Real Internationalism: Inside the RAIZ International Project

  In this special episode, we are doing something a little different by introducing an urgent, concrete internationalist political project. We are joined by two representatives affiliated with RAIZ International.

To protect the sensitive nature of their organizing on the ground, we have tailored this conversation to focus on their overarching strategic goals and material outlook without endangering any ongoing local initiatives.

RAIZ International rejects the dominant trend of contemporary Western "solidarity," which often reduces internationalism to hollow press releases, moralistic posturing, or aesthetic digital templates. Instead, RAIZ operates on a model of concrete internationalism—rooting its efforts in the actual relations of production, global displacement patterns, and working-class organization.

We discuss the material realities of their focus areas:

The Colombian Context: Navigating the complex aftermath of displacement, land conflicts, and regional state violence, and tracing how those struggles connect directly back to Western imperialism and transnational resource extraction.

The Migrant Labor Pipeline: How global capital forces displacement from the Global South into the centers of Europe, turning vulnerable migrants into hyper-exploited labor pools.

Building Independent Working-Class Power: How RAIZ coordinates across borders to offer material support, link regional organizing struggles, and establish durable counter-institutions that empower workers directly rather than funneling them into state-vetted NGOs.

If you are listening from Europe and hear about RAIZ initiatives or their upcoming speaking tour through local newsletters or radical community spaces, we highly encourage you to attend an event, stop by, and get involved. This is how we begin building a concrete, internationalist future with a real revolutionary outlook.


Project Links & Fundraising
Official Website: https://www.raizinternational.org/
Fundraising Tour Support: https://chuffed.org/project/gira-venceremos

Support our analysis on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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Transcript

Welcome And Project Overview

C. Derick Varn 0:01

Hello and welcome to Varblog. And today we are doing something a little different, and we are introducing a project, and we're going to try to be as concrete about it as we can without endangering any of its work. So today I'm introducing to you two representatives who are affiliated with Raius International. And I'm going to turn it over to the both of you to explain what that is and what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Alright. So for a start, we would like to actually introduce ourselves as speakers. It's something that's fairly common throughout the popular education formats that we are part of. And I think it's a good way to contextualize also in what kind of role we are here. My name is Liv. I've grown up in the German countryside, working class upbringing, studied abroad for two years, and then I basically kind of got engaged with internationalist educational campaigns of a variety of traits and specifically also solidarity with various diaspora movements that sooner or later got me in contact with Reis, Reis International specifically, that has a lot of contacts to Colombia and the Colombian social movements that will also be talking a little bit about today. And that is a good comrade, Jack, if you want to go next.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, I would also briefly present myself. My name is Jack. I'm also from Germany. I'm a bit from a family. I like to position myself also a bit in this sociopolitical background. So I come from a family with an academic background. I would say I grew up with certain privilege, something that throughout my life and throughout my activism, something that have to deal with. And yeah, I had the privilege also to study and live in several European countries. And about five years ago, I came into contact with comrades from Colombia and got engaged in internationalist work in solidarity with Colombia, and had the chance over the last few years to spend several months over several times in Colombia to get to know a bit the reality cultures of the social movements in in Colombia.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

As to the question about what Raiz International is, we are basically an internationalist collective, as the name would suggest. Currently, our main focus of work is on Europe, and we're trying to further radical and effective solidarity between people in the struggle for like broader social transformation or wellist transformation in character specifically. We're trying to interface with the various existing struggles in Europe and kind of hope to contribute to building popular power and forms of revolutionary practice in that context, which is its own bag of tricks, certainly comes with its own difficulties. The reason why Reis International, though, is because in doing that, we are drawing inspiration from social movements in Colombia, to which we also nurture close and caring mutual relations and kind of are in constant exchange with. We believe that a systematic change is like a global process, something that can't be confined to, say, a Colombian or strictly European context, in which we need to learn from each other. And our focus there is, of course, like the 500 years of resistance on the South American

Meet Raiz International And The Why

SPEAKER_02 3:45

continent or the American continents, and how that can inform a European perspective as well. Maybe, Jack, if you want to add in together.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I would I I think part of our collectives are also uh members or migrants that are from Colombia itself. So it is also part of how we bridge this connection between two continents, between two very different contexts sometimes. And as Liv already said, I mean it's the intent is to build those bridges, to connect struggles that are, even though they might be in very different contexts, they're very similar. And it's this intent to recognize each other in the struggles we're in, to build those initial bridges where we can meet and where we can recognize each other, and as such, try to cultivate bonds of trust, friendships among peoples, namely among grassroots organizations, and kind of bringing those sparks of resistance with us and sharing them wherever we go.

