 31 I can give you or now that works too and we could just let folks in in one minute and I'll open up with the poem again Mariana video and then from the video with Mariana uh Moses do you want me to pass it over to you or you just want to pick it up you can pass it over that'd be awesome okay like i'm putting my helmet on lock and load baby okay okay we can let people in hi good afternoon good evening wherever you are we're just going to take a minute to give folks time to uh to come in thank you all for joining us good afternoon and good evening to those who join we're just going to give it a minute for folks to come on and then we'll go ahead and get started all right uh good evening good afternoon again thank you for joining us for WTF the Cinco de Mayo have to do with imperialism my name is Sierra Taylor i am the director of cultural strategy with code pink women for uh women for peace uh we are just going to uh have a really great discussion we have an incredible lineup of artists cultural workers organizers who are really getting into this question into the revolutionary history the revolutionary legacy of Cinco de Mayo and uh as a part of the struggle for liberation of people who are poor dispossessed who are exploited who have been oppressed uh not you know only in Mexico but for generations to come and what we really want to do here is to take a look at this history that's often unexplored that's often uh ignored or made invisible and to be able to explore this history to look for the lessons that we can glean for our struggles today and so I want to open us up with a poem we're going to get started uh with Mariana Boutet who is a professor artist and curator and then I'm going to pass it over to my colleague Moses who will bring us into the second half of the discussion around the role of art and culture in revolutionary movements and I'm going to mute everyone who is not talking just to make sure that we can all hear one another um and uh oh sorry um and then yeah we'll get started so this poem is called Cinco de Mayo by Luis Rodriguez Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people those whose land is starved of blood civilizations which are no longer holders of the night we reconquer with our feet with our tongues that dangerous language say more of this world than the volumes of textured and controlled words on a page we are the gentle rage our hands hold the stream of the earth the flowers of dead cities the green of butterfly wings Cinco de Mayo is about the barefoot the untooled the warriors of want who took on the greatest army europe ever mustered and won i once saw a mexican man stretched across an upturned sidewalk near chicago's 18th and bishop one fifth of mayday he brought up a near empty bottle to the withering sky and yelled out a grito in the words que viva Cinco de Mayo and i knew then what it meant what it meant for the barefoot zapoteca indígenas in the battle of Fuebla and what it has meant for me there on 18th street along among los ancianos the moon faced children the futureless children the futureless youth dodging the gunfire and careening battered cars and it brought me to that war that war that never ends the war Cinco de Mayo was a battle of that i keep fighting that we keep bleeding for that war against a servitude that a compa on 18th street knew all about as he crawled inside a bottle of the meanest mexican spirits and so again that is louis rodrigo a poet an organizer an educator and this was called Cinco de Mayo i'll put the the poem in the chat thank you so much to my dear friend and comrade shally barnes who shared that poem with me today we're going to have a really great discussion for those who are just coming in welcome to wtf to Cinco de Mayo got to do with imperialism i again i'm sierra i'm the director of cultural strategy we we wanted to open up this conversation because so often when you hear about Cinco de Mayo it's either as this very hollowed commercialized idea of just a party and you know drinks and tacos and sombreros and no real understanding of the revolutionary history of this battle that was uh the battle uh in and Puebla which was uh a rag tag a gorilla uh just group of people um who came together who believed that a better world was possible who believed uh that there does not need uh to be any slavery or uh our servitude who believed in emancipation and liberation for all people the world over and we're able to come together and rise up in unity to fight an oppressive imperialist force and so without further ado i would like to introduce Mariano Bote Mariana is an art historian artist curator born in mexico city she is an associate professor in modern and contemporary latin america art history at the visual arts department of university of california san diego bote received her phd in visual studies at the university of california ervine in 2010 her experimental video documentaries have been shown at the guttenheim in new york in the bow the rena sofia museum in madrid the anthology films archives in new york the museo caíral gill in mexico medicico city red cat among other museums galleries and festivals bote is co-editor of fantasma and uh the zona crítica collection series in the same collection series she is the author of zonas disturbo or zones of disturbance specters of an indigenous mexico in modernity bote is the founder of the red specter an agitation agency at the intersection of art theory and politics mariana's most recent publications include las otras jugadoras el neo de zapatismo en las prácticas artistas contemplas una historia en clave menor i am so sorry that i butchered that spanish but i thought it was important that we really lift up the language uh the the actual titles of of these books and in spanish and the the native language which is a volume about uh zapata that is published by fondo de cultura equinomata mariana lives and work in san diego california i have the opportunity to meet mariana and learn from her while in detroit michigan a couple years ago mariana was able to come and and visit with us at the um and explore the the incredible artwork of mexican artist diego revera um and uh just really uh brought out the beauty of the worker uh the beauty of of struggle and and uh the power that a unified group has when they come together in in hopes of a world that puts people over property and to know that we can overcome those who who seek to oppress us and so without further ado i'm going to get into uh get