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Building Bridges: Solidarity is a Verb: Educators Organize to Remove the ADL from Public Schools and Defend Palestinian Rights
Jul 21, 2025
Jul 21, 2025
Solidarity is a Verb: Educators Organize to Remove the ADL from Public Schools and Defend Palestinian Rights
Host Mimi Rosenberg is joined by teacher union activists Mary Najimy and Judy Greenspan to discuss the National Education Association’s (NEA) groundbreaking resolution to remove the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from public school programming. The conversation explores how the ADL’s role in education undermines anti-racist pedagogy and silences Palestinian voices, and situates the resolution within a broader labor-led movement to challenge settler colonialism and support global justice. The show also features Adam Weissman of Teaneck for Palestine, who denounces New Jersey’s proposed Assembly Bill A3558 and the weaponization of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a tool to suppress dissent and criminalize Palestinian solidarity.
00:00 Introduction – Public school unions confront genocide in Palestine
02:06 NEA resolution to remove the ADL: framing the issue
04:08 Historical context: labor, colonialism, and the Palestinian struggle
06:20 Why Palestine is a labor and education issue
08:15 Origins of the Educators for Palestine caucus in the NEA
10:36 Judy Greenspan on the ADL’s ideological agenda and repression of educators
13:57 ADL’s influence in schools, curriculum, and austerity exploitation
17:15 Alignment of Zionist, anti-DEI, and anti-union forces
20:27 McCarthyism 2.0: silencing Palestinian advocacy in education
22:50 Defining anti-Palestinian racism vs. Islamophobia
26:10 ADL as an agent of anti-Palestinian racism and political repression
29:43 Labor unions, economic justice, and political organizing for Palestine
33:05 How the NEA resolution was won: grassroots organizing and consciousness shift
37:22 Bargaining for the common good: reclaiming public education
40:30 NEA resolution language and next steps amid backlash
42:55 Building community campaigns: Drop the ADL from Schools
45:10 Intersectional education organizing: ethnic studies, funding, and curriculum
47:40 Adam Weissman on NJ Assembly Bill A3558 and the IHRA definition
50:15 How the IHRA definition criminalizes dissent and endangers free speech
52:49 Weaponizing antisemitism to suppress Jewish, Muslim, and pro-Palestine voices
54:15 How to fight back: protest at the New Jersey Statehouse and mobilize nationally
56:30 Final reflections – Organized labor as a force for liberation and a free Palestine
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Rough TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Mimi Rosenberg. And with Ken Nash, we’re building bridges. And today, solidarity is a verb. We’re off to public school. Unions confront genocide in Palestine. We’ll explore the intersections of public education and labor organizing.
Today’s discussion is one that’s already sparking national conversation. Later in the program, we’ll bring you a report on proposed legislation that aims to redefine anti-Semitism in a way that could criminalize or silence criticism of the Israeli state and the settler colonial project of Zionism by framing such critique as inherently prejudiced or stereotypical against Jewish people. Now,
the country’s largest teachers union. The National Education Association, the NEA, passed a groundbreaking resolution. Barring the Anti-Definition League, or ADL, from participating in curriculum development and instructional partnerships in public schools, this move challenges
long-standing assumptions about the ADL’s role in education and civil rights. But this isn’t just about curriculum. It’s about power. Whose shapes are classrooms? Whose histories are told? And how organized labor can be a force for justice in schools and across the globe. This isn’t just a conversation.
It’s a call to action. We’ll confront the urgent need to see our unions not just as economic bargaining units, but as political engines capable of organizing against colonialism. and the systemic bias that ideologically seeks to justify it at home and abroad. We’re joined by two teacher union activists who helped shepherd through a historic resolution to remove the Anti-Defamation League from public education spaces.
Mary Najimy was the president of the 110,000-member Massachusetts Teacher Association. She’s an ardent advocate for public education who. . . Its principles are grounded in her nearly three decades as a classroom teacher. She served as president of the Concord Teachers Association for 11 years, where she brought open bargaining,
a transparent approach to winning contract campaigns that is based on a broad vision for education and encourages member participation at every step to her local. She has the belief that public education is foundational to democracy, as does Judy Greenspan. A Jewish teacher and member of the Oakland California Education Association and Labor for Palestine has spent decades fighting against U. S.
militarism and for the human rights of black, Latinx, indigenous, and LGBTQ plus communities at home. And they both, again, fight. believe that public education is foundational to democracy. This is a program about reclaiming the soul of public education and the power of
organized labor to stand on the right side of history. I’m delighted to have both Mary and Judy with me. Good evening. Good evening. It’s really exciting to be here to talk about this really spectacular victory. Well, it’s great to be in a space that honors labor,
too, because I think the power of labor is often left out of this conversation about support for Palestine. Well, thank you. You saved me an additional sentence. Agreed completely. Absolutely.
