Did you know the Port of Houston is shipping weapons parts for Israel? Research shows that our port has facilitated over 85% of all F-35 shipments for Israel, with fighter jet wings passing through every month. Without this military cargo, Israel could not commit its genocide in Gaza. Swipe through to learn more about the campaign that is fighting to end our city’s complicity in genocide.
TAKE ACTION NOW: 1. Visit houstonarmsembargo.com to sign the petition and endorse the campaign 2. Follow @houstonarmsembargo for campaign updates and upcoming events!
The Palestinian labor movement endorses the call for a day of struggle on October 30th against militarisation and genocide organised by a collective of dockworkers’ unions and calls on all global port, transport and related unions to join it. We also call on grassroots and civil society organizations that can support this mobilization to do so following the unions’ leadership and context-specific directions.
Marking the horrifying 3rd anniversary of Israel’s ongoing, livestreamed genocide against our people in Gaza, the Palestinian labor movement salutes the the collective of unions from seven countries representing dockworkers at 45 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean that have announced a day of strikes and protests against war and genocide on October 30th. We call on all unions representing dockworkers, port workers, and other maritime and transportation workers across the world to join and support this mobilisation.
We remind all trade unions globally, whether joining the October 30th mobilizations or not, that we have also called for organising solidarity actions marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, from November 20th – 29th.
This coming October 30th, we the undersigned Palestinian trade unions and federations renew our call to unions around the world to:
Uphold and defend the inalienable rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine as stipulated in international law, particularly the right of our refugees to return home and receive reparations, and
Escalate BDS pressure to end all state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
Our struggle for justice in Palestine is inseparable from the global struggle against systemic racism, militarisation, exploitation, climate devastation and all forms of oppression.
It is the duty of unions to ensure that the workers they represent—whether in ports, on ships, in businesses, or in government offices—are not involved, often without their knowledge and/or consent, in actions that involve complicity in atrocity crimes anywhere, including Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Indigenous Palestinian people.
The 2024 decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, that its occupation is illegal, and that its policies amount to apartheid – make ending all complicity in Israel’s crimes not only a moral but also a legal obligation. States, institutions (including unions), and corporations must impose targeted, lawful sanctions on Israel.
Intensifying our collective efforts to end Israel’s genocide, we, the undersigned Palestinian trade union bodies, call on port, maritime and transportation workers and unions around the world to escalate their support for our liberation struggle by joining the dockworker unions’ mobilisation on October 30th by:
Peacefully disrupting and blocking the transfer of military, energy and other dual-use supplies to Israel, including by refusing to handle Israeli or Israel-bound such supplies.
Supporting the maritime transfer guidelines from the Palestinian BDS National Committee and using them to pressure your governments to comply with them.
Pressuring your governments to uphold their legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated by UN human rights experts, by, at a minimum, imposing “a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation,” as well as canceling or suspending “economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Signatories:
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Gaza
Palestinian Federation of Trade Union (PFTU)
General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW)
Palestinian Postal workers union -PPSWU
Federation of Independent Trade Unions
The Palestinian New Federation of Trade Unions
Communication it and postal workers coalition -CWU PS
General Union of Palestinian Women
General Union of Palestinian Teachers “GUPT”
Association of Employees of The Financial Sector – Palestine
Health Services Employees’ Union
Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
Union of Workers in Local Authorities
Palestinian Electricians Union
Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
Palestinian Painters and Plasters Association
Union of the Southern Local Authorities
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Posted onSeptember 24, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Today, #Labor4Palestine joined thousands of marching from Bryant Park NYC to the #UN against #ZionistGenocide war criminal #Netanyahu
The Palestinian labor movement reiterates its solidarity with workers across the world resisting all forms of oppression and calls for global action to end complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide and apartheid from Friday, November 20th leading up to the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Sunday, November 29th 2026.
This coming November, we the undersigned Palestinian trade unions and federations urgently renew our call to unions around the world to:
Uphold and defend the inalienable rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine as stipulated in international law, particularly the right of our refugees to return home and receive reparations, and
Escalate BDS pressure to end all state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
While approaching the third anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and in light of Israel’s accelerating ethnic cleansing, annexation, settler violence and pogroms in the West Bank, anddepraved violent repression of our prisoners, we remind ourselves that an injury to one is an injury to all. Israel’s livestreamed genocide, coupled with the wars and threats of aggression by its imperialist partners in Washington, is leading to the collapse of respect for international law, human rights and workers’ rights, threatening humanity at large, not just Palestinians.
Today, the Palestinian struggle for justice is at the heart of the battle against a world order of “might makes right” that is being imposed by the U.S-Israel genocidal axis and enabled by colonial powers. As Israel’s wars of aggression against the peoples of the region expand from Lebanon to Syria and from Yemen to Iran, and as the US threatens the peoples of Cuba, Greenland, Venezuela, Oman, among others, it is clear that hardly anyone is safe from this descent to the abyss.
The Israel-US axis is waging its war for Greater Israel without any consideration for the global recession (maybe even depression) it is potentially creating and its impacts globally. This includes the exacerbation of the cost of living crisis, austerity measures, the housing crisis, food insecurity, among others. Military budgets are swelling at the cost of health, housing and education. The first to feel the brunt of all this are working people and their families. The demands for affordability, fair wages, more and better social services, and lower living costs are organically connected to the calls for an end to astronomical military spending, vicious privatisation, and global complicity in Israeli crimes. This affects us all and therefore should unite us all. Where states fail to uphold international law and end their own complicity, workers and their unions must take the lead in acting to end this complicity!
Our struggle for justice in Palestine is inseparable from the global struggle against systemic racism, exploitation, climate devastation and all forms of oppression.
It is the duty of unions to ensure that the workers they represent—whether in ports, on ships, in businesses, or in government offices—are not involved, often without their knowledge and/or consent, in actions that involve complicity in atrocity crimes anywhere, including Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against our people.
The 2024 decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, that its occupation is illegal, and its policies amount to apartheid – make ending all complicity in Israel’s crimes not only a moral but also a legal obligation. States, institutions (including unions) and corporations must impose targeted, lawful sanctions on Israel. We call on all union bodies and civil society organisations worldwide to organise, uplift and turn solidarity into concrete strategic action across the ten days leading up to the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people from November 20th to November 29th 2026.
We, the undersigned Palestinian trade unions, call on workers and unions around the world to escalate their support for our liberation struggle by:
Organising, joining and amplifying global peaceful actions to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People from Friday 20th to Sunday 29th November.
Adopting ethical procurement policies (EPP) and, where applicable, ethical investment policies (EIP) that exclude corporations implicated in grave human rights violations anywhere, including in Palestine.
Pressuring corporations and institutions they work in to end any complicity through ending contracts that directly or indirectly support Israel’s atrocity crimes, and adopting EPP and/or EIP.
Rejecting any racist agreement with Israel that facilitates the substitution and further oppression of Palestinian workers.
Escalating economic, academic, cultural, and sports BDS campaigns.
Peacefully disrupting and blocking the transfer of military, energy and other dual-use supplies to Israel, by:
Participating in actions to identify and stop the illegal transfer by sea, land or air, including by pressuring states to enforce international obligations in relation to such shipments, and by pressuring complicit corporate actors.
Refusing to handle Israeli or Israeli-bound military supplies, energy and other dual-use cargo.
Pressuring your governments to uphold their legal obligations following the ICJ rulings of 2024, as stated by UN human rights experts, by, at a minimum, imposing “a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation,” as well as canceling or suspending “economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Cutting all ties with Israel’s colonial Histadrut federation and expelling it and all similarly complicit Israeli unions and associations (academic, medical, etc.) from all international fora.
Declaring your union an Apartheid-Free Zone (AFZ) to end corporate and institutional complicity with systems of oppression, particularly Israel’s regime of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Signatories:
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Gaza
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Union (PGFTU), Jericho
General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW)
Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
Federation of Independent Trade Unions
The Palestinian New Federation of Trade Unions
Association of Employees of The Financial Sector – Palestine
Health Services Employees’ Union
Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
Union of Workers in Local Authorities
Palestinian Electricians Union
Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
Palestinian Union Of Postal Services
Palestinian Painters and Plasters Association
Union of the Southern Local Authorities
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US labor has historically played a key role in establishing the Zionist settler-colonial project.
Amidst Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, including its violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank, our unions must end all forms of complicity: Protect members’ freedom of expression; divest pension, health and general funds from complicit corporations; join the cultural boycott of and lobby governments to implement sanctions on genocidal Israel.
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Posted onAugust 22, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Endorse this Response to the Urgent Appeal From the Palestinian Postal Service Workers Union to US Trade Unions and Labor Federations
Today in Idhna—as across the West Bank, Gaza, and all of historic Palestine—life for Palestinians is a living nightmare. Part of an accelerated effort to “annex” the West Bank to the Israeli state and to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population there, the small village just south of the city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) is daily invaded and terrorized by settlers, in full view and with the support of the Israeli Occupation Forces. Villagers such as our union sibling Imad Temeiza are daily assaulted, their properties are vandalized, their livestock are killed, and their crops are burnt. Life has become impossible for Palestinians in the West Bank, as they struggle simply to survive.
On the 10th of August, 2026, Imad’s union, the Palestinian Postal Services Workers Union (PPSWU), issued an emergency appeal to trade unions and labor federations around the world to ACT NOW against escalating Zionist settler-colonial violence. The current wave of Israeli state violence–aided and abetted by the government of the United States–is the culmination of what Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has called the “hundred years’ war on Palestine.” It is part of the same machine of racism, ethnic cleansing, war, and genocide terrorizing workers and oppressed people around the world, from Palestine, to Iran and Lebanon, to Venezuela, to ICE death camps here at home.
UAW delegates voted to divest the union’s reported $400,000 in Israel Bonds, making it the first major U.S. union to do so. Organizers say it’s a victory for international solidarity and a sign of the working class’s growing rejection of Israel.
Last month, the United Auto Workers (UAW) became the first major U.S. union to vote in favor of divesting from Israel Bonds.
The vote occurred at the union’s annual Constitutional Convention in Detroit. The UAW reportedly holds at least $400,000 in Israel Bonds.
The push was organized by the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a caucus within the union, and UAW Labor for Palestine, which is part of Labor for Palestine, a group that has been pushing the union to endorse the BDS movement for over 20 years.
The vote was praised by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions–Gaza.
“While expressing our sincere gratitude and appreciation for this bold step, we affirm that it reflects the living conscience of the working class, which refuses to allow its membership dues to serve as a means of financing genocide and injustice,” said the federation in a statement. “Your decision places you on the right moral path and underscores the power of cross-border labor solidarity.”
The leadership of the union had initially removed the divestment amendment from the Convention’s agenda, but New York legal services worker Olga Karounos, made a motion to move the amendment out of committee, which succeeded. The amendment was approved by a vote of 321 to 287.
“This is going to send a message to – not just the billionaire class – but to politicians and any single person who is not afraid to stand up to genocide, to Netanyahu, to the United States government, and will put the UAW again on the map for standing up for international solidarity,” declared Karounos.
Israel Bonds is commonly used as a name for the Development Corporation for Israel (DCI). The organization solicits loans from the Israeli treasury to help maintain the country’s economy, an idea devised by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. In 2023, the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) called on Israel Bonds to register as a foreign agent.
“Israel Bonds is a sophisticated operation to enlist American public support for Israel’s political projects while dodging the minimal transparency and scrutiny our laws require,” said DAWN’s Director of Advocacy for Israel/Palestine, Adam Shapiro, in a statement at the time. “Americans need to know that foreign government agents are lobbying to change U.S. laws and to solicit their political and financial support for Israel’s occupation, apartheid policies, and human rights abuses.”
Over the past few years, Israel Bonds have been targeted by activists looking to disentangle their local governments from apartheid, occupation, and genocide. The UAW vote is just one recent win amid a flurry of similar victories. Last year, for example, Michigan’s retirement system divested all state pension investments in Israel Bonds.
A 2024 UAW Executive Board vote on Israel divestment failed, but Shelly Pires, a legal services worker in New York City and a member of UAW Local 2325, told Mondoweiss that organizers pushed for the vote once they had established significant support among the union’s base.
“When I speak to people outside of my sector, at this moment in time, Israel’s actions are extremely unpopular,” said Pires. “People across the working class spectrum, for many different reasons, do not support what Israel is doing. They’re sick of seeing children being killed and oppressed. They are learning more about this apartheid state, and they don’t want to support it.”
There’s a long history of support for Palestine among the UAW rank-and-file.
“Photo dated 28 November 1973 of Arab auto workers and their supporters in Detroit protest, published in Revolution, January 1974.” (Photo via the University of Michigan Library Digital Collections)
In 1973, Arab-American auto workers in Detroit walked off the job to protest the union’s purchase of $300,000 in Israel Bonds. In 2014, UAW Local 2865, which represents student workers at the University of California, became the first major U.S. labor union to endorse the BDS movement via a vote (although it was undemocratically overruled by union officials) , and in 2023, the UAW became the largest U.S. union to back a ceasefire.
However, despite these campaigns, the UAW’s leadership, like most major unions, has remained economically connected to Israel and supportive of the state.
Labor historian Jeff Schuhrke, author of No Neutrals There: U.S. Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine, says that’s what makes the recent vote so impressive, as fact that the UAW’s constitution will potentially prohibit the purchase of Israel Bonds symbolizes a definitive change.
“The passage of this resolution confirms that a majority of union rank-and-filers in the US stand in solidarity with Palestinians and want to break from the long history of labor’s die-hard support for Zionism,” Schuhrke.
However, he also notes that it’s unclear how the union’s international executive board will react to the vote and whether or not the union’s leadership is getting the message.
“There is also still much more that can be done by the UAW and other U.S. unions,” pointed out Schuhrke. “Not only divesting from Israel Bonds, but divesting from companies targeted by the BDS movement and organizing union members and allies to boycott those companies. There is historical precedent for this kind of union boycott and divestment organizing from the 1980s, when U.S. labor backed the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.”
“Also, the UAW represents workers at Caterpillar and some of the Pentagon contractors that are deeply complicit in Israel’s crimes, so making the deliberate choice to educate and organize those workers around Palestine so that they may become willing and able to take collective action to physically impede the ongoing genocide is another critical step the union could take,” he added. “And the same goes for other unions representing workers at complicit companies.”
At the convention, Mike Davis, a parts manufacturing worker from Ohio, made a motion to call a stronger pro-Palestine amendment to the floor. In addition to the Israel Bonds divestment, the amendment would have established support for UAW workers who refuse to send weapons to Israel, set anti-imperialist endorsement criteria for politicians, and cut ties with Israel’s largest labor union, Histadrut. 69 delegates supported the amendment, short of the 128 needed to advance.
“While I’m disappointed the broader measure didn’t pass, I believe it was important to bring it to the membership so we could start the conversation,” Davis told Mondoweiss. “A lot of the kickback we received was relating to whether or not it was legal to hold a work stoppage or strike over this, but I personally feel that if American soldiers can be conscientious objectors, then there’s no reason a factory worker shouldn’t be able to withhold their labor for similar reasons, especially during an ongoing genocide.”
“Hopefully moving forward, we can get more of this language added, but for right now, we just need to keep the conversation going,” he added.
Michael Arria Michael Arria is Mondoweiss’ U.S. correspondents. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow him on x at @michaelarria.
Democracy Now reports on how UAW becomes the largest US labor union to divest from Israel! Local 2325 member Olga K. introduced the resolution on behalf of UAWD, our rank-and-file organization grounded in class struggle politics ❤️🔥 building upon years of efforts by the Arab Workers Caucus in the 1970s, @laborforpalestine, and more.
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Posted onJune 20, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Statement Issued by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions–Gaza Regarding the United Auto Workers (UAW) Decision to Divest From Occupation Bonds
(English translation follows below)
Statement issued by the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions–Gaza Regarding the United Auto Workers (UAW) decision to divest from occupation bonds.
It is with great gratitude and honor that we, at the Palestine General Federation Trade Unions in Gaza, received the news that the delegates to the historic 39th Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers (UAW) voted by a majority to divest the union’s investments from Israeli occupation bonds.
While expressing our sincere gratitude and appreciation for this bold step, we affirm that it reflects the living conscience of the working class, which refuses to allow its membership dues to serve as a means of financing genocide and injustice. Your decision places you on the right moral path and underscores the power of cross-border labor solidarity.
We also extend special recognition and appreciation to the pivotal and extraordinary role played by the “Unite All Workers for Democracy” (UAWD) movement and the “Labor for Palestine” (L4P) organization. It is your tireless efforts and enduring class struggle that paved the way for this achievement, demonstrating that labor democracy is the primary engine for realizing justice.
We also bear in mind that your union pioneered this path by calling for a boycott of investments in occupation-linked entities—a move that led to strikes across most major Detroit factories in 1974. That event marked a historic milestone, demonstrating the solidarity and unity of a diverse workforce—including Arab workers from Yemen—who have maintained this principled stance across generations, right up to the present day.
While commending this principled stance, we call upon you to persist in this path of struggle and look forward to further courageous steps that reinforce this direction—including severing all ties with the complicit Israeli trade union, the Histadrut, rejecting any role in arming the occupation, and continuing to press for an end to any complicity in the crime of genocide.
We call upon all labor and professional unions in the United States and across the globe to follow this honorable example and to escalate impactful labor actions aimed at ending complicity with the occupation, in defense of human rights and the values of justice and freedom that unite workers worldwide.
Long live working-class unity. . . and glory to truth and justice.
/s/ Tariq Al Hindi Deputy General Secretary of Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions–Gaza June 20, 2026
Palestinian General Federation of the Trade Unions – Gaza Strip (PGFTU) shares this message to the UAW historical success in divestment from Israel bonds as a giant step in the right direction. @uaw4democracy , @uawlaborforpalestine and @laborforpalestine stand in solidarity with the Palestinian working class!
The slides are the English translation of the message, with the original letter shown towards the end. It is rounded out by the Democracy Now! video coverage of the divestment win.
Full text of PGFTU-Gaza Strip’s message here: https://laborforpalestine.net/2026/06/20/pgftu-gaza-message-to-uaw-historical-success-in-divestment-is-a-giant-step-in-the-right-direction/
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After UAWD members forced the amendment onto the Constitutional Convention agenda, UAW delegates voted to divest the union’s reported $400,000 in Israel bonds, marking a victory for decades of rank-and-file organizing.
Bucking a decades-long trend of sidelining questions of international solidarity and silencing Palestine liberation, delegates to the 39th UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit, Michigan voted June 18th to divest from Israel bonds. The UAW reportedly holds at least $400,000 in these investments. Delegates from Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the class struggle movement of the UAW, representing UAW members across the country, led the effort to divest.
UAW members have been fighting to divest dues money from Israel bonds for over fifty years. In the 1970s, the UAW Arab Workers Caucus picketed UAW events, struck, and organized for the 1974 UAW Constitutional Convention demanding divestment. Workers redoubled their efforts after the apartheid state escalated its genocide in October 2023.
UAWD developed and organized to advance a class struggle program of Constitutional amendments, grounded in UAWD’s principles of rank-and-file militancy, workers’ democracy and workplace control, international working class solidarity, and political independence. The program includes a stronger version of the divestment amendment to end the UAW’s complicity with Israeli genocide and end imperialist wars. UAWD members brought the amendment to membership meetings in several locals across the country. Members at locals 869, 1115, 2320, 2325, and 7902 voted to send the amendment to the Convention.
UAW leadership initially excluded divestment from the Convention’s agenda. On Wednesday, June 17 UAWD member Olga Karounos, a legal services worker from New York, made a motion to call the amendment out of committee. 147 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required to agendize the amendment. The amendment was debated and adopted by the Convention Thursday, June 18. A previous UAW Executive Board vote on divestment failed on May 3, 2024. The vote came after sustained worker pressure and demands for action on the issue from multiple union locals.
Since its founding in 2004, Labor for Palestine has led the effort within the US labor movement to honor the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line. Labor for Palestine has organized protests and resolutions in the UAW and in unions across the labor movement, and many of the UAWD members who advanced the divestment amendment are also long-time Labor for Palestine members.
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, UAWD member Mike Davis, a parts manufacturing worker from Ohio, made a motion to call the stronger pro-Palestine amendment to the floor. In addition to forcing divestment, UAWD’s amendment to End Complicity With Israeli Genocide and Imperialist Wars would support workers who strike to interrupt weapons flows to Israel, set endorsement criteria for politicians, and cut ties with the apartheid Histadrut labor organization. 69 delegates stood in support of Davis’ motion, falling short of the 128 required.
UAWD delegates also brought amendments to fight layoffs and ICE to the Convention. UAW leadership also excluded these resolutions from the agenda and UAWD delegates called for them to be debated. These amendments, and the stronger pro-Palestine amendment, threatened to disrupt production and labor-management agreements that maintain labor peace.
UAWD’s amendment to Fight Layoffs with Work Sharing would require UAW negotiators to bargain work sharing provisions, spreading available work across the entire bargaining unit instead of throwing some workers out of a job. The resolution notes that “thousands of UAW members have recently been laid off at John Deere, Stellantis, General Motors, Ultium, and numerous IPS facilities.” On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD member Margie Thornton made a motion to call it out of committee. 62 delegates stood in support, falling short of the 128 required.
UAWD’s amendment to Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers would trigger membership meetings to discuss striking in the event of ICE attacks in the area. UAW Local 2325 has already implemented a similar structure. On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD supporter Andrew Eichen made a motion to call it out of committee. 162 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required. Shawn Fain’s United caucus organized against the resolution in their Wednesday morning meeting, which delegates were urged to attend if they want future jobs on UAW staff. The amendment was debated and voted down Thursday, June 18.
Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD) is the class struggle movement of the UAW. UAWD members across the country organized in their locals to send class struggle amendments to the Convention and ran as delegates from their locals.
Labor for Palestine Meet-Up at Labor Notes 2026 Start: Saturday, June 13, 2026•12:45 PM End: Saturday, June 13, 2026•02:00 PM Location: Catherine Chevalier Woods Grove #3• Catherine Chevalier Woods, Chicago, IL 60706 US
In this urgent moment, join a meet-up with other activists about how we can organize workers’ power to shut down US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, stop the war on Iran and Lebanon, stand with anti-ICE resistance, and uphold the Palestinian trade union call for BDS and a free Palestine from the river to the sea, including:
An immediate and permanent end to the siege on Gaza, the halting of all U.S. military aid for Israel, and an arms embargo.
That our unions sever ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut and its U.S. mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee.
Divestment from Israel Bonds as well as industries connected with Zionist settler colonialism and occupation.
Whether you’re a lifetime activist with experience to share, or a new organizer who wants to learn more about the movement, you’re invited to join!
To connect with the Labor for Palestine National Network, visit laborforpalestine.net.
Location & Accessibility
Catherine Chevalier Woods Picnic Grove #3 is located a 10-15 minute (0.5 mi) walk from the Labor Notes conference along the Des Plaines River Trail (Yellow). Trails are unpaved, but relatively flat. Walking and driving directions from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Chicago will be provided upon RSVP.
A limited number of N95 masks will be provided on-site, however masking will not be required.
Food & Drink
Lunch from a local Palestinian-American restaurant will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis. Labor for Palestine hopes to be able to feed all attendees, however the quantity and variety of options provided will be dependent on donations received. Please consider making a contribution and sharing the fundraiser below with activists in your network!
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Posted onMay 16, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Solidarity Statement for José Maria de Almeida (Labor for Palestine National Network)
Solidarity Statement for José Maria de Almeida Labor for Palestine National Network, May 16, 2026
Demanding the Immediate Dropping of All Charges Against Brazilian Union Leader Zé Maria and Rejecting the Weaponization of Antisemitism to Silence Palestine Solidarity
The Labor for Palestine National Network (L4PNN) issues this statement in full solidarity with José Maria de Almeida — known as Zé Maria — a lifelong metalworker, trade unionist, national president of Brazil’s Unified Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU), and a veteran of that country’s struggle against dictatorship and for workers’ rights. On April 28, 2026, a federal court in São Paulo, Brazil, sentenced Zé Maria to two years in prison for alleged “racism” stemming from a political speech in solidarity with the Palestinian people that included the slogan “Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
We condemn this conviction in the strongest possible terms. It is not a legitimate application of anti-racism law. It is a politically motivated judicial attack on freedom of expression, on the right to criticize state policies, and on the internationalist principles of the labor movement. We call for the immediate dropping of all charges.
A Lifetime of Struggle for Workers’ Rights
Zé Maria is no casual political commentator. He is a living memory of Brazil’s labor movement. Arrested under the military dictatorship for distributing May Day leaflets, he became a leader in the historic ABC strikes that helped break the back of the regime. He was a founder of the Workers’ Party (PT) and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), and later a founder of the independent union federation CSP-Conlutas, which represents more than two million workers. His entire life has been dedicated to the working-class struggle against exploitation, racism, and authoritarianism. Jailing such a figure for a slogan of Palestinian liberation is an insult to every worker who has ever raised their voice for justice across borders.
The complaint against Zé Maria was not filed by a public prosecutor acting in the public interest. It was filed by the Israeli Confederation of Brazil (CONIB) and the Israeli Federation of the State of São Paulo (FISESP) — private pro-Israel organizations acting as private prosecutors. The court accepted their argument that anti-Zionist political criticism constitutes antisemitism, thereby collapsing the distinction between opposition to a state’s policies and racism against Jewish people. This is a dangerous and deliberate conflation. Zé Maria has explicitly repudiated antisemitism. As he wrote: “Antisemitism is racism, which I repudiate with all my might. Zionists make up a political movement — Zionism, whose racist and colonialist ideology is the basis of the State of Israel.” Criticizing Zionism is not antisemitism. Opposing the Israeli state’s occupation, siege, and settler-colonial project is not racism. It is an internationalist duty.
The Same Legal Logic Is Being Deployed in the United States
We in the U.S. labor movement must recognize this case as a warning. The same legal framework that put Zé Maria in prison is being actively advanced in the United States. Executive Order 13899 and the pending Antisemitism Awareness Act (S. 558) direct the Department of Education to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — a framework whose accompanying examples explicitly conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. This has already led to campus investigations, faculty discipline, and the abduction of student activists like Mahmoud Khalil. If a Brazilian union leader can be jailed for saying “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” then every worker in the United States who speaks out for Palestinian rights is at risk of censorship, termination, or criminalization.
We reject this entirely. The First Amendment right to criticize foreign governments — including the State of Israel — must be defended without exception. And we note that U.S. unions have already begun to resist this framework. The California Faculty Association, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and New York public sector locals such as DC 37 Locals 1113 and 3005 have all rejected the IHRA definition, passed divestment resolutions, and affirmed that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. This statement stands in that proud tradition.
A Direct Threat to Trade Union Internationalism
Criminalizing political solidarity with Palestine is not a narrow legal technicality. It is a direct assault on the very idea of trade union internationalism. For generations, labor activists have stood with the South African apartheid struggle, with the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism, with the Cuban people against the blockade, with the Chilean people against the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship, with the Afghani and Iraqi people against US imperialist wars, and more recently with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, return, and liberation. If a union leader can be jailed for saying “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” then cross-border worker solidarity itself is placed in jeopardy.
Our Demands and Commitments
Therefore, the Labor for Palestine National Network in the US demands:
– The immediate dropping of all charges against José Maria de Almeida (Zé Maria) and his immediate release.
– That the U.S. State Department and the current administration refrain from any actions that would legitimize this judicial attack on labor rights and free speech in Brazil, and publicly affirm that criticizing Israeli state policy is protected political speech.
We further commit to:
– Rejecting any conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and opposing the use of the IHRA definition or any similar framework as a tool to suppress Palestine solidarity in the U.S., Brazil, or anywhere else.
– Raising awareness about Zé Maria’s case in our workplaces and communities, and building solidarity with the Palestinian people as part of our union internationalist work — including support for the BDS movement and opposition to the weaponization of antisemitism in U.S. labor and academic settings.
– Sending this statement to CSP-Conlutas (internacional@cspconlutas.org.br) and encouraging all members and allies to sign and share the international petition at change.org/abaixo-assinado-ze-maria.
– Circulating these demands publicly on social media with the hashtags #FreeZeMaria, #PalestineSolidarity, #UnionInternationalism, and #DropTheCharges.
We stand with Zé Maria. We stand with Palestine. And we will not be silenced.
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NYC May Day 2026 Rank-and-File Antiwar Speak-Out US Labor Must Act Now! No School—No Work—No Shopping! *Money for Human Need! *No ICE—No War—No Genocide! *No Weapons for Israel!
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Convened by the Labor for Palestine National Network, with speakers from many of the endorsing organizations: UAW Labor for Palestine UAW 2325 UAWD: Unite All Workers for Democracy NYC Labor for Palestine NYC Educators for Palestine Coalition for Action in Higher Education Teamsters Mobilize Entertainment Labor 4 Palestine Dancers for Palestine Pal-Awda NY/NJ CUNY for Palestine Workers World Party Science for the People NYC NYC City Workers for Palestine Students for Justice in Palestine- CUNY Law Palestinian Youth Movement Break the Chain Left Voice Cuba Sí NY/NJ CWA for Palestine =========== An Urgent May Day Call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions To Trade Unions and Labor Forces in the United States of America (PGFTU-Gaza) https://tinyurl.com/mrxksxye US Labor Must Act Now to Stop US-Israel Wars! https://tinyurl.com/2757fwjm Labor for Palestine National Network (L4PNN) Member Groups https://tinyurl.com/vn3jmwks
Posted onApril 28, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Urgent May Day Call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions To Trade Unions and Labor Forces in the United States of America (PGFTU-Gaza)
An Urgent Call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions To Trade Unions and Labor Forces in the United States of America On the Occasion of International Workers’ Day – May 1, 2026 https://sisinfo.short.gy/PGFTU-May-Day-2026
On the occasion of May 1st — International Workers’ Day — and drawing on the essence of this day as a revolutionary act that awakens the latent power of the working class, and as a platform for escalating union action, particularly in the United States of America, the Palestinian General Federation Trade Unions addresses this urgent appeal to the unions and labor forces in the United States of America, as a first step toward building real pressure that transforms solidarity into tangible and lasting tools of influence. From the trenches of steadfastness and suffering, and from amid the rubble of what were once factories, workshops, and sources of livelihood, we turn to you — our comrades in the labor movement in the United States — with an appeal rooted in the unity of class belonging and shared historical responsibility, and in the firm conviction that the power of workers, when united, is capable of reshaping the scales of justice in the world.
In these difficult circumstances facing the world and our region — and Palestine in particular — Palestinian workers, especially in the Gaza Strip, are living through one of the most severe humanitarian and social catastrophes of the modern era. The cycle of production has been nearly completely disrupted, more than half a million workers have lost their livelihoods, and unemployment rates have reached unprecedented levels exceeding 80%, under a siege that has lasted for many years and amid widespread destruction of infrastructure and productive facilities. The damage has not been limited to the loss of work, but has extended to the comprehensive destruction of productive infrastructure — factories, workshops, and service facilities — uprooting the material foundation of economic life and leaving workers utterly unable to secure any source of income.
We present to you a harrowing reality regarding the fate of Gaza’s “food basket”: the agricultural and fishing sectors are being subjected to systematic eradication and total paralysis. More than 94% of agricultural land has been destroyed, and production has collapsed nearly entirely—plummeting from 405,000 tons annually to a mere 28,000 tons. Out at sea, fishermen face death on a daily basis; Israeli warships have destroyed most fishing boats, burned their nets and equipment, and turned their search for sustenance into a massacre. Dozens have fallen as martyrs or been wounded, while others have been abducted to interrogation and detention centers under a hail of gunfire and shells. This has resulted in the total collapse of the food security system, the transformation of fertile lands into barren, contaminated terrain, and has left more than 560,000 people without means of sustenance, facing the very real threat of famine.
Data reveals the catastrophic scale of the losses workers have incurred. Economic losses have exceeded $9 billion over the past two years. As a result of the destruction of the production sectors and the obstruction of workers’ access to their workplaces—including within the territories occupied in 1948—where approximately 220,000 workers once constituted a vital pillar of the Palestinian economy. Their sudden deprivation of work triggered a severe economic and social shock, leading to a decline in purchasing power and a surge in poverty and debt rates throughout society—not to mention the ongoing targeting, harassment, and detention of the working class in both Gaza and the West Bank.
The systematic crimes to which workers in Palestine are subjected intersect with the blatant Israeli targeting—backed by the U.S. administration—including factories, means of production, and the foundations of economic life, within the framework of a complex crime. This forms part of a compound crime in which political, military, and economic dimensions are intertwined, and aims to cripple the people’s capacity to work, produce, and survive.
Comrades in American Trade Unions and Labor Forces…
The ongoing catastrophe in Palestine and Gaza cannot be measured merely by unprecedented, catastrophic figures and statistics, but by its very structural nature; for the working-class community itself is being dismantled, and its capacity to reproduce its own existence is being stifled—all amidst massive and comprehensive destruction of infrastructure. In the absence of any economic horizon, workers are being driven toward forced poverty, forced migration, or remaining trapped within a cycle of total helplessness.
In the occupied West Bank, the quest for work has transformed into a daily test of survival. Thousands of laborers set out before dawn, confronting checkpoints and walls, and navigating routes fraught with the risk of gunfire and arrest. Statistics reveal that 74 workers were killed over the past year while attempting to reach their workplaces—18 of whom were killed by direct fire—in addition to more than 35,000 arrests and 1,500 injuries recorded over a two-year period, effectively turning the pursuit of a livelihood into a daily journey to the brink of death.
In a scene that unfolds daily, workers gather near gaps in the wall or at military gates, watching soldiers’ movements and waiting for the opportune moment to cross. While some scale the fence, others dig rudimentary tunnels or squeeze through narrow openings—facing at every step, the peril of gunfire, pursuit, or arrest. This suffering is not confined to the economic sphere; rather, it extends to profound human and psychological dimensions, as their families live in a state of perpetual suspense—caught between the hope of a safe return and the dreaded news of an arrest, injury, or martyrdom.