to mariana who will talk about the history the revolutionary history and legacy of cinco de mayo so i'm here super proud and honor to try to do a little introduction to the possibility of rethinking a the cinco de mayo celebration right the battle of may five in 1862 in mexico in puebla and try to rethink it away from um the sort of now sort of commodify commercial american holiday that it is about drinking beer and thinking of mexican heritage but it's actually no anymore understood in the calendar of the united states as a actual marker of a radical history a radical history that since the 19th century has been a sort of place of articulation of solidarity actually not only in mexico as the history of mexico against the imperial colonialist forces of the 19th century in that moment but how these actually play in the politics of emancipation and a radical project in the united states so as i said may um cinco may five in 1862 commemorates this very important battle in which the rag tag mexican army um composed mostly of indigenous um special guerrilla forces defeat the most powerful army of that moment the the imperialist french army in their attempt to expand their empire to actually now that the newly emancipated territories of the americas right that had fought the war of independence across the continent from chili to um to the north to canada to try to attempt again to conquer american soil and it's very important to try to recover cinco de mario as this uh history but the generation who won this battle right you don't win battles like that right where it's like you are the the small army against the biggest unless you have a sort of long formation of the people who actually fought um this this battle is actually the generation of indigenous um intellectuals artists and politicians that were very educated in the tradition of the most european radical um tendencies right they were very much uh enamored with the idea of the french revolution we can think of them like um as the idea of these indigenous jackobinds just like the way you know we have constructed the hatian revolution as the idea of the black jackobinds so they in a sense were the left to the left of the european movements or the intellectual european and it's very important to recover that history because if we think of an international history we think of a history of a confrontation of the forces of the the radical left that eventually becomes a socialist project of emancipation right but grows out of a tradition of revolutionary politics in the 19th century but we need to think of heiti or cinco de mario right as the moment in which the black subject and the indigenous subject are at the center of this radical tradition that we should think as a tradition that is international and is the beginning of forms of resistance and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle right and war like to defeat the colonial imperial project of the europeans and cinco de mario is perfect exactly that so this generation of people who defeated the french began when they were very young there were also radical militants in the sense that they had to be part of at least three big wars they began as teenagers almost in the organization of the resistance against the american invasion the united states american war in 40 in 47 so first they fought the war against the invading american army then they organized the war of reform where they basically fought against the power of the reaction which was a articulation of the church that owned 75 percent of the land the territory in mexico the church were the owners of 75 percent of the land in mexico so they fought to expropriate this property from the hands of the reactionary power that is the church in the history of mexico right the center of the colonial project the catholic church and after that victory when they actually defeat the conservative forces they come to power and those reactionary forces right the conservative party decides to go to europe and to love in the european monarchies and powers to get an army to invade mexico and this is the origin of cinco de mago as as as the battle this is the the history that makes cinco de mago an important date so when they just like today because it's very interesting that the repetition of these forms of subordination and destruction of the other nations the reason of the invasion the the rationale that the european forces is the depth what is has at that moment is in power but they are very impoverished and they have an accumulated depth to the european banks so the reason why the europeans have excuse to invade mexico at that moment is because they come to collect the depth we know that this depth is now also the reason why there is constant aggression from imperial forces against the the independence of nations in asia in africa in in in the america so coming to collect this depth in reality napoleon the third has the idea to expand the french empire just the way they had spent expand already the french empire in the north of africa so to continue this new french imperialist project this is this is what perhaps is interesting for us to to think because this has an important side on the american side because all this history all these radical indigenous intellectuals that fought you know multiple wars and invasions in mexico and against their own reactionary internal forces during the the the war of reform had a very important um ailish and alliance a political radical alliance with the progressive forces in the united states so there is amongst the historians the idea that there was a series of secret correspondence between the group of Juarez and the group around um lingon and the north to actually execute maximilian the emperor when finally Juarez um defeated the french empire the execution of maximilian was a big big affair in the 19th century because imagine Juarez 100 uh sapotec uh indian from oaxaca there to order the execution of a of a rojo out sport right a prince from one of the most powerful um monarchic families in europe this this notion of the execution of the kings right is a very rare thinking history is very fascinating we can really think of only three executions of kings right well there is the british one but that one you know they immediately would crongwell decide that that was terrible and bring back the king and ask for forgiveness right that's what the england is no very ever uh advance or progressive forcing history but the french