Category Archives: LFP Statements

Stand With Palestinian Workers: Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!

PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD WIDELY!
To endorse the following statement please click here.
Full list of signers here.

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net
Website: laborforpalestine.net

Stand With Palestinian Workers:
Cease the Genocide NowStop Arming Israel!
Labor for Palestine, October 24, 2023

“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)

The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza and sharply escalating settler colonial violence in the West Bank that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”

The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.

Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.

In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:

  1. To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. 
  2. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 
  3. To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 
  4. To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 
  5. Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which calls not only for an end to the 1967 Israeli occupation, but an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall, full equality for Arab-Palestinians inside 1948 Palestine (“Israel”), and implementation of the right of Palestinian refugees to return.. 

Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine
(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)
Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild
Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council
Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation
Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat
Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine
Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)


Rising Unequivocal U.S. Labor Solidarity With Palestine
Oct. 27, 2023: APWU Pres. Stands Up for Palestine v. AFL-CIO EB: “Mark Dimondstein, the president of the postal union, argued that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into a single state. He called for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to demand a cease-fire.”

Oct. 27, 2023: UAW BDS Sign-On Letter: “We, rank-and-file members of the UAW and allied community members/organizations, stand unequivocally in solidarity with Palestinians and their resistance against the occupying Zionist state.”

Oct.25, 2023: Natl. Domestic Alliance Workers Staff Union Solidarity With Palestine: “The National Domestic Alliance Workers Staff Union and allied non-union staff stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and against apartheid.”

Oct. 23, 2023: Petition: NOLSW Must Demand a Ceasefire & an End to the  Occupation of Palestine: “We need as many signatures from NOLSW members as well as unit endorsements as we can get before this upcoming Monday to demonstrate that the NOLSW rank-and-file stands firmly in solidarity with the Palestinian people and will by while Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza. Free Palestine.”

Oct. 20, 2023: The Bronx Defenders Union-UAW Local 2325 Support of Palestinians: “We do not consent to Israel’s genocidal rhetoric and actions against the Palestinian people and we do not consent to U.S. political support for this genocide.”

Oct. 20, 2023: Starbucks Workers United stands with Palestine: “We condemn the occupation, displacement, state violence, apartheid, and threats of genocide Palestinians face.”

Oct. 19, 2023: Make the Road Union UAW Local 2320 staff: We Stand With Palestine: “Ceasefire now. End US tax dollars used to fund apartheid. Stop the genocide.”

Oct. 16: 2023: U.K. Trade unionists must stand with Palestine: “We urge all trade unions to stand with the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond.”

Oct. 10, 2023: Amazon and Google Workers with No Tech For Apartheid: “We stand in full solidarity with the Palestinian people as they resist 75 years of occupation and in their fight for life and liberation.”

Oct. 9, 2023: GSOC-UAW 2110 A response to Linda G. Mills’ statement on Israel: “GSOC stands in solidarity with Palestinians fighting to free themselves from Israeli occupation.”

July 22, 2022: UAW 2325 (Association of Legal Aid Attorneys) Votes to Divest From Israel Bonds: “ALAA 2325 supports taking action, both as individual members and as a chapter collectively, in support of Palestinian liberation from Israeli apartheid.”

May 15, 2021: Labor for Palestine: U.S. Labor Must Stand With Palestine!: “An injury to one is an injury to all: From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!”

Background and Context 

Bottom-Up Labor Solidarity for Palestine Is Growing: “While still at the margins, this unprecedented and rapidly-expanding worker-based Palestine solidarity has the potential to finally break Zionism’s century-long stranglehold on U.S. labor, and to organize workers’ unparalleled power—in their labor bodies and at the workplace—to help topple apartheid Israel.”

Labor for Palestine: Challenging US Labor Zionism (American Quarterly): “Zionism has long been the default position in US labor. However, there has been another, hidden tradition of postwar labor anti-Zionism that began with Detroit in 1969–73 and has slowly re-emerged after September 11, 2011, from the antiwar, Palestine solidarity, and racial justice movements.”

Labor Zionism and the Histadrut: The Histadrut has used its image as a “progressive” institution to spearhead — and whitewash — racism, apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians since the 1920s. In this, it has been the cornerstone of Labor Zionism, which began in the early 1900s.”

The Jewish Labor Committee and Apartheid Israel: “The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) presents itself as a model of progressive, socially conscious trade unionism. But as a U.S. mouthpiece for the Histadrut, this false image has been a smokescreen to disguise and promote Apartheid Israel, “AFL-CIA” support of U.S. war and empire, and racism in the labor movement.”

Labor for Palestine Model Resolution: [X union/labor body] 

Stand With Palestinian Workers: 

Cease the Genocide Now, End All Complicity, Stop Arming Israel!

WHEREAS, October 7, 2023 saw the people of Gaza collectively reject the culmination of 16 years of a brutal land, air and sea siege devastating the entirety of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents; and

WHEREAS, the 16-year blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip has devastated the economy, leading to the closure of many companies, factories, and farms, resulting in a high level of unemployment, and reducing the government’s ability to provide basic services to the Palestinian population in Gaza; and

WHEREAS, the siege has deprived Palestinians in Gaza of their basic rights to health care, education, work, and freedom of movement, with 81.5 percent of individuals in Gaza living below the poverty line and 64 percent are food insecure; and

WHEREAS, the latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine; and

WHEREAS, the section of the Gaza border that was bulldozed through on October 7th was the site of the Great March of Return, a 2018-2019 peaceful protest which Israel responded to with deadly force, killing 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, and injuring 28,939 a reminder that all forms of Palestinian resistanceeven peaceful onesare criminalized and crushed by Israel; and

WHEREAS, as in the last 16 days alone at least [update as needed] 4,741 Palestinians have been killed and 15,898 wounded, with over a million of the densely populated enclave’s people displaced; and

WHEREAS, there have been [update as needed] 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza with these attacks resulting in at least 15 health workers killed, 27 health workers injured, damage to 25 hospitals and other healthcare facilities and three hospitals in northern Gaza evacuated; and

