The 250th anniversary of the establishment of the United States on July 4, 2026, is an opportunity to offer a coherent counternarrative to a history of erasure, domination, and repression, to elevate movements for self-determination, and to contribute to the cultivation of a bold political imaginary. Where the opposition is committed to a sustained and future project of unsustainable and deadly individualism, we must center the material realities and demands of all people colonized, both externally and internally.

For 60 years, the Center for Constitutional Rights has championed freedom struggles and dedicated itself to the long arc of dismantling U.S. empire. This zine, Everything Rots in the Empire, explores some of this work to support, expand, and buttress justice-oriented efforts; it contains snapshots of histories, key concepts, and other movement moments, with a particular focus on resistance in Vieques, Puerto Rico, where a delegation of activists and artists from the Pacific and Palestine gathered in November 2025. May we find courage from these stories, knowing we are part of a larger constellation of those who have fought and are still fighting for decolonization and self-determination.

Our struggles tell the truth about the U.S. settler-colonial project, and our triumphs reveal its weaknesses. From the representation of the American Indian Movement during their historic occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 to supporting the organizing of Fannie Lou Hamer and the broader Southern Black Freedom Struggle, from insisting on the rights of Palestinians to their homeland to defending the Puerto Rican independence movement, we understand U.S. empire as alive and evolving, and we assume a posture and politic of refusal, whereby the colonized neither agree to their subjugated position nor accept this colonial reality as inevitable.

For the past several years, the Center for Constitutional Rights has been reigniting and deepening our relationships with colleagues and comrades across U.S. territories and colonial holdings. Moments of shared learning and exchange of strategy make clear the continued need for the documentation and dissemination of our collective history, unity among our collective fights, and the co-creation of a world where we live in right relationship with the land and all living beings.

Please see here for the text in Spanish (with deep gratitude for our partners at Algarabía Language Co-op).

Credits

The title of this zine is inspired by Elda Guadalupe, community leader and organizer in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and co-founder of La Colmena Cimarrona, who welcomed the study tour in November 2025 and shared these words: “Everything rots in the colony.”

The content of the zine is a collective effort, across decades of work and relationships, pulled largely from the Center for Constitutional Rights’ internal and external archive. 

The design and layout of the zine is the work of Malia Osorio, a Kānaka Maoli movement artist and member of the anti-colonial study tour to Vieques.

This zine serves as an accompaniment to a longer form newspaper project we’re pulling together later this fall titled “Dispatch from the Colonies” on decolonization, demilitarization, solidarity, and repair. If you have an artifact or an essay or photographs you’d like us to consider for the newspaper, please fill out this submission form.