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Education for Our Liberation
Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of the Summer 1964 SNCC Freedom School Program in Mississippi
“So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do,
how we are willing to say ‘no’ to withdraw from that system
and begin within our community to start to function
and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs.”
— Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power” Speech, 1966
Throughout the history of Black freedom struggles—both in the United States and globally—questions of self-determination have remained constant. Whether the battle was against Jim Crow segregation or the cultural remnants of colonialism, visions for new institutions that center the needs of marginalized communities have been extensive. These visions have radically imagined alternatives to socioeconomic disenfranchisement: pinpointing community-based, consciousness-raising education as a key tool for freedom.
In December 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary Charlie Cobb penned a proposal for a summer Freedom School program in Mississippi to the SNCC executive committee, noting the need for some educational program that would supplement the lackluster and racist education Black high school students were receiving in the education system. Due to decades of racialized and gendered poverty, Black people in Mississippi had extreme barriers to educational opportunities. For instance, in the early 1960s, less than five percent of Black Mississippians were high school graduates (Strukey 2016). The SNCC executive committee approved the proposal, and a Freedom School was developed by members of SNCC (Chilcoat & Ligon 1995:24).
While racialized violence and discrimination continue into the twenty-first century, it would be remiss of us all not to acknowledge the extensive work done by organizations like SNCC to combat anti-Black racism in their communities.
Context, Curriculum, and Elements
Centering the lived experiences of Black students in Mississippi, the Freedom School curriculum was created by a collective of educators and activists over the course of a two-day conference. In addition to providing the students with extensive academic and intellectual support, the Freedom School was first and foremost proposed to nurture students’ political consciousness and give them the tools to organize against racial injustice themselves (Chilcoat & Ligon 1995:25). The curriculum contained a multitude of interdisciplinary elements:
- an academic component focused on developing reading, writing, and math skills,
- a citizenship component to encourage students to think critically about their community and draw connections between their personal experiences and the greater climate of white supremacy in the United States, and
- a ‘Guide to Negro History’ that explored the socio-political activism of Black people around the globe (SNCC Digital Gateway 2016).
By dedicating a large part of the curriculum to Black history, the SNCC Freedom Schools opened the path to a consciousness-raising model that stressed a connection with the greater African diaspora and affirmed notions of Black transnational identity for students. The schools themselves were attended by students voluntarily; Freedom School teachers knocked on doors in the community they taught in to explain the purpose of the school and invite students to attend. By relying on word of mouth, the Freedom School classes across Mississippi gained popularity among community members. By the end of the Summer of 1964, over fifty Freedom Schools had been created, reaching over 2,100 Mississippians both young and adult (Watson 2014).
SNCC’s leadership and teaching model was largely influenced by mentor Ella Baker, an organizer in the Civil Rights Movement who developed the educational pedagogy of ‘democratic education’ which aims to teach students “…about the emancipatory nature of learning and schooling” (Watson 2014). Due to this, the Freedom School curriculum was deliberately developed to invest in the leadership potential of all students and create a learning environment in which teachers and students were both co-creators of knowledge. SNCC recognized that the educational institutions in Mississippi were failing Black students in a multitude of ways, so the curriculum needed to be flexible enough to accommodate various student needs: as they studied the curriculum, teachers were told to discard it and to create, on the spot if necessary, activities and questions that responded to the needs of the students in front of them. The curriculum’s central premise, the importance of questioning, challenged the concept of a written curriculum. The Freedom School curriculum encouraged—in fact, mandated—that teachers improvise (Emery et al. 2004).
Although the majority of Freedom Schools started their day off with singing, each school differed in terms of its daily schedule and classroom content. While some Freedom School students wanted to spend the bulk of their day learning deeply about Black historical figures and events such as the Haitian Revolution or Harriet Tubman, other Freedom School students were concerned with improving reading/writing skills or learning French. Many Freedom School classrooms even focused on the Civil Rights Struggle waging across the nation and internationally at the time. Freedom School teachers pushed students to discuss among themselves organizing tactics and strategies for, for example, Black voter registration (Sturkey 2004). In addition to the use of discussion, Freedom Schools in Mississippi utilized a diverse range of artistic and literary methods to give students the tools needed to both push back on dominant white supremacist societal narratives and take pride in their identity as Black people.
