Latest Dispatches

Israel has been ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people from their indigenous lands since the Nakba in 1948, but in the last week this genocidal campaign has escalated into one of full on extermination in Gaza. More than 2 million people are confined to an open air prison. Bombs are being dropped on their homes, their schools, their roads and their hospitals. White phospherus fills the air burning all in sight. Israel has said explicitly that It is targeting all Palestinians, even civilians, even children.

Over 3,000 people have already been murdered and those that remain are being starved and denied water. These acts are happening with the full support & funding of the US. We stand unequivocally in solidarity with Palestinians in their fight for liberation and against all settler colonial and fascist states from the US to Israel. Stop the Genocide and Free Palestine.

It feels like 9/11 again. New conflicts, old arguments and familiar scapegoats. And in the sense that the western world at large has refocussed it’s lust for god, guns and genocide from it’s current infatuation with post Jim Crow black folks and model minorities, to it’s old infatuation with the mongol hordes in the far east. Coveting the silk, the spices, the rubber, commodities consumed to sate an appetite of extraction and oppression.

And this time it is in defense of one of it’s favorite vassals. An apartheid state propped up by u.s. tax dollars to keep a strategic foothold in the middle east. Occupying another subjegated population that “should be grateful” for the “civilization” that was given them by a conquerring force. A populace that should be heard and not seen, and if they defend their home (as is their right according by international law), they are met with cluster bombs, white phosphorus and inhumanity. “Stop resisting, comply, stop resisting”: familiar chants uttered as they are oblitterated beyond memory. Familiar phrases spoken by another occupying police force that trains with the idf.

Wan smoke of self-made fires envelop the cityscape of another city on occupied land. The fires of xenophobia, islamophobia and zionism, all being stoked by old superstitions of ones sky father being better than anothers sky father. State news saying hamas has sleeper cells ready to attack the states, the nypd telling new yorkers not to ride the subway because of terrorist attacks, people posting flyers all around the city stating false crimes by Palestinians. It is the exact same playbook and exact response that this late-stage colonial empire applied 22 years ago, and everyone is lapping it up and slow walking us to another unwinnable war to line the pockets of weapons contractors.

Palestinians, Jews, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Argentinians, Venezualians, Colombians, Mexicans and all people of every land, love, rage and solidarity. With the people always and never with the warring city-states that fracture sisters and brothers against each other. The seas are rising, the people are rising, and one day we will all gaze at the same horizon together.

Adisorn of The Hills

“As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing, “Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.”

- James Oppenheim

At the September General Assembly, we received a special invitation: to join a community-labor coalition committed to supporting the campaign to unionize a food factory in NYC. Supported by Brandworkers, an organization of food factory workers of color building a solidarity union with the International Workers of the World (IWW) in NYC, they soon hope to launch a public campaign. But since the campaign is presently undercover, one of the workers, who we shall only identify as A., addressed the assembly, along with Gabriel Morales of Brandworkers, to lay out the cause:

Opening Comments from Gabriel Morales at Brandworkers:

I’ve been a member of MACC for many years now. Brandworkers is a membership organization of food factory workers organizing with the IWW. Based in Long Island City, we have a unique approach to workplace organizing, to unlock the potential of local food organizing. We have members in a number of places, recovering millions of dollars in wages, defining best practices in the food factory industry, and turning the tide against a food system that is HYPER-exploitative. The US food system has its roots in slavery, imperialism, neoliberal deals. Workers are predominantly contending with extreme hardship on the job: death on the job, women workers are underrepresented in pay and power, overrepresented in terms of sexual violence, assault and harassment.Workers face staggering obstacles to forming a union.

Labor unions have had great wins in the last few years, but only 6.4% of workers are represented by a union. We as workers, anarchists, and leftists do not have the ability to express our collective power. Wage inequity in the United States is as bad as it was during WWI, one hundred years ago. Workers don’t have the organization necessary to fight back against exploitation. This situation, incredible wage inequity paired with a low level of organization is almost the exact same social context that led to an upsurge of radical unionism, often led by anarchists, in the early 20th century.

14 years ago, I was a young anarchist and hotel worker, really pulled by the philosophy of anarchism, but not grounded in anything. It’s only in union organizing that I found what I actually believed.

Testimony of an undercover worker in a NYC food factory, A___

Thank you everybody, I would like to let everyone know my name is A__ Thank you, MACC, for this invitation. I’m going to tell you a little of my story.

I am Mexican and I have been working and living in New York for decades, making bread for decades. I am proud of my work and think I do well in it. My job description is to shape the bread - like the baguette, the babka, bread made from potato, which is delicious - there are countless shapes I can do.

There are workers at the bakery in production: shaping the bread, putting it into the oven, cutting it, putting in work orders of the bread for distributors, etc. We are a group where each worker has a role inside the factory.

Inside the factory there are also a lot of violations, wage theft, no sick days or stolen sick days. Inside the corporation, my personal thing is that we are not valued by the company.

Each of us has a different role in our lives: I am a loving person, I have pets, I love the pets, they are part of my life. We’ve been through the pandemic (we lost a worker) you may ask me, why am I talking about my pets? Because, if pets are important for us in our lives, they should be valued. We believe the company does not value us at all. We’re not important: they didn’t give us a mask during the pandemic up until now. We cannot social distance and we cannot talk about it. Why? Because it’s hectic, all the time moving around. We lost one coworker - and our employer did not even say sorry to us.

So, that’s why tonight I want to invite MACC to join our coalition: it is right now undercover. For many reasons, we are organizing under cover. But soon this is going to become viral, going to become known. We want MACC to join us for this moment.

For now, I think that’s all I want to say. I’m very thankful to allow me to express this to you. You will also need some time to talk. But thank you very much for allowing me to speak.