WORLD WORLDWIDE BELGIUM BRUSSELS News Journal Update - (en) Bruxel, UCL - Social organization against genocide: Palestine and established social movements (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Here we translate an article from our sister organization Black Rose /
Rosa Negra in the United States with which we share not only the
libertarian communist political project but also the "specificist"
practice described in the introduction. ---- In this article, several
members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra share their thoughts on their efforts
to integrate the struggle for Palestinian liberation into their
long-term organizing activities. Throughout the article, emphasis is
placed on the distinction between temporary mobilization and an
orientation towards sustainable organization in everyday places - our
workplaces, our schools and our neighborhoods.

Introduction
More than 100 days after Israel's genocidal assault on the Palestinian
people and the most powerful peace mobilization in over a decade, many
of us who took to the streets are asking ourselves: question: What will
it take to really stop the American war machine?

Reflecting on the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq, it is
clear that more is needed than a march from point A to point B, and even
more than scattered actions such as the occupation of highways,
politicians' offices or minor acts of vandalism. Going out into the
streets, pouring your energy into action, going so far as to risk
arrest, disrupting the normal course of things, and then feeling
exhausted and defeated is a cycle common to the anti-war movement and to
all struggles. .

Many of us within Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) joined the organization
because we were tired of the cyclical nature of activism . We were
mobilizing on issues just so as not to get past the starting point once
the mobilization was over, but with low morale and reduced resources. We
wanted to find ways to gather and maintain momentum, preserve the memory
of struggles, meet the needs of movement participants, and create
leverage to win fights in the here and now - all in the aim of pushing
towards a revolutionary rupture. This is one of the reasons why BRRN
prioritizes building movements rooted where we live, work and study, and
therefore seeks to move away from a focus on single-issue campaigns and
sub-regions. activist cultures.

It is true that the fact that we are still in the early stages of
rebuilding combative social movements may make mobilization around
emergency situations such as the genocide in Palestine slower. Part of
the reason for this is that we organize with heterogeneous groups of
people and try, for example, to lead our co-workers into action, rather
than mobilizing other radicals or activists. . We believe this approach
will ultimately be more effective because we are building a sustainable
organization in living spaces with a daily struggle that can respond
quickly to future struggles. We seek to do the organizing work of
bringing new people into social movements and the political work of
bringing them into organized anarchism, so that there are more prepared
activists. are in the future. We know that organized, rather than simply
mobilized, political struggle is far more effective in challenging
imperialism in moments of crisis.

Our approach often goes unnoticed. First, it prioritizes action in
broader social movement spaces as equal participants, rather than
emphasizing ensuring that our brand as an organization politics is
visible on every call for mobilization or on every protest sign.
Although we also organize and participate in large marches and other
actions, believing that this is a necessary component of any struggle,
it is not the main part of what we focus on. Due to the aforementioned
lack of visibility and the importance we place on this model of
organizing for power building, we want to highlight some of the less
visible work our members are engaged in as part of the solidarity with
Palestine.

It is not about showing how to do things "the right way", but about
showing how, in a variety of different contexts, we can all do the basic
work - often very modest but necessary - 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 many Palestine solidarity marches,
speakers call to get out and continue organizing because marches alone
cannot stop Israel's genocidal attack - this is objectively true, but it
is often unclear what this might look like, particularly for grassroots
activists outside the professionalized bureaucratic systems of NGOs and
unions. So what might the next steps look like? Here are some examples
of what the members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra have managed to do.

The organization of a neighborhood in Boston

Members of the East Boston Tenant Committee for Palestine pose for a
photo after a screening and discussion.

Tony has lived in the East Boston neighborhood for 20 years, while
Roxana has lived and worked there for 6 years - both are BRRN members.
Their many years of organizing in the neighborhood have allowed them to
build bonds and relationships of trust. When the war on Gaza began, they
were able to leverage these relationships to expand their reach and
bring together large numbers of their neighbors to attend a group march
in support of Gaza. Palestine. After brainstorming this initial effort
with a number of participants, the group chose to formalize their effort
by creating the neighborhood organization East Boston for Palestine.
Since then, the group has organized discussions and film screenings in
the neighborhood, bringing together immigrant families from different
backgrounds to discover and discuss the connections between their
struggles against imperialism. This organization helped create a
supportive anti-imperialist community in the neighborhood and laid the
foundation for organizing around other issues in the place they call home.

Currently, the Palestinian struggle is enjoying a huge wave of support.
For some, it is a political issue that they discover through activism.
For others, the connection with Palestine is rooted in belonging to
Muslim or Arab communities, or in the direct experience of the violence
of colonialism and imperialism, which they resisted. In order to impose
a cost on the imperialist machinery, we must find ways to bring together
groups of seemingly diverse people, create lasting organizing, and
develop more strategic forms of resistance.

