One year in, the Palestinian solidarity movement is adapting its tactics
Facing increased repression in North America as Israel escalates its genocidal assault on Gaza, organizers with the Palestinian Youth Movement and Labor for Palestine discuss how they’re adapting their methods of resistance.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/5inHiBxJLwhtSy8oGsjLlS?si=56db38fe3ae94ce8&utm_source=oembed
Over the past year, Israel’s US-backed genocidal assault on Gaza, which is on the verge of spiraling into a regional war, has reached unprecedented heights—so has the international movement fighting to stop it. Organizers and people of conscience have mobilized the largest Palestine solidarity marches in US history, major labor unions have called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to military aid for Israel, activists have taken direct action to disrupt the war machine. How have these movements grown and changed in the past year? Where have they been effective? And how are they responding to ever-intensifying efforts to silence and repress political dissent?
In a wide-ranging discussion about the present and future of the Palestine solidarity and antiwar movements, TRNN sits down with Yara Shoufani, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which is also raising funds to support Palestinians in Gaza; Nadya Tannous, a PYM organizer who is also on the steering committee of the “Mask Off Maersk” campaign; Dennis Kosuth, a registered nurse and member of the Labor for Palestine coalition; and Marcelina Pedraza, an electrician with the United Auto Workers and member of Labor for Palestine.
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Ju-Hyun Park:
Welcome to The Real News Podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I’m Maximillian Alvarez. We’re more than a year into Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza, and this bloodbath is now spiraling into what could become a regional war with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to unleash on Lebanon. The same horrors Israel has reigned down on Gaza and threatening to escalate missile attacks on Iran. As we record this, Israel is ramping up its campaign of depopulation and annexation committing massacres in Jabaliya in the north of Gaza.
Ju-Hyun Park:
While this genocide has unfolded in front of our eyes over the past year, we’ve also seen mounting international resistance from mass protests to direct actions taken to disrupt the war machine. People of conscience in the US and Canada have played significant roles in growing this resistance movement. North America was the epicenter of the student encampment movement this spring, and on top of calling for a ceasefire, more major labor unions have recently joined the call for an arms embargo of Israel.
Maximillian Alvarez:
As we officially crossed the solemn anniversary of October 7th, and as we head into the final three weeks before the presidential elections here in the United States, and as the threat of more war, death, and destruction rises, it is critical for us to take stock of where things are with the Palestine solidarity and anti-war movements here in North America and beyond, how have these movements grown and changed in the past year? Where have they been effective and how are they responding to the ever intensifying efforts to silence and repress political descent?
Ju-Hyun Park:
For this conversation, we’re extremely grateful to be joined by the Palestinian solidarity activists in North America from the Palestinian Youth Movement and labor for Palestine. But before we begin, we’d like to extend our gratitude on behalf of the entire real news team to you. Our listeners and supporters. We’re so proud to be a nonprofit newsroom that tells the stories corporate media will not. And as part of that commitment, we don’t take any ad money or corporate donations ever. We depend on listeners like you to make our work possible. So please consider becoming a sustainer of the Real News today@therealnews.com slash donate. And without further ado, we’d like to introduce our guests, Yara Sani and Nadia Tanus of the Palestinian Youth Movement, Marcy Raza of United Auto Workers and Dennis Kosuth of the Chicago Teachers Union, both of whom also organized with Labor for Palestine. Welcome to The Real News everyone, thanks so much for being here.
Yara Shoufani:
Thanks so much for having us on the show.
Ju-Hyun Park:
So let’s start with some introductions and reflections. Could you each go around and introduce yourselves and your organizations as well as the role that your orgs have played in the movement over the past year?
Yara Shoufani:
Yeah, thanks so much for having us on the show. I’m Yara. I’m with the Palestinian Youth Movement and I’m actually based in Toronto, Canada, but the PYM is an international organization with chapters across the United States, Canada, and also Europe. And the PYM has really taken up a role over the last year of trying to mobilize and bring people together from various walks of life in order to fight to see an end to the genocide of our people. We have taken to the streets and our various locales, organizing local protests, but also protests that respond to international days of action that we’ve issued. For example, just recently on October 5th, calling for an International Day of Action to commemorate the one year of the genocide, which was taken up in over 30 cities across the world. And we’ve also organized national actions, so National March in DC just last year as well as a national march in Ottawa and Canada.
And also we’ve organized national actions in protest of particular developments. So in the Sea, we organized in a national action and protest of Netanyahu’s Congress visit just a few months ago. So we’ve been really trying to bring different sectors of society with primary focus on the Palestinian Arab and Muslim communities in the action towards fighting against this genocide, calling for an arms embargo, really trying to sever the ties and the weapons flow that continues to flow from the United States and Canada to the Zionist entity. And of course, trying to raise consciousness of people across the world through educational and media work to really try to bring as many people into the movement. The Palestinian Youth Movement has also acted as a convener of various organizations. So just a few months ago in May, we organized the People’s Conference for Palestine in order to bring the movement together to basically ask some of the questions that we’re asking today, questions like What is working? What strategies and tactics do we need to change? How can we be as effective as possible? And just in the last few weeks, we’ve also launched an international fundraiser to be able to stand with our people and support their steadfastness now that they’ve been withstanding a genocide for a year remaining firm on the land amidst some of the most horrible conditions that we’ve seen to date.
Dennis Kosuth:
Good afternoon. Thank you again so much for hosting this conversation. My name is Dennis. As was said earlier, I am a registered nurse in Chicago. I’ve been a nurse for almost 20 years, and I work in Chicago public schools as well as a hospital. And so I’m a member of the Chicago Teachers Union as well as National Nurses United. And I’m here representing nobody but myself. I certainly a member of those unions, but I’m here in my own capacity as an activist. Organizationally I’ve been or am part of several organizations, worker based organizations in Chicago here we have Chicago Labor Network for Palestine. It was just started recently and it’s basically a network of maybe about a dozen different people who are members of about a dozen different unions in the Chicago area from SEIU to CTU to UAW. We’ve got doctors’, councils, graduate students, a whole layer of activists who are unified in being in solidarity with awful genocide that is ongoing and obviously spreading into other areas of the region.
