Making Hot Dates and Fighting Imperialism

Making Hot Dates and Fighting Imperialism:
Get this Calendar and Get Busy
By Chris Crass

Working for liberation is a full time job and between paying the bills,
building our organizations, taking care of ourselves and loved ones,
studying and reflecting on our work, developing radical and relevant
strategy to knock the legs out from under the right and build the left, be
meaningful parts of our families and friendships, practicing our politics
in daily life, go on hot dates and love others as bell hooks' says
'helping them grow as people', it can be overwhelming. And as Franklin
Covey co-founder, Hyrum Smith says, "If you fail to plan, you plan to
fail".

Fortunately there are comrades looking out for us. The new 2005 Freedom for Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War calendar is here. It can help us keep track of dates and plan for the future, but more importantly, this calendar is grounded in history to help us think about what it is we're doing.. If you haven't already been using this, be warned: it's powerful. The 2005 calendar features 12 full color images - including
collage, murals, woodcuts, and more - and over a dozen pages of writing
created by and about former and current political prisoners and prisoners
of war. Leonard Peltier, Laura Whitehorn, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Angela
Davis, Linda Evans, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Tom Manning, Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Marilyn Buck and others throughout the 44 pages. It is moving to look at these pages beautifully crafted by so many of our leaders. Leaders, who the ruling class have imprisoned with the goal that my generation would never know them or the movements they come out of. The ruling classs understands the central role of historical study to the process of making the future. The South African freedom movement put forward the slogan; "revolution is the struggle of memory against forgetting." The power of this calendar is it's deep connections to our living history through people and struggles that help us develop
historical consciousness to root ourselves, not in nostalgia, but a
continuity of who we are as people working for liberation.

The calendar is a joint project between outside organizers in Montreal and New York City in collaboration with three long-term political prisoners being held in New York for their actions as part of anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles: Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes and David Gilbert.

The intro in the calendar reads, "The initial project was suggested by
Herman, and has been shaped throughout the process by all of our ideas, discussions, and analysis. The outside collectives compile, edit and produce the calendar. All of our members are involved in day to day
organizing work, on issues ranging from Palestinian solidarity to gender
violence to prisoner justice. We work from an anti-imperialist,
anti-racist, feminist, queer and trans positive position. Throughout our
production process, we seek the input and guidance of the three Political
Prisoners involved in the project: Robert Seth Hayes, Herman Bell and
David Gilbert. For us, it is extremely important that people on the
streets recognize the history of today's social justice movements, and how that ties in with solidarity for PPs/POWs. We want to emphasis the ongoing involvement and continued commitment of PPs/POWs in these same movements."

In addition to being an educational tool, it is also a fundraiser for
grassroots organizations struggling against the prison industrial complex
in the US and Canada. This year, proceeds will be divided between: Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), a community-based social justice organization of working class and poor South Asian immigrants working for racial justice, immigrant rights, and an end to deportations and detentions; The New York State Task Force on Political Prisoners, which fights for the release of political prisoners in NY State prisons; and a variety of smaller groups that do direct support work for political prisoners, refugees and immigrants facing detention and deportation in the Montreal area.

This is an excellent gift for friends and family. While I recommend a
Franklin Covey for day-to-day planning, an anti-imperialist wall calendar
with such depth and beauty helps us remember why it is we're planning.

You can order the calendar directly for $15 ($9 for prisoners) from their
website: http://www.twelvemonths.org.

Chris Crass is the coordinator of the Catalyst Project, a center for
political education and movement building. They focus on anti-racist work with mostly white section of the global justice and anti-war movements with the goal of deepening radical commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation.