The History of Palestine Solidarity at ALAA-UAW 2325
Michael Letwin, May 9, 2026
Thanks to Marcus, Ignacia, Daniella, Navruz, and others for organizing this event, and much respect to all the panelists here—and shouting out our sibling Sophia Gurule, who yesterday won a hard-fought, year-long battle for reinstatement after an unjust termination at Bronx Defenders!
By way of a brief introduction, I am a co-founder of Labor for Palestine, which began in 2004, was a Staff Attorney at the LAS CDP-Brooklyn office from 1985-2022, thirteen years of which as ALAA president from 1990-2002. In 2007, I was part of an attorney/activist delegation to the West Bank to observe the trial of political prisoner Ahmad Sadat, and to 1948 Palestine. In 2010, I was a co-panelist with BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Today I’d like to briefly outline how Palestine solidarity developed over many decades here in our own local, ALAA-UAW 2325.
The broad context for that struggle is that US labor officialdom has actively supported Zionism, beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the 1920 establishment of Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For the past 80 years, UAW leadership has been one of the main pillars of this “Labor Zionism” in the US, raising millions of dollars for the Israeli settler colonial regime.
So it is no coincidence that the first major challenge to this US labor complicity emerged from rank-and-file UAW members, starting in January 1969, when the Detroit-based League of Revolutionary Black Workers championed the Palestinian struggle as part of worldwide resistance to racism and colonialism. A few years later, three thousand Arab autoworkers in Detroit led protests and strikes against UAW officials’ support for Israel during the 1973 war, shortly thereafter, I had the opportunity to be present when the Arab Workers Caucus took the fight to the 1974 UAW Constitutional Convention (you can see their call on our website and in this hard copy, which I’ll pass around shortly.)
In 2004, Labor for Palestine was established to reclaim this resistance, to challenge ongoing union complicity with Zionism, and to promote union respect for the BDS picket line, out of the belief that workers have the unique power to end Israeli genocide, and and to support a free Palestine, from the river to the sea—because all “Israel” is occupied Palestine. Which is to say that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
This early resistance to Labor Zionism in the UAW coincided in time with the founding of ALAA in 1969 to represent public defenders at the Legal Aid Society in New York, many of them deeply affected by the Vietnam antiwar, Black liberation, and women’ s movements of that era. In the mid-1980s, our union joined the struggles against apartheid South Africa and US wars in Central America, while at the same time, a multiracial group of ALAA Staff Attorneys and 1199 support staff in the Brooklyn Legal Aid office of what was then called the “Criminal Defense Division,” were organizing against racism on the streets, in the courts, and within the Legal Aid Society. On June 1, 1989, as part of this racial justice organizing, two of those staff attorneys, Ellen Sachs and Bob Zuss, reported back at a meeting jointly sponsored by Brooklyn ALAA and 1199 about their recent participation in a delegation to the West Bank during the First Intifada—that was ALAA’s first-ever Palestine solidarity (and you can see the flyer for that here). On July 25, 1989, ALAA Union HQ hosted a presentation by Palestinian trade unionist Hani Baydoun, and in early 1990, as newly-elected ALAA president on the Action & Democracy Slate, which upheld the need to speak out against injustice everywhere, I signed a labor petition calling for his release from Israeli custody.
But this official momentum for Palestine was broken when pro-Zionist ALAA members—citing their commitment to Israel—succeeded in defeating a union resolution against the impending 1991 Gulf War, in response to which, antiwar ALAA members formed Legal Aid Lawyers Against the War, which sent a small contingent to a mass protest in Washington DC. Ten years later, in the days following 9/11, 50 ALAA members and 2,000 other trade unionists joined New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW), of which I was a co-convener, and which included condemnation of Israeli occupation. Zionist members and other disgruntled union members immediately enlisted in the broader post-9/11 crusade against dissent by punishing and silencing antiwar voices.
