Keegan D. & June Vass | Red Phoenix correspondents–

Fire has recently become the weapon of choice for workers disillusioned by the capitalist system and frustrated with the antagonisms of the bosses and owners. Rather than condemn these relatable expressions of justified rage, we implore workers nationwide to let these fires inspire us to organize to put an end to the root causes of our collective suffering.

It only takes one person to burn down a warehouse. When we work together we can seize control of our own workplaces and build the infrastructure to burn the entire system that oppresses us, lighting the way for a truly democratic economy by and for the masses.

Fires have been started by workers at warehouses in Ontario, California as well as in Queens, New York, and Molotov cocktails have started fires at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home and a Tesla sales office in Louisiana.

Of these incidents, the Ontario fire at a paper products warehouse garnered the most attention on social media due to a post made by the alleged suspect in which they recorded themselves setting paper products ablaze while repeating the phrase:

“All you had to do was pay us enough to live.”

In these screen grabs from a video, a Kimberly-Clark warehouse burns in Ontario, Calif., April 7, 2026. (KABC)

A similar video has also gone viral, showing another worker recording themself sitting on top of a shipping container, joyously kicking their legs, while the warehouse behind them burns.

These fires come as many working-class Americans are reaching our breaking point due to increasing exploitation at the workplace, dwindling wages amid rising costs of living, expanding political repression, the destruction of communities for the development of data centers and other capitalist vanity projects, and being forced to shoulder the increasing financial burden of the bloodthirsty war on Iran.

While some armchair academics, disconnected from the plights of workers, may spend their time critiquing the long-term efficacy of these fires at accomplishing their own personal idealized version of “revolution,” working-class revolutionaries must look at the situation for what it is: an outcry of frustration and despair by those who cannot see a viable path forward.

These fires are an organic expression of the desperation we currently feel due to the many points of crisis in the capitalist system. It is our duty to make clear to our fellow workers that destruction is not the only option.

We, the workers, have revolutionary potential when we organize together, as we can learn from studying the history of labor struggles in the U.S., such as the Bread and Roses Strike and the Ludlow Massacre.

The capitalist class should cower in fear of the collective power of the working masses, not only under the threat of these attacks on production to continue, but that, with the right organization and discipline, this discontent may intensify into a movement in which we control the means of production ourselves.

In our current political situation, in which the capitalist class is launching an endless stream of assaults against working people both domestically and internationally, it can often feel like the only option is an outburst of justified rage. This tactic is however insufficient to genuinely challenge the power of the capitalist class, and often results in even harsher crackdowns on revolutionaries by the bourgeois state in the long run.

The series of workplace fires that began in April have been viewed positively by large sections of working people who understand and relate to the frustrations of the alleged arsonists, but such acts should not be viewed as the only model for resistance. As workers we must bring together those disgusted by the exploitation inherent to the capitalist system to organize a unified and disciplined revolutionary strategy which can pair acts of sabotage with a broader strategy of building working-class power: one that will genuinely challenge the capitalist class’s reign and take control of our economy for ourselves.

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