I want to begin by unpacking the motivations, some of which you may have just mentioned, actually, but to develop them behind the resolution to remove the ADL influence from public education, and particularly since the ADL has long positioned itself as a civil rights partner for equal rights and justice.
Mary, Judy, let’s do the unpackaging. Yeah. So, Mimi, let me first start with the historic, put Palestine in a historical context that also includes labor. So the Palestinian struggle was born at the time of international liberation movements.
It has always been part of the struggle against colonialism, imperialism, and unfortunately, American institutions and Western institutions in general, like government, like press, like education,
have made Palestinian rights and liberation the exception. We actually call that the Palestinian exception. But the Palestinian Solidarity Movement today remains intersectional. It’s a movement against all forms of racism and oppression in the United States and around the world. And why is it a labor issue and why is it an education issue?
Well, it’s a labor issue because labor unions have always been about international worker solidarity. And it’s an education issue for many reasons. We are We are educators of young people, and we cannot tolerate infanticide and scholasticide. We bargain over the common good.
And that actually means what happens to our students inside of school and outside of school. We need to fight for First Amendment rights inside of school and on the streets and for academic freedom. So many of those factors were the factors that came into play. And this movement for Palestine within the NEA started About six or seven years ago, with a handful of us,
I’m Arab American myself, we formed an Arab American caucus inside of the NEA. And we had two or three anti-Zionist Jewish NEA members with us. And we started moving new business items just simply to raise awareness and education about Palestine. And, you know,
the debates on the floor were pretty harmful to Arabs, Palestinians, and any Jewish person who does not support the state of Israel. But we’ve grown. And I’ll talk about that history in a couple of minutes. I’d love Judy to jump in and really talk about the motivation. This was her new business item.
Let’s fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and then we’ll go back later and actually talk about the seven-year buildup that got us to victory. Okay. So I think I got the short straw in this action. I’m new to Educators for Palestine. I have worked a lot within OEA,
which is our local affiliate of NEA, and the Oakland Education Association from the very beginning. after October 7th, in November passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire, calling for an arms embargo, calling for an end to the genocide, and then to the U.
S. direction and complicity in the war. And we had a series of teach-ins throughout our school system, and it was the ADL, and their friends that were instrumental in trying to shut us down. Because the problem is the ADL is not a neutral party. They require strict adherence. You know,
they really have, although they don’t say it, they have an IRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is basically you cannot criticize Israel. Israel is a state that does no wrong. And and if you criticize it, doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish,
whether you’re Palestinian, whether you’re Arab American, whether you’re black or Latinx, then you are anti-Semitic. And this has been extremely harmful. And I think the reason why I really wanted to move this. And this resolution was because a lot of teachers don’t know that.
They’re in their classroom. The ADL materials are free. They have, you know, they have this horrible, I mean, really,
it’s a phony reputation as being anti-hate and racist. And for freedom and all this. And they’re not. In fact, they are behind a lot of the doxing and harassment that teachers and students and other progressive organizations and institutions. I mean,
they criticize the Black Lives Matter movement in the middle of the George Floyd protest. They are right now criticizing the demonstrations to fight ICE and to protect the Latinx community, which teachers are very involved in. They really play a pro-government, and I mean a pro-Trump role. They have met with the right-wing nationalists.
They have done so many horrendous things. I mean, very much like. . . Theodor Herzl and the founders of the State of Israel, who met with the Nazis and made a deal when they set up the State of Israel. So I felt very personally,
as a Jewish educator, I’m a member of JVP, Jewish Voice for Peace, and I’m also with Bay Area Labor for Palestine, that we should bring this to the floor of the convention. I will say, and we can talk about that later, I don’t think we were prepared to for the incredible backlash.
And we don’t have the machinery that the ADL and other groups have. So as soon as we passed it, and it was a very exciting vote. Well, let me just stop you for a minute, Judy. Yeah, I’m sorry. No, not at all. I just want to have a better grasp on what role the ADL has in schools. Is it in
inadvertent school by school role? Or is there something in state curriculum or state legislation that gives them an across-the-board, around-the-country particular role? They are known as a civil rights group, so I think we need to do a little bit more to unpackage the kind of hypocrisy there.
