by Milena Germon (pictured on right)
Maine
Ever since I was little, I wanted to know everything about how the world worked. I had endless questions, and much to my family’s and school’s dismay, I was never satisfied by the final answer that “life isn’t fair” and “injustice is just a part of the system we live in.”
In retrospect, I can identify lots of little moments of radicalization: seeing neighbors get priced out of the city, listening to my Nonna recount about what it was like to flee the military dictatorship in Argentina in the early 70s, watching my parents juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet. Then later, as a young adult: wrestling with neglectful landlords, working under exploitative bosses, seeing friends get brutally arrested at peaceful protests. In high school, I remember feeling like there was an alarm bell going off that only certain people could hear – I wanted to shake everyone I knew by the collar and say: it isn’t normal that we have to live like this! Isn’t anybody paying attention?
I connected with the Independent Socialist Group (ISG) while I was in college. An ISG member – who was one of my class’s TAs at the time – encouraged me to continue to ask difficult questions and let me be outraged at the lack of answers available. I began to go to ISG study groups with her and learned that not only were there other people who saw these seemingly invisible forces at play, but that these patterns had names and solutions. In fact: people have been debating and writing for hundreds of years about how a system made for human need is possible and necessary! And that now, there are lots of people all over the world taking on this task.
The pandemic hit partway through my junior year, and as we clumsily transitioned to “Zoom school”, it struck me with sharp clarity that capitalism will eat us all up without remorse unless something changes. Uncontrolled pandemic, catastrophic climate crisis, endless violence and war – these issues will not be “voted out” because they’re baked into the capitalist system. A better world is possible… but we must fight for it!
Independent Socialist Group 