Our colleagues in the American Labor Movement…
The martyrs of this catastrophe are your colleagues—your peers in both profession and class. They must not be reduced to mere statistics; rather, they were workers who produced, healed, taught, and saved lives. Consequently, targeting them constitutes a direct assault on the very concept of labor itself, as well as on the values upon which the global trade union movement was founded. It is from this standpoint of shared struggle—and with a full appreciation of the significance and impact of your presence, particularly within the United States—that we reach out to you.
Accordingly, as we extend our greetings to you and to the working class worldwide, particularly the martyrs, prisoners, wounded, and bereaved, on the occasion of International Workers’ Day, we in the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions call upon you to transition from the stage of expression to the stage of action, and from symbolic solidarity to impactful solidarity. We hereby ask the following:
Fight to halt the investment of trade union pension funds in the apartheid state. Workers’ funds must serve as a tool to protect their rights, not as a means to finance their violation. Therefore, divesting from bonds and companies linked to the war economy constitutes a pivotal step in redirecting the economic power of the trade union movement toward serving the cause of justice; furthermore, we call for the adoption of ethical, transparent investment policies subject to oversight by the union rank and file.
Work to prevent the export of weapons of destruction and death. The union movement plays a decisive role within global supply chains, enabling it to exert direct influence to disrupt arms shipments—and to halt participation in their production or transport—through clear union stances adopted within ports, factories, and shipping hubs.
Urgent and serious pressure to lift the blockade on fishermen and farmers and attacks by Zionist gunboats; and to permit the entry of production supplies (including seeds, fertilizers, fuel, fishing nets, and replacement boats), thereby enabling workers to earn their livelihood with dignity and safeguarding what remains of the food production cycle.
Pressure to compel the U.S. government to adhere to international law—not merely through statements, but through organized advocacy campaigns, political accountability, and by conditioning support on respect for human rights and labor rights.
Elevate the American trade union position to the level of the global labor movement: the current stage requires repositioning American trade unions within a more cohesive international labor movement, and aligning with the positions of international federations that have taken clear positions supporting the rights of the Palestinian people.
Affirm solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination—not merely as a moral stance, but as part of a global struggle for freedom and social justice.
Remember that the martyred victims are at the very heart of the labor movement. Doctors and nurses, teachers and professors, journalists, ambulance drivers, and rescue workers—all constitute the living foundation of the Palestinian labor movement, and targeting them is a direct assault on society’s capacity to persevere.
Transition to practical and sustainable trade union initiatives by launching educational campaigns within unions, adopting official boycott resolutions, building alliances with social movements, and organizing field-based events and protests—thereby generating continuous, cumulative pressure.
Our colleagues and comrades.
History is not written in statements, but in organized action. The labor movement that forged its rights through struggle is capable today of serving as a decisive force in the face of injustice, provided the will is present. Our people in Palestine—and our workers in particular—await from you actions that rise to the magnitude of the tragedy.
Long live international workers’ solidarity… Long live the laboring working class—on this May Day—striving for a new world governed by peace, stability, freedom, justice, and human dignity.
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions May 1, 2026
Signatures:
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NYC MAY DAY 2026 Rank-and-File Antiwar Speak-Out US Labor Must Act Now! No School—No Work—No Shopping! *Money for Human Need! *No ICE—No War—No Genocide! *No Weapons for Israel! May 1, 3:15pm Garibaldi Plaza Washington SQ Park, NYC
Posted onApril 3, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on US Labor Must Act Now to Stop US-Israel Wars!
US Labor Must Act Now to Stop US-Israel Wars! April 3, 2026
The Labor for Palestine National Network unequivocally condemns the rapidly expanding US-Israel war against Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and throughout the region.
This is a naked war of aggression that reflects decades of bipartisan US imperialism in the Global South to extract natural resources and terrorize the working class.
This is a war of terror. The US-Israel attacks have already crippled vital infrastructure and killed thousands of people. It is being conducted by the same war criminals that have genocided at least 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023; who have bombed millions to “liberate” Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Nigeria; who are carrying out aggression across the Americas with military intervention in Venezuela and economic warfare against Cuba; and who are waging a fascist wave of terror at home against migrants, complete with mass abductions, concentration camps, deportations, and the murder of anti-ICE protesters.
No one is “liberated” by imperialist war. US-Israel bombs are destroying the rights of Iranians, Lebanese, and Palestinians to live, thrive, and determine their collective future and governance.
The war is an extension of the Nakba. Israel has seized on the war against Iran as an opportunity to bomb, invade, and occupy Lebanon, in pursuit of its long-term project of territorial expansion known as the “Greater Israel” project. At the same time, Israel continues to expand eight decades of Zionist ethnic cleansing—-the ongoing Nakba—by intensifying anti-Palestinian pogroms in the West Bank and relentless genocide in Gaza.
Imperialist bombs dropped abroad also fall at home. The war on Iran is a massive attack on the entire working class.While racism, unemployment, homelessness, cost of living, food insecurity, school and social service cutbacks, union-busting, deportations, and repression soar at home, US troops are being sent thousands of miles to kill and die for oil executives, weapons contractors, the billionaire class, and Israeli settler colonialism. The $1+ billion a day it costs to bomb Iran—including $2+ million for the Tomahawk missile that massacred 165 children at Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school—should be spent instead on building just, sustainable societies at home and abroad.
We need workers’ action now. Protest rallies are essential, but are not enough to stop war, rising fascism, and crisis dragging the entire world toward disaster. Echoing workers in Europe and North Africa who have gone on strike against the genocide in Gaza, we must use our power—in the streets, in our unions, in our workplaces, and in uniform—to build an anti-imperialist united front in support of a general strike, and calls from Minneapolis, May Day Strong, and many others, for No Work, No School, No Shopping on May Day 2026.
We demand:
No war on Iran!
End Israeli Genocide—Arms embargo now!
US hands off Venezuela and Cuba!
Abolish ICE!
Money for Jobs, Food, Housing, Education, and Healthcare, Not for War!
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Posted onJanuary 27, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on ICE OUT! Friday, January 30, 2026 Nationwide Shutdown! No Work. No School No Shopping. Stop Funding ICE.
ICE OUT! Friday, January 30, 2026 Nationwide Shutdown! No Work. No School No Shopping. Stop Funding ICE.
The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country – to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN. On Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work and no shopping.
The entire country is shocked and outraged at the brutal killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. by federal agents. While Trump and other right wing politicians are slandering them as “terrorists”, the video evidence makes it clear beyond all doubt: they were gunned down in broad daylight simply for exercising their First Amendment right to protest mass deportation. Every day, ICE, Border Patrol and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear. It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!
On Friday, Jan 23, Minnesotans are taking unified action. ✖️ No work. ✖️ No school. ✖️ No shopping.
Join Minnesotans statewide in a collective pause and for a 2pm march in Downtown Minneapolis.
We are united in demanding: ➡️ ICE must leave Minnesota now ➡️ The officer who killed #ReneeGood be held legally accountable ➡️ No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming budget
Posted onJanuary 10, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine National Network Resolution to Support February 6, 2026 Call by Italian USB Union for Global Strike Against Genocide, Militarism, and Attacks On the Working Class
Labor for Palestine National Network Resolution to Support February 6, 2026 Call by Italian USB Union for Global Strike Against Genocide, Militarism, and Attacks On the Working Class January 10, 2026
Whereas, the Italian USB union, along with unions from Turkey, Morocco, Euskadi and Greece,are planning for another general strike on February 6, 2026 involving dockworkers from at least 21 ports across the Mediterranean to protest against the genocide in Gaza, imperialist war, militarism, and the attacks on the working class, and;
Whereas, they are appealing to workers around the world, including US workers and dock workers, to join their actions and;
Whereas, the US-supported genocide in Israel, the attack and war on Venezuela, and the US trillion dollar military budget is paid for by attacks on healthcare, education, housing, and all public services and;
Whereas, the US working class and people also need to take action globally with workers and people around the world against genocide, militarism, and attacks on workers in the US and globally,
Therefore, be it resolved, that the Labor For Palestine National Network endorses the Stop the War on Venezuela National Network call for a day of action to Shut Down the Imperialist War Machine in solidarity with the USB-led general strike and urges its member groups to organize or join labor actions on 2/6/26.
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Posted onJanuary 9, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on From Minneapolis to Palestine, Our Struggle is One! Laga bilaabo Minneapolis ilaa Falastiin, Halgankeennu waa Mid! De Minneapolis a Palestina, ¡Nuestra lucha es una sola!
From Minneapolis to Palestine, Our Struggle is One! January 9, 2026
The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns the cold-blooded execution of poet, mother, and legal observer Renee Nicole Good, who was gunned down by an ICE death squad in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026—less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered by police in 2020.
Renee is at least the ninth person shot to death in their vehicles by ICE since September. Another 32 people have died in horrific ICE detention last year. All are victims of the same bipartisan US terror machine of racism, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, war, and genocide on workers and oppressed people—from Gaza, to Venezuela, to Minneapolis, and around the world.
The murder of Renee Good and all victims of ICE is an Injury to All! In our unions, workplaces, communities, and on the streets, we affirm our solidarity and resistance to injustice:
¡Chinga la migra!
No one is illegal on stolen land, rise up, take a stand!
Shabakadda Qaranka ee Shaqaalaha Falastiin waxay cambaareyneysaa dilka naxariis darrada ah ee loo geystay gabyaa, hooyo, iyo kormeere sharci ah Renee Nicole Good, oo ay toogteen koox dil ah oo ka tirsan ICE oo ku sugan Minneapolis Janaayo 7, 2026—wax ka yar hal mayl meeshii ay boolisku ku dileen George Floyd sanadkii 2020.
Renee waa ugu yaraan qofkii sagaalaad ee lagu toogtay baabuurtooda ICE tan iyo Sebtembar. 32 qof oo kale ayaa ku dhintay xabsi ICE ah oo naxdin leh sanadkii hore. Dhammaantood waa dhibanayaal isku mid ah oo ay geysteen mashiinada argagixisada ee Mareykanka ee cunsuriyadda, gumeysiga dadka deegaanka, nadiifinta qowmiyadaha, dagaalka, iyo xasuuqa shaqaalaha iyo dadka la dulmay—laga bilaabo Gaza, ilaa Venezuela, ilaa Minneapolis, iyo adduunka oo dhan.
Cidna sharci darro kuma aha dhul la xaday, kac, istaag!
Baraf, Baraf dibadda u bax!
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De Minneapolis a Palestina, ¡Nuestra lucha es una sola! 9 de enero de 2026
La Red Nacional Trabajadores por Palestina condena la ejecución a sangre fría de la poeta, madre y observadora legal Renee Nicole Good, quien fue asesinada a tiros por un escuadrón de la muerte de ICE en Minneapolis el 7 de enero de 2026, a menos de un kilómetro de donde George Floyd fue asesinado por la policía en 2020.
Renee es al menos la novena persona asesinada a tiros en sus vehículos por ICE desde septiembre. Otras 32 personas murieron en las horribles detenciones de ICE el año pasado. Todas son víctimas de la misma maquinaria terrorista bipartidista estadounidense de racismo, colonialismo de asentamiento, limpieza étnica, guerra y genocidio contra los trabajadores y los pueblos oprimidos, desde Gaza hasta Venezuela, pasando por Minneapolis y el resto del mundo.
¡El asesinato de Renee Good y de todas las víctimas de ICE es una ofensa para todos! En nuestros sindicatos, lugares de trabajo, comunidades y en las calles, reafirmamos nuestra solidaridad y resistencia contra la injusticia:
¡Chinga la migra!
Nadie es ilegal en tierra robada, ¡levántense, alcen la voz!
¡Fuera ICE!
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Posted onJanuary 4, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Injury to Venezuela is An Injury to All! / ¡Una agresión contra Venezuela es una agresión contra todos!
An Injury to Venezuela is An Injury to All! January 4, 2026
The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns US war on Venezuela, including the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
As Trump boasts, this war is nothing less than a grab for oil and other natural resources that reflects more than two centuries of bipartisan US imperialism in Latin America. It is part of the same war on workers and oppressed people that includes arming Israeli genocide in Gaza, unleashing ICE terror against our migrant communities, military occupation of our cities, devastating tariffs, defunding our social services, attacking our unions, and rising fascism.
We call on all US workers and labor bodies to stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people’s fight for self-determination.
US Hands Off Venezuela!
Defend Venezuelan Sovereignty!
Free President Maduro and Cilia Flores!
Money for human need, not imperialist war!
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¡Una agresión contra Venezuela es una agresión contra todos! 4 de enero de 2026
La Red Nacional de Trabajadores por Palestina condena la guerra de Estados Unidos contra Venezuela, incluyendo el secuestro del presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro y la primera dama Cilia Flores.
Como alardea Trump, esta guerra no es más que un intento de apoderarse del petróleo y otros recursos naturales, lo que refleja más de dos siglos de imperialismo bipartidista estadounidense en América Latina. Forma parte de la misma guerra contra los trabajadores y los pueblos oprimidos, que incluye el apoyo militar al genocidio israelí en Gaza, la represión del ICE contra nuestras comunidades migrantes, la ocupación militar de nuestras ciudades, los aranceles devastadores, el recorte de fondos para nuestros servicios sociales, los ataques contra nuestros sindicatos y el auge del fascismo.
Hacemos un llamado a todos los trabajadores y organizaciones sindicales de Estados Unidos a solidarizarse con la lucha del pueblo venezolano por la autodeterminación.
¡Manos fuera de Venezuela! ¡Defendamos la soberanía venezolana! ¡Libertad para el presidente Maduro y Cilia Flores! ¡Dinero para las necesidades humanas, no para la guerra imperialista!
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Posted onDecember 20, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine National Network and National Lawyers Guild International Committee Statement of Solidarity with the UK Hunger Strikers
Labor for Palestine National Network and National Lawyers Guild International Committee Statement of Solidarity with the UK Hunger Strikers December 20, 2025
Labor for Palestine National Network, together with the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, stands in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian solidarity activists imprisoned in Britain who are collectively undertaking a hunger strike in protest of their unjust detention and the criminalization of resistance to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Of the 33 people held without bail under the UK’s “Terrorism” Act for direct action aimed at disrupting the machinery of genocide, at least six are currently on hunger strike, with others prepared to join as their demands continue to be ignored. These hunger strikers are demanding: an end to the censorship of their communications; immediate and unconditional release on bail; the right to a fair trial, including full disclosure of communications between Elbit Systems, Israel, and the British state; the de-proscription of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization; and the permanent closure of all Elbit facilities and subsidiaries in the UK.
As formations rooted in internationalist, anti-imperialist solidarity—with Labor for Palestine National Network grounded in working-class struggle and National Lawyers Guild International Committee committed to standing in solidarity with political prisoners and movements resisting imperialism—we recognize hunger strikes as a historic weapon of last resort used by political prisoners confronting colonial and imperial repression—from Ireland and South Africa to U.S. prisons and colonized Palestine itself. The British state’s use of “terrorism” laws to detain and silence those who acted to disarm genocide is part of a broader Western strategy to criminalize liberation struggles and international solidarity, while shielding arms manufacturers like Elbit Systems from accountability. This repression mirrors the sanctioning of Palestinian prisoner solidarity organizations, the global policing of BDS, and the routine targeting of workers, students, lawyers, and organizers who refuse complicity in settler colonial and imperialist violence.
Labor for Palestine was founded in 2004 to reclaim the legacy of militant labor solidarity with Palestine and to answer the call of Palestinian trade unions to end all complicity with Israeli settler colonialism and genocide and to uphold the Palestinian BDS picket line. National Lawyers Guild International Committee has a long history of supporting political prisoners, challenging imperialist repression, and upholding international law against war, occupation, and collective punishment. That shared commitment requires standing with political prisoners whose actions sought to stop the flow of weapons and profits sustaining mass death in Gaza.
The crime is not acting to disarm genocide—the crime is arming settler-colonial genocide. We know that sending arms to terrorist settlers and the Israeli state is illegal, yet our governments continue to violate the will of the people. Palestine Action is the result of the collective will to disarm genocide through an immediate arms embargo.
Labor for Palestine National Network stands with the prisoners and the people.
We call on unions, rank-and-file workers, legal workers, and labor bodies to demand that the UK government:
Meet the hunger strikers’ demands.
De-proscribe Palestine Action.
Shut down Elbit Systems.
Free all political prisoners and prisoners of war.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.
For concrete ways to take action—including contacting British embassies, organizing protests, pitching media coverage, and supporting the prisoners directly—see the TOOLKIT FOR UK HUNGER STRIKERS (U.S. VERSION)
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Posted onNovember 20, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on The ongoing battle over Israel within the U.S. labor movement — “No Neutrals There: U.S. Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine” (Mondoweiss)
The ongoing battle over Israel within the U.S. labor movement
The author of the new book, “No Neutrals There: U.S. Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine,” discusses how U.S. labor unions have played a key role in building and maintaining the state of Israel.
UAW Labor for Palestine action in Albany, NY, March 2024. (Photo: UAW Labor for Palestine X Account)
This year, on the eve of International Workers’ Day, General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza, published a call to the U.S. labor movement.
“This war would not have been possible without the unlimited U.S. support for the occupation, whether through military funding, political and diplomatic backing, or arms deals that kill our children, women, and elderly every day,” it read. “The U.S. administration under Trump has continued what the previous administration started, becoming a direct accomplice in genocide, ignoring the voices of millions inside and outside of the United States, and an overwhelming majority of the nation, who reject this brutal aggression.”
“Therefore, we call on you, the American labor unions, to translate your solidarity into effective actions that go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure to stop this dirty war,” it continued.
Over the years, many rank-and-file U.S. workers have engaged in such effective actions, but labor leadership has consistently backed Israel and even cracked down on organizers who have taken a stance on the issue.
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria recently spoke with Schuhrke about the book.
How was Zionism originally perceived by the U.S. labor movement? How was it specifically perceived by Jewish union members?
Jeff Schruke: When Zionism first emerged as a deliberate political project in the 1890s and early 1900s, its main spokespeople and champions were primarily middle- and upper-class bourgeois Jews in Europe, such as Theodore Herzl. The participants were not working-class Jewish folks. They were not leftists.
Working-class Jews, particularly in Eastern Europe, had their own organization that was founded the same year as the Zionist organization, called the Jewish Labor Bund. It was a socialist group. It was working-class Jews, men and women, who were rebelling against the Tsarist regime and the Russian empire, and also fighting back against exploitative working conditions.
Many of them worked in the factories in newly industrializing cities across Eastern Europe. They regarded Zionism as a major distraction from class struggle. It was a nationalist movement, and as socialists, they rejected nationalism. They believed that the working class should unite worldwide, regardless of nationality.
They also viewed Zionism as something of a fantasy, the idea that Jews were going to go to Palestine, which was already populated and, at that time, part of the Ottoman Empire. The idea of creating your own state seemed absurd, and it seemed much more practical to the working-class socialist Jews to work on improving their lives and their conditions where they already were.
It wasn’t until around the 1910s that labor Zionism emerged as an attempt to fuse the nationalist and settler colonialist ideology of Zionism with the more socialistic, working-class-oriented politics of the Jewish Labor Bund.
The Labor Zionists, who were mostly working-class Jews, regarded the more bourgeois mainstream Zionists as having an inefficient way of going about settler colonialism. They thought the middle-class and upper-class Zionists were simply trying to appeal to major world powers like the British Empire, the U.S., or the Ottoman Empire and win a Jewish state through these diplomatic channels.
The Labor Zionists thought the best way to establish a Jewish state in Arab Palestine was to just literally go there and start colonizing the place. To start building their own economy, communal farms, cooperative villages, housing programs, schools, and industrial businesses. A transportation network, their own healthcare system, their own workers’ bank, and literally lay the foundations for a Jewish State.
They wanted to do the settler colonialism themselves as workers and have it all be centered on this ideology that sounded like socialism, but was actually premised on the exclusion, dispossession, and expulsion of the native Palestinian Arab population. They were consciously saying “Jews Only,” and they weren’t open to Palestinian workers.
If a Jewish employer was hiring native Arab workers, Zionists would go and try to literally force out those workers through direct physical force.
Slowly, this argument began to be made to working-class socialist Jews in Eastern Europe and in the United States that supporting Zionism was not so much about supporting nationalism; it was actually about working-class solidarity.
Starting in 1920, the primary instrument of this Zionism was the Histadrut, an organization often referred to as a trade union federation. In some ways, it was that, but it was so much more. The Histadrut was doing all the things I just mentioned. Setting up farms, healthcare networks, and a workers’ bank. It was a major employer and paved the way for the eventual establishment of the state of Israel.
They were enforcing this racial line, excluding Palestinians and pushing them off to the margins economically in the hopes that this would push them off the land altogether.
Histadrut officials would appeal to Jewish American labor leaders, many of whom had come from the Jewish Labor Bund and were socialists. They were traditionally anti-Zionists, but the Histadrut appealed to them on the grounds that this was a matter of worker solidarity. They were asking Jewish-led unions in the U.S. for financial contributions for all of their settler colonial projects that they were doing in Palestine.
Can you talk about the creation of Israel in 1948 and the role that unions played in that process?
Over the last two years of genocide, whenever unions in the U.S. or union members have put forward statements in support of a ceasefire, or an arms embargo, or a boycott, critics will jump in and ask, Why are unions talking about Palestine in the first place? Why are unions talking about Israel? This has nothing to do with the work of unions. They should just stay out of it.
The most basic argument of my book is that this position is completely ridiculous because unions in the U.S. have always been very much involved in this issue. They have never been neutral or silent on the question of Palestine.
Unions in the U.S. have always been very much involved in this issue. They have never been neutral or silent on the question of Palestine.
In 1948, the U.S. labor movement was at its peak in terms of historic strength, thanks to the New Deal, World War II, and numerous major organizing campaigns that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as general support from the federal government. One in three workers in the U.S. was unionized, and unions had considerable economic and political strength during this period, exerting significant influence.
U.S. labor support for Zionism began as early as 1917, during World War I. The American Federation of Labor endorsed the Balfour Declaration in 1917 as part of its broader support for U.S. entry into the war. Then, as I mentioned, in 1920, the Histadrut was convincing Jewish American labor leaders to donate some of their union funds to help projects on the ground in Palestine under the guise of worker solidarity.
By the 1940s, support for Zionism extended beyond Jewish American labor leaders. It was supported, really more significantly, it was the non-Jewish Christian labor leaders. People William Green, who was president of the AFL at the time, and Philip Murray, who was president of the CIO. Well-known, non-Jewish labor leaders like Walter Reuther, George Meany, and Jimmy Hoffa were strongly supporting Zionism by this point, partially because replacing class struggle with class collaboration in the service of nationalism was very similar to how the U.S. labor movement approached unionism at the time, but also because these high ranking U.S. labor officials very much invested in U.S. empire and showing how they were patriot loyal patriots supporting the U.S. government in the hopes of getting a seat at the table.
In terms of how they were supporting it, there were continued donations, with millions of dollars from union treasuries, union pension funds, strike funds, and healthcare funds going to these settler-colonial programs that were being established.
They were also lobbying President Harry Truman to immediately recognize Israel. The Truman government had actually imposed an arms embargo to try to reduce the bloodshed in the area, but U.S. unions were demanding that he lift that and send weapons to the Zionist militias like the Haganah, which became the IDF.
In 1948, approximately 30,000 members of the garment unions went on a half-day strike. They left work early and traveled to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for a large pro-Zionist rally, demanding that Truman immediately recognize Israel, lift the embargo, and send weapons to these Israel militias that were carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign. In some cases, the garment unions were even voluntarily stitching together uniforms and caps for Zionist soldiers.
Did the Red Scare and McCarthyism have an impact on U.S. union support for Israel? Would things have been any different if there hadn’t been a purge of Communists from unions and a wider crackdown on the left?
I think in the longer term, it could have gone a different way, but what’s particularly complicated about that moment is that the Soviet Union initially supported the creation of Israel.
Before 1948, the communist movement worldwide had been consistently anti-Zionist due to the belief that the entire working class needed to be united. So they saw labor Zionism as being basically just a nationalist, racist form of worker organizing and generally rejected it in favor of having Jewish and Arab workers organizing together in Palestine.
From about 1950 on, the Soviet Union’s official policy was anti-Zionist, and it was highly critical of the state of Israel, supporting the surrounding Arab countries and the Palestinian liberation movement, but in that brief period around 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, the official Soviet policy was supporting Israel and that trickled down to many communist groups across the world. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc states were the crucial votes at the UN General Assembly when the 1947 partition plan, which basically set the stage for the Nakba, was passed.
It was also the communist government of Czechoslovakia that provided weapons to the Zionist militias that carried out the Nakba, because, as I said, the U.S. and the U.K. were enforcing an arms embargo at that time.
So even communist trade unionists in the U.S. were supporting Zionism and Israel, and then by the 1950s, they kind of went back to being anti-Zionist. Maybe if communists hadn’t been systematically purged from the U.S. labor movement during the McCarthy period, then labor’s position might have been different, but in that moment, at least in 1948, everyone was basically on the same page, unfortunately.
Certainly, after the post-World War II Red Scare and the onset of the Cold War, U.S. labor officials shifted significantly to the right, including those who had traditionally been more progressive, and this included many Jewish American labor leaders who had emerged from the Jewish labor movement.
They embraced anti-communism, in part because they believed in it ideologically, but it was also a political calculation. They were reacting to McCarthyism and Red Scare tactics that were always trying to paint unions as some kind of Soviet conspiracy. So they tried to distance themselves from any left-wing radicalism. Many U.S. labor officials really became full-throated cold warriors.
Then you had the Vietnam War and AFL-CIO’s, a formal partnership with the CIA and the State Department. They were trying to undermine any kind of left-wing type of labor movement all around the world, not just actual communists, but anyone, any type of union that was oppositional to the power of imperialism. The AFL-CIO worked with the U.S. government to try to undermine those unions. The more radical and left-wing elements of the labor movement had already been marginalized and sidelined, so all this went largely unchallenged.
We’ve been discussing union leadership, and there’s obviously been a long history of solidarity efforts among rank-and-file workers that defy the reality you’re detailing. Your book details important organizing efforts from the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Detroit autoworkers’ strike for Palestine in 1973.
Can you talk about some of that organizing and the reaction from union leadership?
I always try to make it clear when I talk about U.S. labor support for imperialism, Zionism, and colonialism that it’s not the labor movement writ large, it’s the labor officialdom. It’s the high-ranking leaders, union presidents, and so on. The rank-and-file members might have different ideas. This is why union democracy is so vital in all these questions.
Throughout all this history, there have been various examples of rank-and-file union members protesting against their own union leaders’ support for Israel.
A great example, like you said, is 1973 when 2,000 Arab-American auto workers in Detroit who were members of the United Auto Workers, led a wildcat strike for one day at the main Dodge assembly plant and shut down production to protest not just constant the racial discrimination and harassment that they were facing from their employers and union representatives, who were pretty much all white, but also the fact the UAW had invested about $780,000 into the state of Israel.
They did it through Israel Bonds. They were using union members’ dues money to invest in the oppression of Palestinians, and many of these Arab-American auto workers were understandably upset that their own dues money was being used for this purpose.
One of the workers’ demands was for union leadership to divest its bond holdings from Israel. They formed an Arab workers caucus within the UAW to try to assert their voices, not only around Palestine and the bond issue, but also to demand more representation in the union itself, more democracy in the union, and the direct election of union.
That’s something that only, finally, happened in 2022 with the election of Shawn Fain. That was the first time the union had a direct election, with members voting directly for the union’s top officers. That was something that these Arab workers had proposed back in the 1970s.
“Photo dated 28 November 1973 of Arab auto workers and their supporters in Detroit protest, published in Revolution, January 1974.” (Photo via the University of Michigan Library Digital Collections)
Then, moving ahead to the 1980s during the First Intifada, there was a growing number of rank-and-file union members trying to educate and organize within their unions about Palestine and making the direct comparison to apartheid South Africa.
Many U.S. labor leaders were, to their credit, enthusiastically supporting boycotting and divesting from apartheid South Africa. They were supporting black South African trade unionists who were facing repression and pressuring the Reagan administration to impose sanctions on South Africa until apartheid was ended.
Many rank-and-file union members were clearly supporting those efforts, including many African American workers, so it was natural to make the comparison to say, Look what Israel is doing to Palestinians, especially in the West Bank and Gaza, while the Intifada was happening.
So for the first time, there started to be a more coordinated effort from rank-and-file union members to show solidarity with Palestine and to challenge the labor officialdom’s traditional support for Israel. In 1988, there was the first delegation of U.S. Unionists going to the West Bank to see what conditions were like for Palestinian workers living under the military occupation. Such incidents were beginning to occur.
If we fast-forward to the Second Intifada, when the BDS movement was first officially launched in 2005. Around the same time, in 2004, a group of rank-and-file union members and local union leaders around the country founded Labor for Palestine as a permanent network of organizing within the U.S. labor movement that stands in solidarity with Palestine and tries to push unions to support the boycott movement.
This prompted a crackdown from high-ranking union officials who were trying to make sure that their unions would not embrace BDS and would not become too critical of Israel.
That’s pretty much been the story for the last twenty years. Whenever UAW members or a union graduate student workers pass BDS resolution democratically, the high-ranking national union officials will overturn that decision.
Again, it comes down to union democracy. The rank-and-file are democratically and collectively saying, we don’t wanna continue our union support for the state of Israel, and the leadership is rejecting that
Polling shows that support for Israel has dropped among the U.S. population, particularly among Democratic voters. The Democrats are still associated with the labor movement to some extent, and I’m wondering if you believe that’s shifted the unions in any capacity.
I think if we’re just talking about rank-and-file union members, there’s definitely been a shift.
For example, every year, Labor Notes hosts a large conference of rank-and-file union activists in Chicago. I was at last year’s conference, and you saw people wearing keffiyehs everywhere. There were at least four or five panels about Palestine. All pro-Palestine. Panels about how the labor movement can show more solidarity with Palestinians mainly.
Each of those panels was jam-packed. It was standing room only. That anecdote shows you the prevailing attitude among union activists.
In the last couple of years, there have been multiple efforts at the grassroots level, where union members are demanding a ceasefire, demanding an arms embargo, and pushing for BDS.
At the University of California, graduate workers, postdoctoral scholars, and other academic staff, represented by UAW Local 4811, went on strike for several weeks in the spring of 2024 in solidarity with the Gaza solidarity student encampments. So that’s all very significant. I think we’ve seen more Palestine solidarity in the U.S. labor movement in the last two years than at any other time in history.
You even had high-ranking union leaders and labor union presidents call for a ceasefire. Last summer, 7 unions, including two of the largest unions in the country, the National Education Association and the Service Employees International Union, sent a letter to Joe Biden demanding an arms embargo on Israel.
This is all significant. However, the problem is that all that has come from high-ranking union officials have just been statements and resolutions. There hasn’t been much actual action.
Take the UAW, for example. They called for an immediate ceasefire and then turned around to endorse Joe Biden in the presidential race without attempting to secure any concessions from him on the issue. At least there were no efforts we could see publicly.
So there’s been a shift in language, but not enough action.
What are some concrete things unions could do to wield their power on this issue?
The divestment of union pension money from BDS targets. Having that be an official policy and then actually doing it.
A boycott on products moving to or from Israel. That’s especially relevant for logistics workers, dock workers and railroad workers, and warehouse workers.
We’ve seen tech workers take a lot of action on this issue, even though they’re not unionized. Microsoft workers have pressured the company as part of the f No Azure for Apartheid campaign.
You have university workers and engineering students whose research at the academic level supports the technology of the Israeli war machine and the U.S. military industrial complex. I think the unions that represent those workers need to provide more political education and clearly explain the realities of the labor they’re doing and the destruction it’s contributing to.
One idea that was popular in the 1980s, which I think should make a comeback within the labor movement, is what was called “economic conversion” for workers in the weapons industry. Today, we might call it a just transition, but discussing how workers in the weapons industry can produce products that are not weapons, bombs, or missiles. Socially useful civilian products, like medical equipment, green energy components, public transit vehicles, and things like that.
The companies these workers work for, these executives at these companies are the ones who are making huge profits off of death and destruction, and the U.S. government is that’s giving them through contracts. That’s who the real enemy is.
There has to be a discussion of what happens to these workers’ livelihoods. There has to be a transition to a more humane, rational kind of economy that isn’t premised on death and destruction. So having those kinds of conversations, doing that kind of political education, that’s something unions really can and should be taking the lead on.
Democrats also rely on unions, not just for donations to their campaigns, but especially for get-out-the-vote efforts, where union members go door-to-door and canvass for political candidates.
So it’s important for unions to have a policy that says we’re not going to support candidates who are blindly pro-genocide and who will just stand by Israel no matter what. They’re going to have to say, we will only support and lend our resources, time, and energy to supporting candidates who are in favor of Palestinian liberation and are not going to be just blindly backing Israel.
Comments Off on The ongoing battle over Israel within the U.S. labor movement — “No Neutrals There: U.S. Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine” (Mondoweiss)
The Italian union USB is going on a general strike on November 28th and will be rallying on November 29 against the genocide in Gaza. They are also appealing for US workers and unions including the ILWU & ILA to stop the movement of all cargo to Israel to stop the genocide and to work toward a general strike in the US. For additional info: USB https://www.usb.it
Hello everybody. I am Francesco Staccioli, member of the national board of the USB Trade Confederation in Italy. Our comrades in United States with Disarmed Genocide, Labor for Palestine National Network, Lifeline for Palestine, and other groups are organizing in action in solidarity with Palestine on November 28th and November 29th.
