Principles of Unity

"The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
— Ghassan Kanafani

"We have power, we just don't hold it. In order to hold it, we have to organize to grasp it collectively." 
— Aaron Bushnell



The below are the principles which guide the small yet growing group of solidarity organizers that make up Theater Workers for a Ceasefire. These principles do not necessarily reflect the values of our statement signatories, which is a distinctly separate and standalone project. If, however, you align with these principles and wish to engage in organizing with us, please reach out.  

Organization

We state that organizing is building collective power to wage sustained and strategic struggle toward concrete, transformative goals. Organizations achieve their ends by setting clear objectives along with requisite strategies and tactics necessary to achieve them.

Organizing is distinct from mobilization. While essential in its own right, mobilization engages in short term, visible response to urgent actions. Organization is critical because of its unique ability to build power. Organizing demands sustained, long term engagement with objective issues, both externally with the masses and internally within the organization’s structure. In the words of Kwame Toure, "to be an organizer you must be a mobilizer, but being a mobilizer does not make you an organizer." Further, he clarifies that mobilizing is unity of action while organization additionally requires unity of thought. TW4C aligns in unity of thought to build the collective power of theater workers for long term, sustainable struggle.

Struggle & Solidarity

Struggle is the central locus of our activity. The concept of struggle implies there are conflicting forces at play. We see those forces, on the one hand, as the masses of working classes, oppressed, exploited, and dispossessed, and on the other, one collective enemy: a small group of capitalists and imperialists, whom we must unilaterally side against. We further understand struggle through an internationalist lens: of having one common enemy. 

Within the scope of our mission, solidarity demands that our organizing heeds the calls of the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian diaspora. This being the case, we organize the working classes and oppressed sections of the theater workers in the United States in solidarity with the oppressed of Palestine. 

Anti-Imperialism

From the internationalist standpoint, our clear, shared enemies include the subsection of imperialists known as Zionists, who have historically articulated a campaign to forcibly remove (if not completely annihilate) the people of Palestine. We state emphatically that Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism and condemn all forms of antisemitism. Similarly, we believe that equating Judaism with Zionism is itself antisemitic. While we are ultimately led by our Palestinian comrades in struggle, we are grateful for our Jewish allies who hold up the front against the Zionist project which is responsible for the determined assault on the Palestinian people.

On that front, we, too, recognize our role as those in the United States, in the belly of the beast, to heighten the contradictions domestically, aiding the resistance on the ground in Palestine and  connecting our struggle in solidarity with oppressed peoples worldwide.

Combat training between the Israeli Occupying Forces and the US Department of Defense systematizes the oppression of working class Black and brown people in the U.S. Global arms trading standardizes military exercises and imperialist turns in Asia and the Pacific. Research & Design sanctions disproportionate defense mechanisms that undermine UN efforts towards resolution, supported through U.S. intervention and extraction, as also seen in the resource-rich lands of Haiti, Congo, and Sudan. The deep entanglement of these conditions are connected to the decades of surveillance, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, necessitating their resistance.

It is our collective struggle that bounds us to one another across borders, walls, and nation states. 

Materialism

The materialist standpoint is a worldview that demands we begin our change work from the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, in order to move into a practice (or action) that aims to change those conditions, and then honestly learn and reflect from that action. We dispense with high-minded ideals about the merits of our own actions, engaging critical thought towards the overall trajectory and success of our objectives. We see things in their inter-connection, constant change and development, and hold ourselves to a standard of foregoing the subjectivist and anything-goes spontaneity of idealism in place of a grounded, sober, and reasoned approach to judging our ideas and actions by their real-world outcomes. 

Internally, adopting a materialist standpoint allows us to engage in various forms of criticism and self-criticism and internal debate to ensure that the organization is based on the widest and most durable sense of unity possible. Materialism also requires that we stand opposed to various forms of liberalism (including individualism), which we feel is the standpoint of our oppressor, and which we commit to remaining vigilantly on guard against.