Category Archives: NYCLAW

NYCLAW Support for ILWU May Day Work Stoppage

Posted on April 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

NYCLAW Support for ILWU May Day Work Stoppage

April 23, 2008

Robert McEllrath, ILWU President
1188 Franklin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 775-0533
(415) 775-1302 FAX

Dear Brother McEllrath:

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) salutes the ILWU’s Pacific Coast May Day Shutdown to Stop the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the beginning, Bush & Co. have sought to justify this war for oil and empire with phony claims about “fighting terrorism,” finding”weapons of mass destruction,” and spreading “democracy.” Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies at the polls, the administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East.

This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but also arming and financing Israel’s war on Lebanon and its increasingly brutal slow-genocide of the Palestinians, launching a proxy invasion of Somalia, bombing Pakistan, and threatening to attack Iran.

As in all such wars, ordinary working people pay the price. In Iraq and Afghanistan, this war has killed more than a million people, caused more than 50,000 G.I. casualties, promoted civil war, cost at least $1.2 trillion and pushed the economy into crisis — with no end in sight.

At home, the administration continues to attack civil liberties, the Arab-Muslim community, undocumented immigrants, Katrina refugees, people of color and labor.

Yet this is a bipartisan war. Congressional Democrats — including senators Clinton and Obama — have given Bush every penny he has asked for. They have refused to filibuster war spending (which requires only 41 Senate votes) and won’t even promise to get out by the end of the next presidential term in 2013. At most, they call for “redeployment” to maintain U.S. control of the region.

A generation ago, a war ended when Vietnamese resistance and the Black freedom movement ignited a grassroots working class mutiny in the military, auto plants, ghettos and barrios, against what Martin Luther King Jr. accurately called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . my own government.”

It will take a similar mutiny to end this war. The ILWU has a proud tradition of work stoppages to protest South African apartheid and U.S. death squads in Central America. Your May Day action shows how workers — both in and out of uniform — have the collective power to end this war, bring the troops home now, and get the U.S. out of the Middle East.

Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):

Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300

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

Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; N.E. Regional Coordinator, Million Worker March Movement

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Posted in Gaza, LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

NYCLAW: U.S. Labor and Gaza

Posted on April 2, 2008 | Leave a comment

From: New York City Labor Against the War <nyclaw01@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Subject: NYCLAW: U.S. Labor and Gaza

Since it was first issued on Monday, New York City Labor Against the War’s statement, U.S. LABOR AND GAZA (below) has been endorsed by 330 people around the world, and posted at numerous sites, including:

*MRZine
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/nyclaw250308.html

*Labournet
http://www.labournet.net/world/0803/gaza20.html

*Pacbi
http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=705_0_1_0_C

But to break the silence on Palestine, we need you and/or your organization to:

1. Endorse: http://www.petitiononline.com/Gaza/petition.html

2. Post and forward.

3. Otherwise publish.

4. Stay in touch with these efforts by joining NYCLAW’s listserv at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/

Thank you!

—–

U.S. LABOR AND GAZA
New York City Labor Against the War
March 23, 2008

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel’s recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians — half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children — since February 27.

WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?

Israel claims that it is fighting “terrorism” in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.

In fact, Israel’s attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment — with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority — to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.

Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world’s “largest open air prison,” assassinating activists, and cutting-off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.

Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements and murder in the West Bank — from which no rockets have been fired.

Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery or tanks.

Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel’s modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.

On February 29, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger “Shoah” — a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.

As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the “inevitable consequence,” of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as “worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967.”

Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, “You have Palestinians who wouldn’t necessarily support the violence but they are saying, ‘Well, what choice do we have?'”

SIXTY YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE

Israel’s war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance — including nonviolent protest — to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Indeed, most of Gaza’s population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.

In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine — including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.

Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees — the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.

Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas — today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) — are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a “demographic threat,” and threatened with mass expulsion.

In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8-meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.

From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.

All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis “peace conference” in November.

U.S. SPONSORSHIP

Israel’s war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons and approval.

Since 1948, Israel — the top foreign aid recipient — has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.

Israel’s recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.

On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of “America’s. . . . commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats,” and that the U.S. and Israel are “friends — special friends.”

This “special friendship” means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.

Such support bolsters Israel’s longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East — and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa’s closest ally.

After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture “evidence” of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.

Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.

In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel’s attacks against Gaza.

LABOR’S ROLE

In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.

Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.

But through a combination of intent, ignorance and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country — often without the knowledge or consent of union members — is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.

Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.

In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent “National Solidarity Rally for Israel.” In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel’s war on Lebanon.

These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel’s opponents — many of whom are Jewish.

In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on “Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements.”

Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.

Labor leaders’ complicity parallels infamous “AFL-CIA” support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.-Israel war machine and labor’s corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.

A NECESSARY STAND

More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position too “divisive” and “unpopular.”

