Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation: Recent Episodes

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*This somewhat belated report captures Black Rose/Rosa Negra Labor Committee’s participation in the 2024 edition of the Labor Notes Conference.

Prepared by the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Labor Committee.*

Background on Labor NotesThe 2024 Labor Notes Conference was held from April 19th to 21st in Chicago, bringing together some 4,700 unionists from around the United States and beyond. This year, the biennial conference smashed the previous record set for attendance during its 2022 gathering.

Now in its 45th year, Labor Notes began its life as a simple black and white newsletter, coming on to the scene one year prior to the election of Ronald Reagan. Carrying labor news and pointedly advocating for reform caucuses within unions, Labor Notes emerged in a period marked by the accelerating retreat of the labor movement––a trend that continues into the present. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of wage and salary workers belonging to a union was 10% in 2023, down from 20.1% in 1983, four years after the founding of Labor Notes. Whereas union density as a whole has declined, the record breaking attendance at Labor Notes, along with increased organizing in new industries and geographic regions is cause for hope that a committed rank and file will not only turn the tide, but give rise to a new and more combative unionism.

In the intervening years, Labor Notes expanded beyond a print newsletter to an organization that offers training and brings together rank-and-file activists from across the US for its large biennial conference. The organization seeks to foster militancy and union democracy in the labor movement, advocating for reviving the strike weapon and moving from the weak tactics of business unionism. While members of the organization Solidarity first helped to cohere Labor Notes and continue to play important roles within it, the project takes a politically non-sectarian approach. As such Labor Notes exists at what we refer to as the intermediate level, being neither a political organization united around a specific ideological perspective nor a mass organization that functions as a vehicle to carry out fights directly.

PlanningSince the 2018 conference, Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s (BRRN) Labor Committee has made it a point to attend and participate in each Labor Notes gathering. Mainly this looks like financially and logistically supporting the attendance of BRRN members and encouraging them to speak on conference panels.

In late 2023, the BRRN Labor Committee began to identify several specific objectives related to our active participation in the Labor Notes conference, including aims to:

• Begin building networks of rank-and-file activists within industries where we have some presence (focusing on K-12 education, higher education, the building trades, and healthcare).
• Gather information about the current state of labor struggle and organization in the US, so that we can have a better analysis of conditions.
• Establish a presence for anarchism by articulating our perspective on building workers power via a fighting rank-and-file led labor movement as panelists, at our social event, and by tabling during the conference.
• Attend with co-workers and organizing contacts, in order to build organizing relationships through discussion, debate, and shared learning.
• Bring attention to the Palestine solidarity organizing that our members are engaging in through their unions and make the case for an anti-imperialist labor movement.

With these objectives in mind the BRRN Labor Committee committed to sending at least 20 members to the 2024 iteration of the conference. As well, we made plans to organize a public social during the conference and to support the attendance of a member from one of our international sibling organizations.

Recognizing early on that these plans would require a significant financial investment, we launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of crowdfunding $5,000. By the end of the campaign nearly 110 individual supporters had donated more than $7,000, far exceeding our goal and ultimately allowing us to underwrite the airfare, lodging, and attendance for a total of 27 Black Rose/Rosa Negra militants. This fundraising effort also played a crucial role in enabling us to secure spots for members early on, prior to the cap on attendance that was later imposed by conference organizers in response to overwhelming interest.

During this same period we worked closely with our Argentinian sibling organization Federación Anarquista Rosario (FAR) to plan the travel, attendance, and participation of one of their militants who is active in the public sector employee union Asociación Trabajadores del Estado (ATE). This came at an especially critical time as Javier Milei—the recently elected far-right president of Argentina—began rolling out a package of extreme neoliberal policies. In supporting the attendance of our FAR comrade, we hoped to not only deepen the relationship between our political organizations, but to bring the experience of Latin American labor militancy to a largely North American gathering.

The ConferenceAs always, it was exciting to walk through the doors of the Chicago O’Hare Hyatt, where Labor Notes takes place, and immediately find oneself in the company of thousands of other unionists from around the United States and beyond. The agenda was packed with full days of workshops, trainings, industry specific breakouts, history panels, cultural events, lectures, discussions, and more.

Members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra participated on several panels throughout the weekend, offering lessons from campaigns that were made successful by rank-and-file militancy. This included panels that focused on organizing the unorganized in the South, building bottom-up power to carry out indefinite strikes, and organizing for Palestine solidarity in our unions. As well, we were happy to be able to arrange for the comrade from our sibling organization FAR, to speak on an international panel about public sector organizing in Argentina.

Other than its record breaking number of attendees, another detail set the 2024 conference apart from those in the past: this year Labor Notes lifted a ban on the official presence of political organizations. While political organizations, including Black Rose/Rosa Negra, had long held unofficial events during and around past iterations of the conference, 2024 was the first year that they were invited to table and list their own events in the conference agenda.

We took advantage of this new openness by booking a large event room on the main floor of the hotel to host our ‘Red and Black Party’. With it we aimed to create a more casual space to gather, meet, and network with unionists who share our political and strategic principles. While daytime conference proceedings present some opportunity to do this, it’s often hard to have anything more than passing chats as everyone rushes to get to the next event on their schedule. Given that one of the objectives we commit to in our political program, Turning the Tide, is the development and expansion of a “militant minority of anarchists dedicated to organizing at a rank-and-file level within strategic industries”, we felt that we needed a place to have more sustained conversations.

With the decorations up, drinks on ice, and music bumping we opened the doors to our party right around 9 PM. Kicking things off, we had members of the Blue Bottle Independent Union—who had just recently announced gone public with their effort—speak about the choice to organize independently of a parent organization, what it takes to run an underground campaign, and what they hope to accomplish in the future.

Over the course of the night hundreds of Labor Notes attendees filtered into our party, with many visiting our literature table, lining up for our party photo booth, and grabbing drinks from the bar. BRRN members chatted with dozens of fellow unionists, articulating our strategic vision within the labor movement and gathering contacts from those who are organizing in our same industries. At one point in the night we cut into the music to announce that the United Auto Workers (UAW) had won their campaign at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, news that was met with an explosion of cheers and applause.

By the time the party wound down a little after 1 AM, our literature table was picked clean, our contact lists were full, the beer stockpile was nearly depleted—and we were confident calling the Red and Black Party a success.

Critical ReflectionsWhile members of the BRRN Labor Committee believe that the Labor Notes conference is playing a key role in creating an opportunity for labor militants in the United States to congregate and develop a resurgent labor movement, we do not participate uncritically. As a matter of strategy, Labor Notes the organization stresses the formation of rank-and-file reform caucuses oriented toward challenging and replacing the existing executive leadership of unions. Unfortunately, the overemphasis on leadership has led Labor Notes to tacitly or expressly endorse high profile labor leaders and politicians who have little interest in developing a militant, democratic, and rank-and-file led labor movement.

This was exemplified in the choice to provide Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson with stage time on the first night of the conference this year. Johnson, a former Chicago teacher and staff organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, won his mayoral campaign as a Democrat in 2023. Since taking office, he has overseen the repression of Palestine solidarity protests in Chicago over the last year. More recently, Johnson helped to broker a deal with union bureaucrats that would prevent strikes in the city during the Democratic National Convention.

But Johnson’s presence at the gathering did not go without response. Immediately prior to his appointment to take the stage, hundreds of Labor Notes attendees—many adorned in Palestinian keffiyehs—gathered to demonstrate outside of the hotel where the conference was being held. Responding to the gathered crowd, local police quickly arrested several participants, though were eventually forced to release them without charge after police cruisers were surrounded.

The power we have built and must continue to build, did not and can not come from politicians—whether they have their own labor movement bonafides, or claim to be the most “pro-union” elected in history. Neither can it come from electing the right reform candidates to our executive boards. Rather than investing ourselves in winning and defending control of a particular office, we can instead build a more durable power through the development of independent rank-and-file organization.

ConclusionLabor Notes continues to present the best opportunity to regroup a militant labor movement in the United States. Despite the shortcomings identified in the previous section, it would be beyond foolish to refuse participation or attempts at intervention in one of the few independent labor oriented projects that have achieved the scale and momentum that Labor Notes has built.

It is still the case, as we offered in our reflection on the 2022 conference and at the beginning of this piece, that the labor movement in the US continues its slow quantitative decline. While there are bright spots to be proud of—the explosion of organizing in the service sector; recent UAW victories in the South; the choice by a small but growing number of workers to pursue independent unionism—it is impossible to ignore the statistical reality. Should this lead us to a state of resignation? To abandon labor as a sector through which we can build and assert class power? We refuse this position.

In fact, in the decay of what has passed for unionism over the last 50 years, a renewed and militant unionism—animated and controlled by the rank-and-file—might find more room to breathe and grow. It will take a great deal of work to make this hope a reality.

If you share our commitment to such a project, reach out.

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In the last several years, the total rate of those lacking safe, clean, and stable shelter in the United States has increased by double-digit percentages year-over-year. This ‘crisis’, as it is often called, is an increasingly extreme manifestation of the degradations built-in to the structures of a capitalist housing market maintained and protected by the state.

The state has shown itself unable and unwilling to muster the resources necessary to confront the growing scale of human degradation and misery on the housing front. Instead, at the behest of the real estate, land owning, and landlord interests it is ultimately beholden to, the state is mobilizing its punitive and carceral capacities to ‘deal’ with this issue.

As Neil B. argues in this analysis of one area in the housing conjuncture, anything resembling a humane social response to this crisis will require fighting social movements to wrench concessions from the state. Without independent combative movements applying pressure through direct action, the state and the various fractions of the capitalist class that hold sway over it will reach first for police, violence, and prisons to ‘solve’ social problems.

by Neil B.

For those of us who have been working and organizing with unhoused communities for a long time, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson came as little surprise. The much anticipated decision ruled that, contrary to the findings in a 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, fining and criminalizing sleeping in public is not a violation of the 8th Amendment’s clause against cruel and unusual punishment. While cities and states across the country have been finding ways to criminalize poverty anyway, this ruling effectively gave them a green light to open the floodgates.

The 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit did not start the housing crisis, nor did it really stop cities from punishing unhoused people. What it did do was give them a perfect scapegoat. Los Angeles City Council, for instance, passed 41.18, its flagship ordinance that bans sitting, lying and sleeping in August of 2022. This ordinance had not just been declared unconstitutional twice before, it had been declared unconstitutional by the 2018 9th Circuit ruling. In short, the city of LA was making sleeping outside illegal just after the worst peak of deaths in the COVID pandemic, and at the same time blaming the increase in visible homelessness on the 9th Circuit and blatantly flouting their decision. Rather than encouraging cities to declare housing a human right and create socialized housing for everyone, municipal lawmakers simply chose to get creative about the ways they punished unhoused people.

Still, as is obvious to everyone, the crisis has only gotten worse.

In addition to blaming the 9th Circuit, people blamed the “soft on crime” policies of Democrats, others pointed to addiction, bad choices and mental health issues as the reason why people wind up on the street. However, housed people have addiction issues, make bad choices, and suffer from debilitating mental illnesses yet often don’t wind up on the street, and oftentimes people develop both mental health issues and addiction problems because they are on the street.

The reality is this situation is getting worse because the overwhelming crises of capitalism have made life precarious and untenable for many, many people. Landlords need to charge more and more to pay mortgages or keep up with insurance costs, and bosses need to pay less and less or risk going out of business. It’s a vice grip, squeezing many beyond their breaking point. The gap between rhetoric and reality, whether the willful misrepresentation on the part of frustrated government officials who are sick and tired of getting phone calls from angry ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) groups or the sincere ignorance of people too burdened by their own troubles to think critically about the origins of poverty under capitalist exploitation, will have troubling potential consequences in the wake of this ruling: if people are under the impression that the current problem is primarily due to a lack of law enforcement options, they are going to push for increased carceral solutions.

We have already seen this in anticipation of the ruling. In California, since the CARE (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) Act went into effect on January 1st, 2024, the government has been building an infrastructure of CARE courts. These courts, under the guise of the insidious euphemism of “care,” exist as a tool to force “service-resistant” unhoused people into mental health treatment, which can strip them of their autonomy and force them to take “stabilization medications” against their will. If a person doesn’t comply, the court can force them into conservatorship. We all saw how difficult it was for Britney Spears to get out of her conservatorship — and she’s a wealthy, internationally famous blonde white woman. What do we think is going to happen to people who are already stigmatized and despised by most people just on the basis that they are poor in public?

California Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) participates personally in the clearing of an encampment in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024.The most bewildering aspect of this deepening crisis is that Californians and Angelenos in particular have voted in favor of taxes to pay for low-income housing. The problem is, 50+ years ago Californians, and Angelenos in particular panicked in response to the Fair Housing Act, and in a racist effort to stave off what they feared would be a rapid influx Latinx families, worked to change city codes to make multi-family low-income housing extremely difficult to build. Still, given the general logic and structure of capitalism the idea that building more housing will somehow bring rents down runs counter to reality. Banks, which often finance development and hold mortgages on other properties, aren’t going to finance at a rate that would threaten lowering property values enough to make rent relief through increased supply truly possible. Landlords aren’t going to lower your rent. Put more simply, no matter how much we build, rent goes up, not down.

Even well-meaning politicians are usually powerless to change this dynamic. Without a huge mass of people knocking down their doors and threatening or carrying out disruptive escalation, any effort to impose a serious rent decrease through city ordinance or law, would meet a swift and massive backlash from landlords, developers, and banks. As Black Rose/Rosa Negra states in our Program, the state is the administrative arm of the capitalist class. It is a tool designed to work in one direction. As such, their true function is to participate in the constant cycle of gentrification as the enforcers and janitors- sweeping up the mess. The state is a hammer constantly in search of a nail, and over and over again the nails it strikes are “undesirable” communities: poor, Black, urban, trans, queer, immigrant, brown, Indigenous, unhoused – whoever the undesirable community they target is, they have one tool: identify an activity, make it illegal, throw them in jail.

And why would they stop? Prisons are a big business in the United States. We have more prisoners than any other country on Earth. Prison labor, i.e. slave labor, keeps many household-name American companies profitable. Prisons are one strategy American lawmakers use to revitalize the economy of communities where their core industry — be it coal, gas, mining, manufacturing, or something else — has collapsed for any number of reasons, be it offshoring labor to “developing” countries that are more easily exploitable, or “greenwashing” industry, or simply resource depletion. Since prisons are an economic revitalization strategy, then the administrative class has to find ways to provide a steady supply of bodies to keep the prison running. Never mind the fact that, in the case of unhoused people, it would be far cheaper to pay a person’s rent in an apartment than it is to imprison them or force them into managed “care” via a CARE court. That’s because housing people isn’t the point: perpetuating the status quo is. Without a stick to threaten would-be revolutionaries or troublemakers, it would be much harder for the state to maintain a steady labor supply for the capitalist class.

The GEO Group is one of the United States’ largest private prison corporations.Moreover, lucrative cottage industries within the nonprofit industrial complex have developed to manage the so-called “homelessness crisis.” There are non-profits who specialize in street medicine that accompany the sanitation department to sweeps; city departments, like the LA sanitation department, and others have teams of people trained to clean and manage encampments; there are Homeless Outreach workers, and caseworkers, mental health care workers; and city council districts have homelessness teams. Teams of experts get lucrative consulting fees giving this opinion or that on how to fix the problem. If we were to house everyone through a robust socialized housing program, all of these people would lose their jobs. It is a cruel irony that the organizations established to help unhoused people need the crisis to survive.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, circumstances in LA are a powder keg. Despite the fact that LA’s mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness, in February the city council ended its COVID eviction moratorium. In anticipation of this, LA landlords filed more than 70,000 evictions in 2023. The hypocrisy of calling homelessness a crisis while processing over 70,000 evictions to go through is mind boggling. Meanwhile, through the use of 41.18 special enforcement zones, the city has created a swiss cheese of areas where it is possible for unhoused people to put their tents. Unfortunately, most of those are near residential areas where people are particularly hostile to encampments. Residents call the police and their council people who then turn around and order sweeps of the encampments. LA city council is pitting housed and unhoused Angelenos against one another, while blaming the problem on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Even when people mean well, their reliance on the existing infrastructure corrupts their intention.

Case in point: the mayor of Los Angeles’s core campaign issue was addressing houselessness. A week after declaring the aforementioned state of emergency she launched her flagship Inside Safe program; “building the plane while flying,” as she said. Surely, a plane that is being built while flying is destined to crash, and Inside Safe has been a monumentally expensive wreck.

In short, Inside Safe uses the city’s 41.18 ordinance (colloquially called the “no sit, sleep, or lie” law) to target particularly unpopular encampments for removal. They tell participants that entering Inside Safe is voluntary, but if they don’t join they have to move somewhere else or they will be ticketed daily. If participants agree to go in they have to give up their tent and all of their belongings beyond what fits in two duffel bags. They are not told where they are going or for how long they can expect to be there. They are told they will receive services like mental health treatment, ID vouchers, help finding employment, etc. They are also promised entry into permanent housing within ninety days of entering. Then, they are taken to one of about a dozen or so roach motels around the city, sometimes within the vicinity of where they were staying, sometimes not, and left to their own devices.

Anti-sweep demonstration outside of Los Angeles courthouse.Don’t get me wrong; many people are excited to enter Inside Safe because they believe the mayor’s promises. For the vast majority of the people, though, nothing materializes except prison-like conditions of boredom, isolation, and increasing hopelessness.

According to a report written by Los Angeles’ Abolition Coalition, of which I am a member through LA Street Care, the Inside Safe program has spent $341 Million dollars on 1,265 participants across 16 locations since it began 18 months ago. It has “permanently housed” 539 people, 236 of whom are back on the streets because they could not afford the $2,200/mo market-rate housing they were assigned after their temporary subsidies ran out. It has also kicked 842 people out and had 44 participants die with some from overdoses and at least one was murdered.

That is a cost of approximately $126,765.80 per person. If the city would have just housed them in market rate apartments for those 18 months, they could have paid $7,042.54 per month in rent for each of the participants for 18 months. More crucially, the city could have taken that $341 Million dollars and built socialized housing instead. It feels more and more like housing people is not the point.

In late July, the Rand Corporation published a report that came to the same basic conclusions our report did: sweeps of encampments do absolutely nothing to change the number of people sleeping on the street. They are little more than a cruel game of whack-a-mole. And yet, the housed NIMBYs keep demanding them, the politicians keep scheduling them, and the vicious cycle continues.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision Mayor Bass issued a statement condemning it and saying that the city of LA was going to continue approaching the problem with compassion. To anyone with their eyes open the knee-jerk response was “what compassion?” Seven City Council members and the LA County Board of Supervisors ordered a review of their legal options in the wake of the ruling. Not to be outdone by the Supreme Court, Governor Newsom on July 25th ordered the removal of all encampments in the state of California, though he bewilderingly claimed it was optional for municipalities to participate.

So long as we continue to rely on the structures of capitalism and the state for solutions to this and other crises we will remain trapped in an escalating cycle of management, or better yet, mis-management. As people continue to push “solutions” and those solutions fail an increasingly frustrated public is going to demand that the government find real solutions, and those solutions will lead to more and more use of force. That is what the Supreme Court gave the green light to.

Things are not all doom and gloom, however. There are reasons for optimism. In Los Angeles, a network of autonomous organizations have assembled the Abolition Coalition. Our work uses outreach as a foundation for community building, but our aims is to fight the city and politicians head on. Under the banner “Inside Starving,” many of these groups wrote the scathing report on Inside Safe cited above that centers the experiences of the people impacted by the program. This is part of a deliberate strategy to pressure the city to come up with real solutions by getting real, reliable information directly from the people who are most impacted. And we have seen some early results. We managed to get a meeting with the Mayor wherein we made a simple request: put in writing what services the participants can expect, and where they are going. Though she refused, our resolve only deepened.

One of the encampments we worked very closely with, the Juanita encampment, was brought into an Inside Safe location. While there they organized themselves as Housing for Juanita. They held a press conference and demanded the dignified treatment they deserved. The city retaliated by making it impossible for anyone from the broader community to enter the location.

Another group associated with the Abolition Coalition, Aetna Street Solidarity, was a long-standing, highly organized encampment that created a thriving community. It partnered with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs to create various educational and practical projects aimed at reframing public space and life in a way that includes unhoused people in the broader concept of “community.” Though they were targeted for removal and swept, the community has remained strong and continues to fight the city’s cruel and repressive policies.

During the pandemic, several people moved into homes that the California Department of Transportation bought through eminent domain decades ago when they proposed an expansion of the 710 freeway. After the proposal was defeated by the community, the houses sat empty. When faced with losing their homes, these folks decided to take matters into their own hands and moved into the abandoned houses. They call themselves the Reclaimers, and they have been fighting the city and state to stay in these homes for years. So far, they have raised the money they need to buy the homes, and have so far staved off eviction as their cases wind their ways through the courts.

Over the last 15 years we have repeatedly seen the rise of mass protests mobilized over pressing problems like Wall Street corruption, racist police violence, and bodily autonomy, growing larger and more frequent over time. The overlapping crises the United States finds itself in are beginning to tear apart the seams of what has been one of the most disastrous empires in human history. This is not to say that we are as organized as we need to be–we are not–but we have ample opportunity to continue to push against institutional weak points, growing the capacity to initiate a social revolution to produce a reorganized society that actually centers human needs, and the needs of all life on the planet. The Grants Pass ruling offers plenty of opportunities to connect struggles — over pay, cost of living, policing, and more. This is an issue for housed people as well, after all. History teaches us that the violence the state imposes on the most marginalized will eventually be imposed on us all — unless we organize and fight to stop them.

For a first hand account of what the reality on the ground will be in the wake of the Grant’s Pass, check out Birdie, an unhoused Angeleno, telling his story here.

If you enjoyed this article, we recommend our national scale conjunctural analysis, published in the 2023 edition of our organization’s program Turning the Tide.

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IntroductionEvery year, Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra (BRRN) holds a national Convention in a different city somewhere in the United States. Delegates from Black Rose Locals gather to debate and deliver the votes of members on proposals that would substantively change the structures or direction of the organization; collectively reflect on our past year’s organizing failures and successes; and deepen crucial relationships among our militants from Locals spread across the country’s wide geography. Since adopting our first comprehensive political program Turning the Tidein 2023, our Convention has also served as the venue for revisiting certain elements of this core document.

From August 9th through 11th, the Bay Area Local hosted militants from across the country in Oakland, CA for our 2024 proceedings that marked a particularly important milestone: a decade since our organization’s founding.

To offer a lens into our organization’s internal life and share some of the lessons we learned during this landmark Convention, what follows is a brief summary of each day’s proceedings.

Day OneOur tenth national Convention was opened with remarks from the federation’s outgoing secretary. Following this, attendees read aloud greetings received from our sibling organizations across the globe, including:

• Organização Socialista Libertária (Brazil)
• Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (Brazil)
• Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (Uruguay)
• Federación Anarquista Rosario (Argentina)
• Federación Anarquista Santiago (Chile)
• Grupo Libertario Vía Libre (Colombia)
• Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (Australia)
• Geelong Anarchist Communists (Australia)
• Anarchist Communists Meanjin (Australia)
• Black Flag Sydney (Australia)
• Union Communiste Libertaire (France/Belgium/Switzerland)
• Embat (Catalonia)
• Batzac – Joventuts Llibertàries (Catalonia)
• LiZA (Spain)
• Federación Estudiantil Libertaria (Catalonia/Spain)
• Perspektive Selbstverwaltung (Germany)
• Têkoşîna Anarşîst (North East Syria/Rojava)
• Perhimpunan Merdeka (Indonesia)

Our comrades’ celebratory messages not only heartened us but reminded us that Black Rose / Rosa Negra is part of a living, vital, and growing worldwide current of organized anarchism inspired by the Platform and especifismo.

Next up was an organizational history panel, where former members of California-based Amanacer, Miami Autonomy and Solidarity (MAS), Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (later, Common Struggle), Workers Solidarity Alliance, and Common Action recounted their experiences in these regional anarchist organizations during the rapprochement, or unification, process that established Black Rose/Rosa Negra. Veteran militants explained how our history begins from a culmination of a years-long process spurred by invitational Class Struggle Anarchist Conferences (CSACs).

Beginning amidst the 2008 financial crisis, CSACs intended to cohere an anarchist strategy and practice beyond the limits of the period’s summit-hopping protests. Conference coordinators did not set out to forge a national organization, but by the close of the 2010 proceedings in Seattle it became increasingly clear that the basic level of unity between participating organizations warranted a serious exploration of the question. Buoyed by 2011’s surge of social movement activity in the Wisconsin Capitol protests and the Occupy Movement, as well as the popular social explosion in reaction to the racist vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, members of MAS strongly appealed for national organization at what would become our inaugural Convention in 2013. After many years of careful construction, BRRN would publicly debut in 2014.

More than just a trip down memory lane, the panel emphasized lessons hard learned by militants who share many decades of accrued experience between them. Their reflections reminded us of a central reason we emphasize the need for political organization: to reposit collective memory that can be transmitted from one generation of militants to the next.

If you are interested in reading more about the process that created Black Rose/Rosa Negra, we recommend our history page and this more detailed account of the rapprochement process that birthed our organization.

Afterwards, the organization’s national elected officers shared reports and reflections from their one-year terms. These administrative, immediately recallable roles are structured in such a way that they wield no ability to alter the collectively determined course of the organization.