But explain a little bit more about what role the ADL actually does play in schools. And again, whether this is pretty much across the board. So ADL, as you’re saying, Mimi, they have created a facade that they are a civil rights organization. And because they have chapters across the country and because they are they have
resources to actually write curriculum their curriculum isn’t mandated but what they do is they build relationships with school departments and state departments of education they offer different tiers of curriculum so for example they have a program called no place for hate another program called world of difference They train educators to run professional development using their curriculum. And quite frankly, their curriculum is pedagogically not sound. It’s the other problem with their curriculum.
is that they don’t analyze, they don’t have kids look at systems and structures of power. They ask children to look at individual events of hate or bias or discrimination. Of course, all of those things are real and important, but they take discrimination as an individual act. And then they ask kids to sort of they never get into what we call Bloom’s taxonomy,
a higher order of thinking. They always sort of ask the kids to stay at very basic levels of thinking. But as Judy was saying, In public education, we are subjected to austerity budgets. So schools don’t have extra funding to pay teachers, for example, to write the curriculum or to buy outside curriculum.
So when the ADL offers these programs to schools, schools don’t have to take it, but they are motivated to do so because of austerity budgets. Now, the other thing that the ADL does when there are acts of anti-Semitism in a school. They offer to come in and do whole school seminars to teach children about their version of anti-Semitism.
So this is why they’re popular. Can I also say one more thing? I want to touch upon something Judy said earlier. When Judy was talking about who they’re partnering with, Right now, there’s a convergence of right-wing forces that are pushing the white and Christian nationalist agenda.
And I see them in three parts. So I see the pro-Israeli Zionist movement is attacking liberated ethnic studies and DEI initiatives because those initiatives. . . emphasize concepts like systematic and systemic oppression, colonialism, and imperialism. And the ADL does not want Israel to be part of that history, even though they are.
The second force is the right-wing anti-DEI movement. They’re joining the Zionist movement to weaponize antisemitism, to conflate the criticism of Zionism and Israel with anti-Semitism so that they can get rid of DEI. What they’re saying is DEI is anti-Semitic. And then the third force is the anti-union forces like My Pay My Say and the Mackinac Foundation,
who we saw a lot of activity from around the time of the Janus Supreme Court decision when the Supreme Court decided that union participation cannot be mandatory. So those forces are aligning with the right-wing DEI and the Zionist movement to weaponize anti-Semitism because they’re trying to convince union members. You’ll see all of these ads from My Pay My Say saying something to the effect of your union is anti-Semitic,
so drop your dues. So this is the convergence and they’re attacking K-12 public education and higher education because education in theory is supposed to be the great equalizer. But having the great equalizer does not align with the Christian and white nationalist movement. So that’s the politics behind what we’re seeing overall. Well, Judy, I would say.
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I would just say this is all really part and parcel of something that we’re fighting in all of our unions, and that’s the privatization and the destruction, the death of public education. Because these forces are not really for public education when it comes right down to it.
They are sending their children to private schools or charter schools. They’re doing everything they can to subvert public education. And there is very much – you can’t – It’s nothing less than a new McCarthy era around the issue of Palestine. Not only is there, as Mary said, a Palestine exception,
but people are being fired from their jobs. People are being deported or threatened with deportation for bringing Palestine into their classroom. We’ve had a number of teachers in the Bay Area and California who have gone before federal committees and been interrogated just about doing lessons, just about making their own lessons and not following the ADL model. Did you want me to say,
like, I could say, like, one, two minutes on the IRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance? Oh,
I think we need to, which will feed into the later part of our program as well, which is changing the semantics, changing the definitions. to conform to what is a support for a nationalist and ultra-nationalist exclusionary project rather than anything that has to do with culture or religion of Judaism.
So please do. Well, let me just say that there were two resolutions at the representative assembly, the NEA representative assembly from the Jewish caucus. And they were about the definition of anti-Semitism. One of them would have adopted the IRA. It’s called IRA.
And it basically says if you speak out against Israel, you are anti-Semitic. And it ties in Israel with Islam. with the history you know somehow it becomes it’s the history of the Jews and it’s it’s it becomes the greatest crime that you cannot not only that it’s like it’s it’s you’re speaking poorly about the hot somehow you’re diminishing your criticism of the Holocaust if you support Palestine and if you criticize Israel and that’s really the fundamental part of it that’s the that’s the weapon
the weaponization of really the liberation struggle that’s going on in Palestine that’s being used against teachers and educators and other people. And if this is adopted, and there is a bill that’s coming up, there’s also a bill, for example,
in California and other places where that just basically forbids the teaching of Palestine in the classroom. AB 715 in California does that. So it’s really at a time when we need to support Palestinian people at a time when the genocide has stepped up beyond any anything that we could imagine, you know,
that they’re trying to break. our solidarity movement, our working class solidarity movement by attacking the unions, and also, of course, tear people away from supporting the people of Palestine. So IRA is actually very dangerous.