In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that “silence is betrayal,” and that “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government.”

At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

These principles are no less relevant today.

Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.

Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:

1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.

2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.

3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.

————-
Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):

Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300

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

Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March

————-
NYCLAW, with Al-Awda-NY The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a cofounder of Labor for Palestine .

Previous NYCLAW materials on Palestine include:

Response to Anti-Boycott Attacks (October 19, 2007)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2683

Open Letter to UTLA President A.J. Duffy (October 9, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2466

U.S. Government and Labor Aid to Israel (September 1, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2442

Labor and the Middle East War (August 11, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2429

Conference: Palestine, Labor and the AFL-CIO (July 23, 2005)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2245

From Palestine to the US – Labor Fights Back! (October 7, 2004)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2111

Report on the New York Visit by Representatives from the PGFTU (December 22, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1359

An Evening With Palestinian Trade Unionists (December 13, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1328

Protest Israeli Consul’s Speech to AFL-CIO (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1001

No Labor Money for Israeli War Crimes! (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/999

Monday Israeli Consul Protest Postponed April 26, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/926

————-
Subscribe to the NYCLAW low-volume listserv:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw01@gmail.com
PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129

Sincerely,

 

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Posted in BDS, Gaza, LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

U.S. Labor and Gaza (New York City Labor Against the War)

Posted on March 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

U.S. Labor and Gaza
New York City Labor Against the War
March 23, 2008

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel’s recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians — half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children — since February 27.

WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?

Israel claims that it is fighting “terrorism” in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.

In fact, Israel’s attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment — with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority — to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.

Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world’s “largest open air prison,” assassinating activists, and cutting-off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.

Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements and murder in the West Bank — from which no rockets have been fired.

Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery or tanks.

Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel’s modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.

On February 29, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger “Shoah” — a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.

As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the “inevitable consequence,” of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as “worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967.”

Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, “You have Palestinians who wouldn’t necessarily support the violence but they are saying, ‘Well, what choice do we have?’”

SIXTY YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE

Israel’s war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance — including nonviolent protest — to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Indeed, most of Gaza’s population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.

In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine — including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.

Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees — the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.

Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas — today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) — are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a “demographic threat,” and threatened with mass expulsion.

In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8-meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.

From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.

All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis “peace conference” in November.

U.S. SPONSORSHIP

Israel’s war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons and approval.

Since 1948, Israel — the top foreign aid recipient — has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.

Israel’s recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.

On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of “America’s. . . . commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats,” and that the U.S. and Israel are “friends — special friends.”

This “special friendship” means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.

Such support bolsters Israel’s longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East — and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa’s closest ally.

After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture “evidence” of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.

Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.

In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel’s attacks against Gaza.

LABOR’S ROLE

In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.

Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.

But through a combination of intent, ignorance and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country — often without the knowledge or consent of union members — is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.

Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.

In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent “National Solidarity Rally for Israel.” In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel’s war on Lebanon.

These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel’s opponents — many of whom are Jewish.

In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on “Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements.”

Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.

Labor leaders’ complicity parallels infamous “AFL-CIA” support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.-Israel war machine and labor’s corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.

A NECESSARY STAND

More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position too “divisive” and “unpopular.”

In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that “silence is betrayal,” and that “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government.”

At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

These principles are no less relevant today.

Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.

Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:

1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.

2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.

3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.

————-
Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):

Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300

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

Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March

————-
NYCLAW, with Al-Awda-NY The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a cofounder of Labor for Palestine.

Previous NYCLAW materials on Palestine include:

Response to Anti-Boycott Attacks (October 19, 2007)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2683

Open Letter to UTLA President A.J. Duffy (October 9, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2466

U.S. Government and Labor Aid to Israel (September 1, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2442

Labor and the Middle East War (August 11, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2429

Conference: Palestine, Labor and the AFL-CIO (July 23, 2005)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2245

From Palestine to the US – Labor Fights Back! (October 7, 2004)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2111

Report on the New York Visit by Representatives from the PGFTU (December 22, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1359

An Evening With Palestinian Trade Unionists (December 13, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1328

Protest Israeli Consul’s Speech to AFL-CIO (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1001

No Labor Money for Israeli War Crimes! (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/999

Monday Israeli Consul Protest Postponed April 26, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/926
————-
Subscribe to the NYCLAW low-volume listserv:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw01@gmail.com
PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129

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Posted in BDS, Gaza, LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

Protest greets ‘Butcher of Gaza’

Posted on March 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Protest greets ‘Butcher of Gaza’

By Greg Butterfield
New York

Hundreds of Palestinian people and their supporters gathered outside Manhattan’s luxurious Waldorf-Astoria Hotel March 18 to protest a fundraiser for the Friends of the Israeli Occupation Forces (officially “Israeli Defense Forces” or IDF). Inside, wealthy patrons supped on $1,000-a-plate dinners and toasted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, dubbed the “Butcher of Gaza.”