Using poetry, plays, academic essays, roleplaying, and short stories, the 1964 Freedom Schools worked to reconstitute and refigure a Southern Black identity outside of the racism that historically marginalized and defined the life of a Black person in Mississippi. The Freedom School curriculum challenged the reductive 1960s imaginations of the so-called Southern United States as simply a poverty-stricken area and recognized (through art, performance, literature, etc.) that the censuring of Black history in standard textbooks minimized the traumatic history of enslavement and the Black experience in Mississippi. Moreover, many Freedom Schools published newsletters that included the art and writing of Freedom School students as well as news from the Freedom Summer voting registration organizing work (Emery et al. 2004). These newsletters voiced political consciousness and activism to an audience that went beyond the Black students and SNCC volunteers involved in the Freedom Summer campaign.
Funding
Teachers were not paid, so they had to arrange their own room and board in the (typically) small, rural town they’d be teaching in. The budgets of the Freedom Schools were nearly non-existent, so Freedom School teachers were also expected to crowdfund supplies for the classrooms themselves. For example, before the start of the Freedom Summer Campaign, all volunteers were expected to ask companies to contribute books and equipment. Freedom School teachers relied heavily on the communities they lived and worked in for support. While a small budget was calculated for each town, the communities themselves generally provided a place for the classes—e.g., in a church basement—and donated equipment like tape recorders or projectors (Emery et al. 2014).
The Legacy of the 1964 Freedom Summer Schools
The Freedom School program started in 1964 summer was explicitly designed to develop the power of Black Mississippians: the schools pushed to deconstruct the U.S. public educational system that operated (and continues to operate) by maintaining elitist, eurocentric standards of intellect. Through its cultural and educational work, the Freedom Schools created spaces that supported and empowered Black people in a society that did not readily supply that knowledge. For many students, the Freedom Schools served as an entirely new opportunity to dream and envision a future beyond the constraints of exploitative sharecropping or racial terror.
The Freedom School educational model, of providing alternative education as a means of pushing back on dominant narratives and unapologetically claiming the human right to decent education, continued to influence activists beyond just the sociohistorical moment of Freedom Summer. After the summer ended, some Freedom School volunteer teachers decided to stay in Mississippi and continued to facilitate classes into the fall of 1964. Depending on the community, Freedom Schools served as community hubs for tutoring young Black people after school, held nighttime classes for Black adults and the voter registration effort, or continued classes for “children whose regular public school classes had been suspended for cotton-picking” (Emery et al. 2004).
As the Black Freedom Struggle continued, notions of ‘democratic education’ remained present in the ideological framework of the Black Power era institution-building (Carmichael 1966:53) and contemporary freedom projects such as the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School Program which “…serve[s] children and youth in grades K–12 in communities where quality academic enrichment programming is limited, too expensive, or non-existent” (Children’s Defense Fund New York) or the Gaza solidarity encampments on college campuses globally throughout the Spring of 2024 that offered public, political education programming. Although institutional racism and race-based school segregation remain a serious problem (Hale 2014), dozens of freedom schools in the United States today identify the 1964 SNCC Freedom Schools as an influence. Liberation struggles across the globe, from Turtle Island to Palestine, continue to push for change by employing similar educational strategies to inspire others to fight for collective liberation.
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{
"article":
{
"title" : "Education for Our Liberation: Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of the Summer 1964 SNCC Freedom School Program in Mississippi",
"author" : "maya finoh",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/education-for-our-liberation-reflections-on-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-summer-1964-sncc-freedom-school-program-in-mississippi",
"date" : "2024-09-05 21:47:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/sncc-thumb.jpg",
"excerpt" : "“So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do,how we are willing to say ‘no’ to withdraw from that systemand begin within our community to start to functionand to build new institutions that will speak to our needs.”— Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power” Speech, 19661 Carmichael, Stokely. “Black Power.” Voices of Democracy, University of California at Berkeley, Oct. 29, 1966, www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/carmichael-black-power-speech-text. ↩ ",