execute the monarchy right execute the king then the mexicans execute maximilian which is an osberg prince very important um and then of course the bolsheviks uh kill the sar right so it's this moment in which we need to imagine the 19th century racist european dominant discourse and this indigenous rag tag republic right with radical ideas like expropriating the property of the church uh refusing slavery trying to make actually an intellectual um um intellectual leadership and political leadership out of indigenous people right an indigenous democratic modern nation trying to emancipate itself to recover their indigenous fruits and to base their idea of a nation in an anti-colonial struggle an anti-imperialist struggle this is this mexico that moment is a very beautiful and heroic there to kill one of the kings of europe right to make clear right they had to like the blood of the king will really make a sort of a strange secular ritual so the europeans will never ever again dare to invade the americas and i say these like this because that's the the sort of um correspondence that we know was between guares and the north right in the the the actually after the civil war this is when happens is the the lincoln is already assassinated but that's right the ones that had done the emancipation in the united states that group tells guares go ahead and do it what is had the support of their own allies they've been together on this so we need to think of cinco de mago as this very interesting moment in which why is that so important in the united states why becomes the important holiday because indeed the the the sort of progressive forces of the united states the emancipatory radical forces of the united states the ones that fought the civil war and eventually you know created emancipation and the moment of black reconstruction we can think of all the the defeats and the way this is you know a terrible history that in a sense we continue to fight here but those moments were in total alliance with defeating the imperial intentions of the europeans that is what the battle the battle of cinco de mago represents and cinco de mago as a battle is a battle won by guerrilla tactics by a rag tag army of indigenous people that just like vietnam and this is what is considered like vietnam right attack the very heavy artillery of the french and the very you know the the basically the french army that had already conquered years in the north of africa right so for a totally embarrassing defeat by an indigenous guerrilla that is who destroyed the french army in that battle and the first act of restoration of the republic by fares is actually the inauguration of a monument right a monument to coautemoc the hero of the resistance of the Aztecs against the invasion of the spaniards in the in the 15th century so we could begin to remember cinco de mago as this very you know early 19th century moment of us coming together as indigenous and black as brown and black and also as the progressive forces to come together to defeat colonialism imperialism military intervention and the racist forms of oppression that don't allow the indigenous people and the black people the people who are actually you know the the ones that have built these nations and who are the the core of these nations to recover their history their radical history within modernity right of creating the possibility of us continuing to do this fight so this memory to try to like sort of stop thinking of cinco de mago as you some mexican heritage day right and try to understand that actually is this moment of of the sister republics i call them right when when come together in their most progressive tendencies to actually defeat right the project of colonialism the project of imperialism the project of and they fight wars of resistance against wars of emancipation right for the abolition of slavery and to defeat once again the intentions of colonial imperialist power so powerful thank you all again for joining it's so important that we recover this revolutionary history so that we know exactly what we're up against that we remember who we are as those who are in struggle to know that to know what is possible when we're able to bring together people who may not have been together before and stand up and rather rise up against those who are oppressing and exploiting us for those of us who are in struggle it is so important that we know this history because those we are up against do know this history they do know the power of our people coming together not just within the united states but within communities around the world who are connected in our material conditions and our want for freedom and so this history is is still being fought for and you all are a part of this struggle now and so we have to carry it on these lessons into how we organize and how we show up for each other in true solidarity and not just in name and so again thank you all for joining i'm going to pass it over to my dear comrade moses i'm so excited for the second half of this panel on the role of art and culture and revolutionary movement i know moses you're going to introduce pauline and moni but i love them both so much so i just want to put that out there it's recorded i love you all thank you so much for joining in uh yeah awesome well thank you so much seara so um as seara said my name is moses i am the pretty new divest from the war machine organizer here with code pink and i'm really excited to kind of be leading the second part um and so i'm going to be starting by just reading a poem before we kind of start um uh with our panel i thought it would be a good idea to kind of frame the poem a little bit um and i think a lot of it kind of goes hand in hand with what seara was saying and i think um you know watching this video this morning and stuff and thinking a lot about kind of the rewriting of you know revolutionary radical and anti-imperialist histories that the united states does quite frequently and i think with great intention and linking it you know to other struggles of you know for instance like the rewriting of the history of mayday um the us is of course the only um country where mayday is not celebrated but it's kind of ironic because um the event that mayday is commemorating actually did happen in chicago but the us has really bent over backwards and has done somersaults to reimagine and unrevolutionize and de-radicalize history and i think something that's so scary about it is actually