It has been criticized because, you know, it really, it’s been criticized for basically stopping any criticism. Yeah. I want to double back for a moment. Mary, I want to ask you, so we have this, at best, puffery
that the ADL brings to what is supposed to be dislike, bias, hatred, or negative behavior to people of Jewish ancestry, which to me is whether that’s cultural, religious, and so on,
I. . . I definitely do not believe that in theocracies, nor do I believe that the Jews ever constituted a state that was dismantled. But in any event, so they deal with these things. Meanwhile, there is Palestine.
that exists. So where does the issue of Palestine and the Palestinians come in or not come in? How does the ADL deal with that? And maybe you can help us with something else as well, which we talked about a bit offline. And that is, is this about Islamophobia? Or is this about anti-Palestinian racism? And how are we to understand the differentiation?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m glad you asked that. Let me actually start with that, because that will help your audience understand the first question that you just asked about where Palestine comes in with the ADL and their work. So for too long, and I myself used to use the word Islamophobia as a catch-all thing, for anything that was like anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim.
But as of two years ago, the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, in coordination with the Toronto-Palestinian community, developed a framework that they’re calling anti-Palestinian racism. And the difference between anti-Palestinian racism, the reason why it’s important to distinguish is because Islamophobia is really about the xenophobia towards people who are Muslim,
sometimes Arab, and anybody who’s perceived to be that. But the root of anti-Palestinian racism is is specific to who the Palestinian people are and their history of the Nakba or the catastrophe, their first ethnic cleansing or genocide. So the framework manifests,
lists four or five manifestations, erasing even the Palestinian identity, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, erasing their connection to the land, denying the Nakba, The second manifestation is dehumanizing, blaming Palestinians for their own plight,
calling them human animals, et cetera. The policies that are implemented that we’re seeing unfolding now. And of course, dehumanizing leads to the justification of violence. The third manifestation is defamation. So that’s claiming that all Palestinians just hate Jews because they hate Jews,
because they’re inherently anti-Semitic, they support terrorism, and they are anti-democratic. Here’s where not only are Palestinians targets of anti-Palestinian racism, but anybody who stands in solidarity, including anti-Zionist Jews, get accused of defamation, being anti-Semitic.
They are defamed. And then the last one is exclusion and denial of rights, excluding Palestinians or anyone speaking on behalf of Palestinians from academia, from graduation, et cetera, and denying of rights. So how does the ADL manage Palestine?
Well, they consistently commit acts of anti-Palestinian racism, By always dehumanizing Palestinians. Listen to the way that Jonathan Greenblatt talks about Palestinians. And Jonathan Greenblatt is? The CEO of the ADL, right? They push to erase and censor the Palestinian narratives in school. They falsely conflate the criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel with anti-Semitism.
And then they target, they have literal campaigns to target and try to get educators fired, be them Palestinian or not, if they teach the Palestinian narrative about Palestinians. So they are in no way a civil rights group. They really are a political arm that exists in the service of the state of Israel. So we need to think about more carefully and detail and describe the issues that
we’re dealing with, which is really the criminalized pro-Palestinian advocacy and deal with the anti-racism Palestinian movement. dialogue and diatribe and behavior that accompanies that. And of course, the ideology that is used to rationalize and legitimize that, which is the Netanyahu government,
and indeed, and indeed has been the governments from every single one of our presidents forward with perhaps some carving out of exceptions for Jimmy Carter in his understanding of the Palestinian issue, but certainly not Joe Biden and certainly and decidedly not the Trump administration.
So I want to segue from there into The issue of labor. Many of us still struggle with the issue of seeing, as I mentioned earlier, labor unions as an engine for political change. So I want to deal with that and how the resolution was shaped that was brought to the NEA because,
again, I conceive of it as one of the most important resolutions on the issue that has been brought before the NEA and in a very difficult context with a very, very strong Zionist and also those who would say from labor, don’t bring up extraneous non-economic issues because what it does is it divides the working class.
It keeps us divided. But it is an economic issue. Well, absolutely. So you’re going to talk about that as well. But I will certainly say that some of the strongest leadership in the professional staff congress, for example,
the CUNY union, said we don’t want divestment resolutions because it’s divisive to the working class and issues that are of a political nature as differentiated from economic bargaining are divisive. And my own union, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, which is part of the UAW,
has very much of that kind of economist view. So take us from there. Educate us as to what labor unions are and how this resolution was constructed. Was it the Palestinian trade unions? Were they involved in it? And how the heck you managed to get it through this. The NEA, not an easy task.
