Address of a Young Socialist

To my peers, and to my community,

It was winter break, December 2024 and while my mind was reeling from months of late rent payments and struggles with college courses, my mother surprised me for Christmas with a flight to North Carolina.

She moved months ago, and what little she knew of my struggle on campus, she knew less of my struggle on my own.

I was scared to step away from so much responsibility, even for a few days. My mother’s worry is worse than any anxiety. I couldn’t parse her seeing how I was during that semester. I was lost and ashamed of my academic performance.

Mom was certain I needed time away from the chaos, and she was right. I just couldn’t pry myself away from what I was busy with.

In her simple Charlotte apartment, I spent evenings with encrypted phone calls, signal chats and proton email chains, planning a northeast students for Palestine day of action.

There was not a moment I wasn’t face first in my journals, so to the dismay of my protector. Mom had seen me restlessly toss and turn in the mornings over lost sleep. I was burning holes into the back of my notebook, erasing and re-erasing edits. Finally, near the second to last day of my layaway turned conference call, Mom sat me onto the couch for some quality time.

I got to pick the movie and the snacks, just like we used to do at home. 12-year-old Patch would stay up finishing whatever was on FX, and mom’s promise not to fall asleep was universally broken (but I had never minded it).

This time, sitting beside her at 20 years old, I chose to watch Judas and the Black Messiah. Fred Hampton’s life, assassination and the story of the man whose complicity got him killed.

What moved me to start thrifting textbooks and stealing away into the shelves of Peterson Library was not some grandiose awakening of the self. I never had a perfect moment, and I’m certain there were no lightbulbs involved either. I never even considered myself leftist until this January.

It’s a strange thing because I didn’t even notice the change until I noticed the questions.

“What can get others to understand this?” “What is the real risk of protesting?” “Who can I count on to care about this?” “How do I know that without speaking even more?”

Three simple changes in framing: How did this happen? Why is it still happening? How does it stop?

Reaching the last wasn’t possible without accepting the place I was in. I needed to treat myself like a learning, growing person and not striving to become a monolith of leadership. Seriously considering that maybe if I don’t know the answer, I can teach myself to find it. Lead with my actions and act on my principles.

During the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1986, Angela Davis was in confinement awaiting her moments to testify in court. In her interview filmed from the cell, she said something that stuck with me.

“The real content of any revolutionary thrust lies in the principles; in the goals that you are striving for, not in the ways that you reach them.”

I believe all my peers can learn for themselves how our system of oppression operates, and in exactly what terms and manners it trickles into our lives.

I believe that for my peers to gain this awareness it will take a conscious, dedicated, long effort on my person to engage them in these discussions of freedom, because how else will these discussions come about?

I stay believing, despite the raids and shootings and lynchings across America, that my peers and I will not be intimidated by any oppressive force. My peers and I rather quickly are becoming the leaders of our generation.

That means by teaching ourselves to lead, learn and speak, we start to free ourselves from silent classrooms and isolated in-groups.

I believe that with this letter, addressed largely to the Black student, the Latino student, the international student, the queer student and the Muslim student; and still so addressed to the wider campus community of workers, faculty, staff, families, friends and allies; I can rally you under our collective struggle, and stir the type of social consciousness needed for the moment of history we live within.

I believe you are ready to lead in the same way I am. I believe that only trying will realize that potential.

Always,

Patch Isaiah Bowen Colon