Seeing lots of tweets about the Kerala model for covid-19, prompting mild shock that a Communist-led Indian state is so effective :) (1/n ) https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1248966999763562497

While I'm amused by incredulous ppl googling “why is kerala HDI so high”, and while you SHOULD read about the uprisings… (2/n)

the peasants, labor, women’s & civil society movements that led to large scale investments in health, edu and poverty-reduction... (3/n)

I’m here to talk about crucial role ART and CULTURE played in developing consciousness and driving sweeping change in Kerala (4/n)

One thing I think the US left lacks is a strong (mass) cultural front (theatre, media, arts) to “prepare the ground ideologically” (5/n)

I could be wrong, but in my decade+ here I have observed a kind of rightwing cultural stranglehold of MSM and pop media…(6/n)

A gazillion cop shows, sensationalist fear-mongering law and order shows, shows about getting or being rich (7/n)

All reinforcing carceral/capitalist logics; all limiting our ability to dream beyond current realities (8/n)

But one beautiful thing about Kerala in the 1950s was the cultural movement that swept Comrade EMS into power… (9/n)

The dawn of this heightened political consciousness and fire was in large part created the Kerala People’s Art Club (KPAC) (10/n)

who had a huge role in shaping Kerala’s political history. My Appa still talks about his childhood experience of seeing (11/n)

KPAC’s groundbreaking play - the subtly named “Ningalenne Communistakki” (You Made Me a Communist) and being moved...(12/n)

... to tears along with his aunt who was visiting from Bombay who was also crying by the end of it (despite not knowing the language) (13/n)

Tonight, I’m thinking about Thoppil Bhasi who wrote the play, when he was underground, hiding from a govt that had a bounty on his head (14/n)

And what it must have felt like to issue a clarion call to rise up and fight exploitation, in a way that resonated so deeply with so many (15/n)

I’m thinking about what that means for our movements around the world, to create art that invites us to action (16/n)

Art that heals trauma, that makes us feel seen, art that sets free imaginations that have been shrunken by capitalism (17/n)

I’m grateful for the witness-bearing art of @mollycrabapple, the counternarratives of @yesitsalex___ (18/n)

For the feelings that @micahbazant’s art stirs in me…(19/n)

and for the fact that @survivepunishNY held space on a zoomcall for some collective abolitionist art making <3 (20/n)

May we all keep making art. For some inspiration here are some pictures from when CPI M had one of their big national meetings in my hometown (21/n)

There were murals all over the city, celebrating landmark political wins, but also warning of challenges ahead (22/n)

I’ll try and translate and I hope you enjoy these. (23/n)
I'm going to stop numbering now and just add a bunch of pictures now.

If you have favorite contemporary artists and cultural workers making critical life-affirming interventions please share in this thread!!

"The fields that we harvest shall be ours" was a line in KPAC's play that spread a new wave of excitement among the people