On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to push the moment closer to 21st century socialism.

After each day of the congress, a few LeftRoots cadres will blog about their experiences that day in hopes of giving those interested a peek at what we’re doing in California and why we’re so excited about it.

Myrna, Boston:

One of these days, I am gonna write a blogpost about how LeftRoots is the Cardi B of the 21st century socialism world. But it’s 1.30am right now and that really means its 4.30am since I rock out on the east coast time. And to say I am annoyed is an understatement, because for whatever reason — I lost that blogpost as in the application closed on me and then saved an hour ago. SO this is what I got for you…

LeftRoots is an organization full of people who are deeply committed to getting free and will go to the ends of the earth in search of tools to make this happen. Because of this deep commitment, there is a demand that you bring your authentic self. People make a deep effort to see you which results in a deepening of commitment to one another. We had spent the last 3 months rigorously setting up support structures to help us get through a milestone. And this support structure allowed us to dream.

And dream we did. In a small group I was a part of we dreamt of the little red school, one of the political training programs we are developing for LeftRoots members, no longer being little because it got big! We needed alternatives and we followed the traditions of schools like the freedom schools and the universidad sin fronteras. It would teach trades that were/are necessary to rebuild areas that are severly struck by the climate crisis. It would also teach a curriculum on transformative and restorative justice that would be necessary to learn because we need alternatives to policing.

And also we had to do sobering assessments as to where we are and contend with that overwhelming feeling of how much work we have to do and all the tensions that brings up in our bodies and minds.

Grateful for the ability to sit with my praxis circle at dinner and play a game of telephone where my name ended up being “something” and someone was a park ranger, and we renamed our strategy doc “We will win oh shit!”

We’ve been doing movement sing alongs and chant alongs, so it’s only appropriate that I offer one up here, especially since it helped me write this post a second time (the first post I had Bruno Mars on heavy rotation, because we got it going on and don’t it feel good to be us.):