In the early afternoon of July 4, over 100 community members gathered in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego for “Revolution Day,” an event for those seeking an anti-imperialist alternative to traditional U.S. “Independence Day” celebrations. The event was organized by Umoja San Diego with participation from the Party for Socialism and Liberation San Diego, the Brown Berets de Aztlán, the San Diego Black Panther Party, East County BIPOC Coalition, ANSWER San Diego, Spring Valley Cleanup Crew, and families and individuals from the community.
Liberation photo: Zach Farber
Despite being organized on a nationalist holiday in a city with seven military bases where one out of 10 residents works for the military, the march was very well-received by the community. Signs demanding justice for victims of police terror, freedom for Leonard Peltier, abolition of ICE, and expressing revolutionary optimism were met with cheers and honks of approval from cars and pedestrians.
Participants marched four miles from the City Heights Library to the World Beat Center lawn. When they arrived, they were greeted with food, drinks and several canopies set up by small businesses and community organizations. Then, the crowd sat on the lawn and heard poetry, musical performances and political speeches.
Liberation News spoke with Umoja leader and event organizer DeVaughn Walker after the march. Walker told us, “I choose [to protest] American holidays in order to change the culture of how we celebrate and name said days.”
Jose Cortes, a PSL candidate for U.S. Congress in 2022, was invited to speak during the closing rally. Cortes was not surprised by the community’s support for the action, because, “Housing is becoming more and more inaccessible by the day. This is a society where most people don’t own the homes they live in, where people are living multiple families to a unit just to survive and still paying 60 to 80% of their take-home pay in rent to a greasy landlord.”
Cortes said he is optimistic about the future and the ability of the working class to organize and seize power: “We’re told to be apathetic and fearful, that all we can do is just experience this economic fatalism of the ruling class, that all we can do is experience it and not change it — all of that is false, and why a revolution is necessary and possible here in the United States.”
Featured image: Members of the PSL and others march through the streets. Liberation photo by Michaela Malone
