🧵On #BRICS, Western mainstream media may dismiss it for being insignificant, and by the Left for not being left enough.

But let’s not dismiss Global South countries still trying to emerge from imperialism, and 46% of the world's population.

Thread of some links/analysis: Interview with @vijayprashad on @democracynow: BRICS countries "are not a socialist bloc” but they "don't want to do what the West tells them — they're driving their own agenda."

🧵Drawing #AndréeBlouin (1921-1986), born 101 years ago today in the Central African Republic. She was an anti-colonial activist, pan-Africanist, and feminist who was key to the liberation movements in French-Guinea, the Belgian Congo, and other African countries.

A thread. 1/5 The lives of revolutionary women often go unrecorded – one of the reasons we began making portraits at @tri_continental was to recover our rich collective archive.

#AndréeBlouin was much more than “the woman behind Lumumba,” and formed part of DRC's first Cabinet. 2/5

🇨🇺120 years ago today, Cuban painter #WifredoLam (1902-1982) was born. His Cantonese father did calligraphy, inspired by Confucian/Daoist traditions, mother was a Congolese descendant, and godmother, an Afro-Cuban priestess. You can say he was made in and of the Third World.🧵1/7 Over his 80 years, #WifredoLam was conscientised by the Spanish Civil War, anti-colonial struggles, Negritude, Surrealism, and the Cuban Revolution. He drew, painted, sculpted, illustrated, engraved, and gave expression to aspirations of colonised peoples. 2/7

<A thread for #25November> Today is a day of revolutionary martyrs. Our chosen ancestors.

25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence, marks the day in 1960 that the Mirabal sisters were assassinated in the fight to see the Dominican Republic liberated. 25 November, the day in 1994 that the Koothuparambu communist student activists were gunned down in Kerala, India.

<A thread to remember a feminist ancestor>
Born 4 September 1895, #XiangJingyu was a Chinese communist, politicised by the anti-feudalism of the 1911 Revolution and the anti-imperialism of May Fourth Movement. Part of the Communist Party of China since its founding, Xiang Jingyu became the first woman elected into the central committee and headed the Women’s Bureau.