Members and chairpersons of the Housing and Territorial Sectoral Committee discuss their activity.Day One closed with a panel discussion from members of the organization’s Housing and Territorial Sectoral Committee and organizing highlights from BRRN Locals around the country. In the latter session, BRRN militants emphasized the importance of deep organizing in solidarity with Palestinian national liberation. Deep organizing entails not just passively attending marches and demonstrations as a political organization, but working consistently within our sites of social insertion—the workplace, the neighborhood, the school/university—so that we can effectively bring fighting mass organizations in these sectors into struggles that they may not typically recognize as their own.

Day TwoWe began Day Two with discussion and debate on updates to our conjunctural analysis. Conjunctural analysis is the practice of assessing the various social forces and conditions at the local, regional, national scale that are coalescing to shape the present moment, allowing us to identify strategic opportunities to tip the balance of power. Although our organization has previously undertaken efforts aimed at ‘naming the moment,’ this was the first time that the exercise was directly and systematically incorporated into adjusting our limited-term strategy.

In their assessments of the conjuncture, delegates shared what members around the country had identified as important factors bearing on the present, including, among others: a national cost-of-living crisis squeezing social reproductive capacities; simultaneous erosion of legitimacy for certain State institutions like the Supreme Court with renewal for others; and the continued slow decline of U.S. hegemony abroad coupled with the explosion of a domestic anti-imperialist social movement demanding a ceasefire, arms embargo, and in some cases full-throated support for Palestinian national liberation. A more detailed and complete conjunctural analysis derived from this Convention session will be published at a later date.

After wrapping our preliminary conjunctural analysis, the Convention body moved to critically self-assess our progress on our limited-term strategy. Reports from Locals helped us identify where we had made significant advances toward our objectives—including around increasing our rank-and-file concentrations in the building trades, public education, service, and healthcare industries; spearheading or playing crucial roles in organizing the unorganized; gaining ground in localized fights against the construction of new ‘cop campuses’; and further developing our relationships with sibling organizations internationally—as well as where we have fallen short or failed, requiring a recalibration in strategy.

Convention proceedings on Day Two ended with Sectoral Committee breakout sessions for participating delegates to further discuss and refine how to implement our national limited-term strategy in each respective area of organizing.

In the evening, we threw open the doors to the convention hall for a public panel discussion and party. Reflecting on their past year in campaigns, the panel of speakers featured Enrique, a Southern public high school teacher fresh off a successful union campaign; Dera, an organizer salting at a shop in the service industry, and Alex, a member of faculty who has been organizing on her public university campus around the Palestine solidarity movement.

With around 70 people in attendance, the panel’s facilitator framed the organization’s theory of strategy.

Flyer for our 10th anniversary party. “We aim to build popular power,” Cameron, himself a rank-and-file union steward, explained. “For us, popular power means the creation of fighting social movements animated by principles of class struggle, class independence, self-management, internationalism, democracy, and direct action. History demonstrates that it’s fighting movements built on this basis that can challenge the state and capital…not only to wrench reforms from them in the short term, but to build the necessary power to kickstart a revolutionary social transformation that can topple them both.”

Answering the facilitator’s questions, panelists discussed the wins, losses, and lessons learned from their organizing efforts. Alex emphasized the need for rooted, on-the-ground organizing around shared needs, rather than cliquing up with others based solely on common ideology: “To make progress in what I’m doing, I’ve had to work with people in my workplace who are far from radical.” She continued, “That even means bringing along people who, for example, consider themselves staunch Democrats.”

10th anniversary public event featuring Black Rose/Rosa Negra militants reflecting on lessons from their organizing work.Dera, a college student who was also active in sustaining the encampments on her campus last school year, spoke to the transferability in lessons between that setting and her current salting effort for an independent union campaign. “I’m taking lessons from student organizing into the workplace, like emphasizing participation in our decision-making processes, meeting people where they are at and really getting to know what people’s motivations and fears are to build their confidence so they can act together collectively,” she said. Dera also plans to take her salting experiences back to campus where she can organize student-workers and student-tenants to exert real leverage on university bosses.

After some questions from the audience, the panel broke down their side of the stage to make way for People’s Disco DJ Jared G to set up his turntables. Over beers, attendees and BRRN delegates talked, danced, and enjoyed themselves late into the night.

Day ThreeThe final day was devoted, in the main, to the delivery of membership votes by Local delegates on proposals, constitutional amendments, and nominees for national administrative officers. While not quite as exciting as Days One or Two, this portion is crucial to keeping alive the directly democratic processes that sit both at the heart of our organization and our vision of the world we are fighting to bring into existence.

As our tenth national convention drew to a close, delegates said their goodbyes, no doubt tired from the long weekend but enjoying in equal measure a deepened commitment to one another and to the “long and patient work” of building toward a social revolution that will abolish class society and the system of domination which keeps it in place. “Black Rose is my political home” said one delegate as they left to catch their flight, “without you all, I would be fighting alone.”

Onwards, TogetherDelegates from Black Rose/Rosa Negra Locals around the U.S. pose for a group photo.From our prehistory through to the present, members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra have faced more than our share of obstacles, made mistakes or missteps, and sometimes struggled to find direction. Through it all, though, members—who are the organization—have approached our work with honesty, humility, camaraderie, and a commitment to our organization’s principles. We believe that this is evident, most importantly, to those who we are embedded alongside in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools.

As our organization enters a period of growth, we invite those who share our principles, agree with our program, and are engaged in long-term organizing to reach out to us at blackrosefed.org/join. Don’t fight alone.

FOR POPULAR POWER!
FOR LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM!

Black Rose / Rosa Negra

August 2024

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This is the third installment in our Anarchists in the Labor Movement series. Click through the links to read installment #1 with an education worker and #2 with healthcare workers.

In this interview we speak to Daniel Bovard-Katz, a metalworker in a midwestern U.S. state.

As the title suggests, this series engages with anarchists who are active in workplace organizing. Some of those we speak to in this series are buildng a militant minority within the rank-and-file of their existing union, others are organizing the unorganized through new union campaigns, while others still are finding ways to build the capacity to win shop floor fights in contexts where union support is not available.

In part, our aim with these interviews is simply to shine a light on the presence of anarchist militants in the U.S. labor movement. More substantively, we ask participants to critically reflect on their experiences, including both successes and failures, to draw out generalizable lessons.

Some, but not all of those interviewed in this series are members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length

Daniel Bovard-Katz – MetalworkerBRRN: How would you summarize your politics in one sentence?

Daniel: I believe in radical democracy, meaning all people having equal power to affect society.

BRRN: Can you share some background about the campaign you are working on?

Daniel: I have worked on a lot of campaigns, organizing in my own workplace and supporting others doing so. For my own workplace, I live in the Midwest and work in the metal and machinery industry, broadly defined. We’re not pursuing NLRB1 recognition, so there’s no determined bargaining unit. I started organizing over frustration with working significant unpaid overtime several years ago, but stopped after basically winning on that issue for myself and the one co-worker in a similar role as mine. A friend was hired into the company and recruited someone she worked closely with, which revitalized the effort recently.

BRRN: Are you working with an established union or going independent?

Daniel: We’re part of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). I was recruited to the IWW because they seemed to be the only people interested in organizing all workers.

BRRN: How do you see your anarchist politics as relating to organizing for power with coworkers?

Daniel: There is an emphasis on democratic decision making throughout the union, including at the campaign level. Otherwise, politics don’t come up much.

BRRN: Do you ever talk about your anarchist or anti-authoritarian politics with coworkers? Do you talk ‘politics’ (world events, local power structures) with your coworkers at all?

Daniel: Very rarely, and usually pretty surface level. I did have one conversation with a co-worker where we discussed issues at work and how to address them, but afterward he brought up Narendra Modi, who he was a big supporter of, and said that Indian Muslims were all supporters of terrorism. I tried to gently push back on this, talking about how people in the US also have blamed Muslims for terrorist attacks they had nothing to do with, but I don’t think I was very successful. In retrospect, I think that I should have worked harder at this conversation and spent more time finding out why he said that, but I was a little out of my depth.

BRRN: Does your campaign include others who see themselves as ‘political’, but are part of a different political tradition or political organization?

Daniel: I’m not sure. I would guess everyone who has joined the union sees themself as some sort of radical leftist, while some more conservative workers have agreed with the need for change and even collective action, but have not yet been asked about joining a union. We’re in the beginning stages of organizing, so this may be a difficulty later on, but so far has not really been a problem.

BRRN: Does organizing in unions fit into your vision for transforming society or for revolution?

Daniel: Yes, as I said above, I think the core of my belief is democracy, in the sense of people having equal power, and unions are perhaps the only way to meaningfully shift power in the workplace, which is where most of the decisions in society are made. So my process would be something like (1) form unions in all workplaces, (2) build up those unions to the point of actually making decisions about what is produced democratically, (3) cut out the layer of management that no longer does anything, and (4) replace state control of society outside of workplaces with worker control by control of the industrial production that is needed for a complex society.

BRRN: What resources have helped you most as you’ve organized?

Daniel: The IWW Organizer Training program is very good.

BRRN: What advice can you share with anarchists looking to organize a union? What do you wish you had known when you started?Daniel: You have to build a relationship with people based on caring about them. Talk to your co-workers and learn more about them, even before you start having organizing conversations. Be someone who people like (or at least don’t hate) working with and talking to.

[1] National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – the agency of the federal government that enforces U.S. labor law and oversees some union elections.The post Anarchists in the Labor Movement #3 appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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This is the second in a new series of serialized interviews that we are calling Anarchists in the Labor Movement. In this installment we bring you interviews with two nurses in the Southern United States.

As the title suggests, this series engages with anarchists who are active in workplace organizing. Some of those we speak to in this series are building a militant minority within the rank-and-file of their existing union, others are organizing the unorganized through new union campaigns, while others still are finding ways to build the capacity to win shop floor fights in contexts where union support is not available.

In part, our aim with these interviews is simply to shine a light on the presence of anarchist militants in the U.S. labor movement. More substantively, we ask participants to critically reflect on their experiences, including both successes and failures, to draw out generalizable lessons.

Some, but not all of those interviewed in this series are members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length

Xaquiri – NurseBRRN: How would you summarize your politics in one sentence?

Xaquiri: Anarchist-communist: a communist analysis of political economy with an anti-authoritarian praxis regarding power relations and the state.

BRRN: Please share some background on the campaign you are working on

Xaquiri: We are a group of 800 Registered Nurses at a level one trauma center in Louisiana that is the non-profit descendant of a large public hospital that was closed after Hurricane Katrina. I had dreams of unionizing since I started working there five years ago, but that accelerated after the obvious dire necessity of COVID. We have had several failed starts in organizing since then, but the most recent campaign really took off this past spring, after another group of nurses at a neighboring hospital were on the verge of filing for election right before their hospital was sold to the parent company of my facility, so a lot of the energy from that organizing was spread to us.

BRRN: Are you working with an established union or going independent?

Xaquiri: We are working with an established union National Nurses United (NNU) because they were already on the ground working nurses at the other hospital that got sold. I also chose to engage with them because they have a lot of resources to invest in supporting our effort, which is unusual for an established union to put resources in organizing new facilities in the South. I also found them to take a more militant approach to organizing than many unions — greater willingness to strike, aversion to worker-management partnerships, and engagement with intersecting justice issues instead of a narrow focus on building membership.

BRRN: How do you see your anarchist politics as relating to organizing for power with coworkers?

Xaquiri: A big part of my politics is the belief in ordinary people to get radicalized and shift power relations away from capital right where they are. I’m excited to see people who have never considered themselves political before now becoming engaged with all sorts of struggles, and that is all based on recognizing their collective power and where they are positioned in relation to the ruling class.

BRRN: Do you ever talk about your anarchist politics with coworkers? Do you talk “politics” (world events, local power structures) with your coworkers at all?

Xaquiri: At this stage I generally try to avoid it because so many people are so new to this way of thinking.

BRRN: Does organizing in unions fit into your vision for transforming society or for revolution?

Xaquiri: I guess you can say I have an anarcho-syndicalist theory of change and popular power. Unions are the closest thing to a radically democratic organization with control over resources in our society. Showing people that it is possible to take power on a local level with broader implications over the whole society is one of the most important parts of building unions for me.

David – NurseBRRN: How would you summarize your politics in one sentence?

David: I’d say nowadays the ideology most animating to me is syndicalism.

BRRN: Share background about the campaign you worked on.

David: I’m a nurse at a large university hospital in the Southeast. During the height of COVID, people in my unit were pretty pissed off and I started to hear that folks were feeling similar elsewhere in the hospital too. I heard from a friend in management that the hospital thought there was a union push happening, so I thought that if there was, I wanted to be part of it. NNU had recently won an election at a hospital in our state, so I figured that if folks were organizing at our hospital it was probably them. I got in touch with NNU and asked if they were organizing at my hospital. They said no, but if I wanted to initiate something, they would be willing to help. I asked some of my coworkers what they thought, and they were all pretty on board, so we started.

Now sadly, our effort was not successful. After more than two years of organizing, engagement dropped to nil and NNU pulled out, I think rightfully. That said, the effort was not a total bust. My unit, which was probably the most fully organized, got new equipment we had been asking for for years, our awful nurse manager got removed and replaced with our great clinical team lead, and faced with the prospect of a union, the hospital gave us the biggest raises since I’ve worked there, removed some of the hurdles placed on clinical ladder advancement, and gave us a parking stipend. Without a doubt the effort to unionize, even while unsuccessful, yielded improvements for nurses at our hospital.

BRRN: How did you decide between organizing with an established union and going independent?

David: We organized with NNU. What I found was that at our institution, in the South, there was a lot of fear around unionizing. People really had an impression that our institution was all powerful and could just crush anyone they wanted. Because of that, other nurses seemed to really want to be involved with a union that they felt was established enough to stand up to our institution. Organizing with NNU gave the nurses at my hospital faith that this was a serious effort that could actually make headway.

Sadly, I think organizing independently or with a smaller non-nurse union just wouldn’t have gotten the traction to get us even where we got. That said, NNU was not perfect. I generally perceived a reluctance from their leadership to invest resources in our effort because of the size of our institution. It seems that after their loss at Hopkins, they’re pretty gun-shy about large hospital systems and are focusing more on smaller institutions they think they can win more easily and with less perceived risk. I also think we would have benefitted from more organizers from NNU and more experienced organizers. They had a tendency to assign us organizers and then reallocate them frequently; hand-off was often not great and contacts were lost in the process. It created an air of noncommitment from NNU and unseriousness that definitely frustrated our nurses.

I wouldn’t say these issues defeated our campaign though. Ultimately, the major issue we ran into was just the level of turnover our hospital experiences — but the lack of experienced organizers and the frequent trading out of organizers didn’t help. Still though, I think NNU was probably the better choice for us because it opened door with nurses to have faith in the effort.

BRRN: How do you see your anarchist politics as relating to organizing for power with coworkers?

David: To me, workplace organizing is the ultimate expression of anarchist politics. I affiliate with anarchism mostly because I believe in the democratic organization of our society and economy. I believe in building democratically organized popular power at our jobs. It’s where we enlist ourselves into the application and production of power. So gaining power in our workplaces is one of the most direct ways for us to build popular power and change the conditions of our lives, and that’s what I’m seeking.

BRRN: Do you ever talk about your anarchist politics with coworkers? Do you talk ‘politics’ (world events, local power structures) with your coworkers at all?

David: We talk about politics at work frequently. My coworkers are generally either apolitical or progressive/liberal. I often engage in these discussions; I enjoy talking and debating this stuff with them. I think they know I’m pretty far to the left, and I generally share with those I’m close with that I’m an anarchist. I try not to get into too much leftist rhetoric with my coworkers: I dont think they’re very familiar with it so it doesnt connect with them. People are always willing to talk shit about our bosses and administration though. Folks are really animated by talk about controlling our own work, having power in our workplace, and what we’re owed for the work we do. I also have found that talk about workplace democracy is an idea that can connect with people. Apolitical people already have an understanding of democracy, so it’s not a big leap to be like, “Hey, why doesn’t our workplace work like that? Why do we supposedly have a say in our government but not when we’re at work?” People seem to get that.

BRRN: Did your campaign include others who see themselves as ‘political’, but are part of a different political tradition or political organization?

David: I reached out to some left organizations around our city to see if they could help me with connecting to other nurses, but sadly they weren’t much help. There were other political anarchist-aligned folks who were involved, some really actively and consistently and others not. I was honestly a bit disappointed at how some folks who seemed to profess our ideology didn’t show up. I also have been kind of bummed to see how many anarchists just uncritically went into travel nursing. Travel nursing has acted at a release valve for our institutions, allowing them to shuffle nurses around without having to fire anyone. Staff leaving was what ultimately undid our campaign.

We ended up at a place where many of the units had been cored out staff-wide, consisting only of very senior nurses just trying to get to retirement without issue and new grad nurses who didn’t plan to stay, neither were willing to take on the leadership in their units to make the union happen. The people who could lead in these units, middle-experience nurses with years of work left and who know their coworkers, all left for travel positions, especially the political ones and those who were agitated about our working conditions. This may have given them a better paid deal for a while, but in the end it’s leaving us all with a rawer one. I think all of us who align with anarchism need to consider what use having a political identity is if we are not willing to act on it.

BRRN: Does organizing in unions fit into your vision for transforming society or for revolution?

David: So I’ve lost a bit of faith in the idea of “the revolution.” I’m not sure it’s coming. I think we need to be honest with ourselves that our movement is relatively marginal at this point, we have limited reach and even more limited power, and I mean that for the entire left. So I think we need to be looking for niches where we can build power and expand from, so that when crises occur we can leverage our positions for greater popular power. I think nurse unions are a great avenue for that, so say the next time a crisis like COVID occurs, maybe we take over the hospitals, and who knows from there.

BRRN: What resources have helped you most as you’ve organized?

David: Honestly I’m not a big theory reader. I’ve been involved in radical organizing for a bunch of years now and I’ve learned a lot from my compatriots.

BRRN: What advice can you share with anarchists looking to organize a union? What do you wish you had known when you started?

David: Oh, I wish I did so much differently. First, I’d say we were too cautious to start. We should have started much earlier, even a few months earlier may have made a big difference. Talk to folks right away. There were a bunch of people that I held off talking to and by the time I did while they supported and wanted to help but they were leaving. A lot of this delaying ended up being due to concerns for security, and while it’s definitely important, we shouldn’t let it slow us down. I’d also say reach out to political people of course, but don’t count on them. I think it’s important to just engage in a spirit of solidarity with your coworkers: you’re all in it together, and you want to be reaching out to all of them.

I’d also say this probably applies to any union, but when working with NNU, try to maintain your own contact networks. The organizers try to route a lot of the connections through themselves, but can be kind of hit or miss on how good they are at following up. Further, it seems that once the union is formed, NNU doesn’t provide a lot of structure. It seems to me that for power to remain with the rank and file and not just default to national leadership in the absence of a governing structure, we’d need to maintain our own networks that we can use to fill that void. Don’t surrender the organizing to the organizers, we need to remain actively engaged to win and hold worker power.

If you enjoyed these interviews, we also recommend the first installment in this series:interview with June, an anarchist academic worker.

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Soon after October 7th, 2023 the Black Rose/Rosa Negra International Relations Committee (IRC) convened a special meeting to draft a statement condemning what was already becoming a genocidal assault on Gaza and the Palestinian people by the occupation forces of the Israeli state.

Given the urgency of the moment and the swelling Palestine solidarity movement in the United States, the membership of our organization made the decision to limit debate on the draft statement and instead move to a referendum vote to publish and distribute the statement as quickly as possible.

Over the intervening months, the membership of Black Rose/Rosa Negra continued to closely analyze the unfolding genocide in Gaza and to participate in deep and rooted social movement organizing in opposition to US support for Israel.

During this time our membership also returned to the text of our original statement, debating more fully certain elements which were cause for disagreement. Out of this constructive and comradely internal debate emerged a version of our original statement that is only slightly modified grammatically, but much clearer in its support for Palestinian self-determination and national liberation.

After being carried with overwhelming support in a membership referendum, we adopted the updated version of our statement, which we present below.

Black Rose/Rosa Negra External Education Committee (EEC) and International Relations Committee (IRC) 2024.

Updated Statement: Stop the Genocide in Gaza! End the War on Palestine!As Israel carries out a genocidal assault on Gaza, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for self-determination and an end to occupation and apartheid.

The horrific violence being waged against the people of Gaza today is a direct outgrowth of the everyday violence of Israeli settler colonialism, which has only intensified in recent years.

Israel has imposed a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007 — the longest siege in modern history. This brutal blockade by land, air, and sea has destroyed Gaza’s economy and confined more than 2 million Palestinians to an open-air prison with severe shortages of food, water, fuel, electricity, and medical supplies, in addition to multiple Israeli military bombardments during this period of collective punishment. Today Gaza appears less an open-air prison and more an open grave.

For more than 75 years, Palestinians have been waging a national liberation struggle against Israel’s settler-colonial project in and outside of Gaza. This struggle has taken on a variety of forms, from armed resistance to non-violent direct action. But regardless of the form, the response from the Israeli state, Zionist settlers, and their apologists, has always been the same: the weaponization of anti-semitism, accusations of terrorism, disinformation campaigns, and the continuation of systematic ethnic cleansing.

Israel’s call for a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave has rightfully been deemed a “textbook case of genocide.” High-ranking Israeli officials have referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, Zionists in Tel-Aviv recently hung a banner over a highway that read “Zero Gazans”, and near the West Bank, Israel’s National Security Ministry is distributing thousands of rifles to Zionist civilian settlers.

The Israeli military recently ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate from Gaza within an impossible 24-hour period, during which they proceeded to shower Gaza with airstrikes. Israeli violence against the Palestinian people has included the use of white phosphorus in crowded civilian areas and the murder of evacuees. The casualties from this genocidal attack continue to grow into the tens of thousands.

Given that the US is Israel’s most significant ally, those of us living in the heart of the empire have an obligation to do all in our power to halt this genocide. But what does showing solidarity with Palestine look like for us? In the face of deeply rooted state support for Israel, we must redouble popular efforts to deprive the Israeli state of legitimacy and aid from the US. Those who work and reside in the US have a special obligation to do this: the taxes taken from our paychecks bankroll Israel’s occupation and its genocide of Palestinians.

To resist this genocide, we must build the strength of popular organizations such as labor unions and community organizations to take action in solidarity. Although demonstrations and civil disobedience bring attention to the issue, we can only force the end of our government’s support for Israel by building and using popular power.

On the labor front, workers in the US must break the current silence of their unions. Workers must push their unions to release clear statements of support for Palestine and demands to end US aid to Israel, support and attend demonstrations for Palestine, and build the capacity for work stoppages, the prevention or delay of arms shipments, along with pension fund divestment. On the education front, educators and students must divest universities and colleges from Israel. For community organizations, organizers must aim to end law enforcement training partnerships between the United States and Israel, support the ongoing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and fight back against pinkwashing in queer spaces.

We must also look for opportunities to link these efforts across sectors and movements, as a coalition of community and labor organizers in the California Bay Area have demonstrated is possible through a successful 2021 campaign to block an Israeli cargo ship from being offloaded at the Port of Oakland.

The road ahead requires sustained organization and effort, and will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is a moment in history where our action or inaction will be keenly
remembered and judged. It is imperative that we seize this moment—against genocide for all and forever, for the end of Israeli settler colonialism, and for Palestinian self-determination.

(Updated 7/20/24)

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2024 marks the 10th anniversary of our organization’s founding. This is a milestone on which we will soon have more substantial reflections to offer – keep your eyes out!

For now, we are excited to invite you to join us in Oakland on August 10th for a public celebration marking a decade of Black Rose/Rosa Negra. Event details below.

Black Rose/Rosa Negra 10th Anniversary CelebrationWhen August 10th at 7 PM

WhereThe Firehouse
815 Alice Street
Oakland, California
94607

What7 PM – Members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra from around the U.S. will offer stories and lessons from a year organizing in the labor, tenant, and Palestine solidarity movements.

Discussion framed by AK Press author Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis.

9 PM – Funk, disco, and soul records spun by Jared G. of People’s Disco.

See you there!

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We present here a translation of an article which appeared on July 7, 2024 in the recently revived Spanish anarchist journal Regeneración Libertaria. The journal describes itself as “a portal for the revolutionary anarchist tendency, concretely of the especifista current, adapted to the Iberian Peninsula”.

Despite its original theoretical texts appearing in Spanish, the anarchist strategy of especifismo has only recently begun to make an impact on anarchism in Spain and Catalonia, places where the movement has historically found its expression through anarcho-syndicalist labor unions such as the CNT and CGT. This context becomes relevant to the article as the author, a CNT militant, aims to address the tension between especifismo’s commitment to organizational dualism and the revolutionary syndicalist view which sees no need for political organization outside of the union.

The recent introduction of especifismo to the Iberian Peninsula can be attributed largely to the work of organizations such as Embat and LiZA, whose militants have been producing articles, participating in social struggles, and holding seminars in Spain, Catalonia, and Portugal.

We are encouraged to see our European comrades taking up these ideas, debating them, and seeking to adapt them to their own context.

Article in the original Spanish: ‘El especifismo ante sus críticos’. Minor changes have been made in the course of translation for the purposes of clarity.

Translation by Cameron Pádraig.

Especifist anarchism advocates the need for a theoretical, strategic, and tactical organization—bound together with a program—under the banner of libertarian socialism. This is the ‘specifically anarchist’ organization, hence the term especifismo. It is a meeting point between affinities of social and organized anarchism, the aim of which is to influence social movements or ‘mass organizations’. In this way especifismo embraces ‘organizational dualism’, because the anarchist organization is not meaningful unless it is oriented towards the various popular struggles. The specific organization aims to plant, within social movements, a revolutionary seed which can provide consistency through the ups and downs of social conflict and the political cycle.

