Ah, understood. That makes sense, imo the main thing we have to do as leftists is propagandize to educate and grow our numbers, and being deliberately provocative is a part of that.
Personally I think the PNW/Cascadian “regional identity” is fairly weak and has the same issues as with any regionalist/nationalist movements in the US, in that they often end up incorporating reactionary settler-colonialism because the entire country is founded on it. Imo that means socialism and anti-colonialism will have to be the primary axes around which people organize, and at that point I question how many people regional identity even brings on board.
All that said, obviously we have no idea what will actually work because there’s never been a revolution in similar conditions so I’m not going to be prescriptive.
You have the right idea, the “Cascadia” bit is a shortcut to actual progressive discussions about what it may actually take to make good things happen. We’re doing it right now, even. It’s not meant to be totally serious (unless it actually becomes a thing, but by then it’s way out of our hands anyway).
Proto Cascadian identity (while working toward “socialism with Cascadian Characteristics”) will need to be formed as an extension of indigenous liberation. Half the liberals already can see the farce of land acknowledgments that they do at every city council meeting, but this is what it might look like to see real action. It forms a path to anti-colonialism since even land acknowledgements directly call it occupied land.
Progressive liberals are vulnerable to having their American identity crushed, which is accelerating every day under Trump 2.0. “Socialism with Cascadian characteristics” is a just a bit (or thought experiment), but it takes advantage of what is happening right now and gets them out of the liberal dead-end quickly. There needs to be so we fucking urgency if we are going to protect our communities from fascism and we know we can’t wait 4 more fucking years and then watch Democrats tank to a Vance/DeSantis ticket. Either liberals talk me down or they don’t actually hate this shit and they’re pretenders (a lot of them irl are down to engage though, they’re on their way).
Ah, understood. That makes sense, imo the main thing we have to do as leftists is propagandize to educate and grow our numbers, and being deliberately provocative is a part of that.
Personally I think the PNW/Cascadian “regional identity” is fairly weak and has the same issues as with any regionalist/nationalist movements in the US, in that they often end up incorporating reactionary settler-colonialism because the entire country is founded on it. Imo that means socialism and anti-colonialism will have to be the primary axes around which people organize, and at that point I question how many people regional identity even brings on board.
All that said, obviously we have no idea what will actually work because there’s never been a revolution in similar conditions so I’m not going to be prescriptive.
You have the right idea, the “Cascadia” bit is a shortcut to actual progressive discussions about what it may actually take to make good things happen. We’re doing it right now, even. It’s not meant to be totally serious (unless it actually becomes a thing, but by then it’s way out of our hands anyway).
Proto Cascadian identity (while working toward “socialism with Cascadian Characteristics”) will need to be formed as an extension of indigenous liberation. Half the liberals already can see the farce of land acknowledgments that they do at every city council meeting, but this is what it might look like to see real action. It forms a path to anti-colonialism since even land acknowledgements directly call it occupied land.
Progressive liberals are vulnerable to having their American identity crushed, which is accelerating every day under Trump 2.0. “Socialism with Cascadian characteristics” is a just a bit (or thought experiment), but it takes advantage of what is happening right now and gets them out of the liberal dead-end quickly. There needs to be so we fucking urgency if we are going to protect our communities from fascism and we know we can’t wait 4 more fucking years and then watch Democrats tank to a Vance/DeSantis ticket. Either liberals talk me down or they don’t actually hate this shit and they’re pretenders (a lot of them irl are down to engage though, they’re on their way).