Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota
On the morning of April 10th the statue of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata at 12th Ave. and Lake St. in South Minneapolis was adorned with a mask. This occurred in commemoration of the anniversary of Zapata’s assassination and in response to a call made by compañerxs in Mexico for actions in solidarity with political prisoners and in support of their unyielding struggle against the state and the cartels, which we know are not just linked by a few bad apples as the authorities would have us believe (sound familiar?) but are instead two facets of the same organization of society that produces poverty and destruction across the globe.
A small gesture no doubt, but one that helps remind us that the struggles of the past are not dead, cast in bronze with no relevance to our daily lives, but rather continue to breathe through us whenever we stop waiting for change to come and begin living our lives as insurgents in the here and now, whether this looks like masking up and resisting the police in the street, taking care of our loved ones and ourselves, or simply telling our friends about how and why people in other places and times resist/resisted and what lessons their struggles might hold for ours.
As of the 13th the mask had yet to be removed.