My dearest brother Karl,

I’m writing because of the whole Bonaparte thing.

I heard you’re feeling blue, brother, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.

I read what you’ve been writing and you seem angered.

Now, anger in the face of injustice is wise and honorable.

I just hope that you don’t let it consume your hope, or distort how you’re seeing this world and the beautiful people in it.

We can’t let the bourgeoisie steal you too, now, my friend.

Out here, they just put up our own neofascist gangster-in-chief, as our brother Cornel likes to say,

And they did the same bullshit to our people. 

Maybe sometime soon we can discuss who the bigger clown is over tea.

It might be good for both of us.

History does stay rhyming.

If you find the time,I do have one question: 

Do you have the will to love my people?

See, my brother,

You called some of my people a word I hadn’t heard before: “lumpenproletariat”,

And it made me wonder if you have had the chance to go for a walk lately.

Is that our beloved sisters at the Donnybrook Laundry, toiling in the sweatshop to stay fed?

Is that our dear brothers breaking stones and picking oakum at the poorhouse?

Is that our precious, vulnerable children, especially our daughters, being sent to the textile factories for “bread and board”?

Surely you see this, right? Because it’s happening on my block too.

Aren’t my people revolutionaries, brother Karl?

And yes, of course, we make the bossman a dollar while he pays us a penny.

Thank you, sincerely, for reminding us that he owes us our ninety nine cents.

But he doesn’t stop there! He knows no end!

For our whole damn lives, the bossman has been trying to steal our whole damn lives.

Like how he dumps his cattle’s shit into the lake we drink out of,

And when we get sick, he sells us a “cure” — just enough so we keep workin’ for him.

And he buys ads for the politician and buys vacations for the judge so he can charge us whatever-in-the-hell he wants!

Or how our people—mostly our mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and sisters—don’t get a penny for keeping the whole damn thing afloat by feeding, clothing, raising, housing, and nurturing the beautiful people the bossman feasts upon.

Around here, before you know it, the bossman will steal your labor, body, home, community, environment, culture, art, music, institutions, governance, cuisine, ideas, philosophy, language, relationships, thoughts, identity, sense-of-self, and meaning—and, don’t get it twisted, these are revenue streams.

My brother, the bossman is so brazen, he’ll even take your death—and charge your loved ones $14.99 a month to read your damn obituary.

Brother Karl, my people have nothing to lose but our chains, so we’re having a revolution:

My people in the jails,

My people on OnlyFans, 

My people in the Union hall,

My people who couldn’t get to the Union hall because that damn bus never runs on time.

When you said we had a world to win, my brother, my people took that to heart.