askchapo

As individuals we're not going to tip the scales one way or another. If we can retreat/regroup to places where it's safer to organize, there's nothing wrong with that. Revolutionaries throughout history have gone into exile.

a group of individuals is a collective is an organization. We are not remotely in the illegal phase of organizing where it is reasonable thinking about "going into exile." The PSL is running an open presidential campaign; on top of organizing a revolutionary movement and being on the streets near every day across the nation. We are not in an illegal phase where anyone is "going into exile" by packing up and leaving the working poor to fend for themselves.

If people who can afford to want to leave for elsewhere for the benefit of their own life opportunities and ease of experience for themselves or their families, that is a personal choice which everyone who has the means to is free to make

but I would deride anyone trying to mask that, by donning a cloak of "revolutionary exile" on themselves, as stolen revolutionary valor spitting on the face of the BLA and BPP and AIM members who have spent decades in solitary confinement refusing to ever give up the struggle; and the ex-BPP members (BOOMERS) who are still organizing to this day; who I've had the good fortune of engaging in sister-organization activities with. Packing one's bags and passport in hand lining up opportunities to leave the country willingly because it seems better elsewhere is not the same as Assata Shakur escaping prison and seeking refugee status in Cuba with a $1million bounty being placed on her head; and trying to provide that veil as if it is so for others is shameless opportunism.

Preparing means of leaving if one can afford it for when things do reach illegal phases and one is specifically targeted can make perfect sense

it is good planning and one must gauge how to maximize their own effectiveness and sometimes retreat is necessary; but (and this is not remotely targeted at specifically you, if you want to leave you do you) the naked defeatism and opportunism in this thread and a few others today makes me want to reach through the compuer and shake the lot of you. People aren't respecting and realizing that the rhetoric they are engaging in is actively counter-revolutionary. It does more to smother the nascent revolutionary movement in its crib than ANY FASCIST COULD DREAM to be saying "oh it's all lost, there's only decay, there's not going to be revolution, why bother, let's all flee or die." The revolutionary movement which is and has been being built every day for years by many people and groups dedicating much of their lives and in cases their freedom, is killed by these defeatist and opportunist attitudes more than any pig or proud boy.