In this article several members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra offerreflections on their efforts to bring the fight for Palestinianliberation into their long term organizing efforts. Throughout, anemphasis is made on the distinction between temporary mobilization andan orientation toward sustained organizing in sites of everyday life-ourworkplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. ---- Introduction ---- More than100 days into Israel's genocidal assault on the people of Palestine andin turn some of the most vigorous anti-war mobilization in over adecade, so many of us who have been out in the streets have asked: Whatwill it take to actually stop the US war machine?Reflecting on the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq, it's clearit takes more than marching from point A to point B-and even more thanscattered direct actions like taking over highways, occupyingpoliticians' offices, or minor vandalism. Coming out into the streets,pouring our energy into actions, escalating to risk arrest, disruptingbusiness as usual, and then feeling exhausted and defeated is a commoncycle in the anti-war movement and in every struggle.Many of us in Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) first came to theorganization because we had grown tired of the cyclical nature ofactivism. We were reacting to crises just to end back up where westarted, only with depleted morale and fewer resources. We wanted tofind ways to gather and sustain momentum, retain historical memory, tendto the needs of movement participants, and build leverage to win fightsin the here and now-all to the ends of pushing toward a revolutionaryrupture. This is one reason why BRRN prioritizes rootedmovement-building where we live, work, and study and thus seek to moveaway from a focus on single-issue campaigns and activist subcultures.Admittedly, because we are still in the early stages of re-buildingfighting social movements, it can make mobilizing around emergencieslike the genocide in Palestine slower. This is in part because we areorganizing with heterogeneous groups of people and trying, for example,to bring our coworkers to actions, rather than to mobilize otherradicals or activists. We believe that this approach will ultimately bemore effective because we are building lasting organization in rootedsites of everyday struggle that can respond swiftly to future strugglesas well. We seek to do the organizing work of bringing new people intosocial movements and the political work of bringing them towardorganized anarchism, so that there will be more prepared militants downthe line. We know that organized, rather than simply mobilized,political struggle is far more effective in challenging imperialism inmoments of crisis.Our approach often flies under the radar. For one, it prioritizes actingin broader social movement spaces as co-equal participants, rather thanplacing an emphasis on ensuring our brand as a political organization isvisible on every call for mobilization or protest sign. While we alsoorganize and participate in large marches and other actions, believingthat they are necessary component of any social movement struggle, theseare not the core of what we focus on. Because of the aforementioned lackof visibility, combined with how important we think this organizingmodel is for actually building power, we want to highlight some of theless visible work that our membership is engaged in around Palestinesolidarity.This is not to show how to do things "the right way", but to show how ina variety of different contexts we can all do the basic-and often verymodest but necessary-work of building the foundations of movements sothat we end up with more comrades, power, and solidarity than we startedwith. At the end of a lot of Palestine solidarity marches, the speakersmake calls to go out and keep organizing because marches alone can'tstop Israel's genocidal attack-this is objectively true, but it's oftenunclear what that can look like, particularly for rank-and-filemilitants outside of the professionalized NGO and union bureaucracysystems. So what could these next steps look like? Here are someexamples 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 aphoto after a film screening and discussion.Tony has lived in the neighborhood of East Boston for 20 years, whileRoxana has lived and worked there for 6-both are members of BRRN. Theirmany years of organizing in the neighborhood have generated a lot ofconnections and relationships of trust. When the war on Gaza started,they were able to rely those long-term relationships to expand theirreach and bring together many of their neighbors to attend apro-Palestine march as a group. After reflecting on this initial effortwith a number who attended, the group chose to formalize its effort bycreating the East Boston for Palestine neighborhood organization. Thegroup has since hosted discussions and film screenings in theneighborhood, bringing together immigrant families from differentbackgrounds to learn about and discuss the connections between theirstruggles against imperialism. This organizing has helped create asupportive anti-imperialist community in the neighborhood and createdthe foundation for organizing around other issues in the place they callhome.In the current moment, there is a huge wave of support for thePalestinian struggle. For some, it's a political issue that they learnabout through activism. For others, the connection to Palestine has itsroots in being part of Muslim or Arab communities, or having experiencedand resisted the violence of colonialism and imperialism directly. Inorder to exact a cost on the imperialist machinery, we have to find waysto bring together seemingly disparate groups of