On IronProle

As seen on twitter, working hard to keep his community fed, healthy, and growing with From The Heart PNW.

Please look at the work they're doing to see how you can fulfil similar needs in your own communities. Please help support the work that these folks are doing, if you're able.

Apart from his thoughts on twitter, Red also recommended Activist Study – Araling Aktibista (aka ARAK). It's a great read by the Communist Party of Philippines' Education Department, which you can read from Foreign Languages Press for free.

It's a great resource to get up-to-speed with Red's work and mindset, and I highly recommend checking it out as well.

I'm going to post some of the things I've learned from Red. His outlook on life and his role within it have shaped my understanding of what a comrade should do; of what a comrade does.

I don't have too much of it documented, many of his thoughts may become hard to find with the passage of time. I am absolutely thankful for the learnings I've been able to take from him so far, and his spirit will live on in the work all of us continue to do. I believe, fundamentally, we share a purpose and attitude.

More than anything, it's been a pleasure to witness some of the beauty of humanity within a comrade I respect dearly. I strive to live a life as meaningful as his, and I work each day towards that effort.

Your first job - Mar 5, 2021 (src)

Your first job in guerrilla warfare is to survive. The fight is long, and the fire is hot. We dont need to run to a flame that's already headed our way.

Prepare yourself for survival and you are preparing yourself for success.

Running toward the fire because you are bored or guilty or for some other secondary reason is for you, not for the People.

Discipline, Frugality and Humility are the ways of the guerrilla warrior. You survive so you can serve.

Build a world worth living in. - Oct 24, 2022 (src)

The Marxism I practice has no room to tell anyone that their pain is not real that that their palliatives are not useful.

Change minds by making a world worth living in and nobody will retreat from it, nobody will seek out such palliatives.

Change conditions and minds will change with them. Heal the leg and the opiate is no longer required.

First things first.

If your Marxism is one of judgement and moralizing, of penalizing and crushing, it is not one that we share in common.

We stay armed with compassion, with constructive works and with a focus on reducing harm.

Build a world worth living in.

Red's take on understanding the river - Oct 20, 2022 (src)

Once you stop trying to swim against the current and realize things are as they must and should be, everything falls into place.

No wishful thinking, no idealistic daydreaming. No false hopes. Just concrete actions and clarity of purpose.

I could wish things were easier, or i can make them easier for someone else.

I can wish i had a mentor or i can be that mentor i wish i had.

I could hope for long life or i can help build longer lives for those who would otherwise be lost.

Life is as it must be. It is the only way it could be.

From there we can move toward changes that matter. From there we can create history.

First-Things-Firstism - Oct 21, 2022 (src)

First-Things-Firstism

Fill Bellies. Mend Bones. Settle Minds. Throttle Aspirations.

If nothing else this should be what you remember from me.

Put first things first.

The first three are self explanatory but the fourth always gets me questions.

We mean that we encourage people with aspirations to advance their profession or their studies to do so, even over the street work, so they can bring their skills back to the work.

You want to get a MD? focus on your studies and give us only your freest time. Get your grades, pass your exams and bring it back to the streets.

Your skills, knowledge, expertise and your newfound income will help the movement.

You wanna be a lawyer? Do it we support it, so you can bring that advantage to the people and their needs.

Its cultivating people and their abilities, building potential for the movement and splitting valuable labor from the exploitation of the owners.

We must be developing our forces at all times and all hands are needed. This fourth point is the longest looking one of the pack, the one that requires a firm rooting in place and time.

But it is crucial to our long term success that we have our own experts.

So instead of going for that better paying job on the east coast, we need to capture that expertise. Maybe they take the lesser job in order to continue serving the people. Maybe they forgo some of that aspiration and join us once more in service at the street level.

This is what it means to throttle aspirations. Not to kill them, in fact to support them, but to limit their usefulness to the bourgeois and maximize their value to our neighbors.

In this way people fulfil themselves and each other effortlessly.

More book recs from Red - Sep 18, 2022 (src)

How To Hide An Empire, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and Wages of Destruction are three must reads for greenhorns. If you want to have an informed viewpoint on the history of colonialism. It doesnt stop there but its a great start.

The author of HTHAE, Immerwahr, is pretty spicy and has some occasional chuckle worthy moments when he finds creative ways to describe US settlers.

HEUA, written by Walter Rodney and Angela Davis is data driven history that never stops blowing your mind at the sheer monstrosity of European colonialism.

I forgot to add Open Veins of Latin America. A brutal and eye opening book along the lines of HEUA, very data and fact heavy. A necessary read.

