This commemorative month is about audaciousness, refusing to accept enslavement. About looking back.
Slavery had existed in Haiti for 300 years before the revolution, centuries before Nat Turner’s rebellion and before the Combahee River Raid led by Harriet Tubman. There was no “pragmatic reason” to think slavery would not continue, to try to make peace or have a “peaceful” life. Instead, people gave their lives for liberation, and many more performed brave acts we will never know.
Black August was created by people who, as Assata Shakur, a member of Black August LA, described as “the people in jail, under the jail.” They were fighters who were hurt and angered by the murder of George Jackson and Jonathan Jackson. They developed a commemorative month not just to tell history but to inspire people to finally liberate the planet from capitalism, imperialism, bigotry, and destruction. Political prisoners play a vital role in our militancy.
For those of us who are part of the liberatory struggle, the struggle for socialism, we can take heart that despite mass incarceration, genocide, and the horrors committed by this system, the red thread is unbroken. Some people say, “We are not our ancestors.” In fact, we are, and for the Nat Turners, Toussaint-Louvertures, Harriet Tubmans, and Bunchy Carters, we continue our struggle with lessons from them.
That no one is free if anyone is oppressed. The struggle against capitalism must be a struggle for Black Liberation. The attacks on Haitian immigrants and the imperialist plunder in Africa and the Caribbean are a result of the leadership of the U.S. government, its capitalists, and its toadies, mainly in the apartheid state of Israel. We must unite on a consistent and strategic basis across the world, through networks like La Izquierda Diario, which are working together throughout Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Our combativeness, bravery, and creativity must be led by the working class, which has the most powerful weapon — the power to shut down the economy around the world. As we saw during the Great General Strike that Du Bois wrote about in Black Reconstruction, when the slaves leave the plantation, the slave system collapses. If we think about where we work — the places we make money for someone else — and can shut down those places, we would control the economy.
People did this in Palestine during the general strike in 2022. The strike in solidarity with Palestine in California was organized by UAW 4811, many of whose members participated as members of the DSA.
Because of the anti-ICE organizing in Los Angeles and Minnesota, where tens of thousands marched in below-freezing weather saying, “No work, no school, no shopping,” they forced the Trump administration to retreat. Even as Trump attempted to advance in Iran, his administration’s nose was already bloodied. The working class — who is Black, Latino, trans, women, immigrants, and youth — is powerful, and Black Lives Matter — the largest social movement in recent history — demonstrates that when the multiracial youth and working class unite to defend the oppressed, we can advance our interests. As the police unite with ICE to target our communities, workplaces, and homes, abolition is still the solution. Cops are not workers — they are evictors and strikebreakers, and they have no place in our movements. Abolition is still our answer, but there is no way we can abolish the police without the destruction of capitalism and imperialism. We must organize, as Fred Hampton said, for “International Proletarian Solidarity.”
A weakened Trump is not a defeated Trump. Our most powerful weapons are our labor, our tenacity, and our unity. Because of the fight against Trump in the U.S., the anti-ICE struggle, and the weakening of U.S. imperialism worldwide, we have an opportunity to build socialism organizationally. In Los Angeles, DSA LA has over 6,000 members, thousands of whom consider themselves socialists. I want to encourage people to join DSA not because it is a ready-made organization, but the opposite — so that you can bring your politics, ideas, and strategy to the organization and learn from it. We must fight for class-independent politics. Both the Republicans and Democrats are scared, and they should be. To unite the fight against ICE with the defense of political prisoners, Palestine, and organizing the rank and file is the most terrible nightmare of the capitalists, imperialists, cops, and bigots, as well as their administrators in the capitalist parties.
George Jackson discussed reading as liberatory, saying, “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison, and they redeemed me.” Black August itself was created by political prisoners, as was the case in Palestine, and by Black political prisoners who were liberated because of political organization.
The continued strategic attack on the movement is the political repression carried out by the police in the service of both capitalist parties. From the stresses to the jails and prisons, we must fight for all charges to be dropped and for the freedom of all political prisoners. From the Prairieland to Palestine, from Minnesota, we are only as strong as our fight for our attacked comrades. From the First World War, our comrades of the socialist tradition were arrested for protesting war. Black people and immigrants are not just targeted because of racism but because these groups have contributed to political analysis and the combative fight — from CLR James in Trinidad, who wrote the Marxist analysis of the Haitian Revolution, Black Jacobins, to George Jackson.
Our fight to defend our democratic rights is a beginning, not an end. In our fight for Housing for All, finishing Reconstruction, and ending mass incarceration, as the DSA platform presents, we can only achieve that through a class-independent program. The genociders, the AIPAC Democrats, are just one of many enemies who attack us and our right to political organization. Billionaires and workers have diametrically opposed interests. We should fight to run class-independent candidates — workers from our own class — to be our political representatives. The slave patrols of the Nat Turner revolt, the LAPD of the 1965 uprising, and every fight since have shown us this. Not just one person, not just one department, or even one official. We don’t want to get rid of ICE, let alone the cops, sheriffs, and military. Abolition is not reckless; it is anti-capitalism. We can’t meet absurdity with pragmatism but with strategy and socialist determination. I would like to give you an example. Last year, my union, SEIU 721, went on strike. We correctly called out the LA County Board of Supervisors for fighting so hard to prevent us from getting a cost-of-living increase. Those of us, like myself, who worked during the pandemic, whose coworkers and clients died, are now going to be asked to campaign for those same people to be reelected. This isn’t anything new, but what should be new is that we fight for workers — and socialist workers, at that — to be in office. There is no way we can have political representation when the people in office represent and defend landlords and cops — that is the Republicans and Democrats — and keep us living on poverty wages. I don’t care how many land acknowledgments they do. It’s not actually respectful to our lives and the people we serve. I think our aim should be for workers’ control. That can only come through intentional political organization for class independence.
Our capability is to organize the poorest, the most oppressed, the working class in a combative, insurrectionary, liberatory struggle.
We are on hallowed ground. Just a few miles from here, the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party had its headquarters. In the 1990s, in 2013, and then in 2020, the city rose up for Black lives. In 2025, the youth burned Waymos as the city braced itself as unions united, calling for the release of David Huerta. After a coalition of right-wing Zionists, anti-trans zealots, cops, and sheriffs united to break down the encampment at UCLA, not only did the encampment hold, but UAW 4811 went on strike across California. Los Angeles is a city of combat and class struggle, and it is for us to unite those forces, to unite them in a class-independent program, and to use our most powerful weapon — the strike. As the Italians did for Palestine, “Block Everything.”
An eclipse recently happened in Spain, and as some people may be aware, Nat Turner’s rebellion, which took place in August, saw an eclipse that was the signal for him to begin the revolt.
Now is the time for us to escalate our fight — in theory and practice, in the workplace, in the streets. And politically, we must advance our audacious program — one that relies on the strength of the working class and the oppressed. One that breaks with the perspective of “pragmatism” and combines the political struggle for class independence and combativeness. To fight for class-independent politics. Both the Republicans and Democrats are scared, and they should be. To unite the fight against ICE with the defense of political prisoners, Palestine, and organizing the rank and file is the most terrible nightmare of the capitalists, imperialists, cops, and bigots, as well as their administrators in the capitalist parties. Now is the time for audaciousness and strategy. To commemorate those who gave their lives with a determination for complete liberation. Why not now? Why not socialism in our lifetime? It is only up to us. As Assata Shakur said, quoting Karl Marx, “We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to gain.” Unite!
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