Greetings comrades,

My name is Ivan Kilgore. I am an incarcerated activist and founder of the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation. For the past nineteen years I have been fighting on behalf of the underdog. It is with great humility that I have accepted an invite on behalf of the Sin Frontera’s organization and Critical Resistance to address many of the challenges we face today as we march and celebrate the International Workers’ Day/May Day March.

As I write this, I reflect on the various systemic forms of oppression and state-sanctioned violence we face on a daily in our efforts to rid the world of those oppressive structures that work tirelessly to limit us in our capacity as human beings. Today, we must march in solidarity to bring about an end to such forces.

Today, we march in spirit, and for the countless children, women, and men whose voices have been silenced by police bullets, prisons, and the various forms of discrimination. For them we shout, Uhuru!

As we stand together, let us reflect on these forces that operate to commodify our labor on both sides of the fence as we reclaim our dignity as human beings. No longer shall we accept the notion we are surplus to be hidden, marginalized, or murdered behind death fences or the doors of factories in our mother lands.

And while it may seem our victories are few, in the hearts and minds of our collective, they stand in magnitude as we shall continue to place one foot in front of the other marching to Jubilee. As my late father was often quoted to say, “There is no step too high for a stepper!” So let us step! Let us step over the walls built around our communities, our minds, our hearts, and our nations so that we may continue to tear them down one brick at a time, one policy at a time, one soul at a time until we free ourselves of these prisons.