WHEREAS, upon announcing his intention to reduce parts of Gaza to “rubble,” Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu ordered leaflets dropped from the sky telling Palestinians in the Gaza strip, of which 50 percent of the population are children, to “leave now,” knowing full well that there is absolutely nowhere they can go; a public declaration of intent to commit the international crime of forced population transfer; and

WHEREAS, Israel has consolidated all these tactics of extermination in the current attack on Gaza, including the prohibited use of white phosphorus weapons in densely populated urban areas. In addition, Israel is arming settlers with an additional 10,000 assault rifles, which has already further galvanized attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank; and

WHEREAS, Israel justified its decision to suspend all entry of food, water and fuel into Gaza by claiming that it was fighting “human animals”; As we have seen with past examples of US led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan , such dehumanizing language is used to manufacture consent for genocidal violence; and

WHEREAS, a majority of media, politicians and employers have demonstrated an inconsistent valuation of human life, with calculated omissions effectively endorsing Israel’s ongoing perpetration of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza; and

WHEREAS, the tired trope of “religious conflict” has been used often to mask the reality of settler colonial violence and dispossession, essentializing and racializing both Jewish and Muslim communities and those critical of Israeli settler colonial violence have been falsely accused of anti-semitism; and

WHEREAS, the Union of Professors and Employees at Birzeit University in the West Bank, calls on all trade unions around the globe to reject the “criminalization of resistance… where all blood that is shed is blamed on the oppressed and all crimes of settler colonial invasion and dispossession are ignored entirely”; and

WHEREAS, all over the world and including our [city/workplace], workers of all faiths and backgrounds are united in their opposition to apartheid, occupation, genocide and settler colonialism; and

WHEREAS, the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism as a structure of power designed to accumulate wealth through dispossession and maintain racial hierarchy links it organically to the struggles of Indigenous, Black and Puerto Rican peoples, as well as other oppressed peoples in the United States; and 

WHEREAS, the institutions of organized violence that oppress working class, Black and Brown communities in the US train and share tactics of repression with Israeli institutions of organized violence, for example through the deadly exchange program; and

WHEREAS, since World War II, Israel has been the largest overall recipient of U.S. foreign aid, with over $150 billion since 1946 and U.S. President Joe Biden has just announced another $14.3 billion in aid for Israel as part of a broader “defense” spending package that is a boon for the military-industrial-complex and is being claimed as a job promotion program for US workers who are allegedly “building the arsenal of democracy”; and

WHEREAS, the U.S. began moving warships and aircraft to the region “to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond,” including sending two U.S. aircraft carriers as well as special operations forces to “assist Israel’s military in planning and intelligence”; and

WHEREAS, Palestinian trade unions call for workers around the globe to stand in solidarity to “end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes” and to “pass motions in their trade union to this effect”; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that our [union or other labor body] condemns Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and calls for an immediate end to the bombings and destruction in Gaza as well as an end to all US military and economic aid to the settler colonial state of Israel; and

RESOLVED, that we endorse the October 16, 2023 Palestinian trade union call:

  1. To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. 
  2. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 
  3. To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 
  4. To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 
  5. Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

RESOLVED, that our employer(s) publicly declare and divest from all financial ties with “the State of Israel and all Israeli and international companies that sustain Israeli apartheid”; and

RESOLVED, that our union pledge to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by divesting from Israel Bonds, severing all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respecting the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS); and 

RESOLVED, that our employer defend its workers [and students] who are routinely doxxed and attacked when voicing support for Palestine, including those who take part in the BDS campaign, and/or who otherwise oppose Israeli settler colonialism.

U.S. Labor Must Stand With Palestine! (Updated Endorsers)


ENDORSE // DONATE

U.S. Labor Must Stand With Palestine!
Labor for Palestine, Nakba Day, May 15, 2021

As workers, labor, and anti-apartheid activists, we join millions around the world to unequivocally condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people: mass evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem, storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, waves of state-sponsored violence throughout the West Bank and the ’48 areas (stolen from Palestine in 1948), and merciless bombardment of Gaza that has already killed and wounded hundreds of people, many of them children.

Recent reports by B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch only belatedly acknowledge what Palestinians have always said: this is not an “Arab-Israeli conflict,” an “Israel-Hamas war,” “communal clashes,” or a “civil war,” but rather another chapter in more than a century of Zionist settler-colonialism — as symbolized by Israel’s very establishment through the uprooting and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba (“Our Catastrophe”), whose 73rd anniversary is today, May 15, 2021.

These crimes are only possible because of $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million *per day*) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people.

This is the same system of racist state violence that — with direct Israeli support — brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe since 1948, and we unconditionally stand with their resistance in all parts of Palestine, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond. 

We urge workers and labor bodies in the US to join the growing mass protests against apartheid Israel, and to support the Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising and General Strike: Tuesday, May 18. We uplift the Italian dockworkers who refused to ship weapons to Israel on April 14, thereby answering the urgent May 13 appeal for international solidarity, signed by Palestinian trade unions, to support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).

BDS is inspired by the worldwide divestment campaign that helped topple apartheid South Africa, and reflects decades of Palestinian boycott and mobilization against Israeli colonization. It requires not only an end to the 1967 Israeli occupation, but an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and implementation of the right of Palestinian refugees to return. 

On this 73rd anniversary of Nakba Day, as Palestinians courageously resist brutal Israeli attack, we urge the labor movement to respect the BDS picket line by:

• Endorsing BDS, along with UAW 2865, the Connecticut AFL-CIO, the United Electrical Workers, IWW, and other US labor bodies, and with labor organizations around the world, who have already done so.

• Ending, once and for all, US labor officialdom’s long and shameful complicity in Zionism by divesting labor bodies from Israel Bonds, and severing all ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee.

• Mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as demonstrated by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States who have refused to handle Israeli cargo, and AROC’s Block the Boat campaign against an upcoming Zim Lines arrival at the Oakland Port.

