The Base: STL 2040

Tim Martin was tired. Saint Charles native (or what was left of it after the goddamn Maoists blew it sky high with homemade mortars on the 20th anniversary of Mike Brown’s death), former insurance agent, wife and kids fled to god knows where in the middle of the night when Trump II’s boys rolled through the neighborhood abducting and summarily executing black and brown people who had ignored the order for all of them to leave the area and retreat east of the Missouri River. “God I’m fucking tired”. He looked it too. 25 years tacked on to his 28. Common look these days. He was nostalgic for the days his parents talked about when commies didn’t shoot cops, fire mortars and blow up bridges but just postured with militant rhetoric behind masks. Now they’ve taken over all the black areas of the Saint Louis metropolitan area. He’d read the reports and briefings. A handful of college kids, service industry workers, former gang members and hippie types had, somehow, managed to use a variety of both legal and illegal methods to grow, influence hundreds of thousands of people, form coalitions, get a bunch of politicians sympathetic to them into office, and act as a basic fucking dual power in the whole damn nonwhite city along with a bunch of southern Illinois. Kinloch, Berkeley, Florissant, Ferguson, North STL, Cool Valley, Pine Lawn, all theirs. Cops didn’t go in and come out alive. Fly over it? They apparently had developed the ability to shoot down drones, planes and helicopters. Better yet, they had fucking lines in the cops and everywhere else. The mayor was powerless and the feds kept getting ambushed and shot. They had this habit of inserting secret members of their party, known to none but the highest levels, into positions and getting money and weapons through them. Bastards acted like the fucking mob.

All these thoughts bounced around in Martin’s mind as he staggered through the broken battle torn alleys of what he presumed was once the Central West End or somewhere North. He’d been walking for days, found a canoe and crossed the Missouri. No bridges. Smack dab between black and white Saint Louis, the Maoists and cops/army/militia had been shooting it out here and shelling it for years. The Loop was the same way. Nobody lived here, all the mansions were reduced to rubble and the people that lived in them either dead or fled. The commies had cleaned out everything worth cleaning out long ago. Snipers would pick your ass off if you stumbled into the wrong street. North or South was hard to determine, but Martin didn’t want to end up on the Trump boys’ and cops’ turf on the South side. If they didn’t know you or you didn’t have the appropriate answers to their stupid ass questions they’d just shoot you. Looking for food? You get shot. At least the Maoists had some semblance of a working system, their network of neighborhood coalitions, urban farms and the fact that all the Wash U and SLU and UMSL kids that couldn’t leave this city turned to war zone fled to their base area with their engineering, agronomy, and other degrees meant that they were able to get shit back together after the water and power were cut off. Of course this stuff was strictly rationed but you wouldn’t starve to death. On the South you had to pay to even walk down the damn street without being shot.

Martin walked without seeing people. Hours. He didn’t even know where he was going. He knew districts, but not streets. Most of the gas stations and convenience stores were long gone but somehow he found one. “Mobil on the Run”, no lights of course and no gas. Window already smashed. “Fuck it, at least I can sleep here.” Place was a mess. Shit and piss everywhere. No food, soda machine broke. Martin found a shit free corner and crawled in it. Tied his backpack containing all his earthly possessions to himself and prayed he wouldn’t be executed in his sleep.

KICK. What the fuc- KICK.

“Get up. What’s in the bag? Who are you? You come up here to try to sell drugs or do something else you’re not supposed to be doing? Where you come from?” A bald black man with a squint in one eye, a salt and pepper goatee, an olive BDU coat with three red stars on the collar, horn rimmed glasses and a forage cap with a red star on it stared at him, hand on a holstered pistol on his waist. 5 other Maoists surrounded him, 2 black, one white, one hispanic. These had various types of rifles. Shit.

“TIMMARTINSAINTCHARLESJUSTLOOKINGFORSOMEWHERETOSPENDTHENIGHTPLEASEDONTSHOOTME”

The black one had taken his bag and dumped it out on the ground and was currently eying the collection of knives, useless US currency, ammunition, food, and the two pistols.

“You don’t just walk up here with a bag full of weapons and shit talking about spending the night. Why the fuck did you come all the way up here? Do you know you easily could have been picked off by a sniper because you’re a white dude we don’t know?”

“You guys destroyed Saint Charles.”

