A social activist highlighted how awareness of the “vital legacy of solidarity” could help to tackle challenges in the community and benefit the island’s young people.

Glenn Fubler, of Imagine Bermuda, spoke at the Labour Day celebrations on Union Square this week.

He said: “If our community — especially our younger generation — was fully aware of the vital legacy of solidarity, that would leverage addressing our various challenges, such as the cycle of violence.”

Mr Fubler referred to the shooting incident on Court Street last month, when two men were killed.

He said that if the perpetrators “had fully understood on whose shoulders that they stand, they would possess a reverence — a love — for all lives and for themselves”.

He added: “Promoting a reverence for all lives leads us to the global matter of the genocide in Gaza.”

Mr Fubler said that “brutal violence and inhumane starvation of tens of thousands of children” is being justified by those representing “the global elite”.

He noted that he was moved to tears by the situation.

Mr Fubler added: “It’s clear that in spite of the massive propaganda machine, the vast majority of people around the globe support justice and peace for Palestinians — demonstrating solidarity.”

He joined some people in the audience who carried Palestinian flags as a show of unity.

Mr Fubler said that solidarity was a societal “glue” that connects people and leverages social progress and listed several relatable events in Bermuda’s history.

He said: “For instance, solidarity led abolitionists in London to help Mary Prince produce her book exposing the realities of slavery, thus leveraging emancipation in 1834.

“It also led formerly-enslaved Bermudians in February 1835 to take court action, which liberated 73 enslaved — mostly children — Americans, during the Enterprise saga.

“During the early twentieth century, the local economic downturn led to scores of homeless boys sleeping wherever they could, notably on the Hamilton docks.

“The two Robinson sisters from Princess Street set up the Sunshine League for orphaned children, an act of solidarity.

“In 1944, salaries of workers at the naval base in Southampton were decreased and in solidarity they formed the Naval Base Workers Association.

“However, Eustace Cann advised them to address the ‘big picture’, and they quickly evolved into the Bermuda Workers Association — fostering solidarity island-wide.

“That success merged with the momentum created by the Bermuda Union of Teachers, producing the popular labour movement, led by E.F. Gordon, which provided the foundation for the social transformation of twentieth-century Bermuda.”

He said the BWA evolved into what is today the Bermuda Industrial Union.

Mr Fubler added: “That sense of solidarity carried through the 1950s, leveraging the success of the Theatre Boycott — ending segregation — and also led to guaranteeing the right to vote for all.”

He reminded the audience that Martin Luther King Jr said “an injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere”.