Yeah. Judy, you’re so great at telling this story. But let me just, before you do, let me just set this up. No, I wasn’t going to tell that story. But you have such a sharp analysis on why this is a labor issue and why it’s an economic issue. I do want you to unpack that. That’s really important.
But I actually first want to say that what happened inside of the NEA is a microcosm of what’s happening in this country and worldwide. It’s both civil society that is separating from elected officials on Palestine, and it’s rank-and-file unionists that are separating from from their elected leaders on Palestine and its civil society and its rank and file unionists that are creating the grassroots movement and aligning themselves with the outside solidarity movement and putting upward pressure on our unions
I say if our unions aren’t in the struggle, it’s our job to force them. We have just pushed them over the edge, whether they like it or not. They’re in the fight now. But Judy, please do it. Please unpack why this is an economic issue. Okay. All right.
Well, let me just say, first of all, that it was an uphill struggle even to bring it to the floor of the NEARA. And I was brought into back rooms twice on the day of the vote. And NEA leadership pleaded with me, please don’t bring this. It’s going to be divisive.
I said, it can’t be any more divisive than the war that is tearing apart the Palestinian people and the genocide that is going on and how much our schools are suffering because of all the money being poured out of it. Anyway, you know, I brought it to the floor and we won the vote. And then because they charged the resolution being about a boycott. And I actually addressed that.
Wait a minute. I’m not going to let you get off that easy. We brought it to the floor. And how in the world? What kind of organizing went on? What did you do to win? I mean, this is, as I said, quite monumental.
Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about that. We have a little bit different. We have two different parts of it that we can talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this meme started, as I said earlier in the show,
about six years ago when we formed the Arab American Caucus. And it was the handful of us. And we were getting no traction. But we persisted. We continued every year to do what grassroots organizers and rank-and-file union members do. You stand and you have one-on-one conversations. And you listen to people’s concerns.
You find out what they know. You do the political education. A couple of years ago. . . You know, we spent two or three years doing this on the floor of the representative assembly. Now,
for your audience, the representative assembly is anywhere from seven to ten thousand NEA members from all of the 50 states plus internationals that the NEA represents. And it’s like a giant town hall meeting where you decide all of the business over four days. Two, three years ago, we moved some new business items about just simply educating about who the
Palestinian people and culture was. And we started to lose less badly. And we thought that was a victory. Yeah. Really, you have to know your mile markers. When the genocide started live streaming into our devices, October 2023,
suddenly NEA members started joining the Arab American Caucus saying, we want to do the work on Palestine. So we actually had enough people where we separated and we created Educators for Palestine. The Arab American Caucus last year moved a bylaw change. The other thing that’s important to understand about the NEA is they have bylaws that recognize the four traditional ethnic groups, Black,
Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian Pacific Islander. And But no recognition of Arab Americans or anyone from the Middle East. So the Arab American Caucus moved a bylaw last year that would give the same recognition now to MENA,
Middle East, North Africa, because it’s now a census category. And that won overwhelmingly. And I credit that to people finally understanding that if we’re going to call ourselves a racial and social justice union, it has to be encompassing of new groups of people who have come from a history of
colonization, who have been racialized. I think that was a factor that helped people be more embracing racism. Again, we won the education business item, the new business item that the NEA would teach about the NACPA. That helped.
And for two years, as we moved these new business items last year and this year, It was good old grassroots organizing. It was one-on-one conversations. We had a table. We set up tables with flyers. We talked to our fellow unionists. And then we have a structure where every state meets every morning with their own delegations.
And they debate the business that’s going to come up on the floor. Let’s go from there because time is racing ahead. Can I just add one thing? Please. I think it’s just really important. I think you need to add more than one thing. okay no no no as some of us are some of us are veterans of the anti-vietnam war you
know some of us worked you know very hard on that and spent years very similar to palestine not being able to talk to people about it being called a communist if you support i mean the vietnamese and and and being uh being sort of shut down and then all of a sudden because of the war the material conditions changed almost overnight People were like, wow, there’s something going on in Vietnam and the war and U. S. soldiers are being killed.
I believe that this is what we saw this year at the NEA. We saw a change of people’s consciousness. That was not only because of the tremendous work that I don’t mean to diminish the work that Mina did. But I want to say that I think people in this country and around the world. are finally seeing what’s going on and realizing that there is there’s a genocide there’s a war this is a labor issue because money is being drained from our
communities we’re going to go to back to school some of us in three weeks actually in oakland and some of us a little uh later later on and there’s not going to be any money there’s no money i mean trump has made sure because he cut these there’s really no department of education anymore But there’s plenty of money to send arms and death machines and to buy caterpillar tractors to destroy homes in Palestine. And this is why it is a labor issue, because we have to fight.