C. Derick Varn 5:05

Well, I was particularly moved when uh Liv reached out to me for two reasons. One, I have connections to Germany, I lived there very briefly before the euro was a currency. That I guess that tells you hold on. Oh, you still got Deutsche Mark. Crazy. Right. Well, Deutsche Mark died like literally the year after I went back to the state school. But um, but no correlation and destroying international currencies wherever I go. And I have also been to Colombia. I uh when I was an international school teacher, I interviewed for a job in Manizales up in the highlands. And I have been to Medellin, like most foreigners who've been to Colombia, it's a little embarrassing, but nonetheless. And I lived in Mexico for a long time, so I have deep ties to Central and South America. And so that is how you guys caught my interest, actually. This is specifically, and just as a side note, this in this interview comes after I did an interview today with another person in Germany. However, we were talking about North Africa, so this is how international things have gotten lately. So I I want to talk about Race International, which you describe as a conjecture of collectives. For those unfamiliar with this kind of setup, how does uh race international operate within that metrics and what does it mean in practice to stand in solidarity with broader formations uh that might be attached to it?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Jack, would you want to go or shall I take the first step here?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

You can go ahead and then I can compliment.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

So, first of all, I think it's important to say that Raíz International and Raiz Colombia are still two different formations that have kind of deep ties to each other and that are in like pretty frequent exchange with each other. And I think Jack can speak to that being in Colombia right now a little bit more than me. But the important part is why we in the first place considered Colombia such an important social context to be connected to to tie ourselves together, and why we think that's an important thing to also bring and talk about and an experience to share with. So we have moved in a lot of social spaces and organizational and activist spaces, and there's a lot of talk about a lot of social movements with tales from Rojava to like all of the occupations in Europe or to mass mobilizations of this and that sort. There's very little talk about, say, the social movements in Colombia connected not to the cliche image, like oh, it's weird Marxist guerrillas battling narcos, more from a perspective of what are the actual on-the-ground social movements like and what are their tactical and strategic innovations, and what can we learn from that? In that regard, Raiz International is a little bit of an innovation because Raiz in Colombia has roots in the uprisings 2019 during COVID and 2021 in the course of like anti-austerity protests, and emerged as like a kind of force that was drawing together all of the organic forms of self-directed organization that happened during these uprisings, specifically in like urban centers and mostly based in Bogota. So, this is what it means that it is like a conjunction of different collectives that is raised in Colombia. Now, with our internationalist approach, this is basically a kind of not necessarily methodology, but an approach that we would also want to continue. And one of our big steps is in communication with the Colombian movements we are in contact with, ask the question: what would it mean to have this kind of tying together of various collectives which are already involved in trying to form self-directed political power? What would it mean to bring that to a European context? And what would it mean to tie those together into a functional, say, larger scale conjunction of collectives as well? And that's kind of the connection between these two poles, if that clarifies the relation a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, I would extend on this because I think or or also on the history of race, because this is the the process we most directly articulate and and communicate with here in Colombia, is that it that it rises out of this out of the social uprising in Colombia, which has the the highest point in 2021. And there is an interesting phenomena, or that the people that take the streets that go on in the neighborhoods, more often in the peripheries of the cities, are not necessarily organized peoples. They don't come from political organizational background, but it's a very organic expression of resistance and of people coming together and in itself constructing a form of here in Colombia, they call it popular power, through building

Moving Past FARC Stereotypes

SPEAKER_01 10:50

blockades, resistance points, community sharing food. And I think this is a bit also an inspiration that that we take for us. It's this those expressions of popular power that emerge often very organically. And I think in the recent years through the Gen Z uprisings, there are a lot of parallels that one can observe of how how people express themselves and their desire for change and resistance often very organically, and and to connect to those expressions, especially in a European context. There are a lot of them, often they are dispersed, and there's the idea with a bit the inspiration from Colombia and relating it to the European context of how can we connect to the those expressions of popular power and and connect them not only within each other in Europe, but I mean also to Colombia.

(Cont.) Moving Past FARC Stereotypes

C. Derick Varn 12:02

So I I do like the point that you're making about Colombian struggles on the ground, because unfortunately, in the United States where I'm located, and probably to some degree in Europe, although this is a little bit more unknown to me, when people think of Colombian left, they think of the FARC and as descended organizations, or they think of like the ELN, they think of these Marxist-Leninist groups who you know fought narcos, sometimes became narcos, and not any of the other actual movements on the ground. So this kind of leads me to two questions that you you can answer together. You've you have talked a little bit about the nature of these movements in Colombia, but can you go a little bit more into detail about what kinds of organizations we're dealing with? We're gonna be leaving it to kinds because I you know the things are kind of hot in Colombia right now, so we have to be a little bit careful. And then also how this relates to the to the current state of European emancipatory movements of various kinds: housing, environmentalism, anti-racism, migrant solidarity. Because I don't I think that it's clear that that is what you're aiming to connect the two. And I obviously think that's a great idea. In fact, I I think that's a great idea anytime you can do it anywhere on the planet. But uh, how are they alike and how are they different?