Though New York Police forced protesters to rally across the broad expanse of Park Avenue, there was no question that the occupation’s backers heard their message loud and clear. Throughout the rally well-heeled guests quick-stepped from their limos and towncars into the hotel lobby, while Barak’s arrival was greeted with jeers and thunderous chants of “Bush, Barak, you will see, Palestine will be free!”

The crowd of women, men and children held signs demanding the right of return for Palestinianrefugees and waved large Palestinian flags in the chilly late-winter air. Besides people of Arab descent, there were African American, Latin, Asian, Native and white supporters, including anti-Zionist Jewish activists.

Protesters cheered when International Action Center co-director Sara Flounders offered her wish to the “Friends” that they “choke on their dinners.” She was echoed by other speakers who said their plates were caked in the blood of dead and suffering Palestinian children in Gaza.

The protest was organized by Al-Awda NY-The Palestine Right of Return Coalition and the General Union of Palestinian Students, among other groups. Speakers at the rally included Samia Halaby of the Defend Palestine Coalition and Al-Awda NY, people’s attorney Lynne Stewart, Larry Holmes of Troops Out Now Coalition, Michael Letwin of New York City Labor Against the War, and Charlotte Kates of New Jersey Solidarity-Activists for the Liberation of Palestine.

On March 11, 13 human rights and anti-war organizations had called on the Waldorf-Astoria management to cancel the event. “The human rights violations committed by the Israeli military over the past 60 years are severe,” said the groups’ statement. “Last week the respected Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that, ‘From 27 February to the afternoon of 3 March, 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the [Israeli] Chief of Staff’s contention that ninety percent were armed, at least fifty-four of the dead (twenty-five of them minors) did not take part in the hostilities. In addition, at least forty-six minors were wounded.’

“Furthermore, during last week’s fighting, Israel’s Deputy Defense MinisterMatan Vilnai threatened Gaza’s people with ‘a bigger holocaust.'”

Israel has blockaded Gaza, cutting off electricity, fuel, water, food, and medicines. Hundreds of people have died in vicious Israeli military assaults. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians—Republican and Democrat alike—and the corporate media continue to label heroic Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” and U.S./Israeli state terrorism as “self-defense.”

The Zionist settler state, Washington’s loyal attack dog in the oil-rich Middle East, receives more than $5 billion in U.S. aid annually, almost half going directly to the military. President Bush’s proposed 2008 budget calls for a further 9-percent increase in direct military aid.

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Posted in Gaza, LFP Media, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

Human Rights Groups ask the Beatles to boycott Israel’s Anniversary (PACBI)

Posted on February 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

PACBI

Press Release | February 8, 2008

Human Rights Groups ask the Beatles to boycott Israel’s Anniversary

Over 40 Human Rights organisations from around the world who campaign for peace and justice for the Palestinian people are today sending an open letter to the surviving Beatles, Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney, and to the families of George Harrison and John Lennon, asking them not to accept any invitation to join in this year’s 60th Anniversary celebration of the birth of the state of Israel. An invitation was delivered last week by the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, during a visit to the Beatles Museum in Liverpool.The letter describes what happened in 1948. This was not a peaceful legally conducted creation of a safe haven for Jews escaping Europe but a brutal ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians and theft of their land. The Zionist movement had set out to claim the whole of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state long before the Nazi atrocities had occurred. In 1948 they took 78% of the land and brutally exiled or killed 750,000 Palestinians and destroyed over 400 villages- policies and actions that would never have had the support of the Beatles while they were together singing ‘all you need is Love’ and ‘give peace a chance’.

Professor Steven and Hilary Rose, founder members of Bricup (The British Committee for Universities in Palestine) say ‘We are asking the Beatles to boycott these events because they are a celebration of the denial of the human rights of the Palestinian people- inalienable rights established in the 1948 UN Declaration. These were enacted on the wave of revulsion at the Nazi Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War. It is to our shame that the West does not insist that the Declaration really is universal and is enforced in The Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel. Human rights apply to all governments, and not only to those that lack the powerful friends that Israel has. This cuts in to the heart of International Law which underpins all our rights and freedoms.’

For more information please contact:

Prof Steven and Hilary Rose: [email]s.p.r.rose@open.ac.uk[/email]

PSC 02077006313 or email: [email]info@palestinecampaign.org[/email]

ENDS

Further Information

Copy of the letter

Open Letter to the Beatles

To Paul, Ringo and the families of John and George

Dear all

We are writing to you to ask you to decline the invitation to join the celebrations marking the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.

