MATHETΩN

The most-familiar sighting of a Mathetes is one of the lonely pair on foot or bike forging through the darkest thickets of cities or through rural barrens administering polemic or medicine. Or perhaps one has seen the strange-looking little tan trucks of the Slaves, having driven all night in haste, installing caches of supplies or literature.

But fewer have seen the Mathetai’s permanent communities. These are communist, agrarian, and usually isolated (I am ignoring the large exception in Harlem). They are — one might say — the hive to the Mathetes’ bee, or the mortar to his shell.

These comprise families with children, novices, and Mathetai recuperating from the road. Besides being farms, the communities are small manufacturies, are laboratories and academies.

I mean soon to report from my years visiting them. …