SPEAKER_02 13:30

So I think it's worth first starting out with the kind of social movements that we are trying to learn from in the Colombian context, which are quite often overlooked in this international focus on the usual like fark on the one's hand, and then like all of that kind of cliche imagery that often comes across. And in that regard, what is very interesting and inspiring for myself is to be able to learn from people who are involved with the Congresa de los Pueblos, which is basically like the the difficulty is there's a lot of concepts involved that I'm not fully comfortable to expand on because there's a whole lot of conceptual baggage that I'm not privy to fully understanding. But fundamentally, what goes on is a process of attempting a legislation from below and from the grassroots. So the Congreso de los Pueblos is organized in different regions throughout Colombia, which involves travel between those regions, talking to the people in the territories, and elaborating a framework of mandates and political programs out of these ongoing conversations and tours to realize that the bourgeois state is not to be trusted in both its constitutional nature as well as enforcing the constitutional rights thereby involved. And there needs to be a popular form of politics that can encompass the actually the actual interests of those territories. Now, these mandates go from positions on energy and extractivism all the way to agroecology and the like. And how those mandates will then be carried forth and practically implemented, for example, shows in agricultural collectives that are specifically focused on things like food sovereignty, that are involved with land occupation and land reclamation from lands that were taken by force or by legal leverage, by uh what's the word, specifical kind of treat and treaties, uh unequal treaties and the like. And these kind of occupations, these kinds of so-called tickams, the the agroecological and uh food sovereignty territories, they all try to follow up on the mandates that were kind of elaborated and are continued to be elaborated in this grassroots process of traveling, talking to the people, kind of getting their perspective, getting their interests, and cohering that into larger emergent format of politics. And this, I think, is a process that is incredibly overlooked internationally. I certainly hadn't heard about it before I got into contact with Reis International. And at the same time, it is incredibly valuable for a lot of struggles across the globe because, especially in Europe, there is a hard reliance on the bourgeois state, even though we are trying to deny it front, left, and center. It's like against the state or statism, but then all of our action formats fully rely on state capacity. We protest to XYZ, we petition for XYZ. And the person, well not person, but the institution enforcing that is always the state. There's not really a creative impulse to say what would it mean to build up a politics from that grassroots. And that I think is an experience that can be learned from and drawn from and exchanged about in a very fertile and fruitful manner. Yeah, that that would be my initial impulse on it, and I think Jack has a lot to add there too.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the initial points, which is always interesting to highlight, and Liv, you already pointed out to this, is when it comes to international list work, especially as we are from the global north, from the European core, we're articulating in solidarity, and one of the struggles to say when asked about the Colombian movement, we are not in the position as such to explain what the Colombian social movement is and really does, because it's basically as most of the resistance in the Americas has a tradition of over 500 years of resistance against colonialism, and many of the concepts that also converge in in the People's Congress and its expression of organizing and projection are actually concepts that derive from

Uprisings And The Rise Of Popular Power

SPEAKER_01 18:30

the indigenous peoples of the continent. And I think even though we're not necessarily in the position to explain it, we we can, and as Liv also said, there are a lot of things that really inspire us and that we consider as very important or very interesting concepts to connect to Europe, to say, okay, there is such a rich history and experience of really just legislation from below, of grassroots organization. I mean the Tecums that Liv mentioned, they're a very incredible expression of grassroots organization and legislation where the People's Congress organized a Congress of land, territory, and sovereignty. I think it was 2013, where all the collective, all the organizations that were part or that are part of the People's Congress came together and in a big assembly of a couple thousand people decided, okay, what based on our the needs of the communities they represent, based on the different life plans as they call them here, they derived those mandates as the legislation of the peoples, and have this expression of the Tikams that are now under the Petro government, but also institutional recognition, where farmers or farming communities in their territories uh have autonomy to decide how to organize what they need. And I think this is a very inspiring process that in Europe brings a certain projection or a certain strategic depth of depth of where do we look at what is organizing? Where do we want to get that, and what's the perspective of those expressions of resistance, of self-organization? I think personally, yeah, that's where I also draw a lot of inspiration from the Colombian social movement.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And maybe another thing to add. I heard myself and I heard Jack say the word inspired by and inspiration quite a lot. And my to to make a small gest here, my materialist impulses kick in, and I want to directly jump to another practical implication that is involved, and that is in many regards, we're fighting the same enemies as well. And there is often only a very abstract kind of understanding of this fact. But from coal exports to Germany, to various pipeline, building and construction companies to coffee plantations, there's so much at stake in practically interlinking those struggles. Because as inspiring as the Colombian movements and articulations are to us, we are also painfully aware that as of right now, they are nationally based in many regards. They are networked in South America, of course. More than in Europe, but it also takes a union across oceans to actually take down enemies that are mobile globally and that cannot be defeated on the simple ground of a land occupation in Colombia, because there's always elsewhere that they can draw resources from. And it requires a certain sense of responsibility, say, from European collectives or European movements, also to practically overcome the burdens of say imperialist expansion or colonial history, which have kept movements separate practically and historically, because a lot of revolutionary processes have ended their articulation being shot at the border, so to say, and kind of helping them across the border and tying those links not only between diplomats and representatives, but between people right there in the thick of it, I think would be a first way to imagine a different kind of internationalism, even though at some points the practical steps to do that seems ridiculously small.

