Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota
In the spring of 1972, while the US was bogged down in an imperialist war in Vietnam and Cambodia, students at the University of Minnesota rioted for days on end. They fought with police, built barricades, destroyed the ROTC armory, and wrote graffiti on the walls of lecture halls. On one building in particular, Ford Hall, the graffiti read: “U.S OUT OF CAMBODIA, PIGS OUT OF DINKYTOWN!” It is in the spirit of this uprising and as a tribute of insurrectionary memory that we write this communique:
On a windy Tuesday afternoon a banner was hung in the Dinkytown neighborhood of Minneapolis over I-35 that read “US OUT OF MIDDLE EAST, PIGS OUT OF DINKYTOWN.” The banner was hung as the evening rush hour was about to start. This action, while small and symbolic, takes place in the context of rising conflict everywhere. The continuing escalation of the perpetual civil war we see, especially in Berkeley, but here locally as well on the Capitol steps in St. Paul on March 4th. The war in Syria, with the Trump administration dramatically escalating our involvement by launching nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles and bombing a mosque full of civilians. The war in Afghanistan that has been going on for almost 16 years, with the so-called “mother of all bombs” dropped on a cave system used by Daesh to hold prisoners. The possibility of war re-starting on the Korean peninsula and potentially in the South China Sea against the DPRK and China. The ongoing cold war between Russia and the United States, with both states waging proxy wars through various rebel groups and terrorist organizations. Everywhere we look, we see this war escalating. The prospect of World War III is not only becoming a real possibility, it quite possibly has already begun.
Needless to say, this is terrifying. It carries with it the horrifying prospect of a nuclear armed superpowers clashing in open warfare with one another. We know that these wars will not make anyone safer, especially those of us who are poor, and most especially those of us outside of the Empire and on the receiving end of this imperialist aggression. We also know that the best way to end an imperialist war is to bring that war home. To answer imperialist war with revolutionary civil war! To destroy the State, to disband the military, and to make revolution and seize everything from the capitalists and ruling class! So consider this banner drop, a small and symbolic action, a call for more creative resistance that can effectively damage the Empire’s ability to make war on poor folks like ourselves overseas.
We stand in uncompromising solidarity with the Rojava revolution and the YPG/YPJ and their fight for autonomy and a better world beyond capitalism. We stand in uncompromising solidarity with the people of Syria who refuse the tyranny of Assad, the domination by an imperialist power like Russia or the United States, and the fascist Islamic State. We stand in uncompromising solidarity with all who resist aggression in their home countries and fight for their own autonomy, and we urge people everywhere to fight a united struggle against capitalism, empire, and the State for a global insurgency against these forms of domination and power.
Against empire.
Against democracy.