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL: 
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
________________________________

On behalf of Labor for Palestine
(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

Suzanne Adely, Al-Awda-NY; Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President-Elect, National Lawyers Guild; 

Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council

Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee Pioneer Valley DSA

Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)

Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Organizing Collective, USACBI: US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; DSA Palestine Solidarity Working Group

Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)

Endorsements (as of May 23, 2021)

Organizations
Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
AFSCME 3800 – UMN Clerical Workers Union
ALAA/UAW Local 2325, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem Union, Family Defense Practice Unit
DSA AfroSocialist & Socialists of Color Caucus
DSA Palestine Solidarity Working Group
Black Attorneys of Legal Aid (BALA) Caucus, ALAA/UAW 2325
Attorneys of Color of Legal Aid (ACLA) Caucus, ALAA/UAW 2325
LGBTQ+ Caucus, ALAA/UAW 2325
CUNY Adjunct Project
Labor Against Racist Terror
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
CAIR-NJ
Central Jersey DSA
NYC DSA Labor Branch

Individuals (list in formation; organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

  1. Daniel Ashworth, ALAA/UAW 2325
  2. Ellyn Kessler, ALAA/UAW 2325
  3. David Klein, California Faculty Association (CFA)
  4. Steve Brier, PSC-CUNY, AFT Local 2334; School of Labor & Urban Studies, CUNY
  5. Susan Morris, Former Executive Board Member, ALAA/UAW 2325 (Retired)
  6. Lisa Edwards, ALAA/UAW 2325
  7. Jamila Hammami, Steward, Co-Organizer for Labor & External Relations, CUNY Graduate Center PhD Social Welfare Program, PSC-CUNY
  8. Ryan Kelly, National Writers Union
  9. Nora Carroll, ALAA/UAW 2325
  10. Lauren Restivo, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  11. Michael Shannon, ALAA/UAW 2325
  12. David Sole, Past President, UAW 2334 (Retired)
  13. Erin Tomlinson, ALAA/UAW 2325
  14. John King, UAW-ACT 7902
  15. Dennis Gallie, UAW 249 (Retired)
  16. Goetz Wolff, Board Member, UC-AFT 1474 (UCLA); LA County AFL-CIO
  17. Ed Kinchley, Delegate, SF Committee on Political Education (COPE), SEIU 1021; Delegate, SF Labor Council
  18. Win Heimer, A&R, AFT 4200R
  19. Azalia Torres, Former Executive Board Member, ALAA/UAW 2325 (Retired)
  20. Eli Nadeau, SENS UAW 7902
  21. Susan Stout, Unifor 2002 (Retired)
  22. David Walsh, NALC 214; Delegate, SF Labor Council
  23. Dan Kaplan, Executive Secretary (retired), AFT 1493
  24. Dave King, Co-Chair, Climate Jobs PDX
  25. Lauren S. King, Climate Jobs PDX; Portland Jobs with Justice
  26. David Clennon, Convention Delegate, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA
  27. Judith Ackerman, AFT and 1199SEIU
  28. Amy Muldoon, CWA 1106
  29. Val Sanfilippo, Retired Steward, SEIU 221
  30. Francis Cook, UFT, AFT Local 2; MORE Caucus (Movement of Rank and File Educators in the UFT)
  31. Hayat Bearat, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  32. Milad Momeni, CLSWU
  33. David Laibman, PSC-CUNY (retiree chapter)
  34. Mike Gimbel, AFSCME 375, Retired Executive Board member
  35. Elizabeth-Ann Tierney, Alternate Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  36. Ayami Hatanaka, ALAA/UAW 2325
  37. David McKeown, IBEW Local 6 (retired)
  38. Greg Giorgio, Delegate and Secretary, IWW Upstate NY Regional
  39. Carol Elaine Gay, President, NJ State Industrial Union Council; CWA retiree
  40. Alexander Hu, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  41. David Letwin, Executive Board Member, Rutgers AAUP-AFT Local 6324
  42. Alexandra Smith, ALAA/UAW 2325
  43. Aaron Goodwin, UAW 2865
  44. Diana Dooley, IBEW Local 6
  45. Gabriel Camacho, Political Director, UFCW Local 1445; LCLAA member at large
  46. Ron Jacobs, Steward, AFSCME 1343
  47. Naomi Sharlin, UFT, AFT Local 2
  48. Nicole Camera, UFT, AFT Local 2; MORE Caucus (Movement of Rank and File Educators in the UFT)
  49. Mark D. Stansbery, Board Member and Chair of Organizing and Mobilization, CWA 4502; Ohio AFL-CIO and Central Ohio Labor Council
  50. Jane Rubio, UFT, AFT Local 2
  51. Joan Hwang, Organizer, Workers Assembly Against Racism
  52. Rebekah McAlister UFT, AFT Local 2
  53. Jennifer Kovacs, ALAA/UAW 2325
  54. Hollis Higgins, NALC Branch 442 (retired)
  55. Leah Martin, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  56. Danielle Bullock, UFT, AFT Local 2; MORE Caucus (Movement of Rank and File Educators in the UFT)
  57. Brian Lewis, Steward and Delegate, AFSCME DC37, Local 375; DC37 Progressives; NYC-DSA Labor Branch
  58. Malcolm Sacks, UFT, AFT Local 2; MORE Caucus (Movement of Rank and File Educators in the UFT)
  59. Aisha Lewis-McCoy, Alternate Representative, LGBTQ Caucus, ALAA/UAW 2325
  60. Sara Catalinotto, Retired Delegate, UFT, AFT Local 2; Labor Against Racist Terror
  61. Susan Moir, Massachusetts Teachers Association (retired)
  62. Leah Margulies, ALAA/UAW 2325
  63. Monica Shah, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  64. Andrea Alajbegovic, LSSA/UAW 2320
  65. Lucy Herschel, Delegate, 1199SEIU, UHWE
  66. Calypso Taylor, ALAA/UAW 2325
  67. Alex Jallot, Delegate, Pace High School, UFT, AFT Local 2
  68. Yessenia Mendez, LSSA/UAW 2320
  69. Ian Spiridigliozzi, ALAA/UAW 2325
  70. Hoda Mitwally, Delegate, LSSA/UAW 2320
  71. Royce Adams, International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1291; CBTU/APRI
  72. Josh Komarovsky, LSSA/UAW 2320
  73. Will Chaney, GEO/UAW 2322 UMASS-Amherst
  74. Robert F. Williams, GEO/UAW 2322 MSCA Westfield State University
  75. Erik Mears, UFT/AFT Local 2
  76. Cherrene Horazuk, President, AFSCME 3800 – UMN Clerical Workers Union
  77. Annie Zirin, CTU/AFT Local 1
  78. Meaghan Whyte, Delegate, LSSA/UAW 2320
  79. Hector Agredano, Pasadena City College Faculty Association
  80. David McNally, Texas State Employees Union/CWA Local 6186
  81. Jessie Muldoon, Site Rep., Portland Education Association
  82. Brenda Stokely, Social Service Employees Union local 371 DC 37 AFSCME, AFL-CIO; Million Workers Movement NE Region co-organizer
  83. Camila Valle, UAW 2110
  84. Alejandro Coriat, NOLSW 2320; Legal Workers’ Rank and File
  85. Vish Soroushian, NOLSW/UAW 2320
  86. Hector Agredano, Pasadena City College Faculty Association
  87. Ramzi Babouder-Matta, Steward, CWA 1180; Labor Against Racism and War
  88. Sarah Soliman, Worker Advocate, Worker Justice Wisconsin
  89. Elly Wong, Steward, NPEU (IPFTE Local 70)
  90. Naib Mian, Unit Council, Bargaining Committee, New Yorker Union, News Guild NY Local 31003, CWA
  91. Lucas Koerner, Harvard Graduate Students Union – UAW 5118
  92. Martha Grevatt, Retired Executive Board Member, UAW 869
  93. Dianne Mathiowetz, UAW 10 (retired); Producer and Host, The Labor Forum, WRFG 89.3FM
  94. Stephen Terry, ALAA/UAW 2325 (retired)
  95. Gabriella Ferrara, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  96. Patricia Lavelle, ALAA/UAW 2325
  97. Spencer Eliot Smith, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  98. Meghna Philip, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  99. Kevin Duffy-Greaves, LSSA/UAW 2320
  100. Amanda Lipari, Civil Vice President, ALAA/UAW 2325
  101. Lindsay Cowen, Delegate, LSSA/UAW 2320
  102. Karen Sullivan, PSC-CUNY
  103. Mimi Rosenberg, ALAA/UAW 2325; Producer and Host, WBAI radio, 99.5 FM’s labor program Building Bridges
  104. Benjamin Bisaro, ALAA/UAW 2325
  105. Andrew Smith, Shop Steward, AFSCME, DC 37, Local 1503
  106. Shayan Mirzahaidar, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  107. Basir Mchawi, PSC-CUNY/AFT
  108. Emily Woo Yamasaki, LSSA/UAW 2320
  109. Susan Williams, MD, Former Delegate, Doctors Council, SEIU Local 10MD (retired)
  110. Hoang Gia Phan, Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP-UMass Amherst)
  111. Michael Novick, former steward and member, house of reps, former member of Human Rights Committee, United Teachers Los Angeles (joint NEA-CTA/AFT-CFT)
  112. Robin Strauss, PSC-CUNY/AFT
  113. Maria Amor, UAW 2320
  114. Estee Ward, Make the Road New York – NOLSW/UAW 2320
  115. Noha Arafa, ALAA/UAW 2325
  116. Terry Fitzgibbons, Building Rep., NJEA/Education Association of Passaic
  117. Sherry J. Wolf, CWA 1032
  118. Damon Fillman, Steward, CWA 1032; Rutgers AAUP-AFT
  119. Alan Maass, CWA 1032
  120. BJ Walker, CWA Local 1032
  121. Lauren Tomkinson, CWA Local 7799
  122. Alexandra Haridopolos, Delegate, UFT/AFT Local 2
  123. Marty Goodman, Former TWU Local 100 Executive Board (1997-2006)(retired)
  124. Caryn Schreiber, ALAA/UAW 2325
  125. Emma Goodman, Vice President, ALAA/UAW 2325
  126. Ray Siqueiros, AFT Local 8002
  127. Stephane Barile, Site Rep., New Haven Teachers Association, CTA
  128. Nora Christiani, ALAA/UAW 2325
  129. Gregory Butterfield, NOLSW/UAW 2320
  130. Kathleen Shannon, Staff Organizer, Rutgers AAUP-AFT Local 6323; CWA local 1032
  131. Marie E. Kelly, At Large Member, National Nurses United
  132. Katherine Fitzer, ALAA/UAW 2325
  133. Pooja Patel, ALAA/UAW 2325
  134. Daniella Korotzer, ALAA/UAW 2325
  135. Angelica Barrios, 1199SEIU (Forensic Social Worker)
  136. Lauren Katzman, ALAA/UAW 2325
  137. Gloria Banasco, ALAA/UAW 2325
  138. Maureen Stutzman, ALAA/UAW 2325
  139. Omar Alam Rana, Alternate Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  140. Monica Bustos, 1199SEIU
  141. Matt Caldwell, ALAA/UAW 2325
  142. Michael Gibbons, Representative, LGBTQ+ Caucus, ALAA/UAW 2325
  143. Mirna Haidar, ALAA/UAW 2325
  144. Kip Bastedo, ALAA/UAW 2325
  145. Jonathan McCoy, ALAA/UAW 2325
  146. Joe Piette, NALC Branch 157
  147. Naila Siddiqui, Vice President, ALAA/UAW2325
  148. Hannah Deegan, ALAA/UAW 2325
  149. Mallory Harwood, ALAA/UAW 2325
  150. Titus Mathai, ALAA/UAW 2325
  151. Michael Pate, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  152. Rebecca Kurti, 1199/SEIU
  153. Kar Nowakowski, ALAA/UAW 2325
  154. Keith Malonis, 1199/SEIU
  155. Katharine Kuhl, ALAA/UAW 2325
  156. Angie Rodriguez, 1199/SEIU
  157. Mik Kinkead, ALAA/UAW 2325
  158. Sophie Cohen, ALAA/UAW 2325
  159. Neil Friedman, PSC-CUNY Retired Chapter
  160. Jordan Manalastas, ALAA/UAW 2325
  161. Leon Pulsinelle, NJEA
  162. Brianda Guzman, 1199/SEIU
  163. Larry Hales, 1199/SEIU
  164. Aissatou Barry, Delegate, ALAA/UAW 2325
  165. Benjamin Jarvis, Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1520
  166. Elena Landriscina, ALAA/UAW 2325
  167. Susan Kingsland, 1199/SEIU
  168. Alex Washington, ALAA/UAW 2325
  169. Grover Francis, ALAA/UAW 2325
  170. Taylor James, Former Executive Board Member, ALAA/UAW 2325
  171. Haley Pessin, Interim Delegate, 1199/SEIU; Legal Workers Rank and File
  172. Tarini Arogyaswamy, ALAA/UAW 2325
  173. Ferdinand Cesarano, 1199/SEIU
  174. Lori Masco, ALAA/UAW 2325
  175. Patrick Matutina, ALAA/UAW 2325
  176. Kathleen Wahl, ALAA/UAW 2325
  177. Hilary Dowling, ALAA/UAW 2325
  178. Raissa Carpenter, ALAA/UAW 2325
  179. Khouloud Ballout, 1199/SEIU
  180. Laurie Dick, ALAA/UAW 2325
  181. Samantha Plummer, UAW 4100; Central Brooklyn DSA
  182. Hannah Hussey, ALAA/UAW 2325
  183. Stephanie Hedgecoke, Recording Secretary, CWA 14156
  184. Bill Riggin, ALAA/UAW 2325
  185. Ivan Pantoja, Former Executive Board Member, ALAA/UAW 2325
  186. Marlen S. Bodden, ALAA/UAW 2325
  187. Candace Graff, ALAA/UAW 2325
  188. Jeff Schuhrke, Representative, UIC United Faculty, AFT Local 6456
  189. Norman Koerner, Alliance of Charter School Employees, AFT
  190. Whitney Powers, Steering Committee Member, CWA 7799
  191. Alex Wolf-Root, President, CWA 7799
  192. Bri Dobson, CWA 7799
  193. Hypatia Ostojic, Systemwide Chair, Peace and Justice Committee, UPTE CWA 9119
  194. Patrick Langhenry, ALAA/UAW 2325
  195. James Lauderdale, Lead Senior Civil Service Advocate (retired), SEIU Local 721
  196. Amanda Achin, Classified Staff Union, Massachusetts Teachers Association; Boston DSA Labor Working Group
  197. Darrin Hoop, Building Rep., Seattle Education Association; National Educators United
  198. Richard Blum, ALAA/UAW 2325
  199. Catherine Khella, Organizing Committee, NYC DSA Labor Branch
  200. David Guerrero, Delegate, 1199SEIU
  201. Asa Mendelsohn, UC-AFT 3299
  202. Helen Scott, Department Rep., United Academics: AAUP/AFT Local 3203; VT AFL-CIO State Labor Council
  203. Nancy Welch, UVM United Academics AAUP/AFT, Local 3203; Upper Valley Democratic Socialists of America
  204. Liz Medina, Executive Director, Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO; UAW 2322
  205. Ron Jacobs, President, AFSCME 1343
  206. Heidi Fox, Vermont State Employees Association
  207. John Davy, Vermont State Employees Association
  208. Shannon Dufour-Martinez, AFSCME 1674
  209. Kit Andrews, Vermont State Employees Association
  210. Stephanie Higgins, union staff, GEO-UAW 2322
  211. Stanley Heller, AFT 1547, retired; Middle East Crisis Committee (Connecticut)
  212. Susan Klein, Unite HERE Local 34, Yale Unions Retirees Association
  213. Frank Panzarella, Former President, IAM Local 1990; New Haven Energy Task Force / Fight the Hike
  214. Martha London, Professional Staff Union/Massachusetts Teachers Association (Retired)
  215. Dylan Kupsh, UAW 2865; NSJP, UCSB SJP, UCLA Grad SJP
  216. Marsha Love, United Association of Labor Educators