"content" : "“So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do,how we are willing to say ‘no’ to withdraw from that systemand begin within our community to start to functionand to build new institutions that will speak to our needs.”— Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power” Speech, 19661Throughout the history of Black freedom struggles—both in the United States and globally—questions of self-determination have remained constant. Whether the battle was against Jim Crow segregation or the cultural remnants of colonialism, visions for new institutions that center the needs of marginalized communities have been extensive. These visions have radically imagined alternatives to socioeconomic disenfranchisement: pinpointing community-based, consciousness-raising education as a key tool for freedom.In December 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary Charlie Cobb penned a proposal for a summer Freedom School program in Mississippi to the SNCC executive committee2, noting the need for some educational program that would supplement the lackluster and racist education Black high school students were receiving in the education system. Due to decades of racialized and gendered poverty, Black people in Mississippi had extreme barriers to educational opportunities. For instance, in the early 1960s, less than five percent of Black Mississippians were high school graduates (Strukey 2016)3. The SNCC executive committee approved the proposal, and a Freedom School was developed by members of SNCC (Chilcoat & Ligon 1995:24)4. While racialized violence and discrimination continue into the twenty-first century, it would be remiss of us all not to acknowledge the extensive work done by organizations like SNCC to combat anti-Black racism in their communities.Context, Curriculum, and ElementsCentering the lived experiences of Black students in Mississippi, the Freedom School curriculum was created by a collective of educators and activists over the course of a two-day conference. In addition to providing the students with extensive academic and intellectual support, the Freedom School was first and foremost proposed to nurture students’ political consciousness and give them the tools to organize against racial injustice themselves (Chilcoat & Ligon 1995:25)4. The curriculum contained a multitude of interdisciplinary elements: an academic component focused on developing reading, writing, and math skills, a citizenship component to encourage students to think critically about their community and draw connections between their personal experiences and the greater climate of white supremacy in the United States, and a ‘Guide to Negro History’ that explored the socio-political activism of Black people around the globe (SNCC Digital Gateway 2016)5.By dedicating a large part of the curriculum to Black history, the SNCC Freedom Schools opened the path to a consciousness-raising model that stressed a connection with the greater African diaspora and affirmed notions of Black transnational identity for students. The schools themselves were attended by students voluntarily; Freedom School teachers knocked on doors in the community they taught in to explain the purpose of the school and invite students to attend. By relying on word of mouth, the Freedom School classes across Mississippi gained popularity among community members. By the end of the Summer of 1964, over fifty Freedom Schools had been created, reaching over 2,100 Mississippians both young and adult (Watson 2014)6.SNCC’s leadership and teaching model was largely influenced by mentor Ella Baker, an organizer in the Civil Rights Movement who developed the educational pedagogy of ‘democratic education’ which aims to teach students “…about the emancipatory nature of learning and schooling” (Watson 2014)6. Due to this, the Freedom School curriculum was deliberately developed to invest in the leadership potential of all students and create a learning environment in which teachers and students were both co-creators of knowledge. SNCC recognized that the educational institutions in Mississippi were failing Black students in a multitude of ways, so the curriculum needed to be flexible enough to accommodate various student needs: as they studied the curriculum, teachers were told to discard it and to create, on the spot if necessary, activities and questions that responded to the needs of the students in front of them. The curriculum’s central premise, the importance of questioning, challenged the concept of a written curriculum. The Freedom School curriculum encouraged—in fact, mandated—that teachers improvise (Emery et al. 2004)7.Although the majority of Freedom Schools started their day off with singing, each school differed in terms of its daily schedule and classroom content. While some Freedom School students wanted to spend the bulk of their day learning deeply about Black historical figures and events such as the Haitian Revolution or Harriet Tubman, other Freedom School students were concerned with improving reading/writing skills or learning French. Many Freedom School classrooms even focused on the Civil Rights Struggle waging across the nation and internationally at the time. Freedom School teachers pushed students to discuss among themselves organizing tactics and strategies for, for example, Black voter registration (Sturkey 2004)3. In addition to the use of discussion, Freedom Schools in Mississippi utilized a diverse range of artistic and literary methods to give students the tools needed to both push back on dominant white supremacist societal narratives and take pride in their identity as Black people.Using poetry, plays, academic essays, roleplaying, and short stories, the 1964 Freedom Schools worked to reconstitute and refigure a Southern Black identity outside of the racism that historically marginalized and defined the life of a Black person in Mississippi. The Freedom School curriculum challenged the reductive 1960s imaginations of the so-called Southern United States as simply a poverty-stricken area and recognized (through art, performance, literature, etc.) that the censuring of Black history in standard textbooks minimized the traumatic history of enslavement and the Black experience in Mississippi. Moreover, many Freedom Schools published newsletters that included the art and writing of Freedom School students as well as news from the Freedom Summer voting