At the same time, we will be shutting down Italy again with a new general strike called against rearm Europe and the war economy which is cutting down our wages, our rights, our public services that is clearly clearly linked with genocide and all the wars. They will be protesting the enormous complicity of their own governments in enabling the genocide and the complicity of their principal labor federation as well as uplifting the call by Palestinian trade unions for an arms embargo.
We support our comrades in the United States and all working people around the world. We fight to ensure that our governments spend our taxes on earth, housing and other human needs and not on murdering people in Palestine or anywhere else in the world. International solidarity is no more an option for working people. We must connect our struggles and strengthen our solidarity network for human rights, peace, and a world that works for all of us.
Free Palestine and free the world from the lords of war.
Comments Off on Italy USB Union Appeal To US Workers For Action On Palestine Nov 28 & 29 (LaborVideo)
Posted onOctober 21, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine National Network and Coalition for Action in Higher Education Condemn Israeli Attack on PGFTU Headquarters in Nablus
On Wednesday the 15th of October at approximately 9:30 to 10pm local time, the Zionist colonial army raided the headquarters of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. The occupation forces stormed the premises, vandalized and destroyed property, and detained and interrogated union employees in the latest of nownear-dailyinvasions of the city. “We consider this assault,” said PGFTU General Secretary Shaher Saad in a statement, “a direct targeting of the Palestinian trade union movement and a deliberate attempt to silence the voice of workers.”
This attack is not an isolated incident but part of a broader colonial project to crush all forms of Palestinian self-organization—political, social, and economic. It follows the bombing and destruction of PGFTU offices in Gaza City on the 7th of March, 2024. As PSI General Secretary Daniel Bertossa explains, it represents “a systematic campaign against trade unionists throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The PGFTU supports and sustains Palestinian life in the West Bank and beyond by supporting and sustaining Palestinian labor. Like countless other Palestinian institutions, it has long faced harassment and violence for defending the rights of Palestinian workers under colonial occupation, apartheid, and blockade.
As trade unionists and workers in the United States, we affirm that an injury to one is an injury to all. The repression of the PGFTU is a direct assault on the global labor movement and on the very principles of freedom of association, working class dignity, and collective struggle.
Labor for Palestine and CAHE stand shoulder to shoulder with our sisters and brothers in the PGFTU and across Palestine. We reaffirm our commitment to honoring the Palestinian BDS picket line—refusing to collaborate with, normalize, or provide material support to Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.
We call on labor unions, union leaders, rank-and-file workers, and workers’ organizations in the United States and internationally to:
Denounce this attack and demand accountability for those responsible;
Stand in active solidarity with Palestinian workers resisting settler-colonialism and exploitation;
Enforce the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in our workplaces and unions;
Build collective power to enforce the arms embargo and confront the corporations profiting from war, dispossession, and repression.
The struggle of Palestinian workers is the struggle of all workers—for liberation from exploitation, racism, and colonial domination. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
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Posted onOctober 18, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Palestine Labor Solidarity Contingent at NYC No Kings Labor Feeder March Today (Labor for Palestine National Network et al)
STOP ARMING ISRAEL! *US Hands off Venezuela! *Fund our communities, Not Genocide & Occupation! *Stop ICE, Military & Police Terror, Union-Busting & Racism!
An Injury to Palestine Is An Injury to All: Labor Solidarity Now!
No war on workers here, and no war on Palestine—not in our name, not on our tax dollars!
We honor the Palestinian trade union picket line demanding that labor worldwide:
▶Block the ships, ground the planes, and stop the weapons bound for Israel. ▶Boycott, divest, and sanction the corporations and institutions complicit in occupation and apartheid. ▶Refuse to build, move, or fund the machinery of war—anywhere. ▶Stop Arming Israel & No US War On Venezuela! ▶Fund Our Communities, Not Genocide & Occupation! ▶Stop ICE, Military & Police Terror, Union-Busting, Racism & Fascism! ▶Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea!
Posted onOctober 17, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Palestine Labor Solidarity Contingent at October 18, 2025 NYC No Kings Feeder March and Flyers (Labor for Palestine National Network et al)
Comments Off on Palestine Labor Solidarity Contingent at October 18, 2025 NYC No Kings Feeder March and Flyers (Labor for Palestine National Network et al)
Posted onOctober 16, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Injury to Palestine is an Injury to All! The Labor for Palestine National Network Supports the October 16, 2025 Palestinian Trade Unions Urgent Appeal to All Unions, Labor, and People of Conscience
“An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel”, 16 October 2023
Israel has demanded that 1.1 million Palestinians evacuate the northern half of Gaza, whilst subjecting them to constant bombardment. This ruthless move is part of Israel’s plan, backed by unwavering support and active participation from the US and majority of European states, to carry out unprecedented and heinous massacres against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and to ethnically cleanse it altogether. Since Saturday Israel has indiscriminately and intensively bombarded Gaza, and cut off fuel, electricity, water, food, and medical supplies. Israel has killed more than 2,600 Palestinians – including 724 children – leveling whole neighbourhoods, wiping out entire families and injuring more than 10,000 people. Some international law experts have begun warning of Israel’s genocidal acts.
Elsewhere, Israel’s far-right government has distributed more than 10,000 rifles to extremist settlers in ‘48 Palestine and the occupied West Bank to facilitate their escalating attacks and pogroms against Palestinians. Israel’s actions, massacres, and rhetoric point to its intention to implement its long promised second Nakba, expelling as many Palestinians as possible and creating a ‘New Middle East’ in which Palestinians live in perpetual subjugation.
The response by Western states has been one of complete and total support for the State of Israel, without even a cursory nod towards international law. This has amplified Israel impunity, giving it carte blanche to carry out its genocidal war without limit. Beyond diplomatic support, Western states are supplying Israel with armament, sanctioning the operation of Israeli weapons companies within their borders.
As Israel escalates its military campaign, Palestiniantradeunionscallonourcounterparts internationallyandallpeopleofconsciencetoendallformsof complicitywithIsrael’scrimes– mosturgentlyhaltingthearmstradewithIsrael,aswellasall fundingandmilitaryresearch…
This urgent, genocidal situation can only be prevented by a mass increase of global solidarity with the people of Palestine and that can restrain the Israeli war machine. We need you to take immediate action – wherever you are in the world – to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade…
Wearecallingontradeunionsinrelevantindustries:
To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel.
To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, funding to it.
We make this call as we see attempts to ban and silence all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people. We ask you to speak out and take action in the face of injustice as trade unions have done historically. We make this call in the belief that the struggle for Palestinian justice and liberation is not only a regionally and globally determined struggle. It is a lever for the liberation of all dispossessed and exploited people of the world.
PalestinianGeneralFederationofTradeUnions,Gaza.
General Union of Public Service and Trade Workers General Union of Municipal Workers
General Union of Kindergarten Workers General Union of Petrochemicals Workers General Union of Agricultural Workers Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees
Generation Union of Media and Print Workers Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) General Union of Palestinian Teachers
General Union of Palestinian Women General Union of Palestinian Engineers Palestinian Accountants’ Association
Professional Associations Federation including: Palestinian Dental Association – Jerusalem center Palestinian Pharmacists Association – Jerusalem Center Medical Association – Jerusalem Center
Engineers Association – Jerusalem Center
Agricultural Engineers Association – Jerusalem Center Veterinarians Syndicate – Jerusalem Branch.
PalestinianJournalists’Syndicate Palestinian Bar Association
Palestinian Nursing and Midwifery Association Union of Kindergartens Workers
PalestinianPostalServicesWorkersUnion
Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities Professors & Employees The General Federation of Independent Trade Unions, Palestin
The Palestine New Federation of Trade Unions Palestinian General Union of Writers Palestinian Contractors Union
Federation of Health Professionals Syndicates PalestinianUnionofPsychologistsandSocialWorkers
Comments Off on An Injury to Palestine is an Injury to All! The Labor for Palestine National Network Supports the October 16, 2025 Palestinian Trade Unions Urgent Appeal to All Unions, Labor, and People of Conscience
Posted onOctober 2, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Solidarity With the Sumud Flotilla! US Labor Must Act to End Gaza Genocide Now! (Labor for Palestine National Network)
Solidarity With the Sumud Flotilla! US Labor Must Act to End Gaza Genocide Now! Labor for Palestine National Network, October 2, 2025
The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns the October 1, 2025 Israeli assaults and mass kidnappings against the Global Sumud Flotilla, and demands the immediate release of those abducted.
This new war crime blocked essential humanitarian aid to Gaza, the site of a two-year genocide—itself an extension of the ongoing Nakba—that has already murdered some 680,000+ people, and maimed countless more, including tens of thousands of children.
As the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza has said, US labor must “go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure,” including “general strikes and widespread civil disobedience,” to end the ongoing bipartisan, US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Workers worldwide are called on to honor the Palestinian trade union picket line by breaking the complicity of their governments and workplaces in the settler-colonial genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestine. This includes refusing to produce, ship, handle, weapons for Israel, as workers in Italy and elsewhere are doing right now.
The entire Palestinian trade union movement points out: “Never again is truly now. Together, we can and must disrupt all complicity in Israel’s ‘final solution’ for the Indigenous people of Palestine. Together we can support dismantling Israeli apartheid just as South African apartheid was dismantled.”
Posted onSeptember 1, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on PGFTU-Gaza Urgent Appeal to All Unions, Labor, and Human Rights Organizations In the United States and Around the World
Urgent Appeal to All Unions, Labor, and Human Rights Organizations In the United States and Around the World PGFTU-Gaza September 1, 2025
Dear friends, trade unionists and comrades in struggle throughout North America and the world,
On behalf of the PGFTU General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions in the Gaza Strip, we address an urgent appeal to all unions, labor, and human rights organizations in the United States and around the world: It is time to stand united against the machine of death and destruction, and to say without hesitation: No to genocide, no to massacres, no to starvation!
We call on you to mobilize all your energy, resources, efforts, and initiatives to ban Israeli weapons of mass murder, and to use all possible means to halt the ongoing holocaust to which our Palestinian people are subjected daily, and to prevent the US administration from supplying this occupation with weapons.
Our people are steadfast, holding their heads high thanks to you, your efforts, and your support for us. They will continue to struggle courageously for their land, freedom, and dignity, for a life with dignity and social justice, and to confront the heinous and criminal attempts to obliterate their rights. We appreciate every movement, every message of solidarity, and every act of resistance to injustice. We affirm that labor and trade union solidarity among peoples, especially among labor unions in America, is the most powerful weapon against the killing machine. Your voice and efforts can make a difference and galvanize the world to stand with Palestinian rights.
Our Palestinian people demand nothing but freedom and dignity, and they are resisting for a just life for all their children. We raise our voices so that their resonance reaches the entire world, and to affirm that your continued activities, presence, and pressure are a protective shield that will alleviate our pain in the face of the Zionist war machine.
Let us raise our voices, break the silence, and struggle for a world that stands with justice and humanity, not with the killing machine and occupation.
Long live the ongoing struggle! Long live international popular solidarity! Long live the free, resistant Palestinian people!
Comments Off on PGFTU-Gaza Urgent Appeal to All Unions, Labor, and Human Rights Organizations In the United States and Around the World
Posted onSeptember 1, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Workers Demand: Stop Arming Israel Now! (Labor for Palestine Banner at 2025 Detroit Labor Day Parade)
Workers Demand:Stop Arming Israel Now! Money for Healthcare & Education, Not Genocide & Occupation!
Posted onSeptember 1, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine Flyer at 2026 Detroit Labor Day Parade
An Injury to Palestine Is An Injury to All — Respect the BDS Picket Line! Workers Demand: Stop Arming Israel Now!
*Money for Healthcare & Education, Not Genocide & Occupation! *End ICE, Military & Police Terror, Union-Busting, Racism, & Fascism! *From Palestine to Mexico, All the Walls Have Got to Go!
Join the Labor for Palestine National Network at the QR code below: 9/1/25
Brussels Airlines and its parent company Lufthansa plan to resume flights to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, August 13th. But airport workers at the Brussels Airport have indicated that they will refuse to work on these flights due to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. A French baggage handlers’ union is also pressuring the Brussels Airport to cut ties with Brussels Airlines due to the airline’s plan to resume flights to Israel.
Labor for Palestine stands in full solidarity with Belgian airport workers and their union representatives who refuse to be complicit in Israel’s genocide. We can end this genocide only through our collective refusal to participate in it.
Posted onJuly 30, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns the kidnapping of Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls and the other 20 members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Handala
The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns the kidnapping of Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls and the other 20 members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Handala.
On July 27, Zionist forces seized Handala and kidnapped its passengers in international waters, as they sought to break the siege on Gaza. While in captivity, Smalls, the only Black flotilla member on the ship, has been physically assaulted and denied access to his attorneys by his Zionist captors.
The attack on Handala and Israel’s racist targeting of Smalls demonstrates once again that the Zionist entity and its U.S. backers will punish anyone who resists their deliberate campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people. Now and always, we must be steadfast in our solidarity with Palestine, which is up against the same enemies as working people across the globe.
We demand: *The immediate release of Chris Smalls and all activists abducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces! *An end to Israeli genocide in Gaza and throughout Palestine, a total arms embargo against Israel, and the release of all Palestinian prisoners! *Respect for the Palestinian trade unions’ Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line against Israel! *An end to Zionist settler colonialism, and a free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
We call on all workers, unions, and other labor bodies to take up these demands and to build power for material action to stop the Zionist entity and the U.S. war machine.
Comments Off on The Labor for Palestine National Network condemns the kidnapping of Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls and the other 20 members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel Handala
Posted onJune 18, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on *No War on Iran! *Stop the Genocide in Gaza! *Stop Arming Israel! *From Palestine to Mexico, All the Walls Have Got to Go! (Labor for Palestine National Network)
Comments Off on *No War on Iran! *Stop the Genocide in Gaza! *Stop Arming Israel! *From Palestine to Mexico, All the Walls Have Got to Go! (Labor for Palestine National Network)
¡Chinga la migra!—Palestine x LA Will Free Us All! Labor for Palestine National Network, June 11, 2025
The Labor for Palestine National Network stands with LA’s mass resistance to ICE abduction of hundreds of immigrant workers, and to Trump’s illegal deployment of National Guard and Marines, abetted by Democratic politicians who condemn that deployment, while unleashing LAPD rubber bullets and other forms of violence against immigrant defenders.
An injury to immigrant communities is an injury to all, as bipartisan settler-colonial genocide in Palestine is mirrored by a settler-colonial blitzkrieg at home. From Palestine to LA and throughout this country, resistance is justified and necessary—just as it was during the historic anti-racist LA uprisings of 1965, 1992, and 2020. No one is illegal on stolen land, and from Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!
Ron Gochez of Unión del Barrio explains: “We’re seeing resistance right now, from the people in Gaza resisting and fighting for their lives, to us right here on our own historic homeland, our Indigenous land here. We’re fighting for our lives, as well. And we’re going to continue to do so, whether it’s the police, the National Guard.”
As the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza has pointed out, “your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism.”
We stand with LA’s immigrant community in:
Demanding an immediate end to state terrorism against immigrant communities, freedom for all those abducted, and the abolition of ICE; withdrawal of all federal agents, military, LAPD and other police; dismissal of all charges against protesters, including SEIU-USWW President David Huerta; and an end to the Deadly Exchange of militarized Israeli “crowd control” weaponry and training tested against Palestinians and now deployed by the LAPD to brutalize and criminalize working-class neighborhoods of color.
Uplifting Unión del Barrio’s call on workers in military service: “STAND DOWN! Do NOT Use Violence Against Your Own Gente!” (Those with questions about illegal or unjust orders can contact the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild at 619-463-2369 for referral to an attorney to discuss their rights.)
Urgently mobilizing workers’ immense power across the US to shut down genocidal wars on the working class—from LA to Palestine—by any means necessary, including mass meetings, demonstrations, and strikes. As PGFTU-Gaza says: “True labor solidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words.”
Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net
Comments Off on ¡Chinga la migra!—Palestine x LA Will Free Us All! (Labor for Palestine National Network)
Posted onMay 27, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Breaking Ties With the Israeli Histadrut — Part 1 (May 18, 2025)(Labor for Palestine National Network)
May 27, 2025Breaking Ties With the Israeli Histadrut — Part 1 (May 18, 2025) Break ties with the genocidal Israeli Histadrut! As the latest round of Israel’s genocide against the people of Palestine violently continues, many workers around the world are beginning to hear calls for unions to break ties with the Histadrut, Israel’s racist “labor federation.” But what exactly is the Histadrut, and what is its role in Israel’s brutal ethnic cleansing project? Join Labor for Palestine National Network members from across the U.S. and Europe to learn more about this racist formation that finances the IDF, its connection to international labor Zionism and imperialism, and why a global movement of workers is organizing to break ties with the Histadrut. #Labor4Palestine#BreakHistadrut laborforpalestine.net Speakers Sherena Razek (moderator) is a Diasporic Palestinian feminist scholar, activist and labor organizer, former president of the Graduate Labor Organization at Brown University and a co-founder of that union’s Palestine Solidarity Caucus. She has been organizing closely with the Labor for Palestine National Network along with the other panelists here today for the past 589 days of ongoing American funded Israeli genocide in Gaza. Monadel Herzallah is founder and President of the Arab American Union Members Council, a co-founder of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), a plaintiff in the Taxpayers Against Genocide complaint recently filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to challenge Israeli genocide in Gaza in which he has lost 43 family members, and a co-convener of the Labor for Palestine National Network. He will provide the historical background on the Histadrut and its foundational role in the establishment of Israel over the ruins of historic Palestine. Claudio Feliziani is a filmmaker and researcher formed in the 1980’s Italian autonomous workers left, a Migrant worker, and active in the Stop Arming Israel Campaign in Germany. He will set the stage for the international stakes of this call and our shared demand to break ties with Histadrut, and why it’s especially critical in Germany. Lizbeth McManus is an actor/performer, and rank-and-file member of SAG-AFTRA and organizer with Entertainment Labor for Palestine. She will share with us the US context of organizing against Histadrut and in solidarity with Palestine. Michael Letwin is a social justice activist since the 1960s, is a former president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2235, and a co-founder of Labor for Palestine. He will talk about why this Palestine solidarity work is a matter of not crossing picket lines. Background Materials •Labor Zionism and the Histadrut https://tinyurl.com/2mp37frs •The Jewish Labor Committee and Apartheid Israel https://tinyurl.com/ykdv6mhr •The Histadrut: Its History and Role in Occupation, Colonisation and Apartheid (Trade Union Friends of Palestine) https://tinyurl.com/yef7jxem •Labor for Palestine: Challenging US Labor Zionism https://tinyurl.com/2kkz6aef •Labor Video Project / @laborvideo •No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine https://tinyurl.com/y7hwt6u3 ==== Während die aktuelle Phase des israelischen Völkermords an den Palästinenser*innen grausam andauert, beginnen viele Arbeiter*innen auf der ganzen Welt ihre Gewerkschaften aufzufordern, alle Verbindungen zur Histadrut, dem rassistischen israelischen “Gewerkschaftsverbund”, zu kappen. Aber was genau ist die Histadrut und welche Rolle spielt sie in Israels brutalem Projekt der ethnischen Säuberung? Lern zusammen mit Labor for Palestine Mitgliedern aus den USA und Europa mehr über diese rassistische Organisation, die die israelische Armee (IDF) finanziert, ihre Verbindung zum sog. Labor Zionism (“Arbeitszionismus”) und Imperialismus und warum sich eine weltweite Arbeiter*innenbewegung organisiert, um alle Bande zur Histadrut zu zerschlagen. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch mit deutschen Untertiteln statt.
Transcript:
Chapter 1: Introduction and context
0:01
1 secondHi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Um I think we’re going to get started now. Um so I just wanted to
0:09
9 secondssay hello, good morning, good afternoon for those of us joining us or maybe even good evening for those joining us from
0:16
16 secondsacross the US and Germany and from other places and time zones. Welcome to the first iteration of our Labor for
0:23
23 secondsPalestine National Network teaching series. This session is titled an injury to Palestine is an injury to all breaking ties with the Israeli histadr.
0:33
33 secondsMy name is Sharina Razi. I am a diasporic Palestinian feminist scholar, activist and labor organizer, the former
0:40
40 secondspresident of the graduate labor organization at Brown University uh and a co-founder of our union’s Palestine Solidarity Caucus there. and I’ve been
0:49
49 secondsorganizing closely with the Labor for Palestine National Network along with the other panelists here today and some of our participants too, I’m sure uh for
0:58
58 secondsthe past 589 days of ongoing American funded Israeli genocide in Gaza. As
1:06
1 minute, 6 secondsmembers of this labor collective, we understand that we have the right to refuse the colonial conditions of our
1:12
1 minute, 12 secondslabor and to oppose the use of our labor to colonize and exterminate another people. We understand it is our
1:20
1 minute, 20 secondsobligation as labor internationalists to dismantle the racial capitalist and imperial systems of domination at play
1:28
1 minute, 28 secondswherever they are because our dignity and rights as workers and as human beings are deeply interconnected.
1:35
1 minute, 35 secondsThe old labor adage, an injury to one is an injury to all must extend to all workers of the world if it is have any meaning beyond its status as a slogan.
1:46
1 minute, 46 secondsAnd that means unequivocally that this statement extends to every child left limb
1:53
1 minute, 53 secondslimbless from American manufactured bombs. Every mother forced to give birth with no medication or hospitals to care
2:02
2 minutes, 2 secondsfor her and her new child. Every father forced to face his children with no food to put on the table as aid trucks sit
2:09
2 minutes, 9 secondsblockaded at the colonial borders Israel enforces around Gaza. Every teacher and student with no schools or universities
2:17
2 minutes, 17 secondsleft to gather at and study in. Every journalist whose press fest has been turned into target practice by the
2:25
2 minutes, 25 secondsIsraeli occupation forces. Every prisoner languishing in Zionist torture dun dungeons. every health care worker
2:32
2 minutes, 32 secondsrisking their life to save lives. The list unbearably goes on. We have the right and the duty to
2:40
2 minutes, 40 secondsorganize to end this brutality. Funded by our tax dollars, enabled by our complicit employers, ordained by
2:47
2 minutes, 47 secondsgovernments against the interests and calls of their constituents. Don’t ever forget we’re part of the global majority that stands with Palestine.
2:56
2 minutes, 56 secondsuh or enabled unfortunately by cowardly union leadership who have failed to meet the urgency of this moment beyond hollow
3:03
3 minutes, 3 secondsstatements for over 19 months of unabated genocidal assault. It is absolutely our obligation as rank and
3:11
3 minutes, 11 secondsfile labor internationalists to respond to calls coming from Palestinian workers represented by the Palestinian General
3:18
3 minutes, 18 secondsFederation of Trade Unions who have in very clear terms asked of us and directly of American trade unionists to
3:26
3 minutes, 26 secondsintervene in the flows of racial, social, and political capital enabling the Israeli war machine to rage over our people in Palestine.
3:36
3 minutes, 36 secondsAmongst these demands has been a long existent call to break ties with the Israeli histadrut which will be the focus of today’s conversation. Our
3:45
3 minutes, 45 secondsintention today is to develop an understand and understanding of what the histadrut is. Expose the ties established labor formations in the US
3:54
3 minutes, 54 secondsand Europe and Germany specifically have long maintained with this racist organization. and most importantly to
4:01
4 minutes, 1 secondthink together uh about how and why workers across the world are calling for unions to break ties with the Histads
4:08
4 minutes, 8 secondsand to build solidarity with the people of Palestine. During this political education event, we want participants to come away with foreign four main
4:16
4 minutes, 16 secondslessons. The first one being a basic understanding of what the histadrut is, its origins, its racist, genocidal and
4:23
4 minutes, 23 secondsapartide politics and its role in the ethnic cleansing and formation of Israel and really its place at the heart of the
4:30
4 minutes, 30 secondsZionist project. Secondly, we want you to get an understanding of the links between the histadder and labor Zionism in the US and Europe and particularly in Germany.
4:41
4 minutes, 41 secondsThird, we want you to have an ability to identify and challenge the haz or propaganda about the histadro so you can oppose these lies as they confront you.
4:51
4 minutes, 51 secondsUm, such as this farce that we as labor unionists should be acting in solidarity with a so-called socialist labor
4:59
4 minutes, 59 secondsfederation. Rather, we want to make clear the similarities between the Histadrut and its closest relatives, South African apartheid and racially
5:08
5 minutes, 8 secondssegregated unions that have no place in our movements towards justice and liberation. And finally, and very importantly, we want to highlight the
5:16
5 minutes, 16 secondssolidarity work of global movement of a global movement of workers organizing to break ties with the Zionist formation and share some tools that you can take back to your workplace and communities.
5:27
5 minutes, 27 secondsUh, including a recording of this panel so you’re empowered to challenge these ties at the at the union, local, your
5:35
5 minutes, 35 secondscaucus, state, national, and international levels.
Chapter 2: History of the Histadrut
5:39
5 minutes, 39 secondsSo, we’re going to begin a panel discussion on the histadder where I will have the great privilege of introducing our speakers and at the end we will open
5:47
5 minutes, 47 secondsit up for Q&A uh and close with some materials for you to take back to your unions. I’d like to invite our
5:54
5 minutes, 54 secondsparticipants to share questions through the Q&A function should be at the bottom of your screen. Um you can share them now and throughout the panel as they
6:02
6 minutes, 2 secondsarise. And I also want to note that we have some highlevel German translations that were done by Elizabeth Hawk and
6:10
6 minutes, 10 secondsClauddio Felitzani and we’ll be sharing those in the chat for our German speaking participants at the start of each panelist’s discussion. So without
6:19
6 minutes, 19 secondsfurther ado, I would like to introduce our first speaker, Manad Hzalah, uh who’s the founder and president of the
6:26
6 minutes, 26 secondsAmerican or the ArabAmerican Union Members Council, a co-founder of the US Palestinian Community Network, a plaintiff in the taxpayers against
6:35
6 minutes, 35 secondsgenocide complaint recently filed with the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights to challenge Israel Israeli
6:42
6 minutes, 42 secondsgenocide in Gaza in which he has lost 43 family members and a co- convenor of the Labor for Palestine National Network. He
6:51
6 minutes, 51 secondswill provide the historical background on the Histadrut and its foundational role in the establishment of Israel over the ruins of historic Palestine. Monado, thank you so much for being with us.
7:01
7 minutes, 1 secondI’ll pass it over to you. Thanks to you.
7:04
7 minutes, 4 secondsThank you so much for having me as part of this program. Such an ambitious program. I don’t know we could do it in
7:10
7 minutes, 10 secondssuch a short period of time but I really appreciate you inviting me and being part of this. Uh I am going to be
7:20
7 minutes, 20 secondspresenting a slides that is uh basically summarizing a comprehensive presentation out of like 52 uh slides but I have
7:29
7 minutes, 29 secondssummarized it into 10 slides only. Uh the I’m going to start by sharing the
7:36
7 minutes, 36 secondsfirst screen first slide. Uh I believe I could do that. Got it. Okay. So uh the
7:45
7 minutes, 45 secondsthe the objective for this is really uh understanding the conquest of how uh
7:51
7 minutes, 51 secondslabor Zionism function as a vehicle of settler colonialism and why it was the
7:58
7 minutes, 58 secondsdominant strand for Zionism during the British mandate period. Uh another objective is to uh understand the
8:07
8 minutes, 7 secondsconquest of land and the conquest of labor as a core strategies of labor zionism and their material um consequences on the Palestinian farmers.
8:19
8 minutes, 19 secondsUnderstand also the function of histaded root before and after the Nikkba. And and finally understand that Israeli
8:27
8 minutes, 27 secondsworkers, I mean like the uh histaded root the representatives quote unquote have the always and always been will
8:36
8 minutes, 36 secondssubjugate the Palestinian under Zionism.
8:45
8 minutes, 45 secondsOops. Okay. So uh before we begin you know talking about Palestine. Palestine has as you see in the map has a
8:54
8 minutes, 54 secondsstrategic location because of its position visa v Europe, Africa and Asia connection the three continents through
9:02
9 minutes, 2 secondsthe land and waterways. Palestine was under the rule of various empires throughout the ages and this was a party
9:10
9 minutes, 10 secondsdue to it strategic locations large ports along with Mediterranean and the fact that it bordered the Sinai and
9:18
9 minutes, 18 secondswhich facilitate the large proportion of global trade throughout the Swiss channel. So in in uh exposing the myth
9:27
9 minutes, 27 secondsof saying land without a people for a people without a land wanted to you know the name Palestine actually comes from
9:34
9 minutes, 34 secondsthe word Palestine which is mentioned in 800 BC in an ancient Egyptian uh
9:42
9 minutes, 42 secondsinscription. This land has always various names throughout the centuries and the historian have used some version
9:50
9 minutes, 50 secondsof Palestine of thousands of years. In the early uh 20th century, Palestine’s
9:57
9 minutes, 57 secondsnative population was majority Arab Muslims with a significant Arab Christians uh population and a small
10:05
10 minutes, 5 secondsJewish and Drew population. So we see uh this is important background to see the his geography and the history of that.
10:15
10 minutes, 15 secondsSo do you realize the Zionist project?
10:17
10 minutes, 17 secondsJewish settlers embrace labor Zionism during the British mandate. Labor Zionist through establishing a
10:26
10 minutes, 26 secondsJewishonly economy in Palestine led by Jewish workers that was a majority for them.
10:35
10 minutes, 35 secondsuh labor zionism is taken over Palestine’s economy. The method was two.
10:41
10 minutes, 41 secondsOne is conquest of land, stealing as much land as possible for exclusive Jewish settlers use. And two, the
10:50
10 minutes, 50 secondsconquest of labor, excluding Palestinians workers from the labor market through the discriminatory hiring
10:57
10 minutes, 57 secondsand uh uh violence. So Palestinian you know that the attachment of Palestinians to
11:04
11 minutes, 4 secondsthe to their land it’s really important the connection is both a spiritual and native land and culture and material in
11:13
11 minutes, 13 secondsterms of economical uh livelihood. So when Palestinians are lose their land they be they lose not only their
11:22
11 minutes, 22 secondslivelihood but also their spiritual connection to the land. Palestinian songs, dresses, symbolized poetry,
11:31
11 minutes, 31 secondsculture, all this reference to the land and geography and in the of the indigenous nature of the Palestinian. So
11:38
11 minutes, 38 secondsprior to the creation of Israel, most Palestinians were dependent on their land for their livelihood and working as farmers.
11:49
11 minutes, 49 secondsSo creating the Jewish economy was really important for the Jewish for the settler colonial uh project of Zionism.
11:58
11 minutes, 58 secondsUh you know theft through expulsion and facilitating by by the
12:05
12 minutes, 5 secondsBritish land purchased for exclusive Jewish use. They will force farmers to sell their own lands by many many uh
12:14
12 minutes, 14 secondsways uh to drive them away from their own livelihood. The results basically the Palestinians uh farmers losing their livelihood and connection to their land.
12:26
12 minutes, 26 secondsIf you see the map here, you could see that in 1882 first Zionist colony and
12:33
12 minutes, 33 seconds1947 and the extent of Zionist colonization by the end by end of the British mandate. So the British uh
12:43
12 minutes, 43 secondscolonization was really helpful in in supporting the Zionist movement at the
12:49
12 minutes, 49 secondsearly ages way before 48 and continue to have the Israeli colonization throughout
12:57
12 minutes, 57 secondsthe years up to 1966 was prior to the uh the ex the eniction of uh incubation of Westbach and Gaza in 1967.
13:11
13 minutes, 11 secondsSo uh the mass employing of uh uh of Jewish settlers into Palestine. Uh you
13:19
13 minutes, 19 secondscould see from the 18 to uh 1947 there was the immigration from Europe and you
13:26
13 minutes, 26 secondscould see the map here where uh Jewish population is you could see it in the blue color and uh Palestinians in the
13:35
13 minutes, 35 secondsgreen under the British. The Jewish population in Palestine increased from
13:40
13 minutes, 40 seconds6% in 1918 up to 33% in 1947 and setting up a trade unions. That’s where we start
13:49
13 minutes, 49 secondstalking about his route like the root to sabotage Palestinian worker struggle. So the results was like Palestinian workers
13:58
13 minutes, 58 secondsface deteriorating working condition in that uh period of time.
14:04
14 minutes, 4 secondsSo the the histo has employed many ways to uh sabotage violence and with and
14:14
14 minutes, 14 secondsnecess with the necessary collaboration with the British colonization. They established a
14:21
14 minutes, 21 secondsmajor enterprise, financial transport, a service to exclusively employ Jewish
14:27
14 minutes, 27 secondssettlers using international funds sabotaged by burned down Palestinian produce. Sabotage sabotaged joint
14:36
14 minutes, 36 secondsPalestinian Jewish labor organizing effort. this there was some sort of effort to have Palestinians and Jewish
14:44
14 minutes, 44 secondsto work together in terms of like uh uh trying to get their their workers rights
14:50
14 minutes, 50 secondsand and but they were sabotaged by the histad route in terms of sent Jewish terror
14:59
14 minutes, 59 secondsgangs to threaten Jewish owned businesses that employed Arab workers spread anti-Arab propaganda throughout
15:09
15 minutes, 9 secondsleaflets Then also they played a major role in breaking the historical strike that was
15:17
15 minutes, 17 secondsuh carried out by the workers and population whole population of Palestine in 1936 and it stood until uh the
15:27
15 minutes, 27 secondsrevolution or the farmers and and workers from 1936 to 1939 prior to uh uh
15:36
15 minutes, 36 secondsto the establishment of the state of Israel.