C. Derick Varn 23:14

Well, I think this gets to a couple of key things I've been thinking about since you informed me of the project. And and one of which is the nature of what internationalism is in America, and a large degree of my interactions with Europeans too, internationalism is treated as an ideological necessity, but it's also one that you gesture towards. You know, you put your flags on your on your your your social media handle, which I personally refuse to do. I I don't do flags, period, but that's just me. I don't judge people who do, but it's treated as a statement of moral support. Maybe you protest, you know, in support of Gaz or something akin to that. It's pretty clear to me that that both of you would argue that international must be a cornerstone of any leftist response because of all kinds of things: capital flight, capital mobility, the international monetary currency, the domination of the the quote unquote western powers over the over the world, mostly my country, frankly, but you know, you you Europeans are also implicated. So uh it seems to me that you that part of what you uh are trying to make a little bit more apparent is internationalism not as something that you take on as a moral stance or kind of an addition that's required but also has no real implications for what you do, but an internationalism as a practice of politics. So what do you agree with that and what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I would yes, I think this is exactly this this or one of our fundamental approaches is to say we want to do internationalism, but we want to do it as a practice, we want to do it material material, we want to do it real. That it doesn't, as you mentioned, no, does it doesn't stop at the flags and doesn't go to its material consequences if we really get to the bottom of it. And I think this is a bit this idea of also a process, I think, of of trying to find out how how does this work in practice or how do we learn to construct it in practice? Because I mean, internationalism is tainted, especially between the global north and the global south, by colonial hierarchies that in a way through our various socializations we kind of carry with us and are in the responsibility to deconstruct it.

Grassroots Mandates And Land Struggles

SPEAKER_01 26:10

And I think one of the first steps that we consider important is to create spaces for mutual recognition. And what does this mean? A bit that we all struggle, but as we mentioned already before, now that for example, Colombian social movements as such in Europe are not very present, even though, as we firmly believe, they have things worth talking about. And so we need to create those spaces where we can recognize each other within our struggles to understand who is the person I'm talking to, what is the baggage they're carrying, how are they positioned, how are they struggling, and how do I myself recognize myself in the other, even though we come from very different contexts or we we have very different experiences. And I think this is one of the first steps of materializing this practice, of overcoming those artificial borders that are not just physically between the countries, but also in our minds sometimes that that have been raised up by the way we have been socialized. And then oh sorry. No, please.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Um I I would add two things in there. One is historical note. The historical part is that I think in social movements and in socialist organizations nowadays, we often find an idea of internationalism that is fully based on the kind of state lens. We we imagine it as a common term, or we imagine it as a second international, or whatever. We see it through this lens of their different national movements coming together and representing their various national contexts, but it's always parties or even representatives of states, and specifically with the Comintern, also like a direct line, we are teaching you how to do socialist development. And this is a kind of internationalism that we first of all don't have the means to do. I haven't seen like any nominally socialist state declare a new Comintern and do the same thing of we're developing you in a socialist modernity. And on the other hand, it's also harmful in some ways because it reinforces those both physical and ideological lines between us as coming from national backgrounds. And rather than making the attempt to jump over that and say, okay, what do we have in common? How do we build something globally? We kind of get stuck in our own contexts and end up end up retreating into nationalisms when it's convenient, as has happened quite often historically. Which brings me to the second point that part of our work is various forms of translation, whether that is translation in language, which I'm far behind. I really need to brush up my Spanish. I'm not good at it at all, but also translation in terms of experience, so that we don't only have a nominal understanding of each other, but we have an actual practical understanding of each other's contexts, so that we can learn from each other without either fetishizing the other or orientalizing them or whatever, and also without kind of the opportunity to retreat back into ourselves and lean into our contexts too much. And this act of translation is interpersonally very difficult and will be very difficult during our tour. But we also believe that that is a necessary first step to start an internationalism that is practical and at the grassroots of organizers rather than delegative and kind of outsourced from the social movements as a as a thing apart, if that makes sense.

C. Derick Varn 30:36

And I remember thinking, like, why are we doing that? We are not an international body that has any binding anything, and no one's gonna trust us anyway. And we're not very deeply connected to either the Venezuelan government, but even more importantly, in my mind, the Venezuelan people to talk about what was going on there in the first place. So I I like this idea of internationalism being something that you actually do and can't be and isn't just about delegation to representative bodies, are top up stuff. I mean, to be quite frank, a lot of times one of the base the biggest concerns and one that is not completely unjustifiable is are you a State Department spy? Um, you know, as I've dealt as an American in Latin America many times, and I completely understand it, right? Like I'd be like, okay, of course, you know, like I get why you don't trust me. I also like this idea though, that it's not something that you are just doing, you're not just going to Colombia to just help out. You are trying to see how the skin can be in the game in two different areas of the world that are often in direct interaction. I wanted to ask you about that because I don't think people think about Colombian migration to Europe, but like we talk a lot about it in America because there's a lot of immigration from Central and the Upper South America and Upper South America to the United States. Unfortunately, in our racial dialogues, they often get conflated with earlier waves of Mexican migration. But what kind of Colombian immigrant community uh exists in Europe and how can you interface with it?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

I think that or shall I?

