Kopkind Colony

January 1, 2024, will mark 30 years since the Zapatistas burst onto the world stage, rebelling — as Andy Kopkind wrote in The Nation at the time — against ‘a new world order … that intrudes in the most pernicious manner on the way of life of people always overlooked’. It was an armed revolt that regained some land plundered from indigenous people and was met with state terror, but inspired the desiring world anew. ‘They have infused left politics’, our companera Margaret Cerullo writes, ‘with an imaginative, literary, or poetic dimension—organizing horizontally, outside and against the state, and with a profound respect for difference as a source of political insight, not division.’ And they persist. This new year they will be celebrating their decades’ long phase in 500 years of indigenous resistance in the Americas.

The desiring world is the one we inhabit, perched between cynicism and hope, painfully aware of the bleak old world but rejecting its shackles on the imagination. The future will not be foreclosed, we say, never sure except in the belief that the opposite is unacceptable.

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Augusta Palmer, who at film camp in 2022 workshopped Blues Society, which promises to be a marvelous documentary on the Memphis Country Blues Festivals, held in the tumultuous years from 1966 to 1969, wrote John Scagliotti this year on his 75th birthday: ‘Film camp was a game changer for me. One of my characters says, “We were filled with eroici furori, poetic furor … I always thought that was the best thing that could happen to you, to be thrown together with this group of people who had a heroic enthusiasm.” He was talking about the blues, but Kopkind was like that for documentary. Thank you for that gift.’

Continuity and change have been central to Kopkind from the start. A living memorial that honors the past and feeds the future could not but be mindful of that duality. Now anticipating our 25th anniversary, we are mindful of it, also, in the people who remember, like Augusta, and those who, having been to Kopkind, then return, like our mentors this year, Jennifer Berkshire and Scot Nakagawa; like Jeff Sharlet, who was our guest speaker at a free public event this summer; like Bob Pollin, who since 1999 has come to talk to Kopkind’s journalists and activists on economics. This year he and his wife, Sigrid, brought Nancy Folbre, our new friend, talking about the astonishing, unmeasurable human capabilities in the unpaid work required simply to live, and the implications of this ‘care economy’ for women and girls especially, for families and the unfamilied, for any left political project that cares if people and communities can thrive.

We are mindful of it in the people who have paid the experience forward, and those who will, and all of you reading this who support Kopkind. And those, too, in our orbit who died this year: people who were important to the broad political culture and to early discussions about this project, namely Amber Hollibaugh; and people who, in addition, were closely involved with us for 20 years, namely Kevin Alexander Gray. In an earlier note on Kevin we wrote that, in short, he held to ‘a politics of humanity for humanity’. The phrase, which could be the subtitle to every theme of every Kopkind political camp across the years, is from the Zapatistas. So simple that almost no one can achieve it, though we must try.

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And so to freedom dreams … Recalling that these have been essential to every great movement for a politics of humanity, as Robin D.G. Kelley discussed years ago in a magical talk (with a bat and a broom) in the barn at Kopkind while he was working on his terrific book by that name.

In this time of remembrance and resistance, in this dark, terrible time for the world, we with Kopkind wish you light, courage, hope. On the cusp of our 25^th anniversary, we look back on spirits aflame, but ever forward. We will be celebrating Kopkind’s birthday on Andy’s birthday, August 24, at Tree Frog Farm. Stay tuned.

With poetic furor and warm wishes for 2024!

If you are able, please help with a year-end gift. And if you can spare $100, we have a treat: Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World, translated and with commentaries by the Lightning Collective. Allegorical tales with bite and humor and tips on taking the lion down. You can make checks payable to Kopkind and send to 158 Kopkind Road, Guilford, Vt. 05301. Or press the Donate button above. If you would like the book for your $100+ donation, please write jwyp2000@gmail.com with your name and mailing address. Thank you!