Envision a scenario in which a group of people, whom you’ve never met forcibly enter your home, and begin to occupy it under the immediate threat of violence. 
They begin to strip your home for parts. They steal anything of value and ship it back to where they came from. They steal the copper pipes which make up your plumbing. They replace your plumbing with two pits in the ground, one for you to use the restroom in, and another for you to bathe in. 
They allow you to work and go to the grocery store, but they take 80% of your income and most of the food upon your return. Over time, they restrict your mobility to a smaller and smaller fraction of your home. As the years progress, they cut off your access to food and medicine further. 
Your family members begin to die from malnutrition, while others fall ill. You try to call your neighbors or law enforcement for help. They’re all baffled why you’re complaining; after all, your occupiers graciously dug you two nice holes in the ground! 
Perhaps if you’d allow them to civilize you, everyone would be better off. Finally, in the tenth year, when only you and one other family member remain, you seize the opportunity to grab one of the occupiers’ weapons, and manage to evict them from your home. 
Later on the news, the headline story declares you and your last remaining family member irrational, brain-washed terrorists. 

The next day, your neighbors, the local law enforcement, and occupiers return in greater numbers than before to reassert their occupation. Is your resistance not justified because a large coalition which benefits from your continued exploitation and suffering says so? This issue, as its title suggests, serves as a brief introduction to colonialism, imperialism, and decolonization. It urges the necessity to approach our struggles, strategies, and understandings of politics and history through a global lens pointed towards anti-imperialism. How is the violence we see on our streets related to the colonial and imperial violence our government perpetuates abroad? This issue provides a set of introductory tools to interpret how our declining material conditions are impacted by the institutions of colonialism and imperialism. In doing so, we demonstrate the linked destiny of our communities, and the hyper-exploited communities of the Global South. This issue emphasizes the necessity of an internationalist understanding of history and current events. It presents an outlook and spirit of global allyship against a growing war waged against the dignity and sanctity human life. (excerpt from "Colonialism and Current Events")