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And I do really appreciate the work that POYM has done. I know myself and a crew of people from who happen to be teachers and educators, and I know I saw Marcy there as well, were in Detroit at the conference and really appreciated the space that was created because I think we need more of those spaces. The work that we’ve been doing here, and I’ll just wrap up on this, is really basic education. Most people are appalled by what they see in the news. This is a genocide that’s being live streamed. I think that they are horrified by what’s happening but aren’t sure what they can do about it. They understand their tax monies are funding this outrageous murder. They understand the politicians that they maybe even had voted for are giving unconditional support for the crimes that Israel continues to commit on a minute by minute basis in their name, in the name of their government, and yet are trying to figure out how do they do something about it.
And so the things that we’ve done have been very basic. Unfortunately. I think that it’s the basis upon which we continue to build and grow our movement. So it’s been educational sessions. We organized an educational session that was hosted at our union hall at the Chicago Teachers Union, 150 people, workers from across the city came together and learned from Palestinians about what the history of the situation is. This did not start October 7th, this goes back 75 if not longer years. We’ve also organized contingent at rallies that have been going on in Chicago and we’ve hosted just informal events where we can get together, educate each other and learn about how we can continue to resist in any way possible against these horrible crimes. So I’ll leave it at that.
Nadya Tannous:
Hey y’all, I’m Nadya Tannous, and I’m a long-term organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. I’m also a member of the MAs Off Maersk campaign steering committee. And so I’ll talk a lot and shala on this time together about the demand of arms embargo and the way that the PYM is picking up that demand as building beyond ceasefire and actually answering to the moment of an onslaught in the north of Gaza, an onslaught in the south of and also Israel’s increased slaughter across the region. Mask off. Maersk was launched at the People’s Conference and it’s trying to target a lead in the logistics industry, which is Maersk. It’s one of the largest logistics companies on the planet Danish, and has actually a long history in of itself of fueling us imperialistic wars from South Africa to Vietnam, and also they have a history of funneling weapons to Nazi Germany. So they have a long history and legacy of engagement with wars and profiteering off of worth. It’s our role to be able to expand and say not just who are culpable, what are the weapons companies that are taking a role in producing these mechanisms of terror, but what are the veins and the arteries of the system that helps those weapons move from the us, from Europe, from the global south in order to be used against our brothers and sisters in Yemen, in Iran, Nan, and of course in Stein. Really happy to be here.
Marcelina Pedraza:
Hey everyone, thank you for having me. My name is Marcie Pedraza and I’ve been a union electrician for 25 years, started in construction, but for the past, let’s see, over 10 years, I’ve been in UAW first in Belvedere Local 1268 where I just came from a rally where President Sean Fein was and Senator Bernie Sanders. And right now I’m working at for Chicago Assembly Plant for the past eight years, UAW local 5 5 1. And as many are aware, the UAW called for a ceasefire back in December. Its one of the first big unions, international unions to do that. But a lot of us on the local level felt like we could take it a step further and not just call for ceasefire, but demand BDS and stand in solidarity with Palestinian trade unionists and workers because that’s what we do, right? As workers, we join picket lines, we don’t cross them.
And it was just a really quick resolution that I put together, basically sharing information or getting information from the Palestinian trade Unionist call and also other UAW locals that have passed similar resolutions. And when we had our meeting in January, we weren’t able to do it the month before because we didn’t have a quorum. I presented it to a few of my members at other committees that I’m in, and thankfully it passed overwhelmingly, but I did get a lot of pushback from it afterwards because in the beginning a lot of people just didn’t really understand what it was about. And when they heard the words stopped transporting weapons to Israel and stop giving money, people were kind of confused. And even in the meeting I brought it up as, look, this is our tax dollars that are paying for this. And it has been going on, like Dennis mentioned for a really long time.
And basically I wanted to bring this up and then also try to educate some other members that were having questions and came to me not in a hostile way necessarily. So the important thing for us anyway was education. So I’m also a member of UAWD and we have a Palestine education committee and we put together these panels to help get more information to the membership on what exactly and what has been going on. And we’ve been involved in several demonstrations and big ones in Chicago all the way from the beginning, well since last year, but also up to the recent march on the DNC, also with this recent Monday, the work stoppage for October 7th or the one year anniversary. And for this question of why we’re doing this, we have to stand together just in preparing for this today. I don’t even know at this point.
I’ve spoken on this so much and it’s just, it’s so disheartening, but I still have hope and I still say we need to keep the pressure on, keep going on the streets and protest and keep demanding. Our latest call for UAW is for our IEB, our international executive board to divest from Israeli bonds. There’s something like $400,000 and there’s a mass call now to email and call all our regional directors to do that because last time they voted not to divest. So trying to get them to vote for divestment again, and I’ll just stop there. Take care.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Thank you all so much for those introductions. And I want to kind of build on something that you just said, Marcy, right? That feeling of despondency that so many of us have, especially after we have crossed the grim anniversary of a year of genocide, right? And Yara, I want to toss this to you and Nadia from the Palestinian Youth Movement because you and I first met in person when I was in DC in November with Jesse nor covering what was then the largest Palestine like solidarity protest in this country’s history. I mean, it was massive, it was forceful and it was really powerful. And of course those protests in different locales around the country in Canada have not stopped. And that forceful speaking of truth to power is not nothing. But over a year we of course have seen that power is not listening. And so I think the question on a lot of our viewers and listeners minds is how has the movement itself developed over the course of the past year? How has PYM specifically adapted its tactics or adapted to this sort of environment? And how have you seen the impact of PYM like on people living here in Canada and the US over the past year?
