kites #7 and #8 are an extended punctuation of a point we have been arguing from kites #1 on: there are no shortages of crises engulfing the US and Canada that present opportunities for great advances towards revolution, but there is a profound lack of communist forces, most especially the vanguard party, to seize on these crises. We continue to make this punctuation not only by analyzing the crises and contradictions that are right now missed opportunities, but also through summations of what vanguard parties and communist organizations make possible and where they have have fallen short of their responsibilities in the past.
kites #7 features articles on several key social faultlines and crises that shape the objective situation we aim to transform through struggle. This content is posted on our website, and includes articles on the “War on Drugs”, the war in Ukraine shaped by sharpening inter-imperialist conflict, and the present-day oppression of women, as well as a social investigation into what class forces and social dynamics were at play in Canada’s “Freedom Convoy.” kites #8 and #9 are devoted to summations of communist history in the US and Canada:the newly-published issue #8 consists entirely of a major new document from the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries titled “The CP, the Sixties, the RCP, and the Crying Need for a Communist Vanguard Party Today: Summing up a century of communist leadership, organization, strategy, and practice in the United States so that we can rise to the challenges before us”;the forthcoming issue #9 will bring forward a series of summations of Party-building efforts in Canada over the past twenty years, namely, the experiences of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada and Revolutionary Initiative.
To continue to get issues of kites to the finish line and to broaden the journal’s impact and distribution, we are calling for volunteers on two fronts.
Distribution and popularization:
- Ask your local library and bookstores to carry kites
- Start a discussion circle of kites (see “A kites readers guide to starting a discussion group”)
- Contact us to order bulk copies for your discussion group or local distribution efforts
- Holler if you have ideas for spreading kites on social media
Production:
- Copy editing
- Print layout
- Illustration and graphic design
- Translation
kites has thus far only been published in English, but we aim to create a “translations” section of our website in the near future. We need translators to make this possible and fill our translations page with content. We are especially seeking people who can translate our content into Spanish and French, though anyone with translation skill in any language would be welcome to contribute. We should mention here that if you think translation means not much more than running an article through Google translate, then: thanks, but no thanks. We take our content seriously, and we need translators who will give our articles the care they need to make sure that readers in languages besides English get the intended meaning of our articles. In translation, as in all things, we must raise our standards and get beyond amateurishness if we take making revolution seriously.
Thus far, kites has been written and produced by a relatively small number of comrades. We’ve been punching well above our weight, but we need a larger collectivity taking responsibility for our journal. Moving forward, we aim to deepen our bench so that we can broaden our content, overcome bottlenecks in production, and connect kites with everyone thirsting for answers on how we can get beyond the hellscape of capitalism-imperialism.
We’re making our plans to crack the empire. You in?
kites-journal.org 