SPEAKER_01 32:27

You can go ahead. I can I can compliment it there.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Okay, so there is one obvious connection, which is of course, Spain. There is a linguistic proximity there to say that you already have an opportunity to go there. I actually don't know if there is like a passport thing where you can say, okay, I'm from a former Spanish colony and I would like to live in Spain, if that is an opportunity, or if that is legally possible, I would need to follow up on that. But that is one obvious connection. Another one, I think, is aspects of specifically also political exiles, because political exiles are not very prone to emigrate to the US. So you have other destinations in Latin America, but depending on the historical context, the situation at hand, the current news cycle, that might also not be a great option. So political exiles specifically, if they're they're already in the social movement nexus and of a certain class position, I would say, but also in a certain movement position where they have the opportunity, would be uh or can see Europe as a more attractive as a more attractive destination for political exile as well, for very obvious and and quite reasonable concerns. Yes. And I think those communities generally would be would be possibilities to interface with, even though there's larger kind of organizations that usually are more broad tent. So that you have like Latin America collectives, South American cultural committees, assemblies, and art collectives and things like that. So they sometimes they tend to extend more out of the specific national context and include people from other South American countries into the fold just because it is not the strongest uh migratory waves to Europe, after all, and there's a necessity to kind of band together on commonality in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, I I think the the Nordic countries they saw a large wave of of migration in the 90s, 80s, uh 80s, 90s, and there are also a lot of political refugees. And I think in Spain, as as Liv mentioned, no, there's a big Colombian population. And I believe that especially in the current European context, that migrant communities organize will become more and more of a necessity because we see similarities of migrant crackdown of legislation that is becoming more restrictive and restrictive, taking a really way too much international inspiration of the US crackdowns. And this necessarily will require also a solidarity between Europeans and and its migrant communities to construct an answer to this.

C. Derick Varn 36:19

Well, you a lot of the late 20th century has a lot of that. But so our less aware European friends, that's why some of us who follow your politics are as like, I'm not listening to what a French president says to us, I don't care. But to to get to your point, I mean it's down to even like these migrant detention camps that where you deport people to and then deporting people to not their country of origin, but some random third country that has an agreement with your country. These have both been adopted broadly by the EU. And I don't think many Americans know that. Speaking of that and how one might actually build that, let's talk about Gira Europe. Is it Gira Europe or Gira Europa? I was confused.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

So we called it Hira Venceremos.

C. Derick Varn 37:20

Okay, it's just a little more than that. So forgive my bad English approximations.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

No worries.

C. Derick Varn 37:31

I do actually understand both German and Spanish, but don't ask me to speak them anymore. Spanish, I'm a little bit better at German,

Material Internationalism Against Shared Enemies

C. Derick Varn 37:40

German. I couldn't even say Marxists the other day, and I was like, I don't even know what's happening. I'm also tongue twisted, like yeah, but I used to be able to say it. Um my old friends in uh in Munchin would be very disappointed in me, but they'd also be like, Well, you know, you're an American, what can you expect? Anyway, so I wanted to talk about this. So instead of doing like a traditional speaking tour or just an adjut prop run, you are framing this as a tactic to facilitate actual international exchange between Europe and Colombia. So what is the core concept of this tour and how does it aim to do that? How does one practically build cross-border relations?

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Okay, so simplest is to start with the interpersonal groundwork, and that needs time. It can't be done with like we have half a day here, we talk about the Colombian context, and we fuck off to the next city again. It it actually needs oh shit, cursing. Uh that should be. I swear in the first few minutes, it won't matter. Yeah, so anyways, like starting with that is a need to reconceptualize. So, what we said is we have destinations where we already have social ties to collectives, where we already have established co-working relationships, as Raíz International, and we bring people from Colombia connected with Colombian struggles to those places, and we stay there for three days. We share our chores, we share our everyday life, all of the reproductive tasks that come with like living in a place for three days, and we sit down and seriously exchange about each other's situations. That sounds incredibly simple and like not like a lot, but this is the sort of baseline out of which you can grow an actual practical and material relation by asking, okay, what do you need and how could we maybe accommodate for that? And what does the other side need, and maybe we can provide for? And this is already more than I don't know, a tweet or a protest, because it establishes the first connection for a longer-term collaboration that kind of I'm of the of the conviction that if you really want to educate someone about a particular kind of struggle, about a particular kind of issue, not just on an intellectual level, but in like a full understanding, then this can only happen through prolonged working together on something in with the same purpose. And to establish a ground base for this is basically the concept of the tour. We are trying to select based on topics that the people that we want to invite to join us from Colombia are already involved in. One interesting example could be for uh could be to bring someone involved in land reclamation and land occupation in Colombia, like hypothetical example, and take them to uh occupation, a squat in Europe. Similar situations, completely different contexts. What can we learn from each other's struggles, from each other's troubles, and where are the limits of each collective where we can extend each other? And it is a bit experimental because usually what we've seen most is exactly these speaking tours. And it might seem a bit odd to have a fundraiser to just ask someone, hey, would you like to give some money for a Colombian person from a land occupation to sit in a squad in Europe and talk things out? But I think it's a way more rigorous groundwork, both for conceptual understanding of global interconnections of struggle, and also for cultivating the practical relations we will need to build to overcome that.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Yeah, I would add as such, is it's this what we thought a lot about of how do we create those spaces that we put a lot of of emphasis on on creating also informal spaces that are not so official, that as the format of the space would have some kind of distance between it. But rather apart from this, also create the spaces where, as Liv mentioned, no, where we really can get to know each other, we can recognize each other, we can share those experiences and and ask questions, get answers that we don't expect, and build this foundation that then in the next step can be translated into material and very practical internationalism with this effective solidarity, however we like to call it.