registration organizing work (Emery et al. 2004)7. These newsletters voiced political consciousness and activism to an audience that went beyond the Black students and SNCC volunteers involved in the Freedom Summer campaign.FundingTeachers were not paid, so they had to arrange their own room and board in the (typically) small, rural town they’d be teaching in. The budgets of the Freedom Schools were nearly non-existent, so Freedom School teachers were also expected to crowdfund supplies for the classrooms themselves. For example, before the start of the Freedom Summer Campaign, all volunteers were expected to ask companies to contribute books and equipment. Freedom School teachers relied heavily on the communities they lived and worked in for support. While a small budget was calculated for each town, the communities themselves generally provided a place for the classes—e.g., in a church basement—and donated equipment like tape recorders or projectors (Emery et al. 2014)7.The Legacy of the 1964 Freedom Summer SchoolsThe Freedom School program started in 1964 summer was explicitly designed to develop the power of Black Mississippians: the schools pushed to deconstruct the U.S. public educational system that operated (and continues to operate) by maintaining elitist, eurocentric standards of intellect. Through its cultural and educational work, the Freedom Schools created spaces that supported and empowered Black people in a society that did not readily supply that knowledge. For many students, the Freedom Schools served as an entirely new opportunity to dream and envision a future beyond the constraints of exploitative sharecropping or racial terror.The Freedom School educational model, of providing alternative education as a means of pushing back on dominant narratives and unapologetically claiming the human right to decent education, continued to influence activists beyond just the sociohistorical moment of Freedom Summer. After the summer ended, some Freedom School volunteer teachers decided to stay in Mississippi and continued to facilitate classes into the fall of 1964. Depending on the community, Freedom Schools served as community hubs for tutoring young Black people after school, held nighttime classes for Black adults and the voter registration effort, or continued classes for “children whose regular public school classes had been suspended for cotton-picking” (Emery et al. 2004)7.As the Black Freedom Struggle continued, notions of ‘democratic education’ remained present in the ideological framework of the Black Power era institution-building (Carmichael 1966:53)1 and contemporary freedom projects such as the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School Program which “…serve[s] children and youth in grades K–12 in communities where quality academic enrichment programming is limited, too expensive, or non-existent” (Children’s Defense Fund New York)8 or the Gaza solidarity encampments on college campuses globally throughout the Spring of 2024 that offered public, political education programming. Although institutional racism and race-based school segregation remain a serious problem (Hale 2014)9, dozens of freedom schools in the United States today identify the 1964 SNCC Freedom Schools as an influence. Liberation struggles across the globe, from Turtle Island to Palestine, continue to push for change by employing similar educational strategies to inspire others to fight for collective liberation.References Carmichael, Stokely. “Black Power.” Voices of Democracy, University of California at Berkeley, Oct. 29, 1966, www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/carmichael-black-power-speech-text. ↩ ↩2 Charles Cobb, “Prospectus for a Summer Freedom School Program in Mississippi (Excerpt).” HERB: Resources for Teachers, www.herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1158. ↩ Sturkey, William. “The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools.” Mississippi History Now, Mississippi Historical Society, May 2016, mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/403/The-1964-Mississippi-Freedom-Schools. ↩ ↩2 Chilcoat, George W., and Jerry A. Ligon. “‘We Will Teach What Democracy Really Means By Living Democratically Within Our Own Schools’ Lessons From the Personal Experience of Teachers Who Taught in the Mississippi Freedom Schools.” Education and Culture 12, no. 1 (1995): 24-42. ↩ ↩2 “Freedom Schools.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, Dec. 2016, www.snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/culture-education/freedom-schools. ↩ Watson, Marcia. “Beyond Slavery And The Civil Rights Movement: Freedom Schools And Transformative Education.” African American Intellectual History Society. Oct. 16, 2014, www.aaihs.org/beyond-slavery-and-the-civil-rights-movement-freedom-schools-and-transformative-education. ↩ ↩2 Emery, Kathy, Sylvia Braselmann, and Linda Reid Gold. “Introduction: Freedom Summer and the Freedom Schools.” Education and Democracy, The San Francisco Freedom School, 2004, www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/A_02_Introduction.htm#_edn16. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 “New York Freedom Schools.” Children’s Defense Fund New York. Children’s Defense Fund, www.cdfny.org/programs/cdf-freedom-schools/new-york-freedom-schools. ↩ Hale, Jon N. “The Forgotten Story of the Freedom Schools.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, Jun. 26, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-depressing-legacy-of-freedom-schools/373490. ↩ "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Trump’s attack on Venezuela: An Exemplary Punishment",
"author" : "Simón Rodriguez",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/trumps-attack-on-venezuela-an-exemplary-punishment",
"date" : "2026-01-14 10:13:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Uncle_Sam_Straddles_the_Americas_Cartoon.jpg",