For every single penny that is going to that is going to destroy the Palestinian people and get it back into our communities, because Trump and his and his team and not just Trump, but, you know, as far as I’m concerned, the Democrats and the Republicans together are not fighting.
Right. They are they are they’re terrorizing. And we need to unite and say we are also bringing Palestine into this discussion. It is a labor issue. And Judy, what I want you to also address is really, and I wouldn’t say we’re even shifting gears,
but let’s talk about this in the concrete context. just give us some of the highlights of the resolution and exactly what its status is, since there is an effort to claw it back. And we’re not going to let that happen. And I’m saying we’re not going to writ large. So talk a bit about that.
And then I just want to get a kind of roundup, if you will, so that we have time to bring Adam into our discussion on the legislation happening in New Jersey that would seek to change resolutions around anti-Semitism to the IRA resolution and what’s so dangerous about that. But let’s shift gears at that point and also talk about where this fits into Trump’s effort to not only the specifics of dismantling the Department of Education and
alongside aggressive campaigns against DEI initiatives and curriculum changes and book bans, but indeed, what the hell it means in terms of destroying the education, the public education system. So that’s an awful lot to unpackage, but let’s try to be as. .
. Streamline about it as we can. And Judy, I want you to take us to the resolution. What’s its status now? And then, Mary, put it in that broader context. And of course, the broader context being what we do to save our education system,
which has everything to do with what we do for a free, free Palestine. Okay, so given the time limits of our show here, new business item was very straightforward. It was really almost like two sentences. The first being the NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League,
ADL, such as curricular materials or its statistics, and the NEA will not use. will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings. The rationale that we put forward, again, just two sentences,
educators embrace the urgency to respond to the questions of racism, injustice, and all forms of bigotry. Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be. And basically, you can put a resolution on the floor if you get 50 delegates to sign on. We’ve got more than 50 delegates.
People were actually very enthusiastic about this. It’s very broad. And it’s something, of course, that hit a real raw nerve with the Zionists in NEARA. How we’re moving forward, we’re still meeting. We’re still trying to figure it out. I will say that And I do wish we had been more prepared for the storm that hit us,
because unfortunately the ADL and the Zionists were very prepared. And we’re still, you know, we believe, we see this vote as a tremendous victory. We see the NEA acts to nullify the vote as a step backward victory. For labor and for all working people and certainly those of us in education, it just obscures the real issue, which is fighting against the genocide. And so we’re still determining what next steps we’re going to take as we move forward.
Go ahead, Mary. Yeah. And our work comes. . . now organizing with our community, state by state,
local by local, family by family, student by student, right? I want to encourage your audience to go visit both the Drop the ADL website and the Drop the ADL from Schools website. There is a comprehensive unpacking of what the ADL is all about and the Drop the
ADL from Schools is a campaign with a toolkit. So what does it mean This is part and parcel of the fight to save public education. The new union movement since 2013, when the Chicago teachers went on strike, became this concept of bargaining for the common good. What is bargaining for the common good?
It means you are with your communities, figuring out with them what they want for their public schools. And this is an intersectional fight. When you look at these increments, incredible ethnic studies teachers in Santa Ana, they are taking the ideas from the Zen Education Project, a people’s history of Santa Ana.
That’s how it’s in, yeah. Yeah, they’re working with the Arab community to create a curriculum on the history of the Arab community in Santa Ana, and with the Latinx community, and with the Black community, with every community.
What is your history from your And so when we align with our communities and determine what do we want for our students’ education in terms of curriculum and pedagogy, What do we need for school funding, for student support services? When we are aligned with our communities and when we are united as a union, we are unstoppable. And that’s what this fight is. It’s the fight against autocracy,
against who gets to say what our students have the right to learn, a fight against austerity, a fight against union busting. And it’s a fight for democracy and democratized schools. And how do people find out more about your efforts and indeed more about and for disclosure? I too am a member of Labor for Palestine and I am hardly neutral in this issue. I really commend both of you.
I’m thoroughly excited and if anything will redouble my efforts in my union today. the UAW to make it more responsive and continue the issues of divestment, sanction, permanent ceasefire, and really for self-determination for the Palestinian people. But Mary and Judy, how do people get in touch with you? so you can find us on instagram educators for palestine one word underscore nea um
you can actually if you just search educators for palestine you will see so many educators for palestine uh rank and file we’re not chapters but each one of us has our own work in our state we are mta rank and file for palestine on instagram There’s, I think there’s an OEA for Palestine. There’s OEA for Palestine. There’s CTA, which is the California Teachers Association for Palestine. And I think we have a Gmail account now.