people, create lastingorganization, and develop more strategic forms of resistance.By participating in the creation of an independent pro-Palestinianorganization, BRRN members in Boston have been able to avoid many of thepolitical limitations foisted on struggles by non-profit organizations,top-down labor unions, or the Democratic Party. In focusing on aspecific geography like a neighborhood, we are able to developrelationships rooted in a site of everyday life, instead of trying togrow insular activist cliques united around little more than ideology ora particular issue. This grants us the ability to collectively makesense of the current moment and its historical roots. We makeconnections of political and social solidarity in a process that buildsa shared world view. It also creates an accessible outlet for action forso many people that feel the urge to stand in solidarity, but may be newto 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 BRRNwhen she took part in planning a "Healthcare Workers for Black Lives"demonstration in 2020. Three years later, the connections made then havebecome central to organizing efforts happening now, as healthcareworkers come out to support Palestine. Workers at every major healthcareinstitution in the Bay Area have mobilized and begun forging moreextensive bonds with each other through a combination of previouslyexisting political connections, a national petition that connectedsignatories, visibility at marches, word-of-mouth, and ever-growingSignal and WhatsApp group-chats.It's in this context that Morgan sought to take the organizing aroundthe Palestine issue into her hospital. Initially meeting with a smallnucleus of like minded staff at her hospital, the group coalesced arounda plan to hold a daily outreach table in the hospital's courtyard, whichsought to connect with and educate coworkers around Palestinianliberation. Bringing in more participants allowed her to host an onlineteach-in on the Palestinian experience and brain trauma with a localPalestinian 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, withMorgan and her coworkers pushing for the hospital to divest frommilitarist and B D S-targeted corporations, establish a sister hospitalrelationship with a Palestinian hospital, and protect staff from anyretaliation for speaking out on Palestine. This organizing has beengreatly enhanced by Morgan's history as a rank-and-file union activistat the hospital, and helped to expand her political relationships at thehospital beyond her union and across different departments andprofessions. Morgan believes that the relationships she has builtthrough this process, most of which are at the hospital where sheintends to work for the rest of her career, have formed a foundationfrom which future fights can be waged.As a member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Morgan'sunion involvement has created even more opportunities for organizingoutside of just her own workplace. The union local to which she belongsis massive, covering much of Northern California. In the local, membersinitially organized for a ceasefire statement, and then an even strongerresolution that called for 1) an immediate and permanent ceasefire, 2)the end of all military aid to Israel, and 3) an end to the occupationof Palestine.Morgan and other rank-and-file SEIU members are building relationshipsthat can take this organizing beyond just paper resolutions, in thehopes that these actions will lead to enduring cross-industry organizingstructures. On a national level Morgan has participated in the "PurpleUp for Palestine" campaign to call on SEIU as a whole to demand aceasefire. The campaign has successfully pressured SEIU's unionpresident to release a statement calling for a ceasefire. This efforttoo has presented another opportunity to connect directly with otherworkers 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 ademonstration in San Francisco.On the other side of the Bay from Morgan is Grant, a long time member ofBRRN who recently started working at an academic medical center. UnlikeMorgan, Grant's hospital is mostly non-union. With almost no existingstructures connecting workers together, and no history of activism atthe hospital, pro-Palestine workers were starting from scratch.Fortunately a few individuals were able to connect through a nationalhealthcare workers for Palestine petition. From those initialconnections, Grant and other hospital workers were able to grow a loosenetwork of several dozen supporters, with pockets of organizing in acouple of hospital departments and the attached medical school. Theywere able to expand their base of support by organizing twodemonstrations at the hospital which involved more than a hundred oftheir co-workers.In a previously disorganized and seemingly apolitical environment, thePalestine solidarity organizing that Grant played a key role in pushingforward has created lasting connections between worker organizers acrossthe hospital. Without this system-wide effort, many of these coworkerswould not have encountered each other, let alone taken workplace actiontogether. These efforts have demonstrated to workers that theirworkplace is a site of political struggle, inspired new activists tostep up, and has been a means of supporting Palestinian workers in thehospital who are suffering most directly in the midst of the ongoinggenocide.As BRRN militants and healthcare workers in the Bay, both Grant andMorgan have also been participating together in the regional organizingthat is happening between hundreds of healthcare worker activists.Recently this culminated in a healthcare worker-led action that shutdown the offices of L3Harris, a weapons industry company whose bombshave been dropped on hospitals