C. Derick Varn 42:58

So beyond the immediate stops and these um sort of I don't know quite what to call what you're doing, but it's just exchanges, we'll just use that.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Use encounters so far because it seems suitable.

C. Derick Varn 43:12

Yeah, these encounters that works. That makes sense in in English. How are how is one looking to build a longer-term strategic outlook from these encounters? And maybe what a durable but equal internationalist infrastructure can emerge from that because one of the problems that we we mentioned earlier is prior forms of internationalism, they're either symbolic or they require a state basically to be doing some kind of revolutionary social diplomacy of which you can glom on to. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes you can't even do that, so it's not actually a mass participation or mass understanding between areas. And you know, I have some American friends who moved to Spain recently. And I they had some um naive notions about Europe to use America talk. They thought it was way more woke than it was going to actually be. Um in fact, they were kind of shocked that even certain not universally, but even certain like Spanish socialist would have strong anti-immigrant opinions. So what kinds of things do you are you hoping to emerge from this to make this a a practice that more and more people can uh get on? And and like I said, I think actual interactions between people really do makes make internationalism a lot easier um than than abstract statements or trying to figure out what the Soviets who no longer exist anymore would want us to do. Anybody?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Oh go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

No, I mean I think this is this is exec or this is the point that the recognition, the first getting to know each other can only be the first step, and then needs to come the materialization of internationalism, of this solidarity, and I think this goes through to building common agendas. I mean, there's a a comrade here in Colombia that always says the best form of internationalism is if you advance with systemic transformations in Europe. This will help us a lot here. If we because there, I mean, we mentioned it before, there it's so globally structured, there are a lot of pressure points that exist in Europe or everywhere on the on the globe, and each front that is open, each alternative that is built is is helping also to to diverge the pressure that unfortunately is often exerted on the most marginalized on the peripheries. And if those expressions, those fronts are coordinated, have common agendas,

Translation Trust And Anti Colonial Practice

SPEAKER_01 46:20

then it's when we really can advance most in materializing this internationalism.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

And I think there's one thing we also need to be brutally honest about right now. We are not on the offensive. Like this is not where we are. Our internationalism is still relying on digital communications infrastructure that is tied to a military-industrial complex. We have no fucking power of changing at that at this very moment. So one way of phrasing it is that what we are doing is smuggling. For any fed listening, not like in the actual material sense, but in like the smuggling of ideas, whatever you want to fucking call it, right? It it has to happen through the channels that are open to us, knowing fully well how fragile those channels are once we grow to a sizable effectivity. But the problem is you can also not do it because at the beginning of building your own infrastructure, stand those actual connections, right? So it has to be clever about how to utilize the resources we are given, and from that build up something that can last. A good example for international practical international solidarity that we've encountered in our research for planning this out is there's a hamburg collective of a coffee roastery. They are cooperatively owned and they're buying coffee through like legal trade routes from suppliers in around Japas to have the proceeds of that higher sales price in Germany support the zapatistas in their territories, right? This relies on a fully internationally marketized system, but it is a form of sharing resources from one pole of that system to another that benefits the actual movement building at two points on the globe. And that might sound a little bit opportunistic, but I think that we can't really pick and choose right now an optimal side to stand on. We have to think of how to make this work. And the first step is trying to think of things we can do with our immediate resources, the immediate collectives we're having right now, and building the best we can out of that so that maybe we can actually go on to the next step of constructing an infrastructure that is not fragile to bourgeois interests on the global market.