CONTACT: info@laborforpalestine.net
ENDORSE
DONATE

Labor for Palestine Statement at NYC May Day 2019

Presented by Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine

From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!

On May Day 2019, I first want to remember Bud Korotzer, who was present at NYC May Days for some 70 years through 2018, and who is very much here today in spirit. To his lifelong partner, Fran, and their family, please join me in saying: Bud Korotzer, presente!

There are many organizations and struggles represented here. That’s how it should be, because the whole meaning of May Day is to show unity between all struggles for justice, to reaffirm, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that “justice is indivisible.”

Today, from Jim Crow to Jerusalem, from the Mexican border to Gaza, Palestine is on the cutting edge of such justice movements. And Palestine is a workers’ issue!

At the forefront of that intersectionality are Dr. Angela Y. Davis, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Dr. Michelle Alexander, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, Black for Palestine, and other Black supporters of Palestinian liberation.

Their leadership, in turn, reflects more than half a century of Black solidarity with Palestine, as exemplified by Malcolm X, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. And that is why those leaders are being smeared by Zionists with charges of anti-Semitism, and even being cynically blamed for recent attacks on Jewish synagogues in this country.

To the contrary: blame for those attacks lies squarely with Trump and his mob of  anti-Semites, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and rightwing politicians—all of them openly allied with Israel—who have whipped up and/or tolerated a frenzy of racist violence against Muslims, People of Color, Jews, and others.

These alliances echo Israel’s long-standing and well-documented complicity with rightwing dictatorships and apartheid South Africa.

Let’s be clear: none of this started with Netanyahu. It is rooted in Zionism, a settler-colonial ideology that has practiced “ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid, and death” against Palestinians, an ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) has been carried out since 1948 by an Israeli apartheid regime that veteran South African freedom fighters have called “worse than apartheid.”