What happened was not the peaceful creation of a safe haven for Jews escaping from Europe; it was the brutal ethnic cleansing and massacre of the Palestinians and the theft of their land. The United Nations decision in 1947 to partition Palestine allocated 55% of
the Palestinian land for a Jewish state and 45 % for a Palestinian state. But even that gross settlement was not good enough for the Zionists who had targeted the whole of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish State – long before the Nazi atrocities. So, the Zionists took 78% of the land, brutally exiled or killed over 750,000 Arab Palestinians and destroyed over 400 of their villages in an ethnic cleansing operation that was driven by brutal terrorism.

Palestine/Israel is about the size of Wales. Can you imagine what the Welsh would have felt and done if the UN had decided to partition Wales and incomers had ethnically cleansed and massacred Welsh villages? It is not only the Palestinians who remember these days of horror as the Nakba; Israeli historians themselves have documented these events in all their bloody detail. And little has changed since in 1967 Israel seized the remaining Palestinian territory (the West Bank and Gaza) and the brutal occupation continues.

The Beatles sang “All you need is love” but Israel believes that all it needs is racism and an army. Is this a policy that would have commanded their support when they were singing together? We don’t think so. The prospect of the surviving Beatles celebrating the Zionist theft of Palestinian land in 1948 is obscene, both for the suffering Palestinian people and for the growing number of British people who support their call for justice. As John put it, it is time to give peace a chance, not to celebrate oppression.

Signed by:

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

Ittijah – Union of Arab Community Based Associations

The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

Alternative Information Center – Palestine/Israel

Rima AWAD – Arab Counseling Centre for Education – Palestine

Yehya Hijazi – Al Mirsat Organization –– Palestine

Sana Shehadeh – Palestinian Counseling Centre – Palestine

Caritas Jerusalem

Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK (PSC)

British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP)

British Muslim Initiative (BMI)

Friends of Al-Aqsa UK

The Peace Cycle

Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine

Raymond Deane -Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Comité de Soutien au Peuple Palestinien – Belgique

Association Belgo-Palestinienne – Belgique

Comité pour une Paix Juste au Proche Orient – Luxembourg

Sonja Zimmermann- Netherlands Palestine Committee NPK

Aktionsbuendnis fuer einen gerechten Frieden in Palaestina, Germany

Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost – Austria

Fritz Edlinger, Secretary General – Society for Austro-Arab Relations SAAR

Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS)

Women in Black – Strasbourg,

Collectif Judeo-Arabe et Citoyen pour la Paix Strasbourg – France

Handicap Solidarité – France
Association Farrah-France

Association Internationale de Préservation du Patrimoine Palestinien AIPPP

Civimed Initiatives – France

Amis du Monde Diplomatique 67

Magda Zenon – Hands Across the Divide (Cyprus)

CADTM – Commité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde

Solidaridad para el Desarrollo y la Paz – SODEPAZ Spain

Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa

Women in Solidarity with Palestine, Toronto

NION (Not In Our Name) Toronto

Creative Response, Toronto

New York City Labor Against the War – USA

Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

Women in Black Los Angeles

Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights – USA

Posted on 09-02-2008

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Posted in BDS, LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

CUNY Professors Decry Their Union’s Anti-Israel, Anti-American Activities (Jewish Press)

Posted on December 19, 2007 | Leave a comment

Jewish Press

CUNY Professors Decry Their Union’s Anti-Israel, Anti-American Activities

By:Elliot Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter Wednesday, December 19, 2007

“Not in our name!” some City University of New York (CUNY) professors are proclaiming.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union that represents 20,000 faculty members and other professional staff at CUNY, supports and promotes various far-left and anti-Israel causes, these professors claim.

For example, a mere 16 days after September 11, 2001, PSC President Barbara Bowen was one of thirteen principal officers to sign a statement denouncing “George Bush’s war” in Afghanistan.

This statement, issued by New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW), claims the United States has already “inflicted widespread suffering on innocent people in such places as Iraq, Sudan, Israel, the Occupied Territories…” and warns that war “will play into the hands of religious fanatics from Osama bin Laden to Jerry Falwell.”

The statement proposes that “an independent international tribunal [should] impartially investigate, apprehend and try those responsible for the September 11 attack.”

Justifying its occasional venture into the political realm, the PSC told The Jewish Press that it cannot “defend the interests of our members without participating in the life of the city, state and nation that defines the social and political context in which we work and teach.”

However, KC Johnson, professor of history at Brooklyn College, said this is only an excuse. Referring to PSC leadership as the “far left fringe,” Johnson said “they’re far more interested in international affairs than they are in the working conditions of most people at CUNY.”

Bronx Community College professor of history David Gordon agreed: “They pay far too much attention to radical causes that are dear to the far left but much less attention to the economic needs of the membership.”

Among other groups the PSC supports directly or by proxy, Johnson said, is Labor for Palestine, whichNYCLAW co-founded with the pro-Palestinian group Al-Awda. In a letter to fellow trade unionists and workers, Labor for Palestine calls attention to Israel’s “brutal military occupation of Palestine,” and its “murder and collective punishment” of Palestinians.