15:40
15 minutes, 40 secondsThis is important about the histo rule during the Nakba and it’s called plant
15:47
15 minutes, 47 secondsdal d which is a plan that was zionist military planned to systematically
15:53
15 minutes, 53 secondscleanse Palestinian village from their native population. This is no almost people hardly know about this but the
16:02
16 minutes, 2 secondshistadrut members founded the hagana which is a zionist milit militia uh that was important that is really the
16:10
16 minutes, 10 secondshelagana and argon they were in in they’re responsible for massacres that
16:17
16 minutes, 17 secondstook place prior to 1948. One of the most you know famous one that people know about is
16:25
16 minutes, 25 secondsthe massacre of Derine. There is other massacres as well during that uh that period of time they carried out the
16:34
16 minutes, 34 secondsvillagers uh and various war crimes resulting in mass cleansing and ethnic
16:41
16 minutes, 41 secondscleansing. I remember those Nakba survivors. If any of you have had the chance to talk to any of the Nakuba survivors, Palestinians, they will say,
16:50
16 minutes, 50 secondsI myself had a conversation with my own grandfather who said that the massacre of Derine really played a major role on
16:58
16 minutes, 58 secondsmaking people scared and fear and they’re able to had to lo to scare leave their own houses so they won’t happen to
17:07
17 minutes, 7 secondsthem like what happened in in Dia and that is as you See this is we will w we
17:16
17 minutes, 16 secondsare witnessing that and what’s happening in Gaza at this moment. This is important picture that
17:24
17 minutes, 24 secondswe see. And then anybody who would talk about histadrut and being playing a peaceful role in this or like uh this is
17:33
17 minutes, 33 secondsthe uh chairman of histaded signing an Israeli missile used in the genocide against Palestinian and
17:40
17 minutes, 40 secondsGaza support is Israel genocide. It will continue to be a mark against anybody
17:48
17 minutes, 48 secondswho is trying to defend the hed root of what they supposed to be standing for or what they claim to be standing for.
17:54
17 minutes, 54 secondsDiscriminate against Palestinian union members. Wage theft. There’s millions of dollars being stolen from Palestinian
18:01
18 minutes, 1 secondworkers. Lack of representation. Punishing and threatening workers who go on strike.
18:09
18 minutes, 9 secondsworked cons consistently with the CIA to train operatives to hamper worker
18:15
18 minutes, 15 secondsstruggle in El Salvador supported and supported the appetite in South Africa.
18:22
18 minutes, 22 secondsOur brothers and sisters in Latin America are well aware of that and they can really help us in in exposing this
18:29
18 minutes, 29 secondshistorical war role that the history played against the working class in Latin America and South Africa. So
18:37
18 minutes, 37 secondslastly, I wanted to end by saying the demands from the BGFTU and Palestinians to boycott and end all the relationship
18:44
18 minutes, 44 secondswith the histaded routtroot to to support the arms embargo on Israel through targeting MK and divest from is
18:52
18 minutes, 52 secondsfrom Israeli bonds. South Africa unions have declared that we must call for the
18:59
18 minutes, 59 secondsisolation of hedroot Israel’s racist trade union which supports unconditionally the occupation of
19:06
19 minutes, 6 secondsPalestine and the inhumane treatment of Palestinians and end quote. Uh I I will
19:13
19 minutes, 13 secondsend here my slides and I tell you that we have a lot more to talk about. I’m be more than happy to hear your your
19:21
19 minutes, 21 secondsopinions about this, your input and your feedback so we could make this presentation in a much more
19:28
19 minutes, 28 secondscomprehensive way and hopefully we will do more education about this. Thank you so much for having me.
19:37
19 minutes, 37 secondsThank you so much Monado that was amazing and such brilliant concise background and overview of this
19:44
19 minutes, 44 secondsorganization and its role in colonizing Palestine and his continued role in colonizing Palestine. Um, just want to
19:52
19 minutes, 52 secondsremind our participants to use the Q&A function to ask questions. I did see a question there about the length of this
19:59
19 minutes, 59 secondsteaching. So, it’s going to be 90 minutes. So, we should end um I don’t want to say sorry the time because we’re all in different time zones, but 90
20:07
20 minutes, 7 secondsminutes an hour and a half is our programming and they will there will be time to go over your questions at the end. Um I’m very pleased now to
Chapter 3: International perspectives
20:15
20 minutes, 15 secondsintroduce our next speaker um who is Clauddio Felitzani, a filmmaker and researcher formed in 1980s Italian
20:23
20 minutes, 23 secondsAutonomous Workers Left. He’s a migrant worker and active in the stop arming Israel campaign in Germany and he’s going to set the stage for the
20:31
20 minutes, 31 secondsinternational stakes of this call and our shared demand to break ties with his and why it’s especially critical in Germany. Welcome Claudia.
20:42
20 minutes, 42 secondsSo thanks you for organizing.
20:45
20 minutes, 45 secondsUm I’m very glad to be here and um so I I speak from Berlin, Germany. Uh I’m
20:55
20 minutes, 55 secondspart of the stop arming Israel campaign here in Germany. Uh the campaign answers to the call of the
21:03
21 minutes, 3 secondsPalestinian trade unions and workers in Palestine.
21:07
21 minutes, 7 secondsUh here in Germany we are connecting the anti-militarist networks with the Palestinian political community
21:15
21 minutes, 15 secondsuh one of the biggest uh uh community in uh in Germany with 100,000 100,000 Palestinian in Germany.
21:24
21 minutes, 24 secondsuh uh we are connecting the the political community uh engaging also for
21:31
21 minutes, 31 secondsthe empowerment of power solidarity of solidarity in the basis of the German trade unions.
21:38
21 minutes, 38 secondsuh recently together with uh trade unionist for Palestine Gaftin and Fugaza uh we organized a series of debates
21:47
21 minutes, 47 secondsevent on the issue of Palestine solidarity in the German trade union uh and we try to give them an historical perspective.
21:58
21 minutes, 58 secondsSo the starting point uh of our debate was a specific question. Why in more than half an year
22:05
22 minutes, 5 secondsof current genocide in Palestine, the Debe, the German trade union federation has not said a word about it
22:14
22 minutes, 14 secondsexcept for a statement of solidarity with Israel victims immediately after the October 723 Gaza uprising.
22:22
22 minutes, 22 secondsWhy has the dig repressed in the basis of the trade unions any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian workers under genocidal
22:30
22 minutes, 30 seconds[Music]
22:31
22 minutes, 31 secondsaggression? We cannot find an answer to this question without talking about the historical partnership between the Gabbe
22:39
22 minutes, 39 secondsthe German uh federation of trade unions and the east Israeli history route.
22:46
22 minutes, 46 secondsSo we are dealing with the paradox here that despite constant exchange programs, educational trips, intensive public
22:53
22 minutes, 53 secondsdiplomacy between the de member structures and the east route, the vast majority of German workers. When asked
23:00
23 minuteswhere what the east route is even do not know what we are talking about. In such a situation, we agreed on
23:09
23 minutes, 9 secondsthe need of a political education campaign exposing more than complicity, I would say, identity of the history with the
23:17
23 minutes, 17 secondsoccupation and apparatide regime in Palestine has absurd the union
23:23
23 minutes, 23 secondsand true agency of colonization uh since the 1920s pursuing the objective of the ethnic segregation of
23:31
23 minutes, 31 secondsthe working class in Palestine, which was from uh very well described by
23:37
23 minutes, 37 secondsMonadal in its uh in its slides.
23:43
23 minutes, 43 secondsUm so uh we found um we found interesting to
23:50
23 minutes, 50 secondsfocus uh on the role of the gabbe in the interaction of postwar Germany with the state of Israel and the Zionist project.
23:59
23 minutes, 59 secondsUh I found an article uh very interesting uh of the Irish Bifton is the foundation Irish
24:09
24 minutes, 9 secondsball uh which is uh the foundation of the green party and uh I will I will
24:16
24 minutes, 16 secondsshare in the in the chat uh uh the link uh in German and afterwards also the the
24:24
24 minutes, 24 secondstranslation. So uh in this in this article it’s described uh it’s described how in postwar Germany uh the
24:32
24 minutes, 32 secondsrelationship with the Gibbe uh was uh was part uh was part of the of the
24:39
24 minutes, 39 secondsprocess of uh was um something pretending to be part of of
24:46
24 minutes, 46 secondsthe um the nazification project. I quote, “For the Israeli Trade Union Federation, Instad was not primarily
24:55
24 minutes, 55 secondsabout class struggle, but about building a Jewish Zionist state.” End quote.
25:04
25 minutes, 4 secondsUm, beyond the warfare of narratives is historically enough proven. Mahmud Mandani gives uh a radically not
25:13
25 minutes, 13 secondseuroentric insight on the failure of the denification in a full chapter of is neither settler nor native the making
25:20
25 minutes, 20 secondsand unmaking of the permanent minorities uh a book I had I had the chance and the honor of translate to my native language
25:28
25 minutes, 28 secondsItalian how in the frame of the cold war uh is pro is proving how in the frame of the cold war and in the anti-communist
25:37
25 minutes, 37 secondsreconstruction of the federal republic of Germany that the napification was traded off against the unconditional political and militarily support to
25:46
25 minutes, 46 secondsIsrael. To make an example, the state secretary of Denau’s government, the first government after
25:53
25 minutes, 53 secondsuh after national socialism in Germany was Hans Kloka uh who was one of the editors of the Nurember racial laws.
26:05
26 minutes, 5 secondsIt’s interesting how the debe the German trade union federation embraced this collaboration representing it as as a contribution to the
26:13
26 minutes, 13 secondsdenification appearing to be setting a discontinuity with the national socialist project while embracing
26:20
26 minutes, 20 secondsactually another ethnationalist settler colonial project in the Middle East.
26:27
26 minutes, 27 secondsIt is important for us according to the aims of the web this webinar uh to understand Zionist from its origins as a
26:35
26 minutes, 35 secondscorporatist ideology offering from its inception at the beginning of the 20th century its
26:42
26 minutes, 42 secondscooperation to both the European anti-semitic elites and the antibbolvic reaction to undermine from inside the
26:50
26 minutes, 50 secondsrevolutionary socialist majority of the Jewish diaspora an offering in addition to the British empire and the European
26:57
26 minutes, 57 secondsruling classes, a colonial outpost in the Middle East. At this point, it’s also worthy to
27:05
27 minutes, 5 secondsmake a reference to the work of Lenny Brener, continued by Tony Greenstein more recently investigating the diplomatic relationship between laborism and NAT Germany.
27:16
27 minutes, 16 secondsThere is uh unfortunately not time now to to discuss the issue but I uh
27:21
27 minutes, 21 secondsum I just want to observe here now uh how until today the anti-semitic extreme
27:30
27 minutes, 30 secondsright-wing in Germany in the EU and and USA as you know uh within the class
27:37
27 minutes, 37 secondsinterest represented by by it is also constantly consistently prozionist
27:46
27 minutes, 46 secondsback to the postwart time relationship between Germany and Israel uh the relationship with the debate and
27:54
27 minutes, 54 secondsisadroot we can see how it it less to do it has less to do with the nification than with the open support to
28:03
28 minutes, 3 secondsa social partnership let’s say a corporativist model that could replace the investment of the owning classes in that of the
28:11
28 minutes, 11 secondsmilitarily defeated fascist the labor science organized with its full mobilization and militarization of the
28:18
28 minutes, 18 secondsworking class for the national interest around the promise of a share in settler colonial privileges represented the
28:26
28 minutes, 26 secondssecond better antidote after fascism against class struggle and proletarian internationalism.
28:35
28 minutes, 35 secondsThis help us in a better understanding of the roots of the German
28:41
28 minutes, 41 secondsanomaly given by the so-cal anti-German antiduts movement as a top-down propaganda warfare.
28:50
28 minutes, 50 secondsSo in division in the international solidarity and trying to sell the endorsement of a settler colonial
28:57
28 minutes, 57 secondsproject as an anti-fascist struggle to highlight the historical legacy of this social partnership
29:06
29 minutes, 6 secondsrelations is for us today crucial to understand the current substantial alignment of the German trade union
29:14
29 minutes, 14 secondsfederation with the German region of state and military-industrial complex.
29:21
29 minutes, 21 secondswith inconditional support to Israel. The deal to deal with this questions help us
29:29
29 minutes, 29 secondsto try to understand in times where a ruling class is head into the world war.
29:34
29 minutes, 34 secondsWhat scope is still available for class interests that cannot be reconciled and definitely for international solidarity among workers to take action from below
29:43
29 minutes, 43 secondsagainst the current genocide in Palestine, the militarization of society and the preparation for the upcoming
29:51
29 minutes, 51 secondsworld war. Thank you.
29:58
29 minutes, 58 secondsThank you so much Cladio for giving us this really important um historical perspective on Europe and Germany uh and
30:05
30 minutes, 5 secondsthe collaboration with of the Zionists with this fascist regimes uh in the past and into the present. Of course, I want
Chapter 4: US labor movement complicity
30:13
30 minutes, 13 secondsto introduce our next speaker uh Elizabeth Mcmanus uh who is an actor and performer and a rank and file member of
30:21
30 minutes, 21 secondsSAG AFA and an organizer with entertainment labor for Palestine. she will share with us the US context uh of
30:29
30 minutes, 29 secondsorganizing against the histadro and in solidarity with Palestine. Thank you so much for being here Elizabeth Beth.
30:35
30 minutes, 35 secondsThank you Shireena. Greetings. I come to you as a union member concerned with the rights of workers and also as someone
30:43
30 minutes, 43 secondscommitted to social justice across borders and across systems of power.
30:49
30 minutes, 49 secondsToday this webinar is focused on a reality that we must confront and that is the historic and ongoing relationship
30:57
30 minutes, 57 secondsrelationship between the AFL CIO and the history and how that relationship must be confronted in light of the ongoing
31:05
31 minutes, 5 secondsapartheid and genocide in Palestine. The AFL CIO has long presented itself as a champion of
31:14
31 minutes, 14 secondsworkers rights and justice. Similarly, the history group has played a central role in the development of the Israeli
31:22
31 minutes, 22 secondseconomy and labor movement. But with this, we must ask whose rights are being protected and whose voices are being
31:31
31 minutes, 31 secondssilenced with more than 214 journalists killed by Israel and the AFL CIO remain silent.
31:40
31 minutes, 40 secondsSad Afraid, an AFL CIO AI affiliated labor union representing many broadcast journalists domestically, has not only
31:49
31 minutes, 49 secondsremained salad, but has also refused to comment regarding the targeting of Palestinian
31:56
31 minutes, 56 secondsjournalists. The roots of the AFL CIO’s relationship with the history group think back to the early years of the
32:03
32 minutes, 3 secondsZionist labor movement. In the 1940s and 50s, American labor leaders viewed the
32:10
32 minutes, 10 secondshistory not just as a union but as a nation building institution in pre-state in early
32:17
32 minutes, 17 secondsIsrael. Under the leadership of those like George Mini and later Lane Kirkland, the AFL CIO developed strong
32:25
32 minutes, 25 secondsties with the history, seeing it as a progressive ally. Over decades, these ties were
32:33
32 minutes, 33 secondsdeepened through formal partnerships, funding initiatives, and mutual exchanges. Several US labor unions
32:41
32 minutes, 41 secondsestablished direct relationship with the history group, including the American Federations of Teachers, Service
32:48
32 minutes, 48 secondsEmployees International Union, United Auto Workers, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
32:58
32 minutes, 58 secondsThese relationships were often framed as international solidarity, but they largely ignored the real realities of
33:05
33 minutes, 5 secondsPalestinian labor exploitation and exclusion under Israeli control. Even after the occupation of
33:13
33 minutes, 13 secondsthe West Bank in Gaza in 1967 and despite mountain evidence of systemic discrimination, the AFL CIO and its
33:22
33 minutes, 22 secondsaffiliates largely maintain these elite alliances. The relationships continued through the decades even as global human
33:30
33 minutes, 30 secondsrights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described Israeli policies as amounting to apartheid.
33:40
33 minutes, 40 secondsRecently in June 2023, the Hisp chairman visited the United States in a delegation arranged by the AFL CIO
33:49
33 minutes, 49 secondsinternational committee and supported by leadership from the American Federation of Teachers and the Retail wholesale
33:56
33 minutes, 56 secondsdepartment store unions workers among others.
34:01
34 minutes, 1 secondOne year ago, labor unions from New York City were part of a delegation that met with the history chairman at their
34:08
34 minutes, 8 secondsheadquarters in Tel Aviv. The delegation included the executive director of DC 37 Union, New York City’s largest public
34:18
34 minutes, 18 secondssector union along with the president of a union that represents superintendent and administrator administrators in New York City public schools.
34:28
34 minutes, 28 secondsThe same AFL CIO that proudly stood in solidarity with South African unions during apartheid must now confront its
34:36
34 minutes, 36 secondscomplicity and another system of oppression. This is about accountability for institutions that enable systemic
34:45
34 minutes, 45 secondsoppression. It’s about holding our own labor movement to the same moral standards we claim to uphold
34:52
34 minutes, 52 secondsinternationally. In June 2024, when the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America made a solidarity
35:01
35 minutes, 1 secondstatement with the historic strike, UEE workers in solidarity with Palestine noted that the statement on the surface
35:09
35 minutes, 9 secondsuh showed uh was on the surface was a show of international solidarity, but neglected to reference the history’s
35:16
35 minutes, 16 secondscomplicity and oppression and massacre of Palestinian workers throughout decades.
35:23
35 minutes, 23 secondsAs trade unionists, we say solidarity is not selective. You cannot pick and choose whose rights matter. If we are
35:31
35 minutes, 31 secondsserious about justice, then we must be serious about Palestinian liberation, too. Thank you.
35:40
35 minutes, 40 secondsThank you so much, Elizabeth, for this crucial perspective on the roles really on the major uh union leaders in the US
35:48
35 minutes, 48 secondsand their complicity historically and into the present. uh with the histatroots and with labor Zionism more
35:54
35 minutes, 54 secondsbroadly. Thank you so much. Um I’m very pleased now to introduce our final speaker, Michael Lewin, a social justice
Chapter 5: Organizing for liberation
36:03
36 minutes, 3 secondsactivist since the 1960s, uh former president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW
36:10
36 minutes, 10 seconds202035 or 2235, excuse me, and a co-founder of Labor for Palestine. Um, Michael is going to talk about why
36:19
36 minutes, 19 secondsPalestine solidarity work is a matter of not crossing picket lines. Welcome. Thank you, Shireina.
36:26
36 minutes, 26 secondsAnd hello, friends and comrades. It’s an honor to be here with all of you today. Sharina, Manado, Claudia, and and
36:35
36 minutes, 35 secondsElizabeth have laid out quite clearly how and why Palestinian trade union bodies have called on rank and file workers and union bodies around the
36:44
36 minutes, 44 secondsworld to boycott the Israeli so-called labor federation known as the histadr.
36:49
36 minutes, 49 secondsAnd as referenced earlier, this was most recently reaffirmed on Mayday of 2025 as follows. quote, “We, the undersigned
36:58
36 minutes, 58 secondsPalestinian trade unions, call on workers around the world to escalate their support for our struggle to end
37:05
37 minutes, 5 secondsthe genocide and dismantle Israel’s colonial aparttheid regime by cutting all ties with the histadrude and
37:12
37 minutes, 12 secondsexpelling it from all international fora.” End quote. So in this context, the most fundamental labor
37:21
37 minutes, 21 secondsprinciple, an injury to one is an injury to all, means that an injury to Palestine is an injury to all, as this
37:31
37 minutes, 31 secondswebinar in fact is is titled. And by the same token, the Palestinian boycott, divestment, and sanctions or BDS
37:39
37 minutes, 39 secondsmovement is a picket line. And as rank and file workers and union members, we know that the first and most fundamental
37:48
37 minutes, 48 secondspart about being a union member is that we never cross a picket line. We walk picket lines, especially when there are
37:55
37 minutes, 55 secondspicket lines against the ongoing settler colonial knockb inflicted on the Palestinian people since and even before
38:02
38 minutes, 2 seconds1948 all the way through today. Because what’s going on today is simply a further extension and escalation of that NAPA.
38:10
38 minutes, 10 secondsAs you’ve heard today, the history is no minor player in this Zionist genocidal project. The photo of a history leader
38:19
38 minutes, 19 secondswriting a message on missiles to be dropped in Gaza says it all. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as you’ve
38:26
38 minutes, 26 secondsheard. So let’s now just sum up in essence this case that’s been explained.
38:32
38 minutes, 32 secondsthis case against the history which has used its false image as a quote progressive or even socialist
38:38
38 minutes, 38 secondsinstitution to spearhead, whitewash and otherwise project and inflict racism,
38:45
38 minutes, 45 secondsapartheid, dispossession, ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian people since it was founded in 1920.
38:53
38 minutes, 53 secondsWhile we could not even touch on all of these issues here today, this indictment of the history includes one from its
39:01
39 minutes, 1 secondfounding in 1920 its alliance with Western imperialism not only to implant Zionism in Palestine but also in as part
39:10
39 minutes, 10 secondsof the same project to attack workers struggles throughout the world and especially in Europe including the Bolevik revolution of October 1917 to
39:18
39 minutes, 18 secondswhich it was promoted as uh as an alternative.
39:22
39 minutes, 22 secondsSecondly, its conquest of land and conquest of labor campaigns that Manado outlined so clearly in the 1920s and 30s
39:30
39 minutes, 30 secondsto make way for the Zionist state by evicting Arab peasants from the land and boycotting Arab labor and products.
39:37
39 minutes, 37 secondsThird, when this provoked the 1936 six-month general strike that Manado also discussed, but which by the way is
39:44
39 minutes, 44 secondsthe longest to date in world history, it supplied Jewish labor to replace striking Palestinian workers and then helped the British colonialists,
39:53
39 minutes, 53 secondsterrorized the Arab population, and finally crushed the Arab revolt in 1939 after 20,000 Palestinian casualties and
40:01
40 minutes, 1 secondmany others jailed or deported. Next, I forgot what the number is here. There’s so many of them. At the same time, the
40:08
40 minutes, 8 secondshistory was collaborating with the Nazis in Europe to bring more Zionist settlers to Palestine while blocking Jewish
40:15
40 minutes, 15 secondsflight from Nazi extermination to anywhere else other than Palestine and in exchange sabotaging anti-Nazi boycots
40:24
40 minutes, 24 secondsand sabotaging alerts to the Jewish communities in Hungary and elsewhere who were facing extermination, which it knew
40:32
40 minutes, 32 secondsabout in advance. Next, its role in terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of at least 80% of the indigenous Palestinian
40:39
40 minutes, 39 secondspopulation subsequent and during during and subsequent to the Nagba of 1947 and 48. next its leadership command of the
40:48
40 minutes, 48 secondsnew Israeli state. Because let’s not forget that for the first 30 years of that state, the history through the Labor Party that it controlled and vice
40:57
40 minutes, 57 secondsversa was the ruling party in so-called Israel and its command of the Israeli Defense Force in which it has played a
41:05
41 minutes, 5 secondskey role so-called defense force in continuing and legitimizing ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinians. Next, its conduit for CIA
41:15
41 minutes, 15 secondsand MASSAD participation in colonial wars in Africa and its cooperation with the AFL CIO and the CIA in undermining
41:23
41 minutes, 23 secondsand murdering popular movements in El Salvador and throughout Central America.
41:28
41 minutes, 28 secondsNext, its near monopoly over Israeli trade, including weaponry with apartheid South Africa that included the provision of nuclear weapons to that apartheid
41:36
41 minutes, 36 secondsregime. Next, its support for each and every Israeli war and occupation ever committed. Next, it’s ongoing
41:44
41 minutes, 44 secondssegregation, exclusion, and/or exploitation of Palestinian workers in both the 1967 and 1948 areas. And by the
41:51
41 minutes, 51 secondsway, I use those terms because we don’t refer to Palestine, any part of Palestine, as Israel. Israel is not a place. It’s not a people. It’s a regime.
42:02
42 minutes, 2 secondsIt’s a colonial settler regime that temporarily occupies historic Palestine.
42:07
42 minutes, 7 secondsAnd this, by the way, includes uh in during that th those those attacks on Palestinian workers since 1948,
42:15
42 minutes, 15 secondsreprisals against Palestinian workers in Israel, so-called Israel, in other words, the 1948 areas who participated
42:21
42 minutes, 21 secondsin land day in 1976 when the labor Zionist government shot and killed six Palestinian strikers. And of course now that compa that pales in comparison with
42:30
42 minutes, 30 secondswhat’s been done uh in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine and finally at least in this brief summary its ongoing role in opposing the BDS
42:39
42 minutes, 39 secondsmovement or any other resistance to Israeli genocide and camouflaging what that genocide looks like. So for all
42:47
42 minutes, 47 secondsthese reasons and many more, labor bodies in South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Norway, and elsewhere have
42:54
42 minutes, 54 secondshonored the P the BDS ticket mine by severing ties with the histadr. But virtually no US labor body has done the
43:02
43 minutes, 2 secondssame. And so the first question then is why not? And in the brief moments I have left, I would just say that the short
43:09
43 minutes, 9 secondsanswer is that US laborers officials a dominant official adamant Zionism has
43:16
43 minutes, 16 secondsreflected on the right end of that spectrum in affinity with settler colonialism, imperialism, anti-communism
43:24
43 minutes, 24 secondsand racism abroad and at home against workers of color. And meanwhile, you know, during the 40s and and
43:32
43 minutes, 32 secondssubsequently, labor leaders even on the left echoed Stalin’s indispensable military and political support for the
43:40
43 minutes, 40 secondsNagba and establishment of the Zionist state. And so what that meant was that for decades after, all the way through to today, in large part, union leaders
43:49
43 minutes, 49 secondsacross the political spectrum have a long history supporting Israel’s wars in part through buying huge quantities of
43:55
43 minutes, 55 secondsIsrael bonds. Now, since the end of World War II, this labor Zionist consensus, whether people called it that
44:03
44 minutes, 3 secondsor not or recognized it as that or not, in US labor official, has been maintained largely by the history’s US mouthpiece, the Jewish labor committee.
44:12
44 minutes, 12 secondsAnd while similarly painting itself as progressive, the JLC has a long history of promoting Israel, US wars of empire,
44:19
44 minutes, 19 secondsand domestic racism. one just one example of which was its role in attacking the New York City uh teachers uh rather supporting the 1968 New York
44:28
44 minutes, 28 secondsCity teacher strike against community control of the schools and backlash against affirmative action and today that’s led by retail wholesale and
44:36
44 minutes, 36 secondsdepartment store union president Steuart Applebound uh and under his regime the JLC has mobilized top union officials in
44:44
44 minutes, 44 secondsthis country and abroad to attack the Palestinian leds movement so finally how do we try to change all that well first
44:52
44 minutes, 52 secondsby reclaiming and rebuilding the long history of US rank and file labor anti Zionism dating to the 1960s. So for
45:00
45 minutesexample in January 1969 the Detroitbased League of Revolutionary Black Workers championed the Palestinian struggle as
45:08
45 minutes, 8 secondspart of worldwide resistance to racism and colonialism. And continuing that, in 1973, 3,000 Arab auto workers in Detroit
45:17
45 minutes, 17 secondsled a wildcat strike with black, white, and other support to protest the UAW local 600’s purchase of $300,000 in
45:25
45 minutes, 25 secondsIsrael bonds. This is during the 1973 war and led they led a protest also against Benabit’s humanitarian award for
45:35
45 minutes, 35 secondsthen UAW President Leonard Woodcock. And so toward that end and to continue to uplift those struggles and that legacy
45:42
45 minutes, 42 secondsin 2004, Labor for Palestine was founded to promote respect for the BDS picket line. And during the intensified Israeli
45:49
45 minutes, 49 secondsattacks on Gaza in 2010 and 2014, Ulwu, the West Coast Longshore locals 10 and 34 in Oakland refu refused began to
45:58
45 minutes, 58 secondsrefuse to unload ships from ZIM, Israel’s leading maritime shipping company. And soon after UAW local 2865
46:06
46 minutes, 6 secondsgraduate students at the University of California, today known as UAW 4811 and the U the United Electrical Workers and
46:13
46 minutes, 13 secondsa small number of other labor bodies adopted pro PD BDS statements, often with vocal support from anti-ionist uh
46:20
46 minutes, 20 secondsJewish members following renewed appeals from Palestinian unions in 2021.
46:26
46 minutes, 26 secondsSolidarity statements were issued by additional labor bodies and block the boat, a community labor alliance first launched in 2014 by the Arab resources
46:34
46 minutes, 34 secondsand organizing center in Arock along with other campaigners some of whom are here today successfully prevented the Israeli ship Golands from docking
46:42
46 minutes, 42 secondsanywhere on the west coast inspiring the block the vote campaigns in other US and Canadian ports that have prevented them
46:50
46 minutes, 50 secondsline ships for the last 10 years or more from visiting the west coast.
46:56
46 minutes, 56 secondsIn the immediate wake of Israel genocidal attack on Gaza that sharply escalated on October 7th, 2023, most
47:03
47 minutes, 3 secondslabor officials still remain silent or worse. But that same ongoing genocide combined with mushrooming rank and file activism together with the black lives,
47:11
47 minutes, 11 secondsimmigrant rights, and other movements of recent years have produced unprepedented labor outcry against the carnage. Once
47:19
47 minutes, 19 secondsagain, the boss, in this case, the Zionist entity has been the best organizer of resistance. Now, some of this resistance has come from above,
47:26
47 minutes, 26 secondsincluding the seven major unions that have called for a ceasefire and now even an arms embargo against Israel. And this shift from the labor official dome’s
47:35
47 minutes, 35 secondsimplacable Zionism has helped to encourage a growing number of labor bodies to speak out against Israeli genocide. However, as others here have
47:42
47 minutes, 42 secondsalready referenced, even these unions have failed to acknowledge the Palestinian trade union picket line, including its call to separatize with the history or to take any concrete
47:51
47 minutes, 51 secondssteps to divest unions and employee pension funds from Israel bonds or to stop the research, manufacture, and transport of US weapons, much of it
48:00
48 minutesproduced by and in union shops to Israel. And that, by the way, includes the union. I’m part of the the
48:07
48 minutes, 7 secondsUAW. But in the face of relentless USbacked Israeli genocide, that’s not okay. Which is why the Palestinian trade
48:16
48 minutes, 16 secondsunionists recently said the following quote. We in the General Federation, General Federation of Trade Unions in
48:22
48 minutes, 22 secondsGaza addressed this call to you on the eve of International Workers Day, affirming that your struggle for workers
48:29
48 minutes, 29 secondsrights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor solidarity is demonstrated through
48:38
48 minutes, 38 secondsactions, not just words. And we count on your awareness and determination to take concrete steps to end this strategy
48:45
48 minutes, 45 secondstragedy. End quote. That’s in furtherance of that mission. That’s why we have launched the Labor for Palestine
48:53
48 minutes, 53 secondsNational Network founded in January 2024 to organize workers unique rank and file power from below in our unions,
49:02
49 minutes, 2 secondscommunities, and workplaces to actually go beyond words and shut down Israeli genocide and settler colonialism through
49:09
49 minutes, 9 secondsresistance to the bipartisan real escalation of Israeli genocide that we’re now seeing in Palestine and as well to Trump’s parallel blitzkrieg of
49:18
49 minutes, 18 secondsrepression and destruction at home with democratic uh complicity all too often or at least acquiescence not only
49:26
49 minutes, 26 secondsagainst Palestinian solidarity activists but against all workers, unions, students, immigrants, people of color,
49:32
49 minutes, 32 secondswomen, LGBTQ plus, social services, education, science, free speech, and really humanity itself. And so finally,
49:41
49 minutes, 41 secondsas part of that resistance, we invite both union members and as yet ununized workers to first learn more about the
49:48
49 minutes, 48 secondshistory and labor zionism by visiting labor for palestine.net where we have quite a lot of material there that
49:57
49 minutes, 57 secondsaddresses exactly what we’re talking about here today and I’m going to put that link into the chat. Secondly, to consult Steve Zeltzer’s labor video
50:06
50 minutes, 6 secondschannel on YouTube, which also has a tremendous amount of video and other material on the history in particular, as well as Palestine solidarity in
50:15
50 minutes, 15 secondsgeneral. And then to mention also Jeff Shery’s upcoming book, No Neutrals There: US Labor Zionism, US labor,
50:23
50 minutes, 23 secondsZionism, and the struggle for Palestine, which comes out on October 28th, and reference to which I’m going to post here in the chat as well.
50:32
50 minutes, 32 secondsUh secondly to use labor for Palestine’s forthcoming model resolution which will be calling for union and other bodies to
50:40
50 minutes, 40 secondssupport the Palestinian trade union BDS picket line uh including the call to severize with the histadr and finally to
50:47
50 minutes, 47 secondsu please join us in the lab for palestine national network which consists of 53 member orgs and growing
50:55
50 minutes, 55 secondsand you can do that here and again thank you thank Thank you so much, Michael, for
51:03
51 minutes, 3 secondsthe clarity of these statements and the overview of the crucial role of rank and file organizing. Even the statements
51:09
51 minutes, 9 secondswe’ve seen national federations make, even if just statements are a result, direct result of rank and file pressure
51:17
51 minutes, 17 secondsand power because really the power is with the rank and file workers and it’s always good to have those reminders. Um,
Chapter 6: Q&A and closing remarks
51:24
51 minutes, 24 secondsI want to thank all of our panelists for these really informative um, and important presentations. I think this
51:31
51 minutes, 31 secondswas a really fantastic first session. I know it can feel like we’re just scratching the surface, which is why we
51:38
51 minutes, 38 secondswant this to be part of a series. Um and a series that will be useful for uh workers and unionists who are tuning in
51:46
51 minutes, 46 secondsand who are organizing doing the really you know persontoperson organizing on the ground work that is required to
51:53
51 minutes, 53 secondsbuild the kind of power we need to confront Zionism and its ties to uh racial white supremacy in the US imperialism and settler colonialism
52:02
52 minutes, 2 secondsacross the globe. Um I want to open the floor to questions now from our panelists. I know we have some already
52:09
52 minutes, 9 secondsum that I will read for everybody and um we’re all here. Yes. Yes. Manad had to
52:17
52 minutes, 17 secondsstep out unfortunately. Um so I’ll share some of these questions, invite panelists to respond, but also please
52:25
52 minutes, 25 secondsfeel free to continue asking questions using the Q&A function. I think we have around 20 minutes or so for this. So the first question for panelists, there was
52:33
52 minutes, 33 secondsrecently a uni Europa labor conference in Belfast which pistrute attended activists disrupted it and I’m curious
52:41
52 minutes, 41 secondsif you are aware of any fallout from that within uni Europa. Is there any sign that they will shift their stance
52:48
52 minutes, 48 secondson inviting history to such events? Um, if anyone wants to speak directly to this or otherwise, I know Clausio,
52:56
52 minutes, 56 secondsyou’re a natural contender to respond first, but Elizabeth, Michael, please feel free to weigh in.
53:06
53 minutes, 6 secondsWhat I can say briefly, yes, it was in Belfast was set a very we got the new and it was a very powerful action uh
53:14
53 minutes, 14 secondswhich made clear what is what what is the relationship of of uh of the trade
53:21
53 minutes, 21 secondsunions uh against against uh all over the world should be. But uh
53:30
53 minutes, 30 secondswhat I what I can say about Germany is that in the same time uh the beginning of April there was the 50 the 50 years
53:38
53 minutes, 38 secondsof the partnership uh of of the German Federation of Trade Unions and we had
53:44
53 minutes, 44 secondsthe visit of uh of the famous guy signing bombs uh in the Elit system
53:51
53 minutes, 51 secondsplant. uh he was in Germany and made official an official visit to the to the
53:58
53 minutes, 58 secondsdirection of the uh to the leadership of the of the German Federation of Trade Unions. Uh and unfortunately the the
54:08
54 minutes, 8 secondspower relationship were not uh in uh were not such as in uh as in Ireland uh
54:15
54 minutes, 15 secondsas uh and uh and uh there was no no counter counter action. Uh what uh what we we
54:24
54 minutes, 24 secondscould do this year was uh instead of being u u marginalized again like like the the
54:34
54 minutes, 34 secondsthe year before the first of my uh to 2024. This time uh we decide for another
54:43
54 minutes, 43 secondsfor another uh strategy and we disperse ourself in in in the in the uh
54:49
54 minutes, 49 secondsFederation uh Mayday demonstration and uh starting asking the questions where
54:56
54 minutes, 56 secondswe were asking ourself uh today. Uh but um yes that’s that’s a connection. Maybe
55:06
55 minutes, 6 secondsyou can you can add some more on the on the issue. Thank you, Cladio.
55:15
55 minutes, 15 secondsUm, next question. Did uh DJ Bay follow a similar policy to
55:22
55 minutes, 22 secondsestablish against migrant workers in Germany and specifically against Turkish workers? And um a question similar
55:31
55 minutes, 31 secondsrelated, I’ll just ask it at the same time. Do all German trade unions have close relationships with the roots?
55:44
55 minutes, 44 secondsUm I would say uh it’s um it’s it’s something coming from uh uh from the top is a is a very
55:54
55 minutes, 54 secondsis a top- down relationship. Uh so the the diplomatic relationship with Eastadoot are uh concerning and
56:02
56 minutes, 2 secondsconcerning the uh the leadership and uh the uh the highest rank of the of the
56:09
56 minutes, 9 secondsGerman trade union. Uh I was arguing before as I was arguing before the most
56:16
56 minutes, 16 secondsof the the basis of the giver of the trade union are not even informed of of this kind of relationship.
56:25
56 minutes, 25 secondsUh at the moment at the moment we are we are still we are still waiting for for a clear uh uh positioning of any of the German trade unions against his route.
56:39
56 minutes, 39 secondsUh and even against the genocide officially against the genocide in Palestine made exception for for uh
56:48
56 minutes, 48 secondsgroups in uh in the b in the bases of the trade unions. they are uh uh constantly working uh to organize
56:58
56 minutes, 58 secondsthemsel and and come out uh strategically in the long run. Uh in Germany there is an awful lot to do in
57:06
57 minutes, 6 secondsin this sense. Thank you Cladio. Uh we have
57:13
57 minutes, 13 secondsanother question. Can panelists talk about the role of CWA and its support for aparttheid Israel? CWA has four
57:21
57 minutes, 21 secondsareas that directly relate to this genocide um and its silence and our direct complicity. The CWA News Guild has
57:28
57 minutes, 28 secondsrefused to defend the Palestinian journalists and have even failed to defend their own journalists who’ve been targeted for their Palestine coverage.
57:35
57 minutes, 35 secondsThe health and education sector which includes 20,000 workers in um the University of California represented by UPTE have also failed to support
57:44
57 minutes, 44 secondshealthcare and education workers being killed in Huzza. That’s absolutely the case of my own union aft as well. Um,
57:51
57 minutes, 51 secondsand last but not least, CWA uh, alphabet workers, the IT sector have denounced their complicity and the development of
57:59
57 minutes, 59 secondsIT software that has served the military and targeting civilians and journalists and Gaza. Um and this participant also
58:09
58 minutes, 9 secondsis drawing connections trying to highlight the role CWA’s role within the AFL CIO which has been pretty bad since
58:16
58 minutes, 16 secondsthe 60s um in terms of collaboration with US foreign foreign policy arm to intervene in countries such as Chile um
58:24
58 minutes, 24 secondsetc. Um so would love to invite our panelists to respond um on the CWA.
58:35
58 minutes, 35 secondsMichael, yes. The CWA has uh as the question pointed out has uh remained essentially
58:44
58 minutes, 44 secondsat best silent about the genocide in Palestine. And that’s despite the fact that it, you know, presents itself as a
58:52
58 minutes, 52 secondsprogressive union. So again, we see that similarity with the way that the history and the JLC, the Jewish labor committee present themselves. Um, and of course,
59:01
59 minutes, 1 secondyou know, we support CWA workers as we do workers of all unions who are organizing uh and fighting for their
59:08
59 minutes, 8 secondsrights. Uh, but the CWA leadership has not addressed this at all. And it’s not even one of the seven unions that have,
59:17
59 minutes, 17 secondsat least on paper, come out for ceasefire and for an arms embargo. Um, so I’m glad to say that there is a new uh group called CWA for Palestine.
59:30
59 minutes, 30 secondsum which is uh beginning to organize and if you’re interested in that please do contact us at info laborforal.net and we
59:38
59 minutes, 38 secondswill connect you with the folks who are doing that because you know what that shows again is that whether it’s in the UAW or CWA or any other of the unions
59:46
59 minutes, 46 secondswe’re talking about these movements have to come from below either to get our unions to take a a position against
59:54
59 minutes, 54 secondsgenocide and then equally to get them to do something about the positions that they may have taken as in my union UAW.
1:00:01
1 hour, 1 secondSo um you know please do contact us reach out to us and we will put you in touch.
1:00:07
1 hour, 7 secondsThanks, Michael. Anyone else? I just want to add to that also, just to second your point. Um, we’re going to be sharing out as a resource, which Michael mentioned earlier, model resolutions.
1:00:19
1 hour, 19 secondsSo, um, resolutions that you can take back to your locals, to your caucuses, to your national federations, and I know a lot of the big unions meet in the
1:00:28
1 hour, 28 secondssummer. Um, and I’ve been a part of organizing within AFT to try and push these resolutions. It’s not easy work.
1:00:35
1 hour, 35 secondsUm, we really got the book thrown at us last summer when many of us for our first time were attending this convention and thinking that this would
1:00:43
1 hour, 43 secondsbe a good faith engagement with rank and file to you know share have a member leadership of their unions. That’s
1:00:51
1 hour, 51 secondsreally not how these business unions at this level function. And so um that’s one of the resources we want to share with folks um kind of language you can
1:01:00
1 hour, 1 minuteuse and then maybe another session we can think about in the future is just fact sharing and experience sharing on
1:01:08
1 hour, 1 minute, 8 secondsfor those of us who have participated in trying to pass these resolutions both successes and failures um in that regard I think are useful intel for us to share
1:01:16
1 hour, 1 minute, 16 secondswith each other. Um there’s a question um where did it go because it’s for Elizabeth specifically. Yes. Um, so
1:01:25
1 hour, 1 minute, 25 secondsEntertainment Labor for Palestine has been doing fantastic work. Really second that and applaud the the work you guys are doing. So what lessons do you have,
1:01:33
1 hour, 1 minute, 33 secondsElizabeth, that could help other sections of organized labor emulate uh your successes?
1:01:41
1 hour, 1 minute, 41 secondsOkay. Um, thank you for the question. I would say my advice would be to continue to organize. However, do not do it in a silo.
1:01:51
1 hour, 1 minute, 51 secondsum organize also with the community, you know, figure out the points of unity because you’re not going to, you know, probably agree with everybody on
1:02:00
1 hour, 2 minuteseverything, but um come together on the points of unity in which you can move forward and realize at this moment it’s going to take different strategies, not
1:02:09
1 hour, 2 minutes, 9 secondsjust one. So even with us, yes, we have a labor union that’s been complicit, but we cannot just focus just on that. um we
1:02:17
1 hour, 2 minutes, 17 secondshave to you know try multiple strategies and with within labor you know it’s important to also you know do the coalition building because you know when
1:02:26
1 hour, 2 minutes, 26 secondsyou come to start talking about things as strikes you need the community support you need mutual aid and if you’re in labor and you’re not talking
1:02:35
1 hour, 2 minutes, 35 secondsabout how to build mutual aid in community that needs to be done so that means getting out there um building relationships I’m um very big and I
1:02:43
1 hour, 2 minutes, 43 secondsdefinitely stress build relationships and not just not showing up or individual events. It’s getting to know people um because you have to build
1:02:52
1 hour, 2 minutes, 52 secondstrust in this moment and and that’s what it’s going to take to have um any level of uh relative success. So again, just
1:03:01
1 hour, 3 minutes, 1 secondum organize, reach out, coalition build, and again think outside the box and not
1:03:08
1 hour, 3 minutes, 8 secondsjust within your industry and within labor. Such important insights, Elizabeth.
1:03:15
1 hour, 3 minutes, 15 secondsThank you. This question is kind of related and maybe um all panelists might have some ideas in response not specifically just this question but broader about this coalition building
1:03:24
1 hour, 3 minutes, 24 secondsthat Elizabeth’s talking about. So one of our participants is asking what do you think about the JBP Jewish voice for peace peace le breaking the bonds campaign against Israel bonds.
1:03:35
1 hour, 3 minutes, 35 secondsUm I don’t know if anyone’s been involved here amongst panelists uh or just want to build on the idea of coalition building and the importance of
1:03:43
1 hour, 3 minutes, 43 secondsthat as trade unionists. You can go ahead whoever would like to kick us off.
1:03:51
1 hour, 3 minutes, 51 secondsWell, just to say that, you know, we’ve Labor Palestine has called for breaking exactly those bonds um since, you know,
1:03:59
1 hour, 3 minutes, 59 secondswe founded in 2004. And others, in fact, uh including Stan Heler, who I don’t believe is here today up in in Connecticut, uh has been organizing
1:04:08
1 hour, 4 minutes, 8 secondsabout this, you know, going all the way back to at least that that long. So, um you know, we support all of these
1:04:14
1 hour, 4 minutes, 14 secondsefforts. We’ve endorsed the JBP campaign and uh it’s it is particularly critical in you know that it comes up in a in a
1:04:22
1 hour, 4 minutes, 22 secondsnumber of different contexts. So, Israel bonds are owned by uh you know governmental bodies say like New York
1:04:29
1 hour, 4 minutes, 29 secondsCity which owns a whole mess of Israel stuff uh but also other cities and counties and states and so forth but
1:04:38
1 hour, 4 minutes, 38 secondsalso uh not just by governmental entities but by pension funds which you know are our pensions and often if we
1:04:46
1 hour, 4 minutes, 46 secondseven have a pension those funds usually have Israeli investments including the bonds and then the unions
1:04:53
1 hour, 4 minutes, 53 secondswhich was mentioned earlier. So to sort of echo Elizabeth’s point, this kind of crosses over, you know, the union space,
1:05:00
1 hour, 5 minutesgovernmental spaces, community spaces in the uh Bay Area. Um they’ve had a very effective campaign to uh stop or to to
1:05:10
1 hour, 5 minutes, 10 secondsget uh some of the uh Alama County and others to uh say that they would divest from Israel bonds and Israeli
1:05:18
1 hour, 5 minutes, 18 secondsinvestments. We have to definitely support all these things and they’re critical in and they’re very concrete in terms of uh ways in which our unions in
1:05:25
1 hour, 5 minutes, 25 secondsparticular have been complicit and remain complicit and I should also just add that as a member of UAW labor of Palestine which a number of people here
1:05:34
1 hour, 5 minutes, 34 secondsin the in the call are are part of as well. Um you know this has been a major issue in the UAW going all the way back as I said to the the early 70s. So for
1:05:43
1 hour, 5 minutes, 43 secondsthe 50 plus years the UAW has held and mostly refused to divest even under the
1:05:51
1 hour, 5 minutes, 51 secondsnew Shaun Fain leadership which you know is far better than any other leadership has ever been in the UAW but
1:06:03
1 hour, 6 minutes, 3 secondsnonetheless yes the university should divest and yet we can’t so far get the UAW international executive board to actually divest its own holdings.
1:06:13
1 hour, 6 minutes, 13 secondsin Israel bonds. So this, you know, cut across all sectors and also shows the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk.
1:06:25
1 hour, 6 minutes, 25 secondsAbsolutely. Thank you, Michael. Um Claudia or Elizabeth, uh do you have also comments to share on this question both specifically or more broadly?
1:06:38
1 hour, 6 minutes, 38 secondsYeah, about the about the attempt of coalition building. Maybe I can contribute uh in uh so we as uh as stop
1:06:48
1 hour, 6 minutes, 48 secondshaving Israel. We are uh we are uh working tight with Garin and Fugaza
1:06:57
1 hour, 6 minutes, 57 secondswhich is trade unions for Palestine. I will share some resources at the end in the in the chat. Um and the Jewish
1:07:06
1 hour, 7 minutes, 6 secondsvoice, the Jewish voice, the German Jewish voice for peace, the Yudishim is out is also very uh very active uh in in
1:07:16
1 hour, 7 minutes, 16 secondssupport of uh of this initiative. Uh there was the the there
1:07:22
1 hour, 7 minutes, 22 secondswere attempts uh in the last year uh to uh to try to enter the the bargaining uh
1:07:30
1 hour, 7 minutes, 30 secondsnegotiations. So the the renovation of the of the uh of the contracts uh of the
1:07:39
1 hour, 7 minutes, 39 secondsdock workers for instance in Hamburg and Braymond and uh there were some attempt to to bring a political issue of of the
1:07:48
1 hour, 7 minutes, 48 secondsPalestine solidarity into the negotiation. Uh it’s a beginning let’s say that that is that is a beginning and
1:07:56
1 hour, 7 minutes, 56 secondsand this is a perspective in the long term. uh clashing also with uh with the
1:08:04
1 hour, 8 minutes, 4 secondsGerman with the German uh law labor laws which supposedly uh
1:08:13
1 hour, 8 minutes, 13 secondsare prohibiting the uh the political strike. So the the the trade union can
1:08:21
1 hour, 8 minutes, 21 secondsnegotiate only on base of of salary issues uh and uh on other issues but not not
1:08:29
1 hour, 8 minutes, 29 secondsabout political political issues. Uh this is a point which is uh which is now in discussion. There are actually there
1:08:37
1 hour, 8 minutes, 37 secondsare voices also uh arguing that it’s not it’s not a
1:08:44
1 hour, 8 minutes, 44 secondslegal it’s not a legal obstacle but uh some some kind of constitutionary law uh
1:08:51
1 hour, 8 minutes, 51 secondswhich uh which belongs to the social partnership uh of the trade union with uh with the
1:08:58
1 hour, 8 minutes, 58 secondsindustrial uh with the industrial complex.
1:09:03
1 hour, 9 minutes, 3 secondsUh there are also other examples uh in which uh the in which on the other side
1:09:10
1 hour, 9 minutes, 10 secondsthe networking is difficult. uh with the EG Metal for instance where where the
1:09:16
1 hour, 9 minutes, 16 secondsthe metal industry the metal industry uh trade union which uh which is openly in the
1:09:25
1 hour, 9 minutes, 25 secondsmajority of of its structure is openly on the side of uh of the war the war
1:09:32
1 hour, 9 minutes, 32 secondscredits and the new armament that’s why that’s why I was uh so I think it’s it’s
1:09:39
1 hour, 9 minutes, 39 secondscrucial for us now to talk about the class perspective. Uh and to question to question the the social partnership in
1:09:48
1 hour, 9 minutes, 48 secondsin its rules in in its roots uh when uh when the the ruling class is actually uh
1:09:57
1 hour, 9 minutes, 57 secondsthe industry and the governments are heading to uh to the war preparation.
1:10:06
1 hour, 10 minutes, 6 secondsThank you Claudio. I also I would be remiss not to mention and shout out JVP Rhode Island’s um break the bonds
1:10:13
1 hour, 10 minutes, 13 secondscampaign in the city of Providence which has been a really important um and really deeply community involved effort
1:10:22
1 hour, 10 minutes, 22 secondsto pressure the city to divest from Israeli aparttheid occupation genocide colonialism. Um, and I’ve seen really
1:10:31
1 hour, 10 minutes, 31 secondsthe whole community across higher ed, labor, students, um, immigrant rights organizations, JBP, of course, really
1:10:40
1 hour, 10 minutes, 40 secondscoming together to build each other up in all of our different campaigns. And I think this speaks to Elizabeth’s point
1:10:47
1 hour, 10 minutes, 47 secondsabout different approaches and all using all the approaches and pushing on all the levers of power and influence that
1:10:54
1 hour, 10 minutes, 54 secondswe have and coalitions being a really important way to sustain those efforts.
1:10:59
1 hour, 10 minutes, 59 secondsUm because sometimes, you know, our orgs kind of get beat down in the moment and we need someone else to step up and carry the movement while we sort of
1:11:06
1 hour, 11 minutes, 6 secondsrecuperate. And I think in higher eds we’re definitely, you know, in my specific experience at Brown facing that right now. I know the community orgs
1:11:14
1 hour, 11 minutes, 14 secondswe’ve built partnerships with have been so important in keeping the momentum going in the city. Um, just this week,
1:11:22
1 hour, 11 minutes, 22 secondsuh, the city of Providence raised the Palestinian flag at city hall for the first time in history, and we saw an
1:11:29
1 hour, 11 minutes, 29 secondsoutpouring of that coalitional support and mobilization. um and how people showed up because obviously there were
1:11:37
1 hour, 11 minutes, 37 secondsnational Zionist efforts to smear and slander including the uh mayor of Providence himself who denounced this
1:11:45
1 hour, 11 minutes, 45 secondsact and called it divisive and controversial despite the fact that the Israeli flag had flown literally the week prior. So just want to like upvote
1:11:54
1 hour, 11 minutes, 54 secondsthe importance of coalition building and thank my partners and the coalitions I’ve been a part of for really sustaining me and others uh in that work.
1:12:04
1 hour, 12 minutes, 4 secondsUm okay let’s move on to another question. I think this is important to address. Um so next question. All of us
1:12:12
1 hour, 12 minutes, 12 secondsin unions here believe we need to reform our unions from below even horribly conservative unions in the US. Can the
1:12:19
1 hour, 12 minutes, 19 secondsHistadrru be reformed from below by its members? I’ve had a socialist Jewish educator in the US make this argument.
1:12:26
1 hour, 12 minutes, 26 secondsIs there any hope anti-Zionist Jewish members of the Histadritz could build a reform movement to change the Histadrit’s directions? Um, or if not,
1:12:35
1 hour, 12 minutes, 35 secondscould you elaborate on why? Whoever wants to go, feel free to
1:12:44
1 hour, 12 minutes, 44 secondsjump in. Well, I I would say no. And and the
1:12:52
1 hour, 12 minutes, 52 secondsreason being really the analogy with apartheid South Africa where you had white unions,
1:13:00
1 hour, 13 minuteswhite only unions essentially that were actually quite militant in regard to fighting for their own members
1:13:09
1 hour, 13 minutes, 9 secondsrights, but which were white only unions and that was fundamental to the nature
1:13:16
1 hour, 13 minutes, 16 secondsof that society as being a settler colonial society. Now, of course, we live in this country, the United States, in a settler colonial society, but I
1:13:24
1 hour, 13 minutes, 24 secondsthink there’s different um there’s a difference, and that is there is none, despite all the racism uh and oppression
1:13:33
1 hour, 13 minutes, 33 secondsand genocide in this country, there is also a tradition that parallel exists of
1:13:41
1 hour, 13 minutes, 41 secondsuh multi-racial and multinational labor organizing within and which which a number of unions, you
1:13:48
1 hour, 13 minutes, 48 secondsknow, were really upholding and have upheld and certainly the industrial unions that came from the 1930s on have been much
1:13:56
1 hour, 13 minutes, 56 secondsmore based in that. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t racism or isn’t racism in those unions. Again, the UIW is notorious going back to the late60s in
1:14:04
1 hour, 14 minutes, 4 secondsparticular the struggle over racism in that union. And that struggle of course is not over. But that’s different than a
1:14:12
1 hour, 14 minutes, 12 secondssociety like apartheid South Africa or or the Israeli regime, the Zionist entity which is a kind of settler
1:14:20
1 hour, 14 minutes, 20 secondscolonialism in which uh there are not you know the history in this case plays
1:14:27
1 hour, 14 minutes, 27 secondsthe role as the spearhead of the existence of that society and the maintenance of that society. And that’s why uh the history group never has been
1:14:36
1 hour, 14 minutes, 36 secondsand never can be an instrument of change or of reform or of ending settler colonialism because settler colonialism
1:14:44
1 hour, 14 minutes, 44 secondsis so baked into its DNA and that the Israeli so-called working class by which I mean the the Jewish so-called working
1:14:54
1 hour, 14 minutes, 54 secondsclass is not a working class in any way that we would recognize just as the white South African working class was not. And so there’s a lot more that can
1:15:01
1 hour, 15 minutes, 1 secondbe said about it, but I think that’s essentially the reasons why that’s not going to happen.
1:15:13
1 hour, 15 minutes, 13 secondsThank you, Michael. Um, Claudia or Elizabeth, you want to weigh in? Yes, very very briefly on on Michael. I so I
1:15:23
1 hour, 15 minutes, 23 secondsuh I stay on what Michael said. And I agree 100%. I can build up something
1:15:31
1 hour, 15 minutes, 31 secondssomething more which is also uh particular for for Germany as I was uh telling before. So that the actually the
1:15:40
1 hour, 15 minutes, 40 secondsthere is some some kind of um um privilege sharing. So with the when a
1:15:48
1 hour, 15 minutes, 48 secondswhen a working class like the Israeli working class or the German working class uh is somehow uh co-opted by the
1:15:57
1 hour, 15 minutes, 57 secondsby the program of actually of the program of the of the owner of the owner uh uh uh of the industry. So the
1:16:06
1 hour, 16 minutes, 6 secondsnational interest is becoming uh is is is coming in foreground.
1:16:11
1 hour, 16 minutes, 11 secondsUh the point is uh is the perspective of a uh of a solidarity from below among workers.
1:16:20
1 hour, 16 minutes, 20 secondsuh which uh which is which is now which now I said is is the crucial point and
1:16:27
1 hour, 16 minutes, 27 secondsuh uh I would I would also not expect not expect anything from the Israeli working class. uh from the German
1:16:35
1 hour, 16 minutes, 35 secondsworking class. Uh we have to confront we have to confront the this kind of this cooperation and uh what what I was
1:16:44
1 hour, 16 minutes, 44 secondscalling uh social partnersh the the social partnership uh of the of the labor structure. This
1:16:52
1 hour, 16 minutes, 52 secondsis this is the the heat the point we have to hit uh in the next future. Uh when when the the German industry is is
1:17:01
1 hour, 17 minutes, 1 secondcomplicit in the in the in the second uh in the second uh line after after US is
1:17:08
1 hour, 17 minutes, 8 secondsone of the uh the weapon industry enabling uh genocide in Palestine, the massacre in Ukraine and uh and so on.
1:17:20
1 hour, 17 minutes, 20 secondsSolidarity of among workers against the national against the national interests is the I think the the topic.
1:17:35
1 hour, 17 minutes, 35 secondsThank you Cladio. Um Elizabeth if you have anything to add.
1:17:43
1 hour, 17 minutes, 43 secondsUm go ahead. I have nothing additional. Thank you.
1:17:49
1 hour, 17 minutes, 49 secondsThank you. I’ll just say quickly to close on this question that um we’re we are witnessing we are living the logical
1:17:57
1 hour, 17 minutes, 57 secondsconclusion of what Zionism as ideology looks like in practice and it is a genocidal ideology. There’s nothing
1:18:04
1 hour, 18 minutes, 4 secondsredeemable in Zionism. I really appreciate the question. I appreciate um us weighing in on it and reflecting on
1:18:11
1 hour, 18 minutes, 11 secondsit carefully. Um but I do think in the case of Zionism, all of our efforts have to be organized towards dismantling this
1:18:19
1 hour, 18 minutes, 19 secondsracist exterminationist um settler colonial project so that other things can blossom and bloom in
1:18:27
1 hour, 18 minutes, 27 secondsits place. Right? So I think um that’s where I stand on that question and I think other panelists thank you for your
1:18:33
1 hour, 18 minutes, 33 secondscomments also. Um we’re getting close to the end of our time together. So I think it’s a good moment maybe for our
1:18:42
1 hour, 18 minutes, 42 secondspanelists if you’d like to just offer some closing remarks. Um and then I will also do that and just sum up the uh end
1:18:50
1 hour, 18 minutes, 50 secondsof this session and looking towards the next one. So maybe we’ll go in the order or Elizabeth if you wanted to go first
1:18:58
1 hour, 18 minutes, 58 secondscuz I think maybe your time is a bit limited you can please do so.
1:19:05
1 hour, 19 minutes, 5 secondsUm well thank you. Yes, I do have to head out to another commitment. But um just again like with everything that we
1:19:13
1 hour, 19 minutes, 13 secondsheard today, we see that you know there’s work to do um to bridge the ties to history. But even with that work um
1:19:21
1 hour, 19 minutes, 21 secondsit’s important as rank and file for us to organize. Um this is going to be an effort from the bottom up. And as we um
1:19:30
1 hour, 19 minutes, 30 secondsdo our our work, it’s also important to make changes within our union because we we see in a lot of our unions um what we
1:19:39
1 hour, 19 minutes, 39 secondshave the challenges that we have with leadership. So those are things that we have to address. But as I head out again
1:19:46
1 hour, 19 minutes, 46 secondsto meet my coalition, um again I would just stress that um you know just take you know everything that you’ve uh heard
1:19:54
1 hour, 19 minutes, 54 secondstoday and the two kits that will be made available and do more whatever you’re do whatever you’re doing now see what else
1:20:03
1 hour, 20 minutes, 3 secondsthat you can do and and do more um because there is a lot of work to do. um there’s an urgency of the situation and
1:20:12
1 hour, 20 minutes, 12 secondsall of the letters, all of the papers, documents will not stop what’s going on and it’s going to take action. It’s going to take building and that’s what we have to do in this moment.
1:20:23
1 hour, 20 minutes, 23 secondsUm so that’s what I have. Thank you.
1:20:28
1 hour, 20 minutes, 28 secondsThank you. And really leading by example, you literally do the work. So thank you so much. Um, Cladio do you
1:20:37
1 hour, 20 minutes, 37 secondswant to go next? Uh, yes. So, very very shortly uh I want to highlight again the
1:20:45
1 hour, 20 minutes, 45 secondsthe importance how how crucial crucial is the political education and uh this is this is our
1:20:53
1 hour, 20 minutes, 53 secondsfight now. uh the the fight against uh not only against ignorance but also against
1:21:00
1 hour, 21 minutesuh active disinformation. Uh and uh let’s go on.
1:21:08
1 hour, 21 minutes, 8 secondsI I hope we we will we will have a long we will have the a long way we have a long way and then we will have uh much
1:21:17
1 hour, 21 minutes, 17 secondsmuch of of these exchanges. Uh I’m very very glad to to be to be with you uh now
1:21:25
1 hour, 21 minutes, 25 secondsand um yeah let’s go for more. Thank you Michael.
1:21:34
1 hour, 21 minutes, 34 secondsYeah what Elizabeth and Claudio and Shireina have been saying um and before them and to remember that you know this is such a a difficult moment.
1:21:46
1 hour, 21 minutes, 46 secondsI mean it’s been a difficult moment. Uh it’s been a difficult moment since 1948 and before, but obviously it’s been a
1:21:54
1 hour, 21 minutes, 54 secondsespecially difficult moment since October 7th of 2023 and the genocide that has, you know, accompanied that.
1:22:01
1 hour, 22 minutes, 1 secondBut all of us are affected by that to some degree. I mean, not affected by directly the way people in Palestine are, but nonetheless, we all in our own
1:22:10
1 hour, 22 minutes, 10 secondsways have been experiencing it. And um it’s it’s sometimes discouraging or can feel discouraging. But I think, you
1:22:19
1 hour, 22 minutes, 19 secondsknow, we can take inspiration above all from Palestinians and their uh resistance and
1:22:27
1 hour, 22 minutes, 27 secondsSimood, you know, um and which is part of that resistance, their their steadfastness
1:22:34
1 hour, 22 minutes, 34 secondsand and from each other, you know, from uplifting what all of us here are trying to do and beyond here all the work that
1:22:42
1 hour, 22 minutes, 42 secondsis being done. I mean just one example to take heart from was uh yesterday in London there were more than a half a million people marching for Palestine.
1:22:52
1 hour, 22 minutes, 52 secondsUm and there have been you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in this country that have marched for Palestine since October 7th of 2023. and
1:23:00
1 hour, 23 minutesremembering that you know all tyranny eventually can be brought down and will be brought down in injustice and to take
1:23:09
1 hour, 23 minutes, 9 secondsuh you know support each other to take inspiration from each other and to move forward together.
1:23:16
1 hour, 23 minutes, 16 secondsThank you so much. Uh I want to sincerely thank everyone for coming today and participating in this teaching about the Histadritz, its origins and
1:23:25
1 hour, 23 minutes, 25 secondsthe formation of a Zionist state and its ongoing role in the occupation, colonization and genocide against the Palestinian people. I want to remind
1:23:33
1 hour, 23 minutes, 33 secondseveryone that we organized this call to serve as a teaching tool for unionists to take back to their locals, caucuses,
1:23:40
1 hour, 23 minutes, 40 secondsand national federations. So please feel encouraged to share the reporting once we circulate it. We’re also looking into
1:23:47
1 hour, 23 minutes, 47 secondsum having some translated subtitles in different languages. Uh organize a watch party and a discussion um and plan
1:23:56
1 hour, 23 minutes, 56 secondstogether about bringing model or bringing resolutions to your unions at every level. We’ll be sharing a toolkit with participants soon and definitely
1:24:03
1 hour, 24 minutes, 3 secondsbefore our next iteration of this series which is going to take place on June 22nd. So save the date where we plan to
1:24:12
1 hour, 24 minutes, 12 secondsdeepen today’s discussion with an examination of internal labor dynamics within Israel including the mistreatment of Palestinian workers and the history
1:24:21
1 hour, 24 minutes, 21 secondsof Palestinian labor within the settler colony, Israel’s exploitation of migrant workers and further connections to
1:24:28
1 hour, 24 minutes, 28 secondsglobal solidarity movements because we’ve just really scratched the surface on this really important work happening in this moment that many of you are a
1:24:35
1 hour, 24 minutes, 35 secondspart of and I thank you for that. And you know, together we’re going to continue to hold this line. Thank you all and enjoy the rest of your day.
1:24:43
1 hour, 24 minutes, 43 secondsBye-bye.
Comments Off on Breaking Ties With the Israeli Histadrut — Part 1 (May 18, 2025)(Labor for Palestine National Network)
Posted onMay 25, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Organizing Guide “An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Breaking Ties with the Israeli Histadrut” – Part I (Labor for Palestine National Network)
On May 18, 2025, Labor for Palestine National Network members from across the U.S. and Europe co-hosted Part I of a learning series called “An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Breaking Ties with the Israeli Histadrut.” The call featured speakers from Palestine, Germany, and the U.S. teaching workers about the Histadrut: Israel’s racist “labor federation” that finances the IDF, its role in Israel’s brutal ethnic cleansing project, its connection to international labor Zionism and imperialism, and why a global movement of workers is organizing to break ties.
This toolkit supports the dissemination of this information and follow up organizing. We hope that workers will schedule viewing parties with your local unions, caucuses, and Labor for Palestine chapters to watch the recording and discuss how you can organize together. We urge you to consider bringing a version of the model resolution linked below to your unions and other labor bodies to adopt and join the movement to break ties with the Israeli Histadrut.
Develop a good understanding of the Histadrut; its origins; its racist, genocidal, and apartheid politics; its role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and formation of Israel; and its place at the heart of the Zionist project
Identify and expose links between the Histadrut and labor Zionism in the US and Europe, particularly in Germany
Make clear the similarities between the Histadrut and its closest relatives–South African apartheid and racially segregated “unions” that have no place in our movements towards justice and liberation
Highlight the solidarity work of a global movement of workers organizing to break ties with this Zionist formation and empower organizers to challenge these ties at the union local, caucus, state, national, and international levels
Discussion Questions
Was there anything particularly surprising or striking that you learned about the Histadrut as an organization and its history in Palestine that you did not know before?
