“Our Story of Anti-Imperialism”

This is an edited transcript of Penny Arcos presentation at the Center for Political Innovation gathering on January 11th, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey.

Thank you, Noah, for that introduction. I really appreciate it. And thank you all for being here.

Let me first of all thank you guys for taking the time away from your busy schedules—taking a moment to get away from the wild news cycle, and from the abundance of lethargy and hopelessness and rage that gets pumped through your phones.

As Noah said, I am Penny Arcos. I’m the regional captain for Minnesota, and I’m going to be sharing with you the history of the Center for Political Innovation: who are we, and where are we going?

Because if you don’t know where you came from, then you don’t know where you’re going.

My Background

First of all: how did I get involved?

During the pandemic, my son, Angel, turned 18. And during the George Floyd riots, it was very, very difficult to understand what was going on. The city was burned down. My son’s job was looted. Then you had the COVID lockdowns—no jobs anywhere.

How do you start your life as a new adult, right?

Everything that had given us a sense of community and belonging and meaning in our lives—fixing bikes at Cycles for Change and selling them on Craigslist, playing guitar in youth group at church (and I got to be a part of it), being part of community outreach at the light rail—we would pass out fresh bread, play guitar, sing songs, and people were just blessed by the music in their busy day as they were getting on the light rail.

And it was all just ripped away from us during the lockdowns—the endless lockdowns.

Then my mom—the most precious woman you will ever meet—was no longer able to take care of herself in Illinois. She came up here with her whole life in two duffel bags.

And I was like: that’s it. That’s it. That’s all there is to life. You work, you raise a kid, you take a few vacations, and then you hope someone can take care of you at the end of your life.

I had to scramble to figure out how I was going to take care of her. And I couldn’t take care of her. It was traumatizing. Then I had to scramble through the health care system and the insurance red tape and figure out how to get the right care for her.

So I’m here to honor her right now.

And then the siege on Gaza began. And then the war in Ukraine began.

And as I saw a kid in Ukraine that looked just like my son, I was terrified. I wondered: what if Biden—or whoever was running the country at the time—decided to call up a draft, drag my son onto the front lines, and start a nuclear war with Russia?

What am I going to do?

In my search for answers, people that I respected—friends and family members—the only thing they could say was: “Well… America has a middle class. Russian oligarchs.”

And I wanted to know why.

Why are we spending billions of dollars for foreign wars, to start a nuclear war against Russia? And why are we spending billions of dollars to blow up babies in the Middle East?

I thought we were pro-life, right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to believe in?

One of my friends from a former church—one_toggle response was: “Well, when the Lord returns… Jerusalem…”

Wait, wait, wait. So you mean to tell me that my son and I marched around the Minnesota Capitol year after year in the middle of February, froze our tushies off to save the babies—and now it’s God’s will to blow up babies in the Middle East because Jesus Christ is coming to town?

Can you explain that to my son?

Thought so.

How I Found The Innovationist Movement

So then I went to the DNC convention in August. I was trying to figure out: what can we do about this?

I’ve been to these marches and they’re not even on the news. Millions of people go to a march and nothing happens. The war keeps going.

I went to a Jill Stein event—okay. But when I was in Chicago, I was at the Mexican Art Museum and I met Gabby and Phil. Raise your hand, Phil. Yeah. Gabby was the one checking you in.

They were passing out books at the Mexican Art Museum. I said, “Hey, I’ve seen them on Caleb’s channel.” And they invited me to an upcoming workshop in October titled, “Why are they taking us to war?”

Why are they taking us to war? They want to sell weapons. Why else?

But Caleb explained how capitalists need constant war to open up new markets and to support the military-industrial complex. And he also explained a four-point plan that CPI has: to rescue our economy, to build the peace bridge, to end the wars, and rebuild America.

So I was curious, and I kept digging.

When I got home, I was inspired by Jose Vega. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him in New York—Jose Vega does all these interventions. He’s here—where’s Jose?

I was inspired by Jose Vega and all his interventions, especially against AOC and all the Democrats.

So I intervened on Ilhan Omar at a town hall. I had tried to confront her many times about the Ukraine war, and she wouldn’t listen.

So I got up there:

“We would like to know, as American people, why you continue to support sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Nazis in Ukraine to start a nuclear war with Russia. China is not our enemy. Russia’s not our enemy. No more money for rich men’s wars.”