C. Derick Varn 49:06

Are uh uh other Central American Nicaraguan, Salvadorian. The assumptions locally is that they're Mexican, most of them aren't. The plans don't even make sense. But uh, as I was talking to Hassam El-Hamali, uh I messed up another language, I kind of sort of speak. Um Ma'avi this morning, he is an Egyptian who is in exile in Berlin. And we were talking about this. It really doesn't matter to start conceptually leaking both the ways we can do this, because yeah, I I agree with you. I'm using the master's tools, there's no way around this. My entire educational project is based off of social media, which is now collecting data, explicitly going to both the US and Israeli military, and also the probably the EU's two, and there's almost definitely a file on me that I just made even bigger by saying what I just said, but nonetheless, that these are the options that we have, and then the the other thing is like I do think it is very important to get people in the global north to start realizing that yes, they do benefit from imperialism, but they also don't, and the imperial boomerang is coming home hard. You know, the the way these things were tried out in the global war on terror and the suppression of migrants from Latin America and the suppression and then massacres and the genocide of Gazans, that all these things have involved technologies and interceptions between the international bourgeoisie and their state apparatuses that make acting nationally totally insufficient, but also it also means in a strange way, your national struggles do matter for things downstream. So, you know, if we can limit this data center even through traditional liberal bourgeois means, we will probably be helping people in the Middle East indirectly. If I can get the unions locally to care about not building ICE containment camps to put migrants in, it actually might have effects even to non-migrant Colombians. So I really like this idea of getting people to understand one, we need to come together as equals because we've been operating in colonial hierarchies forever, even on the left. And even if we don't mean to, we do it, right? There's no way around that. We've been socialized to do it, you know, even with even if you're the most woke person on the planet, you probably still do it. And two, I think it's important for people to understand that there is an international skin in the game issue that what happens in Chile or in the UAE or in uh Kazakhstan, you know, or definitely in Colombia or in Mexico really does have ripple effects to working class people in Berlin and in New York and where I live in Salt Lake City. And so that's why when you guys told me about this, I was very willing to like take this on because I think that point needs to be driven home over and over again, particularly because sometimes you'll hear, oh, you know, this immigrant stuff isn't popular, we should stick to popular issues, we should try to work on quality of life issues, etc. etc. etc. And my point has just been like, even from the standpoint of that, you're not gonna succeed nationally alone. There's like even in the belly of the beast, like the United States, where there's a lot of incentives for people not to do capital flight, they can fly between states here. We're a big country, and we have massively different regulate regulatory policies depending on where you're at. And if someone leaves New York to go to Texas, it's a problem. And so I think getting people to focus on what is going on in between in Europe, too, because I think you're also right, we're not on the offensive, the the global left right now. You know, we might be more popular than we've been historically, but we're not more successful than we've been historically. You know, people will say, Oh, America, like you know, you guys like 60% of young people are now okay with socialism. And I'm like, sure, but uh, have you seen our government lately? Like, like they don't even care what we think anymore, much less what you do. So, so you know, so I think that's important, and yet I will also say that I do think this international issues do matter more and more. I mean, like, Gaza really did have an effect on our elections, and the ones that democrats are still you know beating themselves on the back about, they should beat themselves harder, probably, but but nonetheless. So, how can how can someone over here uh in this godforsaken continent of settlers help you out in Europe, potential settlers? Um I do remember when someone suggested that we all go back to Europe, and I was like, I don't think the Europeans would want that, and I think we might actually outnumber them. Um no, we don't actually. We we don't actually outnumber you have a good uh a hundred million more than us, but uh but that's all together. That's if I count all the European countries together. But anyway, it might get really crowded though if 300 million people came back. Uh so how do we also have a demographic problem? So you know that's true. That's true. So do we though? Um we have more we

Diaspora Links And Europe’s Migrant Crackdown

C. Derick Varn 55:40

do have slightly more uh young people than Europeans do, but only slightly. Um but anyway. So how how can we how can people over here age you?

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Well, I mean, this question will bring us to the always uncomfortable bit of the whole thing, which is ah that shit cost, like somebody gotta pay for it, and we're not the most flush you could imagine. First, of course, as the fundraiser, right? It helps spreading it around. We will drop the link as well. We're really trying to cover for the costs, especially for our comrades from Colombia, because it would. I mean, can you imagine a German coming up to you and asking, like, hey, you want to come for Europe and to Europe? How about you pay for your flight? That that's not a good vibe. Yes, so so that's it would barely work with us.

C. Derick Varn 56:37

I can't imagine it working with Colombians. Like you asked me that, and I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

So, yes, that that is always a big thing, like just contributing something to the fundraiser we've set up. But overall, I think just following along the activities that we are trying to pursue, and I think in the broader scheme, thinking of your own environment in the same internationalist way as we are trying to put forward. If you are interested in pursuing that and exchanging about that and talking about how that might be possible, just write us a message. We are trying to kind of figure that out ourselves, and like every brain involved in the process brings some more wisdom to the entire thing, every new perspective is valuable in that regard. And I think this collective construction lives off of people saying, Hey, I see that this is important, I see that the internationalism that I've been pursuing so far has been insufficient, and I want to learn. Like one thing that we that we are aiming for in the long run is building up educational institutions on an international scale, just because of how important it is to teach other languages and teach other social histories and teach other concepts to people. And these sort of things need a grassroots participation of many people involved. So if you're interested in that kind of construction process, then just write us, let's get in contact, talk these things through, and we'll for sure find ways how to materially support each other in doing that. And I think that is the take-home message for everybody who wants to support us, who wants to get active, and of course, just fucking send us money. Come on. I've asked three times now. Yeah, jokes aside, this is always an uncomfortable bit. I'm not a good fundraiser.

C. Derick Varn 58:35

Yeah, not to be a nationally essentialist, but you're German.

