This is a brief report on a series of public events put on by the California Bay Area Local of Black Rose/Rosa Negra in May and June of 2025. You can find the Bay Area Local on their Instagram page: @blackrosebayarea.
by Black Rose/Rosa Negra – Bay Area Local
Throughout May and June, members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s Bay Area Local planned and executed organizing events in California’s three most populous metro areas: Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sacramento. In total, nearly 200 people attended these gatherings across the state.
At each stop, BRRN members offered an analysis of the current moment—one marked by a series of interlocking crises—following up with examples from our own organizing efforts that point the way forward. We detailed how BRRN members are applying the Federation’s general strategy to intervene and build power in the sites where we are rooted: our workplaces, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our homes.
This included case studies from members who have successfully organized with coworkers to bring their unions into the fight for Palestinian liberation; members who have pushed their tenant union to develop a strategy to confront ICE raids in their neighborhoods; and members who led efforts to organize the unorganized through a new, independent, and militant labor union in the service sector.
But far from just being a showcase of endeavors undertaken by BRRN members, these events aimed to arm attendees with some of the tools necessary to begin organizing themselves. While impossible to pack all of the information from a dedicated organizer training into these two-hour events, we were able to emphasize the foundation of all organizing: relationships. For this reason we thought it crucial to include an interactive introduction to organizing conversations.
Meeting strangers can be an awkward experience, doubly so if your task is to roleplay with them. But we found consistently that the minor social discomfort gave way to important lessons and often, new connections between attendees. According to feedback we received from some attendees, these practice conversations gave them the confidence to start thinking of themselves as organizers and to get involved with the mass organizations in attendance.
Across these events we found that people are hungry to build up structures that would empower them to push back against their problems and indignities – but they often didn’t know where to start.
This is why every event ended with representatives from local mass organizations inviting attendees to get rooted and start organizing to from below through their campaigns and projects. These organizations included:
In Los Angeles
- Los Angeles Tenants Union
- Anarchist Black Cross – Los Angeles
- Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee
In the SF Bay Area
- Tenants and Neighborhood Councils
- East Bay Workplace Organizing Committee
- Healthcare Workers for Palestine – Bay Area
- Bay Area Labor for Palestine
- Industrial Workers of the World – Bay Area
In Sacramento
- Sacramento Valley Tenants Union
- Healthcare Workers for Palestine – Sacramento
- NorCal Resist
- Industrial Workers of the World – Sacramento
To emphasize the critical role that relationship building plays in movement building, each gathering was followed by an informal happy hour at a nearby bar where attendees kept the energy high and discussed their takeaways from the event.
We’ll end this report on the same note we tried to leave attendees with: the moment we face is a dire one—from the cost of living crisis, to US facilitated genocide in Palestine, to ICE attacks on our families and neighbors. If we want to do something about it, to confront the crises that are piling up around us, we have to get organized and exert our collective power where we have the most leverage: our workplaces, neighborhoods, homes, and schools.
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