Yara Shoufani:
Yeah, max, I think this question of we’ve been protesting for a year now and we know that our mass mobilizations in the imperial core are not going to be the thing that ends this genocide. And I think that that’s a conversation that we’ve had organizationally, both internally and externally to say that we know that there are going to be critical developments on the ground, regional actors, international actors that are going to play a really decisive role on the conclusion of this genocide. But for us, when we think about why is it that we continue to mobilize, why is it that we continue to bring people together week after week for whether it be national mobilizations or local ones? I think there’s a couple of things that come to mind. One is the expression of solidarity with Gaza itself to make sure that our people back home understand that people all across the world stand with them.
We saw this during the student in ADA where you had signs being written in Gaza that we’re thanking students at Columbia, for example. So there’s this kind of international dimension that’s taking place where our people in ZA and Lebanon understand that they’re not alone and that while the most powerful elements of the ruling elites and the corporations of North America and Europe stand with their enemies, the people of these nations stand with the people of. So that’s I think been a critical segment. But I think another really important reason why mass mobilizations are effective is that they allow for us to articulate our demands and they allow for us to bring people together under these demands who don’t go back home and then just put up their legs and do nothing until the next mobilization actually, these mass mobilizations allow for people to the first time in their lives be introduced to political organizing.
They come to a protest. I mean, even for me, some of when I think about what is the earliest stages that drove me into organizing, I think about the 2014 assault on ZA and going to mobilizations as I was younger with my mom and the way in which mobilizations can really transform the way that a person thinks, allow for them to connect with other people At these mobilizations, you’ll see contingents, like for example, you may have a healthcare contingent where people are able to actually connect with other people who work in the same sector as them and then strategize about what they’re going to do around ensuring that the healthcare sector and healthcare workers are able to express through their unions or through their professions the need for the protection of hospitals, for example, ina. And so there’s a way in which these mass mobilizations are actually, they act as a site for the raising of consciousness, but then also they bring people into to further organizing.
And I think that that’s really one of the most important things. Putting the mass mobilizations aside just for a minute, we’ve really been trying to focus on how can we build as broadly as possible with various organizations and sector-based formations. So I know a lot of y’all mentioned the People’s Conference for Palestine, that was a key part of the conference, having panels, for example, that were discussing educators and how are educators dealing with the question of Palestine at elementary schools, at high schools on university campuses. We had student panels, panels discussing the labor movement and various sectors of the labor movement. And so I think that that’s also one of the other critical things to name is what we’ve seen in the last year has been a huge transformation of society where not a single sector or path or walk of life or identity-based group or any of these areas has gone untouched on the question of Palestine and people have been introduced to Palestine, some people have had their commitment to Palestine and to anti-war movements and organizing and anti imperialism reasserted through this period.
So I think that that’s mean, of course we can say it’s not enough and we want to do more and we continue to try and do more, right? We continue to try to re-strategize and how can we actually strengthen the work that we’re doing in order to try everything that we possibly can to stop this genocide? But we also know that the work that we’re doing is playing is having a critical impact, and I know we’ll talk more about this in relationship to labor and the elections and so on, but I think it’s clear that we’ve been able to in the last year make Palestine unavoidable in a way that’s brought so many sectors together in order to advance the struggle. And maybe I’ll pass it to Nadia to also talk a little bit about Maersk and the way in which you’ve actually taken up the arms embargo campaign.
Nadya Tannous:
Yeah, I think just to build on what Yada has said already, one of the other roles that I think we’ve taken as the PYM, as a grassroots organization of Arab and Palestinian youth in the diaspora is trying to reestablish what it means to politically engage as Palestinians and Arabs in our own and also revive a historic role that the diaspora has had with our struggle around the world, knowing that everything from students in North America or students in Europe and their role in the Palestinian revolution is being mirrored at this time in 2024 as we enter an Israeli genocide against our people where the US is playing the pair with Israel, we know that Israel’s economy, for example, is not the military, rather is not just part of Israel’s economy, it is Israel’s economy. And so knowing that those policy decisions, the number and weight of the martyrs that we’ve seen in the past year are all in alignment with the US foreign policy that is the backbone of Zionism and is the backbone of Israel and our region.
And so what does it mean to take up our responsibility as folks organizing inside of the Imperial Corps against the empire and take up that historic approach of solidarity also with those inside of the empire who are fighting against the exact same forms of oppression? I think that this also drives us, and I’m grateful that we come from an internationalist politic and an international struggle because we can see the impacts that that has on where we go and what our trajectory is. I want to highlight that Azi UD where the people stand with fundraiser because this is exactly an example of the PYM convening, the movement, trying to take up the role and responsibility of those of us outside of Philistine supporting the steadfastness of our people to be able to have a say. So what about the day after genocide? We want our people to be there to have a say the day after.
We want to be able to convene our people and say, rather than helplessness or just one type of engagement, what comes after the rally? What goes into the political education sessions? There’s an agency, there’s a role for every single person who is in solidarity with full stand and one of them can be trying to move resources to support the steadfastness and presence of our people on the ground in re who have Despited, Israeli and US policy and immense murder, torture and unnameable violence, been able to remain, been able to confirm their conviction to stay on the land and to fight for something bigger than them, which is a free Palestine from the river to the sea and the return of all refugees, the freedom for political prisoners and being able to uphold those national demands that we have as Palestinians. I think secondly, going back to the idea of attacking the military industrial complex and that being at the core of the Zionist entity, we know that logistics companies are the things that make all of these different weapons or components of war accessible to the empire.
So we can see that after the November mobilization in DC, we saw a ceasefire in December that was for a few days. We know that part of the driver for that ceasefire temporary was that Israel actually ran out of smart bombs. They were down to 10% of their weapons because they have been using their ammunition indiscriminately just last week they unloaded 50 bullets into one school girl in the West Bank, so they’re running through their munitions because they are indiscriminately targeting Palestinian people now Lebanese people with those munitions. What that does is show us that there is a very heavy burden, whether from Germany in the case of the smart bombs or in terms of munitions coming directly from the United States. And so how do we take a role in interrupting that flow of weapons in order to enact a people’s arms embargo not from the politicians above who for a year have not listened to the mass majority of people here in the US in Canada or in Europe, but actually enacting it from below.
