Mumbi Makena Kanyogo

Mumbi Makena Kanyogo is a writer, mutual aid organiser and thinker writing and learning about solidarity. She is calling on you to disrupt the current calculus wherein those who risk everything are those who experience the brunt of everyday capitalist and neocolonial violence; she is reminding you that solidarity is about democratising risk, not reinforcing the logics of inequality that make solidarity necessary in the first place. Solidarity should make a stem out of thorns—it should never just be a balm.
Solidarity, as in betraying our kin

While Otieno’s first oath was unintentional, the second time she stood naked in that dim room in Gaitumbi next to her fellow revolutionary dissidents, she meant it. The second time she committed her life and wealth to a struggle against empire and its collaborators—words which could render her a signatory to her own death if she betrayed them—was not a mistake.

May 7, 2025