how much of a role that creativity art and culture can really go into rewriting these histories these histories aren't just retold um or de-radicalized by a president signing an executive order or a senate passing a bill those those things can certainly help but these histories are also retold through art and culture and the us powers really navigating and understanding the ways in which the masses consume culture and using it to put forward their capitalist and imperialist agendas and so in this next section we'll be talking a lot about the critical role of arts and culture and revolution and also talking about how important it is to commit to really knowing our enemy and really see and study and understand the ways that they are using arts and culture for their own agenda and how we can build a culture to battle that and i think we're going to be delving into this a lot tonight and understanding really how important the struggle for arts and culture really is and this battle for the narrative and so i'm just going to read a quick poem and then we're going to go into kind of our question and answer section but this is just a poem i wrote a little bit about something we call the mental terrain we are all soldiers on the mental terrain whether or not we know it every morning we open our eyes we strap into our armor and wonder how we will move through the world today how will we read the messages from every direction and facet of our life every tab on our computer is a different noise for us to navigate and every tv channel is a new narrative we hear and read who we're meant to be how we're meant to organize and how the world should be we see the silly human interest stories of the war criminal president turned a happy go lucky painter we read emails from university presidents about living wages healthcare and childcare being too big of a demand for a grad student union and we're met time and time again with the same argument of this is just how it's always been so it's how it's meant to be the battlefield is our hearts our minds our thoughts we're fighting for how we think willy baptist always says that we have to end poverty in our minds before we end poverty with our hands we're in a fight for the narrative how to be seen perceived and how we will proceed so never lose sight of the battle for your mind a lifelong battle a never-ending process every day we make our way through a jungle of a thousand different terrible narratives the narratives of individualism american exceptionalism or mobilization without organization and every day we're in a battle for our hearts and thoughts but we must believe that we are what we are fighting for is possible and powerful despite everything that tells us otherwise the battle is in our streets but it's also on our tvs and in our computers and of course in our minds so how will you fight um well thank you and so we're going to be going on to this next part we're going to be talking a little bit more specifically with a couple of different cultural workers and organizers in the movement about the role of arts and culture in our work as organizers and if you'll all indulge me for a second I'm especially excited about these two people that we've invited to speak here tonight because not only do I feel like these two people have had a really huge impact on these overall movement and the development of leaders and being two really great teachers but also personally have had a really huge impact on me even if they don't know it so the first speaker here tonight is Monitores from Pueblos and Fronteras who I was actually able to meet this past weekend at the Cosetra mobilization in DC in person which was awesome but I first knew about Moni and of course with the University of the poor where she was my first ever revolutionary philosophy teacher and the first ever philosophy teacher that I have ever had who made me feel like I would actually be able to grasp concepts and pillars of philosophy and so I owe a lot to Moni and secondly we have Pauline Casano who is currently with the New York State Poor People's Campaign and also kind of transitioning into a role with the Maryland PPC and I also have a super special relationship with Pauline both as friends as an artist through the University of the poor and at Code Pink and I'm just so excited to have her here tonight and so thank you guys so much and so we thought we would start a little bit tonight by just getting to know Pauline and Moni a little bit more. This is a pretty big question to start with and sometimes people get like mad at me when I ask it but I do think it is important as organizers to hear other organizers journeys because I think it helps us a lot to know that we probably were struggling with the same ideas and kind of structures and stuff like that and so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your own political development kind of what brought you into organizing today and really if there's anything that shaped you and so we can go ahead I don't know if Moni you'd like to start. Yeah definitely thanks for that and I think thanks for everybody who has been part of this so far and well I'm so happy that that now you want to study philosophy. This is the greatest thing that I've received the whole day so I hope that that encourages others to also study philosophy. No so my name is Moni and I'm very happy to be here with you. I work with an organization called Pueblo Sin Fronteras and we have been accompanying migrants throughout caravans and in migrant shelters in Mexico and the United States so very happy to be here with y'all and and the compas are also here with me as well so very very excited. I mean I was born in Mexico in a rural town in Jalisco, Mexico where I was constantly bombarded with a family that was constantly engaging in you know composing music composing poetry my grandma possibly is the best poet I ever I've never known she knows every song out there for every occasion and for every region of Mexico so I grew up in that type of culture and that type of environment where creativity was encouraged um where when we were hungry we sang when we were lonely we sang uh when we were happy we sang so I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this conversation and I was like you know what I remember sitting uh you know at in the soccer fields with my father just before he had to migrate to United States because he migrated before us and singing that song marinera right uh tell me where my