I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article, "Anti-Imperialism: Yet Another Statist Ideology." When I was younger, my social consciousness awakened via the avenues of A) Attending a multiclass, multiracial school in a much larger urban area than I had previously been accustomed to, and B) Hip-Hop Music. This was the first time that my eyes were opened up, and I saw the injustice of racism and poverty. I soon began to read books that were outside the prescribed school curriculum, such as "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. Dubois and "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela. Even though Mandela was critical of Communism, these books were among the first to introduce me to social thought, the human impact of economic systems and political philosophy. Here were two examples of people who actively fought racial, social, and economic injustice. I wanted to do the same. I wanted to make the world a better place.
I ended up attending college at a very Left-wing school (plenty of Anarchists were there, as well). I ended up adopting a Marxist stance. I read the writings of Huey P. Newton, Mao Tse-Tung, and other Communists - and ignored their actions or justified them away. I came to believe that only Communists were interested in racial, social, and economic justice. And I also adopted their understandings of "justice" as the only right understandings. "Revolution" was my goal, although I scarcely understood what that word really meant. I spent every waking moment digesting politically-oriented (80% Marxist) reading. I joined a Black Marxist organization - although I later parted with them due to their incessant requests for money I didn't have. I felt that Marxists were the only force for right in this world, and that everyone else was wrong. I was a true ideologue.
If I had grown up in the 1960s, all of the above would seem perfectly understandable. But this was in the mid- to late-1990s. Everyone was apathetic. No one was Revolutionary enough - not even at that enclave of Left-wing thought. Professors who would be considered firebrand radicals by the likes of the Fox News crowd were "bourgeois" in my estimation. I had never known hardship, and had never ventured out into the real world much - I was very bourgeois myself - but everyone else was "bourgeois." I really idolized a lot of 50s and 60s icons. I idolized Kwame Nkrumah - my introduction to anti-imperialism. I idolized the Weather Underground. I idolized anti-colonial fighters, because I saw them as forces that would overthrow the yoke of colonialism, racism, imperialism, capitalism, etc. - I only understood them as nationalists later on. I was really blind to a lot of mistakes that these groups and people made. I very, very gradually (over a period of years rather than days or months) began to see that these people were not the bastions of a new and better world. I became disillusioned. The truths that you pointed out so eloquently in your article should have been self-evident to me - but I was very reluctant to accept them. No American in 2008 is going to base a movement for social change on the Weather Underground or any of the others mentioned. Anti-imperialism, indeed, turned out to be a big disappointment.

It has been a long time since I've been politically active. I am no longer a Marxist, for reasons I do not have time to go into here. But an adult lifetime of poverty and a constant stream of systems that have failed me and the people I love have convinced me more than ever that the world must change - or melt down. I literally cannot take any more. Life has become unaffordable for me and my generation in the United States. My educational credentials have given me not a whit of economic security. I haven't been able to complete a lease in years, because the money does not last the entire year. I have lived on the streets or in cars at various times in my adult life, including very recently. We are involved in a war that I do not support - and when I mention this fact, brainwashed people spit in my face. My friends of color are in even a worse shituation, because they have faced a psychological battering as well as an economic and political one. Every single action, it seems at times, is a criminal offense. Gay-bashing has become en vogue again after years of slow but seeming progress. Now we are facing a recession, which does not affect me much directly, but allows the rich man to feel it. Decisions are made in my name without my consent. I could go on and on.

I don't know what the answer to our dilemma is, but I am willing to listen to anyone who wants a change.

CK the Dub Organizer