By participating in the creation of an independent pro-Palestinian
organization, Boston BRRN members were able to avoid many of the
political limitations placed on struggles by nonprofits, unions, or the
Democratic Party. By focusing on a limited territory like a
neighborhood, we are able to develop relationships rooted in a site of
daily life, instead of trying to develop scattered activist cliques
united around little more than ideology or a particular question. This
allows us to collectively make sense of the present moment. We establish
links of political and social solidarity as part of a process that
builds a common vision of the world. It also creates a means of action
accessible to many people who feel the need to stand in solidarity, but
who may be new to the movement, or who feel marginalized by
"professional activism."

"East Boston for Palestine" can be found on Instagram: @ebxpal

Organizing healthcare workers in Oakland

SEIU 1021 members march for Palestine in Oakland.

Morgan is an Oakland nurse who began organizing with BRRN when she
helped organize a "Healthcare Workers for Black Lives" protest in 2020.
Three years later, the connections made at era have become essential to
organizing efforts today, as health workers mobilize in support of
Palestine. Workers at every major health care facility in the Bay Area
mobilized and began to forge closer ties with each other through a
combination of existing political connections, a national petition that
relationship between signatories, visibility during marches, word of
mouth and group discussions on Signal and WhatsApp which continue to grow.

It is in this context that Morgan sought to integrate organization
around the Palestinian question into his hospital. The group first met
with a small core of like-minded hospital employees and coalesced around
a plan to hold a daily outreach table in the courtyard of the hospital.
hospital, to connect with colleagues and educate them about the
liberation of Palestine. The arrival of other participants allowed him
to organize an online training session on the Palestinian experience and
brain trauma with a local Palestinian doctor, to co-organize an internal
gathering of around fifty colleagues and, more later, to organize a
public rally for Palestine in front of the hospital.

Currently, the campaign has taken a longer-term view, with Morgan and
colleagues pushing for the hospital to divest from its engagements with
militarist and  B D S -targeted companies, establish a sister hospital
relationship with a Palestinian hospital , and protects staff from any
reprisals for speaking out about Palestine. This organizing work was
greatly facilitated by Morgan's history as a rank-and-file union
activist at the hospital, and helped extend her political connections at
the hospital beyond her union and across different departments and
professions. Morgan believes the relationships she made during this
process, many at the hospital where she plans to work for the rest of
her career, have provided a foundation from which future fights can be
built. led.

As a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
Morgan's union involvement created even more opportunities for
organizing outside of his own workplace. The local chapter to which she
belongs is very large and covers a large part of Northern California.
Within the local, members first organized a ceasefire declaration, then
an even stronger resolution that demanded 1) an immediate and permanent
ceasefire, 2) an end to all aid military to Israel and 3) the end of the
occupation of Palestine.

Morgan and other SEIU members are building relationships that will move
this organization beyond simple paper resolutions, with the hope that
these actions will result in lasting inter-industry organizing
structures. On a national level, Morgan participated in the "Purple Up
for Palestine" campaign to call on the entire SEIU to demand a
ceasefire. The campaign successfully pressured the SEIU union president
to issue a statement calling for a ceasefire. This effort also provided
a new opportunity to directly connect with other workers outside of
formal and often bureaucratized union structures.

More healthcare workers organize in the San Francisco Bay Area

Healthcare workers from several hospitals after a protest in San Francisco.

Across the bay, Grant, a longtime BRRN member, recently started working
at an academic medical center. Unlike Morgan, Grant's hospital is
largely non-union. Since there is virtually no structure connecting
workers together and no history of activism at the hospital,
pro-Palestinian workers were starting from scratch. Fortunately, a few
people were able to connect thanks to a national petition from health
workers for Palestine. From these initial contacts, Grant and other
hospital workers were able to develop an informal network of several
dozen supporters, with pockets of organization in a few departments of
the hospital and in the school of medicine attached to it. They were
able to expand their support base by organizing two events at the
hospital, in which more than a hundred of their colleagues participated.

In a previously disorganized and seemingly "apolitical" environment,
Palestine solidarity organizing, which Grant helped advance, created
lasting connections between organizers and workers across the country.
'hospital. Without this system-wide effort, many of these colleagues
would never have met, much less acted together in the workplace. These
efforts demonstrated to workers that their workplace is a site of
political struggle, inspired new activists to get involved, and provided
support for Palestinian hospital workers who are suffering. most
directly from the ongoing genocide.