Logistics companies are everywhere and so are we. Our movement for a free Palestine and people in solidarity with the Palestinian Lebanese people are everywhere. And we can see this actually when we talk about why Maersk Maersk is an industry leader. So Maersk was targeted now three times in the Red Sea. They were some of the first ships targeted by an law because of carrying a weaponry, and that was really important for us to watch Maersk. They actually pulled out of the Red Sea. They were the first logistics company to do so and all of the other logistics companies followed. That’s what it means to be an industry leader. When we talk about Maersk in labor, we’re talking about Maersk’s role in automation. So they actually are continuing to automate their ports, which is cutting jobs from workers in the longshoreman union or also I-L-A-I-D-U. They have lots of tiffs with the ITF for example.
And so we see them creating unsafe work conditions. We see them automating their ports and taking away jobs from workers. And so what we know is that most workers who work for MA are very unhappy with them. Even in ports that are historically conservative like the Port of Los Angeles, there’s actually an edge there for us to be able to work in different labor sectors and speak and talk through both the historic role of workers and being able to make a stand and actually stop the flow of weapons and goods, much like how we see the ILWU Local 10 and the role in South Africa historically, we also see this ability to confront and combat the shrinking left. As Dennis said, it’s hard sometimes you have the most basic things, but you have to do them because it’s a long struggle. And so how do we actually give an opportunity through the MA campaign to say, look, we’re building something different.
This is about international political education. There’s an organization corporation that you see every single day, and they are absolutely complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel is reliant on them to continue this genocide. And so we need to highlight the importance of worker solidarity with the global south sector-based formations as Yara spoke to, whether that be labor for Palestine or comrades who are on this call. And also we see a growing development of unionized tech, so out of the Bay area. That’s extremely important if we talk about the role of weaponry and surveillance in Israeli domination and the development of artificial intelligence and that importance in this war. And so being able to actually formulate what do we do next? That’s been part of what the PYM has tried to pick up at this time are the demands that are mass. We can engage people and taking up small cumulative steps to confront the genocide from inside of empire. And so it’s not just about holding our politicians accountable, it’s about making a material difference in the moment that we’re living in a year more of genocide is absolutely unacceptable. What are we going to do about it?
Maximillian Alvarez:
And for those at home playing the dystopian bingo game, Maersk is the very same Danish shipping giant that chartered the container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge and collapsed it here in Baltimore earlier this year.
Ju-Hyun Park:
It’s a horrific game of bingo indeed that we are playing these days, but as Yara and Nadia are really helping us understand our role in this moment is really to build a society-wide confrontation with the genocide and those who are not only just enabling it and financing it, but really in many ways benefiting from and directing it who sit in the halls of power here in our own country. Now I want to pivot a little bit back to our friends from Labor for Palestine, and I want to talk about the specific stakes for the working class. In this movement. We’ve talked about the role that workers play as really the gears within the empire itself and how we all need to be working together to build that confrontation from within the belly of the beast. But I’m wondering if you can also speak more to what is really at stake for us as members of the working class as just part of a common humanity in the struggle for Palestine, and how is that factoring in to both the ways in which that you are engaging in this struggle and that you see other fellow workers beginning to take interest and exhibit commitment to what we’re doing here?
Dennis Kosuth:
I think that’s a great question. In terms of what its stake, I think it’s the future of humanity. The slogan that’s been talked about in many spaces is that Palestine will free us all is not about them. People who are suffering under the Israeli onslaught in the region, at about the world, about a dynamic, about a system that has been in place, not just in that region, but around the world of oppression, of racism, of profiting over people. The fact that this country spends trillions of dollars on not just murdering the people in Gaza and now the West Bank and now Lebanon and on and on, but around the world. And so I think it is calling into question that system for many people, just like the uprising that took place following the murder of George Floyd. I think it’s opened people’s eyes to what kind of society we actually exist in.
And it’s making people question what is their role in that society? Am I a passive bystander just watching something happening or do I have a role in taking action? Can I do something about it? And so that’s I think an important question that many people and hopefully more and more are grappling with in particular young people. And I’ve really been inspired as a labor activist and seeing the campus take encampments. We had several of them here in Chicago, whether it was DePaul University, which went on for some time, university of Chicago, Northwestern, and then the School of Arts Institute, I think for a number of hours they were able to hold space until the police came in and unfortunately cleared them out. But there is a labor aspect to those struggles as we see with every struggle in a direct sense in that many grad students are organized into unions here in Chicago.
It was United Electrical Workers, both at University of Chicago and that Northwestern that were very involved in this fight for freedom and for divestment. And that DePaul raised the question of labor organizing as well in the sense that they had two people who worked for DePaul and were discontinued in their rock jobs. One of them was an adjunct professor. She taught a health class, I mean an optional question, asking people to reflect on what are the health impacts for the people in Palestine with this ongoing war. And for that, she was rewarded with having her classes basically canceled for the next upcoming semester. And even though DePaul did an investigation and determined that their action was unjust, they still chose not to renew her. There was another individual who worked there as a security, basically was a contracted or for a company which contract DePaul contracted with.
And apparently DePaul thought he was too friendly with the students and the Palestinian students in particular for treating them as equal human beings as everyone else. And so he was also reassigned away from DePaul. And one of the things the professor said is that if we had a union at this school, maybe they wouldn’t have treated me in this way. And I think that’s the links that we can begin to make with so many more workers in terms of why this issue is an issue for labor, why Palestine is a labor issue. Because many of us are suffering in the sense of people who are specifically losing their jobs due to just speaking out about the issue and saying the truth, which apparently in this country is not allowed and we know why it’s allowed. They want to manufacture consent. They want to make us feel like the state of Israel has to be supported no matter what that to be against.
