Keep up the Pressure: We Demand a Permanent Ceasefire!

The temporary pause in the attack on Gaza can be turned into a permanent ceasefire that ends Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, but only if we stay in the streets! Now is the time to double our efforts to put pressure on the Biden administration – the main sponsor of the Israeli regime and its partner in mass murder – to end the war. We must continue to build momentum and shut down business as usual! 

We can’t afford to forget our historical responsibility to fight U.S. imperialism in the belly of the beast. It is urgent, for our siblings in Gaza and for all humanity, that we continue to build the movement for the liberation of Palestine. We need to remain steadfast in calling for a permanent ceasefire and an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine, now. We cannot let Israel resume dropping bombs on hospitals, schools and residential homes.

We live in a society that exploits the working class to the extent that we rarely have any time to breathe or spend time with loved ones. Consequently, holidays become an opportunity for many of our people to come together without sacrificing their livelihood. 

We strongly believe that the working class should be able to enjoy time with our families and community free from the imposition of consumerism, beyond the holidays invented by our class enemies and the national mythologies meant to erase the experience of colonization and exploitation of communities that continue to be oppressed, as is the case with the Indigenous communities living in the United States. 

As many across the country are preparing to come together in the context of Thanksgiving,let’s not forget the history of colonial violence on which this national holiday is rooted: land theft, exploitation, rape, extermination, environmental destruction, and genocide. Thanksgiving is, in fact, a day of mourning and commemoration of the millions of Native people massacred to build the imperialist project of the United States. It is important to find the connection in the colonial violence experienced by the Indigenous people in the U.S. to the current genocide of Palestinians at the hands of the apartheid state of Israel, and celebrated by U.S. imperialists. 

And this holiday season also presents a crucial opportunity for us to take a stand for the Palestinian people. We call on everyone to join the Shut it Down for Palestine movement: disrupt, march, rally and take other creative actions at commercial centers this Friday. Tens of thousands across the country will be shutting down business as usual on Black Friday, the most profitable day of the year for major retail corporations – join us! And take every opportunity you have to teach, talk and listen with family members and communities about the growing movement to free Palestine, and how Palestinians’ freedom is inseparable from liberation for working people here. 

This moment in history is like no other. Working people are experiencing the disastrous impacts of capitalism, colonialism, and U.S. imperialism on an unthinkable scale. In that same way, resistance and struggle have intensified, and the people are becoming more confident in our collective power to transform society. This is when we advance, until victory!