Black flashed a crooked smile. “Saint Charles destroyed itself by being a nest of pigs and fascists. We got all the good people out, most of them anyway. We tried to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, that’s why there were only 5. Mortars have no name on them, though. Apologies. I’m Comrade Toussaint, Senior Political Commissar and Communist Party Secretary for the First District, North STL City Revolutionary Base, the area in which you currently stand. You are no longer are free to leave. Don’t worry, we are not going to execute you. You will be re-educated, taken care of, and put to productive labor.”

“You ask too many questions for somebody that just showed up here, especially a white person. Stop that shit before somebody puts a bullet in your head and tosses you in the damn river. Everything here is on need to know basis.”

Toussaint shook his head as he lead Martin, the newest resident of one of the (15?) districts of the Saint Louis revolutionary base through lightless, signless streets towards…where? Occasionally he’d point out some point of general interest. “This is where that pig that called himself ‘Riot Lord’ got it in 2023.” (pointing to a corner) “This is where the first homemade grenades were tested out in battle, 12 enemy KIA who stumbled into a trap” (pointing to a vacant lot).

“So, what’s next?”

“You’re going to be placed in an entry level political education course just like any other refugee, assigned a dormitory, and assigned a work detail. You will not be given a weapon at this time, those you brought along with ammunition will be turned over to the People’s Liberation Army. Weapons are for politically solid and tested individuals only.”

“Why do I need to be politically educated?”

“Because you’re white and from Saint Charles. You told me you used to be an insurance agent, right? That implies a petit-bourgeois class stand and outlook and before you can be thoroughly integrated into the life up here you need to remold that shit. You will come to understand that there is no “mine, mine, mine”, only “ours, ours, ours”. If we allow individualism to run amok then we will be destroyed and the fascists/Trumpites won’t have to fire a shot. Look around you. You know what this area looked like before we reorganized it? There are no more drugs up here, no more pigs, no more people killing each other for $2. This wasn’t all the Party. This was mainly the masses, we just guided it, pointed the arrow. Without the masses, we have nothing. This is what every party cadre lives by.”

“What’s a cadre?”

“A professional revolutionary. I’m actually an attorney by bourgeois training but my job is to make revolution. Still have my bar card somewhere but my party card is more important and I keep it on me at all times. Plus the Bar is basically defunct considering that we’re in the middle of a civil war while the Party is actually a belligerent force and political actor even though the pigs don’t recognize us as such. We have 1.4 million people in territories under our effective control and we are consistently growing in influence. There are hundreds of our closed cadre and agents in various offices and positions. People you will never know about. People who lead the enemy backwards and forwards, channel us supplies, tip us off, and more. We are entrenched at almost every level of American society from Wall Street to Skid Row. The enemy says that we have a thousand eyes and ears. This is true. A hell of a thing for us who started about 20 years ago with 25 people in a borrowed room on a college campus, don’t you think? Now we’re thousands and have our hands in everything.”

“Your name isn’t Toussaint, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. That’s my cadre name and the name with which I sign press releases and documents that are released to the public.”

“Where do the refugees come from?”

“Places that the reactionaries have seized power in or where the war is going poorly. STL has been able to hold out and expand because the Party here has developed a mass base and gotten our hands into everything, taking advantage of contradictions between the enemy, splitting their forces, building broad unity, this began all the way back in the middle of the 2010s, right after Trump the First got in. Other places haven’t done so hot, the party structure has been liquidated and massacred in many instances mainly because of their own errors and subsequently those who are able to flee come here. We’re basically a refuge for the entire left at this point. Enough of these questions. You are going to sleep and tomorrow you will begin your political education course and receive your work assignment. You’ll probably be on a farm and that means you’ll meet JLP.”

“Who?”

“Agricultural commissar for this district. Hope you like getting your hands dirty.” Toussaint points at a rehabbed four family flat. “You’re in the basement. Don’t go in there running your mouth. You’re also not going to be allowed to wear that filthy ass shit. We just eradicated a bedbug and lice infestation. You’ll get new clothes inside. Also, read these.”

Toussaint handed Martin two books, with the titles “Quotations from Chairman Mao” and “Quotations from Chairman Jose Maria Sison.”

“Who’s Sison?”

“That dude on the far right, next to Mao. The main reason that there is a People’s Republic of the Philippines today.” Toussaint pointed at a previously unnoticed mural on a building next to the flat. Apparently Sison was a grandfatherly looking Filipino guy in glasses. Heh.