No more money for rich men’s wars. No more money for rich men’s wars.

I was out of there in 45 seconds. That’s all I was—45 seconds.

So that’s how I got involved, and I’ve been building and building a team since then. We had a workshop in February and got interrupted by crazy protesters. But it’s been a great experience. I get my family involved as well—my mom and my son.

The Roots of Caleb Maupin: Organizer & Teacher

To understand the Center for Political Innovation, you need to understand Caleb’s background first. So I’m going to give you a little history on Caleb before I get into the history of CPI.

Caleb has always stood for justice and solidarity in his life. When he was young, his mom was a librarian, and he joined his mom on the picket line to protest for security guards at the library—even though her library already had security guards. That’s what solidarity is about. It’s not just about you.

When he was in college, he witnessed police brutality against two African-American girls who were protesting at their high school about budget cuts. His video was used in court and helped get the girls acquitted against the charges that were raised against them. Again—you see—it’s about solidarity. It’s not about you.

In his search for truth, Caleb studied the successes of economies like Russia and China and Cuba and Nicaragua—and all the lies we’ve been told that it’s all a failure, it never works. He learned, he studied, and he wanted to know more.

In 2007 he joined the Workers World Party to protest the Ohio death row and the Iraq War. In 2010 they relocated Caleb to New York City, and he ended up being a part of Occupy Wall Street. He joined the International Action Center and became a spokesperson for a world-renowned human rights advocate—former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

Then in 2011, Obama bombed Libya—the most prosperous country in Africa. They had a great man-made river, the irrigation project all across Libya. People from all around Africa could come and get a job, have a shot at starting a family, money for education.

When that happened, the Workers World Party was very, very weak. They did almost nothing to support Gaddafi. They were more worried about catering to the Democrats. While at the same time, working-class people stood with Gaddafi because they understood he was fighting the same international global cabal that is grinding nations into poverty—this international banking system that is like a big giant casino. It’s not real money.

And now what is Libya? It’s now an open-air slave market. Thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean Sea trying to get away.

Libya before “freedom.” Libya after “freedom.”

That was the turning point for Caleb. That was it.

So Caleb began a journey around the world as a journalist to find out the truth about other countries and what’s really going on.

In 2013, he attended the World Youth Festival in Quito, Ecuador. He was very impressed by the professionalism of delegates from Cuba, China, Vietnam, and the DPRK.

Caleb Maupin, 2014.

In 2014, he went to Iran and met anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist organizers. He learned about their economy—“not capitalism but Islam,” or the resistance economy. It’s a lot like socialism with Chinese characteristics.

You can compare it to the destructive forces of lightning versus harnessed electricity.

Lightning comes down, strikes a tree, the tree falls on your house. It strikes where it will, and it’s not a good thing.

When you harness that electricity, you can power your home, charge your cell phone—we got lights here, right?—and it serves you.

Friedrich Engels wrote—I'm going to summarize—in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production with a definite plan to serve the needs of the community and the individual.

So you’ve got lightning, and you’ve got harnessed electricity. You’ve got the anarchy of capitalism and imperialism—globalism—or a planned economy that serves the community and serves the people.

In 2015, Caleb risked his life on a Red Crescent mission to Yemen with a bunch of doctors from Iran and volunteers. Saudi Arabia bombed the port of Hodeidah to stop them, and it created an international scandal.

On that boat, Caleb was discussing his faith and their faith with these Iranians, and he reconnected with his Christian faith—which he was previously ashamed of. They told him to be proud of his heritage.

He also reconnected with his abolitionist heritage. He’s a descendant of the great Reverend Charles Finney, part of the Second Great Awakening in America—a mass movement of Christians against slavery.

And that’s what we are: a movement—not just of Christians, but whatever faith you have. I’m still on my own faith journey—to break the system of imperialism and globalism, and to lift the world out of the slavery of the anarchy of the market.

He also went to Venezuela and experienced Bolivarian socialism firsthand.

Back home, when the Workers World Party could not comprehend the success of Venezuela, Caleb said: that’s enough. He launched his own study group called Students and Youth for a New America.

In 2018, he attended the Alternatives to Globalism Conference and discussed 21st century anti-imperialism.

And Russiagate was at its height. On the internet, Alex Reid Ross—part of the Democratic Socialists of America, supposed to be a good guy, right? “Socialism”—a CIA asset—decided to publish a hit piece on Caleb in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz just to “prove” Caleb was fascist.