Zionism makes you antisemite. They put these lies and these myths and they further them because they do want us complicit. They do want silent. And what we have to remember is that our history is not of sile simplicity, but of standing up and fighting back. My own father was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, and when he was brought into the army that Anor movement was already deep within the army. And so he learned through his own experience that his side was not the US army was actually to Vietnamese resistance and that made him a lifelong activist and socialist. And I think those are the kinds of things that are similarly happening, hopefully more and more so the people as they engage with this issue, as they learn more about it, they identify who they’re to be in soldered with, decide that they want to stand.
And it’s not Israel, it’s the people who are being destroyed but also standing up and take inspiration from the people of Palestine and Gaza. As we saw, and I’ll wrap up on this, in the 2011 uprising that took place all across that region, it inspired many people even here in the Midwest, people in Wisconsin who were occupying their capital, identified with the Egyptian workers who were rising up to fight against that dictatorship. And one of the common slogans I remember from going up there was we want to walk like an Egyptian. So I think more and more that people can see the fight that’s happening in Palestine identify to be on that side and say, we want to also be Palestinians and fight back against all the oppression that is taking place in this own country and in their own spaces.
Marcelina Pedraza:
Yes, well said Dennis. And when I try to get this whole question and relate it to workers, it’s a big question. And workers, we do control the means of production, but until we are organized and we mobilize, well, if we do achieve those goals, we can really shut this country down. Like what we saw, what happened with the recent dock workers strike, and I forgot to mention earlier that one of our actions was we went to a protest, a company called Am General in South Bend, Indiana, where it’s represented by UAW, they may Humvees, which are used for war and sent to Israel, and we’re not coming for jobs. We’re not trying to kill your jobs or make your jobs non-existent. We need to start talking about for real, this just transition to a peace economy. We think of the billions of dollars over the years that are going towards the military and war and genocide.
What could those resources be used for? Not just here, but on a global scale. I’m also an environmental justice activist and you can’t ignore the climate crisis and our recent events, the hurricanes and tornadoes and all the money that could be used giving people basic needs like shelter, electricity, running water, fixing our broken schools, making new green schools, having universal healthcare. All this money could go to give houses to everybody, shelter for everyone, and we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our moral compass for a job. So we also need to start talking about what things can we be making as workers to better our society? Solar panels, it could be or it could be mass transit, not necessarily all replacing what on the electric vehicle committee, not replacing one gasoline car for an electric car. We need to talk bigger and have a better access to public transportation, safer, faster, and pedestrian access or bicyclists and things like that.
And these mass actions have really built solidarity. And I’ve heard this over and over and it’s a great reminder that it’s not just building solidarity around Palestine, it’s building solidarity within your unions, things you might be fighting for in your own workplace or other issues that you’re passionate about. So that’s a good thing that’s come of this. I’ve met so many people and learned so much, especially about the Maersk campaign. It’s just sickening all the money from Google workers, I mean the tech and the ai, and it’s really scary this world that what’s happening in the world, it’s really scary, but it doesn’t have to be. We can continue to build solidarity and figure out how we’re going to continue to mobilize, organize people so that we can use our resources in a better way and not just killing people and continuing this genocide because they’re coming for us, right?
They don’t want us to protest. They don’t want us to be in the streets. People are getting fired for using their basic rights to demonstrate the freedom of speech. We need to protect those workers’ rights as well. And if you think that this doesn’t relate to you wait until the next strike and they say, well, no, you can’t strike anymore. You can’t protest anymore, you can’t demonstrate. And then they’re going to say, well, why? Well, because of all that, what happened with the Palestinian protest, now it’s the law. They’re going to try to make it the law. We can’t even have a picket line. So that’s where I try to really bring it home for people that don’t see how it relates, but it is going to affect all of us as workers.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I could genuinely talk to you all for at least three more hours, but I know we’ve got to wrap up soon and everyone is extremely busy and we really appreciate the time that you’ve given so generously thus far. I want to kind of wrap up here by talking about where things go now, right? We are recording this on Friday, October 11th. We are officially less than a month away until the US elections. And of course, Palestine has become a huge issue in the political arena, not just for this election, but as y’all have mentioned, it has become the question that everyone needs an answer to that everyone has to confront in some way or another. And it really is reshaping the dynamics of this current presidential election. And of course, depending on who wins that election, that’s going to set the stage for what the future of Palestine and Israel looks like, what the resistance is going to look like. So I wanted to ask all of y’all if we could do one more turn around the table and talk about where the Palestine solidarity, the anti-war, the anti-imperialist movements go heading into the election. How are y’all calculating the election itself as something that is going to determine the landscape of struggle after November, but also how are y’all planning to continue that struggle regardless of the election results? So let’s go back around the table and talk about that.
Yara Shoufani:
So I think for us, we are under no illusions about either of the candidates when it comes to Palestine. I mean, at the end of the day, the most vicious Zionist genocide has been carried out under a Democratic presidency with the Democratic administration. But we also know that the Palestine movement has been able to create crisis for the political class and for the ruling elites all across this country. And we actually saw that with Joe Biden’s stepping down of the election. I mean, it’s clear that he was an extremely unpopular candidate and the Democrats saw that he was an unpopular candidate. But what is one of the things that made him unpopular? Arguably one of the central things that made him unpopular despite the Democratic’s establishments attempt to make it about his debate performance. It was the genocide. It was Biden’s continued support Israel and for Israel’s genocide that made him extremely unpopular.
