A Continuous Process

I have been out as bisexual to my parents for almost seven years now. My sibling, who is almost six years older, had come out as queer years earlier, so I felt comfortable following suit. I grew up in a liberal household. My mom was liberal. My dad came from a long line of Democrats. I felt like I could have a place in my home, despite living in Bremen, a wildly conservative town. 

By this point, my parents had been divorced for almost two years, but they were good at co-parenting. After I came out, they took it well, or so I thought. My mom was very supportive, but when I went to my dad’s, everything changed. It was like a switch flipped in our relationship. My dad was a heavy drinker, and he tended to get really emotional and angry when he drank. So one night while he was drinking, he lashed out at me about my bisexuality, saying no son of his would be a “fag,” and it was against “god’s plan”. My father. A sell proclaimed liberal. 

He would go on to ground me for having a boyfriend, despite my mother’s wishes. Our relationship never returned to what it was. One time, he got so angry that he grabbed me and punched a hole in the wall. He is better now, but I hardly speak to him because of how he treated me. I can never look at him the same. I can never respect him because he never respected me. My relationship with my father became fuel for my rejection of the establishment.

Fast-forward to October 2023: my grandmother and I were on a trip to the mall together, something we did fairly often. My grandmother’s love language is gifts, so she would take my siblings and me on shopping trips. I love my grandmother. Despite living in the conservative hell that is Bremen, Georgia, and being a devout Evangelical Christian, she was fairly progressive. I always respected her. 

This trip took place a few days after the October 7th attacks in Israel, when Hamas launched one of the most successful coordinated attacks in Palestinian resistance history. We were listening to the radio, and I remember them talking about the attack. My grandmother made it a point that Jewish-hating terrorists were beheading babies and raping women by the dozens. Nothing about the history of apartheid. Nothing about the ethnic cleansing. Nothing of the colonialism. 

I was appalled, to say the least. Who would do such a thing? I never knew much about Israel- only what school had taught me: Israel had a right to exist because of the Holocaust. My grandmother, school, the world- everyone seemed to be on Israel’s side. I believed my grandmother because my grandmother believed the world, and I believed the world too. I was a liberal Zionist because that seemed the easiest. 

In 2024, the Israeli Defense Forces invaded Rafah, where 1.4 million refugees were sheltered. Israel cut off humanitarian aid. They killed dozens. It was all over social media:

‘Free Palestine from the River to the Sea’

‘All Eyes on Rafah’

‘End Israel’s Apartheid’

“Apartheid. I know that word. South Africa. That’s what they had in South Africa. And I know that was bad. Maybe I was wrong? Am I wrong? Is Israel the bad guy here?”

So I did my research. Ever since, I have never shut up and will never shut up about Palestine.

As messed up as it is, the Palestinian Holocaust is what made me a socialist. It is what made me lose faith in the system. So much dis- and misinformation has been sold to the masses by the Israeli government in coordination with the United States, and it wasn’t just Republicans. It was the Democrats too, people I thought were on the right side of history. It made me realize how interconnected our government and economy are with exploitation. Liberalism could not save us from domination. The next year, I began openly calling myself a socialist. Now, I am a communist. Seven years it took me to get to this point; however, there is still so much left I need to do. 

I Am A Fraud

But I do not deserve to call myself a communist. I am a fraud- a hypocrite. I have often caught myself being ostentatious- putting on a performance to please people of the same mind. I believe what I say, but I do not know it. I am not desolate in this self-absorption. Many leftists share this egotistical reality- one where their superior morality is enough to save the world. A false reality. 

There is so much suffering in the world. So much hunger. So much loss. So much persecution. So much exploitation. So much fucking pain. And I’m here in my room writing a blog on my journey to “radicalization” whatever the hell that even means. 

How privileged am I to sit here and claim a moral high ground when my brothers and sisters are at slaughter across the sea? How privileged am I to complain about my independence as a teenager when teens in Congo are just trying to survive? How privileged I must be. How privileged we are to engage with the world in this way. It is a privilege to have the ability and the means to engage in theory and revolutionary thought and not reap the most extreme horrors of capitalism and colonialism. I can speak of the atrocities. I can speak of the war. I can speak of the genocide. But I have not lived it. It is a privilege. It is one that we must treat with immense care, not only with our minds but with our actions. Theory is necessary for revolution, but theory is a useless avenue if no path is paved for it to travel down. We must not forget our privilege. We must not take it for granted. Privilege is not a gift. It is a tool. To not use this tool is a death sentence. 