Twitter Dump

More stuff from IronProle, which should get re-organized onto his page after I'm done saving all my twitter stuff.

TODO: re-order all these TODO: date all the above threads if twitter still exists.

Cancer - Aug 23, 2022 (src)

Wellllll folks

I just got some extremely negative Cancer news. Turns out you cant defeat cancer with self confidence.

If you got a spare thought, save one for my Wife.

It is what it is. I have no control over any of this so im going to just live or die. Im gonna kiss my wife and smoke my weed.

My fate was never under my control. Ive always been a War Man, and wars have casualties. They have defeats.

Whatever you do, dont feel sorry for me. Ive seen my foes defeated in combat. Ive been a professional bicyclist. Ive been a husband and mentor and ive lifted up thousands with my work.

Ive lived more lives than many get.

Make art of me. Celebrate, but never be sorry.

I made peace with death a long time ago. You have to when you take up your rifle. Swords, you get it.

I was hoping i would live to get a warriors death. Maybe i still will.

But either way, War Mans live and we die.

Are you ready to die? - Oct 19, 2022 (src)

MH counselor asked me if im ready to die. I answer yes without hesitation.

I tell her that life is just a sparrow flying thru a warm house, in one window and out another. We are dead far longer than we are alive, so you gotta be impactful while you are here.

I told her that if you dont wait for life to fill you up but instead fill the world up with as much of you as you have to offer, death is no worry. Ive left my greasy paw prints all over this society.

Everything is as it should be!

Garden Analogies - Sep 16, 2022 (src)

Garden analogies are so good for explaining revolutionary processes.

A garden is not an event, and neither is a revolution. Both are complex processes, one historical and the other biological.

You cannot pull on your onions to make them grow faster.

Nor can you ignore history and events. We only build by navigating history. We make our own fates, but mediated by conditions that are ever shifting.

Tilling and Conditioning of the Soil - Sep 16, 2022 (src)

Mutual Aid is a necessary pre-condition but is not the revolution itself. Nobody should be claiming otherwise.

It is the tilling and conditioning of the soil in preparation for the seeds of revolution. Its where we discover new ideas and build new systems.

Logistics cannot simply be summoned from whole cloth. Systems of acquisition and distribution, moving people and things, require strong organization and clear communications.

Mutual Aid is where we put our hands on the materiel limitations of our communities. Where we build up our allies and comrades.

There is no decent excuse for looking down on mutual aid. If you cannot see its worth then that would be your own shortcoming.

Depending on the good will of our communities is a delightful daydream. We must build systems that are robust and efficient, putting labor and materials exactly on target.

This is how we will survive long enough to win. First we must live.

Young queers - Aug 11, 2022 (src)

The young queers sometimes don't recognize the struggles that came before them. We had to fight and bleed to make room for yall and we dont look and act like yall. We came from tougher times where we had to become arnored and clawed up.

The veterans of your struggle you now find yourselves in look ugly and mean and appear regressive sometimes.

Like any veteran of a war, we need understanding and compassion.

I learned to walk and talk hetero cuz thats what kept you safe when there was nobody coming to help you.

You could have been the next Matthew Shephard. So we armed up and got really fuckin hard to kill.

"You some kinda queer?" By anyone makes my hair stand up on end.

My Dad taught me that if more than two men ask you "you some kinda queer?" Its time for violence.

If one hetero asks you that, they want to fuck but you should run away.

All this to say that there wasnt celebrations of queer life. There were no supports. Not outside the big cities!

We supported us, but we had to give up huge parts of what many consider queer culture. We survived.

My Dad has been a closet queer his whole life but the fuckin Queer comes out real fast when you starting with some Homophobia. He would put you on your ass.

Im less closeted but you best believe the Queer comes out when its time for war. War Queers!

History - Aug 23, 2022 (src)

Too much left unfinished, but the kids are young and motivated. History will march on and victory will be ours, the working class will take all we've built.

Nov 10, 2022 (src)

When twitter dies you can find me in hell. Im not learning a new fangled social media in the last year of my life.

Thanks, as always, Red. Pic of him here and somewhere on my hard drive, I'll throw it up on the page when I do my image refactor.

TODO: ^

TODO: link this to/from a Seattle/Washington page when that gets made

index tags: @IronProle, IronProle, Red (Army Duck), North America, America, USA, ACAB, LGBTQ+, Health(care), Seattle, Washington, ARAK, Reading Lists

category tags: Modern Communists, Tweets