"excerpt" : "After four months of maritime siege in which the US military killed more than 100 people in alleged anti-drug trafficking operations and seized oil tankers, as well as the bombing of a small dock in northwestern Venezuela, Trump launched a large-scale attack and kidnapped de facto ruler Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were in Fuerte Tiuna, the country’s main military complex in Caracas.",
"content" : "After four months of maritime siege in which the US military killed more than 100 people in alleged anti-drug trafficking operations and seized oil tankers, as well as the bombing of a small dock in northwestern Venezuela, Trump launched a large-scale attack and kidnapped de facto ruler Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were in Fuerte Tiuna, the country’s main military complex in Caracas.The invaders attacked civilian targets such as the port of La Guaira, the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, the Charallave airport, and electrical transmission infrastructure, as well as military installations in Caracas, Maracay, and Higuerote. The preliminary toll is around 80 dead and more than a hundred wounded. The US government claims that it suffered no casualties and that it had the support of infiltrators working for the CIA. This internal collaboration was crucial to the success of the attack.The Venezuelan military defeat has political causes, beyond US technical superiority. Chavismo has prioritized coup-proofing over military effectiveness, going so far as to have one of the highest rates of generals per capita in the world, who have been given control of various economic sectors for cronyism. Furthermore, the government lacks a military strategy for asymmetric resistance to imperialist aggression.During Chávez’s administration, in 2007, there was debate over which military model to adopt. Retired General Müller Rojas criticized the large investments in sophisticated military equipment, proposed by then-Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel, proposing instead a doctrine of popular resistance and asymmetric warfare. Chávez settled the debate in Baduel’s favor, and in the following years, the Venezuelan government spent billions of dollars on arms purchases from Russia and China. This equipment proved useless in the face of the US attack, as the late Müller Rojas predicted, but it was part of the patronage system that enriched the Chavista military. Ironically, Baduel died as a political prisoner in 2021.A corrupt military may be useful for repressing workers, students, or indigenous peoples, but it can easily be bribed. Maduro himself does not seem to have had much confidence in the military, having entrusted his security largely to Cuban personnel, 32 of whom died in the US attack.Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumed the interim presidency. She declared a state of emergency to avoid the constitutional requirement to call elections in the event of the head of state’s absence. The US government has stated that, through the continuation of the naval blockade and the threat of a second attack, it hopes to ensure that the Venezuelan government serves US interests. When asked on January 4 whether they would use this pressure to demand the release of political prisoners, Trump responded emphatically that he is interested in oil, and everything else can wait. In spite of this, the Venezuelan government announced on January 8 the unilateral release of an unspecified number of political prisoners. Human rights NGOs estimate there are around 800 political prisoners.The rights of Venezuelans have never interested Trump, as demonstrated not only by his lack of interest in democratic rights in Venezuela, but also by the racist persecution of Venezuelan immigrants in the US, stigmatized by Trump as criminals and mentally ill people allegedly sent by Maduro to “invade” the country, a fascistic discourse endorsed by the Venezuelan right-wing leader María Corina Machado. Thousands of Venezuelans have been deported to Venezuela, while hundreds have been sent to the CECOT, Latin America’s largest torture center, run by the dictatorship of El Salvador, under false accusations of belonging to the Tren de Aragua, a gang classified as a terrorist organization by Trump.Delcy Rodríguez has reportedly already reached an agreement with Trump to deliver between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. The US government would sell the oil, establishing offshore accounts for this purpose outside the control of its own Treasury Department; part of the petrodollars generated would be used to pay debtors, and payments in kind would be made to the Venezuelan state, including equipment and supplies for oil production itself, as well as food and medicine.This policy bears similarities to the “Oil for food” program applied as part of the sanctions regime of the 1990s against Iraq. That program became a huge source of corruption in the UN. We can expect something similar or worse from Trump’s corrupt government. Chevron, which already is the main oil extractor in Venezuela, is lobbying for a privileged role in Trump’s plans for oil theft, enforced through a naval blockade and threats of new attacks, as the stock capacity on land or in ships off the Venezuelan coast reached their limit and the alternative was to stop production. On January 9, Trump met executives from Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, among other oil companies, to lay out the profits opportunities in Venezuela enhanced by military intervention.We are facing a new version of imperialist “gunboat diplomacy” and the methods of the “Roosevelt Corollary,” on which the US based its invasion of Latin American and Caribbean countries in the first half of the 20th century, taking control of their customs, as