Ella Baker spoke these words at the Puerto Rico Solidarity Day rally at Madison Square Garden in 1974. Thousands gathered there in support of independence for Puerto Rico, a nation held as a US colony since 1898. In a few sentences she joined the two great themes of her life's work. The first was that freedom in the United States is impossible while capitalism and imperialism endure, whether at home or in the colonies abroad. The second was that liberation will not be handed down by leaders, politicians, or saviors. It must be won by ordinary people who recognize that the struggle belongs to them.

Her presence at that rally was no accident. For Baker, the fight for Black freedom in the American South had always been connected to the struggles of colonized peoples elsewhere, and she worked with the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee and supported movements for self-determination across the world. She understood that the same system that segregated and exploited Black workers in Mississippi ruled Puerto Rico as a colony and waged wars across the Global South. Freedom for one could not be separated from freedom for all.

At the center of her words is the conviction that guided all her organizing: the people themselves must make the struggle, every day and every year, until they win. Baker spent her life building organizations that nurtured local leadership, especially among women and young people, because she believed movements built around a single charismatic leader were fragile and that power must grow from below. Her call remains a challenge to each of us: freedom is not an event or a gift but a daily practice of struggle, sustained by organized people for as long as it takes to win.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium matte-photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*