So we’re not just trying to look cool on the internet. We’re teaching working families why our system is failing us, and what we can do about it.

How can we change it?

We publish books. We do webinars. We do workshops.

Some of the books we’ve published: the first one was The Green Book, which is Gaddafi’s economic plan for Libya.

BreadTube Serves Imperialism—Caleb wrote this and exposed the British and CIA intelligence behind the “socialist streamers” on YouTube. That made a big impact.

Where Is America Going? Marxism, MAGA, and the Coming Revolution is published in Chinese and is available on the Chinese mainland.

Trotskyism: Neoconservatives—The Whole Story—it was number one on Amazon in radical thought for three weeks. Get a copy of that.

The Houthis: Houthis Are Heroes! Who are the Houthis? What are they fighting for? We’ve passed out over a thousand of these at pro-Palestine events. Recently Caleb and Noah went to a PSL event and they got kicked out for passing these books out. So yeah—they really support the Houthis, don’t they?

Khrushchevism: A Study in Psychological Warfare. We’re having study groups across the country—and even in Australia—about the psychological warfare that began during the Cold War against mass movements. We’re bracing ourselves to strengthen ourselves and understand the tactics that intelligence uses to break up mass movements.

Lots of books. Lots of books.

What is Innovationism?—we got it translated, so if you have any Spanish friends, you can pick up a copy there.

Africa’s Flame: The Rise of Ibrahim Traoré. This is my book. I have a display over here about the projects there. It’s all in the end of the book, Three Years of Sovereignty. You can see the pictures and read about the projects: industrializing, agriculture—it’s called Faso Mebo where they’re paving the roads. They’re building an expressway between Bobo-Dioulasso and Ouagadougou—the capital and second largest city.

Education—patriotism—for the kids. It’s amazing what they’re doing. It’s Endogenous development. They nationalized their gold mines. They’re focusing on indigenous development of agriculture and industry of all kinds to support economic sovereignty.

Because if you can’t depend on your own country to make food, then you’re dependent on the imperialists who want to destroy you.

So hands off Ibrahim Traoré.

In The Streets Against Globalism/Imperialism

Now, picture in your mind: what would America look like? What would the world look like if American leaders invested in building our country instead of bombing everyone else’s country and installing puppet regimes all around the world?

Just picture that.

That’s why we’re here, because we have that vision.

So what can we do? Who are we? We’re just little people, right?

No. We are building a mass movement.

What can we do to move our country in that direction?

I’m going to give you a glimpse into what CPI has already been doing since 2021. Hold on—it’s going to be a fire hose of information, but it’s important to know what we’ve done, because we’re not just messing around on the internet and rigging the algorithms. We are out here—a real-life organization—making friends, and we really want to end the wars and rebuild America.

Since 2021, we’ve been on the ground taking action with workshops and webinars and little conventions like this. We’re trying to teach people to get past the red team/blue team agenda, and to unite with working families around the world to end U.S. imperialist aggression.

In 2022, opposition to the Ukraine proxy war was our main priority.

When the African People’s Socialist Party—Uhuru—when the Uhuru offices and homes were raided by the FBI, they were threatened with 15 years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines for being “Russian agents” for a thought crime. CPI was the first on the ground to invite them to a conference and honor them as heroes.

Because we understand: if the FBI can go after them for opposing U.S. imperialism that’s trying to crush Russia, then they can come after us too.

Because of that, blackmailers threatened the volunteers and the attendees—but the conference went ahead anyway.

And it was featured in Newsweek. How about that?

Important, influential people like Tara Reade and Garland Nixon were able to attend. Tara Reade knows Tucker Carlson, and because of that, Chairman Omali was on Tucker Carlson’s show.

It snowballs. It just snowballs.

That’s the importance of getting together like this—because we meet each other.

The smear campaign went ahead anyway. We shut down CPI for a while, careerists dropped out, and we re-emerged stronger than ever.

In 2023, we were a main voice for peace.

Center for Political Innovation reception for Scott Ritter after Rage Against the War Machine, February 19th, 2023.

In February, we sponsored Rage Against the War Machine with Libertarian chair Angela McArdle, and we had a reception to honor Scott Ritter.

In March, when Biden had a “summit for democracy,” we had our summit against hypocrisy.

