April 28, 2024
UAW Labor for Palestine Statement in Support of Student “Free Gaza” Divestment Movement
UAW Labor for Palestine expresses our full support of the “Free Gaza” movement spreading across occupied Turtle Island. All around the so-called United States, students are expressing demands on their universities in the form of Palestine solidarity encampments. We lift up students’ calls for their universities to disclose and divest all support for Israel in alignment with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. As unionists, we encourage students to hold the line on their demands and solidarities with the people of Palestine and employ open bargaining with their universities to exert maximum pressure on holding college administrators publicly accountable on following through on demands to divest from all financial and academic complicity in genocide being perpetrated in Gaza. Students, we applaud your incredible efforts and have your backs!
Below is a summary of the demands that unite this movement:
- Disclose and Divest: Immediately divest from all companies complicit in Israel’s colonial genocide in Palestine. This includes divesting from all Israeli-owned companies; all companies on the BDS list; and all complicit weapons, technology, surveillance, and construction companies (including those based in the so-called U.S.).
- BDS Now: Support BDS and the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel by canceling all research and institutional collaborations with Israeli institutions and canceling all academic trips to Israel.
- Solidarity against Repression: Protect students, faculty, and workers–particularly Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim people–under attack for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
- Demilitarize and Disarm: Demilitarize college campuses by ending all police collaborations and recruitment efforts with the IOF, CIA, DHS, ROTC, etc. Cops off campuses!
- Free and Decolonial Education: Fund free, accessible decolonial and antiracist education. Hire MENA faculty to teach this curriculum. Stop the attacks on public education.
UAW Labor for Palestine echoes these demands and commits to bringing them forward within our own unions and across the labor movement: Disclose and Divest! BDS Now! Solidarity against Repression! Demilitarize and Disarm! Free and Decolonial Education!
Free Palestine from the river to the sea!
In Solidarity,
The rank and file unionists of UAW Labor for Palestine