in the cases of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua.Rodríguez’s capitulation has been interpreted by some as evidence that her rise to power was agreed with Trump, as startlingly quickly negotiations for the restoration of diplomatic relations, which were severed since 2019, have begun. For this purpose, a US delegation visited Caracas on January 9. Certainly, Chavismo’s anti-imperialism was always rather performative, it did not even nationalize the oil industry, and the US maintained an important presence through Chevron. The US remained Venezuela’s main trading partner until at least 2024.The regime is cooperating with the extortionist Trump, not resisting. The traditional right-wing opposition, which celebrated the January 3 attack (describing it as the beginning of Venezuela’s liberation), welcomes Trump’s measures. Not even Trump’s humiliation of Machado, when he declared she lacked “support” and “respect” within Venezuela, has led Venezuelan Trumpists to regain a modicum of sobriety. Their entire political strategy, after Maduro’s 2024 electoral fraud, has been solely to wait for Trump to hand them power.Trump’s priorities are different, although they could converge in the future with Machado: to distract attention from recently published documents reflecting his friendship with the criminal Jeffrey Epstein; to enhance his foreign policy based on extortion, refuting the Democratic slogan “Trump Always Chickens Out”, and to manage billions of petrodollars at the service of his business circle. And finally, in a more strategic sense, it represents the application of the new National Security doctrine, which gives priority to absolute US control of the hemisphere, expelling its imperialist competitors, China and Russia. Venezuela represented the most vulnerable point in the hemisphere for spectacular and exemplary military action. After the attack on Venezuela, threats against Colombia, Mexico, and even Greenland follow.Chavismo itself largely created its own vulnerability after years of anti-popular and anti-worker policies, such as imposing a minimum wage of less than USD$5 per month, eliminating workers’ freedom of association, persecuting indigenous peoples, defunding public health and education, and forcing the migration of 8 million Venezuelan workers, all while favoring the emergence of a new Bolivarian bourgeoisie through rampant corruption, creating new chasms of social inequality.Until 2015, Chavismo ruled with the support of electoral majorities. After its defeat in that year’s parliamentary elections, it took a dictatorial turn, relying on repression and electoral fraud, while bleeding the economy dry to pay off foreign debt, creating hellish hyperinflation. The economy contracted by around 80% between 2013 and 2021, most of this before US sanctions. The destruction was such that the export of scrap metal, obtained from the dismantling of abandoned industries, became one of Venezuela’s largest exports.It is illustrative to recall the cables from the US embassy in Caracas to the State Department, published by Wikileaks, which asked the Obama administration not to publicly confront Chávez, as this would strengthen him in the context of widespread popular rejection of the US. The current situation is different, with many Venezuelans cynically accepting US domination. Opposing imperialist intervention, on the other hand, does not save dissidents from persecution either. The presidential candidate backed by the Communist Party of Venezuela in 2024, Enrique Márquez, has been in prison for 10 months without formal charges.The humiliation to which the Venezuelan people are subjected today, under the double yoke of a dictatorship and a US siege, is brutal. The policy of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean, the perceived sphere of US dominance, gains momentum with this attack. In the face of this we need a continental response, to defend the possibility of a free and dignified future for Venezuela and for all of Latin America and the Caribbean."
}
,
{
"title" : "A Lone Protester, Rain or Shine: One Man’s Daily Act of Dissent in Japan",
"author" : "Yumiko Sakuma",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/a-lone-protester-rain-or-shine",
"date" : "2026-01-13 10:00:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Lone_Gaza_Japan.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Photographs by Chisato Hikita",
"content" : "Photographs by Chisato HikitaThe way Japan’s grassroots activism has shown up for the people of Palestine has been nothing short of extraordinary. In a country known for its low political engagement, I’ve met countless newly woken activists who not only joined the international movement but have also incorporated direct action into their daily lives through street protests, fundraising events and content creation, writing campaigns, etc. Many of them express frustration that demonstrations in Japan aren’t as large as those abroad, or that their efforts seem to yield little visible change, but their persistence and quiet stubbornness are unlike anything I’ve ever seen.One of the figures who has emerged from this movement is Yusuke Furusawa, who has taken to the streets every single day, seven days a week, for more than two years, usually for an hour or so each time. I came across him on social media and reached out while I was in Tokyo.The day we met was an excruciatingly hot Saturday in July. On my way to meet him near Shinjuku Station, a sprawling terminal of train lines, subways, and shopping complexes, he messaged to say he’d had to relocate because of a nearby Uyoku (right-wing nationalist) presence. As I exited one wing of the station, I passed a large crowd gathered around Uryu Hirano, a young hardline activist who had just lost her bid for a national council seat.Then I found Furusawa, delivering a monologue