Well, right now, what’s the best way to get in touch with you folks? Yeah, NEA for Palestine at gmail. com. Well, that’s. . . No, no.
Yeah. And, you know, we’re going to come back with many of these roundtables. And I really would encourage you to stay on with us and to get ready and hear from Adam next, because it’s part and parcel of the same thing. This has been a powerful and necessary conversation. Thank you, Mary.
Now, Jimmy and Judy Greenspan, both for your courage, your clarity, and your commitment to justice and education and beyond, and to our listeners, remember,
organized labor has always been a force for liberation when it chooses to be. From the classroom to the picket line to the global stage, our collective power can and must be used to to stop genocide, dismantle racism, and build a future rooted in justice. And this has been about reclaiming the soul of public education and the power of organized labor to stand on the right side of history. And without further ado,
To segue perfectly into this discussion is a longtime friend and strong advocate who’s right on point, Adam Weissman. And in our prior segment, we heard about educators and labor organizers calling for the removal of the Anti-Defamation League from public school programming. raising concern about the ADL’s alignment with policing,
surveillance, and the silence of Palestinian voices in educational spaces. Now, that conversation leads us right into the heated debate unfolding in New Jersey, where a proposed bill, Assembly Bill A-3558, A3558 has sparked outrage among Jewish,
Muslim, immigrant rights and civil liberties group because the bill seeks to adopt the international Holocaust remembrance. That’s what IHR is. Association’s definition of anti-Semitism into state law. What’s wrong with that, Adam Weissman? And thank you.
Thank you for joining us. A longtime civil liberties advocate and a member of Teaneck for Palestine because we are all over now. So, Adam, welcome. And what’s wrong with Assembly Bill A-3558? Thank you, Mimi. It’s a pleasure to be on the show.
You know, it seems like whenever I’m on Building Bridges, we talk about these ominous acronyms. I was here a few years ago talking about TPP. Now it’s the equally ominous IRA, I-H-R-A, this International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of anti-Semitism. Now, as we’ve already heard,
this is a definition of anti-Semitism that has been weaponized around the country as an attack on the free speech of advocates for Palestinian human rights. In state after state, we’ve seen. . . two real legislative tools to silence and stop support for Palestinian human rights. We’ve seen anti-BDS laws used to undermine our right to stand in solidarity with
Palestine economically. And the companion is these IHRA bills, which are intended to silence us from using our voices to speak for Palestine. And we’ve seen this, and we’ve seen how this has been weaponized again and again. One of the ways that Columbia University has now knuckled under to the Trump administration is by accepting this definition of anti-Semitism as the official definition of anti-Semitism the university would use.
And as part of that, in connection to that, saying that they will not even meet with the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Eric Adams just issued an executive order saying that he’s making IRA the official definition of anti-Semitism for New York City and is trying to pass pro-IRA legislation,
which, of course, has nothing to do with his electoral strategy, where he’s trying to run as the stop anti-Semitism candidate in the mayoral election. So and that really speaks to what a lot of this is about. This is about electoral cynicism on the part of politicians who know that there’s
electoral gain by pandering to the Israel lobby and to feel the pressure from the Israel lobby and feel that they can use it to their advantage. It is not a coincidence that this bill is coming up. In the summer, when really there’s not a lot happening legislatively, even the Zionist lobby in one of their tweets acknowledged that this is an unusual summer session.
And the reason this is happening is that for the last two years, legislative committee after legislative committee has declined to advance this bill because every time they hold a hearing, the room is filled with members of the Muslim community. the Jewish community, civil libertarians coming together, saying that we don’t want this legislation,
that it doesn’t make Jews safer, that it exacerbates anti-Palestinian racism, and that this is really just a ploy to attack free speech. So in effect, the Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly, looking ahead to a uh an election this year where there are many um legislative seats and the governorship of new jersey up for grabs uh wants as much as possible to pass this bill to appease the zionist lobby so after it family after not moving in committee
after committee he found another committee to stick it in this one has uh i think the entire committee are co-sponsors of the bill so it’s his latest effort to win brownie points for the democratic leadership in the assembly to lock down the support of the Zionist lobby. But what it means in practice, it doesn’t make Jews safer. In fact, actually, Jews are a threat by legislation like this. This legislation is used to silence the voices of Jewish activists and has been
used that way around the country. Jewish student activists have been attacked absurdly with the implication that they are anti-Semites using the definition of anti-Semitism. Let’s just again be clear. You get a word in edgewise. That’s absolutely fine. That’s absolutely fine.
