Around and following WW2, imperialists and settler colonizers made power grabs and detrimental ruptures in countries all over the world. This is why so many countries have pivotal and often scarring histories that are accentuated all around 75 years ago.
This era brought on a different wave of oppression through so many countries and areas. Palestine, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawai’i, and so many more have indelible scars and histories from imperial control activity right around this time.
Generations like my parents are some of the last still alive to remember and have experienced what life was like before those divisions, loss of land and home, loss of sovereignty, loss of families and people and land that were once one. The first Nakba, the division of Korea, the Partition into India and Pakistan, life before militarization zones, walls, fences, and borders.
That absolutely breaks my heart. Because it may mean they will never be able to reunify, return home, see relatives, cross borders that once did not exist, and see a reunified land no longer at war because of imperialism.
Our struggles are inextricably bound. When you understand this fact, it broadens the scope and purpose of your work infinitely.
Whether it is against systemic anti-Blackness in the US Empire, militarization across Asia and the Pacific, exploitation of people and land across Africa, continuous Imperialist interventions in Central and South America, the economic imperialism in the Caribbean, and it keeps going. When you recognize that all struggles are linked then the fight becomes for liberation for everyone.
In my lifetime. I am fighting for liberation using my entire lifetime, just as those before me fought for it in their lifetimes. My mother’s lifetime started before her and will continue after her. And mind you, my lifetime will continue far beyond me in our collective People.
Not only have I dedicated my lifetime to liberation, but I have given my life to it, too.
Our fights and struggles are intertwined. When you witness injustice there, it is in fact injustice right here.
When we all make that connection, and we build all of us together, Empires do not stand a chance.
Let us fight so we are the last generation to live under Empires ever again.
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