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Mass Labor Action for Palestine Toolkit!
October 7, October 21 & November 4, 2024

Introduction

The National bodies of Labor for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine are issuing a joint call for mass action by workers and students, kicking off on October 7, 2024. This date marks one year from the date on which Israel’s intensified genocide in Palestine began, with subsequent actions on October 21 and November 4. You can read our call to action here. This toolkit is designed to help organizers plan for action with everything you’ll need!

Getting Started

There are many ways to participate in this call. Below are some organizing tips to help you get started planning your local and/or campus actions.

1. Start by sharing the call to action with other workers in your shop or students on your campus, and decide how you will participate as a group on all three days. See below for possible ideas:
   1. Withhold your labor or campus participation and coordinate a strike, sick-out, student-led walkout, or picket followed by a march or rally. 
   2. If not everyone is able to participate in a strike/walkout, half of the shop could call out on one day and the other half on a different day. Organize a moment of silence at your shop to mark one year of intensified genocide.
   3. If workers are already on strike, dedicate a strike day to building solidarity with Palestine. 
   4. If you’re on a campus, hold a joint teach-in with students and workers about Palestine. See this resource by the Palestinian Feminist Collective for syllabus ideas. 
   5. Reach out to youth movement groups and coordinate a mass Palestine protest in a central location in your city. Post a group photo on social media with banners, Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, buttons, and other signs of solidarity. See below for some hashtag ideas.
2. Once your group has decided on a proposed action, take the call and your proposal to supportive union leadership and/or campus student groups and strategize your coordination.
3. Outreach! Using the templates provided in this toolkit, share the action with other workers (unionized and not unionized) and/or students so they can participate and make your action impactful. See below for more outreach tips and tools!
4. Follow up these actions by organizing an SJP chapter on your campus or Labor4Palestine group in your union, sector, or geographical location, and join the Labor for Palestine National Network (L4PNN)! 

Outreach Toolkit

No matter how you decide to participate in these actions, a solid outreach plan (virtual and physical) is crucial for success! Here’s how to get started:

1. Social Media Outreach: Using this post series about the broader call to action (slides 1-5) with customizable virtual flier templates (slides 6-9) for your local action, post about the action on personal and prominent social media pages, especially those affiliated with left labor or campus groups. Try to get the word out far and wide starting at least one week before October 7.
   1. Note: Your fliers should at minimum have the date, time, and location for the action with a succinct summary of why you’re organizing (eg: “October 7: Meet at the corner of University and Main at 8am to shut it down for Palestine!”). Use images to communicate your message. See our template fliers linked above!
   2. Consider these hashtags in your posts: #StudentLaborOctober7, #StudentWorkerSolidarity, #WeAreAllSJP, #Labor4Palestine, #StopArmingIsrael, #WeekOfAction4Palestine, #WeekOfRage, #BDS, #StudentsShutItDown, #DumpIsraelBonds, #DroptheHistadrut 
2. Mass Flyering: Print out hundreds of copies of this flier (template available here to customize and add details about your local action) and organize a mass flyering day. Break up in pairs and assign everyone specific buildings or prominent areas of the campus or workplace and post fliers in eye-catching locations. 
3. Tabling: If you have a table, get a comrade and station yourselves in a strategic location to pass out fliers and other relevant materials. Try to engage passersby in conversation, and if they’re interested, have them add their contact info to a sign-up sheet in order for them to receive updates leading up to the action. Use that info to send reminders the Friday before the action.
4. Mapping and One-on-One Outreach: Together with comrades, map out your university or workplace. Start by drawing key physical structures. Then add key paths people take everyday (e.g. to get from dorms to classes, or from workstations to break rooms) and the spaces where they congregate along the way. Then for each school, department, or club, identify the students or workers that make it up. Assess which schools,departments, or clubs you have a strong presence in and where your presence is weak. Create a strategy to engage your strong sectors and build a presence in your weak ones. For instance, your group can split up and assign people to reach out 1:1 to key leaders (e.g. the student council leader of the sociology department, or the housekeeper at a hotel with greatest influence over other housekeepers). Ask the leader if they will talk to others about the importance of joining the action, or if there is a time where they all typically gather where the leader can introduce you to everyone to make your pitch. If you meet more people who are sympathetic, get their contact info and follow up with them the Friday before the action to see if others from their department or club are planning to attend the action and if they need any support to do that.
5. Announcements: If you’re based on a campus, ask professors if you can make a 1-minute announcement to the classroom at the start of class–many times they’ll say yes! If you’re based in another kind of workplace, make an announcement in a breakroom or other space where workers gather. Bring quarter sheet printouts of your flier to hand out.
6. Text and Email Outreach: The Friday before the action, text or DM your peers individually or in aligned group threads to remind them about the action and encourage them to participate.

