I’ve always loved the name Kasama for the project. Still, I’ve always preferred the shorthand term compa for addressing people. :-)

It is very interesting to see that a website, dedicated to a revolutionary cause, chose the word Kasama as a symbol of what it stands for.

The direct translation in the English language of the word Kasama is Companion. However, because of the Filipino people’s struggle against US imperialism and the presence of the underground revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the word Kasama has taken a political connotation. The word Kasama, if it pertains to an active member of the revolutionary movement, could be translated as Comrade in the English language.

Its abbreviation is Ka and precedes the name of the person. For example: Ka Andy (Comrade Andy), Ka Jason (Comrade Jason), Ka Felix (Comrade Felx), etc.

In this context, Kasama is not merely a companion but a comrade in the struggle for freedom and national democracy with a socialist perspective.

First, I’m not sure if you’ll ever see my response, because it’s like a year after yours. My bad.

I think if you looked through the site in a little more detail you will find some of the things that you mentioned were missing. The Kasama page often takes blocs of time to focus on particular topics, and so if you only look at the posts from any given moment, it may seem like a very limited quantity of things, experiences, and thinkers are being discussed.

For example, here are a number of posts about Leonard Peltier. href=”http://kasamaproject.org/category/history/queer-history/”>Here is a section on queer politics and history. href=”http://kasamaproject.org/2012/01/08/kasama-pamphlet/”>Here is an entire pamphlet we released of LGBTQ people talking about their experiences of oppression within the communist movement, which provoked a very long discussion. href=”http://kasamaproject.org/category/history/black-panthers/”>Here is a section on the Black Panthers (many of whom, like George Jackson, were communists by the way), which includes other Black liberation pieces. Our categorization right now is not very good and it is often difficult to navigate between different topics, but these things–including other topics you mentioned–are there nonetheless.

Kasama is also a collaborative site, so if you feel that something is missing from the discussion you are encouraged to submit articles which are relevant to our stated goals and aims of reconceiving revolutionary thought and practice. You can send articles for submission to kasamasite@yahoo.com, if you’d like. I, for one, would be interested in seeing most posts about indigenous ideas/strategies for liberation here.

On a more political point: I doubt anyone on this site would consider issues pertaining to indigenous peoples, women and queer folks to be “lifestyle” issues that needn’t be addressed. I have the inclination that you really didn’t look through the site at all, and are commenting based on your own prejudices of communists. This is especially apparent when you say that “it’s all just Lenin and Trotsky” despite the fact that there are very few Trotskyists that participate in Kasama. In fact, I rarely even see us post articles that use the term “working class”, as our participants tend to prefer the term “proletariat” and most of us do not seem to fetishize the organized working class’s role as opposed to that of other dispossessed peoples in the United States.

There is no question that the communist movement has historically not always related well to indigenous peoples, whether that be in the United States, Latin America, or elsewhere. There is no question that communists have often had a mechanical understanding of women’s and LGBTQ liberation. These problems need to be overcome, which requires engagement with different thinkers and ideas. This site and its participants are not opposed to that. Kasama is not united by some strict adherence to any particular dogma, but by a shared conviction that we have often taken for granted that old answers to difficult questions remain–or ever were–correct. At the same time, I maintain my opinion that the lessons of the communist movement have not all been negative and overall there needs to be more continuity than discontinuity with that experience. We may have done a lot of things wrong, even acting occasionally in criminal ways toward the people, but communist movements have, thus far, been the only anti-capitalist movements to overthrow an established state. I don’t say this as some kind of dick-measuring contest, but rather because it challenges us both: on my side, we have to ask if the way communist movements have historically come to power has been part of the problem in their eventual destruction or degeneration; on your side, you have to ask if some of the ideas non-communist anti-capitalists hold have prevented them from becoming potent threats to the system. BOTH of these are relevant discussions, and we need to critically engage with one another to find the answers.

-Natalio

[...]Kasama the emperor can burn down villages, the people are forbidden to light a candle[...]…

If you truly speak of revolution, stop looking at how to overthrow the current system and start looking at YOUR daily habits that support the current capitalist society.

The path to revolution is a journey inwards.