Most of the criticisms of especfiismo accuse it of promoting ‘entryism’, vanguardism, or of aiming to create a secretly coordinated minority who hope to manipulate social movements for their own purposes. These are suspicions that we understand to be legitimate but that, we believe, if they are made from a place of honesty and real concern, arise from a misunderstanding of the basic elements of the strategy.

Especifista anarchism advocates the idea of popular power. This notion maintains that social revolution will come about only through the organized masses themselves. It rests on the firm belief that the popular classes must be the protagonists and subjects of the social revolution. Proponents of popular power are committed to the principle that social struggles must be self-managed by the popular classes, struggles wherein popular structures are built based on the active participation of a broad majority and on democratic decision-making mechanisms. The concrete practice of especifismo is to make these mass organizations and social movements sites of genuine learning and popular participation.

Therefore, if we especifistas are truly committed to our principles, it would not make sense for us to seek executive control over social movements which possess the features that we are seeking to create. Moreover, the specific organization is not an end in itself. In other words, the strategy of especifismo is not concerned with growing a permanent vanguard party, but instead with the construction and orientation of mass movements toward a social revolutionary horizon. Especifismo shuns the vanguardist thesis and instead affirms that the libertarian communist militant must insert themselves within popular struggles, standing shoulder to shoulder with the people—not acting above them or ‘from the shadows’.

We know that not everyone is an anarchist, in fact even within anarchism itself there is no broad consensus on political action. In this way the specific organization is a space of unity for those of us who recognize that a shared strategy, analysis of the conjuncture, and training to be indispensable. We recognize ourselves to be heirs to the socialist tradition, and as such we understand that together we will think better. We reject ‘anarchist’ individualism, which we believe to be a liberal deviation of recent decades.

Returning to the idea of popular power, much of the aim of especifista anarchism, through concrete praxis, is to build mass organizations and social movements that are participatory and democratic. Part of its task is to identify the presence of other political groups and organizations within these mass movements, to understand their strategy, and occasionally to confront them. Our aim in these mass movements is to equip participants within them with effective tools for self-organization and action. We aim to prevent these mass movements from being co-opted, deactivated or controlled by institutional and/or vanguardist tendencies. That is to say, especifismo seeks the opposite of co-optation or entryism. It instead seeks to organize and radicalize the popular masses under their own will and desire for liberation.

One of the fundamental principles of anarchism is a commitment to ‘prefiguration’. This posits that the modes of organization and tactics carried out must accurately reflect the future society being sought. This commitment runs through our modes of organization, of action and our militant code of ethics. In each case we do not recognize a division between means and ends. We believe that the tactics we deploy are loaded with meaning and we do not want to build a new world which smuggles in the endemic evils of the current one. That is why especifismo has a clear ethical code. Transparency, clarity, and honesty in the communication of our intentions are paramount. The strategies of entryism or co-optation are usually marked by unethical stratagems such as the control of certain working groups by a minority organized from outside, the taking of formal and informal power, and/or the use of ambiguous language that conceals intent. These elements are reflective of vanguardism, a revolutionary strategy which engenders a future class society directed by a bureaucratic-intellectual elite. Especifista anarchists see the antidote to such an arrangement to be the popular participation of the mass of people in a society via the frameworks of federalism and socialized control of production. We argue that this mode of social organization generates a broad institutionality that cannot easily be taken over by a privileged minority or intellectuals.

Turning now toward revolutionary syndicalism, there is a quite understandable debate in this context regarding the existence of the specific anarchist organization. This emerges from the understanding within revolutionary syndicalism of the syndicate (the revolutionary labor union) as the structure that synthesizes political organization and mass organization. In this vision, the syndicate is the organization that will replace the State as the administrator of society until the emergence of total communism. We formally support this political commitment and its strategy, however, it does not seem contradictory to us to maintain the existence of a specific anarchist organization where anarcho-syndicalist militants meet to establish a strategic coherence, to share experiences of struggle and to have theoretical debates beyond the trade union spaces.

Revolutionary syndicalism is the popular materialization of the working class constituted in trade unions. It is that which orients itself mainly towards seizing control of society’s productive means. The problem is that, often, it is difficult to attract young militants to anarcho-syndicalism because they do not find within it a space relevant to them. A variety of factors cause this difficulty: theoretical underdevelopment, material circumstances, and/or the demands that union work implies. We contend that the anarchist organization can be a space to form and develop the anarcho-syndicalist militants of the future, to arm them with the capacity to conduct analytical, strategic, and tactical work effectively. As stated above, it can be a place that serves as a political school for many politically disoriented people.

In a context where we might confuse the trees for the forest, the anarchist political organization should be the mountain we can climb to survey the wider landscape. A place that generates the solid revolutionary base for different mass movements, that interconnects them and that energizes anarcho-syndicalism with pragmatic and trained militants. We understand that there are reasons for doubt and we celebrate these organizational debates. They show that the libertarian space is coming back to life after many years of theoretical stagnation, sectarianism, disorganization and purely aesthetic activism. The task ahead is still quite big, but no less exciting for that.

If you enjoyed this article, we also recommend this recorded video lecture on the history and theory of organized anarchism by Felipe Correa, as well as Feminism and Organized Anarchism by militants of the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination.

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This is the first installment in a new series of serialized interviews that we are calling Anarchists in the Labor Movement.

As the title suggests, this series engages with anarchists who are active in workplace organizing. Some of those we speak to are building a militant minority within the rank-and-file of their existing union, others are organizing the unorganized through new union campaigns, while others still are finding ways to build the capacity to win shop floor fights in contexts where union support is not available.

In part, the aim of this series is simply to shine a spotlight on the presence of anarchist militants in the U.S. labor movement. More substantively, we ask participants to critically reflect on their experiences, including both successes and failures, to draw out generalizable lessons.

Some, but not all of those interviewed in this series are members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

June – Academic WorkerBRRN: How would you summarize your politics in one sentence?

June: Anarchism. Popular and direct democratic control of our communities.

BRRN: Share background about the campaign you are working on.

June: I am organizing with a university graduate worker union in an East Coast city with a bargaining unit of about four thousand members. The campaign started in the mid-2010s by a core of communist-leaning graduate students forming an organizing committee. After a few years and a series of problems and reversals (including disaffiliating from a large, well-known parent union that was being very unsupportive, and reaffiliating with a different one), we called a union election and won.

BRRN: Are you working with an established union or going independent?

June: We are working with an established parent union. We chose that route because they had a number of resources (full time paid staff, a lawyer, and the promise of independent funding) to offer. Some founders of our organization were not happy about this decision. The fully-independent option was, overall, too daunting for us, as we felt we would have to spread ourselves too thin with technical aspects of internal data management, IT for our website, fundraising, labor law, etc.

BRRN: How do you see your anarchist politics as relating to organizing for power with coworkers?

June: My anarchist politics have a high level of correspondence with the key organizers in my union. We all want to use popular power to build worker control, equality, and dignity in the workplace. We have also seen that governments and union bureaucracies are a dead end of history, and these methods cannot be used to achieve our goals.

Many union members are in the vaguely socialist/libertarian socialist politics space, and most of them are either familiar with the politics of existing organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), International Socialist Organization (ISO), or were themselves former members of such organizations. Many of them burned out from this socialist party-centric organizing and turned to direct labor organizing as a way to act on their political principles.

BRRN: Do you ever talk about your anarchist politics with coworkers? Do you talk “politics” (world events, local power structures) with your coworkers at all?

June: We talk frequently about world events and “political” topics because of our similar class background (we all work in the same job, after all) and the fact that we live in a socially liberal East Coast city. Maybe because their average age skews pretty young, most of them feel a justified distaste of capitalism. We have a high degree of agreement on hating landlords, bosses, and cops, and on wanting to live in a better, more equal, less violent world.

The biggest disagreement we’ve seen in our union is that a vocal minority (no more than 5%) of our rank-and-file seems to be supporters of Zionism, which has caused strife with our organizers and union reps, who all are anti-Zionist.

BRRN: Does your campaign include others who see themselves as ‘political’, but are part of a different political tradition or political organization?

June: Amazingly we have no strong presence of people who see themselves as “political” in a different tradition or organization. Our members who were previously in ISO or PSL have broken with those organizations and now disagree with their authoritarian positions (an ex-PSL member now helps run our Libertarian Socialist Reading Group), and our members who are also members of DSA do not have any contradictions with our union’s goals, values, or activities. The only exception is that Socialist Alternative and PSL have reached out to us and offered support, but we voted to reject their advances, as many of us have come to believe that state communist parties are reactionary, parasitic, and historically obsolete political formations, with very little to offer the labor movement.

BRRN: Does organizing in unions fit into your vision for transforming society or for revolution?

June: We hope that organizing in unions will assist with advancing the goals of social revolution because it teaches workers to fight together, to count on each other, and to identify and hate the class enemy. However, unions in the U.S. and their parent labor federations are probably hopelessly integrated with the capitalist state and bourgeois political parties and will need to be either transcended, dissolved, or left behind in the movement forward toward a revolution and a new society. Although I do not speak for all my fellow workers, some of us see unions as a preparation for skill-building, making social connections, and devising new political understandings, which is a precursor for forming the kind of *new” revolutionary organizations when the time is at hand for a serious rupture within society.

BRRN: What resources have helped you most as you’ve organized?

June: Labor Notes has been an amazing resource. Shout out to LN for all their help. Also we read “Contradictions of Paid Staff in the Labor Movement” by Roger Williams, “Class Struggle Unionism” by Joe Burns, and “Ready for Revolution: The CNT defense committees in Barcelona, 1933-1938” by Agustín Guillamón.

BRRN: What advice can you share with anarchists looking to organize a union? What do you wish you had known when you started?

June: Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers constantly, every day of your life. Get used to it and get good at it if you’re not very social. Also, something I wish I had known when I started: meet people where they are, be empathetic, and also be genuine about your beliefs (if not too direct about how much you want strikes, ruptures, and revolutions).

I don’t always say the word anarchism around my coworkers, but they know I want workers and regular people to be in the driver’s seat in society, and they know I hate the government and cops, and I think society should be run as a participatory direct democracy instead. Surprisingly, people can and do totally understand that and respect it. Even the liberals in the union who disagree with the radicals—including us anarchists—can’t doubt our honesty, our conviction, and the success of our methods.

If you enjoyed this interview, we also recommend this interview with a Rutgers University adjunct faculty member on their 2023 strike.

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From Below, the podcast of Black Rose/Rosa Negra, is back! This time with a recording of a discussion panel titled, Bringing Indigenous Revolution to Campus. This panel happened recently at the Stanford University Palestine solidarity encampment and was organized by members of the Bay Area Local of Black Rose, which includes some students and workers at the university.

The panel took place against the backdrop of a vibrant movement where students, workers, and others affiliated with universities across the country have been rapidly radicalizing as they confront the full weight of U.S. imperialism and its interests. Black Rose members who organized this panel and have been participating in this encampment saw an opportunity to intervene by answering urgent questions around imperialism, indigenous self determination, and national liberation struggles.

Panelists speaking in this recording include a Palestinian healthcare worker, a Mapuche healthcare worker, and a Kurdish graduate student. None of these panelists are members of Black Rose, and each presents different–and at times contradictory–perspectives on movement organizing.

The panel is moderated by two Stanford students: a Black Rose member and a member of the Latine student group Interwoven Liberations.

We are sharing this recording with the hope that it will also prove useful for radicals around the country who are grappling with the pressing question of how to build a movement capable of meeting the moment, a movement capable of putting a stop to the genocidal war machine funded and sanctioned by the United States.

If you enjoyed this episode of From Below, we ask that you please subscribe and leave a positive review for the show on the podcast platform of your preference.

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On May 15, 1948 the British Mandate in Palestine ended. This date also marks the day on which settlers declared the independence of “Israel”. The establishment and expansion of which was only possible through the violent mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This is why May 15 also commemorates the ‘Nakba’ or catastrophe.

Today the Nakba continues. Both in the sense that generations of Palestinians remain displaced from their homes, but also in that Israeli settlers continue to harass, attack, and kill Palestinians in an attempt to dispossess them of their land.

While this violence is ongoing, it has not remained unanswered. Palestinians, before 1948 and up to the present, have used every means at their disposal to resist their dispossession. The key remains an integral symbol in their struggle, asserting both the pain of the loss, but also an unwavering commitment to return.

In remembrance of Nakba day we present these posters which Black Rose/Rosa Negra members have carried at demonstrations, encampments, and other actions against the genocide currently being carried out in Gaza.

PostersResist & Return Poster – English (11×17 in)DownloadCartel Resistir y Retornar – Español (11×17 in)Download

If you want to read more, we recommend our recent article: Deep Organizing Against Genocide: Palestine and Rooted Social Movements.

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As members of grad student union UAW 4811 across the University of California begin voting in a unfair labor practice strike authorization in response to the encampment crackdown, members of BRRN who work in California universities drafted the following statement.

We write to you as our California-based campuses join the ongoing encampment campaigns at American universities in opposition to the Western and Zionist belligerence against Palestinian personhood and homeland. We have spent seven months bearing witness to the horror.

Yet we also celebrate and learn from Palestinian resilience, incorporating their lessons into our actions of solidarity.

Despite university administrators’ and politicians’ best efforts to conceal it, Palestinian solidarity has been at the heart of a long history of resistance in California.

As is true for the rest of the so-called United States, California was founded on a genocidal settler colonial campaign. This began with the Gold Rush. While the US military waged a campaign of “Indian removal” in the interior of this country – including a war to annex northern Mexico – California’s late 19th Century settlement was facilitated by vigilante “bounty hunters” who received monetary prizes for every native person they killed. This assured that the riches of the Gold Rush would be enjoyed strictly by white settlers. Connections between California history, the U.S., and the Middle East become even clearer when we consider that Middle East oil has long been referred to as “black gold.”

Just two years after the extreme violence of the Gold Rush, the California State University (CSU) system was founded in 1857 and the University of California (UC) followed in 1868. California public universities have long been tied to the interests of empire and settler colonialism, particularly through cutting edge military innovation. In fact, military spending played a key role in developing the California economy since the WWII era. In 2022, California received $56.2 billion dollars of defense spending. The Department of Defense (DoD) controls over 3 million acres of land and employs just under 273 thousand civilians, active military, and reservists in California.

That same year, UC campuses received upwards of $290 million in Department of Defense contracts. More money continues to move through Los Alamos National Laboratory, which remains under the co-gestion of UC, Texas A&M, and a group of private nuclear-committed firms.

Military funding is not relegated strictly to the R-1 UC system either. For example, a research team at CSU Northridge received a $530K DoD grant to investigate augmented reality as a bizarre technological fix to help minoritized populations grow “psychological resilience” in the face of what we see as structural problems.

Moreover, the California State University system invests over a billion dollars in corporations benefiting from the siege in Gaza (A breakdown of the report can be found here).

But such a dystopian reality of a military-industrial-academic complex has never gone without resistance from us, the students and workers who make the institution run. Notably, the UC saw a massive student uprising from 1964-65 when the Berkeley campus banned anti-Vietnam War demonstrations on campus. Some protest manifestations saw as many as 800 students arrested. Not only were students before us opposed to the war itself, but also to UC involvement in the war industry. This image below is from 1971, when our predecessors at Cal mapped out the military presence on campus.

Source: Boston Rare Maps

At that time, we discovered an alleged $11 million in defense contracts on campus and more than $250 million at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Santa Fe, NM) and other UC-affiliated labs. Even Zoology and Entomology were apparently in the military’s pocketbooks, receiving $16,395 and $27,000 in blood money respectively.

Ultimately, that 1960s student movement was crushed as part of a broader state terror campaign against the New Left, including the American Indian Movement, Black Power movement, Chicano movement, and Puerto Rican independence movement, among others, that were in dialogue with and informed by the broader Third Worldist tradition, to which the Palestinian cause also belongs.

This recent wave of struggle began 15 years ago, when the neoliberal project seized a moment of global financial crisis to shock our universities with austerity cuts and subsequent fee hikes. We at the UC and our comrades at California State University (CSU) schools took over buildings in opposition to 32% and 30% tuition hikes in the respective public university systems. When students at UCLA took over Campbell Hall and renamed it Carter-Huggins Hall–after two members of the Black Panthers shot dead on campus in 1969–the Palestinian flag was there.

When UCSD students claimed CLICS library–one of 4 being closed down on campus in 2012–the Palestinian flag was there.

We have seen a growing wave of labor militancy on our campus, led by graduate academic student-workers (colloquially, Teaching Assistants). We organized our first TA strike in 2013. We followed our successful contract struggle by becoming the first local of a US-based union to pass a Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) resolution in 2014, only to be overridden by Democrat-party affiliated bureaucrats who direct the United Autoworkers from Detroit. The Palestinian flag was there.

In 2019, we launched a wildcat strike at UC Santa Cruz that was brutally repressed by police, leaving some 80+ workers fired. As militancy spread to campuses from San Diego to Davis, UC police collaborated with the National Guard to track activity. The longhaul strike won an increase in wages and forced the university bosses to rehire all those who had been fired, but fell short of achieving the movement’s core demand: a cost-of-living-adjustment to salaries that leave instructors paying on average 70% of their income to cover rent. Throughout it, militants demanded that support for Palestinian liberation make its way into our demands. The Palestinian flag was there.

Then, the student-workers’ combative spirit grew amongst professors UC-wide as well, especially amongst Lecturers who labor on average for just above minimum wage. In 2020, UC professors worked alongside students to launch the Cops Off Campus campaign to bring the broader struggle against policing into the institutions where we work and study. Inspired by the Movement for Black Lives, we reaffirmed our position: abolish the police. Not only did we call for police abolition, but also for demilitarization of the universities. We salute Palestinians for having accompanied our abolitionist movement with recent ties stretching back to the Ferguson, Missouri uprising of 2014 as well as to prior movements in the legacy of the Black Freedom Struggle, such as that against apartheid South Africa. The Palestinian flag was there.

Many of us in the public school system–whether students, faculty, or staff–come from non-white, working class families who share a history of structural violence enacted upon us and our ancestors in the name of ongoing displacement, segregation, empire, and genocide.

These are our stories, and the stories of our families. Look no further than the apartheid wall that divides San Diego-Tijuana and the IDF-informed ports of entry for a recent piece of evidence. We are proud to tell our stories alongside that of Palestinian resistance and we are informed by the novel works of Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, and Nur Masalha, among others. Certainly, imperial efforts to silence, censor, and kill our Palestinian colleagues and teachers have ensured that many more important thinkers have not been able to reach us. We resist this epistemic violence and affirm our responsibility to demonstrate how our struggles connect.

In our classrooms, we cannot discuss Black Power without talking about Palestine.

We cannot discuss Chicano History without talking about Palestine.

We cannot discuss Native resistance without talking about Palestine.

We cannot discuss global feminism without talking about Palestine.

Since the 1960s, students and academic workers have fought for space to include decolonial history and theory into the curriculum, including the successful efforts of the Third World Liberation Front, a coalition of CSU/UC student groups who went on strike in order to establish Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. Ethnic Studies then spread throughout the CSU/UC systems and is now embedded in K-12 education in California as a requirement for graduation. Current campus uprisings take note of these genealogies of struggle and reflect a nationwide cultural shift in the American university from which there is no return.

But liberatory momentum rarely goes uncontested. As the university winds up repression against staff, students, and faculty acting in solidarity with Palestinians, we emphatically echo the calls for our coworkers and classmates to strike in the face of the growing militarization of our work and study space.

Such calls have come not only from below, from the voices of students and rank-and-file union militants. After university bosses sicced police on us at the UCLA encampment, union leadership filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against the hostile working conditions, opening the doors for a sanctioned strike. On May 13-15, 48,000 postdocs, academic researchers, student researchers, teaching assistants, tutors, and readers at the UC will cast their ballots in a strike authorization vote.

Those of us in UAW 4811 endorse a yes vote during this strike authorization period. As well, we urge other rank-and-file members of our union to impress upon members of the union executive board that this package of demands can only be met through strike action. Additionally we urge rank-and-file members to organize departmental townhalls in preparation for a work stoppage.

Those of us who are UC-AFT lecturers commit to joining our UAW 4811 colleagues on the picket line and refuse to aid or abet retaliation against those on strike.

Those of us in other parts of the California system of higher education, particularly the California State University (CSU) system commit to joining our colleagues at UC institutions on the picket line.

The struggle on the campuses opened by the student movement has shown its immense resolve. It is time for us, as academic workers whose labor the university relies upon, to open a new front in this fight.

We intend to strike not only over our institution’s complicity in the occupation of Palestine, but with the historical memory of its role in the war crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, Somalia, Granada, Guatemala, and many more. North America’s legacy is one of creating and spreading a Taylorist model for the production of death world over. In our universities–which are perhaps small but lucrative R&D sites in this production line–we can build the power to refuse this work.

If you enjoyed this content we recommend the article Deep Organizing Against Genocide: Palestine and Rooted Social Movements and BRRN’s collective statement Stop the Genocide in Gaza! End the War on Palestine!

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The Durham Local of Black Rose/Rosa Negra will host a series of discussions related to our organization’s political program, Turning the Tide.

Meetings will take place beginning in mid-May and run through June.

Discussion will be oriented toward connecting the politics and strategy outlined in the program with local campaigns in labor, tenant, and student organizing.

To register for the series, follow this link.

Confirmed Dates:

• May 14th, 6-8 PM @ The Night School Bar
• May 28th, 6-8 PM @ The Night School Bar
• June dates TBA

For further information about this discussion series, please email the Durham Local at brrndurham@gmail.com

Read the report from our Turning the Tide discussion series held recently in Boston.

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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)

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Black Rose / Rosa Negra – Labor Committee

On April 19th, over 4,000 labor unionists will converge on Chicago for what will be the largest-to-date Labor Notes conference. Member of Black Rose/Rosa Negra have regularly participated in past versions of the conference as attendees and panelists.

In 2018 we organized a wildly successful independent event during the gathering that we called the Red and Black Party. This original Red and Black party was held in a hotel suite that quickly became hot and crowded as attendees streamed in to hear from anarchist workers involved in campaigns around the US, UK, and Poland.

Thanks to the generous donations we received during our recent fundraiser, we are extremely excited to announce the return of the Red and Black Party, this time bigger and better. See details below.

Join us for the Red and Black Party at the 2024 Labor Notes ConferenceWhen: Friday, April 19 • 9PM – Late.
Where: LAX Room at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, IL
Cost: Free – but bring cash for the bar!
Featuring: Music, drinks, and conversation + updates from anarchist workers involved in public sector campaigns in the US south, anarchist healthcare workers organizing Palestine solidarity, anarchist workers involved in campaigns in Spain and Argentina, and much more!

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We are excited to announce the next event in our Organized Anarchism: A Global Perspective series, a discussion with a delegate from the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU).

➧ Register for the discussion at this linkThis event will take place on Sunday, April 7th at 12 PM (US Pacific) / 2 PM (US Central) / 3 PM (US Eastern) / 4 PM (UYT)

The event will be simulcast in English and Spanish.

Among the most storied anarchist organizations in history, the FAU is marked equally by its illustrious activity and by its members’ major contributions to anarchist social and political theory. Founded in 1956 by refugees of the Spanish Civil War and others who fled fascist repression in Europe, the FAU developed as a small organization that punched well above its weight in struggles on shop floors, in neighborhoods, and on campuses. Adhering to a principled, but non-sectarian approach to mass organizing, the FAU participated during the 1960’s in coalitions that included leftwing organizations of various stripes.

Outlawed and forced underground at the start of Uruguay’s civic dictatorship in 1967, members of the FAU continued to organize both openly and clandestinely. It was during this period of legal proscription that members of the organization developed an armed wing, OPR-33, which carried out high risk actions such as expropriations, sabotage, and even kidnappings of political leaders and members of the capitalist class. Unlike the vanguardist strategy of foquismo, which the FAU criticized, the actions of its armed wing were done in tight coordination with struggles led by mass organizations like unions and neighborhood assemblies.

As the forces of US-backed anticommunism closed their grip on the southern cone, some 50 members of the FAU were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, murdered, or disappeared throughout the 1970’s. Greatly diminished due to repression, the FAU would not reemerge in Uruguay until the fall of the country’s civic-military dictatorship in 1985.

After a period of reorganization, the FAU worked to support the creation of new anarchist organizations in the region, modeled on their organizational-strategic approach of especifismo. These new organizations include groups that would go on to form the Brazilian Anarchist Coordinator and the Anarchist Federation of Rosario in Argentina. Today the FAU remains an active organization, with a presence in labor and neighborhood campaigns.

To learn more about the FAU in advance of the discussion, we recommend the following articles:

• Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organizationby Adam Weaver
• The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU): Crisis, Armed Struggle and Dictatorship, 1967-1985 edited by Paul Sharkey
• “An Organisation of Militants” The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya by Tommy Lawson

For a more comprehensive history of the FAU, we recommend:

• Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-76by Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis
• [Review of Anarchist Popular Power] Lessons in Struggle from Uruguayan Anarchists by Juan Verala Luz
• [Audio] Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis’ Presentation on Anarchist Popular Power

Want to catch up on this series? You’re in luck, because we’ve made available a recording of the first event, a discussion with anarchist theorist and militant Felipe Corrêa.