Organizing a Strike Action

Institutions, universities, and workplaces depend on our participation to function and to make money.  Withholding our labor collectively is one of the most powerful ways to convey our refusal to participate in injustice and genocide, particularly when those institutions are profiting from it. While many workers may not be able to strike, and there are other ways to participate in this action, it’s worth considering withholding your labor on these days of action.

As workers, striking is our strongest leverage in achieving our goal to stop the genocide in Palestine. As students, schools and universities depend on our participation and our tuition fees to function. Because of the depth of US complicity in weapons manufacturing, strikes at many kinds of workplaces have an impact on the weapons supply chain: Universities are invested in weapons manufacturers and military research. Corporate coffee chains provide goods to the IOF and are also invested in genocide. Transportation companies carry weapons components in a complex global logistics web. 

If you decide to take a strike action of some kind on October 7, October 21, and/or November 4, there are a few different approaches. Decide which one works best for your context.

• Organizing a sick-out: A simple way to participate is to organize a “sick-out,” or a day when a lot of workers call out sick and withhold their labor. If you opt for this style of action, your fliers should say something like “Does genocide make you sick? No business / class as usual on October 7!” to get the message across.
• Filing an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP): If you’re organizing through a union, one way to strike lawfully is through filing an Unfair Labor Practice against your employer. This NLRB website outlines lawful ULP strike conditions. 
• Aligning contracts: If your union is already planning a strike that aligns or could align with any of the mass action dates (October 7, October 21, or November 4), work to center Palestine in your strike. 

If we work together and achieve a mass strike, we will send the strongest message that workers everywhere refuse to labor for genocide.

Picketing Campuses and Other Workplaces

A great way to participate in the mass action call is through organizing picket lines. Below are some tips for how to organize a picket.

1. What Is a Picket Line?

Put simply, a picket is a group of folks who show up at a particular strategic location and circle a workplace or campus entrance or other boundary to shut down business as usual for as long as the picket goes. The tactic is generally connected with labor strikes, and picketers try to disrupt all shifts in a workday, sometimes returning day after day until they build enough pressure on an employer to win their demands. 

Like a rally in motion, pickets use multiple tactics to educate workers, students, or passersby on why it’s important to be in solidarity with an issue or demand by not crossing the boundary they’ve created and entering a workplace. They can be “hard,” where nobody is allowed to cross the line, or “soft,” where folks are discouraged but not physically prevented from crossing. 

2. Choosing Your Location

The ideal location for a picket is an entrance that most workers or students need to cross in order to enter a workplace or a campus. A highly visible location can be ideal for spreading the word that the picket is taking place. Other times, people may choose to picket a less visible but strategic site, such as a road through which goods are delivered. For this action, we invite you to consider your campus or workplace map and choose one site (or two if you’re feeling ambitious and have the numbers) for your picket. 

3. Coordinating Pickets

Like rallies, pickets use signs, chant leaders, speakers, song, music, and other techniques to keep the energy high and message on point. However, unlike rallies which typically last an hour or two, pickets are designed to shut down a workplace for an entire day. It is common labor solidarity practice to refuse to cross a picket line. When a strike is legally authorized, many unions (like delivery drivers) will respect the picket, costing an institution financial losses in delivery delays. It’s helpful to have multiple emcees or “captains” rotate the labor of maintaining the picket energy in shifts of 1-2 hours. Coordinate shifts ahead of time so you’re not scrambling to pass off the mic when your energy is zapped.

The location and tactic of your picket will help you determine the best time to start. For instance, if you’re picketing a main entrance to campus and classes start at 9am, you may want to start your picket at 8am and pick up vigor especially around the class shift schedule. However, if your goal is to block the delivery of goods, and trucks start arriving at 6am, you may want to start your picket at 5am. The picket should last until the workday ends. In some cases, that’s 5pm. At other 24:7 work sites, workers will organize pickets around shift changes.

4. Outreach!!

As with any other event, outreach is key! At least 1 week before your picket, you will want to mass flier your campus or workplace to let others know a strike, walkout, or other workplace disruption is taking place and when/where they can find you (eg: “Walkout October 7 to shut it down for Palestine! Picket with us at the campus entrance on University Ave starting at 8am”) Post lots of copies of your flier and share it on social media.

It can also be useful to organize announcements in break rooms or large lecture classrooms–often you can ask sympathetic professors if it’s ok to make a 1-2 minute announcement at the beginning of a class (note: you don’t have to be registered in a class to do this!). Many times they’ll say yes. You can let folks know that a walkout has been called for October 7, share why students or workers are participating, and invite them to be in solidarity by not attending work or classes that day and joining the picket. Tell them when and where they can find you!

At a campus workplace, it can also be immensely helpful to organize sympathetic faculty to cancel classes in solidarity with the walkout. You can coordinate with them to organize other faculty to join through public sign-on statements, word of mouth, or other faculty organizing tactics.

It’s also great to invite other groups to join in solidarity through sign-on statements, coordination support, etc. There are many roles to play to build a strong picket, and the more we work together, the stronger our movements will be!