After watching this video, can we succinctly state in our own words why our union or labor body should not support the Histadrut?
What do we know about our union’s current and historic ties to the Histadrut?
How do we define international labor solidarity?
Why is this important to us, and how does walking the Palestine picket line shape the ways we engage in our union organizing?
Additional Materials
To go deeper, check out the full slidedeck and facilitation guide on “Labor Zionism and the Histadrut” from which the opening section of the recorded call was drawn
Check out this FAQ on why Palestine solidarity is a labor issue
Get Involved!
Stay tuned for registration information for Part II of “An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Breaking Ties with the Israeli Histadrut”
Comments Off on Organizing Guide “An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Breaking Ties with the Israeli Histadrut” – Part I (Labor for Palestine National Network)
Posted onMay 3, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Call to Malta’s union GWU: Support the Flotilla Conscience to Safe Harbor in Malta right away (Labor for Palestine National Network & the Gaza Freedom Coalition)
Call to Malta’s union GWU: Support the flotilla Conscience to Safe Harbor in Malta right away
ADDRESS:
Workers’ Memorial Building, South Street, Valletta VLT 1103 PHONE: +356 25 679 000 EMAIL: info@gwu.org.mt
Dear Comrades in GWU,
We are calling on you to do everything in your power to let the flotilla Conscience to have safe harbor in Malta right away. Malta is a land which has sheltered many who have nowhere to go and need protection from war, or economic peril. Malta was an example to the rest of Europe when the migrations from North Africa was underway and we call on you now to help our brothers and sisters on the flotilla who aspire to help the starving people of Gaza with humanitarian aid and have been targeted by Israeli drones and fear the worst is imminent.
Do all you can to help them have safe harbor at your hospitable shores right away. Israel is violating international law and has targeted this unarmed flotilla Conscience, which is carrying nothing but humanitarian aid and 18 aid volunteers and is in international waters near Malta.
To find out more updated information and any details you need to help them.
Palestinian Unions have called on Unions worldwide to support the beleaguered people of Palestine and especially Gaza and we are echoing their call to all of us, to do what we can to help stop Israel from having access to our railways, ports, for transportation of arms and supplies and surveillance to Israel’s military and surveillance apparatus by any way we can.
Please answer our call to support humanitarian aid and human rights aid workers as soon as you can. We intend to strengthen our relationship with the other unions in the world who act on their humanity and take a principled stance for all humans on this planet.
We intend to publish this letter publicly and share it with our allies
Comments Off on Call to Malta’s union GWU: Support the Flotilla Conscience to Safe Harbor in Malta right away (Labor for Palestine National Network & the Gaza Freedom Coalition)
Posted onApril 11, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on PGFTU Gaza Calls On US Workers To Launch General Strike To Stop Genocide With Michael Letwin L4P (Labor Video)
Apr 11, 2025 The Palestine General Federation Of Trade Unions in Gaza have called on US unions to take general strike action on May 1, 2025 to stop the genocide in Gaza and against their own attacks they face. Michael Letwin who is past president of UAW Local 2325 and a one of the founders of Labor For Palestine talks about this call and also the struggle in the US labor movement to oppose the US military and economic aid to Israel and the continued genocide. He also talks about the growing Gestapo tactics of arresting university workers and students an the efforts to terrorize millions of immigrants and workers. He also discusses the effort of supporters of UAW president Shawn Fain to close down the Unite All Worker For Democracy UAWD caucus in the UAW. Last he talks about the effort to limit the calls for action on May Day to only US issues and not the genocide and trillion dollars US military aid to Israel and for the 800 US bases around the world. This interview was done on 4/10/25. Additional Media: https://laborforpalestine.net/2024/03… Police Attack Palestine Labor Activists In Front Of Chicago Labor Notes Conference • Police Attack Palestine Labor Activists In… Labor For Palestine Rally At 2024 Chicago Labor Notes Conference • Labor For Palestine Rally At 2024 Labor No… Palestinian Labor Activists Speak Out At 2024 Chicago Labor Notes • Palestinian Labor Activists Speak Out At 2… The Israeli Histadrut, Zionism, The AFL-CIO & Imperialism With Carol Lang • The Israeli Histadrut, Zionism, The AFL-CI… Links Between Zionism, Histadrut, South Africa, CIA & The AFL-CIO At BA Labor For Palestine Conf • Links Between Zionism, Histadrut, South A… Fighting Privatization, Capitalism & Imperialist War With French CGT Rail Worker Axel Persson • Fighting Privatization, Capitalism & Impe… The War On Palestinians, ZIM Line, MUA Dockers & Labor Action With MUA Sydney Sec. Paul Keating • The War On Palestinians, ZIM Line, MUA Doc… For More Info: Labor4Palestine https://laborforpalestine.net WorkWeek / workweek-radio Production of Labor Video Project www.labormedia.net
Transcript:
0:01
1 second[Music]
0:12
12 seconds[Music]
0:13
13 secondsThis is Steve Zeltzer with Work Week in Pacifica and the continuing genocide going on in Gaza in the West Bank has
0:22
22 secondsled to a growing anger among workers around the world including uh in the United States and recently there’s has
0:30
30 secondsbeen a call by the General Federation of Trade Unions of Gaza to call on the workers of the United States to take action in solidarity with the Palestinians and against the genocide.
0:40
40 secondsAnd joining us today is Michael Lewin.
0:42
42 secondsHe is a lawyer, former president of his UAW local and also one of the co-founders of Labor for Palestine. Welcome to our show. Thanks, Steve.
0:51
51 secondsGreat to be here as always. So, Michael, first of all, why don’t you talk about the work you’ve been doing and your fight in the union to get the union involved as well as Labor for Palestine?
1:00
1 minuteWell, Labor for Palestine began in 2004, so it’s over 20 years now. And really, the whole point has been to uphold the
1:08
1 minute, 8 secondscall from Palestinian trade unions for solidarity against Zionism. And that includes, of course, support for BDS,
1:16
1 minute, 16 secondsboycott, defenses, and sanctions, especially in the labor sphere. And it really builds on and tries to reaffirm
1:23
1 minute, 23 secondsthe work that began in the late 60s and early 70s in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Arab Workers Caucus in the UAW, both of which in
1:32
1 minute, 32 secondsDetroit, who brought the issue of Palestine to the UAW because the UAW, the Autoworkers Union for decades,
1:40
1 minute, 40 secondsreally going all the way back to the Nagba of 1948 has been a major supporter of Zionism. has bought who knows how
1:49
1 minute, 49 secondsmany millions of Israel bonds. And that really was the issue in 1973 during the 73 war when the when uh
1:58
1 minute, 58 secondsArab workers and black workers in Detroit went on strike and held protests in that situation, not against the company, although they were against the
2:06
2 minutes, 6 secondscompanies, but against the international UAW and the local 600 leadership which owned UA uh Israel bonds and demanded
2:14
2 minutes, 14 secondsthose Israel bonds be sold. And uh so you had many Arab workers in fact in those plants who were leading that that charge with the support of black workers
2:23
2 minutes, 23 secondswith the support of a lot of white workers and other workers. And so that’s what we’re trying to build on is that
2:30
2 minutes, 30 secondslegacy of anti-ionism really anti- labor Zionism in uh the workplace in our
2:37
2 minutes, 37 secondsunions. And so we formed Labor for Palestine in 2004 to make sure or to fight to make sure that Palestine was
2:45
2 minutes, 45 secondsnot ignored or sidelined or excluded by the post 911 anti-war movement which many of us were involved with and also
2:53
2 minutes, 53 secondsto make sure that uh we were bringing this fight to labor within labor to demand that labor uphold the basic
3:01
3 minutes, 1 secondprinciples of solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all. We don’t cross picket lines. to walk picket lines and to make that apply just as much to
3:09
3 minutes, 9 secondsPalestine as anything else. So that’s the history of of labor for Palestine and how we began. And then in the last
3:16
3 minutes, 16 seconds20 years, we’ve pursued those uh those efforts and supported all kinds of rank and file work because we are a rank and
3:24
3 minutes, 24 secondsfile-based caucus or rather a union uh oriented organization. And we also have many of us in the UAW have continued to
3:32
3 minutes, 32 secondsfight within the UAW around the issue of Palestine.
3:36
3 minutes, 36 secondsAnd of course the AFL CIO from its beginning supported Israel. Uh they work with the Historoot. And what is the
3:43
3 minutes, 43 secondshistory? because that union says it represents the workers in Israel, but in reality it has quite a different
3:50
3 minutes, 50 secondshistory, right? The histadroot was the Israeli state in waiting, meaning that
3:57
3 minutes, 57 secondsall the way from its founding in about 1920, it was used by Zionist or movement
4:05
4 minutes, 5 secondsto essentially create the ground for the establishment of the Israeli settler colonial state. And they did that by uh
4:15
4 minutes, 15 secondscalling themselves a labor federation even though they were at that point exclusively and uh they they discriminated against the the indigenous
4:23
4 minutes, 23 secondsworkforce. Their whole idea was to quote conquer land and labor meaning take away the land from Palestinians and exclude
4:30
4 minutes, 30 secondsPalestinians from the work. And that’s the history of the history all the way up through 1948. It
4:38
4 minutes, 38 secondsplayed a major role in the Nagba. and then it it it helped to run the Israeli state for the next 30 years while the
4:46
4 minutes, 46 secondsLabor Party was in office. So it really is uh at the heart of the Zionist project and has nothing to do with the
4:55
4 minutes, 55 secondskind of the labor federation that we would think of in this country. I mean, of course, we have problems with our labor federations, the AFL CIO and so forth, but at least they are labor
5:04
5 minutes, 4 secondsfederations, however, you know, backward they may be or even compromised politically, which they are, including
5:11
5 minutes, 11 secondstheir support for Zionism and lots of other bad things, but nonetheless a labor federation still. This is the history to it is more has more in common
5:20
5 minutes, 20 secondswith say a white workers union in South Africa under apartheid when you had the same kind of colonial settler state uh
5:29
5 minutes, 29 secondswhich had a very active white so-called labor you know unions for white workers only um but which was completely
5:38
5 minutes, 38 secondscomplicit in the apartheid regime and that’s what the history is in Israel what what you know we call uh you know
5:46
5 minutes, 46 secondswe say all of Palest All of Israel has occupied Palestine. So when I say Israel, I don’t mean a place or a people. I mean the regime that occupies
5:53
5 minutes, 53 secondsPalestine and and has since 1948. The history that was involved, I understand, in supporting the apathide regime in
6:00
6 minutesSouth Africa. Yes. Supporting Buazi uh and working with the AFL CIO to fund uh
6:07
6 minutes, 7 secondsBalazi and Inkata uh which would then attack trade unions who are organized in South Africa and Kosatu independent
6:15
6 minutes, 15 secondstrade. Well, even worse than that, I mean the the the thing that’s the other thing about history is that they have also been an employer. So, they’ve owned lots of factories including weapons
6:24
6 minutes, 24 secondsfactories in Israel and they through that process and through the Labor Party government which was then in power in
6:30
6 minutes, 30 secondsthe 70s helped South Africa gave South Africa essentially a partite South Africa nuclear weapons and because
6:39
6 minutes, 39 secondsIsrael had the nuclear weapons and they made a deal to to do that for South Africa as well. um partly for you know all kinds of reasons but mainly because
6:47
6 minutes, 47 secondsthey were alike regimes and wanted to make sure that they were pushing back the anti-colonial liberation movements together and so they were tightly allied
6:56
6 minutes, 56 secondsunder the histadr based labor government with apartheid South Africa and the AFL
7:03
7 minutes, 3 secondsCIO has not said that there’s genocide going on in Gaza the uh they have not called for stopping the weapons US
7:12
7 minutes, 12 secondsweapons that are going to support that that genocide. And in cases like in the San Francisco Labor Council, Liz
7:20
7 minutes, 20 secondsScheler, the president of the AFL actually sent a letter saying you shouldn’t even talk about the issue of Palestine. This effort to build
7:28
7 minutes, 28 secondssolidarity against the uh genocide and for the freedom of Palestinian workers uh in in Palestine and Israel. What kind
7:37
7 minutes, 37 secondsof obstacles has the labor labor for Palestine faced in that regard?
7:42
7 minutes, 42 secondsWell, you know, going back um certainly to well, you know, the first sort of mainstream labor resolution in support
7:51
7 minutes, 51 secondsof BDS came out of a UAW local which was then 2865 now 4811 it’s called in the University of
7:59
7 minutes, 59 secondsCalifornia the grad student workers and now more than just grad students and at that time uh the membership there took a
8:07
8 minutes, 7 secondsvote overwhelming landslide vote in favor of BDS. This is during another of the intense attacks on Gaza by Israel,
8:14
8 minutes, 14 secondsof course, using US weapons. And um that vote passed overwhelmingly and then the international UAW uh overturned it and
8:22
8 minutes, 22 secondsnullified it on the grounds that it was inconsistent with UAW support for Israel. that was under the old regime,
8:29
8 minutes, 29 secondsthe old administration caucus regime in the UAW which was in power for something like 70 years and which has now been
8:36
8 minutes, 36 secondsreplaced to some degree has been replaced by the the election of Shan Feain who’s the current UAW president who came in on a reform slate. But um
8:45
8 minutes, 45 secondsthose are the kinds of obstacles that we faced all the way through that is uh attempts by the bureaucracy in many unions and in the AFL CIO as you point
8:53
8 minutes, 53 secondsout to stifle and overturn and silence uh solidarity with pal with with Palestine. Uh and the the slogan one of
9:01
9 minutes, 1 secondthe slogans we use is you know an injury to Palestine is an injury to all. So they they don’t they don’t get that notion of solidarity even in regard to
9:10
9 minutes, 10 secondsmany domestic labor issues and they certainly don’t get it or apply it or practice it when it comes to Palestine or many other places. And so that’s been
9:19
9 minutes, 19 secondsthe tradition the tradition. Now since uh you know October 7th of 2023 there have been the emergence I would say of
9:27
9 minutes, 27 secondstwo different uh types of breakage with that. there’s the sort of a top- down breakage coming out of what what you
9:35
9 minutes, 35 secondscould call the ceasefire unions uh seven international unions that came out for ceasefire uh and also ultimately for
9:42
9 minutes, 42 secondsarms embargo against Israel and that’s you know that’s a good thing on the other hand um there have been built-in
9:50
9 minutes, 50 secondsproblems with even that because on the one hand there’s the language of much of of those resolutions has been very
9:57
9 minutes, 57 secondsequivocal in regard to the liberation of Palestine and In addition to that, those unions unfortunately have stuck to talk
10:05
10 minutes, 5 secondsand not much to walk. So there’s been a, you know, some good talk, but there’s been virtually no implementation of any
10:12
10 minutes, 12 secondsof those things. And so for example, in the UAW, the international continues to own UA uh Israel bonds. And we in in
10:22
10 minutes, 22 secondsUAW, Labor for Palestine, which is a branch of the National Labor for Palestine National Network, has fought for and demanded since October of 20,
10:29
10 minutes, 29 secondsyou know, 2023 and before for those bonds to be divested. And the international, even under Shaun Feain, has refused to do that.
10:39
10 minutes, 39 secondsSo you’ve got this this kind of this contradiction between Shan Fang coming out rightly and to his credit in support
10:47
10 minutes, 47 secondsof the student protesters, you know, the student inifat, the student encampments, demanding disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest when it comes to
10:56
10 minutes, 56 secondsuniversity investments in Israel, but not applying the same principle to the UAW’s
11:02
11 minutes, 2 secondsownership of Israel bonds. So that’s why you have on the you have not only the top down picture that I’m describing of
11:11
11 minutes, 11 secondsthese unions which but also a rank and file approach which is the labor for Palestine approach. We’ve always been
11:18
11 minutes, 18 secondsabout grassroots rank and filebased demands and action because what the Palestinian trade and this
11:26
11 minutes, 26 secondscomes to the question of the most recent and and you know Palestinian trade union call because what the Palestinian trade unions especially in Gaza have
11:34
11 minutes, 34 secondscontinually said to us over the decades but especially since October of 2023 is we appreciate your resolutions. We appreciate your conferences, but words
11:43
11 minutes, 43 secondsare not enough to stop the genocide. And we’re we’re we’re urging you under the bombs if they fall on us. And you know,
11:50
11 minutes, 50 secondswho knows how many tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinian deaths and casualties since October of 23. We are appealing directly
11:58
11 minutes, 58 secondsto US labor as they did for their recent Mayday statement to take action to go beyond words and take action. And that’s what Live for Palestine is trying to do.
12:07
12 minutes, 7 secondsNot because we have the power as Labor for Palestine on our own to take action in that regard, but rather to organize
12:15
12 minutes, 15 secondsand urge that kind of action, especially from the rank and file, and to have the rank and file also hold our union leaderships accountable. And that’s why
12:23
12 minutes, 23 secondsgroups like UAW live for Palestine or UEIE folks in in the UEE which has been you know one of the most progressive unions but again um you know has not put
12:33
12 minutes, 33 secondsits money necessarily where its mouth is especially when it comes to endorsing uh pro- genocidal candidates like Biden in
12:39
12 minutes, 39 secondsthe last election um in SEIU and other one of the ceasefire unions but we have in all these unions rank and file groups
12:46
12 minutes, 46 secondsthat are affiliated with live for Palestine national network to go beyond and to support the efforts in places
12:53
12 minutes, 53 secondslike ILW local 10 in Oakland which has refused for example to handle Zimline
12:59
12 minutes, 59 secondscargo the Israeli Zim cargo for the last 10 years or more and has kept that cargo more or less from appearing on the West
13:06
13 minutes, 6 secondsCoast. So that’s the approach that we have and that’s what we’re trying to answer are the Palestinian trade union calls for deeds not just words. And of
13:16
13 minutes, 16 secondscourse the increasing attack on UAW members uh graduate students the police
13:23
13 minutes, 23 secondsraids uh the attack even on a lawyer who’s representing uh people who have been attacked. It seems like these
13:29
13 minutes, 29 secondsfascist attacks and as combined with the termination of the contract with the TSA, the union busting, direct union
13:37
13 minutes, 37 secondsbusting of against workers rights to organize, the destruction of the NLRB, uh the destruction if any process, I know the UAW had big plans to organize
13:46
13 minutes, 46 secondsin the south uh through the NLRB. I mean, they’re not going to be having elections. uh the attack the frontal attack on organized labor. You would
13:55
13 minutes, 55 secondsthink that there would be a mass movement uh and call in the UAW and other unions to mobilize the entire working class on Mayday against these
14:03
14 minutes, 3 secondsattacks and combine it with the attack on workers around the world. Right.
14:07
14 minutes, 7 secondsExactly. And and I think what’s happened in the UAW uh to some degree is that you don’t hear much at this moment from the
14:15
14 minutes, 15 secondsinternational. You know, before the election, you had Sean Feain calling Trump a union buster and of course supporting Biden and Harris or you know,
14:23
14 minutes, 23 secondsBiden and then Harris. And we and UW Labor for Palestine called them out on their support for those genocidal candidates and were some of our members
14:30
14 minutes, 30 secondswere actually dragged out of a political action conference at the UW in January of 2024 who were who were heckling Biden
14:39
14 minutes, 39 secondsfor his being a war criminal. and they were dragged out by Secret Service with the applause of many of the delegates at the UAW. So yes, I mean before but but
14:49
14 minutes, 49 secondsat least before the election, you know, Feain and and the leadership was calling out uh Trump for what he was and that actually has not is no longer the case
14:57
14 minutes, 57 secondsat least at this moment. Uh the UAW leadership seems to have endorsed Trump’s uh tariff policy even though that’s destroying the economy. It’s
15:06
15 minutes, 6 secondsputting auto workers, unionized auto workers and many others out of work already. uh because of course that you know trade wars are going to do that.
15:14
15 minutes, 14 secondsThat’s what they trade wars hurt the working working class, right? Trade wars hurt the working class. And not only that, but they also have a a nasty way
15:23
15 minutes, 23 secondsof becoming, you know, real wars. Uh I mean, that’s part of what led to World War II, right, with trade wars of the
15:30
15 minutes, 30 seconds30s. So, um you know, you have that none of that’s good for workers. But on top of that, as you point out, the frontal
15:39
15 minutes, 39 secondsassault on on workers, on labor, on immigrants, on everybody, you know, pretty much except for the billionaire class, and even some of them aren’t
15:47
15 minutes, 47 secondshappy with the terrorists for their own nasty reasons. Um, you know, is really needing very little organized resistance
15:54
15 minutes, 54 secondsat this point. And so I think you know as you’ve often pointed out Steve and you know we certainly agree with in late for Palestine the need to to generalize
16:03
16 minutes, 3 secondsthis resistance and and to to show how these things are connected to show for example how the attack on the Palestine solidarity movement and and the Gestapo
16:12
16 minutes, 12 secondsraids that are taking place against immigrants and and uh you know graduate students and other kinds of workers who are not in universities. of course um
16:19
16 minutes, 19 secondsthey picked up the head of one of the farmworker unions uh recently and and snatched him and he’s now in custody. So
16:27
16 minutes, 27 secondsLeila so um you know this kind of thing is one big picture and of course the univers the attack on the universities
16:34
16 minutes, 34 secondsby the administr the Trump the regime is being done under the guise of fighting quote anti-semitism by which they mean
16:41
16 minutes, 41 secondsopposition to Israeli genocide. So all these things are are you know inextricably connected. there’s no way to separate these things. And yet what
16:49
16 minutes, 49 secondswe’re seeing is one, very little resistance being organized. You know, it was good that there was a hands-off demonstrations last uh on the 5th uh I
16:59
16 minutes, 59 secondsguess that was still last weekend um around the country and and apparently they I saw something like 600,000 people were reported in in DC and that’s great.
17:08
17 minutes, 8 secondsBut at the same time, um, you know, they’re not those the leadership of those demonstrations were refused to mention Palestine, refused to make those
17:16
17 minutes, 16 secondsconnections. And that isn’t to say that they shouldn’t have been supported the demonstrations or that it wasn’t important to to be there. And the people that went and participated, of course,
17:25
17 minutes, 25 secondsmany of them support the Palestine Solidarity Movement, perhaps the overwhelming majority even. But the leaderships there, you know, dominated
17:32
17 minutes, 32 secondsby the unions, leaderships of the unions and the democratic politicians made sure that that was not, you know, allowed.
17:39
17 minutes, 39 secondsWell, also they left out military spending. I mean, their trillions of dollars and NATO, they supported NATO.
17:46
17 minutes, 46 secondsYes, they supported NATO, right? And they left out trillions of dollars which are going to the military. In fact, uh Trump wants to increase the military
17:53
17 minutes, 53 secondsbudget to over a trillion now. And that money is coming out of housing, healthcare, education. Uh so to leave
18:00
18 minutesthat out leaves out uh what the US capitalists and imperialists are doing which is let’s expand the military uh
18:07
18 minutes, 7 secondsand build up the military for war with China and other countries while we’re attacking class here. And the other
18:14
18 minutes, 14 secondsthing about you know Trump and uh Musk and the fascist uh the D uh JD Vance is
18:22
18 minutes, 22 secondsthat they actually want to destroy public universities. the attack at NIH uh they want to liquidate the public universities as we know them in project
18:31
18 minutes, 31 seconds2025 and privatize them and bust the unions uh and they are carrying that out. Isn’t that their plan for public
18:38
18 minutes, 38 secondsuniversities? Yeah, I mean, as everybody says, you know, or is often said, project 2025 tells exactly what they intend to do, and they’re doing it. And
18:47
18 minutes, 47 secondsthey’re doing it so far with very little resistance. And if we’re going to survive this thing, we can’t, for example, wait for general strike in
18:55
18 minutes, 55 seconds2028, which is what the UAW leadership has been talking about. I mean, it’d be great to have a general strike in 2028, but we need a general strike in 2025 so
19:03
19 minutes, 3 secondsthat we’re around in 2028. Their unions left in 2028 if you wait. That’s exactly right. And and you know the UAW I mean
19:10
19 minutes, 10 secondsfor example has already been in decline for you know for decades and decades. I mean when I remember when I first you know was aware of the UAW in the late60s
19:19
19 minutes, 19 secondsand early 70s it had over a million members. Now it has a few hundred thousand members. Now, you know, a lot of that has to do with the industrialization, but a lot of it has,
19:27
19 minutes, 27 secondsyou know, to do with the failure of the leadership, not just of that union, but of all the unions pretty much to uh really organize and to defend, you know,
19:36
19 minutes, 36 secondstheir unions, our unions. And uh, you know, being in bed with the Democrats instead of organizing real resistance and and now more than ever, if we don’t
19:44
19 minutes, 44 secondsorganize resistance now, I mean, we’re living in, as somebody put it, we’re living in a mafia state here. I mean, that’s another way of describing what it
19:51
19 minutes, 51 secondsis, right? It’s it’s just it’s just uh it’s just um a gang a bunch of gangsters up there, you know, more than ever
19:59
19 minutes, 59 secondsbefore perhaps uh in control and they are doing everything. They’re not just attacking public universities. They’re attacking private universities. They’re not just attacking private universities.
20:08
20 minutes, 8 secondsThey’re attacking every single agency of the government that that plays a good role unlike the military which of course they’re promoting and and the the
20:16
20 minutes, 16 secondsGestapo state essentially that they’re building and that they’re that they’ve unleashed uh you know the snatchings. I mean it’s like Argentina or Chile or I
20:24
20 minutes, 24 secondsmean of course this has happened before in this country. It’s not like it’s unprecedented. It happened the Palmer raids you know in the late teens of the
20:32
20 minutes, 32 secondslast century. Uh the first red skier I don’t know if it’s the first red skier.
20:36
20 minutes, 36 secondsThe first Redsker was, you know, the the Hey Market uh martyrs. But anyway, you know, they had that. Then they had the mass round up of like 5,000 people were
20:44
20 minutes, 44 secondsdeported during the Palmer raids for being leftists and communists and radicals, socialists, anarchists, and then they did it in the 50s and now
20:53
20 minutes, 53 secondsthey’re using those same laws to do it today. And so, uh, you know, we’re if we don’t hang together, we’re going to hang separately more than ever before.
21:03
21 minutes, 3 secondsAnd this idea that if you’re critical of Israel, you’re an anti-semite. I mean, that whole idea, I mean, isn’t it the case that the Zionist actually work with
21:12
21 minutes, 12 secondsthe Nazis? Uh, they invited Adolf Ikeman to uh Palestine to get him to support the idea of a of a Jewish state. Uh, and
21:22
21 minutes, 22 secondsyet now if you criticize Israel, you’re you’re an anti-semite, including the thousands of Jews, hundreds of thousands of Jews in the United organizing protests.
21:32
21 minutes, 32 secondsWell, I think one interesting development is, you know, you’ve seen articles in the last couple weeks for the first time really that sort of quote
21:39
21 minutes, 39 secondsmore mainstream uh Jewish people, not I mean not, you know, there’s no such thing, right? But I mean, people that
21:46
21 minutes, 46 secondsotherwise wouldn’t have objected before are now objecting to to the uh the abuse of of so-called opposition to anti-semit
21:54
21 minutes, 54 secondsthe weaponization of anti-semitism to shut down free speech and to shut down Palestinian solidarity. Um there’s a lot
22:01
22 minutes, 1 secondof Jews you know increasingly who are uncomfortable with that notion that with the notion that you know anti- uh
22:09
22 minutes, 9 secondsgenocide is anti-semitic and also that somehow Jews are going to be in a better position because of repression in the campuses
22:18
22 minutes, 18 secondsfor example against free speech um than they you know they otherwise would be and of course Jews are not going to be protected by this and the anti-semitism
22:26
22 minutes, 26 secondsthat does exist is coming from people in bed with Trump That’s who where the anti-semitism is. It’s not in the Palestine solidarity movement as you
22:34
22 minutes, 34 secondspoint out in which thousands of of tens of thousands of Jewish people are involved sometimes at the cutting edge or among those at the cutting edge I
22:42
22 minutes, 42 secondsshould say rather. Um we had a demonstration just recent, you know, a number of big demonstrations including at the US capital and in uh in New York
22:50
22 minutes, 50 secondsCity. You see them at Grand Central where you have, you know, hundreds if not thousands of Jews coming wearing shirts that say stop stop arming Israel.
22:58
22 minutes, 58 secondsThey did it at the Trump building about a month ago and a bunch of them were arrested. So I mean yes all of these things and uh but
23:07
23 minutes, 7 secondsbut so far at least uh you know obviously the movement has not been silenced and it will not be silenced uh no matter what happens it will not be
23:15
23 minutes, 15 secondssilenced but again we need to bring this to labor because bringing it back to that I think the point is you know for
23:23
23 minutes, 23 secondsthose of us who are involved and I think you were in the in the Vietnam anti-war movement um you know one of the things that became clear if it wasn’t already
23:30
23 minutes, 30 secondsis that important as student movements are and they are very important and they played a really important role then and
23:37
23 minutes, 37 secondsnow you know in 1970 and May almost exactly 55 years ago this coming month a thousand universities and colleges in
23:45
23 minutes, 45 secondsthis country were shut down on strike but they couldn’t bring the war to the end to an end because they didn’t have the social weight to do that important
23:53
23 minutes, 53 secondsas they were and this is in no way to denigrate or dismiss what the importance of that was and I was up there as a junior high school student I went up to UCLA and I was camped out there for a
24:02
24 minutes, 2 secondsmonth with lots of other people and it was great and it was important but unless that gets you know uh brought
24:10
24 minutes, 10 secondsinto and and through the the working class movement you know at the workplace in the unions and so forth and it began
24:17
24 minutes, 17 secondsto be but it wasn’t enough and unless that happens it’s very hard to shut down uh the kind of stuff that goes on including the wars that we’re seeing and
24:26
24 minutes, 26 secondsreally the war ended in Vietnam when the working class and military, that is the rank and file GIS, mutinied to a point
24:34
24 minutes, 34 secondswhere the war could no longer continue. And you know, unless we’re able to replicate those kinds of movements today in the working class, um
24:42
24 minutes, 42 secondswe’re going to be faced not only with those for neverending wars abroad, but the the ongoing and never- ending attack
24:49
24 minutes, 49 secondson us at home that really at this point perhaps is unprecedented uh in living memory for sure. and my uh union sister
25:00
25 minutesuh Sarah Nelson uh has called for a general strike. Uh and yet it seems there’s been silence by the rest of the
25:08
25 minutes, 8 secondsunion leadership uh despite the direct funnel attack on union workers, federal workers. Of course, they want to get rid
25:15
25 minutes, 15 secondsof the public workers who are a large majority of organized workers. But it seems like within my union, the CWM and
25:23
25 minutes, 23 secondsthe News Guild, there’s complete silence about this frontal attack. Instead, they’re saying, “Let’s go to uh the
25:29
25 minutes, 29 secondscourts. Let’s file more lawsuits.” Uh they’re not really saying the entire working class has to be mobilized. Are
25:37
25 minutes, 37 secondsyou think they’re afraid that if they do that uh they’ll lose control of the rank and file and that’s one of their fears that they have? I mean, I think it’s a
25:45
25 minutes, 45 secondscouple of things or several things. One is it’s not in their DNA of the Labor bureaucracy to mobilize the members other than to vote in elections. I mean
25:54
25 minutes, 54 secondsthat’s their focus. They’re in bed with the Democratic party for the most part and they you know they cannot think beyond that that even these rallies you
26:03
26 minutes, 3 secondsknow that AOC and Bernie have had recently um you know in places like Arizona where they turn out thousands of people against Trump. It’s pretty
26:10
26 minutes, 10 secondsamazing on one level. Um yet in terms of what they have to offer or what they’re calling for, it comes down to, you know, go out and vote again for the Democrats.
26:18
26 minutes, 18 secondsUm you know, there’s nothing wrong with bringing lawsuits. We should bring lawsuits obviously, you know, to stop these things. But the idea that the
26:26
26 minutes, 26 secondscourts are going to save us or the Democrats are going to save us, you know, is clearly not the case. And so I think part of it is is this baked in DNA
26:34
26 minutes, 34 secondsthat goes all the way back, you know, I mean certainly, you know, for a century or more. uh and it you know was really
26:42
26 minutes, 42 secondscemented during the 30s with the New Deal and all that and and the alliance with the FDR regime. But um on top of that I so so I don’t think that they
26:50
26 minutes, 50 secondsthey’re also scared. I mean they’re scared in the sense that I think that what’s going on with with uh you know the UAW leadership is that they the
27:00
27 minuteswhole point of Trump right the way that he operates is to uh make examples of people in institutions so that other
27:07
27 minutes, 7 secondspeople will also shut up. um you know to to essentially terrorize people uh and institutions to do his bidding and to be scared and the monitor shipped as well.
27:19
27 minutes, 19 secondsSo the yes and the UW has a monitor for for corruption. So um and there’s a question about you know the politics of the monitor on top of everything else in
27:27
27 minutes, 27 secondsregard to Zionism. So you know this is nothing there’s nothing new about this idea of scaring you know people into silence. I
27:36
27 minutes, 36 secondsmean, of course, that’s went on in the 50s and it’s gone on in lots of situations, but the the scale of it, I mean, the sheer um
27:45
27 minutes, 45 secondsunrestrained nature of of the way Trump is retaliating against all his enemies, personal, political, economic, and
27:52
27 minutes, 52 secondsotherwise is really almost unprecedented, I would say, in terms of the uh certainly since, you know, since
27:59
27 minutes, 59 secondsmaybe in the 19th in the 19th century, that went on more, but I mean, even the the fact that there’s no restraint whatsoever. And it’s not his personal
28:08
28 minutes, 8 secondscorruption. I mean, you know, they obviously, his family made a fortune out of this last few days, right, when they first imposed the tariffs and then they
28:16
28 minutes, 16 secondsdropped the tariffs. And his family reportedly made a fortune when they knowing that these tariffs were going to be suspended again so that they could
28:23
28 minutes, 23 secondsbuy low and then, you know, sell high if they’re even selling. And um so you know, nobody’s stopping under the
28:30
28 minutes, 30 secondsinstitutions, right, that are supposed to stop this sort of thing, be watchd dogs, be checks and balances and all that kind of stuff that you learn in civics class, none of that is happening.