And while the Democrats have tried to kind of rally people around Kamala, and certainly there’s been some level of energy around her campaign within democratic circles for the Palestinian era, Muslim communities, for a lot of young people, Kamala’s position is the same. We’re seeing is a continued support for Israel. Continuing to say that an arms embargo was not on the table. We saw this kind of posturing or sloganeering or saying that she supports a ceasefire but is not ready to do anything that actually would get a ceasefire on the table, primarily in arms embargo. And even just in the last few days, we’ve seen the Democrats essentially say that they are not working towards ceasefire discussions in Lebanon and that they support Zionists states targeted. I think they used a language like this, like targeted attacks on Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah infrastructure. That’s the language that they used.
And so the Democrats are making it clear and they’re continuing to isolate themselves from the Arab, the Muslim, Palestinian communities, voters and also young people, and honestly people from all walks of life who don’t want to see this genocide continue. And so I think for us, we’ve just been really clear that our work is going to continue irrespective of the outcomes of this election. Our work is going to continue and we need to build as mass and broad of a movement as possible in the event that the outcomes of this election result in really hard repression against all of our movements, right against progressive organizing and anti-war organizing and anti-imperialist organizing. But nonetheless, our position has just been that we’re going to continue to build through this election, that we’re not going to allow for our people to be kind of pushed into voting for a candidate that is repeatedly saying that she will not do anything to stop the flow of weapons to Israel and who has overseen the genocide against our people.
Dennis Kosuth:
I think it’s definitely going to be irrelevant, to be honest with you. Who wins in terms of the day-to-day for the people who are being massacred and oppressed by Israel right now? I just speaking for myself, I’m not sure how it’d be any different if Trump wins over Kamala come November 5th. It’s got to be other avenues. I think if we’re going to bring about actual tangible changes in that region vis-a-vis our role in this country. And as people know, in my mind, it’s an unfortunate position that unions by and large support the Democratic party. They give lots of money to the Democratic party. They tell people to go and campaign. My own union is trying to recruit people to go to Wisconsin, Michigan and knock doors, and I understand that position. I will not be partaking in that. I found it interesting when we had a meeting recently, they only got a couple of volunteers out of a room of 100 who are willing to go up to Wisconsin.
So I’m not sure we can extrapolate too much from that, but I think it is going to be a point that people are trying to think about when we were organizing to join the protest and organize a contingent as the Chicago Labor Network for Palestine or on the DMC, the way we talk with people is that we need to organize around demands. We need to organize own positions. We don’t need to organize around individuals, especially those individuals have a track record of not supporting our causes. And that’s what’s going to, I think hopefully get people continue to mobilize and organize and experience is going to be a stern teacher. When we were at the DNC, you had the uncommitted activists who were inside their attempting to do things from that angle. And I understand that position, and I think it was an important instruction to many people who watched that maybe hoped, oh, maybe they’ll allow a Palestinian to say something at the DNC in endorsement of Kamala no less.
And they didn’t even allow that to happen. So I think a lot of people paid attention to that. They learned from that. And hopefully we can talk about how do we build beyond that and not depend on these politicians to do things for us, but to move beyond that. And there’s a history of that. You look at Fannie Lou Hamer who was an activist with the Civil Rights Movement, who attempted to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the Democratic Party convention and learn very certainly that that party is based on racism, was founded on racism and was not going to be easily loosened from that. The same thing is true when it comes to imperialism and the backing of us power and might around the world. Kamala Harris said it herself, just listen to her words. She wants to have the fiercest, most powerful deadly force around the world.
And then it’s a disgusting thing to think should be coming out of anybody’s mouth, let alone the party that supposedly represents us. And so I’ll just finish by saying that bottom up people of power is the only thing that ever brought about change in this country or around anywhere around the world. It’s not by spending the two minutes it takes in the ballot box. I don’t begrudge somebody who wants to go and vote for a Kamala thinking that that’s going to reduce harm and create space for more organizing. That’s a position that I can understand and hear. But I also think that anything that’s decent has happened in this country, whether it’s civil rights, women’s rights, voting rights, an movement to stop the war in Vietnam, labor rights the weekend, all those things happened because massive numbers of people got out in the streets and made this country ungovernable. And if we’re going to stop the genocide in Palestine, that’s the kind of movement we’re going to have to build. And that’s the kind of movement that we’re going to continue to build moving forward after November 5th. And people should just keep an out for that kind of stuff and continue to organize your own communities is what I’ll share.
Nadya Tannous:
I think one thing coming out of this moment is real understanding that an anti-imperialist anti-war movement is what we need. I think we can learn from the lessons of the Vietnam War movement and understand why a conversation that excludes the gains of a liberation struggle and the demands of a liberation struggle leads to demobilization. I think that it’s our people on the ground here. It’s the people on the ground back home in our region that are going to push us to a different moment. And the Democrats are losing their black brown poor and working class young base. I think they’ve worked very hard to try and pit black and Palestinian people against each other. Forms of saying that Palestinian people and our demands around ending a genocide are contradictory to, for example, to what’s happening now in the south of the United States, the desecration of full communities because of two incalculable hurricanes.
And we can say actually it’s the US’ unending dedication to Israel, to Zionism in our region that is absolutely emptying the coffers of the United States, unable and unwilling to address our people. The United States doesn’t care how high the cost is if it comes to supporting Israel, they will take that cost every single time. And I appreciate what Dennis had said about a real anti-war movement developing inside of the ranks of folks who were drafted and those who were here and completely disillusioned with the US being any sort of peaceful broker. So we talk about successful moments of people and worker uprising in history. We need to remake those moments now. And we see that with the P-G-F-T-U statement really congratulating the accomplishments of the six largest unions in the US and calling for Biden to enact an arms embargo. The work of labor unions here was really felt back home.
And what Palestinians are asking now is for workers not to cross the picket line. So they’re asking specifically around workers not to handle military cargo or commercial vessels carrying military cargo personnel weapons. And so they also highlighted Maersk Zim. That’s what workers here, that’s what people here can do is not cross the Palestinian picket line altogether. Wherever we are, we can join at the end of October to phone bank and send demands to Maersk to actually confront Maersk in different targets. So we’ll release local actions happening at the end of October and really being able to confront this war machine. We know that the demands and the lessons that we have from this moment entering elections is that voting will not save us. And the Democratic Party is no interest in actually moving the demands of the people forward around Palestine and around any of the demands of against regional escalation.