Nowhere is this clearer than at the Gaza fence, where for the past year, Palestinians have demanded an end to the siege, and their right to return to their homes throughout historic Palestine. In response, Israeli snipers have killed hundreds, and maimed thousands, using $3.8 billion each year in U.S. weapons. In exchange,  Israel serves as watchdog for imperialism throughout the region and beyond.

But none of this can stop the Palestinian freedom struggle and the mushrooming Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which call for (1) ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

Together, we will win.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

Exposing Socialist Zionism Panel at Socialism 2017 Conference

Exposing Socialist Zionism Panel at Socialism 2017 Conference
Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine
Chicago, July 7, 2017

Let’s start at the beginning: In the narrative of the oppressed – in this case, the Palestinian narrative — “Israel” is not a place, but a colonial-settler regime. Just as Zimbabwe was never “Rhodesia,” all “Israel” is occupied Palestine, and there is no such thing as “Israel-Palestine.”

Therefore, the “Occupation” is not just the West Bank and Gaza, which have been Israeli-occupied since 1967, but every inch of land stolen by the Zionist state since 1948. In the Palestinian narrative, “Israel” or “Israel proper” are known as 1948 Palestine, or simply ’48. Conversely a free Palestine refers to *all* of Palestine, from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all its inhabitants.

Think: Make Israel Palestine Again.

Against that narrative is “Progressive Except for Palestine” (PEP), which reflects Zionism’s long-term impact on the U.S. left, specifically through the misappropriation and misapplication of  the right of national self-determination, civil rights, even “socialism” itself, to Israeli settler-colonialism, and often linked to the notion of binationalism.

As discussed by Tikva Honig-Parnass and others, this misappropriation was spearheaded by the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation, which was the Israeli state-in-waiting until 1948, and then ruled the Zionist regime for its first 30 years. Even before that, the social democratic Second International supported Labor Zionism as part of its overall support for imperialism: both the First World War “at home,” and colonialism abroad. Indeed, imperialist regimes like Britain saw Zionism as a way to undermine Bolshevism and the October Revolution of 1917. It’s no surprise that, to this day, the Histadrut is closely aligned with the Second International.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, at the Histadrut’s behest, social democratic garment union leaders in this country enlisted both the AFL and CIO — they were separate federations until 1955 — to loudly demand establishment of a “Jewish state” in Palestine.

This misappropriation of the right to national self-determination and other genuinely-socialist principles was also adopted by the non-Social Democratic left. In the 1920s and 1930s, virtually all communists and socialists had staunchly denounced Zionism as a reactionary, colonial movement. But during the Second World War, Stalin supported a “Jewish state” in Palestine, mainly in the delusional hope of helping Russia replace Britain as the dominant imperial power in the Middle East.

Toward that end, he sent 142,000 displaced Eastern European Jews – willing or not – to displace indigenous Palestinians, organized the necessary two-thirds majority for UN partition in 1947, armed the Zionist militias that carried out the Nakba, and made Russia the first country to recognize the Israeli regime. As U.S. Communist Party chief William Z. Foster boasted in the early 1950s:

“The only true friend of the Jewish people in their fight for national freedom was the Soviet Union, which steadfastly supported the setting-up of the longed-for homeland of the Jews. . . . Eventually, the Jewish masses themselves virtually settled the matter by establishing the Republic of Israel, in May 1948. They then defended their government, arms in hand, against the British-inspired attacks from the neighboring Arab governments. . . . Within the United States. . . . [t]he Communist Party took a very active part in the whole struggle.”

Ironically, some Trotskyists took a virtually identical position. Amidst the Nakba, Hal Draper stated the majority view of the Independent Socialist League: “We not only support the Palestine Jews’ right to self-determination but draw the necessary conclusions from that position: for full recognition of the Jewish state by our own government; for lifting the embargo on arms to Israel; for defense of the Jewish state against the Arab invasion in the present circumstances.”

Now obviously, Draper did not share Stalin’s motives for supporting a Jewish state in Palestine. Rather, his position was rooted in binationalism — the same premise shared by Socialist Zionists of the Hashomer Hatzair — that Jews have an equal right to self-determination in Palestine, including a right to a *separate* state. Jewish and Palestinian workers were to unite for a “socialist” Israel. To put this into perspective, it is like saying that, as communities suffering oppression in Europe, the Boers in apartheid South Africa, or European immigrants in Americas, had the right to a separate — i.e., apartheid — state on stolen indigenous land.

Though common on the left, this premise didn’t go unchallenged. During the 1936-1939 Arab uprising in Palestine, the South African Trotskyists noted that some Marxists had “been swept off their feet by the widespread anti-Semitic wave [in Europe] and have fallen victims to nationalism,” and reminded readers that, “[a] clear, unambiguous stand in support of the colonial people in their struggle against imperialism is the first duty of revolutionary socialism.”

Palestinian Marxists asked how “socialist” were kibbutzes — or “Jewish states” — built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin, site of the most infamous Zionist massacre of the Nakba?

As documented in Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity, this same position was upheld in the 1960s by Malcolm X, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and others, who condemned not only particular Israeli policies, but Zionism itself. This was based on the understanding that Palestinian oppression — and resistance – was part of the same international system of racism and colonialism inflicted on Black South Africans, Vietnamese, Latin Americans and African Americans. Indeed, in 1973, thousands of Arab and Black workers held a wildcat strike in Detroit to protest UAW support for Israel.

Who defended Israel against these protests? Labor/Left/Socialist Zionists and social democrats, including black moderate civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen’s Circle – the same “left” forces who jumped on the bandwagon for U.S. and Israeli wars in the wake of 9/11.

However, 9/11 and its immediate aftermath also sparked the first visible labor anti-Zionism since the 1973 UAW wildcats, including New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) and Labor for Palestine, both co-led by Black radical activists from the 1960s.

