A-Infos (en) US, BRRN: Deep Organizing Against Genocide: Palestine and Rooted Social Movements (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

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. ---- Introduction ---- More 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 Boston

Members 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 Oakland

SEIU 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 B D S-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 Area

Healthcare 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 Area

Students 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 B D S 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 (B D S) 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.

Conclusion

Members 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.

https://blackrosefed.org/deep-organizing-palestine/
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