And so I hope that we do not see a January where fascism continues to rise in the United States. I think the problem is we either stop organizing or we build to be able to bear the brunt of growing repression. And we do that through the people and through people power. So please also uplift. It’s as easy campaign. We’re trying to raise a million dollars to send to our people in genocide is not a metaphor. You either live or you die. And our people back home need our support. So visit the shut it down for Palestine website and engage the fundraiser when folks are getting together for holiday, think about making that a central part of the conversation about how we can do things, what we can do, because the movement will keep on building so that we can make successful moments of history in this time. And people back home deserve it and our people here deserve it.
Marcelina Pedraza:
Yes, thank you. And just thinking about this election and even the last election few elections, I think I made a comment on another one at the DNC one of your reporters, max, and somebody commented on what I said, it’s like, well, why isn’t she mentioning the other candidates? Because we think about this two party system and how they’re both, we’re so tired of it, they’re both just funded by big business and they don’t care about workers. And I know there are other candidates, Jill Stein, Dr. Cornell West, Claudia and Karina. But until we have a true movement and we can have these workers parties, these socialist parties, green parties, whatever they might be, we’re still stuck basically with these two. And how can you say, I believe Kamala said in the DNC, how can you say in one breath, like you stand with, you support Israel, yet we need a ceasefire.
When you’re literally supplying the fuel for a ceasefire, that just doesn’t make sense. And I think anybody can see that. My 13-year-old daughter can see that, and it’s just so sad. So I don’t want to take up too much more time because we’ve been here a while. I would just say keep up the pressure. Hold our electeds accountable from the local level to the top. As I attend these events, I run into quite a few politicians. And then first thing I say, even to our own president, Sean Fein, I said, we need to divest. Like, hi, I’m Marcie 5 5 1. When are we going to divest? Instantly. I just saw Bernie Sanders this morning in Belvedere. We’re trying to get Solanis to keep the promise and reopen the plant where I used to work. I gave Bernie Sanders the labor for Palestine button. I don’t know if he’s going to wear it.
He said, thank you very much, nice to meet you. Just whenever I can, I have that chance. But just continue to talking to your coworkers and organize in your community even. And if you would like to join a group, there’s labor for Palestine. We have UAW labor for Palestine, Chicago for Palestine, even in the UAW. We have UAWD, our rank and file caucus, which we’re the caucus that started one member one vote, and now we have direct elections in our union, whereas before it was all appointed position. So just starting, like I said, from the local level all the way to the top, until we can have, hopefully we can have peace in this world, I know seems like a lot and it’s far away. I just hope that more people will see this as an act of true love in our world.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Once again, I want to thank you all so, so much for joining us, and I promise we’re going to wrap up in one second, but the real news remains a 5 0 1 C3. We are not in the business of telling anybody how to vote. We are in the business of lifting up the voices from the front lines of struggle and giving, working people out there the information they need to act. And what we try to do every week with every production is answer the questions that we know our audience have. And so in that spirit, I just wanted to ask a follow-up question that I know folks have because they ask me all the time. And since we have you all here, I just want to do a quick rapid fire. Do you have a quick direct response to people who are wrestling with this who feel what you just described?
I know they feel that in their hearts. And essentially what they’ve told me is they’re like, look, max, I’ve got the choice between bad and worse. I’ve got the choice between a genocide perpetrated under Democrats, a genocide that I fully expect to be continued under Republicans, but under one, I have a national labor relations board that’s still functioning and allows me to be part of a union under another. I may have a national labor relations board that may not exist, and thus my union power is gone or under one, I have the ability to protest in DC under the other. One of Trump’s administration’s first actions in 2016 was after the inauguration protest where he tried to mass arrest J 20 protestors in charge over 200 with RICO charges. So people are trying to wrestle with this. They got three weeks left of the election. I guess what would you say to folks who are listening to this and are still, they’re in an impossible moral quandary. What would you say to folks there who are dealing with that right now?
Marcelina Pedraza:
Yeah, just to keep going on this, I mean, why live in Illinois? And we’ve been historically blue and some people say, well, it doesn’t matter because it’s going to go to the Democrats. But I mean, this time, I don’t even know. Like I said, at this Belvedere rally, there was a couple Trump flags across the street or right in front of the Union hall and they were just screaming and just being idiots. And I just remember what Chicago Teachers Union President Stacey Davis Gates said not too long ago when Biden was still the candidate that with him it would be less hard. And it resonated with me because obviously, yeah, we don’t want to go back 50 years. We don’t want to go back to where women don’t have the right to make decisions on their own healthcare or where you can’t marry who you love or you can’t protest things like that.
I understand that. It’s just that we need to make sure that people vote and vote with their beliefs and what they really, really believe in. And I know there’s some people that this is the one issue that is the decision maker for them. So they won’t vote for either candidate and that is their right. And I know so many people now who have never even wanted to participate in an election who are campaigning and making phone calls, phone banks and all that. And that’s great. I like to see more people getting involved and because they see that there is a scary option that we can be going towards. So that’s what is encouraging to me to at least see people do something about all of this.
Dennis Kosuth:
I’m happy to share next. I mean, I think it’s unfortunate that this country narrows things down to just this binary choice. And personally, I refuse to be defined by that choice. I think it’s worth remembering that less than half of people actually vote in these elections. And I think we have to ask why is that the case? I don’t think we actually live in a democracy. I don’t think people actually think that there is a tangible difference that happens when they pull the lever for whoever is at the top of the ticket. Because when you think about it, it was outrageous to me when you had the press secretary, the White House going on about who should be installed as a president of Venezuela saying the person with the most votes should be installed. And I think that’s an excellent point. But what happened in the year 2000?