The letter concludes by asking all labor bodies to “demand an end to U.S. military and economic support for Israeli Apartheid,” which it estimates at five billion dollars annually.

The PSC averred that it “has no affiliation with Labor for Palestine.”

However, while English professor emerita at Bronx Community College Nahma Sandrow said, this is “technically true,” she pointed to the PSC’s association with NYCLAW co-convener Michael Letwin, who is “explicitly against Israel,” and who also helped draft Labor for Palestine’s founding document in 2004.

Letwin was president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys in New York City for 13 years until he lost re-election in 2002, in part because of his opposition to the war in Afghanistan. In a Socialist Actionarticle in 2002 concerning AFL-CIO’s ownership of millions of dollars-worth of Israeli bonds, Letwin was quoted as saying, “It’s bad enough that our tax dollars are going to fund Israel, but our union dues – that’s intolerable.”

Letwin co-chaired an anti-war meeting with PSC president Barbara Bowen in 2004 and received a “Friend of CUNY” award from the PSC on behalf of NYCLAW that same year.

PSC President Barbara Bowen

“These people are exploiting being in a position of power in a labor union to make a political statement against Israel. They have enormous power here and it’s scary,” Sandrow said.

Further indication of PSC’s anti-Israel sentiment lies in the signature of PSC International Committee chairman Renate Bridenthal on “An Open Letter/Petition from American Jews to Our Government.” The petition declares: “Our country has an extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy, if only our government would dare to use it…. [W]e call on our government to make continued aid conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement.”

More locally, the PSC recently praised New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s plan to grant illegal immigrants driver licenses. The PSC’s Solidarity Committee had fought for the change, which, according to the PSC, “makes the city safer for all of us.”

Professor of mathematics at Queens College Michael Maller remembers a time when the PSC was less political. The PSC used to be led, he said, by “liberal Democrats akin to Mario Cuomo.” However, “they were getting older and losing energy.” Then, in 2000, Barbara Bowen led a group called the New Caucus, which won control of PSC’s executive council. “And now we’re being led by an alliance of leftists and deconstructionists.”

Following The Money

Many professors and students at CUNY are unaware of the PSC’s ideological positions and activism, according to Brooklyn College’s Professor Johnson. “[PSC president Barbara] Bowen is careful that people do not know,” he said.

For example, said Johnson, very few people know that the PSC distributes union money to political causes. Individual sums are sometimes small but nevertheless shed light on whom the PSC feels worthy of its money.

For example, in late 2001 the University of South Florida moved to dismiss Professor Sami Al-Arian amid allegations that he supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PSC’s Delegate Assembly reacted by proclaiming a “threat to academic freedom and the First Amendment.”

It adopted a resolution on April 25, 2002 to donate $100 to faculty at the University of South Florida defending Al-Arian. In a plea agreement in April 2006, Al-Arian admitted to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad and agreed to be deported.

“The PSC did not contribute any funds to Al Arian,” the PSC wrote to The Jewish Press. “[W]e did contribute $100.00 to support the academic freedom campaign of a faculty union in Florida.”

The PSC does admit donating $5,000 to Lori Berenson, an American woman accused of aiding a Marxist terrorist organization in Peru. However, it claims the contribution was humanitarian and made to Lori’s parents, not to her. (Her father was a professor at Baruch College and a member of the PSC.)

Professor David Seidemann, who teaches geology at Brooklyn College, decries PSC’s political expenditures. “I don’t think any union leader should be using union money for any political agenda,” he said. “Just do what serves everybody’s interests and forget the politics. That’s my philosophy.”

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Posted in Academic Freedom, Free Speech, LFP Media, NYCLAW, PSC-CUNY, U.S. Labor News

March on the Pentagon — Saturday, March 17, 2007 to: End the War & Bring All the Troops Home Now! (NYCLAW)

Posted on November 25, 2007 | Leave a comment

[The following is also attached as a two-sided flyer in Word Format: 3.17.07 Flyer 2pg

March on the Pentagon — Saturday, March 17, 2007 to:
End the War & Bring All the Troops Home Now!

*U.S. Out of the Middle East*

>Immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia: Not another
penny for war funding, timetables, redeployment, advisors, air-war, or
aid to U.S. puppets. Reparations for U.S. devastation of the region.

>No Support to the Israeli Apartheid State: End the $5 billion annual
U.S. government aid to Israel, divest all private investments and union
funds, boycott Israel, end the occupation and fully implement the
Palestinian right of return.

>No Attacks on Iran and Syria — Or Anyone Else.

*End the War at Home*

>Defend Our Civil Liberties.

>End Attacks on the Arab/Muslim Community.

>Full Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants: No detention or deportation.

