Boston First Night: Honor the resistance in Palestine!

Boston

Hundreds of people answered the call of the Boston Coalition for Palestine (BCFP) to disrupt the city’s official “First Night” celebration on Dec. 31, 2024. Gathering in City Hall Plaza, where bands and a parade were sponsored by the city’s business elite, speakers, carolers and chanters on a powerful sound system filled the plaza, proclaiming, “No celebration while Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen are burning!”

Speakers and organizers — including from the Palestinian House of New England, North American Indian Center of Boston and United American Indians of New England, Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Massachusetts Peace Action, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern and various campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and Workers World Party — in unity demanded: “End all U.S. aid to Israel! End the genocide and siege on Gaza, now!” 

When the protesters moved to join the parade, in which the public was ostensibly invited to participate, they were immediately surrounded and blocked by a phalanx of cops. Undaunted and with their ranks swelling, the pro-Palestine demonstrators held their ground, eventually taking the downtown streets with tens of thousands of spectators, many cheering the BCFP’s unabashedly pro-resistance messages.

Will Hodgkinson of Workers World Party gave the following edited speech, which was interrupted many times by cheers from the gathering crowd. (report by Steve Gillis)

It’s such an honor to be with all of you tonight, speaking out in unequivocal, unshakable solidarity with the Axis of Resistance fighting for the liberation of Palestine. 

As Workers World has held since its founding, we cannot separate the worldwide struggle of the working class from the struggles of all Indigenous nations and all oppressed peoples against capitalism, imperialism and settler colonialism. 

And because capitalism cannot exist without imperialism, without settler colonialism, true victory in any one of these struggles will never be possible without victory in all of these struggles, without the complete self-determination of all oppressed nations around the world. 

Tonight, there is absolutely nothing to celebrate this New Year after over a year of this latest horrific stage of Zionist genocide, as the Zionist entity attacks hospitals and kidnaps and tortures doctors. As babies in Gaza starve and freeze in the rain. There is nothing to celebrate as Zionist forces, backed by the U.S., dismember Syria, tear its sovereignty to shreds and continue to expand their colonial land grab. 

What we do honor and salute instead is the resistance to Zionist genocide in Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran. They are leading the way to a new future. Because as this imperialist aggression intensifies, the resistance will strengthen.

Mobilize worker power against the empire

And that’s why it is essential that we here, all of us in the imperial core, that we workers mobilize and use our power in the U.S., this settler-colonial empire, that is making the Zionist genocide possible. We must join and support the resistance and escalate and continue to organize to shut down the companies and universities — all these institutions here –- that are not just complicit in the genocide but actively participating in it. 

The Zionist garrison and the U.S. empire it belongs to are overextended. They are rotting, and across the world billions of people see them for what they are. Their depravity is on full display. You see that in the media where pundits are full of tears for a dead health insurance CEO and then turn around and defend and support genocide, the mass murder of children. That’s how the ruling class values human life. Shame!

But the ruling class is scared, because they see the resistance is only increasing and growing. They see its momentum and power that will break them and sweep them aside. 

And that’s why we must continue the struggle into the new year, so that we see the fall of imperialism, the fall of the U.S. empire and the Zionist regime, so that we see a free Palestine and Land Back in our lifetimes! 

From the river to the sea, free Palestine!