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by Black Rose / Rosa Negra – External Education Committee

Black Rose / Rosa Negra invited Brazilian anarchist theorist, educator, and militant Felipe Corrêa to inaugurate our discussion seres, Organized Anarchism: A Global Perspective. Corrêa chairs the Institute for Anarchist Theory and History, is the author of the forthcoming book ‘Freedom or Death: The Theory and Practice of Mikhail Bakunin’, and is a member of Organização Socialista Libertária (OSL).

On February 25th, Corrêa gave a live presentation on the history, theory, and practice of organizational dualism – a strategic orientation within the anarchist movement often referred to as ‘organized anarchism’. Nearly 600 registered and more than 325 attended the webinar event on the day of. Following the presentation, Corrêa and members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra answered questions from the audience.

We look forward to continuing to build momentum with this series, which will feature delegates from anarchist organizations around the globe that embrace the organizational dualist tradition.

Be on the lookout for a link to register for the next event in the series, set to take place in April!

Recording of February 25th EventThis recording includes the presentation made by Corrêa, but does not include the Q&A portion which was reserved for day of attendees.

Supplementary ReadingsBelow is a list of readings related to Felipe’s presentation. The PDF of Felipe’s slides is available upon request.

Works by Felipe in English:

Create a Strong People: Discussions on Popular Power

Bakunin, Malatesta, and the Platform Debate

Anarchist Theory and History in Global Perspective

Organizational Issues Within Anarchism

The Strategy of Especifismo: Interview with Juan Carlos Mechoso

Documents Referenced During Felipe’s Presentation:

Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists – Dielo Truda (1926)

Platform of the Federation of Anarchist Communists of Bulgaria – FAKB (1945)

COPEI: Commentary on Foquismo and Armed Struggle in Latin America – Anarchist Federation of Uruguay (1972)

Anarchist Communist: A Question of Class – Anarchist Communist Federation of Italy (2003)

Social Anarchism and Organization – Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (2008)

Other Relevant Links:

Institute for Anarchist Theory and History (ITHA/IATH)

Pre-Order Felipe’s Forthcoming Book – ‘Freedom or Death: The Theory and Practice of Mikhail Bakunin’

Organização Socialista Libertária (OSL)

If you would like to read Corrêa’s works in English, we recommend: Create a Strong People – Discussions On Popular Power and Organizational Issues Within Anarchism.

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by Jake Carman, with contributions from other members of the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Boston Local

Planning & ExecutionThrough the Fall and Winter of 2023, the Boston Local of Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) hosted a four-part discussion series on our program: Turning the Tide. The first collective effort of the newly reconstituted Boston Local, the discussion series brought 15 to 25 people to each of the meetings, with 40 or more individuals participating over the life of the series. Our goals, according to Local member Matt Tracy, were to “build connections with strangers and organizers surrounding our shared political questions, thoughts, and goals – and also try to come to a higher level of thinking and reflection regarding the program itself.” The series resulted in dozens of potential members interested in joining the Federation, a network of anarchist militants forming around us, and new local sectoral organizing projects.

Boston BRRN members spent the previous few years seeking out, developing, and strengthening relationships with other local organizers. We also made contacts at recent demonstrations, public events like the Boston Anarchist Bookfair, and through our sustained participation in a variety of social movements. We extended invitations to those who both displayed a commitment to organizing in their particular sector, as well as those who showed an interest in the politics and strategy of BRRN. We asked people to pre-register for security and to assess dietary, language, and accessibility needs. The events alternated between two different neighborhoods on opposite ends of the city, and between weeknights and weekend afternoons. We organized most of these events into separate break-out meetings, in different rooms or even different nearby buildings. This allowed for more intimate conversation with 10 or fewer people, for Spanish language interpretation, and to accommodate the different levels of knowledge on the topics at hand. Most importantly, we ensured that each session included a spread of delicious snacks.

Images of the English and Spanish flyers advertising the program study series. The series itself was conducted in both languages.According to the previously quoted Tracy, planning and executing the series “was relatively easy, because we started with a small group of planners who already knew each other.” One of our members developed a slide deck to facilitate conversation around elements of our program. We did not want simply to lecture to a captive audience about what our program says. Instead, embracing a popular education approach, we created opportunities for participants to express, in a collective setting, how the analyses and strategic recommendations contained in the document do or do not comport with their own experiences in social movement organizing. The slide deck included our ice-breaker and discussion agreements that we borrowed from the AORTA Collective. We also pulled quotes from the program, using them to generate prompts for discussion.

Following an initial introductory session, each subsequent session included two tracks: one for “newbies” or those who wanted to discuss the basic elements of the program and a second that focused on a more detailed examination of its arguments. We allowed participants to self-select which track they wanted to participate in and we were able to provide Spanish interpretation for those who needed it. (The slide deck and quotes for discussion are available in English and Spanish through the Federation’s External Education Committee – eec@blackrosefed.org).

Few attended the events sequentially, but many attended multiple days and all who participated walked away with an understanding of Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s strategic orientation. Aila, who attended the series, said, “I thought it was very enlightening, but also necessary. The dialogue itself with other established and new members was integral to understanding the program. Reading it in a group helps people to see themselves in the work and begin to practice this kind of organizing.”

The majority of the participants read Turning the Tide, in paper form or online. We found participants were often most interested in asking us questions about Black Rose/Rosa Negra, how the organization functions, and how one might join. While there were many questions about the political concepts we use and occasional hang ups regarding the minutia of imagining a post-revolutionary anarchist society, there was a general consensus of agreement around the goals, strategies, and tactics proposed in our program.

Aila added that “Something like Turning the Tide is so important because it is, if not foundational, very uniting. People should start to realize that we have something already that easily brings us together.”

Sectoral BreakoutsBut this series functioned as more than straightforward political education. As already mentioned, we encouraged participants to assess the content of our program by connecting it to their own organizing experiences. This proved extremely fruitful. By the fourth event, participants began to develop a collective understanding of where we each fit into the broader tapestry of movement organizing in our region. This was accomplished by breaking out into three sectoral subgroups: Abolition & Safety, Housing & Territorial, and Labor.

The Abolition & Safety breakout was by far the largest. Participants discussed organizations such as the Jericho Movement, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and others that they had been active in. Drawing on these experiences, participants began to strategize about developing areas of common abolitionist and prisoner support work.

The Housing & Territorial group included organizers currently engaged in 6 different housing or territorial organizations in different parts of Eastern Massachusetts. The group organized themselves through a signal chat and have since held two virtual meetings, and plan to gather together anarchist housing organizers to carry out collective analysis, develop and host organizer trainings, coordinate our participation across the various local social organizations, and host a public video discussion with housing organizers in Barcelona.

The Labor breakout was the smallest of the three, and while there were a handful of union members and a few organizers representing different industries, there was not enough common focus or capacity in the grouping to yet justify launching a coherent sectoral network. Despite this, the discussion of common experiences and challenges organizing at work was useful and generative.

Breaking out and then reconvening as a larger group created the basis from which we were able to better strategize about creating opportunities for multisectoral and transversal organizing.

This first iteration of our program study series wrapped up in late December with a party and a participatory retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Copies of Turning the Tide.ConclusionAs members of the Boston Local of BRRN, our takeaway is that this event series—while requiring a significant effort to plan and implement—exceeded our expectations as a success. Not only did we create a recurring space for anarchist militants to come together in order to collectively discuss and analyze a political document, we were able to lay a solid foundation for future cross-sector organizing efforts.

We have already begun planning the next program study series and are supporting groups in other parts of Massachusetts who have approached us about doing the same. We encourage anyone interested in holding your own collective study of Turning the Tide and would be happy to provide you with the materials and support necessary to carry it out.

We look forward to hearing from you!

You can email the Boston Local of Black Rose / Rosa Negra at: boston@blackrosefed.org

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⇨ DONATE HERE ⇦Since Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) was founded 10 years ago, labor has remained a key focus of our sectoral organizing approach. For our members this has meant organizing the unorganized in campaigns to build entirely new unions, fighting within existing unions for greater rank-and-file control, and building the capacity of workers to lead their own struggles from the shopfloor.

In the last few years our members have participated in paradigm shifting wildcat strikes, successful organizing campaigns in ‘right to work’ states like Texas and North Carolina, massive strikes in higher education in California and New Jersey, and efforts to build and expand rank-and-file networks of healthcare workers. Most recently, our members have been experimenting with ways to bring the fight for Palestinian liberation into our workplace campaigns.

We are resolutely committed to building a pole for revolutionary anarchist politics and strategy in the labor movement. This is reflected in our recently published political program Turning the Tide, where we specifically commit to “developing and expanding a militant minority of anarchists committed to organizing at a rank-and-file level within strategic industries.”

There is perhaps no better opportunity to make the connections for such a project than at the biennial Labor Notes conference. Labor Notes brings together thousands of union members for a weekend of critical discussion, training, and workshops. In 2022 the conference saw its highest attendance ever and this year it is again set to break records. Members of BRRN have been attending Labor Notes for some time and have organized, facilitated, and sat on a number of its panels over the years. During the 2018 edition of Labor Notes, we held an open ‘Red & Black Party’ adjacent to the conference, which featured anarchist workers involved in campaigns in the US, UK, and Poland, and allowed for other anarchist and fellow traveler militant unionists to meet and network.

Images from the ‘Red & Black Party’ at the 2018 Labor Notes Conference

This year BRRN is poised to bring over 25 members to the conference, including those of us who are workers in the building trades, transit, healthcare, K-12 education, higher education, public services, and laboratory science.

We are also extremely excited to announce that we are sponsoring the attendance of comrades from our sister organization Federación Anarquista Rosario (FAR) in Argentina, who are workers in the public sector. This comes at a crucial time for the Argentinian labor movement, as workers there have recently undertaken a general strike in response to the extreme neoliberal program of the newly elected president Javier Milei.

This year we plan to host an expanded redux of the ‘Red & Black Party’, in order to highlight the work many of our members are doing, to hear from our comrades in FAR and Spanish comrades from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), and to provide a space to network with other militant unionists. Details on the party are forthcoming!

We are setting our sights high for the conference this year, but everything that we have planned does not come cheap. From plane tickets and visa costs, to food, lodging, and party supplies. While BRRN will be fronting a significant amount of money for this effort, we are also an independent political organization that relies only on membership dues and individual donations. But that’s where you come in.

We’re counting on your solidarity to help us continue our effort toward building a wing of the labor movement committed to self-management, class struggle, rank-and-file democracy, direct action, class independence, and internationalism.

Any donations received in excess of our goal will be used for the production of Spanish language copies of our political program Turning the Tide.

Donate now and receive one or more of these gifts as a thank you!

$20 – Thank you postcard pack w/ artwork by Ysidro Pergamino and Dinelli

$40 – Bundle of BRRN stickers & pamphlets (and everything above)

$60 – BRRN Tote Bag (and everything above)

$80 – Build Popular Power or Crear Poder Popular T-shirt (and everything above)

If you are unable to donate, we ask that you share the fundraiser with your comrades, friends, and family!

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We are excited to announce the first in a series of live discussions that we are calling Organized Anarchism: A Global Perspective.

➧ Register for the discussion at this linkAnarchist movements across the globe have a robust history of theory and practice around political and social organization dating back to their origins in the 19th century.

In the past decade alone, more than a dozen anarchist political organizations have emerged around the world. From Argentina to Australia, these formations have been inspired by the tradition of organizational dualism, also known as “organized anarchism.” But what is organized anarchism and what is the theory that animates it? What does organized anarchism look like in practice, both past and present?

This series will explore these questions and more by engaging with members of contemporary anarchist organizations around the world.

We are kicking the series off with a framing discussion led by Felipe Corrêa, an anarchist militant and scholar at the Institute for Anarchist Theory and History (IATH). Corrêa has published numerous articles and books on anarchist history, theory, and practice, including: Bakunin’s Theory of the State (2014), and the forthcoming Freedom or Death: The Theory and Practice of Bakunin (2024).

Register now to join us on Sunday, February 25th at 12 PM Pacific / 2 Central / 3 Eastern.

The event will include 45 minutes of discussion, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A from the audience.

If you are interested in reading Corrêa’s work in English, we recommend Organizational Issues Within Anarchism and Create a Strong People: Discussions on Popular Power.

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Varios miembros de Black Rose / Rosa Negra se han ofrecido a colaborar en este artículo para que prevalezca la lucha de la liberación Palestina a través de organizar equipos de lucha con metas a largo plazo. Se hace énfasis en la diferencia entre la movilización temporal y la organización sostenida enfocada en sitios de la vida cotidiana como lugares de trabajo, escuelas y vecindarios.

This article can also be found in English.

IntroducciónHan pasado más de 100 días del ataque con fines genocidas por Israel en el pueblo Palestino y esto ha provocado una de las movilizaciones en contra de la guerra más grandes en los últimos diez años. Muchos de nosotros, al tomar las calles, nos preguntamos ¿qué será necesario para detener a la maquinaria de guerra Estadounidense?

Analizando las protestas contra la invasión de Irak en 2003, es claro que para lograr un cambio hace falta más que marchar o acciones dispersas como ocupar vías públicas, edificios de gobiernos o “pintas” u otros actos de vandalismo en protesta. Salir a las calles desgasta nuestra energía, aumenta el riesgo de ser arrestados e interrumpe la vida de personas no involucradas en el conflicto. Este desgaste se siente como derrota y se vuelve un círculo vicioso en la lucha y el movimiento contra la guerra.

Muchos de nosotros nos involucramos en Black Rose / Rosa Negra (llamémoslo BRRN) porque estábamos hartos del círculo vicioso del activismo. Reaccionábamos a cada crisis y terminábamos en el mismo lugar donde habíamos empezado. Nos involucramos para buscar métodos de incrementar y mantener la efectividad de las protestas, nutrir la fuerza del cambio histórico y ayudar a otros participantes para lograr un cambio y obtener la victoria en la lucha. Cambio que lleve a una revolución eficiente. Esta es la razón por la que BRRN se aleja de las campañas de activismo subcultural y en vez de dar prioridad a los movimientos populares que inician en nuestras comunidades, nuestros espacios de trabajo y estudio.

Hay que reconocer que estamos al principio de la reconstrucción de los movimientos de lucha social, lo que hace que la movilización en emergencias, como el caso del genocidio en Palestina, sea más lento. También hay que reconocer que esto es en parte porque estamos tratando de organizar grupos heterogéneos; convenciendo, por ejemplo, a compañeros de trabajo a tomar acción, en vez de movilizar a otros activistas ya comprometidos con el movimiento. Pero la verdad es que este sistema es, a la larga, más efectivo ya que, a la larga, creará grupos listos para la lucha en otras circunstancias. Nuestra meta es organizar e involucrar más gente en movimientos sociales y atraerlos a grupos de anarquismo organizado. Convertirlos en esencia en militantes preparados. El crear grupos adiestrados y preparados (en vez de simplemente motivar y movilizar a la gente en un momento de crisis) es mucho más eficiente y creará un cambio radical contra el imperialismo.

Comúnmente, nuestros métodos dependen de que nuestro trabajo y organizaciones no sean detectadas por los imperialistas contra los que luchamos. Para esto tenemos que actuar en espacios sociales con gente similar a nosotros, organizarnos sin ser vistos—en vez de poner énfasis en que nuestro movimiento y organizaciones sean reconocidas con un nombre o un logo a la vista de todos. Es cierto que hay otra parte que necesita ser vista: organizar manifestaciones evidentes, como marchas o protestas. Pero esto es el resultado de una serie de acciones y no es el foco central de lo que estamos haciendo en este momento, al inicio del movimiento. Esto parece contradictorio y esta aparente contradicción puede ser frustrante, pero en realidad es una parte esencial de la lucha. Por eso es que ahora queremos enfatizar este “trabajo oculto” que se ha ido dando en la solidaridad con Palestina.

No queremos decir aquí que hay un modo correcto de hacer la lucha,sino más bien mostrar la gran variedad de contextos en los que el movimiento se desarrolla. Las partes básicas, modestas, pero esenciales y necesarias, para crear un fundamento en el que pueda sostenerse el resto de la lucha. Acciones que traigan más compañeros decididos y organizados, que creen poder sustentable, la creación y mantenimiento de una solidaridad que pueda alcanzar verdaderos objetivos. Como ejemplo: al final de las marchas de solidaridad con Palestina, los organizadores dicen que las marchas, por si solas, no van a detener el genocidio, y hacen un llamado para todos sigamos organizando y atrayendo simpatizantes al movimiento. Esto resulta confuso para los participantes, ¿qué hacer ahora? No hay ejemplos que seguir para un individuo que no pertenece a una organización o es un militante ya organizado. Por esto queremos mostrar algunos ejemplos exitosos de los miembros de Black Rose / Rosa Negra.

Organizando a Los Vecinos en BostonMiembros del grupo East-Boston Por Palestina, posando para la foto después de un evento.Tony ha vivido en el vecindario de East Boston por veinte años, mientras que Roxana ha vivido y trabajado allí durante seis. Ambos son miembros de BRRN, con varios años de organizar al vecindario y generar conexiones y relaciones que promueven la confianza. Cuando inició la guerra en Gaza, ellos utilizaron estas relaciones de años para expandir sus vínculos y conectarse con más vecinos para crear un grupo mayor para las marchas pro-Palestina. Después de este inicio exitoso, el grupo decidió formalizarse y darse a conocer como la Organización de Vecinos de East-Boston Por Palestina. Este grupo ha organizado muestras de películas y videos, así como discusiones en el vecindario y esto ha atraído a familias de inmigrantes de distintos entornos, para dar a conocer y discutir las conexiones entre sus propios problemas y la lucha contra el imperialismo. Este modo de organización ha creado una comunidad de apoyo anti-imperialista y los fundamentos para organizar y resolver otros problemas en donde viven.

En estos días hay una gran ola de apoyo a la lucha Palestina. Para algunos es un asunto político que fue enfatizado a través del activismo. Para otros, la conexión con Palestina tiene raíz en las comunidades Musulmanas o Árabes. Otros han experimentado en persona la violencia del colonialismo y el imperialismo. Para poder ver claramente el costo del avance imperialista, tenemos que encontrar puntos comunes entre estos grupos disímbolos; crear una organización entre ellos y desarrollar formas estratégicas de resistencia.

Al participar en la creación de una organización pro-Palestina independiente, los miembros de BRRN en Boston han podido escapar de las limitaciones políticas impuestas en la lucha por las organizaciones burocráticas, los sindicatos elitistas y el Partido Demócrata. Al enfocarse en un espacio definido, como en el caso de este vecindario del Este de Boston, han sido capaces de desarrollar relaciones arraigadas en un sitio de la vida cotidiana. En vez de tratar de atraer grupos de activistas aislados a base de motivaciones ideológicas u objetivos a corto plazo.

Esto nos permite darnos cuenta, como comunidad, de la magnitud del movimiento y de sus raíces históricas. Hacer conexiones de solidaridad social y política, es un proceso que crea una imagen del mundo compartida por otros. También crea una vía para que otros, que sienten la necesidad de solidarizarse pero se sienten marginados o atemorizados, puedan unirse.

Pueden seguir a East-Boston por Palestina en Instagram bajo @ebxpal.

Organizando a Trabajadores de la Salud en OaklandSEIU 1021 miembros de la marcha Trabajadores Por Palestina en Oakland.Morgan es una enfermera en Oakland que se inició en BRRN al organizar y planificar las demostraciones de 2020 de “Trabajadores de la Salud pro-Black Lives Matter.” Tres años después, las conexiones que hizo para ese movimiento fueron básicas para organizar los esfuerzos de los trabajadores de la salud en favor de Palestina y contrarrestar la crisis actual.

Los trabajadores de la salud de las instituciones más importantes de la Bahía, se han movilizado y han formado vínculos más fuertes y extensos en su comunidad a través de sus conexiones políticas previas. Además de los esfuerzos al conseguir las firmas para una petición nacional, hacerse presentes en las marchas, participación en los grupos en línea de Signal y WhatsApp y simplemente dejar que la voz se corra de que el movimiento está cobrando fuerza.

En ese contexto, Morgan llevó a su hospital la organización en apoyo de Palestina. Inicialmente se reunió con un pequeño núcleo de trabajadores con ideas similares. El grupo desarrolló un plan de conectarse y promover las ideas de una Palestina libre a base de repartir volantes a diario en la explanada del hospital. Esto trajo al grupo más participantes (incluyendo un médico Palestino) y eso hizo posible hacer un seminario en-línea sobre las experiencias de la salud en una Palestina en guerra. El grupo creció hasta abarcar a más de cincuenta compañeros de trabajo y de ahí surgió un rally público pro-Palestina frente al hospital.

Actualmente su campaña ha tomado un propósito a largo plazo. Morgan y sus compañeros de trabajo se dedican ahora a promover que la dirección del hospital se aleje del apoyo económico de compañías pro-militaristas y colonialistas. Asimismo buscan una alianza con los hospitales Palestinos y la protección de los trabajadores que hablen libremente en contra del genocidio. Estas metas se han ido alcanzando gracias a la historia de Morgan como organizador sindicalista y han ayudado a expandir sus relaciones políticas más allá de su propio sindicato y de los límites de su profesión y su departamento laboral. Morgan considera que las relaciones construidas a través de este proceso (la mayoría de estas en el hospital donde ella busca trabajar el resto de su carrera), han formado una base sólida para lograr el éxito en otras luchas sociales.

Como miembro de la Unión Internacional de Empleados de Servicio (SEIU), el sindicato de Morgan se ha visto envuelto en crear oportunidades para organizar fuera del área de trabajo. El sindicato local al que pertenece es enorme y cubre casi todo el norte de California. En este sindicato local, los miembros comenzaron demandando una tregua y de ahí pasaron a una resolución mayor que exigía 1) un cese-al-fuego inmediato y permanente, 2) retirarle toda la ayuda militar a Israel y 3) terminar con la ocupación de Palestina.

Morgan y otros miembros de la SEIU han creado relaciones que pueden llevar sus demandas y resoluciones más allá del pliego petitorio y esperan que estas acciones lleven a una organización permanente que abarque varias industrias. A nivel nacional, Morgan ha participado en la campaña “Morado Pro-Palestina” (“Purple Up for Palestine”) para presionar que la SEIU exigia un cese-al-fuego. Esta campaña logró que el presidente de la SEIU emitiera un comunicado pidiendo el cese-al-fuego. Durante la campaña se presentaron nuevas oportunidades para conectarse con otros trabajadores fuera de las estructuras formales y burocráticas.

Más Organización de Trabajadores de la Salud en la BahíaTrabajadores de la salud de varios hospitales, posan para la foto después de una manifestación en San Francisco.Al otro lado de la Bahía encontramos a Grant. Un miembro desde hace largo tiempo de la BRRN, quien recientemente comenzó a trabajar en un centro médico académico. A diferencia de Morgan, el hospital de Grant no tiene en realidad sindicatos. Al no tener estructuras que conecten a los trabajadores—ni una historia de activismo—los trabajadores a favor de Palestina tienen que empezar desde-cero. Afortunadamente, algunos individuos pudieron conectarse a través de una petición nacional de trabajadores de la salud en favor de Palestina. De esas conexiones, Grant y otros trabajadores del hospital pudieron ensamblar una red informal de varias docenas de miembros, con pequeños grupos en varios hospitales y la escuela médica organizando todo. Así pudieron expandir su base y planear dos demostraciones en el hospital que involucraron más de cien trabajadores.

Organizar el movimiento de solidaridad con Palestina permitió a Grant crear conexiones duraderas entre los trabajadores del hospital y generar una sistema de comunicación en lo que antes era un entorno desorganizado y apolítico. Sin este sistema, muchos de sus compañeros no se hubieran podido comunicar entre ellos ni tomar ninguna acción en conjunto. Los trabajos de organización de Grant demostraron que su sitio de trabajo es un lugar de lucha política e inspiraron a nuevos activistas a dar el primer paso en la lucha. De igual modo, ha sido un modo de apoyar a trabajadores en hospitales de Palestina que han sufrido de un modo cruel en este genocidio.

Como militantes y trabajadores de la salud en el área de la Bahía, tanto Grant como Morgan han podido participar juntos en la organización regional que ha involucrado cientos de activistas y trabajadores. Recientemente esto culminó en una acción, liderada por trabajadores de la salud, que cerró las oficinas de L3Harris, una industria de armas que fabrica bombas utilizadas en hospitales en Gaza. Junto con los miembros de su red de contactos, Grant y Morgan han sembrado el movimiento en los hospitales y clínicas de la región, ayudando a los trabajadores de la salud a unirse en un modo nunca antes visto.

Organizando a Estudiantes en El áRea de la BahíaEstudiantes exigen la ruptura con HP en un mitin el 26 de Enero. Se une a ellos un contingente de trabajadores de la salud del hospital de Grant.Como estudiante del primer año de la universidad y miembro de BRRN, Dioretsa ha estado organizando apoyo a la liberación Palestina en su lugar de estudio. A diferencia de otros ejemplos en este artículo, la universidad de Dioretsa tiene una estructura para el activismo pro-Palestina, incluyendo una división de Estudiantes por la Justicia en Palestina y varios grupos de estudiantes de izquierda. Estos grupos tuvieron la capacidad de responder rápidamente e iniciar una serie considerable de mítines y protestas que hicieron notar la cantidad enorme de gente en favor de Palestina. Este movimiento ha generado una experiencia que ha radicalizado a muchos y ha proveído espacios de contactos como las protestas-sentadas donde nuevos miembros pueden venir, hacer conexiones y aprender sobre el movimiento. Estas protestas han servido como centro para organizar la actividad que ha traído a un grupo de estudiantes activistas que formarán el futuro de las organizaciones de izquierda.