And since the most recent Israeli massacre Gaza massacre in 2014, we have seen a small, but growing number of labor bodies standing with Palestine, including the refusal of the dockers in ILWU Local 10 to handle Israeli Zim Line cargo, and the adoption of BDS resolutions by a small but growing number of labor bodies. This has paralleled growing intersectional solidarity from Black4Palestine, the Movement for Black Lives, Labor for Standing Rock, immigrant rights and other grassroots social justice movements in the United States.

That kind of solidarity with Palestinian resistance is the antidote to Socialist Zionism.

Victory! We salute the striking Palestinian prisoners (Labor for Palestine)

Victory!

An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Workers Support Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike (Labor for Palestine)

[Please endorse the statement below by clicking here.]

An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Workers Support Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike (Labor for Palestine)

“We urge all labor organizations and workers’ movements to express their solidarity and support for the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, for the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation and for the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”
Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS), April 28, 2017

Labor for Palestine joins workers around the world to stand with 1,500 Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike since April 17 to protest conditions that Amnesty International calls “unlawful and cruel.” After more than a month, their health is failing, but their steadfastness remains unshakable.

From workers’ rights and women’s rights, to anti-racism and anti-colonialism, hunger strikes are a time-honored form of protest against injustice.

But the Israeli government — which receives $3.8 billion per year in U.S. weapons and closely coordinates with the same police agencies that systematically terrorize Black and Brown communities in the United States — threatens to force-feed the strikers, and is gunning down their supporters in the streets of Palestine. Such relentless state violence reflects the continuing Nakba, Israel’s 69-year-old ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people.

Undeterred, the prisoners have vowed: “Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.”

They know that, like Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa, Zionist settler colonialism will one day fall to the unstoppable tide of popular mass resistance.

Labor bodies around the world have risen to their defense, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Canadian Labour Congress, 26 European trade unions and labor organizations, World Federation of Trade Unions (representing 92 million workers in 162 countries), International Trade Union Confederation (representing 181 million workers in 163 countries), and the Trabajadores-Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (PIT-CNT) of Uruguay.

Their outpouring is accompanied by rising international labor respect of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line, which demands an end to occupation and apartheid, full equality for all, and Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled.

In the U.S., BDS has been embraced by West Coast dockers refusing to handle Israeli Zim Line cargo, the United Electrical Workers, CT State AFL-CIO, UAW 2865, UAW 2322, GSOC-UAW 2110, AFT 3220, and thousands of other union members.

This parallels growing intersectional solidarity with Palestine from the Movement for Black Lives, Standing Rock, #NoBanNoWall, and other U.S. grassroots social justice movements.

Today, we affirm:
*Victory to Palestinian Political Hunger Strikers!
*From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!

=====

Issued May 21, 2017 by Labor for Palestine Co-Conveners:
(Affiliations below for identification only)
*Suzanne Adely, Global Workers Solidarity Network
*Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Labor for Standing Rock
*Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)

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Endorsing Organizations (list in formation)

Labor for Palestine
Labor for Standing Rock
GSOC-UAW Local 2110
Al-Awda New York, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center
Black4Palestine
Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100)
CUNY4Palestine
Decolonize This Place
Existence is Resistance
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Jewish Voice for Peace-New York City
LA4Palestine
NYC Solidarity with Palestine
NYC Students for Justice in Palestine
Palestinian Youth Movement – USA
Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
TOLEF: Tree of Life Educational Fund
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
US Palestinian Community Network

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[When signing, please list trade union and/or other affiliation, and location, in the comment box — then amplify your voice by sharing on social media and promoting on Change.org]

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E-mail: info@laborforpalestine.net
Web: https://laborforpalestine.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaborForPalestine/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Labor4Palestine
Donate: https://laborforpalestine.net/donate-to-lfp

May Day Speech NYC

May Day Speech
Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine; Labor for Standing Rock; Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW 2325
Union Square NYC, May 1, 2017

*From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!
*Viva, Viva Palestina!

As we gather here today, more than 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners are in their 15th day of a hunger strike against conditions that Amnesty International calls “unlawful and cruel.” Their action is part of a long international tradition, including the hunger strike held last fall by prisoners in the United States.

But the Israeli government — which receives $3.8b/year in U.S. weapons, and closely coordinates with the NYPD and other police agencies that systematically target Black and Brown communities in this country — has branded the strikers “terrorists,” just as the South African apartheid regime once labeled Nelson Mandela and thousands of other political prisoners.

Despite all this, unjust and oppressive regimes — no matter how powerful they may appear — always fall: Jim Crow fell, South African apartheid fell, Zionism will fall.

That’s why, like Biblical Davids, the Palestinian prisoners have answered today’s Goliath by saying: “Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.”

I am proud to say that a growing number of workers in the United States are joining them in to stand against the apartheid regime.

Since 2014 alone, West Coast longshore workers have refused to handle Israeli Zim Line cargo; UAW 2865, 2322, and GSOC-2110; the United Electrical Workers, CT State AFL-CIO, and AFT 3220 have endorsed the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line, which demands an end to Israeli military occupation of the 1967 territories; full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

These actions are in the highest tradition of solidarity, from Black Lives to Standing Rock, from New York City to Palestine.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, on April 16, 1963, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

As trade unionists have always said, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All!”

As we say today:
*Free, Free Palestine
*From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free!

Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline

[To sign the statement below, please click here, including your trade trade union and/or other affiliation in the comment box]

stand2

Urgent Call on the AFL-CIO: Reverse Support for the Dakota Access Pipeline
Labor for Palestine, September 17, 2016

As trade unionists and social justice activists, we urgently call on the AFL-CIO to reverse its disgraceful support for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

DAPL continues more than 500 years of settler-colonialism, dispossession, and genocide against indigenous people in the Americas, who are defending the Earth’s vital resources against the same corporate greed, state violence, and repression that violate workers’ rights on a daily basis.

Like the Black and Brown Lives, Immigrant Rights, Palestinian, and other freedom struggles, the courageous Sioux resistance at Standing Rock has become a worldwide beacon for all who fight injustice.