love is going because he's going to the north and I don't know if I'm ever going to see him again um and then I also remember that that song um saying my old town who's hitting under the hill dying like an old man um so these are things that I think are a company and I have a company a company throughout my whole life uh from that to being with the compass being a restaurant worker for my whole life uh having that salsa or that cumbia come up for the corrido right and the compass saying you know that's the song that I used to dedicate to my girlfriend back in Mexico before I had to migrate and I haven't seen in years so all of that is something that accompanies me something that I've been here I have been organizing within the migrant movement for the past 10 years uh and I'm so happy and I'm so excited to be here and to talk a little bit more about what is this question of art what is this how do we think about art how do we engage her and how do we create it so more or less I'll leave it there and I'll pass it over uh that's my friend Pauline thank you thank you thank you thank you yes it's so amazing to be here um uh yeah you know so my my I guess my political development started with some objective conditions for me in 2008 and so um I've always been an artist um you know by all standards a failed artist within this capitalist system right but we're we're going to unpack a little bit about what that actually like the mythology of that um but you know in 2008 uh I lost my job oh I think you muted yourself Pauline how many times are we going to say that during this meeting um but uh yeah you know so in 2008 uh you know lost my job was on unemployment for 99 weeks and I think that's for me that's really the turning point of when I started to really understand that there was something else happening I thought I'm from Boston Massachusetts I moved to New York I went to you know to school of the arts I thought I was doing everything right um and then everything kind of fell fell underneath me um in that moment and I and I was struggling to really find answers to what happened and why it happened and there was a lot of self-blame and self-critique about stuff and then and then a movement came along that really kind of heightened the contradictions of this uh society that we're in and that was Standing Rock and so Standing Rock really called me into an organizing space where I started to really actually question these structures um and then through there a lot of my friends that were a part of Standing Rock um joined the poor people's campaign a national call for more revival and so that's when I met Sierra uh that's when I met some people that are on this call and it was a part of the 40 days of moral action and arts and culture was a huge part of it and so from my history of being an artist I always felt like artists were isolated from the base of people that artists are somewhat separate from from others and that you know where you know we're meant to suffer and we're separate and get let you know all all those things that are not actually real um and so through that I actually found cultural arts organizing and I began to go through a liberatory process in my own mind but then with my community and I started to kind of break break down these walls of what it means to be an artist and I began to really understand um and I'm still understanding this individualistic world that we live in um in this hyper individualist world that we live in and how dehumanizing it is for everybody because the reality is is that everyone is an artist you know that this division of deciding who gets to do what is actually a part of a capitalist um individualist structure and so you know I was called into the movement I think from the changing conditions and I think that relates a lot to what people are going through today um so I guess I'll leave that there and I'll wait for the next question thank you. No that I mean that is beautiful and you know I feel like that brings to something that someone in the movement in Anu tells us a lot which is of course um everyone is a creative genius um and part of our work as cultural workers is really bringing that out of people and kind of having them understand that that we're all born with this beautiful ability to create right and I think kind of this concept also of this feeling that I relate to because I'm also like in the capitalist framework like a failed artist so I relate to that very much but I think what a lot of that kind of has to go into is kind of this concept of mental terrain um that we uh I talked a little bit about the poem and mental terrain is something that really informs our work um and not only on an artistic level but also very much on like a political level and understanding strategy and messaging and really just like a huge struggle that we're battling with every single day in our organizing and so I think it would be interesting if we kind of unpack what mental terrain is a little bit more specifically um I know it's a big question and it encompasses a lot of things um but I think it would be a really worthwhile question to start with so I don't know if either of you want to give it a shot. I can kind of dive in and then Morni you can add to my constant evolving understanding of what mental terrain is but it's um I understand mental terrain is really about where we're coming from and these mythologies that you know these compartments that we that we place feelings of self and collective within it so I'm thinking you know American exceptionalism I'm thinking of um you know like oh like a private property ownership like you know think things that kind of get into where we're coming from and I think you know it's really about the myths that we've been told of where we are and so the contradictions that can come out of like understanding where people's mental terrain is kind of creates this bridge of remembering I'm hearing a lot of like a remembering of who we are um but just thinking about you know the the conditions and the rules that we have in our head and when our conditions challenge those that's really an interesting place where we can think about imagining a new way of being but we have to kind of understand a little bit about you know we're coming from. Yeah definitely I think uh the way I think I and I think what they alluded to this a little bit on the notion of the mental terrain and it's it's it's how every aspect of our life and its totality is actually conditioned