What happened again in 2016? The person with the less votes is the person who got installed in the White House. What kind of sense does that make? And this country is going around and tell other countries how democracy should look. So I think that’s what they want to do, is make us feel like the only power that we ever have in our society is only to be pulling a lever. And that’s part and parcel of an ideology that they want to put upon us. That regular people who work for a living, whether you drive a truck or put needles in the people in a hospital, teach in a school, or turn a bolt in a factory, that you have no power, that you have no say in how the society should be run, will be run, lead that to the elite people who went to fancy universities and that will vote for before or two years and they’re the ones who make the hard decisions.
But we have to reject that framework in terms of how society moves forward. I’m not going to tell an individual how they want to vote on November 5th. People should do whatever they feel like. I think the most important thing we can do is to get engaged, get active organize in your community, whether that’s your school, your workplace, whatever the case may be, organize with other people and make a difference. I’ve been on strike four times in the past five years under Biden and under Trump, and the thing that made a difference was not who was in the White House, but the fact that and 28,000 other educators got out in the streets and fought for the things we want to. That’s what moves society forward, not who’s in the White House.
Yara Shoufani:
I really agree with that, and I’ll just share a couple of thoughts as a Canadian who is looking at this election from north of the border, but just to say I think, so the reality is that people of course, are in a difficult situation, but we also know that there’s an attempt to push people towards severing the struggle of the working class in the United States of marginalized and oppressed communities in the United States, severing that from the fight against imperialism, right? Or severing that from the fight against colonialism and what’s taking place in the global south, and I think that’s also at the center of this, is for us to be able to say, we reject this kind of dynamic, which says that Americans need to put their interests before the interests of the people who are on the receiving end of the bombs that are falling, right?
And that’s part of what building internationalism means, right? It means saying we need to build and rebuild an internationalist movement that is taking seriously the question of anti-war taking seriously the question of anti imperialism and anti-colonialism and not positioning progressive values in the United States as in contradiction with building that movement. And so I think that that’s the main contribution that I would offer because that’s been one of the really sad things to see. I think in the lead up to this election. It feels really similar to four years ago where you get this kind of narrative of democracy is on the line, American working, class rights are on the line, et cetera, et cetera. And this idea that Americans need to kind of prioritize these things and almost like this disdain for the Palestine in certain pockets you’ve seen it’s kind of like disdain for the Palestine movement.
Like how dare the Palestine movement impose on the movement, the working class movement or on other marginalized groups inside the United States and tell us that this genocide needs to be a deciding factor in the election. And it’s like, I think that that’s actually the thing that we need to fight most concretely against. I’m less interested in telling people how to vote at the election polls other than to say, like Dennis said, organize and commit to continuing to organize. But at the same time, I think what I am interested in is really challenging people to not buy into this positioning of internationalism against working class, the working class movement or other marginalized movements inside the United States.
Nadya Tannous:
As a final thought, I just came back from a delegation of Palestinian organizers from the US and Britain to the north of Ireland. We were in dairy for a week and spoke at length with different civil society leaders in organizers in the North, and particularly those who were the survivor of the families, of the survivors of Bloody Sunday in the Battle of the Bogside. I think being internationalist makes me think of the way that a Trump presidency will negatively impact Cuba in a time when situation is Cuba is the worst that it’s ever been under a democratic presidency and under Biden’s policies. And Trump will only make that worse. In the case of Ireland waiting on a reunification resolution from Britain and having the US being actually player in that decision, we know that a Trump presidency would severely impact that process. And however, it’s very clear that neither the Irish nor the Cubans will tell us in the United States how to vote.
And I think it’s because of that same principle. We know what it takes to wage our struggle from here. I do not believe that the Democratic party will protect us from fascism. I believe that they facilitate fascism and without a party on the left that’s actually protecting the rights of the people and actually being a force for revolution and for social democracy, we won’t have justice inside of the United States. And that’s why as a personal story, I am voting a third party. I think that we see an opportunity for a political wave to shift the way that we’ve been constantly positioned to choose between a rock and a hard place or worse and even worse. I know that long-term, these choices will have major impacts on the people of the United States and on the people globally. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are war moners.
I understand that Trump coming into power in January is going to have massive impacts on our people here. And I understand also in a different way, not the same that Kamala and Tim Waltz coming into power are going to have major impacts on the people here. But the fact of the matter is when we go from everything from Roe versus Wade to the protections of workers impact on not having universal healthcare, fema, all of these decisions are things that a democratic ticket are promising us. They are in power now and they are not doing it. As a Palestinian, I know that our community in large part will not vote for the Democratic party, which they have historically. And that’s not because they want Trump. It’s because we refuse to vote for the people who have facilitated the genocide against us. We do not trust them as arbiters of justice and peace.
And part of that is also teaching us the lesson that the United States never has been and never will be a positive broker in global affairs. They are imperialists, they are dependent upon expansion of capital and exploitation of the global south and of the people inside of this country in order to be able to make their ends meet. And they will continue to prioritize the benefit of the ruling class over the rest of us. It is our role to be able to organize, to push against them and to say, we will not fall into this trap of voting for a genocide or and genocidal fascists. We are going to have to push beyond that and figure out a new solution. It will not be easy. And I think that many of us come January, if we were to have this conversation again, we’ll have new things to offer, but I know that in the protection of our rights and being able actually push forward, we also are at a stalemate with a judiciary. And that is because of the lax role that the Democrats have played in actually establishing judges around this country who will uphold civil rights and allowing the Republicans to take on the judiciary as their own playground. Shame on them. They certainly have left us to the dogs and it’s up to us to organize and to build in solidarity with each other and those of the global south who will also be impacted by the choice of who comes into the White House in November.
Maximillian Alvarez:
You’ve been listening to the Real News podcast and we’ve been speaking with members of the Palestinian Youth Movement and Labor for Palestine. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, editor in chief here at the Real News Network