about what the Palestinian people have been enduring, about the complicity of the Japanese government, and about the tangled relationship between the U.S. military-industrial complex and the Israeli state. He stood in the middle of two opposing streams of foot traffic, turning every few seconds to address people coming from both directions, waving a large flag and holding a sign that read “Stop GAZA Genocide.”In October 2023, he had been home-bound for Covid. “I was frustrated because I wanted to go to the protests but couldn’t. Finally, feeling restless, I eventually stumbled out holding a placard, that’s how it all began. When I thought about how I’ve never really taken any actions on this issue while seeing these terrible situations unfolding every day, I just couldn’t sort out my feelings.”Furusawa makes his living as a prop maker for a broadcasting company while occasionally getting gigs as a theater actor. He wasn’t particularly political until a few years ago when he joined a local grass-roots movement to elect Satoko Kishimoto, an environmental activist and water rights activist who had lived in Belgium, to be Suginami Ward mayor against the pro-business, pro-development incumbent. Especially, he was inspired by the Hitori Gaisen, solo street demonstration, movement which was triggered by one person who decided to campaign by standing quietly on the street with a sign, which spread like a wild fire and resulted in a win by Kishimoto, a move viewed as a victory of the People, who were determined to stop the over development and gentrification.'I’m not really good at group activities, so rallies and marches aren’t really my thing. I get too tired trying too hard to chant or keep up with everyone else.” Previously, he had been suffering from depression. “This has been helpful like as a daily rehabilitation activity.”Thus, he stands alone, daily and consistently. As I watched him speak under the glaring sun, I was struck by how most people don’t even look up, or notice him, seemingly so self-absorbed or focused on where they are going. Occasionally, non-Japanese people stop and take pictures of/with him. While I was there, a mother and a kid from Turkey stopped him to thank him through a translation app on her phone. She had tears in her eyes. Furusawa said he does get yelled at a few times a day and was once even choked by a person who identified as an IDF personnel.This was a few days after July 20th, when Japan had a national council election where more than 8 million people voted for candidates from the Sansei Party, which ran on “Japanese First” platform and a far-right, nationalist political messaging. Furusawa says, a few Japanese people who walk up to him with encouraging signs tend to be ultra nationalists and conservatives. “A lot of times, these guys who say to me ‘you are great for standing against the United States,’ are far right people, which makes me feel defeated.” And there are younger ones who mock him or laugh at him.Do you have an idea as to how long you’d be doing this? I asked him. Furusawa told me about the time an Aljazeela crew came to his apartment to shoot a segment on him. When he told them, “I will stop if Israel stopped bombing Gaza,” the reporter said, “That is how Japanese people forget about the Middle East.” Furusawa thinks about this episode daily. “I realized I hadn’t understood anything at all, and I felt this helplessness like all my actions over the past four months were being erased in an instant. That’s when I made the decision to do it every day. Those words swirled around me daily.”After I came back to New York, I procrastinated writing this story. I tried writing it many times in my head, but between being disappointed in the surge of xenophobia and racism in Japan, dealing with medical issues and being scared as an immigrant, my head was not in the right place to give a proper ending to this story. Then, so called “ceasefire” was announced. I thought of him and reached out.I apologized to him for not writing a story sooner. “I didn’t know how to write the story without glorifying the protest movements.”He told me attacks by people from Israel were happening increasingly, probably like three times more, especially after the UK recognized the state of Palestine. “They come at me with anger. I’ve also met a few people from Palestine thanking me with tears for what I do. I feel l need to keep a distance from these emotions because what I am really protesting against is the illegal occupation and apartheid of Palestine and how we are not really facing it.”He hadn’t stopped his protests, still standing out there every day with a flag and a sign, delivering his monologue. He does so because, for one, he did not trust the “ceasefire,” but also because what he stands against is not just the current wave of assaults, bombing, starvation, etc.“I want to keep going until we seriously tackle the issue, not just go through the superficial motions of Palestine’s state recognition. It isn’t about just stopping the war. It is about getting people to care so that nations collectively help them. I am not talking about months, more like years because it is going to take time.”Lately, after spending an hour on anti-genocide protest, he stands with another sign for 30 minutes or so before he goes home. The sign says “Delusion of Hate.” That is because he thinks Japan’s xenophobia and hatred come from delusions. “A mix of victim mentality and inferiority complex, plus delusions inflated by conspiracy theories that don’t even exist.”That is when I realized what he is really fighting is indifference. He went on, “Some might find my style of protests noisy, annoying, or unpleasant. I want them to reject it. I want to get on their nerves, or talk to their hearts. Maybe that is how we can break through the indifference. That is going to take time, like years of time.”"