SPEAKER_02 58:39

Um so anyway. Uh yes, we usually order people to do things, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 58:49

Fair enough. Um it's it is interesting for me to think so, so I will put the link in the show. I I have also been thinking a lot about this lately because I even I feel like I have not been doing enough internationally, and how this international connection is super important. I will admit it is it is getting easier to translate things, but I will also say that in my research are are trying to explain various things, even to do educational stuff here in the United States. I've had to dust off my German to read a bunch of old German texts about the socialist international, and I've had to really dig into Spanish because uh misconceptions about stuff in Mexico are often repeated in English language history books, and not all of them are bad, some of them are are are are decent, but if you read Spanish and you want to understand Mexican history or Colombian history or any of these things, there's a lot more available to you, and I think skilling is super important. When I was staying in in Germany, I always try to make my friends actually talk to me in German because they all spoke English, and it was super frustrating because they would just immediately be like, Oh, well, you don't know what a dative case is, so we're speaking English the rest of the time, and I'm like, Oh shit. So I think it I think this international interaction is important, even if it does happen in English. Sorry, speaking the lingua franca, which is also funny that it's the lingua franca, but anyway. Uh I'm talking a lot. I I'm I'm hoping that this project gets some eyes. I will definitely put the link in the show notes. And I think what I'm really looking forward to is in the fall, we won't say exactly when yet, having some of you come back on, you two, and anyone else you can get on to debrief on how this went so that people can get a sense of maybe what the next steps are, how they could do something similar. Because I've been thinking about this here. I I am very loosely involved with the migrants' rights community here. I've been for a long time, both now in the DSA, but before that, I've been organizations like Vahila La Migra and La Red La Red de Saleriedad. This is my butchering my Spanish now. So I think this is important to you look up uh at an international context for the reasons why you said even if Europe's wagging their finger at us, they're also doing the same things. So there's been a there's been a real lead on on this detention strategy and not even caring where you deport people to, and just I mean, if we're honest, if bourgeois international law was a fig leaf kind of protecting immigrants a little bit up until the 21st century, it's gone now. No one's even trying anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

So I mean, there's been a pretty harsh difference. I I I worked for a while as a social worker, specifically with like migrant youth, and usually in the process, those were all kids who weren't eligible for asylum, right? So they came here without parents, all of that sort of stuff. But the reason for them being here was not really accepted by the state as alleged reason. And the times of deportation after an unsuccessful trial have basically shifted from roughly four months. You could kind of roll back the trial and kind of get a new hearing. But now, as soon as they turn 18

The Tour Model And How To Help

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

and there's no way for them to have any allowance in the country, it's like maybe four weeks or it's the day after their birthday. It's like it's shrinked down by two-thirds, maybe even more than that. The window for changing anything about that has gotten so small. It's it's crazy how that happened within like maybe a year worth of legal changes there.

C. Derick Varn 1:02:57

That's depressing. Although at least you wait till they're 18. We don't even do that. But but yeah, it's it's it's been the it's been depressing. I mean, particularly here because what it means is raging war on 18% of our population, roughly, because you know that's that's about the amount of the US population that's Spanish speaking, and unfortunately, here, even though a very small part of that is undocumented, and almost none of that, as you've implied, is political refugees from Latin America. We basically don't take them. We will take economic refugees and occasionally uh cartel violence refugees, but we won't at although right now we're not even doing that. Apparently, as of this year, the only refugees we've let in have been white South Africans. But but yeah, it's uh it's very bad, and I wanted to highlight that because also, like I said, my and my like literally down the street from me, I can I know of two Colombian families here. So this is this is a live issue for me that affects my my neighbors. Um and the political situation in Colombia has been, I think, one of the more opaque in Latin America because you have these positive developments after 2019, but you also have a government that is kind of all over the place, and so it's been interesting to try to get people to care about. So, where can people find out more about your project? And we'll schedule you to come back on on the fall. So yeah, Chuck, please go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:40

We have a website that we are happy to share in in the link and also on social media. Again, we are also bound to the same structures to reach people, but there people can find us, and I think I I just wanted to highlight now something that that maybe that this internationalism that we talk about, it starts right outside our front door because we live in a world that is hyper-connected, and this creating relations of care, of consciousness towards the other starts often just around the corner, and I think that's where where we all next time we we leave our house, we greet the neighbor, we can think about who is this person, who do I recognize there? And as such, already I think we can all contribute contribute to an internationalism starting very small.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:45

If you're interested talking to us, kind of reach out reaching out to us, we'll drop the webpage and we'll like there's an email address that you can write on as well. And of course the fundraising link will be uh will be there. And maybe if you are in Europe and you're hearing about some strange Colombians coming your place through like some weird local newsletter, then you can stop by. You're welcome. We are happy to talk to you as well. And there's hopefully more internationalist projects with a concrete outlook that we are trying to start up after our tour coming our way. And we're already working together with other collectives within Europe that are trying to do similar things. So news is gonna drop, I guess.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:32

All right. Thank you so much, and I wish you all luck. And like I said, we will follow up in the fall, and I will include all those links in the show notes so people can help out or get in touch with you as they see fit. Take care.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:48

Bye bye.