The IHRA, the IRA definition. Now, it’s been criticized by the ACLU, the Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and really hundreds of academics and Jewish organizations, and by our guests who are still with us,
Judy and Mary. But I’m not sure that people fully understand why conflating Judaism with Zionism is problematic. And I would maintain actually anti-Semitic. So talk a little bit about your understanding of that, Adam, just to put it on these more kind of parochial terms,
if you will, so people really understand what they’re trying to foist upon those people. who would be critical of the state of Israel, and therefore be told that that is inherently bigoted or stereotypical of bias against people who are Jewish, Judaism being anything from a cultural phenomena to a religious phenomena, and so on,
which many people feel to understand. You know, it’s ironic. We saw in the. . . In the U. S.
history, we’ve seen Jews targeted as communists, as anarchists. Now we are seeing Jews targeted as anti-Semites in a campaign, supposedly, to attack anti-Semitism. And in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, we’re seeing Jews targeted for being Jews. And what do I mean by that? Well,
if we’re talking about the religious Jewish community, for many Jews believe that the idea of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah is, in fact, a religious blasphemy. But the definition, the IRA definition considers it inherently anti-Semitic to deny Jewish
self-determination, so-called, by denying the idea of a right of a Jewish state to exist. The IRA definition violates the right of many Jews to express their religious liberty. Many Jews consider the state of Israel fundamentally at odds with their religious beliefs. IRA says that it is a violation of Jewish self-determination to consider the state of Israel racist.
For many Jews, the state of Israel is irreconcilable with their values. For religious Jews, the state of Israel is a project of theft of Palestinian land and murder and is a violation of the Ten Commandments. For culturally aligned Jews, for Jews who draw upon the Jewish history of oppression as a. . .
to inform our Jewish experience. I’m personally the great-grandson of a Holocaust victim from Warsaw, Poland. A survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto that I know posted On his Facebook page, several quotes. I’ll read them. No, we don’t have time to do that. I’ll hurry along.
But the point is, he compared the Holocaust from his own experience as a Holocaust survivor to the genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people. Under IHRA, that would make this Holocaust survivor an anti-Semite. Exactly. And I was going to mention the quote, so there. But I just wanted to say we have really two minutes left,
and you’re going to tell us what we’re going to do, because this is taking place in the state of New Jersey. But as you heard from Judy, as you heard from Mary, this is an issue that is taking place all over the country, and powerful lobby and powerful groups like the ADL and powerful groups are Otherwise, are trying to enforce this now from New York all over the place.
So in New Jersey, where do people need to go? What do they need to respond to? Just as just as did our labor activists in the education sphere, Mary and Judy. What do we do? This Thursday, the legislature, yet again, will be trying to move this bill through committee. So we will be filling committee chambers to let them know that the people of New Jersey reject IRA.
So we’re gathering at 9 a. m. at the Statehouse in Trenton for a rally, followed by packing the hearing so we can testify at 10. People can find out more information about how you can write letters, make calls, attend the hearing by going to link
Tree, that’s L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E forward slash NoIraNJ. That’s N-O-I-H-R-A-N-J. So that’s Link dot Tree, or sorry, Link, T-R dot E-E forward slash NoIra, I-H-R-A-N-J. So that bill is A3558. And I don’t care if you’re in Washington, D. C.
, if you’re in Oakland, California, Los Angeles, if you are in New York, New Jersey at all, make sure you can write a letter.
You can get. . . into that link and say you absolutely and unequivocally opposed this awful, awful effort to change the definition to fit a political act. of genocide and construction of a so-called broader Israel in the Middle East. It’s horrible.
It’s horrible. And then you can also support the Immigrant Trust Act, which would codify and expand protections against state and local ICE collaboration, ensuring immigrant families aren’t targeted by racial profiling or fear-based policing and Because that’s the other thing that they’re doing in New Jersey in response to the IRA.
I want to thank you for listening. I’m Mimi Rosenberg. I’ve been speaking with Adam Weissman and I’ve been speaking with Judy Greenspan and my dear, dear new friend. Mary, who are absolute consummate organizers. Mary and Jimmy, all of you, thank you for listening.
Stay strong, stay well, and continue to organize, organize, organize for a free, free Palestine. No more genocide in our name. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, this is David Amram.
You’re listening to WBAI New York 99. 5 on your FM dial and keep on listening.
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