Al inicio del periodo de invierno, los estudiantes lanzaron una campaña de rechazo enfocada en los nexos de la universidad con Hewlett-Packard (HP), una compañía cuyos servicios de tecnología provee inteligencia al regimen segregacionista de Israel y que además mantiene enlaces económicos y de poder con la universidad. Los organizadores de esta campaña buscan también crear una alianza masiva permanente entre los estudiantes a través de la lucha pro-Palestina. El papel de Dioretsa como coordinadora de organización para la campaña, la vuelve un punto clave de varias organizaciones y grupos de apoyo a Palestina en el área de la Bahía.

Atrayendo a la campaña a grupos como el Grupo de Solidaridad de Estudiantes y Trabajadores Universitarios (del cual Dioretsa también es parte), requiere un gran trabajo político para demostrar cómo la lucha contra el imperialismo de los Estados Unidos y el colonialismo los afecta a todos. En vez de enfocarse solo en traer a activistas comprometidos ya con la liberación de Palestina, Dioretsa y sus compañeros organizadores dedujeron que el éxito de la campaña depende de ir más allá de un grupo de activistas y era necesario construir una base que abarcara todos los diferentes sectores de la universidad. Esto debería incluir diferentes grupos de estudiantes de todos los grados, así como estudiantes de postgrado, maestros, trabajadores de la universidad, laboratoristas y trabajadores de la salud. En resumen, debía incluir a todos.

Un Caso de Organización de Trabajadores en El SuroesteJoe es un trabajador-a-distancia que trabaja como consultor para una compañía ecologista en el suroeste. La compañía está involucrada en conseguir los permisos para desarrollar proyectos en los Estados Unidos y en otros países. Después del 7 de Octubre, Joe se enteró que uno de los proyectos en los que él contribuía era para las oficinas de una firma Israelí a unas 30 millas del campo de refugiados de Jabalia. Otro proyecto era para una corporación trasnacional de energía en la costa de Gaza. Joe contactó a varios de sus compañeros de trabajo para iniciar un grupo de discusión sobre una campaña de boicot, rechazo y penalizaciones (BDS). Joe le dijo al grupo que se negaba a trabajar en estos proyectos y que rechazaría también todos los proyectos que involucraran compañías envueltas en el genocidio en Palestina.

Sus compañeros mostraron simpatía y también cuestionaban la ética de los proyectos en los que estaban trabajando—pero no se sentían seguros de desafiar a la compañía e unirse a Joe en sus decisiones. Sin tener el apoyo de sus colegas, la acción individual de Joe no era suficiente para detener estos proyectos, pero consiguió hacer un espacio para discutir con sus colegas el papel que podían realizar en retrasar el avance colonialista mientras, que al mismo tiempo, impulsaba la justicia ecológica y la solidaridad global. Es muy difícil convencer a los compañeros de trabajo a tomar pasos decisivos como este, pero es importante que nos presentemos como ejemplos de lo que se debe hacer y tener la paciencia necesaria para explicar la importancia de estas acciones. Con un esfuerzo consistente, el poder enorme de los trabajadores de diferentes sectores, es posible irrumpir el colonialismo económico.

ConclusionMiembros de BRRN participan en acciones para bloquear el Puerto de Oakland.Esperamos ilustrar, con este artículo, cómo formar una base fuerte para la lucha contra el imperialismo a base de la comunicación y la participación activa con la gente con la que trabajamos, estudiamos y vemos a diario. Los ejemplos citados son pequeños, pero encierra un gran poder duradero en los vínculos que se forman durante el trabajo necesario para organizar la acción colectiva. La meta es organizar estos efectos locales en grandes movimientos sociales, donde los trabajadores controlen el poder de la democracia y este destruya los imperios.

Para impulsar estos esfuerzos en direcciones con la capacidad de hacer una revolución, creemos que es importante organizar los grupos entre la gente con la que convivimos, así como desarrollar mecanismos de toma de decisiones abiertas y democráticas para darle a los trabajadores que conforman la base de la sociedad todo el poder. Es importante analizar y escoger efectivamente los objetivos de nuestra lucha: las organizaciones y poderes conectados con la guerra de Israel y la ocupación; iniciando así campañas que de un modo realista y directo impacten esos objetivos (en vez de hacer acciones simbólicas que terminan frustrando la participación de los radicales que se nos pudieran unir).

La meta actual es detener los intentos de los Estados Unidos para suplir las armas que están causando el genocidio del pueblo Palestino. Esto no será fácil, por lo que debemos esperar una lucha larga y compleja. Al enfocar nuestros esfuerzos en movimientos en la sociedad donde convivimos a diario, nos ayudará a vencer el ciclo de fatiga de las protestas activistas y crear un poder anti-imperialista mundial que viene directamente de los trabajadores.

Si te gustó este artículo y quieres leer más sobre nuestros métodos de organización comunitaria, te recomendamos: “Going On the Offensive: Movements, Multisectorality, and Political Strategy“ y también “Create a Strong People: Discussions on Popular Power.”

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In this article several members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra offer reflections on their efforts to bring the fight for Palestinian liberation into their long term organizing efforts. Throughout, an emphasis is made on the distinction between temporary mobilization and an orientation toward sustained organizing in sites of everyday life—our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.

IntroductionMore than 100 days into Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Palestine and in turn some of the most vigorous anti-war mobilization in over a decade, so many of us who have been out in the streets have asked: What will it take to actually stop the US war machine?

Reflecting on the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq, it’s clear it takes more than marching from point A to point B—and even more than scattered direct actions like taking over highways, occupying politicians’ offices, or minor vandalism. Coming out into the streets, pouring our energy into actions, escalating to risk arrest, disrupting business as usual, and then feeling exhausted and defeated is a common cycle in the anti-war movement and in every struggle.

Many of us in Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) first came to the organization because we had grown tired of the cyclical nature of activism. We were reacting to crises just to end back up where we started, only with depleted morale and fewer resources. We wanted to find ways to gather and sustain momentum, retain historical memory, tend to the needs of movement participants, and build leverage to win fights in the here and now—all to the ends of pushing toward a revolutionary rupture. This is one reason why BRRN prioritizes rooted movement-building where we live, work, and study and thus seek to move away from a focus on single-issue campaigns and activist subcultures.

Admittedly, because we are still in the early stages of re-building fighting social movements, it can make mobilizing around emergencies like the genocide in Palestine slower. This is in part because we are organizing with heterogeneous groups of people and trying, for example, to bring our coworkers to actions, rather than to mobilize other radicals or activists. We believe that this approach will ultimately be more effective because we are building lasting organization in rooted sites of everyday struggle that can respond swiftly to future struggles as well. We seek to do the organizing work of bringing new people into social movements and the political work of bringing them toward organized anarchism, so that there will be more prepared militants down the line. We know that organized, rather than simply mobilized, political struggle is far more effective in challenging imperialism in moments of crisis.

Our approach often flies under the radar. For one, it prioritizes acting in broader social movement spaces as co-equal participants, rather than placing an emphasis on ensuring our brand as a political organization is visible on every call for mobilization or protest sign. While we also organize and participate in large marches and other actions, believing that they are necessary component of any social movement struggle, these are not the core of what we focus on. Because of the aforementioned lack of visibility, combined with how important we think this organizing model is for actually building power, we want to highlight some of the less visible work that our membership is engaged in around Palestine solidarity.

This is not to show how to do things “the right way”, but to show how in a variety of different contexts we can all do the basic—and often very modest but necessary—work of building the foundations of movements so that we end up with more comrades, power, and solidarity than we started with. At the end of a lot of Palestine solidarity marches, the speakers make calls to go out and keep organizing because marches alone can’t stop Israel’s genocidal attack—this is objectively true, but it’s often unclear what that can look like, particularly for rank-and-file militants outside of the professionalized NGO and union bureaucracy systems. So what could these next steps look like? Here are some examples of what members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra have found success with.

Neighborhood Organizing in BostonMembers of the East Boston for Palestine neighborhood group pose for a photo after a film screening and discussion.Tony has lived in the neighborhood of East Boston for 20 years, while Roxana has lived and worked there for 6—both are members of BRRN. Their many years of organizing in the neighborhood have generated a lot of connections and relationships of trust. When the war on Gaza started, they were able to rely those long-term relationships to expand their reach and bring together many of their neighbors to attend a pro-Palestine march as a group. After reflecting on this initial effort with a number who attended, the group chose to formalize its effort by creating the East Boston for Palestine neighborhood organization. The group has since hosted discussions and film screenings in the neighborhood, bringing together immigrant families from different backgrounds to learn about and discuss the connections between their struggles against imperialism. This organizing has helped create a supportive anti-imperialist community in the neighborhood and created the foundation for organizing around other issues in the place they call home.

In the current moment, there is a huge wave of support for the Palestinian struggle. For some, it’s a political issue that they learn about through activism. For others, the connection to Palestine has its roots in being part of Muslim or Arab communities, or having experienced and resisted the violence of colonialism and imperialism directly. In order to exact a cost on the imperialist machinery, we have to find ways to bring together seemingly disparate groups of people, create lasting organization, and develop more strategic forms of resistance.

By participating in the creation of an independent pro-Palestinian organization, BRRN members in Boston have been able to avoid many of the political limitations foisted on struggles by non-profit organizations, top-down labor unions, or the Democratic Party. In focusing on a specific geography like a neighborhood, we are able to develop relationships rooted in a site of everyday life, instead of trying to grow insular activist cliques united around little more than ideology or a particular issue. This grants us the ability to collectively make sense of the current moment and its historical roots. We make connections of political and social solidarity in a process that builds a shared world view. It also creates an accessible outlet for action for so many people that feel the urge to stand in solidarity, but may be new to the movement, or feel marginalized by “professional activism.”

You can find East Boston for Palestine on Instagram at @ebxpal.

Healthcare Worker Organizing in OaklandSEIU 1021 members at the Labor for Palestine march in Oakland.Morgan is a nurse in Oakland who originally started organizing with BRRN when she took part in planning a “Healthcare Workers for Black Lives” demonstration in 2020. Three years later, the connections made then have become central to organizing efforts happening now, as healthcare workers come out to support Palestine. Workers at every major healthcare institution in the Bay Area have mobilized and begun forging more extensive bonds with each other through a combination of previously existing political connections, a national petition that connected signatories, visibility at marches, word-of-mouth, and ever-growing Signal and WhatsApp group-chats.

It’s in this context that Morgan sought to take the organizing around the Palestine issue into her hospital. Initially meeting with a small nucleus of like minded staff at her hospital, the group coalesced around a plan to hold a daily outreach table in the hospital’s courtyard, which sought to connect with and educate coworkers around Palestinian liberation. Bringing in more participants allowed her to host an online teach-in on the Palestinian experience and brain trauma with a local Palestinian MD, co-organize an internal gathering of about 50 coworkers, and later hold public rally for Palestine in front of the hospital.

In the current moment the campaign has taken a longer-term view, with Morgan and her coworkers pushing for the hospital to divest from militarist and BDS-targeted corporations, establish a sister hospital relationship with a Palestinian hospital, and protect staff from any retaliation for speaking out on Palestine. This organizing has been greatly enhanced by Morgan’s history as a rank-and-file union activist at the hospital, and helped to expand her political relationships at the hospital beyond her union and across different departments and professions. Morgan believes that the relationships she has built through this process, most of which are at the hospital where she intends to work for the rest of her career, have formed a foundation from which future fights can be waged.

As a member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Morgan’s union involvement has created even more opportunities for organizing outside of just her own workplace. The union local to which she belongs is massive, covering much of Northern California. In the local, members initially organized for a ceasefire statement, and then an even stronger resolution that called for 1) an immediate and permanent ceasefire, 2) the end of all military aid to Israel, and 3) an end to the occupation of Palestine.

Morgan and other rank-and-file SEIU members are building relationships that can take this organizing beyond just paper resolutions, in the hopes that these actions will lead to enduring cross-industry organizing structures. On a national level Morgan has participated in the “Purple Up for Palestine” campaign to call on SEIU as a whole to demand a ceasefire. The campaign has successfully pressured SEIU’s union president to release a statement calling for a ceasefire. This effort too has presented another opportunity to connect directly with other workers outside of formal and often bureaucratized union structures.

Further Healthcare Worker Organizing in the Bay AreaHealthcare workers from a variety of hospitals pose for a photo after a demonstration in San Francisco.On the other side of the Bay from Morgan is Grant, a long time member of BRRN who recently started working at an academic medical center. Unlike Morgan, Grant’s hospital is mostly non-union. With almost no existing structures connecting workers together, and no history of activism at the hospital, pro-Palestine workers were starting from scratch. Fortunately a few individuals were able to connect through a national healthcare workers for Palestine petition. From those initial connections, Grant and other hospital workers were able to grow a loose network of several dozen supporters, with pockets of organizing in a couple of hospital departments and the attached medical school. They were able to expand their base of support by organizing two demonstrations at the hospital which involved more than a hundred of their co-workers.

In a previously disorganized and seemingly apolitical environment, the Palestine solidarity organizing that Grant played a key role in pushing forward has created lasting connections between worker organizers across the hospital. Without this system-wide effort, many of these coworkers would not have encountered each other, let alone taken workplace action together. These efforts have demonstrated to workers that their workplace is a site of political struggle, inspired new activists to step up, and has been a means of supporting Palestinian workers in the hospital who are suffering most directly in the midst of the ongoing genocide.

As BRRN militants and healthcare workers in the Bay, both Grant and Morgan have also been participating together in the regional organizing that is happening between hundreds of healthcare worker activists. Recently this culminated in a healthcare worker-led action that shut down the offices of L3Harris, a weapons industry company whose bombs have been dropped on hospitals in Gaza. Together with members of this growing network, Grant and Morgan are sinking roots into the hospitals and clinics across the Bay, where healthcare workers have become open to uniting in an unprecedented way.

Student Organizing in the Bay AreaStudents rally for divestment from HP on Jan. 26, where they were joined by a contingent of healthcare workers from Grant’s hospital.As a first-year university student and integrating BRRN member, Dioretsa has been organizing around Palestinian liberation on her campus. Unlike the other examples in this article, Dioretsa’s university had an existing structure for Palestine activism, including an active chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and various left-oriented student groups. These groups were able to respond quickly and initiate a series of large rallies, teach-ins, and an ongoing sit-in protest that became a visible hub of Palestine solidarity. With this current moment proving to be such a radicalizing experience for many, it has been important to provide easily accessible spaces like the sit-in where new people can come, make connections, and learn. The sit-in as a center for organizing activity has also brought together a core of student activists who will likely be at the heart of future leftist organizing.

As winter quarter began, the students launched a divestment campaign targeting the university’s ties with Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP is being targeted because of its business contracts providing IT services to the Israeli apartheid regime and its intimate links with the university. Student organizers also seek to forge and sustain a mass campus alliance beyond the issue of Palestine through this campaign. Dioretsa’s role as coalition coordinator for the divestment campaign makes her a nexus of various student organizations as well as Bay Area and national Palestine solidarity groups.

Bringing groups like the campus student-worker solidarity group (which Dioretsa is also a member of) into the divestment campaign coalition requires a lot of political work to show such groups how the fight against US imperialism and settler colonialism also concerns them. Rather than just focusing on bringing the already-committed Palestine activists together to fight for Palestinian liberation, Dioretsa and her fellow organizers recognize the campaign will only be successful if it goes beyond the “active club” model of action by building a base across all the different sectors of the university. That includes the different undergrad groups, as well as law students, faculty, campus service workers, medical students, healthcare workers, lab workers. In a word: everyone.

An Instance of BDS Workplace Organizing in the Southwest Joe does remote work for an environmental consulting company in the Southwest. The company is involved in permitting for development projects in the US and abroad. After October 7th, he learned that one of the projects he was working on was for an Israeli firm headquartered about 30 miles from the Jabalia refugee camp. Another assignment was for a transnational energy corporation on the boycott list for extracting offshore gas on the Gaza coast. Joe reached out to some of his close coworkers to open up a discussion about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Joe let them know he would be refusing to work on these two projects and further would reject work on any future projects involving companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine.

While his coworkers were sympathetic and had reservations of their own about some of the work they have been asked to do, they were not ready to refuse the work together with him yet. Without a commitment to collective action, Joe’s individual action wasn’t enough to put a stop to these projects, but he’s been able to make space to talk with his coworkers about what role their labor may play in advancing or slowing down settler colonialism, environmental justice, and global solidarity. It can be very hard to convince our co-workers to take brave steps like this, but it’s important that we’re there to act as courageous examples and as patient explainers. With consistent effort there is a huge amount of power that workers in sectors like this have to disrupt the colonial economy.

ConclusionMembers of BRRN participate in an action to shut down the Port of Oakland.With this article we have hoped to illustrate how, by talking to and taking action with the people who we work, live and study alongside of, we can build a strong base for anti-imperialist struggle. While the examples here are small, they are powerful because of the deep and lasting organizing ties that form the necessary foundation of strong collective action. We seek to unite these local efforts into wider social movements where working people can democratically wield the power needed to bring down empire.

To propel these efforts in potentially revolutionary directions, we believe that it is important to continue to: organize in sites rooted in everyday life; develop mechanisms of open and democratic decision making that exercise rank-and-file/bottom up control; analyze and pick effective targets that are materially connected to Israel’s war and occupation; and initiate campaigns that really, directly impact those targets (distinct from largely symbolic actions that many hopeful radicals have grown frustrated participating in).

The task at hand—to halt US efforts to underwrite and supply the means for a genocide of the Palestinian people—will not be easily won, so we need to be in it for the long haul. Focusing our efforts in rooted movement organizing will help us avoid the cyclical burnout of activist protest by creating a sustainable internationalist and anti-imperialist power from below.

If you enjoyed this article and want to read more about our approach to embedded organizing, we recommend Going On the Offensive: Movements, Multisectorality, and Political Strategy and Create a Strong People: Discussions on Popular Power.

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This month From Below is back, bringing you an exciting discussion with author and historian Zoe Baker. Until recently, Zoe was perhaps best known for her YouTube channel where she produces well researched and accessible videos on anarchist theory and history under the moniker anarchopac.

From Below had Zoe on to discuss her new book Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States, out now from AK Press. The title is an overview of anarchist activity and thought in the period between 1868 and 1939. In it, Baker argues that while divergent on certain strategic and tactical questions, the broad sweep of anarchist theory and action during the period was undergirded by a particular theoretical framework. This “theory of practice”, as Baker refers to it, holds that through action people simultaneously change the world—i.e. material social relations—and themselves.

In their discussion, From Below hosts Robin and Cameron engage Zoe on topics from her book, political historiography, balancing roles as revolutionary and scholar, and public political education.

Be sure to subscribe to From Below so you don’t miss any future episodes! We would also ask that you rate highly and leave a positive review on your preferred listening platform, two things which help to expand the reach of the program.

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If you enjoyed this interview and want more listening on anarchist theory and history, we recommend this presentation by author and historian Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis on his recent AK Press title Anarchist Popular Power.

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On July 18th the Bay Area Local of Black Rose / Rosa Negra and AK Press hosted historian Troy Araiza Kokinis to discuss his new book ‘Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay, 1956-76‘.

You can now listen to the entirety of the recorded talk via the embedded YouTube link below, or via the It’s Going Down podcast where it was originally published.

Anarchist Popular Power is the first-ever full-length English-language history of the Anarchist Federation of Uruguay (FAU). As Araiza Kokinis explains, the FAU organized students and workers to directly confront international and domestic capitalists, far-Right violence, and state repression amidst rising IMF-mandated austerity and declining living standards during the 1960s and 1970s. Pushed underground and into exile by governmental ban and a decade of US-backed military dictatorship, the organization has spread its model for revolutionary change around the world since it resurfaced in the mid-1980s.

The FAU‘s innovative engagement with, disciplined commitment to, and steadfast confidence in everyday people’s capacities to control their shop floors, classrooms, neighborhoods, and lives offers important lessons for revolutionaries today.

Due to some technical issues during the event, the following combines portions of live audio with recreations of the author’s talk. We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Produced and edited by Kenny Donovan.

If you enjoyed this discussion, we recommend Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization.

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This statement, originally written in Spanish, was collaboratively produced and signed by anarchist organizations around the world. We reproduce the English translation here and the original Spanish below. Fifty years ago, the civilian-military coup in the territories dominated by the Chilean state gave free rein to state terrorism and meant for those from below years […]

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Following the overwhelming success of the book’s launch event in July, we are happy to announce a follow up talk for Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-76, this time in Los Angeles. The book, published by and available from AK Press, chronicles the history of a critical period for the […]

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The following is a statement collaboratively written and endorsed by anarchist organizations around the world, including Black Rose / Rosa Negra. This statement originally appeared on Anarkismo.net and is reproduced here in full. Exile is never an easy decision. It’s never a choice. Without resources, it can become a real ordeal. Solidarity is the key […]

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Join us on August 31st for ‘Queer & Feminist Solidarity Against Crisis in Turkey’ hosted by Tamarack Bar & Restaurant in Oakland, CA. This event is entirely free and will begin at 6:30 PM. In times of atomization, repression and alienation, solidarity is the spark of hope. But how do we create the bonds of […]

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In the last month, militants of Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) have appeared on two podcasts to discuss our organization’s recently released political program: Turning the Tide: An Anarchist Program for Popular Power. This is America In July, militants Robin and Matthew appeared on episode of #188 of This is America, a podcast project […]

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In May of 2023 several Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) Militants organizing in the healthcare sector attended the Health Autonomy Convergence (HAC) in Durham, North Carolina. This is their collective reflection on and analysis of the event and of the prospects for radical labor organizing in healthcare more generally. By Healthcare Worker Members of […]

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On July 18th, around 40 people crammed into the upstairs floor of the Tamarack bar, social center, and library in Oakland, California for the launch of Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-76. With so little space in the upper story of the building, some attendees stood in the stairwell to […]

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Black Rose / Rosa Negra Introduction For days now, riots have rocked cities across France. This uprising comes in response to the police murder of French born Algerian teenager Naël M. (also stylized ‘Nahel’ and ‘Nael’) on June 27 in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. For those viewing these events from a US perspective, it […]

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Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) Introduction This interview was conducted between our sibling organizations Die Plattform (Germany) and Union Communiste Libertaire (France). It focuses on the recent large-scale strikes of French workers starting in January 2023 which were organized in opposition to a proposed ‘reform’ of the country’s pension system—effectively raising the age of […]

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The contract for some 340,000 UPS workers, organized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), is set to expire at midnight on July 31st. In preparation for a possible walkout, Teamsters across the country began casting strike ballots earlier this week. A strike by UPS Teamsters would be the largest labor action at a single […]

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This statement by our Argentine sibling organization Federación Anarquista de Rosario (FAR), released in early June of 2023, celebrates 15 years of organizational continuity. The statement traces their careful political and organizational development over the last decade and a half. Black Rose / Rosa Negra extends our greetings and congratulations to FAR. We look forward […]

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In April 2023, faculty and graduate student workers at Rutgers University staged an historic five day strike. The strike was mostly over wages and working conditions, and contributed to a recent wave of labor actions at institutions of higher education in the United States. While they did not win everything, the strike led to serious gains for some workers, including a 40% pay increase for adjuncts and 30% pay increase for graduate student workers.

Although most left and labor media representation of the strike was celebratory, the real history and impact of the strike is more complicated. Not every worker won big gains in the strike, and its resolution was not made on the most democratic of grounds. To get a fuller picture we turned to rank-and-file PTFLC-AAUP-AFT member and Black Rose/Rosa Negra militant Clarence O’Dell. An adjunct faculty member, O’Dell says that the strike is mostly a huge victory, and something to celebrate. However, he says that our movements need to learn from the mistakes and missteps too. These include a strike process that was more leadership driven rather than membership driven, and a settlement that ultimately left out some academic workers on campus.

Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN): Can you briefly talk about your position at the university? What union are you affiliated with?

Clarence O’Dell (CO): I am an adjunct instructor at Rutgers, which means I am a part of a precarious workforce that does the bulk of the teaching on campus. Universities have used “adjuncts” in increasing numbers in the last two decades because they can pay us poverty wages, don’t have to provide benefits like health care, and we can simply not be hired if demand for classes is low. I am a rank and file member of the part time faculty union, a local of the American Association of University Professors – American Federation of Teachers (PTLFC-AAUP-AFT).

BRRN: What did the leadup to the strike look like? What were the official demands put forward by the union? Did these line up with the demands of rank-and-file workers? What unions were involved and who do they represent?

CO: There are three major unions on campus: one for the grad students, full time faculty and counselors (AAUP-AFT), one for the adjuncts (PTLFC-AAUP-AFT), and one for university staff (URA-AFT 1766). The strike was a long time coming – it’s been years in the making. The short version is that Rutgers has the longest standing faculty union in the US, dating back to the 1970s. In the last several faculty contracts, the results were less than stellar, and a minority faction in the adjunct union organized a “no” vote for the last contract. They recognized that the university was not going to give up the wage increases, health care coverage, and other big gains for workers on campus without a credible strike threat. So this faction first ran a “no” campaign, and then ran for officer positions which they mostly won. It was this leadership that began transforming the union from a traditional business union model, to a strike ready fighting union. They hired an organizer to do membership development. They got the contracts to line up such that they would expire all at the same time. They hosted “strike schools” and “freedom schools” to build labor militancy in the union. They did a lot of ground work to make this happen.