“Goodbye. Welcome to the Rev, whitey.” Toussaint walked off North.

Martin vomited.

“Clean that shit up. Fucking loon. We might be commies but we keep a clean house. You wanna do that shit I’ll throw you in with the anarchists.” Toussaint shouted over his shoulder.

“People used to say that Maoist military strategy, protracted people’s war and all that, couldn’t work in the US or any other imperialist country. I myself was skeptical. That is, until I saw it being proved in practice. It’s no use to go on and on and on about how something may work or may not. ALL KNOWLEDGE COMES THROUGH SOCIAL PRACTICE. The thing is to prove it through practice.”

“YO WHITE BOY YOU PAYING ATTENTION?”

The political instructor, a skinny black dude with a raggedy camo Fidel hat with a hastily sewn red star that looked almost as old as his (40?) years glared at Martin from the front of the room and 15 students, most of them black, turned around, giving similar looks. The instructor had drawn a few diagrams and quotes from Mao Zedong’s “On Practice” were all over the whiteboard in this building that had once been one of Saint Louis’s many closed schools but had been reclaimed by the Party as a school for “sharpening political level of the masses of workers”, of which Martin was now one.

“Yeah.”

“What did I just say?”

“Uh…Maoism works?”

“Jesus Christ. Okay, let’s use white boy here as an example.”

“Yo man his name Martin, Toussaint say stop calling him ‘white boy’” — spoke up a kid of not any older than 21 wearing an eyepatch from the seat nearest the door.

“Man fuck Toussaint. OK, Martin. You from Saint Charles, right? What did you think about all this shit before you come here?”

“Uh…they said you guys were…uh terrorists that wanted to kill off all the white people.”

“You been here some months. You alive, right?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Thought so. See how white bo…shit…MARTIN has learned through practice? He white, he used to think we wanna kill all the white people. We didn’t have no politics except ‘Kill Whitey’. He seen white people in our army, in our Party, in the fields, refurbishing buildings, and doing all sorts of shit. Now his consciousness has shifted because he has gotten social practice.”

A wave of yeahs and um-hmms swept through the room.

“And you realize that we are waging a revolution for the liberation of the entire working and exploited people of this country, right? Including your dusty ass, whether you have come to realize it or not?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You GUESS? Man, we are the only place in this whole area where somebody like you wouldn’t be paying high ass taxes or at risk of being stabbed to death, shot by some ex-cop, or chained and sent to work in some mine somewhere by a warlord, and you say you GUESS? You’ll learn soon enough. Rest of y’all dismissed. You stay here.”

The rest of the class walked out and Martin stayed, sweating in his chair and picking at the patch on his coat. The instructor lowered his voice.

“Stop that. A lot of people have been raising concerns about you. You work too slow, it looks like it’s on purpose. You don’t pay attention when we studyin’. You don’t wanna do shit. You don’t read. The circumstances which you arrived here under was suspicious enough, you know what I mean? We all took a chance, we could have just shot you and if you had stumbled into the South Side that’s what they woulda done. But that ain’t how the Party and the People’s Army move. We need everybody and we transform everybody. You here. Tell me what you think. Don’t lie, I’ll know.”

Martin thought.

“Well…uh. I like it. I think that there’s good stuff going on here. But why are you so hard on white people.”

The instructor said ‘shit’.

“I’m hard on everybody, man. I been criticized for it before. When you watch your momma die from an OD when you 12 you kinda lose that loving, tender touch. I seen motherfuckers die in 2,000 different ways, plus one. That’s why I’m in this shit. Because we have to do better. As for your whiteness, we oppressed nationalities, I know Toussaint gave you a long lecture on what those are, have been oppressed for centuries under whiteness. The very concept of whiteness is against black. We in the movement been sold out and shot at by white folks. We right to oppose whiteness. I do guess I shouldn’t single you out though.”

“Fair enough.”

“You shouldn’t be thinking too hard about being white here, though. Nobody gonna have all that much sympathy on you going around bawling about how hard it is to be a cracker in a country built for crackers. The thing is for you to reject your crackerdom and be one with the people. The Party thinks that’s possible and we have many white folks that hate whiteness even more than I do. We in a war zone. I ain’t gonna keep lecturing to white folks with hurt feelings. You feel me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Dismissed. You working at Fairgrounds Park this month, opening up new land for cultivation. Get going.”