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.

Nora, San Francisco Bay Area:

Day two of the 2018 Congress gave comrades the gift of diving in deep — deep into our collective imagination, deep into our alignments, and deep into our assessments of where we are and where we need to be as an organization building toward liberatory socialism.

During dinner with my praxis circle, after hilarious conversations about which kind of superhero power we’d like most to acquire at this current moment and what music we’re currently listening to for inspiration, a comrade said something that really resonated with me: we need to make this movement irresistible. We need to make it impossible for the general public to ignore it or not want to be part of this revolution.

It made me think about the inherent joy that is at the core of the mass struggles we’re all a part of; the joy that is the engine that keeps people in struggle moving; the joy that is inside our songs, our families, our communities, our cultures, our traditions, our humanity. We do this work, we grapple with the difficult questions, we directly confront the terror of this current moment because we want to see that joy replicated and pushed forward everywhere.

One of our organizational leaders spoke passionately to us about the origins of the Cuban revolution, how just a few dozen revolutionary activists were able to topple a powerful dictatorship — and how that revolution was grounded not just in liberation for Cubans, but in the need to support and stand with anti-imperialist, anti-colonial revolutions across the world, specifically on the African continent. It was a lesson in deepening our imagination, remembering our capacities to really, truly change our world, and to never stop moving toward liberation for our comrades in struggle everywhere.