by a capitalist mindset by commodifying everything right everything is something that could be sold everything is something that that has the potentiality to to be sold and I think that's something that is very important for us to if we want to live in a world that fights against um poverty the fights against imperialism we often change that that that mindset right of uh how do we actually live in a world where we value what is necessary where we value um life in general not just profit not just the potentiality of accumulation um and I think this is very important when it comes to art right um how do we uh you know art I think helps us paint the world that uh is currently denied and therefore like assumes that such worth such world is worth living and fighting for uh and that is a better world and I think that's when we engage very significantly the question of the mental terrain we then start thinking about art not as something abstract right something that you know more or less but we start thinking about art as a question of political strategy uh we start thinking about uh you know Jose Maria Maria Jose Maria Mariette he talks about this and you know of building socialism and let America has to be a new invention a historic and a heroic creation I think it's very important for us to think about uh art in that way right we have to take it with the seriously uh seriousness that that that embarks and and then we talk about the question of of hegemony right how are we going to win how are we actually going to provide other alternatives that not only create fans of art that we're creating right or people are singing our songs no we actually not only want fans we want to create fellow activists fellow comrades who are going to be uh with us engaging a fight against capitalism and imperialism in general so more or less is that uh our fight today for against the mental terrain and and to win the mental terrain is to develop a political strategy and political organization that has a capacity to win and to engage in a voluntary um process where people want to be not only our fans when we sing but they want to be our comrades as well so I think that's that's more or less how we put it yeah no that is beautiful and it makes me think too of kind of something that I remember Pauline told me once and I don't have it in front of me um so I'm not going to quote it just right but basically talking about how you know um arts and culture can really reach you in such a special way and really bring you in for further kind of political development and further kind of political education and it's such a beautiful way to kind of bring people together you know and I think when I first kind of started organizing um I was coming off of like you know a bad arts experience and so I was like I am ready to abandon the struggle of arts and culture it has no place anywhere it's all the ruling class and I was like I'm over it and I think there are some spaces that do do that they really kind of abandon that struggle they don't want to think about it and stuff like that but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more and you already talked about a little bit but um both historically and practically why is this something like arts and culture something that we can't abandon but something that we actively have to keep learning and understanding and studying because we're human you know like when I thought about these questions like we're human beings you know this whole um I studied a little bit of sound and I studied the physics of sound and so I'm thinking also mental terrain like we're thinking about you know um we can talk a little bit about pragmatism and its relationship to imperialism and like if something is useful does that make it true as opposed to like is it there and so sound is it goes to that question you know if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it doesn't make a sound the answer is yes it does sound is a physical force it moves molecules and elastic medium like that's what it is right so we you know thinking about organizing or being alive without arts and culture is we're talking about a dehumanization of people and and through that dehumanization we divide people and so I you know for for me and I think for us in general the process is not thinking about that but doing it with people you know like Moses and I like we had an understanding through like doing a collaborative project and so I think that you know that and that's why I really gravitated towards the poor people's campaign because it really emphasized that working with people in collaboration because that's the liberatory action because the new world is being born today and and we and we're gonna fight for that right because we're gonna love being in that space oh definitely I think if we look at all the important political and revolutionary movements in the past they've had a significant aspect of art that is attached to them I mean we think of for example we think of the Black Panthers and we think about a whole attire that comes with them there's a whole aesthetic there's an optic to it we think about the the the Russian Revolution we think about the Chinese Revolution we think about the Cuban Revolution we think about the songs of Silvio you know we think about the Nicaraguan Revolution we think of all these revolutions that are attached to this and I think if we really want to win and if we're really engaging against a really an imperialist project we really have to think again of art as we think of political strategy I'm gonna keep on pushing that and I think as long as freedom remains for humanity and an alien object it's something that we're going to have to engage significantly I think as Thomas like Sankara would say with courageous discipline and passionate struggle right like we have to constantly engage this question I think Mariana you know they talked about what were the progressive forces that actually work together during the Battle of Cinco de Mayo to to fight against the imperialist forces of the time and I often think of that today I think about what's necessary I think about the battle of ideas I think about how do we engage in in a political project that has a potentiality of not only understanding the past but also painting a future and I think that is the beauty of of art itself right it it has a memory but it also has the potentiality to really really ground us and also to color the path towards the future and