Do what you can to make sure as many people know about the picket and visibilize as much solidarity as possible.

5. Feed Your Picket

In order to keep people organizing for the day, you will need to plan to care for them. Without a good food plan, your picket is guaranteed to lose steam. Organize with local coops and ask them to cook large quantities of food and table near the picket. Ask local restaurants and grocery stores if they’re willing to donate goods to help feed the people. Don’t be afraid to ask–you may be surprised when a bougie local restaurant, favorite pizza joint, or corporate grocery store chain hooks you up! You can also raise funds to purchase snacks and water to keep your picket nourished throughout the day. Share the bounty with neighbors–especially those without regular access to food! 

6. Amplified Sound

While pickets can be humble–just a group of folks chanting with signs and lovingly, righteously disrupting a workplace entrance–they grow much stronger with amplification. If you can get 1 or 2 bullhorns, great! If you can get a mic and amplified sound (perhaps hooked up to a generator if you’re not near a power source you can use), even better!! You want your message to be loud, clear, and heard by folks before they approach the picket. Generally speaking, the louder the amplification, the bigger the crowd you can draw and hold. So plan accordingly.

7. Accessibility and Pickets

There are multiple ways to participate in a picket. It will take all of us building solidarity to get what we need for our people, and disabled comrades are core to our movement.

Some of your comrades may be using walkers, strollers, power chairs, canes, or other mobility devices and need more space or a different pace in the picket. As you select your picket site, consider ramp access, places to rest, and nearby shade. Some comrades may be deaf or hard of hearing and need an interpreter on site. Proactively planning around accessibility means valuing everyone’s contributions. 

We are in a COVID surge, and requiring good-quality N95/KN95/KF94 masks on the picket line is important to keep everyone safe. We are all at risk from the long term impacts of COVID, particularly after reinfection, and the Biden-Harris administration has been downplaying COVID’s harms. Taking care of each other’s health also means we can all stay in the movement longer. 

Find alternative ways to include people who cannot be on site. Livestream comrades who cannot attend as remote speakers on the picket. Consider what remotely withholding labor could look like.  

Most importantly, get creative about ways to make space for more of our comrades and what picket accessibility means. Invite disabled comrades into the planning process and strategize with them about how to make your picket as effective, accessible, and powerful as possible. 

8. Getting It Going

It’s the day of, you’ve chosen your location, you’ve made lots of signs (maybe at an art build the day before), you’ve got bullhorns and mics, and your food crew is posted up nearby (a medic even signed up for an afternoon shift in case anyone needs their support!). You’ve been working alongside a rad group of disabled student organizers on your accessibility approach. You’ve got your chant sheets printed, and you know why you’re here: to shut down business as usual and build pressure to stop this genocide! But how do you get your picket started?

Hand out signs (especially if they’re mounted to sticks!) and show your comrades where they’ll be marching. The picket line should go across the boundaries of an entrance so there’s not a gap folks could slip through without engaging the picket. Folks should begin marching from one edge of the boundary to the other, forming a tight oval once they’ve reached the end of the boundary and marching in this shape. 

Get things going with a chant (“Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” “If we don’t get it, shut it down!”) Sometimes a chanter or mic and amp will be set up in the center of the oval so everyone can hear and draw on the energy. Do what makes most sense for your picket. When folks pass by, encourage them not to cross the boundary and to join you. Hopefully, your picket will swell!

Be sure to plan some breaks and rotation to keep it strong the whole day! Music (whether organizing a live performance, leading songs the picket signs together, inviting a marching band of one kind or another to roll through, or just playing some fav tunes) will help sustain your picket.

You can do this!   

Escalation Toward November 4 Actions 

This sequence of mobilizations culminates on November 4. Here are some additional actions you can plan for this date:

• Consider leafleting or rallying outside of a nearby weapons manufacturer. See this map for locations. We recommend bringing pro-worker signs that highlight the complicity of bosses, CEOs, owners in genocide (eg, “We Support Workers, not Genocide!” and “Fellow Workers in Solidarity with Palestine!” and “Workers, Join Us to Stop the Genocide Machine!”)
• Hold a press conference calling out Shawn Fain, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and others as liberal leaders who are using the UAW for clout. Call out the UAW for maintaining investments in Israel Bonds, which directly fund the genocide, whilr ignoring rank and file demands and calls to action. 
• If you are on a campus, hold a press conference about University Administrators’ complicity in the genocide and the repression of the movement to stop it. Share a message about the power of the student intifada and encampments, mentioning how thousands were arrested while pushing their universities to divest from occupation and genocide. 

We urge you to use this date, the day before the presidential election, to send your strongest message.

Conclusion 

We hope this toolkit is helpful in your planning efforts for taking action on October 7, October 21, and November 4. Remember that in taking the boldest action you’re able, you will be building power and pressure alongside many, many others around the country and world. If we act together, we can send a strong message: no more occupation and genocide! We are here to build a world that values life and liberation.