As BRRN activists and health care workers in the Bay, Grant and Morgan
have also participated together in the regional organizing that is
taking place among hundreds of health care workers. Recently, this
culminated in action by health workers who closed the offices of
L3Harris, a military industry company whose bombs were dropped on
hospitals in Gaza. With members of this expanding network, Grant and
Morgan are putting down roots in hospitals and clinics across the Bay
Area, where healthcare workers are now ready to unite in unprecedented ways.

Student Organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area

Student march for the boycott of HP on January 26, where the students
were joined by some of the health workers from Grant hospital .

As a first-year college student and member of BRRN, Dioretsa organized
around Palestinian liberation on her campus. Unlike other examples cited
in this article, Dioretsa University had an existing structure for
Palestine activism, including an active section of Students for Justice
in Palestine and various student groups oriented to the left. These
groups were able to respond quickly and launch a series of large
rallies, teachings, and sit-in protests that became a visible hub of
solidarity with Palestine. With the current moment proving to be a
radicalizing experience for many, it has been important to provide
easily accessible spaces like the sit-in where new people can come,
connect, and learn. The sit-in, as a center of organizing, also brought
together a core of active students who will likely be central to
left-wing organizing in the future.

At the start of the winter term, students launched a divestment campaign
targeting the university's ties to Hewlett-Packard (HP) . HP is targeted
because of its commercial contracts providing IT services to the Israeli
apartheid regime and its close ties to the university. Student
organizers also seek to forge and maintain a mass alliance on campus
beyond the issue of Palestine through this campaign. Dioretsa's role as
coalition coordinator for the divestment campaign makes her a link
between various student organizations and Palestine solidarity groups in
the Bay Area and across the country.

Bringing groups like the campus student-worker solidarity group (of
which Dioretsa is also a member) into the divestment campaign coalition
requires a lot of political work to show these groups that the fight
against U.S. imperialism and colonialism concerns them too. Rather than
focusing on bringing together Palestinian activists already engaged in
the struggle for Palestinian liberation, Dioretsa and her fellow
organizers recognize that the campaign will only be successful if it
goes beyond the 'active club' model of action by building a base across
all different sectors of the university. This includes different groups
of undergraduate students, as well as law students, professors, campus
service workers, medical students, industry workers health, laboratory
workers. In a word: everyone.

An example of  B D S  workplace organization in the South West
Joe works remotely for an environmental consulting company located in
the southwest United States. This company handles the issuance of
permits for development projects in the United States and abroad. After
October 7, he learned that one of the projects he was working on was for
an Israeli company headquartered about 30 kilometers from the Jabalia
refugee camp . Another mission was given to a transnational energy
company on the boycott list for offshore gas extraction on the Gaza
coast. Joe reached out to some of his close colleagues to open a
discussion about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ( B D S )
campaign. Joe let them know that he would refuse to work on these two
projects and that he would also refuse to work on any other projects
involving companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine.

Although his colleagues are understanding and they themselves have
reservations about some of the work that has been asked of them, they
are not yet ready, like him, to refuse to work. Without collective
commitment, Joe's individual action was not enough to stop these
projects, but he was able to discuss with his colleagues the role their
work may play in advancing or slowing colonialism of settlement,
environmental justice and global solidarity. It can be very difficult to
convince our colleagues to take courageous steps like this, but it is
important that we are there to serve as courageous examples and patient
explanations. With continued effort, workers in sectors like this have
enormous power to disrupt the colonial economy.

Conclusion

BRRN members participating in a blockade of the Port of Oakland

With this article we hope to illustrate how, by speaking and acting with
the people with whom we work, live and study, we can build a solid
foundation for the anti-imperialist struggle. Although the examples
presented here are modest, they are powerful because of the deep and
enduring organizing ties that provide the necessary foundation for
strong collective action. We seek to unite these local efforts into
broader social movements where workers can democratically exercise the
power needed to take down imperialism.

To propel these efforts in potentially revolutionary directions, we
believe it is important to continue to: organize in sites rooted in
everyday life; develop open and democratic decision-making mechanisms
that exercise bottom-up control; analyze and choose effective targets
that are materially linked to the Israeli war and occupation; and launch
campaigns that have a real and direct impact on these targets (as
distinct from the largely symbolic actions that many hopeful radicals
have felt frustrated by participating in these actions).

The task at hand - stopping US efforts to finance and provide the means
for genocide of the Palestinian people - will not be easy to win, which
is why we must commit to the long term. By focusing our efforts on
grassroots movement organizing, we will avoid the cyclical exhaustion of
militant protests by creating lasting internationalist and
anti-imperialist power from the ground up.

https://bxl.communisteslibertaires.org/2024/02/02/lorganisation-sociale-contre-le-genocide-la-palestine-et-les-mouvements-sociaux-implantes/
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