that's what art does it contrues and it connects the future and the now and makes it possible and I think in in in a space where we're in constant struggle right consciousness you know it's it's it's only an objective possibility it's always threatened right by the seduction of the now of capitalist ideology so what is it gonna take for us to really create a culture where people voluntarily want to engage and want to sing our songs and want to sing our chants and are singing our chants when they're cleaning you know the dishes and when they're with their family and how do we create even more cultural artists and I think a significant question that we can think about here is when does the cultural artist really engage in this question is when they become a militant when a political strategy and and when an idea of a future informs the way they do art and vice versa right so I think more or less that's that's more or less how you understand this if we really want to win we have to take on very serious the question of a battle of ideas and we have to think of art as part of a political strategy in order to win so yeah yeah that was beautiful and just such a testament to why it's so imperative that we really don't abandon kind of this mental terrain and kind of this huge part of our struggle and so I guess I'd also like to ask kind of more specifically about the role of arts and culture in your own work and specific examples of stuff that you've done in your organizations and your organizing and stuff like that so it'd just be great to hear if there's anything that comes to mind whether it be projects or you know anything like that I think it started maybe um I mean I again like I said in the past we've worked with um you know migrant caravans that you know go from you know 500 people to 15,000 people at a time so how does one communicate with so many people living in such precarious conditions uh we have chance right uh the compass developed chance on the spot uh we had for example we have our own radio station that constantly engages the people on the terrain and the people outside and provides that type of connection uh a lot of compass produce a lot of poetry at a certain point uh in the smaller caravans they actually receive notebooks where they would write their stories and they would write you know what was going on throughout their journey in in the tension in the battles in the tension we've actually engaged in significant art projects where people send in art their art and we put it forward to the public and we've made different things like this that have really significantly helped us and constantly are making music again our process has been significantly collective it's not only like money makes this or money has the idea no it's actually a process of of collective creation of like if if maybe i like pop music but the copas love reggaeton so let's make a reggaeton so it's it's that question uh right of what what is it what what is it gonna move people and and what are our not only the demands that the people have but what are the demands that could get us somewhere else so it's you know balancing that uh so i often think of of that um and there's i mean there's we've done other several things but i think uh what comes to mind right now it's it's a radio station that we're reamping again uh that everybody could find uh in our website and um and we're excited for it so that's that's one of the things that we're more more most proud about that's so exciting i was i i can't wait to that's amazing um uh that actually just made me think of a glory and i'll do a quote actually about airwaves um uh like uh like radio waves our thoughts consciousness travel on air and impact others so really the arts and culture work is about us imagination imagination offers resolutions out of the conflict by dreaming alternative waves alternative ways of imagining feeling and thinking and it's all through love and so i'm thinking you know in poor people's campaign a national call for more revival meetings they all start with music and it's not just to say okay you know this is this is we're gonna we're gonna put a song in the beginning we're gonna put a song the end it's about we're actually gonna call our total humanity into the space and and and we're gonna develop these songs with one another um you know and so we kind of start there and so we think about people that uh you know in the work in the work that we do i think we're thinking about people that don't see themselves as creative beings because that's a part of a laboratory process and then we're thinking about people that did see themselves as creative beings but they don't see themselves as a part of a collective because that's what happens to the art world and so bringing bringing these voices together and sharing our story is unbelievably healing because it's breaking us out of the isolation of who we are um so i think about those those projects and then how we can bring them all together to look like one united front is really important and so one thing that we're doing in the new york state poor people's campaign is we're looking at our our music songbook history setting those songs and then creating a bunch of new pieces together in collaboration we're gonna have like a i i just want to be in preschool my whole life i want to make art and take naps and so we're gonna have a summer art school process um you know and and thinking about one pushing the collaborative part but also calling in people that might not necessarily have seen themselves uh to be a part of that process because again it's about us being human and remembering our history and we are being organized culturally all the time i was in my car the other day listening to a song the radio and i was like oh you know this this drum beat sounds great and i listened to the lyrics and i was like i'm being organized in a capitalist way right now and i'm so annoyed that even for 15 seconds i listened to this song um you know and so thinking about ways that we can actually call people in through through these through this avenue um and and bring in our principles and our values because they're deeply human and interconnected and you know building this movement and poverty um building this movement to be fully human with one another i think it's super important so you know i i think the work can happen in in many in many ways and i think anyone on this call you know after this after this meeting write down in a