}
,
{
"title" : "Sanctions are a Tool of Empire",
"author" : "Collis Browne",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/sanctions-are-a-tool-of-empire",
"date" : "2026-01-13 08:35:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Sanctions.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Sanctions & Embargoes only Hurt the People",
"content" : "Sanctions & Embargoes only Hurt the PeopleIn light of the economic collapse and ongoing social and political unrest in Venezuela and Iran, we must examine U.S. economic sanctions and how they contribute to and exacerbate these dynamics.Although framed as something much more innocuous or even righteous, sanctions are a form of economic warfare used to enforce U.S. & Western empire.What Sanctions AreSanctions block a country’s sovereign ability to act freely in a global world. They restrict trade, banking, investment, and access to global markets.Despite the myth of “free markets,” sanctions show how capitalism really works: Markets are only free when they serve power.They are usually installed against nations that show signs of independence from US and Western (capitalist) interests, such as any meaningful socialist policies, nationalizing resources or limiting foreign ownership or resources or property.Although the claim is usually around “punishing” a government for human rights abuses, There are plenty of governments that commit egregious human rights abuses that are never sanctioned because of favorable business policies towards US interests (global western capital), The US is itself guilty of grave human rights abuses both at home and abroad, so cannot claim to have any moral authority, and Many of the abuses are either exaggerated, outright fabricated, or are simply scapegoats to cover the real motives. To be clear: this does not excuse human rights abuses by any government, but sanctions are never the answer: they are never driven by a moral imperative, and are never successful in improving the materials conditions of the people of the countries affected.How Sanctions are UsedUS foreign policy uses sanctions as a key part of a familiar playbook: Claim that a government is a “dictatorship” or “threat” to democracy or security Cut the country off from trade and money Cause shortages, inflation, and unemployment People suffer — food, medicine, fuel become scarce Blame the suffering on the government, not the sanctions Further stir up unrest by covert actions on the ground agitating dissent and violence Often, provide material support for right-wing political opposition that favors US intervention and resource privatizationThe goal is pressure, chaos, and instability.The End GoalSanctions are a foundational step in a long-term campaign to destabilize a country or region by creating enough pain to force one of the following outcomes: Install a pro-U.S. government Enable or justify a coup Pave the way for military interventionAll of these are about resource extraction and unfettered access for multinational and Western corporations.Fact 1: Sanctions Don’t WorkSanctions Don’t Achieve Their Stated Political GoalsSince 1970, nearly 90% of sanctions have failed — meaning they did not force the target government to change its behavior or leadership. Report after report show that sanctions don’t produce freedom, democracy or peace, they produce suffering.Fact 2: Sanctions Punish PeopleSanctions Hurt the People, Not LeadersAcross 32 empirical studies*, sanctions were shown to: Increase poverty Increase inequality Increase mortality Worsen human rights outcomesRegional oligarchs and elites adapt, while ordinary people pay the price.Example: IraqIraq (1990s) Sanctions destroyed water, food, and healthcare systems Hundreds of thousands of civilians — many of them children — died as a direct result Saddam Hussein retained power, up until the eventual US invasionSanctions weakened the population, not the ruler.Example: VenezuelaVenezuela (2010s–present) Oil and banking sanctions collapsed imports and currency Medicine and food shortages surged Tens of thousands of excess deaths Massive emigration as millions fled the countryThe government survived. The people suffered. If anything, the sanctions contributed to the rise of the right-wing opposition against the strong socialist base of support.Example: SyriaSyria (2011–present) Sanctions began early in the conflict and intensified economic collapse They worsened shortages, unemployment, and infrastructure failure Economic destabilization deepened social fragmentation and displacementSanctions did not overthrow the government, but they amplified collapse, suffering, and long-term instability, making recovery and reconstruction nearly impossible.Example: IranIran (since 1979, and especially 2018–present) Sanctions targeted oil exports and global banking access Iran was cut off from foreign currency earnings The rial collapsed; inflation surged sharplySanctions directly restrict access to dollars and euros — forcing rapid currency devaluation, import inflation, and rising prices for basics even when goods are technically “allowed.”Inflation hits civilians first.Sanctions are a Tool of EmpireSanctions are a tool of global capitalist imperialism, and movements against US intervention must include a call against sanctions. They do not bring freedom or democracy. They enrich global financial elites, preserve imperial control, and devastate everyday people — again and again."
}
]
}
