People think that we're engaged with identity politics. The

The words of Alicia Garza, “People think that we're engaged with identity politics. The truth is that we're doing what the labor movement has always done – organizing people who are at the bottom,” burn with the fire of remembrance and resolve. She tears away the veil of misunderstanding, declaring that the struggle is not vanity nor division, but the ancient work of justice. For across the ages, the cry of the oppressed has always been the same: that those cast lowest by fortune or by power must organize, must unite their voices, if they are ever to be heard.

The ancients knew this truth in their bones. Where one voice alone is easily silenced, a chorus of voices becomes thunder. To organize those at the bottom is to lift up the very foundation upon which all society rests. The stones of the temple are not its crown but its base; when the base is broken, the temple falls. Thus Garza speaks not of novelty, but of continuity: her cause is not new, but the eternal duty of the labor movement, which has always sought to lift the worker, the poor, the marginalized, into the dignity of recognition.

History reveals the power of this unity. In the early 20th century, the Pullman Strike shook America, born of workers crushed by poverty while the wealthy flourished. Alone, these workers were powerless; together, they brought the machinery of industry to a halt. Their struggle was not about “identity” in the shallow sense, but about survival, justice, and dignity. They embodied the same truth Garza proclaims: that real change is birthed when those at the bottom bind themselves together in common cause.

Garza’s words also strike against the tendency of the powerful to dismiss the cries of the oppressed as politics, as though they were games of division. But to those at the bottom, it is not a game, but life itself. Hunger is not politics. Homelessness is not politics. The struggle to be seen, to be valued, to be safe—these are the foundations of human existence. To reduce them to “identity politics” is to deny their sacred weight.

Let the generations remember: the strength of a people is measured not by the luxury of the few, but by the dignity of the many. To organize the bottom is to steady the entire structure of society, to remind rulers and kings that power without justice is hollow. And so Garza’s voice joins the chorus of all who came before, calling upon us to see clearly, to act boldly, and to remember that the work of lifting the lowly is the oldest and noblest labor of all.