By Dr. Adnan Bozan

O Free People...
Workers of the earth, its salt and lifeblood—you who shape life with hands cracked from toil, and who plant the seeds of tomorrow in the ashes of today…
We gather not merely to celebrate, but to remember, to reflect, and to cry out—a cry the size of the pain drowning this East, heavy with death and mass graves.
A cry to restore dignity to humankind, sanctity to labor, and meaning to revolution.

Workers' Day is not a ritual or a recycled speech delivered each year. It is a declaration of rebellion—against those who monopolize bread, dignity, and air…
Against those who turn the worker into a slave, freedom into an empty slogan, and the homeland into a marketplace where consciences and destinies are sold.

In a moment like this, we cannot close our eyes to the flames consuming everything around us, nor to the fire devouring the soul of the East—from Baghdad to Damascus, from Gaza to Sanaa, from Afrin to the Syrian coast, from the Druze South to Cairo exhausted by military rule, to Beirut bleeding from the knives of sectarianism.

At the heart of the East lies a wound called Syria—

A country that no longer resembles itself.
A nation whose soul was ripped from its ribs, its blood divided among internal pirates and foreign lords of war.
Today, Syria is ruled not only from the Presidential Palace in Damascus, but also from the caves of darkness that emerged from the bowels of history to erect a “state” in the name of religion, “justice” in the name of sharia, and a “political transition” in the name of deception.

O Free People...
On this May Day platform, we cannot remain silent about the farce called the “transitional phase” in Syria—where Abu Muhammad al-Jolani (Ahmad al-Shara')—the killer of the revolution and thief of its blood—has been anointed as the head of a state that was never born, and the symbol of an authority that has no legitimacy but the illusion of a “holy weapon” and the sword of excommunication.

Under his cloak, crimes are committed in the name of God, people are oppressed in the name of sharia, and the will of the Syrian people is raped under the guise of “liberation.”
The truth is clear: they replaced one tyrant with another, dirty security branches with ideological intelligence, and the deep state with blind fatwas.

The Syrian—whether a worker, intellectual, or ordinary citizen—is now caught between the hammer of the former criminal regime and the anvil of the new “jihadist authority.”
Two faces of the same catastrophe, partners in killing the Syrian dream, in breaking the revolution, in assassinating the human being.

And the Kurds…
Always left out of the equation—because they have a project.

This new jihadist authority—like the old one—rejected the outcomes of the Qamishli Conference, a brave attempt to unify the Kurdish ranks and vision. Not for secession, but for liberation from centuries of erasure.
They rejected it not because it was separatist—but because it carried a clear, coherent, civic, secular, and free vision… and that alone was enough to deem it an enemy.

Those who oppose the Kurds do so not merely because they are Kurds, but because they are a thorn in the side of tyrants.
Because they carry a project that transcends tribe, sect, and black flags.
A project that believes in women, in difference, in dialogue, in popular councils, in participation… not in pledges of allegiance.

O Workers…
Your holiday this year passes over the ruins of cities you built with your hands, over maps torn apart by guns, over the corpses of your children who slept hungry in displacement camps.
Yet it also passes like a bomb in the face of the silent—because it is the holiday of those who have nothing but their dignity, and who do not sell their voices in the marketplaces of capitals.

On this day, we declare:

• No to Jolani. No to racism. No to those who wear the turban of the caliphate atop our skulls.
• No to the monopoly of representation—whether in the name of revolution, nation, or God.
• No to regional and international complicity that promotes these forces as a “political solution.”
• No to the silence over the assassination of Kurdish intellect and the marginalization of their struggle.
• Yes to a revolution of the worker, the thinker, the farmer, the woman, the writer, and the citizen.
• Yes to the right to self-determination… Yes to federalism… Yes to democracy and national pluralism.
• Yes to freedom—not granted, but seized.

O Free People,
On this May Day, we do not raise old slogans—we raise our heads in defiance of new executioners and say:
We are not dead—we are waiting for the next moment.
We are not defeated—we are transforming… and from our ashes, another fire shall rise.
We are not anyone’s slaves—we are children of the sun and of freedom. And no matter how many chains are forged, the word of truth shall remain the mightiest hammer.

Glory to workers everywhere.
Freedom for Syria, for Kurdistan, and for the oppressed East.
And shame to every killer—in the name of God, the homeland, or the revolution.

May 1st, 2025