May 1st is International Workers Day, a historic day of struggle born of the blood of revolutionary anarchist martyrs of the Haymarket Affair, who gave their lives as part of a mass movement in the US against the rapacious exploitation wrought by the capitalist system and the violence of the state that preserves and protects it.
These revolutionary martyrs envisioned a world free not only from capitalism and the state, but free from all forms of domination. Their memory inspires each successive generation all over the globe to commit to revolutionary social transformation. Once more we return to their memory in an effort to steel ourselves for the immediate struggles in which we are involved and through which we are constructing the popular power necessary to achieve our broader aim: social revolution.
This year, as the Israeli state continues to prosecute its genocidal war against the Palestinian people, we heed and amplify the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU-Gaza) to take substantive—not simply symbolic—action in opposition to the United States’ ongoing support and arming of the Israeli state. Members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra, including those in and outside of unions, have continued to organize in their workplaces to realize concrete solidarity with the Palestinian people. On this May Day we commit to redoubling these efforts.
In recent weeks a massive wave of student organizing has taken center stage across US college and university campuses. Students have undertaken encampments, building occupations, marches, and other activities to demand and pressure the divestment of their institutions from the infrastructure of death that facilitates the mass murder of Palestinians. Now, seven months into the genocidal war waged by Israel, there is not a single college or university left standing in Gaza.
While many US students clearly recognize that the people of Palestine are being systematically destroyed, the same can not be said of the politicians and university bosses who have mobilized brutal state and private security forces to attack the student movement. Our own members—among them students, faculty, and university staff—have suffered in these attacks, but remain unmoved in their commitment to international solidarity.
On this May Day we call on others to join together with the student movement and to expand its scope. Internationalism is nothing if it is not vigorous and material.
For the liberation of Palestine!
For popular power!
For libertarian socialism!
Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra (BRRN)