With this strike, the union had been negotiating for this contract for a full year, and the university had stalled and delayed and refused to meet many of the demands well past the expiration of the last contract. There were some big demands. The biggest was “equal pay for equal work” which was designed to mitigate using low wage workers on a short term contract. Over the last three decades the industry standard has emerged for “two-tier” faculty hiring. There is a top tier of faculty who have tenure, a kind of job protection, benefits, decent pay, etc. And there is a lower tier, adjuncts, who have none of those benefits and are paid a fraction of what tenured faculty make. A key demand of this round of contract negotiating was to have adjunct workers receive equal pay to a full timer for the portion of courses that we teach. If achieved, this demand would go a long way to ending the incentive held by the university to hire adjuncts. If adjuncts and tenure track were an equal cost, it might lead to the creation of more full time jobs.

But ‘equal pay for equal work’ was not the only demand. The unions representing graduate students, faculty, and adjuncts were asking for raises to keep up with inflation, a living wage for graduate workers, and job security with presumptive rehiring for all faculty. In addition, the unions were demanding “common good” and racial equity demands that included DEI initiatives, housing justice with affordable rents in and around campus, and other demands. These were broadly popular, and did seem to speak to the major needs of members and students.

BRRN: There has been a great amount of discussion and celebration of the “wall-to-wall” or “industrial” model of unionism at Rutgers. Can you briefly describe the theory and some of the history behind this model?

CO: The industrial model of union organizing is about maximizing worker power. The basic idea is that if all the workers in a workplace withhold their labor at once, the boss will be powerless to stop them and will have to give in to their demands if they want to keep the workplace functioning and money rolling in. This is in distinction to the “craft” model of organizing, in which just a segment of the workforce is unionized, usually based on a shared job type, skill, or craft, and they bargain and strike and organize independent of the other workers.

The industrial model was very popular with radicals, in fact the famous Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) used this very model built around the slogan, “One Big Union” for all workers. Not only was this a strategy to maximize labor power, but it was an attempt to overcome the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions in a workplace. Instead of racial hostilities dividing workers, the industrial model could bring people together, demonstrate our shared interests, and our collective power.

At Rutgers, the major campus unions have been moving toward an industrial model for some time. The grad students and the full time faculty are already in a union together, but the hope was to bring adjuncts and staff all into the same unit. They asked the university to voluntarily recognize a single unit, which the school declined, and because of the laws in the state of New Jersey it is unlikely that the Rutgers unions will reach industrial status.

Nonetheless, the unions bargained, negotiated, and struck in unison, as if they were a single union. There was a high degree of coordination across the unions, especially at the leadership level, and this led to the first strike of all the instructor academic positions on campus in the university’s history.

BRRN: Given that, as you said, this strike was the first by academic workers in the university’s 253 year history, this was also the first time that the wall-to-wall model you described has been put to the test. How did it function when the rubber met the road?

CO: As good as the industrial model is, there are also some problems with it. The first, is that not all the campus workers went out on strike together this time around. The union representing staff said they felt pressured to strike with faculty and refused to go out at the same time. This seemed to be coming from their more conservative leadership, who are more business minded and simply did not want to strike. This was unfortunate because, had they worked in concert with the academic unions, it would have been a true campus wide, all worker strike, which could have been really powerful. Instead, the staff union is still negotiating their contract and it seems that they are not getting very far alone.

There was another problem with industrial model as it played out at Rutgers; and this is that not every segment of the union won significant gains. For example, the unit I’m in, adjuncts, and the graduate students, both won really impressive raises, as much as 40% for some workers. This is huge and definitely needs to be celebrated. But this came at the expense of other workers who did not see big gains. For example full time faculty are getting 3 or 4 percent wages increase per year for the next four years. This does not even come close to the rate of inflation for this last year, so they are in effect taking a pay cut. Other workers, the medical faculty, got almost none of their demands met, the biggest of which was for paid parental leave and longer term contracts. So in this industrial model while some workers won big, other units of workers had to take sacrifices to achieve that.

But I think there was a bigger problem with how the strike played out, and this was a lack of democratic practice, especially as the strike drew to a close. Instead of checking with members and making sure that they were informed and empowered to decide whether and how to end the strike, the union leadership unilaterally decided to suspend the strike and approve the tentative framework for a union wide vote. The townhall meetings that they held were carefully managed and did not allow for discussion before they already made these decisions. There is a good Labor Notes article that spells out their thinking. But it meant that many of these workers who did not get much from this contract did not have a way to talk about or strategize what could be done in these circumstances.

BRRN: Do you think these problems were a result of deficiencies in the model itself?

CO: I’m not sure if these are problems inherent in the model. It does seem with more democratic processes in union these shortfalls could be overcome. But they did engender some hard feelings in the unions, mostly from graduate students, actually. They felt that the closure of the strike was not democratic, and that the union leadership did not take their concerns seriously. They had some really vitriolic personal criticism of the leadership, which I think crossed the line and went too far in some cases. But the basis of their critique was correct. It should be the members should decide when and how to end a strike, and moreover, that we need structures of democratic decision making in the union to make sure that we are all moving along together and that no one gets left behind. These are problems that can be overcome with better organizing practice I think.

BRRN: What key lesson(s) should other university workers take from the Rutgers strike?

CO: When we strike, we win. Truly. It is only through organized labor power that working people can win anything in this society. And in higher ed we won big wage gains for the most exploited in our ranks, the adjuncts and graduate students. But more than this, we need to be critical of our own practice. We need to learn to fight better and to win more. These wage gains are great. But ultimately, wage gains on a dying planet isn’t going to do much for us. We need to overthrow this system, and the only way we can do that is by building our collective power in organizations like unions. Lets build better fighting organizations for the working class, and learn to fight better, and fight for more, and fight to win. This strike was one step in that direction.

Clarence O’Dell is a militant of Black Rose / Rosa Negra and a rank-and-file member of the Part Time Lecturer Faculty Chapter of AAUP-AFT at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

If you enjoyed this interview, we recommend this podcast interview with two members of our organization’s California Bay Area Local who were involved in the recent system-wide University of California strike.

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Photographs by Shay Horse | Instagram @huntedhorse

On Tuesday, May 30th members of the Bay Area Local of Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation participated in a march alongside a larger coalition which sought to name and shame funders of Cop City. The march took place in Oakland, beginning at Oscar Grant Plaza before making its way to the lobby of a building which houses the Bay Area offices of Atlas Consulting Firm and Cushman & Wakefield (a multi-national real estate brokerage), both investors in the development of Cop City.

Cop City, also known as Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, is a public-private project aiming to establish a nearly 400 acre police urban warfare training ground near Georgia’s capitol city. The land on which Cop City is proposed to be built, originally belonging to the Muskogee people, is highly forested and home to a diverse ecosystem. As such, this struggle represents a multi-sectoral fight involving an ecological front, a front of indigenous struggle, a front against the ever expanding US prison system, and a front against urban police militarization.

This struggle has brought together a diverse coalition of groups opposing the project; from clergy and native peoples, to labor unions and school children. Recognizing the growing opposition, the state has continued to dramatically escalate its strategy of repression. This has included wanton arrests and charges of ‘domestic terrorism’ against protesters, all the way up to outright state sanctioned murder. On the morning of this writing, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) raided the home of Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers (a community bail fund) arresting them on charges of racketeering.

The Bay Local and the Federation to which we belong, believe that Cop City can be stopped, but that doing so will require looking to successes in past campaigns. Namely, we believe that, though not a perfect analogue, lessons from the winning fight against Urban Shield here in Alameda County can serve to shed light on how the movement against Cop City might produce a similar outcome. For more on this, see our statement below, written and distributed at the May 30 action.

Grow Our Power – Compost Cop CityBlack Rose – Bay Area Local Statement for May 30 Action

The movement to stop Cop City is at a crossroads. For two years following the 2020 George Floyd uprising, environmental and racial justice activists, clergy, college students, and community residents have successfully mobilized public protests, treesits, music festivals, and other direct action to prevent construction of the dystopian police urban warfare training facility in Atlanta, Georgia. However, city and state officials appear poised to break ground this summer following severe state repression in recent months, including murdering forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Páez Terán and charging dozens more with domestic terrorism after violently dispersing blockades and protest encampments.

Other movements that beat back urban militarism offer lessons for how to grow our power–and win. From 2007 to 2019, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office used city and federal funds to host an international weapons expo and war games training called Urban Shield. Amidst the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2013, a grassroots coalition of labor unions, faith-based groups, and anti-war and racial justice organizations began pressuring the Oakland city and Alameda county governments to stop hosting the convention. After a sustained campaign, supervisors voted in 2019 against continuing Urban Shield in Alameda County—a massive victory for those opposing police violence and militarization.

How can we sprout the kind of movement that ended Urban Shield to send Cop City into the compost bin of history?

• Establish a local Weelaunee Defense Solidarity Committee: The anti-Urban Shield campaign’s strength came from formal, long-term, cross-movement coalitions that strategically planned, took action, and assessed results together. Different levels of involvement allowed some organizations to help coordinate the campaign while drawing on wider networks to support it.
• Identify and pressure local targets: Movement activists have assembled lists of multinational investors, consultants, insurers, and other partners behind Cop City. Visit stopreevesyoung.com and stopcopcitysolidarity.org to find more near us we can impact until they end their support.
• Strategically leverage diverse tactics: Our movements’ toolkits hold lots of options to expand and intensify action over time. Alongside directly disrupting construction with blockades and other means, we can creatively apply financial, political, and social pressure that sanctions Cop City partners and strengthens our resolve. Lobbying labor and tenant unions, churches, schools, and other sympathetic organizations to publish statements of solidarity and condemnations of Cop City affiliates; phone zapping, postering, and picketing the project’s partners; and raising donations to support the accused forest defenders’ legal defense are some of the many tools at our disposal.

By building upon each other’s contributions to the struggle for a Cop City-free Weelaunee Forest, we can collectively grow our power towards a cop-free world.

For more, see our Federation wide statement on Cop City: Stop Cop City – In Solidarity and Mourning. You can follow the Bay Area Local of Black Rose Rosa Negra on Twitter (@bayareabrrn) or, if you live in the region, join our Telegram channel (t.me/bayreabrrn).

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We are excited to announce the launch event for Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis’ new book ‘Anarchist Popular Power: Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-76’ published by AK Press.

Troy’s book is the first ever English language history of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU). It was the militants of the FAU who first developed the anarchist strategic theory of especisfismo, which is today gaining attention across the globe.

From hotly contested shop floor struggles, to clandestine operations and guerrilla warfare against the US backed military dictatorship which seized power in the country through a coup in 1973, Troy’s book follows events in harrowing detail and with scholarly precision.

We invite you to join us on Tuesday, July 18 at Tamarack in Oakland, California for the official launch of the book!

More event details will be announced in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

The event will include readings from the text, a broad discussion of revolutionary social movement activity in Latin America during the period examined, and lessons that revolutionaries can draw on today.

RSVP on Facebook at this link.

If you are unable to make it to the launch event, the book is now available for preorder from AK Press

This event is cosponsored by AK Press and Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

If you’d like to read more about the FAU, we recommend Tommy Lawson’s An Organisation of Militants: The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya. We also recommend Troy’s recent obituary of Juan Carlos Mechoso, a leading militant and theoretician of the FAU who passed away in late 2022.

The post Book Launch: Anarchist Popular Power – Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay 1956-76 appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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Members of the German political education project Anarchismus.de, took it upon themselves to translate the general strategy section of our newly announced political program Turning the Tide: An Anarchist Program for Popular Power.

We want to extend a warm thank you to these comrades for their work. In the spirit of internationalism, we look forward to further collaboration in the future. If you are a German speaker, we highly recommend that you check out Anarchismus.de as their website contains numerous translations and original works on anarchist theory and strategy. They also produce physical copies of some of these works.

You can access the original post containing the translation on their website.
We reproduce it in full below.

Das Ruder herumreißen: Ein anarchistisches Programm für Macht von unten – “Allgemeine Strategie”

Ein anarchistisches Programm für Macht von untenWir brauchen einen Kompass, einen Nordstern, der uns durch die Höhen und Tiefen unseres Kampfes führt, hin zu unserem Ziel – der sozialen Revolution und dem libertären Sozialismus. Mit anderen Worten, wir brauchen eine allgemeine Strategie, eine dauerhafte revolutionäre Orientierung, die gleichwohl darauf abzielt, das Herrschaftssystems zu zerschlagen und dabei auch den Grundstein für eine neue Gesellschaft zu legen.

Im weitesten Sinne ist die Strategie das Mittel, das wir einsetzen, um unsere Ziele zu erreichen. Sie kann in kurzfristige, mittelfristige und langfristige Pläne gegliedert werden. Um unsere Strategie in die Praxis umzusetzen, müssen wir eine Reihe von Taktiken entwickeln – konkrete Schritte, die eine kohärente Verbindung zwischen unseren Mitteln und Zielen herstellen. Während eine kurzfristige Strategie durch aktuelle Bedingungen an einen bestimmten Ort gebunden ist und auf einen bestimmten Zeitraum verweist, ist eine allgemeine Strategie nicht durch Zeiten oder Orte begrenzt. Stattdessen basiert diese auf einer strukturellen Analyse der jetzigen Gesellschaft, der zukünftigen Gesellschaft (die, die wir aufbauen wollen) und der Art und Weise, wie wir von der alten in die neue Welt gelangen wollen.

Die allgemeine Strategie ist der übergreifende Rahmen, der unsere politische Organisation und ihre militanten Mitglieder anleitet. Sie ist die Brücke zwischen Kurz- und Langfristigkeit, der Klebstoff, der unsere Mittel und Ziele verbindet.

Nach Ansicht der Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) in Brasilien “ist es wichtig, dass die spezifische anarchistische Organisation mit einer Strategie arbeitet“(1), um sicherzustellen, dass ihre Mitglieder “das Boot in die gleiche Richtung rudern”.(2) Eine allgemeine Strategie, die durch kollektive Diskussion und Entscheidungsfindung entwickelt wird, ermöglicht es der Organisation, ihre begrenzten Ressourcen in eine gemeinsame, kohärente Richtung zu mobilisieren, um die Organisation effektiver zu machen.

Einer allgemeinen Strategie zuzustimmen verringert Verwirrung, Konflikte und die Ineffizienz, die entsteht, wenn Einzelpersonen oder Gruppen innerhalb der Organisation mit gegensätzlichen Schwerpunkten arbeiten. Wie die FARJ feststellt, “ist es nicht möglich, in einer Organisation zu arbeiten, in der jede/r oder jede Gruppe das tut, was er für das Beste hält, oder einfach das tut, was er gerne tut, in dem Glauben, zu einem gemeinsamen Ganzen beizutragen.”(3)

Aus diesen Gründen ist eine allgemeine Strategie notwendig.Unsere allgemeine Strategie ist in der anarchistischen Tradition des Aufbaus von “Popular Power”, d.h. einer Macht, die von der Bevölkerung und sozialen Bewegungen ausgeht, verwurzelt. Dieser Ansatz geht auf die Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) und die historischen sozialen und politischen Kämpfe der 1960er und 1970er Jahre in Südamerika zurück. Die von der FAU formulierte spezifisch anarchistische Strategie zum Aufbau der “Volksmacht”, die sich in der Forderung nach der Schaffung eines “mächtigen Volkes”, d.h. in diesem Zusammenhang einer starken Macht von unten, kristallisiert, hat Schwesterorganisationen innerhalb und außerhalb des Südamerikas inspiriert.(4) Im Kern dieser Strategie liegt die führende Rolle der sozialen Bewegungen, die als “ein Zusammenschluss von Menschen und/oder Organisationen, die gemeinsame Interessen haben, um bestimmte Ziele zu verteidigen oder zu fördern betrachtet werden… Diese Bewegungen können sich an den unterschiedlichsten Stellen der Gesellschaft befinden und die unterschiedlichsten Motivationen haben, sie haben aber alle ein gemeinsames Ziel.”(5)

Im Laufe ihrer Geschichte können wir in den Vereinigten Staaten ein breites Spektrum an inspirierenden, sozialen Bewegungen sehen, die verschiedene Kämpfe ausgetragen haben, von der Bewegung zur Abschaffung der Sklaverei bis hin zu Arbeiter-, Mieter-, Bauern-, Frauen-, LGBTQ-, indigenen, Studenten-, Einwanderungsrechts-, Chicano/a-, Umwelt-, Antikriegs-, Bürgerrechts- und und Black-Power-Bewegungen. Durch diese Bewegungen haben wir einige der dramatischsten Veränderungen in unserer Gesellschaft erlebt, von der Abschaffung der Rassentrennung (Jim Crow Laws) bis hin zur Abschaffung der Kinderarbeit.

Unsere allgemeine Strategie beruht auf der Erkenntnis, dass nur soziale Bewegungen das Potenzial für einen revolutionären Wandel haben, dass nur sie die Saat für eine neuen Gesellschaft aussähen können. Wir können Beispiele dieses revolutionären Potenzials in der Vergangenheit und in der Gegenwart finden: z. B. in der Koreanischen Volksvereinigung in den selbstverwalteten Territorien der Mandschurei (während der späten 1920er und frühen 1930er Jahre) oder in den Tausenden von vergesellschafteten Feldern und Fabriken in Spanien während der spanischen Revolution, in den befreiten Gebieten von Morales und anderswo während der mexikanischen Revolution, in den Massenbewegungen in Uruguay in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren, in den Sowjets und Kommunen der Ukraine und Russlands in den ersten Jahren der russischen Revolution und heute im Befreiungskampf in Rojava.

Das revolutionäre Potenzial sozialer Bewegungen ist jedoch keine Selbstverständlichkeit. Viele, wenn nicht sogar die meisten, werden von Reformismus durchzogen und versuchen, lediglich die “Auswüchse” des Herrschaftssystems zu verändern, nicht das System selbst. Diese Bewegungen, oder zumindest ihre Anführer, die die Richtung der Bewegungen bestimmen, sehen Reformen jedoch als Selbstzweck.

Reformistisch orientierte Bewegungen und Organisationen spiegeln in der Regel viele der Werte, Überzeugungen und Praktiken unseres Systems wieder, einschließlich, aber nicht beschränkt auf hierarchische Managementstrukturen mit Top-Down-Modellen der Entscheidungsfindung und einer dichten Bürokratie. Des Weiteren unterstützen sie meist Wahlen von und Zusammenarbeit mit Reformpolitikern, die im Namen der Bewegungen Veränderungen durch den Staat herbeiführen sollen. Auch wird oft Individualismus und Wettbewerb gefördert, weil Bewegungen eine Aufwertung des öffentlichen Profils und der Gehälter ihrer Anführer unterstützen.

Die Taktiken und Strategien dieser reformistischen Politik spiegeln häufig die Bedürfnisse und Interessen der sozialen Kräfte wider, die den Kern der Bewegungen bilden, d.h. Gewerkschaftsbürokraten, Vorstände gemeinnütziger Organisationen und progressive Politiker. Für diese Kräfte ist die Organisation selbst – die Gewerkschaft, die gemeinnützige Organisation oder die politische Partei – die Quelle ihren ganzen Lebens und ihres Lebensunterhaltes, von ihren im Allgemeinen großzügigen Gehältern bis hin zu ihren sozialen und politischen Netzwerken. Daher ist es unwahrscheinlich, dass sie Taktiken oder Strategien verfolgen, die die Organisation gefährden könnten, wie z. B. illegale Streiks oder andere Formen von Massenunruhen, die staatliche Repressionen nach sich ziehen könnten.

Stattdessen sind reformistische Strömungen innerhalb von Bewegungen eher bereit, den Wandel über offizielle Kanäle zu fördern. Lobbyismus, Wahlkampf, symbolische Demonstrationen und Pressekonferenzen sind einige der typischen Instrumente des Reformismus.

Obwohl wir den Reformismus ablehnen, ist der Kampf um Reformen unerlässlich – wenn dieser von unten gewonnen wird und nicht von oben herab durch Großgrundbesitzer, Bosse oder Politiker. Reformen durch unabhängige kollektive Aktionen für bessere Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen zu erringen, stärkt unsere Fähigkeiten, unsere Solidarität, unsere Motivation und unseren Willen zu kämpfen. Der Kampf um Reformen ist entscheidend für den Aufbau der Macht von unten. Aufbauend auf einem libertären sozialistischen Hintergrund, fordert unsere allgemeine Strategie den Aufbau dieser Macht des Volkes durch unabhängige, dauerhafte soziale Bewegungen, die den herrschenden Klassen nicht nur Reformen abtrotzen, sondern auch die Grundlage für eine neue Gesellschaft legen. Diese Bewegungen zeichnen sich durch eine Reihe von Organisations- und Kampfformen aus:

1. ——Sie werden um gemeinsame Bedürfnisse herum organisiert: Im Gegensatz zu denjenigen Formen des Aktivismus, bei dem Individuen in Zyklen moralischer Empörung verwickelt sind, von einem Thema zum nächsten springen und keine soziale Basis aufbauen, fordern wir Bewegungen, die für unsere gemeinsamen, materiellen Bedürfnisse und Interessen kämpfen. Organisationen die sich auf die gemeinsamen Bedürfnisse der ausgebeuteten und unterdrückten Menschen stützen – z.B. für höhere Löhne, Mietkontrollen, Kinderbetreuung, polizeifreie Schulen usw. kämpfen – haben ein größeres Potenzial, wenn es um den Aufbau einer breiten sozialen Basis geht, die nicht nur unsere Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen verbessern kann, sondern zum Hebel für revolutionäre Veränderungen wird.

2. ——Ideologiefreiheit: Anstatt Bewegungen aufzubauen, die an einer bestimmten Partei ausgerichtet sind oder durch eine explizite politische Ideologie geprägt sind – sei sie anarchistisch, marxistisch oder sozialdemokratisch – fordern wir Bewegungen, die um gemeinsame materielle Bedürfnisse und Interessen herum mobilisiert werden. Wir erkennen an, dass es in Massenbewegungen eine Vielzahl von ideologischen Strömungen gibt und dass Versuche, der Bewegung eine einzige politische Zugehörigkeit aufzudrängen, die soziale Basis, aus der die Bewegung entsteht, verengen.

3. ——Klassenkampf und Unabhängigkeit: Im Gegensatz zu einer Zusammenarbeit der Klassen, die herrschende Kräfte mit einschließt, treten wir für Bewegungen ein, die ihre Unabhängigkeit vom Staat, von politischen Parteien und gemeinnützigen Organisationen wahren, um sich dem Klassenkampf zu widmen. Dies vermeidet die Fallstricke der Kooptation, Demobilisierung und Domestizierung.

4. ——Direkte Aktion: Anstatt die Lösung unserer Kämpfe an Andere zu delegieren – seien dies Politiker, Gewerkschaftsbürokraten oder gemeinnützige Non-Profit-Organisationen – rufen wir zu massenhafter kollektiver direkter Aktion auf, da dies die stärkste Form des Kampfes ist. Wenn Massen von Unterdrückten sich der Arbeit verweigern, ihre Miete einbehalten oder die Leitung sozialer Einrichtungen übernehmen, umgehen wir die Vermittler und nehmen hinsichtlich unserer Probleme und den Lösungen, die wir vorschlagen, die Zügel selbst in die Hand. Dies entwickelt das Selbstvertrauen, die Fähigkeiten und die Autonomie der unterdrückten Klasse.

5. ——Direkte Demokratie: Im Gegensatz zu Top-Down-Organisationen oder repräsentativer Demokratie, bei der sich die Entscheidungsgewalt auf eine Handvoll Personen an der Spitze konzentriert, praktizieren Bewegungen, die die Macht des Volkes aufbauen wollen, direkte Demokratie. Dies gewährleistet eine sinnvolle, breite Beteiligung und demokratische Kontrolle durch die breite Masse, wobei alle Beteiligten ein gleichberechtigtes Mitspracherecht in einem kollektiven Entscheidungsprozess haben, unabhängig davon, ob die Entscheidungen durch Abstimmungen, Konsens oder modifizierten Konsens getroffen werden.

6. ——Selbstverwaltung und Föderalismus: Anstelle von Organisationen mit einer starren Befehlskette und einer Trennung zwischen Anführern und Geführten, befürworten wir selbstverwaltete, demokratisch organisierte und von der Basis kontrollierte Bewegungen, in denen Mitglieder ein Mitspracherecht bei den Entscheidungen haben, die sie betreffen und die als Organisationen in einer föderalistischen Struktur miteinander verbunden sind.

7. ——Militanz: Anstatt uns auf die offiziellen Bahnen zu beschränken, die darauf ausgelegt sind, uns passiv zu halten und das herrschende System zu reproduzieren, brauchen wir militante Bewegungen, die den Schwerpunkt auf direkte Aktion legen und eine Bereitschaft zu massenhaftem zivilen Ungehorsam haben, einschließlich illegalen Streiks, Sit-ins, Besetzungen und anderen störenden Taktiken, die eine ernsthafte Bedrohung für Wirtschaft und Politik darstellen.

8. ——Solidarität und gegenseitige Hilfe: Im Gegensatz zu Bewegungen, die sich auf einen bestimmten Aspekt des Kampfes beschränken, brauchen wir soziale Bewegungen, die in Solidarität und gegenseitiger Hilfe verankert sind. Wir müssen uns mit allen ausgebeuteten und unterdrückten Völkern in unserem gemeinsamen Kampf gegen das gesamte System der Herrschaft solidarisieren. Wir müssen uns gegenseitig unterstützen, verteidigen, lieben und schützen.

9. ——Internationalismus: Anstatt unsere Kämpfe auf das Land zu beschränken, in dem wir zufälligerweise leben, lehnen wir Nationalismus ab und rufen zu internationalistischen Bewegungen auf, die sich mit allen ausgebeuteten und unterdrückten Menschen im In- und Ausland solidarisch zeigen, um den globalen Kapitalismus, den Imperialismus und den Nationalstaat zu bekämpfen.