>Stop Police Brutality & Criminalization of Our Youth

>Money for Human Need, Not for War: Rebuild the Gulf Coast for — and
under the control of — Katrina survivors. Decent jobs, food, housing,
healthcare, education and transportation for all poor and working people.

Labor Contingent
Assembly starts at 11 a.m., on east side of 23rd Street, between
Constitution Ave. and the Lincoln Memorial (Blue/Orange line to Foggy
Bottom).  March begins promptly at 12:30.

Buses From NYC
nyc@answercoalition.org  212-694-8720
info@troopsoutnow.org  212-633-6646

————–
[To endorse the statement below, please go to:
http://www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html ]

Mass Movement to End the War Now
New York City Labor Against the War
January 24, 2007

Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November
elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the
Middle East.

This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and
Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and
its increasingly brutal oppression of the Palestinians, launching a
proxy invasion of Somalia, and threatening to attack Iran and Syria.

As in all wars of conquest, ordinary people pay the price. In Iraq
alone, this war for oil and empire has killed at least 655,000 Iraqis,
caused 50,000 U.S. casualties, promoted civil war, and cost $1.2
trillion — with no end in sight.

Meanwhile at home, the administration continues to attack civil
liberties, the Arab-Muslim community, undocumented immigrants, Katrina
refugees, people of color and labor.

Yet this is a bipartisan war, and as a willing accomplice, the
Democratic Party cannot be trusted to end it. Even now, most politicians
refuse to cut-off funding for the occupation of Iraq, let alone end the
war as a whole.

History shows that the U.S. got out of Vietnam only due to tenacious
Vietnamese resistance and to the mass antiwar movement, particularly
among GIs.

Similarly, U.S. war in the Middle East today has been crippled by
overwhelming Iraqi resistance, which deserves the support of a mass
antiwar movement in this country.

This movement — which belongs to rank-and-file participants, rather
than the leaders of any organization — must join together in all
upcoming protests, including those on January 27 and March 17.

To be effective, the movement must be led by those with the strongest
need and greatest power to end the war, including GIs, veterans,
workers, people of color, and immigrants. It must also oppose the entire
war and demand justice — at home and abroad:

U.S. OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST

1. Immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia: No war
funding, timetables, redeployment, advisors, air-war, or aid to U.S.
client regimes. Reparations for U.S. devastation of the region.

2. No Support to the Israeli Apartheid State: End the $5 billion annual
U.S. government aid to Israel, divest all private investments and union
funds, boycott Israel, end the occupation and fully implement the
Palestinian right of return.

3. No Attacks on Iran and Syria — Or Anyone Else.

END THE WAR AT HOME

1. Defend Our Civil Liberties.

2. End Attacks on the Arab/Muslim Community.

3. Full Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants: No detention or deportation.

4. Money for Human Need, Not for War: Rebuild the Gulf Coast for — and
under the control of — Katrina survivors. Decent jobs, food, housing,
healthcare, education and transportation for all poor and working people.
NYCLAW Co-Conveners (Other affiliations listed for identification only):

Larry Adams Former President, NPMHU Local 300
Michael Letwin Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys
Brenda Stokely Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million
Worker March

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw@comcast.net     PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129

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Posted in LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

Additional NYC Labor Support for Israel Boycott (Chief-Leader)

Posted on October 26, 2007 | Leave a comment

http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2007/1026/letters/040.html

The Chief-Leader, NYC Civil Service Newspaper
October 26, 2007

As a Jewish trade unionist who supports the just struggle of the
Palestinian people and the boycott of Israel, I object to the
hypocrisy inherent in the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) President
Stuart Appelbaum’s statements, as quoted in the Sept. 7 issue.
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2683] JLC
President Appelbaum, in opposition to the boycott of Israel by British
unions, states in the JLC letter that “Trade unionists and their
organizations seeking such a just and fair resolution should be
assisting those working to bring the two sides together.”

Where has the JLC actually done this? The JLC is a partisan supporter
of Zionism! It has always fought strenuously against such a dialogue
within the labor movement! Please tell me what unions in NYC have
allowed representatives of the Palestinian resistance movement to
speak to their members? From my own personal experience, I know that
just bringing up the question of defense of the Palestinians, even in
the most moderate fashion, is enough to bring down on one’s head a
full frontal political attack intended to silence all critics of
Zionism.

Many years ago, I chaired a large meeting of my union chapter where I
invited both sides to speak. Only the Palestinian side showed up
because the Zionists’ side refused to sit at the same table with the
Palestinians! Last month, at a meeting I chaired at DC 37 opposing the
Iraq occupation, I made a plea to the union movement to begin a
dialogue on this critical issue. The JLC letter is quoted as stating:
“We call for increased engagement of trade unions with their
counterparts on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I
challenge the JLC to make that statement a reality! I’ll gladly help
them set up such a meeting where the rank-and-file union members can
attend and ask questions. Let’s start a real and continuing dialogue!