The Path Forward

All this to say, it would be a better use of my time not to dwell on the theories and structures of capitalism and socialism, since it would take billions of pages to back up and explain, but to talk about active revolution and my journey to it. So, for the sake of time, I’ll give this brief explanation of why capitalism is evil and why communism should be our end goal as a society. Capitalism is a system built around the exploitation of land, resources, and people, and it will drive itself into the ground, taking us along with it. Communism is a society built on valuing the human condition and environmentalism over profit and production, promoting general welfare and higher standards of living. 

 About a year and a half ago, I started donating monthly to Palestinian food banks and aid programs. I donated what I could, but it would never be enough, especially considering Israel cuts off most of the aid that even makes it to the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. I began researching other ways to help. Everything I found said to boycott brands that fund Israel and its apartheid regime. This is one of the most effective ways to resist Zionism that you can do every day. So what are some of those brands and their alternatives? 

Almost every brand in the United States funds this genocide in some way, so here are some of the medium to high-impact brands: OpenAI, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Intel, HP, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Sabra, Starbucks, Pepsi, Microsoft, Google, and Puma. There are dozens more, but those are a few of the main ones. I highly recommend researching it yourself because there are so many brands that fund genocide. It’s important to be conscious of your spending. Support small businesses when possible, don’t use generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT or Gemini), and look for alternatives to big brands: Qobuz and Deezer instead of Spotify, Ecosia instead of Google Search, secondhand resellers, etc.

Some brands are impossible to get around, like Google and most electronic companies, because of monopolies on resources and products. Electronic companies like Dell aren’t just responsible for the Palestinian Holocaust, but they are also directly responsible for the genocide in Congo. Congo has resources such as cobalt and coltan, which are essential for producing batteries and electronic components. These companies force children to work for over a dozen hours a day in horrible conditions for little to no pay. At the same time, around two million Congolese women have been subject to violent rapes in the genocide, and these companies are complicit in it. Sometimes it feels like there is no way to get around supporting horrible atrocities. The best we can do is buy second-hand and fight for a better future through organizing and direct action. We are being forced to participate in genocide every day, whether it be the gas we buy, the food we eat, the phones we use, or the clothes we wear. We are always complicit. The best thing we can do is minimize that as much as possible. It is our duty to. 

Community Building

Community is the most important thing we have. Without it, we are nothing. I live on a six-acre piece of land near Mount Zion. We have goats, chickens, rabbits, two guardian dogs, and an ongoing garden project. We want to be self-sufficient, so we don’t have to rely on the outside world for resources. It’s healthier, and we won’t be participating in capitalism as much. We have all of this, but we couldn’t have done it alone. We live beside a farm commune. They have a small daycare, and a few couples and families live on their land.

 The awesome thing about it is that they all help one another. They rely on each other for support. We are good friends and have built a strong relationship with them. They hold community gatherings and events. They have talent shows. They trade goods. Not everyone can participate in this way of life, since not everyone has the means to do so, but it has created a support system, much like a communist one, just on a smaller scale. Support systems are how humans survive. Without community we are nothing. We should all be here for one another.

This community has also formed an anti-data center group. We meet, brainstorm ways to protest, attend town hall meetings on data centers and rezoning, etc. As rezoning and data center projects continuously encroach on our lands and resources, we need to band together to protect them. Community allows for coalitions to form. That’s how we fight.  

I have recently formed my own coalition, the Carroll County Bloom Project, a grassroots anti-capitalist group based in Carroll County. We have 29 members and a little under a dozen active planners and leaders. We are made up of high school students, college students, and college graduates. Most of our work at the moment is on setting up a Food Not Bombs chapter in Carrollton. Food Not Bombs is a non-profit, decentralized organization that reclaims food (usually vegetarian or vegan) that would otherwise go to waste and gives it out for free to protest against war, poverty, and environmental destruction. We have had two planned events so far, and our third one is approaching. We always hold the event on the last Sunday of every month between 1 pm and 4 pm at Knox Park in Carrollton. We are also working on finding a place to set up in Villa Rica. 

Some of us are experienced in socialist organizing. Some of us have worked with groups like the Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America, but most of us are just teens and young adults who want to create a better future by aiding local communities. And that’s really all you need to start. 

When community builds, we grow stronger against capitalism. When we are conscious of our spending- of our actions, we grow stronger against capitalism. When we are educated- when we can critically think- we grow stronger against capitalism. As communists, we must stop othering ourselves from the whole. We ARE the whole. As communists, we cannot rely on theory to free our minds. We must free our bodies alongside. Pave the path so we can build our own future. Our own way. Our own community. Free of capitalism. A return to nature.