Michigan Organizer!

Allow me to introduce myself:

My name is Angelo Moreno and I was born and raised in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. My father’s family comes from northern Mexico/Tejas. We are the descendents of the betabeler@s-the beet workers-who were recruited to work in the beet fields of central Michigan for sugar companies. This history is alive inside of me and my reference point, as a result, is Xicanidad. I am Xicano and I honor that identity through my participation in anti-colonial struggle and solidarity.

I believe in hope and vision, and my hope and vision is that we may all come together and create a new, more just world. I seek a world in which many worlds fit, as the Zapatistas say. I seek a racially just, socialist and feminist/queer positive world. I have learned how to believe in this hope and vision by actively participating in struggles, in la lucha. I have learned this from organized farmworkers, from rebellious youth and students, from autonomous municipal councils in the highlands of Chiapas, from the vibrant and dynamic Xican@ struggle, from powerful queer comrades, and from our history, which is made by the people. I have also learned from my, and our, many mistakes. And I suspect that I, and we, will make many more.

I hope most of all to learn from folks in the seac network. To walk and to listen. In my work, my organizing, I hope to be able to bring communities together in order to fight against the destruction of our planet, our ecosystems, our environments. Climate change affects all of us in a very real and serious way. We must, together, find the path out of this mess. It is time for our communities to come together.

I will end this long-winded introduction with a definition of Revolution-the only real way out of this mess-by Mexican Revolutionary and intellectual, Raquel Gutierrez Aguilar:

"Desde aquellos momentos comencé a pensar que la revolución y la organización que luchaba por alcanzarla no podía ser solo la asociación de un grupo de personas que trabajaban para que se concretizara un acto glorioso al final de una sucesión de pasos y tareas que otros pensaban y uno, disciplinada y eficazmente, ejecutaba. Tenía que ser una obra colectiva gozosa, voluntaria, satisfactoria, donde todos y todas pusiéramos lo mejor de nosotros y creáramos en común algo que a todos nos perteneciera; porque ante todo, la revolución se me presentaba muy intuitivamente como un gigantesco y grandioso acto de creación.

From those moments I began to think that the revolution, and the organization that struggled to achieve it, couldn’t just be the association of a group of people who worked so that there was made concrete a glorious act at the end of a succession of steps and tasks that others thought up and one, disciplined and effectively, executed. It had to be a joyful, voluntary, satisfactory, collective work, where we could all put the best of ourselves and all create together something that belonged to all of us; because before anything, the revolution presented itself to me very intuitively as a giant and grand act of creation."

Yours,
Angelo