This witch-hunt, carried out largely over the ALAA e-list—included the kind of demonization which all of us have seen repeatedly: relentless personal attacks, red-baiting, baseless accusations of antisemitism, efforts to block the Union from even adopting a statement in defense of civil liberties, demands that management discipline members for posting messages on the ALAA e-list, and/or racial harassment. While this campaign did not silence ALAA’s antiwar voices—many of whom were Jewish—it did drive most members away from the public discussion and undermined the Union’s longstanding commitment to social justice. It also created an atmosphere in which some members, including several who purported to hold antiwar views, found it politically advantageous to remain silent, or even to align themselves with the witch-hunters. Thus, after 13 years in office, I was ousted from the union presidency in late 2002, and in April 2003, the membership voted down a proposed antiwar resolution—as a result of which ALAA-2325 remained the only local in UAW Region 9A that failed to oppose the Iraq war.
This backlash has been followed by literally decades of Zionist demands on management to censor antiwar and Palestine solidarity advocacy on the Legal Aid email system, which had long been a free-speech venue pursuant to the ALAA Collective Bargaining Agreement—demands to which the new Jim Rogers/Debbie Wright union leadership readily acceded, as part of their broader acceptance of a wide range of union givebacks, and which led to the free speech wars at Legal Aid and other ALAA shops that continue up to this very day, as reflected in this poster from 2008. In response, a rank-and-file opposition—once again emanating from the Brooklyn Criminal office—kept the struggle alive through vocal opposition to union givebacks, and organizing against imperialist war, racist police violence, ICE, and more.
It has taken decades of resistance—at our workplaces and in our union—to overcome these barriers within ALAA. On July 22, 2022, after yet another round of Israeli genocide in Gaza, an intergenerational alliance between longtime ALAA supporters of Palestine—including Azalia Torres, Daniella Korotzer, Susan Morris, Lisa Edwards, Steve Terry, and the late Bob Zuss—and new generations of union members, many of them from BxDU, NYLAG and other recently organized ALAA shops, and deeply affected by the interconnected Black Lives and Palestine solidarity movements—overwhelmingly voted to adopt a Resolution on Divestment from Israel Bonds and on Transparency in Investments funded through Union Membership Dues.
In immediate response to the all-out Israeli genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, and building on these ongoing efforts, ALAA members were instrumental in founding UAW Labor for Palestine, in pressuring UAW International President Shawn Fain to call for a ceasefire, in resisting an attempt by Zionist union members, management, the NY Post, and witch-hunt by a House of Representatives subcommittee to stop us in December 2003 from passing a landslide ALAA resolution Resolution Calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, an End to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and Support for Workers’ Political Speech.
In January 2024, UAWL4P helped establish the Labor for Palestine National Network in January 2024 to uplift and honor the urgent appeals from Palestinian trade unions directly addressed to US labor for solidarity, including BDS, but also saying that talk is not enough, and calling for direct action at the workplace—like west coast dockworkers of ILWU have done in refusing to handle Israeli Zim line cargo since 2014, and like dockers in North Africa and Europe have done during the ongoing Gaza genocide. And it’s important to note that all of this was done by invoking the most basic labor principles cited here today—that An Injury to Palestine Is an Injury to All; and that we walk picket lines, not cross them—and without ever demonizing Palestinian resistance, and while connecting the struggle for Palestine with movements against ICE, racist police, union busting, and all other forms of injustice.
At the workplace, we have refused to be silenced, a prime example of which is the keffiyeh at work campaign, for which our members at NYLAG have withstood management retaliation. In our union, we, along with the rank-and file caucus UAWD have continued—as Sophia will discuss further in a moment—to demand that International UAW leadership finally divest from Israel Bonds, break ties with the Histadrut, stop endorsing genocidal political candidates, and confront the fact that the jobs of many UAW members—through no fault of their own—are directly involved in production contributing to genocide against Palestine, examples of which include Caterpillar and Colt Firearms—in other words, to demand that the “ceasefire unions” actually walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Last month, we successfully brought a union resolution against US-Israeli war in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and beyond, which again stressed the war’s devastating impact on our members, clients, communities, and the entire world. And it’s important to note that instead of being “divisive,” as the Zionists claim, this grassroots, uncompromising Palestine solidarity has energized, organized, and united our union’s membership, perhaps more so than any other issue.
In summary, ALAA-UAW 2325 members have shown that meaningful Palestine solidarity always comes from the grassroots, and we can be proud as Dr. MLK once said for, helping to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. Toward that end, please visit our website at laborforpalestine.net, and wear these L4P buttons to uphold the Palestinian trade union call.
