This story originally appeared in Prism on April 28, 2026.
“The ‘mosaic’ will be built on the principles of seeking to recruit from both the most oppressed segments and from among the most selfless. … The mosaic must immediately begin a dialogue toward building a consensus—as soon as possible—about how to best further coordinate our collective efforts.” –Russell Maroon Shoatz
“Freedom is indivisible, or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few. Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom, or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.” –June Jordan
Oftentimes, powerlessness and despair lead people to turn on one another. Far too many who are scared to fight the crisis will fight their neighbor instead. The history of conquest, colonization, and capitalism is filled with examples. Like clockwork, we can always identify those who are confused, stuck, and deluded by their inability to determine where to direct their fury. In the face of vast oppression, instead of aiming for the head of their tormenters and ruling tyrants, these types blame those next to them. It’s a common reality where poverty flourishes, conflict simmers to a boiling point, and where rigid ideologues preach. In the face of fascism, there are plenty among us in the U.S. who seem doubtful about our collective power. There will need to be some level of understanding in order to overcome. Instead of a call for resentment-filled “unity” or traditional fronts, we can look to what former Black Panther, Black Liberation Army member, and political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz called “the mosaic” for a model of what’s possible. We will not beat back repressive power with a bunch of fragmented groups and individuals beefing over all of the nothingness they have control over.
Perhaps nowhere throughout the Western world is the pitifulness of empty division more apparent than in the U.S. An ongoing circus of sectarian leftists continue to define themselves by pointing fingers at one another, even going as far as blaming each other for genocides, imperialism, and geopolitics that are far beyond their respective spheres of influence. This is a gross overestimation of their own relevance, size, and impact, indicating a ridiculous disconnect. After all, if you took all of the different sections of leftists (Marxists, anarchists, etc.) in the U.S., and added them together in sum, you would fail to total even half a percent of the U.S. population. That’s why I regularly use this leftist microcosm of a much larger problem to highlight the delusion we’re inundated with. As I’ve previously written, it’s a place where you can easily understand how twisted people become on self-important quests while failing to beat back all they claim to be against at home.
Genocide is not happening because someone you don’t like posted a take you don’t agree with on their social media. Imperialism does not need the consent of a U.S. population that largely doesn’t vote because the U.S. is an oligarchy where public opinion doesn’t truly influence policy. The ruling class doesn’t need to “distract” people from the Epstein files for the same reason it doesn’t care about the public will at this point. They don’t appear to fear us much, if at all. The question remains, will we give them a good reason to? The current answer is a loud “no,” as long as people play games that have nothing to do with organizing to defeat the ruling class. This will not happen by waiting for a political party, an outside government, or a hero to do it for us. Expecting as much is an entitled U.S. mindset. It will not happen by projecting ourselves onto movements past or present that we are not part of, while pretending we represent them solely on the basis of ideological identity. It will not happen by being loud influencers on social media, pundits, or celebrities who simply react to worsening conditions for the sake of engaging their followers. Instead, we have to take the lonely and often isolating road away from all of this popular absurdity toward a better project.
Shoatz has an essay titled “The Dragon and the Hydra.” This historical study of organizational methods examines some pitfalls of relying on highly centralized models of resistance. Shoatz lifts up successful examples throughout Black history that didn’t operate this way. In his collected works, “Maroon the Implacable,” the essay includes an end section titled “The Mosaic.” Shoatz lays out the distressing conditions similarly to what I have detailed above, writing:
At present, there are many sectarian divisions due to racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, cultural, and geographic differences. These hinder individuals, organizations, and entire communities who already interact, share many of the same concerns, are faced with similar obstacles to their well-being, and already cooperate to various degrees. But we can all come together like a “mosaic” with a goal of creating positive changes in our collective well-being.
According to Shoatz, his vision for the mosaic was more complicated than forced assimilation. He continues:
The “mosaic” will not be an effort directed toward imposing any type of multiracial, multiethnic, gender-neutral, or conformist utopian universalism. No! The mosaic will allow individuals, organizations, and entire communities to exercise self-determination in deciding what types of social orders they choose to struggle to bring into being, while at the same time learning how to better come together with others to form societies that will be superior to the ones in which we now live. Thus, the word “mosaic” fits us in many ways. We will add to the dictionary definition by defining ourselves as “the mosaic: the movement of oppressed sectors acting in concert.”
Shoatz explains that “the ‘mosaic’ is an ideological jumping-off point that will serve all of our separate and collective interests; it can also be termed ‘Inter-Communal Self-Determination.’” In the spirit of learning from the Black Panthers—successes and failures—Shoatz presents a somewhat revised approach. After all, radicalism and praxis are living practices; you have to know more, study more, and comprehend more than one ideology or historical example in order to supersede it. You cannot “critique” what you don’t understand, haven’t read, or haven’t educated yourself about. He illustrates the better approach by drawing on a multitude of elements of Marxism, anarchism, and Leninism to reach his conclusions. The breadth of his study shows how he could suggest such a mosaic movement, and the limitations of our current situation reinforce his call. If anything, I would take his analysis a step further upon witnessing the seemingly impervious nature of doctrinaire leftism, which traps far too many in the pits of regression. As it stands, we don’t have an oppositional or even functional left. We have “leftists” and “leftism,” and there’s a difference. We’re in the midst of deterioration, but we can rise above it all and approach life with the humility needed to learn and evolve. To build a mosaic movement, we will have to grow beyond the goofiness that leftism is reduced to in the U.S. while fascism thrives.
We don’t have an oppositional or even functional left. We have “leftists” and “leftism,” and there’s a difference.
Tunisian radical theorist and member of the infamous Situationist International, Mustapha Khayati, offered the work “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries” in July 1965. He explained:
Everywhere there are social confrontations, but nowhere is the old order destroyed, not even within the very forces that contest it. Everywhere the ideologies of the old world are criticized and rejected, but nowhere is “the real movement that suppresses existing conditions” liberated from one or another “ideology” in Marx’s sense of the word: ideas that serve masters. Revolutionaries are everywhere, but nowhere is there any real revolution.
The abundance of loud, self-styled radicals talking as if they’re generals of great armies or have huge revolutionary accomplishments under their belts is utter absurdity. It is especially asinine when losses are piling up. What is there to be so arrogant about? A mosaic movement will have to break free from orthodoxy and learn through actions that bring our politics to life.
East German communist dissident Rudolf Bahro wrote in “Socialism and Survival” that orthodoxy becomes reactionary “when a new epoch in the liberation struggle is impending, involving a fundamental regrouping of forces, and this orthodoxy then tries to push people back into the patterns prescribed by the old theoretical paradigm that must now be dialectically superseded.” He said, “We cannot wait until our old recipes start to work after all.” We are repeating past mistakes based on petty nonsense. We are regularly falling apart. If we do not want the failure of all this to keep falling on us, then we should move out of its way. We should move on to bigger, better, and more thoughtful practices. We should move toward the mosaic.
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Lara Witt, Lead Editor
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by William C. Anderson.