in Gaza. Together with members of thisgrowing network, Grant and Morgan are sinking roots into the hospitalsand clinics across the Bay, where healthcare workers have become open touniting in an unprecedented way.Student Organizing in the Bay AreaStudents rally for divestment from HP on Jan. 26, where they were joinedby a contingent of healthcare workers from Grant's hospital.As a first-year university student and integrating BRRN member, Dioretsahas been organizing around Palestinian liberation on her campus. Unlikethe other examples in this article, Dioretsa's university had anexisting structure for Palestine activism, including an active chapterof Students for Justice in Palestine and various left-oriented studentgroups. These groups were able to respond quickly and initiate a seriesof large rallies, teach-ins, and an ongoing sit-in protest that became avisible hub of Palestine solidarity. With this current moment proving tobe such a radicalizing experience for many, it has been important toprovide easily accessible spaces like the sit-in where new people cancome, make connections, and learn. The sit-in as a center for organizingactivity has also brought together a core of student activists who willlikely be at the heart of future leftist organizing.As winter quarter began, the students launched a divestment campaigntargeting the university's ties with Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP is beingtargeted because of its business contracts providing IT services to theIsraeli apartheid regime and its intimate links with the university.Student organizers also seek to forge and sustain a mass campus alliancebeyond the issue of Palestine through this campaign. Dioretsa's role ascoalition coordinator for the divestment campaign makes her a nexus ofvarious student organizations as well as Bay Area and national Palestinesolidarity groups.Bringing groups like the campus student-worker solidarity group (whichDioretsa is also a member of) into the divestment campaign coalitionrequires a lot of political work to show such groups how the fightagainst US imperialism and settler colonialism also concerns them.Rather than just focusing on bringing the already-committed Palestineactivists together to fight for Palestinian liberation, Dioretsa and herfellow organizers recognize the campaign will only be successful if itgoes beyond the "active club" model of action by building a base acrossall the different sectors of the university. That includes the differentundergrad groups, as well as law students, faculty, campus serviceworkers, medical students, healthcare workers, lab workers. In a word:everyone.An Instance of B D S Workplace Organizing in the SouthwestJoe does remote work for an environmental consulting company in theSouthwest. The company is involved in permitting for developmentprojects in the US and abroad. After October 7th, he learned that one ofthe projects he was working on was for an Israeli firm headquarteredabout 30 miles from the Jabalia refugee camp. Another assignment was fora transnational energy corporation on the boycott list for extractingoffshore gas on the Gaza coast. Joe reached out to some of his closecoworkers to open up a discussion about the Boycott, Divestment,Sanctions (B D S) campaign. Joe let them know he would be refusing towork on these two projects and further would reject work on any futureprojects involving companies complicit in the genocide in Palestine.While his coworkers were sympathetic and had reservations of their ownabout some of the work they have been asked to do, they were not readyto refuse the work together with him yet. Without a commitment tocollective action, Joe's individual action wasn't enough to put a stopto these projects, but he's been able to make space to talk with hiscoworkers about what role their labor may play in advancing or slowingdown settler colonialism, environmental justice, and global solidarity.It can be very hard to convince our co-workers to take brave steps likethis, but it's important that we're there to act as courageous examplesand as patient explainers. With consistent effort there is a huge amountof power that workers in sectors like this have to disrupt the colonialeconomy.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 andtaking action with the people who we work, live and study alongside of,we can build a strong base for anti-imperialist struggle. While theexamples here are small, they are powerful because of the deep andlasting organizing ties that form the necessary foundation of strongcollective action. We seek to unite these local efforts into widersocial movements where working people can democratically wield the powerneeded to bring down empire.To propel these efforts in potentially revolutionary directions, webelieve that it is important to continue to: organize in sites rooted ineveryday life; develop mechanisms of open and democratic decision makingthat exercise rank-and-file/bottom up control; analyze and pickeffective targets that are materially connected to Israel's war andoccupation; and initiate campaigns that really, directly impact thosetargets (distinct from largely symbolic actions that many hopefulradicals have grown frustrated participating in).The task at hand-to halt US efforts to underwrite and supply the meansfor a genocide of the Palestinian people-will not be easily won, so weneed to be in it for the long haul. Focusing our efforts in rootedmovement organizing will help us avoid the cyclical burnout of activistprotest by creating a sustainable internationalist and anti-imperialistpower from below.https://blackrosefed.org/deep-organizing-palestine/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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