In September, a small group of us from CPI confronted Tsai Ing-wen—the puppet president in Taiwan—because she was selling war in our country. We said: get out of our country, stop selling war in our country. China is not our enemy.

Also in September, Caleb interviewed President Ebrahim Raisi, the president of Iran. May he rest in peace.

In 2024, CPI stood with our allies to demand an end to imperialist wars.

In February, Caleb held a UN press conference to highlight the Uhuru case and the weaponization of the FBI against support for Russia.

In March, Caleb and Noah went to the World Youth Festival in Sochi. They brought up the case of Uhuru with President Putin, and they asked how we could restore relations between America and Russia.

In June, CPI co-sponsored the reunification event for the Korean Peninsula with the LA Family Church.

In August—this book had already been out since 2020—Kamala Harris and the Future of America. The day that Kamala Harris was crowned the nominee… democracy, no kings, no queens—forgot, she’s not a king, she’s a queen—this book was banned on Amazon all of a sudden, the day she was the nominee.

Social media outrage forced Amazon to restore the book—and Kamala lost.

That was a lot of fun. That really was great. I was like, wow—we can really do something. Wow.

October was my intervention with Ilhan Omar.

In December, Caleb and others went to the trial—the free speech trial of the century—to support Uhuru in Tampa, Florida. And we launched our Peace MAGA campaign with a big banner with Trump and Kim Jong-un shaking hands: “Only peace can make America great again.”

We went to Trump Tower, the New York City Library, and Madison Square Garden.

In 2025—just a glimpse, because Caleb already published our whole year in review—we had our busiest year yet. It’s amazing what we have done.

We continued Peace MAGA at the DC inauguration with a big Peace Bridge banner and the Trump–Kim Jong-un banner to highlight the possibility of peace under the Trump administration—not to support Trump or not Trump, but to highlight the possibility of peace.

Because the only way that a president can do that is if he has mass support from the population—from the working class.

Throughout the year, we held workshops and rallies to support peace talks to end the Ukraine war.

On April 30, after U.S. AFRICOM was signaling regime-change intent in Burkina Faso, we joined an international day of action. We marched around the streets with our signs: “Hands off Africa. Hands off Traoré. Hands off Uhuru.”

In October—this was so fun—we crashed the “No Kings Circus.” In Minnesota, they were standing around bouncing in their Garfield costumes and hippopotamus and frogs—you name it. And I was out there with a big banner of Maduro that said, “Hands off Venezuela.”

One lady there had another “Hands off Venezuela” sign. Everyone else was like, “Shut that up, you’re being disrespectful.” And I said: it’s disrespectful to invade another country.

Right?

So now where are we? Because these clowns did not support Maduro until the day after he was kidnapped: “Oh, hands off Venezuela.” And now the Republicans can say, “Hey, you said no kings, and now he’s supposedly a dictator and a king.”

We are consistent. We are against imperialism—globalism. We stand with anti-imperialist leaders around the world. We stand with Uhuru and Black Is Back. They are our heroes.

Time to Make a Choice

Now my family and I participate with members of our community in these peace rallies. We write songs and we sing songs about building the Peace Bridge.

My mom’s legacy—the last song that she did: “We’ve been working on the Peace Bridge all the live-long day.” We did that at her nursing home with the nursing home staff in front of the Christmas tree.

So that’s her legacy.

So what does this have to do with you?

Like I said: we’re not an internet fandom. We exist to carry out operations around the country—and even in Australia. We have a member in Australia.

The threat of a new world war is hanging over our heads like a Damocles sword, and we are going to resist the threat of a low-wage police state. We want to rebuild America and end the wars.

We’re not trying to revive the Soviet Union. We don’t identify with the “communists,” the ones dancing around in hippopotamus and Garfield costumes and burning American flags.

We know our country has a dark history, and we admit that. But we also have heroes like John Brown, and Caleb’s ancestor Charles Finney—an anti-slavery movement.

We want a brighter future for America and for the world.

And you have a choice.

You can continue to live your life in your phone, marinating in the lethargy and anger and rage and hopelessness that they feed you every day on your scroll, on your feed.

Or you can join us.

It’s not for everybody. It takes work. It takes dedication.

But you can make new friends. You can step out of your comfort zone. You can take steps to demand that we rebuild America.

America is ready. America is ripe. The earth is awakening—and America must join it.