28:40
28 minutes, 40 secondsUm and so I think that therefore union leaderships like in the UA are scared.
28:47
28 minutes, 47 secondsThey’re thinking, “Shit, we’re going to be next, you know, if we’re not already.” Um what if they come after us?
28:52
28 minutes, 52 secondsWhat if they try to descertify us? What if they arrest us for who knows what and corruption and this and that whether it’s true or not and you know um who
29:00
29 minutesthat’s I think part of what’s going on too. Well the issue of democracy and membership dispate and discussion it union impossible. It’s all very
29:09
29 minutes, 9 secondsdifficult union conventions are controlled. Um also there’s a struggle just to keep this uh UAW for UAWD alive.
29:18
29 minutes, 18 secondsThey want to shut it down. I mean it seems like at a time like this you want more democracy. you want more debate and discussion in the labor movement um
29:26
29 minutes, 26 secondsright in the UAW with the formation UAWWD that was a vehicle for some discussion and debate uh and there’s an effort to close it down. Yeah. And just
29:35
29 minutes, 35 secondsfor those who don’t know UAWD is unite all workers for democracy. It’s the rank and file caucus that began a few years ago in the UAW to basically challenge
29:44
29 minutes, 44 secondsthe one party state that exists has existed in the UAW all the way back to at least the 1940s and that was in power
29:51
29 minutes, 51 secondsfor all those decades since and which you know saw the decline of the UAW, you know, from over a million to less than,
30:00
30 minutesyou know, much less than that. Um, and also all kinds of other horrible racist, you know, pro-imperialist things. Um and
30:07
30 minutes, 7 secondsso the UIW so UAWD played a critical role in you know getting Shawn Feain elected with and and he he has credited
30:16
30 minutes, 16 secondsUAWWD with his election basically and says you know without UAWD I would not be in office which is true but unfortunately um the majority of the
30:25
30 minutes, 25 secondscurrent steering committee of UWD is now trying to demolish it be because it appears to them apparently that uh it’s
30:33
30 minutes, 33 secondstoo independent from Shawn Feain that it’s too interested in uh cross connections between white and blueco
30:41
30 minutes, 41 secondscollar workers because it’s too interested in uh solidarity with Palestine and too democratically
30:48
30 minutes, 48 secondsoriented. And so rather than just pick up and leave, which is what they should do, they’re actually trying to destroy UAWD burn to burn it down. Uh and we
30:58
30 minutes, 58 secondshave a membership meeting on April 27th where that’s going to be fought out. and we’re organizing very hard the sort of the left wing of UAWD, the rank and file
31:05
31 minutes, 5 secondswing of UAWD to make sure that that does not happen. But I I just want to return for a moment uh because I don’t want this to get lost in all this information
31:13
31 minutes, 13 secondsthat you know the as you mentioned at the very beginning the Palestinian Gener General Federation of Trade Unions in
31:20
31 minutes, 20 secondsGaza uh issued a Mayday call on April 4th just you know a week ago and what
31:27
31 minutes, 27 secondsthey are urging us US US unions to do and I’m quoting now is to quote go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure close quote
31:36
31 minutes, 36 secondsincluding and this is where the quote that you referenced is general strikes in widespread civil disobedience close
31:42
31 minutes, 42 secondsquote against the ongoing bipartisan US back Israeli genocide in Gaza and to quote coordinate efforts with the
31:50
31 minutes, 50 secondsstudent movement close quotes against the Trump regime’s domestic assault on Palestine solidarity and so um they
31:58
31 minutes, 58 secondsfurther go on and say quote we in the general federation of trade unions in Gaza address this call to you and
32:07
32 minutes, 7 secondsthey’re speaking directly to US labor here. This this is addressed to US unions. Back to the statement on the eve of the International Workers Day
32:15
32 minutes, 15 secondsaffirming that your struggle for workers rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor
32:24
32 minutes, 24 secondssolidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words. And we count on your awareness and determination to take
32:31
32 minutes, 31 secondsconcrete steps to end this tragedy, meaning the genocide. So, you know, that’s the call that we’re hearing from
32:39
32 minutes, 39 secondsPalestine. Even if there was no genocide in Gaza, even if there was no Palestine, we would have to be resisting this Trump regime. But there is on top of
32:47
32 minutes, 47 secondseverything else, of course, and at the forefront and the foremost the genocide in Gaza. And we’re here we’re being called
32:54
32 minutes, 54 secondsupon, you know, urged by people directly under that boot of US weaponry being,
33:01
33 minutes, 1 secondyou know, deployed to demolish and destroy, you know, the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Palestinians,
33:09
33 minutes, 9 secondsjournalists workers. I mean, you know, they’re decimating the whole society, right? Health workers. They they massacred, they assa, they executed uh
33:18
33 minutes, 18 seconds16 health workers uh you know, a week ago. Not to mention the journalists. Not to mention everybody in between. Not to
33:25
33 minutes, 25 secondsmention the fact that there are more amputees in Gaza than anywhere in the world. Not to mention that just two days
33:34
33 minutes, 34 secondsago, or was it yesterday, they bombed another house in Gaza and killed six more children and all kinds of other people. So, I mean, it’s it’s
33:42
33 minutes, 42 secondsunbearable. Of course, uh it’s particularly unbearable for the people that are directly under that. It’s even unbearable to to know of it. But to not
33:51
33 minutes, 51 secondsbe responding, you know, the way the unions do not respond, to not even reference this call from Palestine, uh, let alone respond to it and and take the
34:00
34 minuteskind of action that we need and that they need and that we need together. That’s what solidarity is all about.
34:05
34 minutes, 5 secondsIt’s not simply uh dog goodism, you know, or morality, although those are good things, but it’s the idea that all
34:13
34 minutes, 13 secondsof our fate as workers and as oppressed people uh are tied together inextricably, as the Palestinian trade union statement says. And that if we
34:21
34 minutes, 21 secondsdon’t act together, you know, we are all of us doomed. And yet there’s virtually no response. Even from the unions, even
34:29
34 minutes, 29 secondsfrom the the unions that came out for ceasefire and arms embargo, they have not responded or even referenced this call. So again, lay for Palestine is
34:37
34 minutes, 37 secondsnot, you know, does not have major resources. It doesn’t have anything like that. But we do have our voice and we are doing our best to uplift these calls
34:46
34 minutes, 46 secondsand to bring these issues to our unions and to our workplaces and uh to see if uh on Mayday and the the events leading
34:54
34 minutes, 54 secondsup to Mayday and beyond Mayday if real action can be taken including wherever possible withholding of labor and it remains to be seen where that can be
35:02
35 minutes, 2 secondsdone. But even for places that it can’t be done, there are all kinds of actions that can be taken to show solidarity with with Palestine at the workplace in
35:10
35 minutes, 10 secondsour unions. And we need to be doing that. We need to do be doing that for ourselves, for them above all, and for ourselves because, you know, as the slogan goes, Palestine will free us all.
35:21
35 minutes, 21 secondsWhat that really refers to is that throwing off the yoke of oppression and genocide is is liberating for everybody,
35:28
35 minutes, 28 secondsand we need to be doing our best to support that. and at the rallies on Mayday and they will be happening around the country including in San Francisco
35:37
35 minutes, 37 secondsand Oakland. uh those trade units and those union locals can have contingent and raise this issue of palace and the slopes and these right I mean
35:46
35 minutes, 46 secondsunfortunately those you know to my knowledge those rallies that are being called by the Chicago teachers unions and others which is a good thing that
35:54
35 minutes, 54 secondsthey’re doing that but unfortunately they’re not referencing Palestine even even though they’re led by apparently led by uh folks who are in these
36:02
36 minutes, 2 secondsceasefire unions but the issues are not being connected even by those who are otherwise raising them in certain places they’re being siloed at best and
36:10
36 minutes, 10 secondssilenced at worst. So, we need to be the ones, as you say, to make sure that we’re bringing not to not to stand apart and say, “Well, therefore, we’ll have nothing to do with these protests.” Of
36:18
36 minutes, 18 secondscourse, we should support these protests, but we should we should also make sure that at these protests, the voice of Palestine is is heard in
36:26
36 minutes, 26 secondssolidarity with Palestine and demand that Palestine be heard from the platform as well. And if it’s not going to be heard from the platform, at least making sure that it’s heard from within these contingents that we need to bring.
36:37
36 minutes, 37 secondsAnd people can get a copy, traders can get a copy of the resolution from your website, labor for palestine. Yes. Yes.
36:43
36 minutes, 43 secondsLive for Palestine.net. And we’re also on Instagram. And all of these things are there. And in fact, there’s a sign on uh endorsement form there for uh
36:52
36 minutes, 52 secondsorganizations that want to endorse that that statement in support of the Palestinian Trade Union call. Well, I want to thank you very much uh Michael
36:59
36 minutes, 59 secondsfor joining us and I think uh this is a life and death question for working people not only in Palestine but in the United States who face a fascist regime.
Posted onApril 4, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Join the Palestinian Workers’ May Day Call on U.S. Labor to ACT NOW Against Israeli Genocide! (Labor for Palestine National Network, National Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network)
An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Join the Palestinian Workers’ May Day Call on U.S. Labor to ACT NOW Against Israeli Genocide! Joint Statement From the Labor for Palestine National Network, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) April 4, 2025
As the PGFTU-Gaza statement explains: “We, in the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza, address this call to you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, affirming that your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor solidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words, and we count on your awareness and determination to take concrete steps to end this tragedy.”
The PGFTU-Gaza call is particularly welcome as—with little domestic resistance—the Trump regime is sharply re-escalating the genocide in Palestine, while unleashing a parallel blitzkrieg of repression and destruction at home, not only against Palestine solidarity activists, but against all workers, unions, students, immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ+, social services, education, science, free speech, and humanity itself.
We therefore reaffirm the Labor for Palestine National Network’s 2024 call for No Business As Usual: May Day for Palestine by calling on working class and labor bodies across the U.S. to take one or more of the following actions on and leading up to May Day 2025:
Withhold labor, and uplift growing calls for a general strike on May Day 2025
Post a group photo, with flags, signs, keffiyehs, buttons, and other symbols of Palestinian solidarity
Leaflet and demonstrate at a weapons plant, military facility, or other complicit institution
Storm social media with:
#AnInjuryToPalestineIsAnInjuryToAll
#MayDay4Palestine
#GeneralStrike2025
#StopArmingIsrael
#BDS
#DumpIsraelBonds
#DroptheHistadrut
#FromtheRivertotheSeaPalestineWillBeFree
Devise other creative actions
Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
An injury to one is an injury to all. The Israeli settler-colonial regime is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Asian, and working class people in the Global South and around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with tens of billions in bipartisan US weaponry—tax dollars that should be spent instead to reverse Israeli destruction in Palestine, and on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
Global working class solidarity is the only way to win. More than ever, in this era of globalization, workers and oppressed people everywhere are up a common enemy. We can’t win if we are atomized by union, or even country. We need international, classwide unity. That means every worker must take on the task of building solidarity with Palestine—today an epicenter of class struggle.
Workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States, which has respected Block the Boat’s community-labor picket line by refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
Please Endorse Here (list in formation) 1. Entertainment Labor for Palestine 2. Historians for Palestine 3. Coalition for Action in Higher Education 4. 73 For Palestine 5. UPTE Members for Palestine 6. National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine 7. University of Minnesota Educators for Justice in Palestine 8. Rutgers University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine 9. New York City Labor for Palestine 10. University of North Texas Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine 11. Planning Alternatives for Change 12. UAW Labor for Palestine 13. Young Active Labor Leaders (YALL) Texas 14. Teamsters Mobilize 15. CWA for Palestine 16. Theater Workers for a Ceasefire 17. Wesleyan Young Socialists 18. SUNY BDS 19. National Educators United 20. Shut It Down For Palestine 21. Educators for Palestine (NEA) 22. Educator Defense Network 23. UMN Educators for Justice in Palestine 24. Food Chain Workers Alliance 25. Centennial Education Association 26. General Strike US NYC 27. Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the University of Hawai’i 28. National Writers Union 29. Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Caucus – CFA 30. Brown Palestine Solidarity Caucus – Graduate Labor Organization AFT/RIFT Local 6516 31. Palestinian Feminist Collective 32. NYC Educators for Palestine 33. Sindicato Unitario de Andalucia 35. Comité de Solidaridad con Sectores en Conflicto Santander 36. Harrisburg Palestine Coalition 37. Science for the People NYC 38. Palestine Solidarity TX 39. CUNY for Palestine
To the Free Trade Unions in the United States of America and to every free worker and trade unionist fighting for justice, freedom, and human dignity,
We salute you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, a day that embodies the unity and solidarity of workers in confronting oppression and exploitation. We raise to you the voice of Gaza’s workers, who today stand at the forefront of confronting the most heinous forms of genocide, siege, and starvation, imposed on our people for decades and continuing to this day with direct support from the U.S. administration under Donald Trump, and previous administrations, in blatant violation of all humanitarian and international laws.
Dear members of American trade unions,
For over 16 months, Gaza has been subjected to a brutal assault that has resulted in the martyrdom of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including thousands of workers, along with the systematic destruction of infrastructure, homes, hospitals, schools, and factories. The occupation has stripped Gaza of all means of life, sparing no service or productive sector from systematic devastation, leading to the collapse of healthcare, public services, education, and the economy. Millions of Palestinians now find themselves displaced, without food, water, shelter, electricity, or medicine.
The genocide is in a dangerous escalation. The occupation continues its policy of collective starvation by closing crossings and preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, placing our people at risk of mass famine while the international community remains powerless, silent, or even complicit in this crime against humanity. These policies are not merely intended to subjugate our people but are part of a settler-colonial regime aimed at completely erasing Palestinian existence.
Dear comrades,
Workers in Gaza are among the most affected by this catastrophe. Economic life has come to a complete halt, workplaces have been destroyed, and tens of thousands have been forcibly pushed into unemployment, with no social safety nets in place. Today, workers and their families live in inhumane conditions, deprived of their most basic rights, struggling to survive—whether from hunger or under bombardment.
This war would not have been possible without the unlimited U.S. support for the occupation, whether through military funding, political and diplomatic backing, or arms deals that kill our children, women, and elderly every day. The U.S. administration under Trump has continued what the previous administration started, becoming a direct accomplice in genocide, ignoring the voices of millions inside and outside OF the United States, and an overwhelming majority of the nation, who reject this brutal aggression.
Therefore, we call on you, the American labor unions, to translate your solidarity into effective actions that go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure to stop this dirty war.
Basheer Al-Sisi, General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-City of Gaza
Comments Off on An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All: Join the Palestinian Workers’ May Day Call on U.S. Labor to ACT NOW Against Israeli Genocide! (Labor for Palestine National Network, National Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network)
Posted onApril 4, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Call from the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza to Labor Unions in the United States on the Eve of International Workers’ Day (PGFTU-Gaza)
Call from the General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza to Labor Unions in the United States on the Eve of International Workers’ Day April 4, 2025
To the Free Trade Unions in the United States of America and to every free worker and trade unionist fighting for justice, freedom, and human dignity,
We salute you on the eve of International Workers’ Day, a day that embodies the unity and solidarity of workers in confronting oppression and exploitation. We raise to you the voice of Gaza’s workers, who today stand at the forefront of confronting the most heinous forms of genocide, siege, and starvation, imposed on our people for decades and continuing to this day with direct support from the U.S. administration under Donald Trump, and previous administrations, in blatant violation of all humanitarian and international laws.
Dear members of American trade unions,
For over 16 months, Gaza has been subjected to a brutal assault that has resulted in the martyrdom of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including thousands of workers, along with the systematic destruction of infrastructure, homes, hospitals, schools, and factories. The occupation has stripped Gaza of all means of life, sparing no service or productive sector from systematic devastation, leading to the collapse of healthcare, public services, education, and the economy. Millions of Palestinians now find themselves displaced, without food, water, shelter, electricity, or medicine.
The genocide is in a dangerous escalation. The occupation continues its policy of collective starvation by closing crossings and preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, placing our people at risk of mass famine while the international community remains powerless, silent, or even complicit in this crime against humanity. These policies are not merely intended to subjugate our people but are part of a settler-colonial regime aimed at completely erasing Palestinian existence.
Dear comrades,
Workers in Gaza are among the most affected by this catastrophe. Economic life has come to a complete halt, workplaces have been destroyed, and tens of thousands have been forcibly pushed into unemployment, with no social safety nets in place. Today, workers and their families live in inhumane conditions, deprived of their most basic rights, struggling to survive—whether from hunger or under bombardment.
This war would not have been possible without the unlimited U.S. support for the occupation, whether through military funding, political and diplomatic backing, or arms deals that kill our children, women, and elderly every day. The U.S. administration under Trump has continued what the previous administration started, becoming a direct accomplice in genocide, ignoring the voices of millions inside and outside OF the United States, and an overwhelming majority of the nation, who reject this brutal aggression.
Therefore, we call on you, the American labor unions, to translate your solidarity into effective actions that go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure to stop this dirty war.
Basheer Al-Sisi, General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-City of Gaza
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Posted onMarch 20, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on The Time for Worker Action is Now (Writers Against the War on Gaza, Labor for Palestine National Network, UAW Labor for Palestine, NYC Labor for Palestine, National Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid et al)
The Time for Worker Action is Now. On the Abductions of Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, and the Expulsion of Grant Miner
As of 2:30 a.m. local time on March 18, the Zionist entity, violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement, has escalated its violence against Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, Israel has demolished hundreds of homes, forcibly expelling more than 40,000 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the American institutions that facilitate and defend Israel’s total assault on Palestinian life are intensifying their repression of the students and workers protesting this genocide.
The Trump administration now leads this repression on campuses. 60 universities are under threat of federal investigation. At least 40 of these schools were sent demand letters with specific instructions for quelling student protest. Columbia University has become the federal government’s favorite testing ground for what level of repression is permissible, and the school has responded to the government’s advancing demands and funding cuts by escalating retaliation against their students. Less than a week after collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the abduction of Palestinian student leader Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia expelled Grant Miner, the president of UAW 2710 Student Workers of Columbia (SWC). This expulsion camethe day beforecontract bargaining was set to begin between SWC and Columbia administration. After SWC called an emergency rally in response, the administration—afraid to face hundreds of pro-Palestine workers and union leaders—canceled bargaining.
Columbia is not only capitulating to the Trump administration, but actively enabling its fascist, anti-labor agenda. Before Mahmoud Khalil was detained, the university issued guidance encouraging faculty and staff to allow ICE access to private areas of campus, even without a warrant. On March 13, ICE and DHS detained another Palestinian student, Leqaa Kordia, citing her alleged involvement in Columbia protests, while claiming she overstayed her visa. The university’s longstanding investment in the Zionist project has been redoubled through its craven submission to the Trump administration’s program of racial purging.
The same forces that shape worker struggles everywhere are being weaponized against student work ers fighting for a free Palestine. Under the veneer of higher education, Columbia University is an exploitative landlord—indeed, the largest private landowner in New York City—and a union-busting boss. Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped from his home, a university-owned apartment building, for speaking out against the genocide of his people. Grant Miner was fired from his job for disrupting the flow of capital by urging divestment from Israel. From the Gaza Solidarity Encampment to the liberation of Hind’s Hall to the recent sit-in that created the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone, students have shown us what solidarity from the heart of empire looks like. The White House and U.S. government, in coordination with university administrators, are desperately wielding their power to crush our movement.
Over the last 18 months, SWC has repeatedly voted to demand divestment from the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, and recently released a statement condemning Barnard for expelling two of its students. Over the last two weeks, Barnard and Columbia expelled nine students for protesting their schools’ complicity in genocide. Repression is the university’s answer to the might of labor power. While these escalations are an affront to our basic civil liberties, it is imperative that we remember why Mahmoud and Leqaa were disappeared and why Grant was expelled: protesting against genocide and calling for divestment from Israel. This assault is only the latest in the U.S. government’s decades-long project to criminalize the movement for Palestinian liberation.
The solidarity statements of major union leaders retreat to flimsy words while failing to call for action and refusing to name the reason why these attacks are happening. We urgently call on every labor union and worker organization to engage in mass protest alongside other concerted labor actions, up to and including strike action, demanding:
The immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, Palestinian political prisoners.
Reinstatement and amnesty for all expelled and disciplined students, including Grant Miner.
An end to all forms of collaboration with ICE, DHS, and the NYPD.
Divestment from all companies profiting off the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people and occupation of Palestinian land.
Ending partnerships and collaborations with Israeli universities and institutions.
We must remain steadfast in our cause and willing to withhold our labor in order to achieve our demands. As we approach International Workers’ Day on May 1, we urge union members and all workers to consider escalated and collective uprising. Until liberation. Free Palestine.
To endorse this letter, please email labor@wawog.com. Initial Endorsees include:
Labor for Palestine National Network
NYC Labor for Palestine
UAW Labor for Palestine
Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG)
No Tech for Apartheid
Additional Endorsees:
UPTE for Palestine
CUNY for Palestine
CUNY Rank and File Action
UCLA Rank and File for Democratic Union
Green for Falasteen
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Posted onFebruary 16, 2025bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Collaboration Incoming: United in liberation, stronger together. Proud to be members in Labor For Palestine and Purple Up For Palestine! From the River to the Sea! ✊🏽✊🏻✊🏾💜🇵🇸 (Local 73 SEIU Members for Palestine)
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NYC Labor for Palestine Statement on the Ceasefire in Gaza: A Victory of Palestinian Resistance
In these first days of the ceasefire, NYC Labor for Palestine applauds the Palestinian people of Gaza for this historic achievement—an unequivocal triumph by the Palestinian resistance over the Zionist entity and U.S. Empire.
After 471 days of an unprecedented level of U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, including unending air strikes, starvation, torture, and sexual violence, our hearts are, as always, with Palestine. We know that relief, grief, rage, and hope must all coexist, as families return to their homes, celebrate the release of loved ones from prison, and as they finally have some measure of space to breathe, rest, and rebuild.
At the same time, as Zionist settlers and the Israeli Occupation Forces escalate horrific violence in the occupied West Bank, we know that here in the belly of the beast, our work confronting empire has never been more urgent. We will continue to observe the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by honoring calls for solidarity from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza (PGFTU-Gaza) and other Palestinian labor bodies, such as the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS).
We will continue to apply pressure to our unions and workplaces, demanding:
An immediate and permanent end to the siege on Gaza, the halting of all U.S. military aid for Israel, and an arms embargo.
That our unions sever ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut and its U.S. mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee.
Divestment from Israel Bonds as well as industries connected with Zionist settler colonialism and occupation.
There is no doubt that many union officials will use the ceasefire to ignore our demands. But we must be clear with them and with our fellow workers: As long as Palestine is occupied and its people are denied their right of return and self-determination, our task remains the same. Gaza did not waver or bend in its terms, and as a result, we are witnessing a glimpse of the liberation we know is to come. Whatever we may face, including potential repression at the hands of the Trump administration, we will not yield.
Amidst fury and sorrow for what we have witnessed, our clarity has only increased. The ceasefire deal that is now in effect was on the table in May 2024. It is our government that is the head of this beast, and Biden and the Democratic establishment could have stopped this genocide on October 8, 2023—sparing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives. As we organize, we will continue to emphasize that we all have the same enemies: The billionaire class, which puts profit above all else, and the two capitalist political parties who do their bidding. Unions cannot continue to pour millions of our union dues dollars into supporting politicians who do nothing but inflict systemic violence on Black, brown, Indigenous, and working class people here and around the world.
As workers, unionized and not, we can collectively stop the gears of this war machine. With Gaza as our compass, we know that we are not powerless. The Palestinian resistance has shown us what it means to love life and freedom–and from those teachings, we remember our duty to keep fighting against the U.S.-Zionist forces that do everything in their power to kill and maim.
May every worker engage in resistance, in our workplaces and in the streets, until the day we see the dawn break across a Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
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The Labor for Palestine National Network joins the people of Gaza in celebrating this ceasefire, which is a testament to the steadfast Palestinian resistance against more than a century of Zionist settler colonialism and genocide, to popular resistance throughout the region, and to solidarity throughout the world.
Now, more than ever, it is essential for rank-and-file workers and our labor bodies to walk the Palestinian trade union picket line by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, ending bipartisan U.S. military aid for Israel, and organizing mass action in unions, workplaces, and the streets for a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
CALL OUT SICK ON JAN 6: Upholding an urgent appeal from Palestinian trade unions, @laborforpalestine joins the calls for mass worker action in solidarity on January 6, 2025. We uplift the demands called for by @doctorsagainstgenocide, including the immediate release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh and all of his colleagues that have been abducted.
As workers, we recognize this call as a demand for accountability from the international working class, ranging from those in the healthcare sector to those in newsrooms, manufacturing plants, universities, and tech companies. As healthcare workers in Gaza continue to resist against all odds, we have a duty to stand with them and the people of Palestine. We urge you to take action with us and fight for a world where #NotAnotherChild#NotAnotherHospital gets slaughtered and bombed.
See the complete Labor for Palestine National Network Solidarity Toolkit at tinyurl.com/L4PNNJan6Toolkit to learn more about how you can take action on January 6. An injury to one is an injury to all!
Posted onDecember 17, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine Stands in Solidarity With Amazon Labor Union and Amazon Teamsters Ready to Strike!
Stand with the Amazon warehouse workers! Our @amazonlaborunion_local1 union siblings on Staten Island are preparing to go on strike and they need your support to make a potential strike successful! An injury to one is an injury to all—please share ALUs strike fund and give if you can to support transportation, food on the picket line, and other essential needs! #1u#unionstrong#amazonlaborunion#makeamazonpay
UAW Labor for Palestine stands in solidarity with Amazon Labor Union and Amazon Teamsters Ready to Strike! Support JFK8 Amazon Warehouse Workers on Staten Island and Donate to their Solidarity Fund: AmazonLaborUnion.Org/Strike-Fundraising #AmazonStrike#Ready2Strike
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UAW Divest From Genocide UAW International: DROP ISRAEL BONDS
The United Auto Workers International holds over $400,000 in Israel military bonds. Join hundreds of UAW members in demanding they divest.
Our union is a global beacon of solidarity and worker power. We were one of the first major unions to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and an arms embargo on Israel. Thousands of our Arab members are impacted directly by the genocide. All of us are touched by US policy which has sent $17 billion US tax dollars to Israel this year, all while we lack healthcare, robust free public education. In 1974, workers at UAW local 600 staged a one-day walkout in Dearborn which successfully pushed the IEB to divest from Israel bonds. UAW must again take a clear stand in support of human rights, justice, and our members’ well being. Join the UAW Arab Caucus and UAW Labor for Palestine in calling on the IEB to divest.
Join us in emailing the UAW International Executive Board. Tell them to divest from Israel bonds.
Posted onOctober 1, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine Supports Palestinian Trade Union Call for Worldwide Work Stoppage on October 7!
Labor for Palestine Supports Palestinian Trade Union Call for Worldwide Work Stoppage on October 7! We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024
Endorse the Action: https://tinyurl.com/ENDORSEOct7riseforgaza
Read online: laborforpalestine.net
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Call from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions and the Arab Trade Union Confederation To all trade union organizations around the world 15 minutes for decent work and life for Palestinian workers and people
On October 7, workers around the world commemorate World Day for Decent Work, a date on which unions reaffirm one of their most important principles: defending the right of workers, without discrimination, to decent work.
This date also reminds us of a full year s·ince the occupation deprived Palestinian workers of their right to go to work and subjected the Palestinian people to all forms of oppression and systematic destruction of the foundations of a decent life, foremost of which is the right to work.
To address this injustice faced by the workers and people of Palestine, let us all stop working for 15 minutes to remind the international community of the suffering of Palestinian workers and people, and to reaffirm the global trade union movement’s commitment to its principles, which support peoples’ right to emancipation, freedom, and self-determination.
7/10/2024 Jerusalem time 12:00 let the trade union voice be heard: No social justice, no decent work under occupation.
**More than 40,000 victims and 100,000 injured, half of whom are women and children. **Poverty rate: 55% Economic losses: 2.3 billion dollars. **Reduction of workers by more than 65% in Palestinian institutions. **500,000 workers have lost their jobs. Unemployment rate: 51%. **450 millions USD per month is the cost of depriving Palestinian workers of their wages. **Prices of goods have increased by 600% in gaza.
For Coordination contact campaigns@pgftu.org WhatsApp 009627 9005 2002 00970597904498
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Posted onSeptember 25, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on We are honored to share that we are joining the Labor for Palestine National Network @laborforpalestine! (UE for Palestine)
We are honored to share that we are joining the Labor for Palestine National Network @laborforpalestine!
We join them and worker organizations across sectors and communities to answer the urgent call from Palestinian trade unions in:
1. Demanding an immediate end to the siege on Gaza and to all U.S. military aid for Israel 2. Following the example of Block the Boat, ILWU West Coast dockers, and workers around the world who refuse to build or transport weapons destined for Israel. 3. Respecting the Palestinian-led BDS picket line by severing ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and by divesting from Israel Bonds and industries connected with Zionist settler colonialism and occupation.
We express our uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for self-determination. As workers, we understand it is our moral responsibility to leverage our labor to end the genocide and Israeli settler colonial project. 🇵🇸
An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 Issued by: UAW Labor for Palestine, Labor for Palestine National Network Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine
Our living conditions in the US are connected to Palestinian freedom. Biden and Harris send billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, all while our schools, employers and local governments raise fees and cut services — money that should go to healthcare, housing, education and freedom for all. But even as Israel extends its genocide in Gaza and greater Palestine to Lebanon, its economy is in a tailspin. Let’s strike while the iron is hot and refuse to work for genocide. Join us for a Week of Rage with a Student-Labor Day of Action October 7. Continue with a month of rolling actions, pickets, and walkouts at your school or workplace.
Links to our Call for Action and Organizing Toolkit in bio. and here: Call to Action: https://tinyurl.com/riseforgaza Organizing Toolkit: https://tinyurl.com/riseforgaza-toolkit
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Posted onSeptember 23, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 (UAW Labor for Palestine and Labor for Palestine National Network, Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine)
An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 Issued on September 23, 2024 by: UAW Labor for Palestine and Labor for Palestine National Network* Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine
This past year, we have witnessed the Israeli regime genocide hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, throughout greater Palestine, and now into Lebanon, using weapons provided by the US under a Democratic administration.
Despite the opposition of the vast majority of Democratic voters and millions of others, and as Israel expands its genocide into Lebanon, the Biden-Harris administration will not stop the genocide. With major union leaders unwilling to go beyond mere words, workers must use our greatest leverage—the ability to collectively withhold our labor, alongside other action—to respond to urgent Palestinian trade unions’ appealsforsolidarity.
We are workers from every sector whose labor is directly or indirectly implicated in this genocide. We call upon all workers—unionized and nonunionized—to heed this call. We draw inspiration from students taking material risks in their struggle to end their universities’ complicity in genocide and settler colonialism. Across the country, Gaza Solidarity Encampments demanding divestment and an end to collaboration with Israeli academic institutions were violently repressed with thousands of students and academic workers arrested, some still facing charges. We must stand with students as they continue organizing against the genocide and its escalation into Lebanon despite heightened repression. Together we have the power to disrupt the genocide weapons supply chain ourselves.
Our working and learning conditions in the US are directly connected to the fate of Palestinians. Billions of our tax dollars and labor are sent by the US government to facilitate a genocide instead of supporting universal healthcare, education, or housing while our most basic rights are under attack. We must apply economic pressure on the US-to-Israel pipeline. With Israel’s economy in a tailspin, now is the time to divest from and demilitarize empire.
We will begin a rolling mass mobilization of students and workers on October 7, which marks one year of Israel’s intensified genocide in Palestine, building and escalating every two weeks:
October 21: organize additional sectors to participate in and expand this mass action
November 4: further expand and heighten the action, escalating to blockades of workplaces complicit in the genocide, including research labs, factories, and logistics that supply the Israeli military
We must also end all complicity with settler colonialism by demanding our colleges adopt BDS and our unions divest from Israel Bonds and break ties with Zionist organizations, like the racist Histadrut and genocide-supporting Jewish Labor Committee.
Take action with us and fight for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Will you join us?
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*Labor for Palestine National Network Member Organizations
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1.9 million people have now been displaced in Gaza. People are already starving and a full-scale famine could occur in at any time.
Families in Gaza are in need of your urgent support!
While Israel is causing death, injury, and trauma, MECA’s staff and local partners in Gaza are on the ground responding to the most urgent needs of children and families–food, clean water, medical aid, psychological support, and more.
Thank you for supporting children and families in Gaza!
Posted onSeptember 11, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Appeal from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions on the occasion of a year of resistance to genocide
Appeal from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions on the occasion of a year of resistance to genocide
[September 11, 2024]
Brothers and Sisters of trade and workers’ unions in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world.
We write to you once again from Gaza as we approach the one-year mark since the start of this genocidal war – a year of torture, pain, and suffering; a year in which our people have faced forced displacement, a war of starvation, death bombs that rain on the heads of civilians, and the almost complete destruction of life from the bombardment of homes and their inhabitants, schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches; a year in which we have witnessed the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, the systematic destruction of civil society, and the near complete destruction of the offices and headquarters of most unions.