10. ——Revolutionäre Kultur: Wir müssen uns gegen die Werte und Praktiken der herrschenden Kultur, wie z.B. Individualismus, Wettbewerb, Heteronormativität, Rassismus, usw., stellen. Stattdessen müssen wir in unseren Bewegungen und Organisationen eine revolutionäre Kultur etablieren, die auf Kooperation, Solidarität, Internationalismus, Antirassismus, Feminismus und ähnliche Praktiken basiert, sowohl in der Art und Weise, wie wir unsere Organisationen strukturieren und miteinander umgehen, als auch durch Kunst, Bildung und andere Formen der Kommunikation.

Viele dieser Elemente werden wahrscheinlich in den Bewegungen, denen wir begegnen, fehlen – vorausgesetzt, es gibt überhaupt Bewegungen, die wir finden können. Wie auch immer, ob wir uns in bestehende Kämpfe einmischen oder neue von Grund auf aufbauen, unsere Rolle als anarchistische Revolutionär:innen, als politische Organisation, ist es diese Elemente zu praktizieren, vorzuschlagen und zu verteidigen – durch aktive Teilnahme an den täglichen Kämpfen unserer unterdrückten Klasse. Je mehr diese Merkmale in den sozialen Bewegungen vorhanden sind, desto mehr treiben wir die Strategie eine Macht des Volkes aufzubauen voran.

Dies bringt uns zur Frage der dualen Organisation, einem Pfeiler unserer allgemeinen Strategie. Seit seinen Anfängen im späten 19. Jahrhundert gab es im Anarchismus immer eine Strömung der dualen Organisation, die die Notwendigkeit von zwei getrennten, aber symbiotischen Organisationstypen als Schlüsselbestandteile für die revolutionäre Transformation betonte. Diese duale Organisation besteht aus: einer sozialen Organisation (soziale Bewegungen und Massenorganisationen) und einer politischen Organisation (anarchistische politische Organisationen).

Die Theorie und Praxis der dualen Organisation – in erster Linie verbunden mit politischen Organisationen in der Form des Plattformismus(6) und des Especifismo(7) – betont nicht nur die Notwendigkeit einer sozialen und politischen Organisation, sondern auch die einzigartige Rolle, die beide spielen und die Beziehung zwischen den beiden.

Als Teil unserer allgemeinen Strategie müssen anarchistische Aktivist:innen beide Arten von Organisationen aufbauen, stärken und sich an beiden Arten von Organisationen beteiligen.

Wir wollen einige der wichtigsten Charakteristika der beiden Organisationsformen hier darstellen:Massenorganisationen vereinen bestimmte Akteure der unterdrückten Klasse – Arbeiter, Mieter, Studenten, Einwanderer, indigene Völker usw. – auf der Grundlage, dass sie die eigenen unmittelbaren Lebensbedingungen verteidigen und verbessern wollen. Wie wir beschrieben haben, gibt es diese Organisationen in vielen Formen, von Gewerkschaften bis hin zu indigenen Organisationen, die ihr Land verteidigen.

Da Massenorganisationen danach streben, so viele Menschen wie möglich zu vereinen, um deren materielle Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen, neigen sie dazu, den Schwerpunkt auf Reformen und nicht auf die Revolutionen zu legen.

Die Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front aus Südafrika erklärt: “Die Massenorganisation erfordert keine vollständige Vision des Klassenkampfes, sondern nur praktische Fähigkeiten und den Wunsch, das Kapital zu bekämpfen. In nicht-revolutionären Zeiten kümmert sie sich um unmittelbare alltägliche Kämpfe und Sorgen der Arbeiterklasse und ist nicht unbedingt revolutionär.”(8) Wenn Massenorganisationen eine große Anzahl von Menschen auf der Grundlage gemeinsamer Bedürfnisse und nicht auf der Grundlage von Ideologie zusammenbringen, lässt sich in diesen Massenorganisationen ein breites Spektrum von Ansichten finden. Diese Perspektiven können sich manchmal überschneiden und im Widerspruch oder im Konflikt zueinander stehen. Es können Menschen an Massenorganisationen teilnehmen, die die Demokratische oder die Republikanische Partei unterstützen, die Verschwörungstheoretiker oder Menschen ohne klar definierte politische Identität sind – und es können sich auch verschiedene Arten von Marxisten, Frauenhassern, religiösen Reaktionären, Liberalen und allem, was dazwischen liegt dort finden.

Die ideologische Vielfalt in der Basis der Massenorganisationen bedeutet, dass wir uns auf den “Kampf der Ideen” einlassen müssen.

Als Anarchist:innen müssen wir darauf vorbereitet sein, bei den verschiedenen Kräften, die in den Massenorganisationen im Spiel sind, zu intervenieren und so viele Menschen wie möglich für unsere Ideen und Methoden zu gewinnen. Und um am effektivsten zu intervenieren, müssen wir politisch organisiert sein.

Im Gegensatz zu Massenorganisationen, die im Allgemeinen für all diejenigen offen sind, die bestimmte Bedürfnisse teilen, setzt sich die anarchistische politische Organisationen aus einer “aktiven Minderheit” von Revolutionären zusammen, die eine gemeinsame Ideologie, eine Reihe von Prinzipien und ein Programm teilen. Politische Organisationen verlangen von ihren Mitgliedern ein hohes Maß an theoretischer und praktische Einheit und spielen eine besondere Rolle im Verlauf unseres Kampfes.

Die wichtigste Rolle einer anarchistischen politischen Organisation ist ihre nachhaltige Aktivität innerhalb sozialer Bewegungen. Wir erwarten von uns selbst, dass wir uns in einem von mehreren “Sektoren” organisieren, in denen soziale Bewegungen verankert sind. Sektoren sind spezifische Orte des Kampfes, an denen der Kampf zwischen konkurrierenden Klassen konkrete Formen annimmt, wie z. B. am Arbeitsplatz, an Schulen und in Wohnvierteln. Dem chilenischen Anarchisten José Antonio Gutierrez zufolge drückt sich der Klassenkonflikt in diesen Sektoren durch bestimmte “Akteure des Kampfes” aus – Arbeiter, Studenten, Mieter, Inhaftierte usw., die sich durch folgende Merkmale auszeichnen:

1. Die Probleme, die sie selbst und ihre Interessen unmittelbar betreffen, schließen Polizeibrutalität, unsichere Arbeitsbedingungen, baufällige Wohnungsnot, Inhaftierung und mehr ein.
2. Aus diesen Probleme und Interessen entstanden Kampftraditionen und Organisationen wie z. B. Gewerkschaften, Mietergewerkschaften, indigene Organisationen, Organisationen für die Rechte von Einwanderern und andere mehr.
3. Sie teilen einen gemeinsamen Ort oder eine gemeinsame Aktivität in der Gesellschaft, einschließlich Arbeitsplätzen, Wohnvierteln, Schulen, Gefängnissen, Reservaten und mehr.(9)

Die Sektoren sind nicht isoliert zu betrachten. Jeder einzelne wird durch das Herrschaftssystem geprägt und prägt das Herrschaftssystem. Die Sektoren sind alle miteinander verbunden. Unsere Fähigkeit, Miete zu zahlen hängt zum Beispiel davon ab, wie viel wir bei der Arbeit verdienen, was wiederum oft mit unserem formalen Bildungsniveau zusammenhängt, aber auch mit Fragen von “Race”, des Geschlechts, der Nationalität und Sexualität. Historisch gesehen sind soziale Bewegungen am stärksten, wenn sie in der Lage sind, mehrere Sektoren miteinander zu verweben und zu mobilisieren. Die Bürgerrechts- und Black-Power-Bewegungen der 1960er und 1970er Jahre sind ein gutes Beispiel dafür. Diese Bewegungen umfassten Massenorganisationen an Arbeitsplätzen, in Schulen, Wohnvierteln und Gefängnissen als Teil eines breit angelegten Kampfes. Unsere Aufgabe besteht also nicht darin nur in einem Sektor Macht aufzubauen, sondern Wege zu finden, mehrere Sektoren zu einer Massenbewegung von unten gegen das Herrschaftssystem zu vereinen. In welchen Sektoren wir uns als politische Organisation engagieren entscheiden wir nicht aufgrund persönlicher Vorlieben, sondern auf der Grundlage einer kollektiven Analyse der aktuellen Bedingungen, einer Einschätzung, welche Orte das größte Potenzial haben, um eine Macht des Volkes aufzubauen und einer Abwägung, wie unseren Kapazitäten als politische Organisation aussehen.

Durch langfristiges Engagement, den Aufbau von Beziehungen und prinzipientreuer Organisation, können anarchistische Aktivist:innen nicht nur an Massenorganisationen innerhalb dieser Sektoren teilnehmen, sondern auch deren Alltagspraxis in eine anarchistische Richtung hin beeinflussen – ein Prozess, der als soziale Eingliederung bekannt ist.

Dieser Prozess zielt darauf ab, Bewegungen mit anarchistischen Werten, Prinzipien und Praktiken zu durchdringen, diese aber nicht der Bewegung aufzudrängen. Wie wir in unserem Gründungsdokument “Die Rolle der revolutionären Organisation” feststellen, nimmt die revolutionäre Organisation “an den Massenbewegungen als gleichberechtigte Kämpferin teil…. Sie versucht niemals, Massenbewegungen zu dominieren, zu manipulieren, zu befehlen oder zu kontrollieren und erkennt die Notwendigkeit eines revolutionären Pluralismus an. Sie versteht, dass diese Bewegungen, nicht die revolutionäre Organisation selbst, das revolutionäre Mittel der sozialen Transformation ist.”(10)

Anarchistische Aktivist:innen sollten innerhalb der sozialen Bewegungen als Bollwerk gegen u.a. folgende Kräfte auftreten: gegen autoritäre Revolutionäre, die versuchen Führungspositionen für ihre eigenen Zwecke an sich zu reißen, die Kämpfe in Rekrutierungsmomente für ihre eigenen politischen Organisationen verwandeln wollen und die Frontgruppen hinter den Kulissen lenken; gegen Reformisten, die Bewegungen oft einschränken und sie in den Grenzen des Systems festhalten; und gegen Reaktionäre, die eine konkrete Gefahr für unsere Bewegungen darstellen.

Anarchistische politische Organisationen sind zudem eine wichtige Quelle des historischen Gedächtnisses. Durch Artikel, Bücher, Broschüren, Präsentationen, öffentliche Veranstaltungen und mehr beleuchten sie die Erfolge, Misserfolge, Widersprüche und Erkenntnisse sozialer und politischer Organisationen, historischer Schlüsselfiguren und Ereignissen der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Sie teilen so entscheidende Lehren mit den Kampfgenoss:innen. Das historische Gedächtnis zu bewahren ist Teil der umfassenderen Aufgabe von politischer Bildung und Propaganda. Um den ideologischen Unterbau und die toxische Kultur des Herrschaftssystems herauszufordern, “bemüht sich die anarchistische politische Organisation eine sichtbare Präsenz für ihre Ideen, Methoden und Taktiken aufzubauen, um eine revolutionäre Kultur zu verbreiten… eine Kultur des Kampfes, der Kreativität und der Solidarität, eine Kultur von gegenseitiger Hilfe – antirassistisch, internationalistisch, antipatriarchal, antikapitalistisch und antistaatlich.”(11)

Mit dem Ziel, ein großes, vielfältiges Publikum anzusprechen, nutzt die anarchistische politische Organisation eine Vielzahl von Bildungsmethoden und Kommunikationsmitteln. Dazu gehören zugängliche, visuell ansprechende Multimedia-Inhalte, on- und off-line, Audio- und Videomaterial, Texte, Plakate, Aufkleber, Buttons usw. – sowie soziale, politische und kulturelle Veranstaltungen, Studiengruppen und öffentlich zugängliche Workshops. Zu diesem Zweck müssen wir mit den modernsten Kommunikationstechnologien und -strategien auf dem Laufenden bleiben, um sicherzustellen, dass wir so viele Menschen wie möglich erreichen.

Neben Propaganda und sozialer Einbindung in Massenbewegungen arbeitet eine anarchistische politische Organisation auch an der Entwicklung des Wissens, der Fähigkeiten und der Kapazitäten ihrer Mitglieder. Dies geschieht durch interne politische Bildung und Ausbildung in revolutionärer Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis. Anarchistische politische Organisationen bieten ihren Mitgliedern zudem eine politische Heimat um Erfahrungen auszutauschen, sich gegenseitig zu unterstützen, die kritischen Fragen unserer Zeit zu diskutieren, zu debattieren und um ein Programm für kollektives Eingreifen in aktuelle Kämpfe zu entwickeln.

Um die verschiedenen oben beschriebenen Aufgaben zu erfüllen, fußen anarchistische politische Organisationen auf klaren Grundprinzipien:

• Theoretische Einheit: Anarchistische politische Organisationen setzen sich aus Aktivist:innen zusammen, die eine allgemeine Übereinstimmung in theoretischen Kernfragen teilen – hinsichtlich der Natur des Herrschaftssystems, der Art von Gesellschaft, die wir an seine Stelle setzen wollen, und bezüglich der effektivsten Mittel, um uns von hier nach dort zu bringen. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass es eine starre Form von politischer Uniformität gibt. Es wird immer Debatten geben, aber die Organisation strebt Einigkeit an und will diese Einigkeit in kollektive Aktionen umsetzen.
• Strategische und taktische Einigkeit: Auf der Grundlage einer kollektiven Analyse der aktuellen Bedingungen wird die Aktivität der anarchistischen politischen Organisation von einer gemeinsamen Taktik und Strategie geleitet, die in einem Programm zum Ausdruck kommt. Während das Programm eine klare Richtung für die Organisation vorgibt, wird es als lebendiges Dokument verstanden, das aktualisiert wird, wenn sich Bedingungen ändern.
• Kollektive Verantwortung und Rechenschaftspflicht: Die Mitgliedschaft in der Organisation erfordert ein hohes Maß an Disziplin und Verantwortung füreinander, um die kollektiven Vereinbarungen der Organisation durchzusetzen und dafür, dass wir die Werte, Grundsätze und Praktiken, die wir in der Welt durchsetzen wollen, auch in unserem Miteinander selbst anwenden.
• Selbstverwaltung und Föderalismus: Da die anarchistische politische Organisation eine selbstverwaltete sozialistische Gesellschaft anstrebt, von unten organisiert, verkörpert die Organisation selbst diese Prinzipien. Entscheidungen werden kollektiv durch direkte Demokratie getroffen und die Verantwortung für die Durchführung dieser Entscheidungen wird den Mitgliedern oder Ausschüssen durch Delegationen übertragen. Strukturell besteht die Organisation aus lokalen, regionalen oder nationalen Gremien, die sich auf der Grundlage gemeinsamer Theorie und Praxis föderieren.
• Prinzipientreues Verhalten: Die Mitglieder der anarchistischen politischen Organisation streben danach, ihre Theorie in ihrer täglichen Praxis zu verkörpern. Dazu gehört es, eine kameradschaftliche Kultur des gegenseitigen Respekts, der Zusammenarbeit, Kooperation, Fürsorge und Verantwortlichkeit in unserem gemeinsamen Kampf gegen alle Formen von Herrschaft, zu fördern.

Meinungsverschiedenheiten und Konflikte sind unvermeidlich, aber wir bemühen uns diese gemeinsam und konstruktiv zu entschärfen und zu bewältigen. Diese Eigenschaften, sowohl intern als auch extern, ermöglichen es anarchistischen politischen Organisationen, eine revolutionäre Perspektive und Praxis während den sich stetig verändernden Kampfsituationen zu bewahren. Ohne eine politische Organisation zu kämpfen “bedeutet, sich wenn Organisierungsbemühungen auftauchen auf den Wind des Zufalls zu verlassen, um Militante unter verschiedenen Bannern und Projekten zusammenzubringen, d.h. Ressourcen für jeden Kampf zusammenzuschustern und sich dann wieder in alle Winde zu zerstreuen, ohne dass eine Analyse der Stärken und Schwächen des jeweiligen Kampfes stattfindet. Des Weiteren werden die Beziehungen und die Politisierungen, die sich aus den Kämpfen ergeben, oft nicht gefördert und gepflegt, um künftige Kämpfe weiter aufzubauen.”(12)

Sozialen Bedingungen und Bewegungen werden nicht warten, bis wir bereit sind, um den Kampf gegen das Herrschaftssystem zu eskalieren. Perioden des Aufruhrs werden als Reaktion auf staatliche Gewalt, Unterdrückungspolitik, abrupte Veränderungen in den wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen oder andere Faktoren, die unmöglich vorherzusehen sind, zeitweise aufflackern. Anarchistische politische Organisationen müssen in ihrer Strategie flexibel genug sein, um Momente der Massenrebellion zu berücksichtigen, indem wir unsere Ressourcen und die Energien unserer Aktiviste:innen mobilisieren, um das radikale Potential solcher Momente zu erweitern, die Position der unterdrückten Klasse zu stärken, die Position der herrschenden Klasse zu schwächen und aus diesem Kampf mit einem verbesserten Gleichgewicht der Kräfte hervorzugehen.

In diesen Zeiten der weit verbreiteten Radikalisierung ist es wichtig, dass unsere politische Organisation in möglichst vielen Städten, Gemeinden und Regionen des Landes präsent ist – dies wird unsere Fähigkeit verbessern, Ereignisse zu beeinflussen. Militante Kämpfer:innen, die an sozialen Kämpfen heutiger historischer Momente auf lokaler Ebene beteiligt sind, haben eine kritische notwendige Perspektive, die in die Strategie und Taktik der anarchistischen politischen Organisation einfließen muss. Dies ermöglicht es der Organisation sich an schnell verändernde soziale, politische und ökonomische Situationen anzupassen und unsere Ressourcen effektiv zu koordinieren, um die Bemühungen unserer Kämpfer:innen vor Ort zu unterstützen, einschließlich denjenigen, die rechtliche Unterstützung oder andere Formen der Hilfe benötigen.

Wenn wir keine Kämpfenden vor Ort haben, müssen wir Allianzen mit gleichgesinnten Teilnehmern und Organisationen bilden und so viel wie möglich über die jeweiligen Situationen erfahren, um herauszufinden, wie wir Rebellionen am besten unterstützen können. Letztendlich ist es diese langwierige und Geduld brauchende Arbeit, die es benötigt um eine Macht des Volkes aufzubauen – bei der Arbeit, in unseren Schulen, in unseren Vierteln, in den Reservaten, in unseren Wohnhäusern usw. – und die es unseren militanten Kämpfer:innen ermöglicht, diese Momente der Rebellion aus einer Position der Stärke heraus zu unterstützen und die es uns ermöglicht, als soziale Basis und nicht als isoliertes Individuum, zu intervenieren.

Unsere Fähigkeit, in Massenorganisationen und in Zeiten des Aufruhrs zu intervenieren, kann auch durch intermediäre Organisationen, d.h. vermittelnde Organisationen, erleichtert werden.(13) An der Schnittstelle zwischen Sozialem und Politischem, bringen diese Organisationen – auch bekannt als “Tendenzgruppen”(14) – Akteure, die eine ähnliche strategische, politische oder programmatische Ausrichtung haben, an einem gemeinsamen Ort des Kampfes zusammen. In den USA, haben solche Organisationen zum Beispiel die Form von Basisfraktionen innerhalb der Gewerkschaften, die oft linksgerichtete Mitglieder zusammenbringen, um bestimmte Forderungen oder Kampfformen in der Gewerkschaft durchzusetzen. Tendenzgruppen werden oft unter Umständen benötigt, in denen es nur wenige oder gar keine Massenorganisationen gibt und wo die bestehenden Organisationen geschwächt oder vom Reformismus durchzogen sind.

In unserer allgemeinen Strategie gibt es eine komplementäre Beziehung zwischen drei Organisationsebenen: Ohne Beteiligung an Tendenz- oder Massenorganisationen hat die anarchistische politische Organisation nicht die Macht die neue Welt, die sie anstrebt, zu formen. Ohne die Vision, Strategie und Taktik der anarchistischen politischen Organisation werden die Massenbewegungen und Tendenzgruppen das Herrschaftssystem in der einen oder anderen Form reproduzieren. Damit unsere allgemeine Strategie erfolgreich sein kann, müssen wir auf jeder Organisationsebene Verbindungen und Bündnisse schmieden, um unsere Macht und Wirksamkeit zu verstärken.

Auf politischer Ebene bedeutet dies, dass wir Beziehungen und Bündnisse mit Einzelpersonen, Organisationen und Institutionen, die im Großen und Ganzen mit unserer allgemeinen Strategie übereinstimmen, aufbauen müssen. Dazu gehören formelle Bündnisse mit anderen anarchistischen politischen Organisationen auf lokaler, nationaler und internationaler Ebene, sowie mit ähnlichen Organisationen anderer sozialistischer oder kommunistischer Strömungen auf der Basis von strategischer oder taktischer Einigkeit. Dies kann auch informelle Beziehungen zu öffentlichen Intellektuellen, Verlagen, sozialen und kulturellen Räumen und Institutionen, die erhebliche Gemeinsamkeiten mit unserer Politik haben, bedeuten. Zwischenzeitige Zusammenarbeit bedeutet mit anderen Massen- und Tendenzorganisationen innerhalb und außerhalb des jeweiligen Kampfbereiches Beziehungen und Bündnisse aufzubauen. Zum Beispiel kann sich eine schwarze Studentenorganisation auf einem Universitätscampus mit einer indigenen Studentenorganisation zu einer gemeinsamen Kampagne für die Erhöhung der Mittel für ethnische Studien zusammenschließen.

Obwohl Massenorganisationen oft auf eine bestimmte Gruppe von Bedürfnissen und Interessen ausgerichtet sind, gibt es viele Überschneidungspunkte zwischen verschiedenen Bewegungen. An diesen Kreuzungspunkten müssen anarchistische politische Organisationen dabei helfen, Bewegungen zusammenzubringen – durch Koalitionen, Kampagnenbündnisse oder neuen Formationen – um die Macht des ganzen Volkes exponentiell durch eine gemeinsame Front der verschiedenen Formationen der unterdrückten Klasse zu stärken. Diese Front der unterdrückten Klasse zielt darauf ab, die breite Basis dieser Klasse in ihrer ganzen Vielfalt, in all ihren organisatorischen Ausdrucksformen, zu vereinen.(15)

Während die organisierte Arbeiterklasse ein wichtiger Bestandteil dieser Front bleibt, besteht unsere grundlegende Aufgabe darin, Brücken zwischen dem gesamten Spektrum von organisierten sozialen Kräften, das gegen das Herrschaftssystem kämpft, zu schlagen – von nicht dokumentierten Immigrant:innen, die gegen Abschiebung, Inhaftierung und Diskriminierung kämpfen, bis hin zu Kämpfen um Wohnraum, Gesundheitsfürsorge, geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt, Krieg, Polizeiarbeit, Ökologie und vielem mehr. Isoliert voneinander, gibt es konkrete Grenzen von dem, was diese Bewegungen erreichen können. Nur durch eine Front der unterdrückten Klasse werden wir in der Lage sein, einen revolutionären Bruch mit dem Herrschaftssystem herbeizuführen und dieses durch den libertären Sozialismus zu ersetzen.

Nun kommen wir noch einmal auf die allgemeine Strategie der dualen Organisation zurück. Massenbewegungen spielen eine wesentliche Rolle bei der Schaffung eines Bruchs mit dem Status quo, aber politische Organisation ist der Schlüssel, um sicherzustellen, dass die Bewegung nicht hinter ihrem Ziel zurückbleibt, d.h. dass wir die soziale Revolution und einen sozialistischen Horizont im Blick behalten und dass herrschende Kräfte nicht nur in Schach gehalten, sondern ausgeschaltet werden. Wie die Gruppe Dielo Truda in der Organisationsplattform der allgemeinen anarchistischen Union schrieb: ”Die werktätigen Massen verfügen über enorme kreative und konstruktive Möglichkeiten, und Anarchisten streben danach, die Hindernisse zu beseitigen, die der Entfaltung dieser Möglichkeiten im Wege stehen.” (16)

Während des Prozesses diese Hindernisse für unsere “schöpferischen und konstruktiven Möglichkeiten” zu beseitigen, werden die Institutionen und Organisationen der Macht des Volkes, die im Laufe der Jahrzehnte von unten aufgebaut wurden, in permanente Organe kollektiven Selbstverwaltung umgewandelt werden – sie werden von unten heraus föderiert und in allen befreiten Territorien zusammengeschlossen, um das Machtvakuum zu füllen, das der Bruch hinterlassen hat. Um es mit den Worten des verstorbenen Juan Carlos Mechoso zu sagen: “Die Macht des Volkes konkretisiert sich in der Kontrolle über die Produktionsmittel (Fabriken, Felder, Bergwerke usw.), über die Massenmedien (Zeitungen, Radios, Fernsehsender, Informationen im Allgemeinen), über Dienstleistungen (Verkehr, Energie, Abwasserentsorgung, Kommunikation usw.), über Entscheidungsmechanismen (Forschung, wissenschaftliche Arbeit) und über entsprechende Mittel auf politischer Ebene, über kollektiv geschaffene Rechtsinstrumente, ideologische Strukturen, Bildungspläne und verschiedene kulturelle Ausdrucksformen. Diese Kontrolle ist die des Kollektivs, das sich durch Organe und Institutionen, die während des Prozesses und im Moment der Machtübernahme entwickelt wurden, etabliert hat.”(17)

In diesem Sinne ist unsere allgemeine Strategie zum Aufbau der Macht von unten darauf ausgerichtet, unsere Mittel mit unseren Zielen in Einklang zu bringen. Um eine selbstverwaltete sozialistische Gesellschaft, frei von allen Formen der Herrschaft, zu erreichen, müssen wir autonome, selbstverwaltete Massenbewegungen als Organe der Macht des Volkes aufbauen, die sowohl die zukünftige Gesellschaftsordnung widerspiegeln als auch als Vehikel für ihre Verwirklichung dienen.

