guatemala and Mexico in June that embarrassed the White House. I was excited about that too. It hasn’t gotten better for Harris since then. It hasn’t gotten better for the White House since then. It’s only gone downhill for all of them.
And then the bottom fell out of my world when my Abdus suddenly died on June 15th, a day that will indeed be seared into my heart and mind for me. And I would like to say that my focus on politics stopped but, his death actually made the political, personal in a way that I hated. But in a way that millions experience. In this country after a short break, probably not long enough for sure, it’s true,I dragged myself back into the studio, this work really being one of the things that kept me from falling completely apart to be honest. I channeled my sorrow and my rage at this evil white supremacist capitalist classist system, and the role those politics played in my husband’s death into two very detailed and personal videos called Lessons in the Life of a Black Man that you can find on our YouTube channel Luqman nation. And I hope they’re a fitting tribute to him.
So I’ve been less active politically than normal outside of this work, the past few months. I did go to Columbia in October and feel the spirit of resistance of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous people there. And that refreshed me. So I’m slowly, slowly getting back to a bit of organizing work, but mostly I’m recovering from one chapter of my life, closing in such a tragic and honestly traumatic way and gingerly and probably kind of clumsily navigating this next chapter. So that means sometimes when I feel the absence of my Abdus, especially acutely, it’s okay to not get out of bed, not leave the house to sit and cry, to talk to my therapist or myself. It’s okay to not make every meeting, demonstration, webinar or teach-in. It’s okay to rest and be present in myself, for myself, by myself instead.
That’s hard, but it’s okay. But aside from going through the grieving process, all of this is also about being the most prepared as I possibly can be, the most healthy and whole as I possibly can be, to continue the struggle ahead, which will intensify the struggle for our liberation. This is true for all of us I think since none of us can fight, if we’re all too sick and broken and dysfunctional to even get to the battlefield.
So take care of yourselves and each other, look out for each other, call on your comrades when you don’t hear from them for a while, check on your people, because that is a revolutionary act too, and revolution is definitely coming my friends.
So I’m wishing you a revolutionary, purposeful New Year and a happy one too.