Despite these harsh conditions, we have done everything possible to aid our communities with our limited resources. This is the cruelest ethnic cleansing campaign we have experienced throughout the past 76 years of occupation; this unprecedented monstrous aggression of Israel has increased the torment of the Palestinians in Gaza through the demolition of homes over the heads of their inhabitants and the deprivation of electricity, water, fuel, medicine, and necessary medical supplies due to the suffocating siege on the Strip for the seventeenth consecutive year.
The number of martyrs that Israel has killed in this devastating war exceeds 40,700 casualties, most of whom are women, children, and thousands of workers and their families, in a toll unprecedented in modern history, with more than 16,700 children and 11,300 women counted among them. More than 94,100 people have been injured or wounded. More than 12,000 citizens are trapped under the rubble, in addition to the destruction of hundreds of hospitals and the bombing of refugee camps for the displaced, leaving children prey to epidemics, diseases, and malnutrition, now including a polio epidemic.
In the face of this tragic reality, we continue to bury our loved ones while facing daily genocide that is unprecedented in modern history, whether in terms of its horrific crimes or the use of weapons of destruction and death.
Despite all this, we heal our wounds and raise our voices in international forums, calling on the free world and the global labor movement to stand in a broad and pressing solidarity campaign with our people in Gaza.
We, in the Federation of Palestinian Workers’ Unions, amidst the legendary resilience of our people and their rejection of displacement policies, continue to live on our land despite cases of internal displacement, fleeing inevitable death, where the percentage of displaced people has exceeded 80% of the population. These citizens have endured extremely harsh conditions in mobile tents for several months, far from civilian life, in severely inhumane conditions. Additionally, in the areas of Gaza and the north, which have long been subjected to forced starvation and the loss of most necessities, our people have chosen patience and endured suffering over abandoning their homes and original homeland.
From the heart of Gaza, on behalf of ourselves, the General Federation of Palestinian Workers’ Unions, and all workers who have been forcibly unemployed since the onset of this brutal and destructive war, and in continuation of our communication with you to strengthen our resolve and express our gratitude for your support with us, we emphasize the following:
We appreciate your solidarity with us on International Workers’ Day in response to our previous call. We would also like to congratulate the seven labor unions in the United States – the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), the National Education Association (NEA), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the United Electrical Workers (UE) – representing more than 6 million workers for their courageous stance and public call on the Biden administration to cut off all military aid to Israel immediately.
We call on all unions to take similar courageous stands. Your efforts have made the movement for Palestine indispensable and demonstrated the power and importance of international labor solidarity. The call for a ceasefire is a reasonable, necessary, and courageous first step, but all union councils and local governments must supplement these calls.
We recognize that the thousands of bombs being dropped on our heads and the heads of our children are American-made. We call on all unions to elevate the level of their political pressure, strategies, and tactics to demand an immediate end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We call on you to follow the lead of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) in the U.S. by adopting resolutions supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demanding that the Biden administration end all military aid to Israel.
We highly appreciate the role of the dock workers unions in Africa, Europe, and other ports in taking action to stop the flow of weapons and disrupt the financial networks that finance the bombing of our people. We ask you to refuse to deal with military shipments to Israel through all military ships and logistics companies, especially Maersk and ZIM.
We affirm that the essential goal of issuing this appeal is to mobilize your efforts and the efforts of all free people of the world to deepen the occupation’s isolation and strengthen global solidarity with the struggle of our people, especially on the labor union front in the world as a whole, not just the United States.
We emphasize that we do not bet at all on the occupation workers’ union “Histadrut” to stop the aggression or compel the war criminal ]Netanyahu to stop the war. Still, instead, it comes in the context of internal disputes and the bias of this union in favor of the opposition regime, whose hands are also stained with the blood of our people and which considers itself more committed to the continuity of the occupation state.
Dear trade unionists and professionals in North America, Europe, and around the world,
Our appeal to you is not just words but a cry from the depths of wounds and pain, from under the rubble and from among the tears of orphaned, bereaved, and hungry children. We address your consciences to stand together in the face of this significant humanitarian disaster created by the occupation and its sponsors in the West, headed by the U.S., because we believe that the world is not a place for neutrality in the face of injustice, but rather an arena for testing human values and moral principles. Let your solidarity with us be a light in the darkness of bias, and let your courageous positions be the voice of truth in the face of falsehood. We, with our souls and bodies, continue to resist the death that is imposed on us, and we trust that you will continue to raise the banner of solidarity and struggle to stop the aggression and to live a dignified life for a freedom that is not negotiable and for a justice that does not bow to anyone.
Long live Palestine and its people… and victory for the working class!
Glory to the martyrs of the working class and all the martyrs of Palestine, humanity, and freedom.
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
Signatory:
Basheer Al-Sisi is a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions—City of Gaza.
Dr. Salama Abu Zuaiter is a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions—City of Gaza.
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نداء صادر عن اتحاد نقابات العمال الفلسطينيين
بمناسبة مرور عام على الصمود و مقاومة الإبادة الجماعية
إلى الأخوة والأخوات في النقابات العمالية والمهنية في أمريكا الشمالية وأوروبا وحول العالم
نكتب إليكم مُجدداً من غزة، ونحن نشارف على اكتمال عام كامل من حرب الإبادة الجماعية. عامٌ من
العذابات و الٱلام والمعاناة. عامٌ واجه فيه شعبنا النزوح القسري، وحرب التجويع والتعطيش، وقنابل
الموت التي انهالت على رؤوس المدنيين الآمنين، والتدمير شبه الكامل للحياة من تدمير المنازل على
ساكنيها وتدمير البنية التحتية بالكامل والتدمير الممنهج للمجتمع المدني، وتحطيم مكاتب ومقرات معظم
النقابات.
وعلى الرغم من هذه الظروف القاسية، فقد بذلنا كل ما في وسعنا لتقديم الإغاثة لمجتمعاتنا بالموارد
المحدودة التي لدينا. إنها حملة التطهير العرقي الأكثر وحشية التي شهدناها خلال 76 عامًا من الاحتلال؛
فهذا العدوان الإسرائيلي الوحشي وغير المسبوق زاد من معاناة الفلسطينيين في غزة، فهدم المنازل فوق
رؤوس أهلها، وحرمانهم من الكهرباء والمياه والوقود والأدوية والمستلزمات الطبية الضرورية بسبب
الحصار الخانق على القطاع للعام السابع عشر على التوالي حتى الآن، تجاوز عدد الشهداء الذين قتلتهم
إسرائيل في هذه الحرب المدمرة حتى ساعة نشر هذا البيان أكثر من 40,700 شهيد معظمهم من النساء
والأطفال، والآلاف من طبقة العمال وأسرهم في حصيلة غير مسبوقة في التاريخ الحديث، وأكثر من
16,700 طفل، و 11,300 من النساء. وأكثر من 94,100 جريحاً ومصاباً، ويقبع ما يقارب 10,000
مواطن تحت الأنقاض، إضافةً إلى تدمير مئات المشافي، وقصف مراكز إيواء النازحين، وترك
الأطفالفريسة للأوبئة والأمراض وسوء التغذية وصلت حد وباء شلل الأطفال ، وغيرها من جرائم الحرب.
في ظل هذا الواقع المأساوي، نواصل دفن أحبائنا، بينما نواجه الإبادة الجماعية اليومية التي لم يشهد
التاريخ مثي لًا لبشاعتها سواء بالجرائم المروعة أو بأسلحة الدمار والموت. ورغم كل ذلك، نلملم جراحنا
ونرفع أصواتنا في المحافل الدولية، داعين العالم الحر وحركة العمل الدولية للوقوف في حملة تضامن
واسعة وضاغطة مع شعبنا في غزة.
إننا في اتحاد نقابات عمال فلسطين، وفي خضم الصمود الأسطوري لشعبنا ورفضه لسياسة التهجير
واسمراره في الحياة على أرضه رغم حالات النزوح الداخلي هربا من الموت المحقق والتي تجاوزت فيها
نسبة النازحين ما يفوق عن 80 % من المواطنين والذي عاشوا ظروف قاسية جدا في خيام متنقلة لعدة
اشهر بعيدا عن الحياة المدنية وفي ظروف لاانسانية قاسية جدا عدا عن مناطق غزة والشمال التي تعيش
منذ فترة طويلة حياة التجويع الاجباري وفقدان معظم مقومات الحياة ولكنهم آثروا الصبر وتحمل المعاناة
على أن يتركوا بيوتهم وموطنهم الاصلي فإننا ومن قلب غزة وباسمنا وباسم الاتحاد العام لنقابات عمال
فلسطين وكافة العمال المعطلين قسرا عن العمل منذ بداية الحرب الهمجية المدمرة، واستمراراً لتواصلنا
معكم لشد أزرنا، وشكركم على تفاعلكم معنا، فإننا نؤكد على التالي:
نثمن وقوفكم معنا في يوم العمال العالمي استجابة لندائنا السابق. كما نود أن نهنئ النقابات
ونقابة عمال البريد الأمريكية ،)AFA( العمالية السبع في الولايات المتحدة –جمعية مضيفات الطيران
والاتحاد الدولي ،)NEA( والرابطة الوطنية للتعليم ،)IUPAT( والاتحاد الدولي للرسامين ،)APWU(
ونقابة عمال الكهرباء المتحدة ،)UAW( ونقابة عمال السيارات المتحدة ،)SEIU( لموظفي الخدمات
التي تمثل أكثر من 6 ملايين عامل، على موقفها الشجاع والداعي علنًا لإدارة بايدن لوقف – )UE(
جميع المساعدات العسكرية لإسرائيل فورًا.
ندعو كافة النقابات إلى اتخاذ مثل هذه المواقف الشجاعة. لقد جعلت جهودكم الحركة من أجل
فلسطين أمراً لا يمكن تجاهله وأظهرت قوة وأهمية التضامن العمالي الدولي. إن المطالبة بوقف إطلاق
النار خطوة جيدة وضرورية، ولكن يجب أن تُستكمل هذه المطالبات من جميع المجالس النقابية
والحكومات المحلية المختلفة.
نحن ندرك أن آلاف القنابل التي تُلقى على رؤوسنا ورؤوس أطفالنا هي صناعة أمريكية. لذا ندعو
كافة النقابات لتغيير استراتيجياتها وتكتيكاتها للمطالبة بالوقف الفوري للإبادة الجماعية المستمرة في
)BDS( غزة. ندعوكم إلى تبني قرارات تدعم حركة المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات
ومطالبة إدارة بايدن بوقف جميع المساعدات العسكرية الموجهة إلى إسرائيل.
نثمِّن عالياً دور نقابات عمال الموانئ في إفريقيا وأوروبا وبعض الموانئ الأخرى في اتخاذ
إجراءات لوقف تدفق الأسلحة وتعطيل الشبكات المالية التي تمول قصف شعبنا. نطلب منكم رفض التعامل
مع الشحنات العسكرية الموجهة إلى إسرائيل من خلال جميع السفن العسكرية وشركات الخدمات
Posted onSeptember 7, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Pro-Palestinian Union Members SPEAK OUT: “Factories Are Arming Israel’s Genocide” (NYC City Workers for Palestine, NYC Labor for Palestine Palestine Pre-Rally Labor Day Parade — Status Coup News)
The labor movement joined together to speak out against the violence in Gaza by Israel and for a Free Palestine. Jon Farina covered this event in New York where union members each spoke as to why it’s so important for labor to recognize the need for a Free Palestine and how it ties into unions and labor in general.
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We charge Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party with genocide, and we demand that our unions end all complicity with “Israel!”
After 10 months of escalated genocide in Palestine, and as the Zionist entity and its U.S. partners intensify their horrific reign of terror throughout the region, rank and file union members across the country are descending on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. We are here to tell Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and our union leadership that Zionism and U.S. imperialism are in fact red lines for us.
Many of us have organized for months and decades to push our unions to stand with Palestine. Recently, this organizing resulted in a historic victory–seven of the largest unions in the U.S. called on Biden to end U.S. military funding to “Israel.” But as we continue, day after day, to watch as U.S. bombs massacre Palestinians in schools, hospitals, and refugee camps, we are not content with written pleas from union leaders to the presidential administration presiding over this genocide.
We demand more. We find it deplorable that leadership of many of those same unions, along with dozens of others, dutifully handed over our unions’ presidential endorsements to Kamala Harris–without consulting membership, and without even making any demands. Not only is Harris the sitting vice president in the administration facilitating Palestinian genocide, she hasshown no signs of breaking from her administration’s genocidal legacy. Even in recent weeks, she has repeatedly, publicly pledged her belief in “Israel’s” “right to defend itself.”
As union workers, we have power to go beyond words to take real, material action in solidarity with Palestine–directly pressuring our government and the forces of capitalism that perpetuate colonialism and U.S. imperialism. In Labor for Palestine, we take our cues from the Palestinian Federation of General Trade Unions-Gaza (PFGTU-Gaza), who have called on U.S. unions to end our complicity and to stop arming “Israel.”
We demand that U.S. labor comply with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by divesting from “Israel” Bonds, cutting ties with the racist Histadrut and the Jewish Labor Committee, organizing members to stop arming “Israel,” and ending support for Kamala Harris and all other Zionist political candidates.
We will not allow our movement to be quelled, co-opted, or rerouted into the very system that is committing genocide in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine. The Labor for Palestine National Network will answer the Palestinian trade union call by continuing to build rank-and-file workers’ power to stand with oppressed people in Palestine and everywhere else, until we all are free.
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Pro-abortion rights and LGBTQ+ protesters rally ahead of the start of the DNC
Activists march on North Michigan Avenue on Aug. 18, 2024, in Chicago, host city for the Democratic National Convention. The protest was organized by CODEPINK, a women-led anti-war nonprofit that seeks to redirect tax dollars into health care, education and green jobs. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A crowd of hundreds called for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights Sunday evening in downtown Chicago, getting a head start on a week of protests before the Democratic National Convention kickoff Monday.
Starting with a rally on Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive by the Chicago River, with Trump Tower as a backdrop as the blazing sun set behind the Marina City Towers, demonstrators headed south to the Grant Park monument of Union Army Gen. John Logan, which protesters climbed in an iconic moment during the DNC protests in August 1968.
After an acoustic sing-along by the crowd — “My body, my body/ My choice, my choice,” punctuated by a flute and ukulele — emcee and activist Scout Bratt took the mic to say, “Palestinian liberation is reproductive justice,” a nod to the common thread that ran through speeches and chants during the evening.
“And we reject any political compromises on bodily autonomy,” added Bratt, a spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace and a member of the social justice group Avodah. “Today, we are coming together on the eve of the Democratic National Convention to be sure that they don’t even begin … without knowing our demands.”
The rally and march took place a week after the coalition Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws — endorsed by more than 30 local and national organizations — won a permit for a route on Michigan Avenue following a long legal battle with the city. The lawsuit continues in federal court with representation from the American Civil Liberties Union over the city’s security perimeter ordinance.
The Sunday gathering sought to demand that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency in November, she will commit to sweeping legislation for abortion access and transgender and LGBTQ+ health care, as well as an end to U.S. aid to Israel and a call for a cease-fire.
They hope national legislation will include no gestational bans or viability limits on abortion and a guaranteed minimum income so children can be raised “in a healthy, nurturing environment.” And as trans people continue being targeted by the far right — which the coalition sees as attacks on the bodily autonomy of all LGBTQ+ people — they also demand equal employment and housing rights enshrined in legislation.
The coalition includes pro-Palestinian groups that emphasize the interconnectedness of human rights struggles in Gaza and at home; for instance, anti-war, women-led grassroots organization CODEPINK has said that discussions of reproductive justice within the Democratic Party must consider Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Reproductive genocide, my comrades and friends, is the eradication and destruction of life-giving and life-sustaining resources such as food, such as water, such as medicine, such as medical care,” said Chicago organizer and community leader Leena Odeh of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.
According to reports from the United Nations, miscarriages in the region have increased by 300%, and a shortage of medical supplies means that women are giving birth without pain relief and children are dying without incubators. The largest fertility clinic in the region has been destroyed by Israeli forces, newborn babies face malnutrition and have no access to clean water, and 690,000 women and girls have no access to menstrual hygiene products.
On more than one occasion, speakers forcefully reminded Harris she has to earn their vote. They also repeatedly called out Democratic leaders for what they see as a disconnect between promises and policies enacted at home and abroad.
“We are at a pivotal moment of recognizing and raising cautiousness about all the ways in which the Democratic Party and its brutal policies violently suppress working-class organization and liberation movements. The main line of the Harris candidacy is to vote for them or face fascism, when in fact, the two parties are two sides of the same coin,” said Sultana Hossain, an Amazon labor union activist and co-facilitator for NYC Labor for Palestine.
Nadine Naber, professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and co-founder of Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity, said, “We are here to fight for our bodies and our hearts. And I believe that any movement guided by radical, collective love is like fire.”
Posted onAugust 18, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine at Not Another Bomb Rally in Brooklyn
Free, Free Palestine!
My name is Michael Letwin, and I’m honored to be here on behalf of New York City Labor for Palestine, UAW Labor for Palestine, and the entire Labor for Palestine National Network, which now includes more than 40 member groups across this country.
On October 16, 2023, Palestinian trade unions appealed to international labor: “We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.”
Yet many still ask: Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
An injury to one is an injury to all. Zionism and the Israeli settler-colonial regime—and all “Israel” is occupied Palestine—is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and working class people here in New York City and around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with untold billions in bipartisan US military aid, tax dollars that should be spent instead on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces, including those represented by the UAW—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
Rank-and-file workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States that for the past ten years has refused to handle Israeli cargo.
For all these reasons, we applaud the seven major U.S. unions who recently called on Genocide Joe Biden to end U.S. military funding to the “Israeli” settler-colonial regime. Representing more than six million workers, these include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical Workers (UE).
But words are not enough, and you can’t stop genocide by endorsing genocidal candidates. That’s why the Labor for Palestine National Network is joining thousands of other protesters this week in Chicago to make this real by charging the Democratic Party with genocide, and calling on union leaders to stop endorsing the Harris/Walz slate, which is led by Kamala Harris, #2 in the same administration that is presiding over the ongoing Nakba that has murdered at least 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 months, which Palestinians have an inalienable right to resist.
And amidst unspeakable U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, in Palestinian resistance—and ours, there is hope.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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Posted onAugust 14, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Support L4PNN Organizers Protesting the DNC in Chicago: No Support for Genocidal Candidates — Stop Arming Israel!
Please donate here to make our voice heard at the upcoming DNC protests: No Support for Genocidal Candidates — Stop Arming Israel! TY!
***SUPPORT L4PNN ORGANIZERS PROTESTING THE DNC IN CHICAGO***
Established in April 2004, Labor for Palestine is reclaiming the legacy of working-class solidarity with Palestine in the United States by committing to uplift the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) solidarity call and honor the BDS picket line. As we continue to work towards a permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine, our Labor for Palestine National Network (L4PNN) has rapidly grown to include over 25 member groups in recent months. We believe that by leveraging the unparalleled power of the working-class, we hold the potential to help dismantle apartheid “Israel.”
While we are actively organizing within our labor bodies, at our workplaces, and in our communities for Palestinian liberation, we need your support to expand our efforts even further. Your donation, no matter the amount, will help us continue our critical work and further our commitment to building working-class solidarity with Palestinian resistance while looking towards a future of ultimately ending the occupation. All contributions will help in covering the costs of materials for direct actions—such as rallies, pickets, and teach-ins—and other necessary expenses to sustain L4PNN’s organizing efforts.
We are a grassroots organization fueled by the support of individuals like you who believe in the power of the working-class to effect change. With your support, we can continue to grow our network, educate our fellow workers, and make a real impact in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Thank you in advance for considering a donation to Labor for Palestine. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.
In Solidarity and Struggle, Labor for Palestine National Network
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Posted onAugust 12, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on We Charge the Democrats With Genocide! Join the L4PNN Contingent at the DNC (Labor for Palestine National Network)
We Charge the Democrats With Genocide! No Support for Genocidal Candidates! End All Complicity–Stop Arming Israel! Rank-and-File unionists will be at the DNC to hold the Democrats, and the International Union Leaders who endorse them, accountable.
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Posted onAugust 4, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on NYC Labor for Palestine Statement on Zionist and U.S. Terror and Labor’s Need to Break from Kamala Harris and All Genocidal Politicians
Endorsed by the Labor for Palestine National Network on August 10, 2024.
As we now pass 300 days of escalated genocide in Palestine by the Zionist entity and the U.S., and as the Zionist entity and its U.S. partners intensify their horrific reign of terror across the Middle East, NYC Labor for Palestine expresses our solidarity with the people of Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and reiterates our call on U.S. labor to abide by the Palestinian trade union call to End All Complicity–Stop Arming Israel.
In a period of just 24 hours earlier this week, the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) bombed a densely populated civilian area in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon, killing four civilians and assassinating Hezbollah top military leader Fuad Shukr; the Zionist entity assassinated Hamas Political Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran and Palestinian journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi in Gaza; and the U.S. conducted a strike south of Baghdad in Iraq, killing at least four people. The Zionist entity’s brutalization of Palestine has not relented. Just last night, the IOF once again targeted a Palestinian hospital, bombing the tents of displaced people at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Our hearts are with the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and across the Middle East mourning their martyrs and living in anticipation of an escalating regional war, and we express our solidarity with Palestinian workers in the West Bank currently striking in response to Haniyeh’s brutal assassination.
It does not escape our notice that the latest Israeli escalation, including the murder of Haniyeh, an essential figure in ceasefire negotiations, came just a week after notorious war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was warmly welcomed by Congress and visited with the Biden administration, including Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. By supplying weapons and political support, the U.S. government remains a bipartisan partner in every instance of Zionist war crimes.
With all of this in mind, we applaud the seven major U.S. unions who recently called on Joe Biden to end U.S. military funding to the “Israeli” settler-colonial regime. Representing more than six million workers, these include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical Workers (UE).
We recognize that this significant step is the direct result of more than half a century of dedicated rank-and-file labor solidarity with Palestinian liberation—alongside a broader global solidarity movement led by Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other BIPOC communities, students, and young people. At the same time, our unions must go beyond pleas with an administration fueling “Israel’s” genocidal war on Palestine. Moreover, it is shameful that higher ups at APWU, IUPAT, NEA, SEIU, and the UAW, have undermined their leverage to stop arming “Israel” by endorsing Kamala Harris, a carceral imperialist and committed Zionist, and #2 in the very administration presiding over the escalated Nakba that has murdered at least 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 months. From Harris’s meeting with Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s operations this week, to her full-throated condemnation of the July 24 D.C. protest of Netanyahu, to her reiteration that “Israel has a right to defend itself” in response to the Beirut bombing, we see no evidence that she plans to break with Biden’s genocidal legacy. Her statements in support of Israel come not only amid this horrifying regional escalation and continued brutalization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but while hundreds of Israelis riot in defense of soldiers arrested for raping a Palestinian prisoner.
U.S. labor must comply with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by divesting from “Israel” Bonds, cutting ties with the racist Histadrut and the Jewish Labor Committee, organizing members to stop arming “Israel,” and ending support for Kamala Harris and all other Zionist political candidates.
We will not allow our movement to be quelled, co-opted, or rerouted into the very system that is committing genocide in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine. The Labor for Palestine National Network will answer the Palestinian trade union call by continuing to build rank-and-file workers’ power to stand with oppressed people in Palestine and everywhere else, until we all are free.
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On March 23, 2024, “in the midst of pain and blood, in the displacement camps, amidst the rubble, and the ruins of our homes, workshops, factories, stores, and institutions destroyed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation, using U.S.-made weapons,” the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza (PGFTU-Gaza) sent U.S. workers, unions, and other labor organizations an urgent May Day appeal.
The PGFTU-Gaza’s appeal salutes “some exceptional examples of unions, clearly demonstrated in leading protests denouncing the Zionist war of genocide being waged on the Gaza Strip.”
However, it also decries the “shocking silence and neglect by the international labor movement,” citing those who have “retreated to verbal positions without taking measures on the ground or pressuring the decision-makers to stop this war of extermination, limiting union activities to conferences and statements and not delving deeply into the need to guarantee humanitarian aid, or influencing international public opinion to expose the truth about Zionist crimes and the practices of the allied countries that continue to support Israel.”
The appeal specifically highlights the need “to ban the occupation’s trade unions [the Histdarut] internationally, as they are partners in the war of genocide. In particular, we call on American unions to boycott these unions to protest their complicity in this genocidal war.”
We further call on the working class and labor bodies across the U.S. to build on the May Day call from Bay Area Labor for Palestine, by taking one or more of the following actions on May 1, 2024:
Withhold labor and rally with a labor contingent for Palestine or amplify demands to stop this genocide within your local May Day action
Hold a teach-in or moment of silence
Post a group photo, with flags, signs, keffiyehs, buttons, and other symbols of Palestinian solidarity
Leaflet and demonstrate at a weapons plant, military facility, or other complicit institution
Storm social media with:
#MayDay4Palestine
#StopArmingIsrael
#BDS
#DumpIsraelBonds
#DroptheHistadrut
#FromtheRivertotheSeaPalestineWillBeFree
Devise other creative actions
Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
An injury to one is an injury to all. The Israeli settler-colonial regime is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and working class people around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid, tax dollars that should be spent instead on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
Global working class solidarity is the only way to win. More than ever, in this era of globalization, workers and oppressed people everywhere are up a common enemy. We can’t win if we are atomized by union, or even country. We need international, classwide unity. That means every worker must take on the task of building solidarity with Palestine—today an epicenter of class struggle.
Workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States, which has respected Block the Boat’s community-labor picket line by refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza and sharply escalating settler colonial violence in the West Bank that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”
The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.
Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.
We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which calls not only for an end to the 1967 Israeli occupation, but an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall, full equality for Arab-Palestinians inside 1948 Palestine (“Israel”), and implementation of the right of Palestinian refugees to return..
Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine (organizational affiliations listed for identification only) Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)
Rising Unequivocal U.S. Labor Solidarity With Palestine Oct. 27, 2023: APWU Pres. Stands Up for Palestine v. AFL-CIO EB: “Mark Dimondstein, the president of the postal union, argued that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into a single state. He called for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to demand a cease-fire.”
Oct. 27, 2023: UAW BDS Sign-On Letter: “We, rank-and-file members of the UAW and allied community members/organizations, stand unequivocally in solidarity with Palestinians and their resistance against the occupying Zionist state.”
Oct. 23, 2023: Petition: NOLSW Must Demand a Ceasefire & an End to the Occupation of Palestine: “We need as many signatures from NOLSW members as well as unit endorsements as we can get before this upcoming Monday to demonstrate that the NOLSW rank-and-file stands firmly in solidarity with the Palestinian people and will by while Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza. Free Palestine.”
Bottom-Up Labor Solidarity for Palestine Is Growing: “While still at the margins, this unprecedented and rapidly-expanding worker-based Palestine solidarity has the potential to finally break Zionism’s century-long stranglehold on U.S. labor, and to organize workers’ unparalleled power—in their labor bodies and at the workplace—to help topple apartheid Israel.”
Labor for Palestine: Challenging US Labor Zionism (American Quarterly): “Zionism has long been the default position in US labor. However, there has been another, hidden tradition of postwar labor anti-Zionism that began with Detroit in 1969–73 and has slowly re-emerged after September 11, 2011, from the antiwar, Palestine solidarity, and racial justice movements.”
Labor Zionism and the Histadrut: The Histadrut has used its image as a “progressive” institution to spearhead — and whitewash — racism, apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians since the 1920s. In this, it has been the cornerstone of Labor Zionism, which began in the early 1900s.”
The Jewish Labor Committee and Apartheid Israel: “The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) presents itself as a model of progressive, socially conscious trade unionism. But as a U.S. mouthpiece for the Histadrut, this false image has been a smokescreen to disguise and promote Apartheid Israel, “AFL-CIA” support of U.S. war and empire, and racism in the labor movement.”
Labor for Palestine Model Resolution: [X union/labor body]
Stand With Palestinian Workers:
Cease the Genocide Now, End All Complicity, Stop Arming Israel!
WHEREAS, October 7, 2023 saw the people of Gaza collectively reject the culmination of 16 years of a brutal land, air and sea siege devastating the entirety of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents; and
WHEREAS, the 16-year blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip has devastated the economy, leading to the closure of many companies, factories, and farms, resulting in a high level of unemployment, and reducing the government’s ability to provide basic services to the Palestinian population in Gaza; and
WHEREAS, the siege has deprived Palestinians in Gaza of their basic rights to health care, education, work, and freedom of movement, with 81.5 percent of individuals in Gaza living below the poverty line and 64 percent are food insecure; and
WHEREAS, the latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine; and
WHEREAS, the section of the Gaza border that was bulldozed through on October 7th was the site of the Great March of Return, a 2018-2019 peaceful protest which Israel responded to with deadly force, killing 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, and injuring 28,939 a reminder that all forms of Palestinian resistance—even peaceful ones—are criminalized and crushed by Israel; and
WHEREAS, as in the last 16 days alone at least [update as needed] 4,741 Palestinians have been killed and 15,898 wounded, with over a million of the densely populated enclave’s people displaced; and
WHEREAS, there have been [update as needed] 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza with these attacks resulting in at least 15 health workers killed, 27 health workers injured, damage to 25 hospitals and other healthcare facilities and three hospitals in northern Gaza evacuated; and
WHEREAS, upon announcing his intention to reduce parts of Gaza to “rubble,” Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu ordered leaflets dropped from the sky telling Palestinians in the Gaza strip, of which 50 percent of the population are children, to “leave now,” knowing full well that there is absolutely nowhere they can go; a public declaration of intent to commit the international crime of forced population transfer; and
WHEREAS, Israel has consolidated all these tactics of extermination in the current attack on Gaza, including the prohibited use of white phosphorus weapons in densely populated urban areas. In addition, Israel is arming settlers with an additional 10,000 assault rifles, which has already further galvanized attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank; and
WHEREAS, Israel justified its decision to suspend all entry of food, water and fuel into Gaza by claiming that it was fighting “human animals”; As we have seen with past examples of US led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan , such dehumanizing language is used to manufacture consent for genocidal violence; and
WHEREAS, a majority of media, politicians and employers have demonstrated an inconsistent valuation of human life, with calculated omissions effectively endorsing Israel’s ongoing perpetration of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza; and
WHEREAS, the tired trope of “religious conflict” has been used often to mask the reality of settler colonial violence and dispossession, essentializing and racializing both Jewish and Muslim communities and those critical of Israeli settler colonial violence have been falsely accused of anti-semitism; and
WHEREAS, the Union of Professors and Employees at Birzeit University in the West Bank, calls on all trade unions around the globe to reject the “criminalization of resistance… where all blood that is shed is blamed on the oppressed and all crimes of settler colonial invasion and dispossession are ignored entirely”; and
WHEREAS, all over the world and including our [city/workplace], workers of all faiths and backgrounds are united in their opposition to apartheid, occupation, genocide and settler colonialism; and
WHEREAS, the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism as a structure of power designed to accumulate wealth through dispossession and maintain racial hierarchy links it organically to the struggles of Indigenous, Black and Puerto Rican peoples, as well as other oppressed peoples in the United States; and
WHEREAS, the institutions of organized violence that oppress working class, Black and Brown communities in the US train and share tactics of repression with Israeli institutions of organized violence, for example through the deadly exchange program; and
WHEREAS, since World War II, Israel has been the largest overall recipient of U.S. foreign aid, with over $150 billion since 1946 and U.S. President Joe Biden has just announced another $14.3 billion in aid for Israel as part of a broader “defense” spending package that is a boon for the military-industrial-complex and is being claimed as a job promotion program for US workers who are allegedly “building the arsenal of democracy”; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. began moving warships and aircraft to the region “to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond,” including sending two U.S. aircraft carriers as well as special operations forces to “assist Israel’s military in planning and intelligence”; and
WHEREAS, Palestinian trade unions call for workers around the globe to stand in solidarity to “end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes”and to “pass motions in their trade union to this effect”; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that our [union or other labor body] condemns Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and calls for an immediate end to the bombings and destruction in Gaza as well as an end to all US military and economic aid to the settler colonial state of Israel; and
RESOLVED, that we endorse the October 16, 2023 Palestinian trade union call:
To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel.
To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.
RESOLVED, that our union pledge to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by divesting from Israel Bonds, severing all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respecting the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS); and
RESOLVED, that our employer defend its workers [and students] who are routinely doxxed and attacked when voicing support for Palestine, including those who take part in the BDS campaign, and/or who otherwise oppose Israeli settler colonialism.
Posted onOctober 21, 2026bylabor4pal|Comments Off on 30 October International Day of Action: Find Your Local Port Action (No Harbour for Genocide // Europe Palestine Network)
In nine days, on 30 October, dockworkers in more than 100 ports across Europe, Asia, Africa and America are taking action together, under the slogan: Dockworkers do not work for war. The unions call it one of the biggest coordinated workers’ actions the docks have ever seen.
Dockworkers who act without people at the gates will bear the brunt of the repression that follows, so stand with them.
We’ve built a tool to help you find the action nearest to you. Use it at the link in bio.
The map shows every port we can name so far, grouped by country, with times and meeting points added as unions confirm them. Check back before the 30th; the list is still growing.
It also tells you what passes through your port. We have documented 315 shipments of Elbit Systems components through 56 commercial ports and 3,400 shipments supplying US military bases through 67 ports. Where we have documented transfers from this database or the press for 2025-2026, the port’s entry says so.
Not near a port? Join a solidarity action in your city, push the Istanbul Declaration, share the poster. If you are a union member, dockworker, port worker or seafarer, use our template to write to your union. If you live in a port city, use our template letter to write to your port authority.
Organising something on the day that isn’t on the map yet? Tell us through the form on the page and we’ll add it once it’s confirmed.
Translations of the templates are coming soon.
Comments Off on 30 October International Day of Action: Find Your Local Port Action (No Harbour for Genocide // Europe Palestine Network)
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