The issue of the boycott of Israel can’t be allowed to be pushed under
the rug. The issue of Zionism is central to almost every political
conflict in the Middle East. U.S. foreign policy for over a half
century is wedded to the ideology and strategy of Zionism. Trillions
of dollars of our tax money and the blood of the U.S. soldiers, as
well as the blood of millions of Iraqis, Lebanese, Iranians, Afghans,
Palestinians and Jewish civilians are at stake. Washington has no
money for health care, no money for rebuilding our bridges and
infrastructure, no money to rebuild New Orleans while trillions of
dollars are poured into the wars in the Middle East.

Can the AFL-CIO affiliated American Center for International Labor
Solidarity known as the Solidarity Center continue to embrace U.S.
support for the Israel occupation while unions all over the world are
backing the boycott? In order to emphasize the importance of the
issue, I stated at the meeting I chaired at DC 37 last month that
“Today’s Palestinians are yesterday’s Jews” and “Today’s Gaza Strip is
yesterday’s Warsaw Ghetto.” We must support the seven million
Palestinian refugees waiting outside occupied Palestine for decades
because the Zionists refuse their legal right to return, while the
other three million Palestinians live directly under the Zionist boot
heel. This is one of the greatest crimes in human history along with
the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews!

Let’s have a dialogue on the rise of anti-Semitism but most
importantly, engage the labor movement in a dialogue about Palestinian
human rights and the right of return. Let’s not cover up the U.S.
sponsored crimes of Zionism. As a first step in that dialogue, I was
pleased to see that The Chief printed the letter in your Oct. 19th
edition that was written by Larry Adams, Brenda Stokely, Marty Goodman
and Michael Letwin that criticized Comptroller William C. Thompson and
the JLC witch-hunt of the British unions for boycotting Israel. I
contacted them, after seeing their letter in The Chief, in order to
say how much I liked their letter.

Our union members come from all over the world. That includes the
Middle East and it includes Palestinians as well. Shouldn’t we give
them the right to be heard? Shouldn’t we also allow Jewish
anti-Zionists to be heard? Isn’t it about time that our unions set up
forums where both sides can be heard? That’s what I actually did in my
union chapter many years ago. Unity cannot be achieved by silencing
our Palestinian and Middle Eastern members. Let’s follow the old and
true union motto: “In unity there is strength.”

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Posted in BDS, Free Speech, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

End the War & Bring All the Troops Home Now! (NYCLAW)

Posted on September 27, 2007 | Leave a comment

[For formatted version, download: 92907-flyer.doc]

March in DC — Saturday, September 29, 2007 to:
End the War & Bring All the Troops Home Now!

U.S. OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST

*Immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia: Not another penny for war funding, timetables, redeployment, advisors, air-war, or aid to U.S. puppets. Reparations for U.S. devastation of the region.

*No Support to the Israeli Apartheid State: End the $5 billion annual U.S. government aid to Israel, divest all private investments and union funds, boycott Israel, end the occupation and fully implement the Palestinian right of return.

*No Attacks on Iran and Syria — Or Anyone Else.

END THE WAR AT HOME

*Defend Civil Liberties and Workers’ Rights.

*End Attacks on the Arab/Muslim Community.

*Full Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants: No detention or deportation.

*Stop Police Brutality & Criminalization of Our Youth

*Money for Human Need, Not for War: Rebuild the Gulf Coast for — and under the control of — Katrina survivors. Decent jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education and transportation for all poor and working people.

National March on Washington
Gather at reflecting pool on west side of Capitol at 11 a.m Rally begins 12 noon

Labor Contingent
Assemble 12:45-1:15pm @ Maryland Avenue & 3rd Streets SW

Buses From NYC
info@troopsoutnow.org 212-633-6646http://troopsoutnow.org/toncs29bus.shtml

Issued by: New York City Labor Against the War nycla01@gmail.com, 917-566-4272

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Posted in NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News

A Call to the Antiwar Movement: The Need for Unity and Clarity

Posted on September 13, 2007 | Leave a comment

A Call to the Antiwar Movement: The Need for Unity and Clarity

This is a call for unity and clarity in the US antiwar movement. As activists from a variety of movements, we have a responsibility to articulate a vision for the antiwar movement that moves us forward, at a time when the ravages of colonial occupation are most deeply felt in Palestine, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world, as US imperialism continues to threaten yet more war internationally, and as racism and repression within the United States threaten our lives and our communities.

