Guest Written by Cornell Student, Manuel Cortes Romero
Note: This blog is part of our Guest Blog Series, where we invite community members who are passionate about our topics to contribute written works relating to our issue areas. These pieces are not written by our staff, and encourage people across Tompkins County to bring awareness to specific topics they are interested in various creative formats.
Domestic violence is never an easy topic to talk about, read, or write about. It is deeply personal to me, and writing about both the visible and invisible strength of survivors is deeply meaningful to me. “Give us our roses” means recognizing survivors-the strength it takes to leave, to acknowledge what happened, and to begin healing is not easy, and it deserves to be seen. At the same time, this recognition cannot be limited to just one group. As Audre Lorde writes in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, “This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live.” Her words remind us that acknowledging survivors requires us to see across differences and understand how systems of harm are interconnected-an idea that has shaped movements for justice from the past to the present.
We can have a better understanding of “giving people their roses” by taking a look at a long history of collective action and advocacy. In the early 1900s, activists fighting for fair labor conditions and women’s rights began to challenge the notion that people should simply endure hardship. The phrase “Bread and Roses” came to life most powerfully during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, when workers from a variety of backgrounds demanded not only fair wages but human respect in how they were treated. Their fight showed that survival alone was not enough; people deserved recognition, respect, and a life beyond hardship. That same idea continues to echo across time and cultures. In the Chicano Movement, Latino communities pushed for labor rights, education, and cultural visibility, refusing to be overlooked. In hip hop and spoken word spaces, artists like Common and Kendrick Lamar have carried this message forward by centering storytelling, identity, and the importance of recognizing people while they are still here. Across these moments, the message remains clear: dignity and acknowledgment should not be delayed; they are something people deserve in the present.
Currently, these messages are relevant and present in our world. With movements like Take Back the Night, which centers survivors of sexual and domestic violence and demands both safety and recognition. Too often, survivors are only acknowledged in moments of tragedy, silence, or after harm has already been done. “Give us our roses” challenges that pattern by calling for support and visibility while people are still here, navigating their healing. For many, especially those navigating multiple forms of marginalization, their voices are still overlooked or questioned. It asks us to move beyond awareness and into action, to listen without judgment, to create spaces where survivors feel seen, and to recognize that survival itself is not the end of the story. In this context, giving roses means affirming that survivors deserve dignity, care, and community not just in response to violence, but as a constant and ongoing commitment.
This matters because giving people their roses cannot be something we delay. It has to be a daily practice of recognition, of listening, of believing, and of standing with people before it is too late. It is a reminder that dignity is not something to earn after suffering, but something everyone is entitled to in the present. If we take that seriously, then recognition becomes action, and action becomes the way we move closer to justice.
References:
● Take Back The Night Foundation. “History of Take Back the Night | How We Got to Where We Are Today.” Take Back the Night, 2019, takebackthenight.org/history/.
● St Lydia’s Dinner Church. Bread for All, and Roses Too.
● Zinn Education Project. Bread and Roses Song.
● “About – Advocacy Center.” Actompkins.org, 2026, www.actompkins.org/about/. https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/bread-and-roses-song/
● History.com. The Strike That Shook America.
● Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
● SALAL Sexual Violence Support Centre. Roses Campaign. https://www.salalsvsc.ca/roses/
● National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Transgender Infographic. https://www.nsvrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Transgender_infographic_508_0.pdf