journal at a poem and call your friend and share it with your friend and talk about how it's affected you in your life uh well i just want to say thank you both so much i was so excited and nervous today i was like i'm gonna be talking to paulina moni i have to prepare as much as possible and i feel like i've been able to learn so much from y'all not only tonight but just through our journey together as organizers and so i want to thank you both so much for coming tonight it was amazing um and i don't know if there's anything you want to close with but otherwise i think i'll go ahead and pass it back to seara and thank you both so much just thank you all so much this is really great to be in this space and and to everyone listening thank you i must end with a poem if anybody knows me they know that i always have a poem um and this is a poem that i i really really love and it's by a revolutionary sabbadorian poet and i think many of you know who i'm talking about and it's a poem i'll read in spanish really quick and i'll read in english after and it's called como tú by roque dalton uh and says yo como tú amo el amor la vida el dulce encanto a las cosas el paila el paisaje celeste de los días de enero también mi sangre buye y río por los ojos que han conocido el rote de las lágrimas roque el mundo es bello que la poesía es como el pan de todos y que mis venas no terminan en mi sino en la sangre unánime de los que luchan por la vida el amor las cosas el paisaje y el pan la poesía de todos so are you in english now i like you i love love life uh the sweet smoke things the blue the sky blue landscape of january days and my blood boils up and i laugh through my eyes that have known the buds of tears i believe the world is beautiful and that poetry like bread is for everyone and that my beings don't end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life for love for little things the landscape and bread the poetry of everybody so thank you so much and thanks for everybody that's here today so beautiful thank you so much for this discussion um i mean one i'm just so happy to see your faces uh but also you all are dropping gems so i have speaking of notebooks lots of notes um so thank you all for that and uh i also want to thank uh michelle terry leonardo of the latin-american team uh for hosting this and michelle for like tech and then all the incredible video work and everything um michelle just like always holds us down and so thank you so much for that team again uh we just felt like this conversation on the revolutionary history of cinco de mayo was so important to hold this is a history where you had a big force this gigantic imperialist force that is france supported by the former slaveholders in the united states and a quest for more property and a quest to expand slavery after it had been uh ended in the united states against people who had this incredible have this incredible political project of liberation one that emancipated people from slavery long before the united states even did starting in 1810 and this this this force three times bigger than this ragtag guerrilla group of of of 2000 untrained soldiers versus 6000 uh french soldiers and out of this battle these incredible revolutionaries of of this mexican project for liberation for all came out kicked the ass of these imperialists and you know they left with 100 you know less than 100 mexican soldiers dead but they took 500 french down with them and so just think again how incredible this history is and what a a lesson it is for those of us who are in struggle today to know that when we are able to unite we are able to win we are able to do battle with an incredible uh a force that seems almost insurmountable and so for far too long the united states government has conceived of latin america and the caribbean as its backyard and it is though uh that perspective that the us has carried out its foreign policy of exploitation and control for most of the past 200 years there was a brief period during the new deal era and the united states uh that understood the need to be a good neighbor and this is a concept that we desperately want to to revive today and just in the framework of the green new deal changed the discourse on us environmental pro policy progressives need to frame a good neighbor policy for the 21st century that will improve our relations within the regional community and so the latin american team has been working on this incredible uh good neighbor policy that will work uh to end us imperialism and um and uh to respect and appreciate differences so just stop meddling with the affairs of of of you know of of these political projects these revolutionary political projects and let's work together for the common good so i put the link for the good neighbor policy in the chat again the incredible latin american team has been doing um this work to really get this around before we leave i know we're running over a little bit but for those of you who don't know the columbian people have been carrying out for the last six days against a neoliberal model prices um and we reject the brutal repression that has been unleashed by the national government led by yvonne duque against millions of protesters that have taken to the streets and legitimately used their constitutional rights protests and we reject the announcement that happened on the may 1st to call the army to control the street and keep points of mobilization for the strike i know over time i just want you all to know that there is an incredible struggle that is being waged in columbia right now again of a people who are against this huge oppressive force and just think about how can we be in solidarity with these revolutionaries um in the way in which uh mexican revolutionaries were in solidarity with abolitionists um and those who fought for the emancipation of chattel slavery in the united states or the emancipation of of enslaved black workers in the united states and so thank you all so much this has been super dope uh this has been such a pleasure and uh again the uh the link to the good neighbor policy is in the chat moni put the link for pueblos sin fronteras i am linking that in the chat as well and the poem that we opened with with louis rodriguez uh of california of uh los angeles i'm putting that in the chat as well this beautiful poem about the the revolutionary history of sinco de mayo you all have a wonderful wonderful night stay safe um go with love and we will see you soon