Die Konsolidierung der Macht des Volkes während der postrevolutionären Periode ist der höchste Ausdruck unserer allgemeinen Strategie. Die Stärkung der Macht des Volkes in der vorrevolutionären Periode zielt darauf ab, alle Bereiche des sozialen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Lebens unter kollektive, demokratische Kontrolle zu stellen. Dieser langfristige Prozess beinhaltet den Aufbau, die Stärkung und die Vereinigung unabhängiger sozialer Bewegungen durch kämpferische Auseinandersetzungen, um die unmittelbaren Bedürfnisse der unterdrückten Klasse zu erkämpfen. Diese Bewegungen entstehen aus den unterdrückerischen Bedingungen und Widersprüchen des Herrschaftssystems, was sie aber nicht unbedingt auf einen revolutionären Weg bringt. Dafür gibt es anarchistische politische Organisationen, die mit Hilfe zwischengeschalteter Gruppen dazu beitragen, die Massenbewegungen in Richtung eines Bruchs mit der bestehenden Ordnung zu bringen – in die Richtung der sozialen Revolution, hin zu einer staatenlosen, klassenlosen, selbstverwalteten Gesellschaft, die auf der Asche der “white supremacy”, des Heteropatriarchats, des Siedlerkolonialismus und des Imperialismus erbaut wird. _

Übersetzt von anna und dem anarchismus.de Kollektiv

Auf zum libertären Sozialismus!Fußnoten:1 Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro, “The Need for Strategy, Tactics, and Programme” in Social Anarchism and Organisation, 2008.

2 Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro, “Especifismo: Anarchist Organisation, Historical Perspectives, and Influence” in Social Anarchism and Organisation, 2008.

3 Ebd.

4 Felipe Corrêa, “Create a Strong People”, Anarkismo.net, 2010.

5 Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro, “Social Movements and the Popular Organisation” in Social Anarchism and Organisation, 2008.

6 North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists, “The Global Influence of Platformism Today”, Zabalaza Books, 2003.

7 Adam Weaver, “Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization”, The Northeastern Anarchist, Issue 11, 2006.

8 Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, “Social and Political Levels of Organisation” in Modules for the Anarchist Political School, 2019.

9 José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, “The Problems Posed by the Concrete Class Struggle and Popular Organization”, 2005.

10 Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra, “Role of the Revolutionary Organization”, 2014.

11 Ebd.

12 Adam Weaver and S. Nicholas Nappalos, “Fighting for the Future: The Necessity and Possibility of National Political Organization for Our Time,” 2013.

13 Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro, “The Specific Anarchist Organisation: The Anarchist Organisation” in Social Anarchism and Organisation, 2008.

14 Felipe Corrêa, “Tendency Groups”, Passa Palavra, 2010.

15 Juan Carlos Mechoso and Felipe Corrêa (English Translation by Jonathan Payn), “The Strategy of Especifismo”, Anarkismo.net, 2009.

16 G.P. Maximoff, “Constructive Anarchism: The Debate on the Platform”, Maximoff Memorial Publication Committee, 1952.

17 Juan Carlos Mechoso and Felipe Corrêa (English Translation by Jonathan Payn), “The Strategy of Especifismo”, Anarkismo.net, 2009.

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Illustration by Dinelli.

On the 1st of May 1886, hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States initiated a general strike to demand the working day be limited to 8 hours. During a mass meeting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown. After the resultant chaos, 8 anarchist labor leaders were jailed on flimsy evidence supposedly implicating them as conspirators. A year later, 4 were hanged to death by the state.

To this day, May 1 is used as a marker to celebrate the wins of the dominated classes, to remember our martyrs, and to recommit ourselves to the ongoing struggle for self emancipation. May Day is our day, let’s use it to take stock of where we stand so that we can more effectively navigate toward the horizon of social revolution.

Where We StandIn the last years we’ve seen small, but significant, steps toward a rejuvenation of the US labor movement. In 2022, major strikes increased by a factor of nearly 50% when compared to 2021, recovering a multi-year upward trend for labor action that had been dampened by the onset of the pandemic. Of these strikes, workers in the social reproductive sectors of the economy—healthcare and education—made up the lion’s share of those who walked off the job. We’ve also seen exciting new organizing campaigns launched or continued at places like Trader Joe’s, Amazon, and Starbucks; not to mention similar campaigns and victories at numerous smaller shops across the country.

Intermediate level organizations like Labor Notes have also seen an explosion in participation from workers not only looking to get organized for the first time, but those aiming to make their existing unions more democratic, participatory, and militant. Labor Notes’ bi-annual conference in 2022 smashed previous attendance records, as have their localized weekend Troublemaker Schools in more recent weeks. Regional gatherings like the Southern Workers Assembly have seen rapid growth as well.

It’s against this backdrop that leadership shake ups in legacy unions like Teamsters and the United Auto Workers have taken place. Both unions will see the expiration later this year of contracts covering hundreds of thousands of workers at major firms like UPS and the ‘Big 3’ auto manufacturers. Drawn from internal reform caucuses, new leaders in both unions have declared a commitment to reversing the decades of cozy, concessionary bargaining with bosses—and have even suggested that strikes are back on the agenda. While this is a welcome change in rhetoric from labor brass, it will be meaningless without a rank-and-file base that is activated, organized, and made militant from the bottom up.

Challenges AheadBut we also need to grapple with the real challenges faced by workers in the US. Caught between extreme inflation—in the main a result of capitalist price gouging—and the state’s attempt to discipline the labor market by inducing a recession, workers are being battered. Though desperation brought on by strained resources can indeed catalyze radical action in some circumstances, it is also just as likely to have the inverse effect—wherein workers are less likely to take risks in confronting their bosses, lest they lose their livelihoods altogether.

Despite recent increases in union election filings, the total number of organized workers in the country continues to inch downwards. The same can be said of the total number of strike actions undertaken by US workers if we zoom out to include data from the 1970’s onward.

These trends can indeed be reversed, but doing so will require a ratcheting up of efforts by labor militants to intervene and organize themselves from the bottom up, building rank-and-file capacity to outmaneuver both the capitalist and collaborationist union bosses, put the strike weapon back into regular use, and urging their unions to become politically independent from the Democratic Party and electioneering generally. Newly organized workers should seek to build independent unions outside of the AFL-CIO apparatus wherever possible.

Announcing Our ProgramThis year, we mark the occasion of May Day by announcing the publication of the first edition of our organization’s political program: Turning the Tide: an Anarchist Program for Popular Power. This document is the product of nearly two years of collective research, discussion, and debate within our organization.

Just as the members of the International Working People’s Association—two of whom would go on to be martyred for their alleged involvement in the Haymarket affair—laid out their analysis, objectives, and strategy in a collective document fitting their moment, we have aimed to do the same for the contemporary period.

We built this program with the intent of giving our organization a clear picture of the world we inhabit, the social structures that dominate us, and to unify us around a strategy for accomplishing our short and medium term objectives, toward the end of achieving our ultimate objectives of social revolution and libertarian socialism. Our program is a living document, not meant to stand above reproach, but to be updated and revised in accordance with the real and changing conditions of the world around us.

We are making available a public version of Turning the Tide, which excludes sensitive information. In the near future it will also be released in a print for further distribution.

Click here to access a downloadable PDF of Turning the Tide.

We invite those from the US and beyond to read the document and to provide your thoughts, reactions, and constructive criticisms. If you find yourself in agreement with our program’s contents, we invite you to reach out to us directly via our website.

For popular power!
For a world free of domination!
For libertarian socialism!

Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra

May 1, 2023

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This statement was issued and endorsed by an international coordination of anarchist organizations. It is the first statement issued by this grouping that Black Rose / Rosa Negra has signed on to. Examples of previous statements can be found here.

The earthquakes of 6 February and their aftershocks have devastated entire regions. The death toll is in the tens of thousands and continues to rise. Access to water, electricity, gas, food and other basic necessities is reduced or non-existent for millions of people.

Our comrades in anarchist organisations, grassroots unions and popular organisations are working together and are directly involved in the relief efforts.

We are now launching a fundraising drive to support the work of these organisations.

The AKP regime prevents progressive organisations from collecting donations and providing much-needed relief and solidarity.

To give but one example: on the day of the earthquakes – in a show of solidarity known only by the workers and oppressed – the Independent Mine Workers’ Union immediately declared it was ready to send its members to the affected areas to help with search and rescue operations in the most critical 24 hours after the earthquakes. They were prevented from doing so for two days by the state.

A state which would prefer to have workers risking their lives underground, extracting profits for the ruling class rather than saving the lives of tens of thousands of people buried under the rubble of their own homes. Buried under buildings constructed by housing mafias that – with the complicity of the state, which neglects to enforce building codes and safety regulations – do whatever they can to reap a profit by ignoring safety standards and cutting costs; even if it costs tens of thousands of people their lives.

Humanitarian aid is confiscated and redistributed by the AKP and its Islamo-fascist offices. Fascists and their counterparts in the civil Police threaten to ‘disappear’ ordinary people working around the clock to feed and provide aid to those displaced by the earthquakes.

Clearly, the state and its supporters are more concerned with maintaining the capitalist system than savings the lives of tens of thousands. This is why they disrupt and delay grassroots solidarity and mutual aid.

In this horrific tragedy, which is still far from over, the system of state and capitalism are responsible for far more deaths and much more suffering than that caused by the earthquakes themselves. But we will wrap our open wounds in the solidarity of the workers and oppressed.

In order to guarantee the safety of our comrades we will not disclose the names of the organisations for which the donations are intended. They are anarchist organisations, grassroots unions and popular organisations with whom we already work and who have our full trust.

The donations are collected by our comrades in Switzerland who already have an international solidarity structure. In addition to our anarchist and trade unionist comrades, part of the donations will go to the Swiss branch of the Kurdistan Red Crescent (Heyva Sor).

Send your donations to:Association pour la Promotion de la Solidarité Internationale (APSI)
Place Chauderon 5
1003 Lausanne
Switzerland

IBAN: CH84 0900 0000 1469 7613 8
SWIFT/BIC: POFICHBEXXX
Name of the Bank: PostFinance SA; Mingerstrasse 20; 3030 Bern; Switzerland

Signed by:☆ Alternativa Libertaria (AL/FdCA) – Italy☆ Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) – Aotearoa/New Zealand☆ Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) – Uruguay☆ Embat, Organització Llibertària de Catalunya – Catalonia, Spain☆ Libertäre Aktion (LA) – Switzerland☆ Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (OSL) – Switzerland☆ Grupo Libertario Vía Libre – Colombia☆ Karala – Turkey☆ Corodenação Anarquista Brasileira – Brazil☆ Die Plattform – Germany☆ Anarchist Yondae – South Korea☆ Rusga Libertária – Brazil☆ Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) – Brazil☆ Organização Anarquista Socialismo Libertário (OASL) – Brazil☆ Coletivo Mineiro Popular Anarquista (COMPA) – Brazil☆ Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) – France☆ Tekoşîna Anarşîst (TA) – Rojava☆ Federación Anarquista de Rosario (FAR) – Argentina☆ Organización Anarquista de Cordoba (OAC) – Argentina☆ Organización Anarquista de Tucumán (OAT) – Argentina☆ Organización Anarquista de Santa Cruz (OASC) – Argentina☆ Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra (BRRN) – United States☆ Federación Anarquista Santiago (FAS) – ChileThe post International Statement: Call for Solidarity in Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

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The following statement is endorsed by the membership of Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra.

On January 10, 2023, Tyre Nichols died from severe physical injuries, including a broken neck, sustained three days earlier at the hands, batons, pepper spray, and tasers of five Memphis, Tennessee police officers. As one of the lawyers for Tyre’s family described it, Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr, and Justin Smith treated him like “a human piñata” during a January 7 confrontation.

Tyre Deandre Nichols was born on June 5, 1993, in Sacramento, California. He was two years old when Stephon Clark was born at a nearby hospital. The two lived near each other for the entirety of Stephon’s short life; Tyre left for Memphis shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. These young fathers would face similar fates less than four years apart from each other: death at the hands of municipal police officers. Whereas Stephon died by gunshot, Tyre suffered what his city’s police chief described as “perhaps worse” than the Los Angeles Police Department’s infamous beating of Rodney King – another Sacramento, CA native – nearly seventeen years to the day preceding Stephon’s death.

Nine months before he was murdered, Tyre joined 30,000 coworkers at FedEx, one of Memphis’s leading employers. He started working there eight years after fellow workers at one of his employer’s top national competitors, United Parcel Service, refused to ship law enforcement equipment to Missouri in solidarity with the nationwide uprising against police brutality after Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson.

After police murders like these, widespread protests, die-ins, riots, and other street actions often take the nation to demand justice for the slain. These uprisings express – and generate – collective anger, antipathy, and opposition to the most discrete instances of racist state violence. Recently, these protests have raised the calls to defund, disarm, and dismantle their police departments and find alternative social service and safety systems. All the while, mainstream liberal talking heads proclaim “a moment of racial reckoning” that may finally curb the next Rodney. The next Michael. The next Stephon. The next Breonna. The next George.

Members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra join a demonstration in Oakland, CA after Tyre Nichols’ murder.And still, the next Tyre loses his life as budgets for police departments grow across the country after the political elite’s foremost leaders call for more money to hire more and “retrain” existing law enforcement officers. He becomes the next in a long line of people murdered by police: in 2022, these agents of the state killed a record-setting 1,186 people, over a quarter of which were Black – twice their share of the US population.

Thus, concrete experiences, from the long, hot summer of 1967 to the 1992 LA riots to the 2020 George Floyd rebellion, show that these righteous, empowering popular upswells tend to momentarily flare before dissipating from and being co-opted and repressed off the streets with neither the systemic transformation so many desperately crave nor the sustained organization needed to build power to bring it into reality.

Since recordings of the officers brutally arresting Tyre were released Friday evening, minimal street actions have materialized in Memphis and elsewhere. State administrators and politicians may have learned lessons from 2020’s George Floyd rebellion that helped curb collective discontent so far. Local city council members proclaimed they wanted to “send a very strong message” that “misconduct” would face reproach when they fired two EMTs who responded to Tyre, following the firing of the five officers. Similarly, Memphis Police Raines Precinct Commander Colonel Dennis McNeil “personally apologize[d]” for his officers’ actions, claiming they were “not indicative of the entire police department.” Even the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – the same institution that surveilled and harrassed movements and individual activists for years, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and declared Black Lives Matter a movement of “Black Identity Extremists” – claimed he was “appalled” with the five Memphis officers’ behavior upon opening an investigation into their actions. Alongside public denouncements and workplace removals, the Shelby County District Attorney charged the officers with a litany of crimes, including second-degree murder, before Friday’s footage release. Typical public demands for minimal accountability seem to have been heeded early and effectively before people across the country had the time to absorb another digitally-recorded lynching.

Fired and/or indicted Memphis police officers involved in Tyre Nichols’ murderWhether or not masses of people rise in revolt, the systems that sprout racist state violence will likely stay in place, reinforced and re-legitimated in new ways. How, then, might we dismantle these interlocking systems of domination that disproportionately maim, murder, and cage Black people? How do we transcend the cycle of police brutality → street demonstrations → promises of “accountability,” “healing,” and “change” → movement demobilization → state entrenchment?

Movement activists in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Atlanta, Georgia offer some lessons.

After Derek Chauvin squeezed the life out of George Floyd, Minneapolis’s eruption was best emblematized with the immolation of the Third Precinct police headquarters. Although the building’s barren shell symbolizes the city council’s lack of institutional progress to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department promised in the throes of the uprising, neighborhood-based organizational structures became important prefigurations of a world without police.

When stores burned and white supremacists menaced residents in the uprising’s early days, local organizers helped coordinate block-by-block organizing to defend their communities and continue access to food, baby supplies, and other necessities. Neighbors exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, created lists of resources they could share between themselves, and helped meet each other’s needs. These organizing structures also spurred cross-neighborhood working groups like an “ad hoc fire squad” composed of community members that would quickly respond to nearby emergencies. Although these kinds of organizations have ebbed like the rebellion, many of their participants involved themselves and their neighbors in citywide campaigns to transform policing that have won significant – but not electorally significant – support.

In Georgia, a coalition of environmental, anti-carceral, and other community activists have coalesced with local residents for the last two years to stop Atlanta authorities from replacing a section of the Weelanuee Forest with a multimillion dollar police training facility christened “Cop City.” Such efforts aim to not only preserve the natural environment and a rich ecosystem but also to prevent state forces from further encroaching into – and possibly taking more of – their lives. Since 2013, state agents in the city have killed forty-eight people, three out of every four of whom were Black.

Although the state has launched a campaign of fear and intimidation against them by murdering campaign participant Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Teran and slamming over a dozen activists with trumped-up “domestic terrorism” charges, movement organizers have answered the repression they’ve faced with escalating tactics. From hosting public demonstrations downtown to encouraging community members to flood city council comments denouncing its plans to targeted property destruction and living in makeshift treetop shelters that inhibit heavy machinery from knocking them down, the campaign shows few signs of slowing. Calls to “Stop Cop City” and “Defend the Atlanta Forest” have spread as far and quickly as the movement’s hashtags: over 2,000 organizations and individuals from around the world have signed the movement’s statement of solidarity, along with call-in campaigns to demand the project’s investors to pull their funding from it.

Atlanta’s forest defenders make clear that it is entirely possible to slow – and even push back – the seemingly ever-expanding arms of the state, and Minneapolis’s block-by-block organizing envisioned, if momentarily, how a cop-free and more communal world could be made. Both target earlier stages in the precipitating chain that culminates in police brutality: Atlanta at the heart of the state’s repressive expansion, Minneapolis at the intervening period when authorities might be called to “restore order.” And both demonstrate that systems of domination will not be toppled in one or even several explosive event(s), but require strategic, sustained, and responsive tactics and visions by many people to make long-term impacts.

However masses of people respond to published video of Tyre’s murder, stopping future ones requires ongoing organizing for popular power that can defend against, offensively strike, and ultimately supplant these systems from the ground-up. To do so, we must bring our full selves that we momentarily become in the streets – with our disgust and disdain for the systems and purveyors of violence, the joy and jubilance for a different world, and everything in between – back to the places where we live, work, play, and care, in our day-to-day lives.

In memory of Tyre Nichols and all others lost, in struggle with all who remain.

Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra

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July 19, 2023 – Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra

On January 18, 2023 a multi-agency task force moved to clear out an ongoing tree-sit protest in Atlanta, Georgia. In the opening minutes of this operation, Georgia State Troopers shot and killed a tree sitter.

Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Paez TeranThe tree sitter, Manuel Paez Teran, also known as Tortuguita or Tort, was a participant in an ongoing occupation of the Atlanta (Weelanuee) Forest. The objective of the forest occupation is to prevent the construction of ‘Cop City’, a state-of-the-art, 381-acre police urban warfare training facility. The as yet unbuilt facility has so far drawn $90 million dollars in funding from a combination of tax dollars and corporate sponsorship.

Since the project was announced, residents of Atlanta have demonstrated and registered their anger over its secretive development, its likely impacts on local wildlands, its misuse of public resources, and the certainty that it will increase the presence of heavily armed police in the area.

Already, a number of tree sitters have been arrested and charged with felony crimes accompanied by domestic terrorism enhancements. This represents a grave escalation in the use of legal force and demonstrates just how far the state is willing to go to criminalize even non-violent dissent.

In the wake of the massive George Floyd Uprising, along with the many anti-police uprisings that preceded it, the state has a determined interest in militarizing its security apparatus. There’s no doubt that increasing the use of militaristic training and equipment will result in intensified violence aimed at everyday people, particularly those who are Black and Brown. And such facilities and new funding will only further strengthen and shield a profession filled with perpetrators of misogynist and white supremacist violence.

Additionally, as we barrel headlong into climate catastrophe, we can not overlook the destruction of nearly 400 acres of forested land belonging to the Muscogee people. This is but one example of the rapacious drive for development that is hastening climate breakdown, rooted in the very foundations of the settler-colonial United States.

As members of Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra, our hearts break over the police killing of Tort and the toll that the defense of the forest has so far taken. We extend our solidarity to the Stop Cop City and Defend Atlanta Forest movements. Finally, we wish strength for Tort’s friends and family and a renewed vigor for the broader movement.

An attack on one movement is an attack on all. Time after time, popular resistance has shown the police’s plans can be defeated. We can do it again.

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Two members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra’s California Bay Area Local were interviewed by It’s Going Down News on the massive academic worker strike in the University of California system. The discussion covered a range of topics, from the wildcat strike that proceeded this moment, to building a militant minority, to extending the struggle […]

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by Members of both Black Rose Bay Area and UAW 2865 On November 14, over 48,000 teaching assistants, tutors, readers, associate instructors, other Academic Student Employees (ASEs), Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs), and postdoctoral employees across the University of California (UC) launched the largest coordinated strike the United States’s higher education sector has ever seen. On […]

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Troy Araiza Kokinis reflects on the life and revolutionary work of Juan Carlos Mechoso, who passed on October 11, 2022. Juan Carlos was a founding member of our sister organization, Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) and he will be dearly missed. Black Rose/Rosa Negra sends its heartfelt greetings and solidarity to the family, friends, and comrades […]

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Bruno Lima Rocha is a political scientist, professional journalist and professor of international relations based in Brazil, and is a member of the editorial board of the Institute for Anarchist Theory and History (IATH-ITHA). The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN): Looming over much of the political […]

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By Rafael V. Da Silva, Kauan Willian and Victor Khaled Translated by S Nicholas Nappalos This article was originally published by Jacobin Brasil. Introduction With neither Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) nor Lula (Workers’ Party) able to secure an outright majority during the October 2nd presidential election in Brazil, both advance to a run off election set […]

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by Black Rose / Rosa Negra – International Relations Committee Introduction On September 13th, 2022, 22 year old Mahsa Amini was arrested by an Iranian Guidance Patrol (also known as ‘morality police’). Mahsa was arrested in Tehran for not abiding by laws relating to dress. Three days later, on September 16th, police informed Mahsa’s family […]

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We present here our 2022 Fall agitation posters, ready to be printed out and used to decorate your room, your office, maybe even one of those boring walls you see everyday on your way to work. For more information on how you might affix these posters to walls, consult this video!

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Context and Introduction by Black Rose/Rosa Negra External Education CommitteeTranslation by Black Rose/Rosa Negra International Relations Committee Beginning in late 2019, millions of people began taking to the streets across Chile. Initially sparked by a student protest against public transit fare hikes, the mass demonstrations soon took on a popular character, with participants demanding redress […]

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This document was produced by the Brazilian Anarchist Coordinator [Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira] (CAB), a group of anarchist organizations working collaboratively across Brazil. It is translated and reprinted here with the permission of our sister organizations participating in CAB. The document has also served as an anchor point in recent discussions on feminism within Black Rose […]

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Introduction On July 11, a wave of anti-government protests shook Cuban reality at a national level. Initiated from the outskirts of the archipelago, such as San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, and Palma Soriano in the province of Santiago, the protests spread to several cities and towns in less than 24 hours. Thousands of […]

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Introducción El 11 de Julio una ola de protestas antigubernamentales sacudió la realidad del territorio nacional cubano. Iniciadas desde las periférias del archipiélago, como San Antonio de los Baños, cerca de la Habana, y Palma Soriano en la provincia de Santiago, las protestas se expandieron a varias ciudades y pueblos en menos de 24 horas. […]

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By Black Rose / Rosa Negra Labor Committee Over the weekend of June 17-19, some 4,000 union members and affiliates congregated in Chicago for the 2022 Labor Notes Conference. Owing both to the fact that the biennial conference had been postponed in 2020 and to a modest (but nonetheless exciting) uptick in new union activity […]

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by Felipe Corrêa This article was originally published in 2010 by the Brazilian journal Espaço Livre. It has subsequently been republished by the Institute for Anarchist Theory and History. It has been translated by Enrique Guerrero-López (a member of Black Rose/Rosa Negra). It is again republished here in its entirety. Introduction The present text aims […]

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The following is a statement and analysis written and endorsed by Locals and at large members of the Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. Introduction We must fight for access to safe, legal, free, and universally available abortion. The people of the United States are in the midst of a critical moment. On May […]

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This article was originally published in 2016 for I Congreso Internacional de Investigadorxs sobre Anarquismo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was subsequently translated by Enrique Guerrero-López (a member of Black Rose/Rosa Negra), for publication via the Institute for Anarchist Theory and History in 2021. The original Portuguese version can be found here. We republish the […]

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This article originally appeared in the Perspectives on Anarchist Theory Journal (No. 32) published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 2021. A brief updated introduction has been appended below, but otherwise the text is presented without modification. April 2022 Introduction This article was originally composed in the Fall and Winter of 2020. By that […]

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[Español abajo] In 2020 Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) began experiencing serious internal political conflict over the direction of our organization, its strategy, and its structures. The organizational turmoil produced by this conflict was greatly exacerbated by the psychological, social, and political strain brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd Uprising. […]

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