In solidarity, numerous trade union bodies — including the Amalgamated Transit UnionCalifornia Faculty AssociationCommunications Workers of AmericaIndustrial Workers of the WorldIWW Environmental Unionism CaucusNational Nurses UnitedNew York State Nurses AssociationNational Writers Union/UAW Local 1981United Electrical WorkersSEIU 503 OPEUBorder Agricultural Workers; and the Labor Coalition for Community Action, which includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work — #StandWithStandingRock.

Workers’ rights are inseparable from indigenous rights. We need decent union jobs that protect, rather than destroy, the Earth — there are no jobs on a dead planet.

An injury to one is an injury to all: #NoDAPL!

=====

Labor for Palestine Co-Conveners:

Suzanne Adely, U.S.-MENA Global Labor Solidarity Network; Former Staff, Global Organizing Institute, UAW

Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325

Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired)

Jaime Veve, Transport Workers Union Local 100, NYC (retired)

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See also:

From Standing Rock to Occupied Jerusalem: We Resist Desecration of our Burial Sites and Colonizing our Indigenous Lands (Palestinian BDS National Committee, September 9, 2016)

Open Letter from U.S. Trade Unionists to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Boycott Apartheid Israel (Labor for Palestine, December 4, 2009)

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info@laborforpalestine.net
https://laborforpalestine.net/
https://www.facebook.com/LaborForPalestine/
https://twitter.com/Labor4Palestine
Donate: https://laborforpalestine.net/donate-to-lfp/

=====

 

This petition will be delivered to:

  • AFL-CIO President
    Richard Trumka

Labor for Palestine: Against Apartheid, For International Solidarity (Western Mass Labor for Palestine brochure)

View in searchable PDF format: 2016 — WM LFP Brochure.OCR

Screenshot 2016-06-29 16.34.41

Labor for Palestine Opposition to Gov. Cuomo’s Anti-BDS Blacklist, NY MTA Board Meeting

  • Marty Goodman (TWU Local 100) at 5:48 min.
  • Suzanne Adely (Labor for Palestine) at 8:10 min.
  • David Letwin (Jews for Palestinian Right of Return at 10:46 min.
  • John Mooney (TWU Local 100) at 13:22 min.(Written text of some statements, below video)

Marty Goodman (TWU 100)

My name is Marty Goodman. I am a retired Station Agent and a former TWU Local 100 Executive Board member.

I am here to oppose Governor Cuomo’s undemocratic gag act on State funding to supporters of the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against apartheid Israel.

I, like many Jews, fervently support BDS. Israeli Occupation, terror and racism must go.

In 2003, I used vacation time to go to Nablus in the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank of Israel. I stayed with a Palestinian family. I protested occupation every day and roamed its’ bullet ridden streets, learning of outrage after outrage. When I left Nablus, the Palestinian father said, “Marty, you’re family now.”

I’ve learned that yet another illegal Israeli settlement is being built in Nablus, defying international law.

I’m angry as hell. I demand that the MTA reject and repudiate Cuomo’s gag order and the creation of a black list of BDS supporters!

Free speech is a first amendment right!

I also demand that this Board vote down purchases of IBM technology (p213) and Goldman Sachs services as underwriter for the Hudson Rail Yard’s “Trust Obligation” (p33).

Both IBM and Goldman are heavily involved in the Israeli garrison state.

MTA, DIVEST NOW!!!

Spend money on a decent contract for TWU Local 100. Transit workers need wage hikes above inflation to keep up with rising costs, extend maternity leave for women, improve medical care, and remove second class pay for new hires.

I say, Equality for all in Palestine!

End U.S. aid to apartheid Israel!

No to Cuomo’s McCarthyite gag act!

Long live BDS!

Suzanne Adely (Labor for Palestine)

Labor for Palestine, a national workers network, joins members of Transit Workers Union Local 100 who are here today calling on the MTA Board to reject compliance with Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order #157, an unconstitutional blacklist against those who support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

BDS is a global human rights movement which demands an end to the brutal Israeli military occupation of the 1967 territories; full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

It has gained growing momentum in recent years, particularly the wake of Israel’s massacre of 2200 Palestinians — including 500 children — in Gaza in 2014, and a 10-year high in Palestinian casualties in the West Bank in 2015.

These crimes reflect a system that veteran South African freedom fighters call “worse than apartheid.” That is why BDS is closely aligned to Black Lives Matter and other racial justice movements, and many of its supporters are Jews of conscience.

In the past two years alone, the BDS picket line has been embraced by West Coast longshore workers of the ILWU; thousands of academic workers in the United Auto Workers and American Federation of Teachers; the United Electrical Workers; and Connecticut AFL-CIO.

Such boycotts are protected First Amendment speech, and have been used to remedy injustice, from the segregated buses of Montgomery, Alabama, to the California grape fields, to apartheid South Africa. Today’s BDS movement is similarly unstoppable, for as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In the judgment of history, the MTA Board will find no refuge in siding with apartheid Israel, or in the excuse that it was “just following orders.” The only legal and moral choice is to refuse complicity with Governor Cuomo’s new McCarthyism.

David Letwin (Jews for Palestinian Right of Return)

I’m speaking today on behalf of Jews for Palestinian Right of Return. We call on the MTA to refuse to cooperate with Governor Cuomo’s unconstitutional executive order 157 directing the state to blacklist any institution or organization that respects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions picket line against apartheid Israel.

This illegal order is a disturbing assault on the right of free speech and expression. But it is also part of a broader campaign by authorities to intimidate into silence those who stand up for Palestinian human rights and who refuse to accept the legitimacy of a racist regime sustained though ethnic cleansing and dispossession.

The BDS call, which demands the end of the 1967 occupation, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and right of return for Palestinian refugees, follows in the footsteps of earlier boycott campaigns against Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa. It marches hand in hand today with liberation movements like Black Lives Matter. In the spirit of those movements, we say to the members of the MTA Board of Directors: don’t do business with IBM and Goldman Sachs, both of which are deeply complicit with the apartheid Israeli regime, and don’t collude with Governor Cuomo’s witch-hunt against the growing worldwide BDS movement for justice and equality.

And the next time you see the governor, please tell him for us that his desperate attempt to muzzle BDS will only make it louder.

Thank you.