This statement was prepared by the External Education Committee of Black
Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. Illustration by Dinelli. ----Around the world, millions of people will be taking to the streets today
in honor of May Day, International Workers' Day. In the U.S., mass
mobilizations from coast to coast, border to border are stringing
together various strands of a multiplying movement against the
accelerating authoritarianism of the Trump Regime. ---- This year's May
Day takes place in the shadow of Trump's first hundred days in office.
Since his inauguration, Trump has spearheaded a systematic assault on
the working class at home and abroad - firing thousands of federal
workers, militarizing the border with Mexico, terrorizing immigrants and
their families, targeting international students for their solidarity
with Palestine, bombing Yemen repeatedly, and attacking trans people,
labor unions, and free speech.
Elon Musk and Trump have slashed federal administrative departments and
agencies across the board, but key to their reactionary offensive is
also the rapid expansion of the repressive arm of the state. The Trump
administration plans to hire thousands more Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) stormtroopers, expand its network of concentration
camps, and promises a trillion dollar military budget as it continues to
back Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people.
As we fill the streets today with our co-workers, neighbors, classmates,
and comrades, we should be clear-eyed about the fight ahead: no one is
coming to save us. In response to the ongoing onslaught from the White
House, the Democratic Party has barely mustered symbolic opposition,
while the "Fight Oligarchy" tour, led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez, seeks to channel popular discontent against Trump back
into the voting booth.
International Workers' Day is an opportunity to demonstrate where our
most potent weapon lies: in an independent, organized, and militant
working class capable of disrupting politics and business as usual and
stretching its solidarity across global borders. When the marches end,
we must continue patiently and persistently building our power from
below; in our workplaces, neighborhoods, sites of incarceration and
schools, outside and against the state. This power-popular power-is
forged and strengthened when we use it as a fulcrum to pry concessions
from the hands of the bosses and the state.
Even as the authoritarian assault accelerates, we can seize victories.
After the State Department detained and attempted to deport Mohsen
Mahdawi, a green card holder and a prominent Palestinian organizer at
Columbia University, tens of thousands demanded his release; to the
cheers of hundreds of protestors, he walked free yesterday. Similarly,
neighbors put their bodies on the line to deliver food, water, and
gasoline to a Tennessee man targeted by ICE until agents backed off.
Solidarity in action is our weapon.
On May Day, we remember the Haymarket Martyrs, anarchist labor leaders
executed by the state for their fight for the eight hour workday.
Recalling "The Crime of November Eleventh," the infamous date on which
the state hanged Albert Parsons, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, and
August Spies, the famous anarchist Emma Goldman, proclaimed:
"Our great dead, from the scaffold and the block, the rifle shots and
the electric chair, who sent their last greetings to Liberty, are not
dead; they live with us always, unto all eternity. Thus the people learn
to know the men and women who have perished for the emancipation and
liberation of all...Their thoughts and deeds supply the leaven by means
of which will rise a new and beautiful world."
For popular power!
For libertarian socialism!
For "a new and beautiful world"!
https://www.blackrosefed.org/international-workers-day-2025/
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