We believe that it is critical, necessary and essential that the building of the antiwar movement in the United States take place in a manner that emphasizes political unity and political clarity – political unity that links communities and movements in common struggle against US imperialism and political clarity that defines that struggle and its component parts, placing the struggle of the Iraqi and Palestinian people for national liberation at the center of our demands, just as it is in the center of the crosshairs of imperialism and in the center of resistance; as well as the struggles of the people of the Philippines, Colombia, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, the Sudan, Haiti, Lebanon, Somalia and everywhere else in the world where imperialism is waging war and occupation and people are resisting, organizing and building. Similarly, the struggles of Black, Chicano, Latino, Asian, Arab, Native and other oppressed nations and communities within the US must be central to our work as an antiwar movement that has real meaning for those most directly affected here; for example, the struggle of Katrina victims to rebuild their communities in the face of racism and oppression, and the struggle of undocumented and other immigrants for full equality, legalization, and workers’ rights.

Therefore, we believe that in order to continue to build a broad, mass antiwar movement, and to create the unity of movements and communities necessary to do so, these issues and struggles must be brought forth in our central demands in a clear and consistent manner, emphasizing the unity of our common struggles against US imperialism, and explicitly focusing on the inextricable linkage between Iraq and Palestine; the Right to Return for Palestinian refugees; the national liberation movements throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America; the struggle for self determination for the Black and Chicano nations, and against racism, national oppression, and all other forms of oppression within the United States; and the centrality of indigenous struggle.

We believe that when these central issues are ignored, or not discussed, in public literature, main calls and key slogans for demonstrations and actions, rather than building unity, this has the political effect of sidelining core issues and strengthening the hand of those who would prefer to see an antiwar movement that challenges only the methods and tactics of US imperialism, while leaving its structures intact. We believe that it weakens the power and strength of the anti-imperialist forces in the movement, and that, instead of providing needed political clarity, forces our entire movement to take a step backward, at a time when forward steps are decisively necessary.

In this context, we are concerned to note that the national demonstration being organized for September 15, 2007, by the ANSWER Coalition and a number of other groups, features, in a break with the legacy, politics and advocacy of ANSWER, one slogan and one alone – “End the War Now!” While we certainly agree that this demand is key, we cannot help but to note with dismay the absence of other, and stronger, demands. We are deeply surprised to see that the occupation of Palestine and the denial of the Right to Return for six million Palestinian refugees – at the center of ANSWER’s principles in the past for antiwar demonstrations, and inextricably linked to the occupation of Iraq – is unmentioned in the literature, slogans and call for the demonstration. In fact, the term “occupation” is unmentioned in the primary slogan of the demonstration, even in regard to Iraq. In addition, the people’s struggles against US imperialism in Colombia, the Philippines, Cuba, the Sudan, Venezuela, Haiti, and around the world – as well as the potential threat of war on Iran – are also unmentioned.

We raise these concerns not because we doubt ANSWER’s commitment to an anti-imperialist, anti-racist vision of social justice. In fact, it is precisely because of the strong commitment of those organizers, expressed through years of work and activity that have consistently delineated a broad, anti-imperialist perspective as a leading force in the US antiwar movement, that we must raise these issues for broader discussion and consideration, so that we may work together, arm in arm, to continue to build an antiwar movement that is capable of providing the support needed to the national liberation movements of the people of Iraq, Palestine, and everywhere; and that is capable of being fully part of and fully linked with struggles against racism and oppression within the United States, from the ongoing criminalization and national oppression directed against communities of color within the US, to the raids and repression against the immigrant community, to the ongoing “War on Terror” that has translated into a war of terror on Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities.

The organizers of September 15 have traditionally been at the forefront of raising these issues, not as extraneous, secondary or minor issues subject to a “laundry list” of concerns, but rather as inextricably connected, central matters that are vital to creating any real movement capable of substantially confronting and challenging US imperialism; and building the alliances that can continue to raise and mount such a challenge, within the US and at an international level. For years, forces within the antiwar movement, linked to United for Peace and Justice, often supportive of the Democratic party, have done everything possible to minimize, exclude and silence the voices of oppressed communities and national liberation movements, refusing to recognize the linkage of Iraq and Palestine, and the overall war on the Arab people; advocating for internationalized occupation of Iraq; denouncing the Iraqi national and people’s resistance; refusing to address the multifaceted, vibrant and powerful movements challenging US imperialism throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia; sidelining indigenous and Native issues; and refusing to focus on racism and national oppression within the United States. These forces have played this role for years; they have often justified their actions by labeling them “broad,” and stating that they are capable of reaching larger numbers of people without addressing these fundamental issues for any movement seeking social justice or to support the national liberation struggles of oppressed peoples.

Time after time, the work of community organizations and antiwar coalitions – including the ANSWER Coalition – has proven those arguments incorrect; that real, broad movements are built by linking communities and struggles against common enemies, through community and grassroots organizing, and that the vast majority of people in the United States have no more interest in supporting the oppression of people in Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia, Venezuela or the Philippines than they do in supporting the occupation and devastation of the people of Iraq. Therefore, we are committed and determined that our organizing must continue along this path – a path of struggle, justice and liberation; a path of anti-imperialism; and a path of political clarity that informs, motivates, educates and organizes people into a mass movement truly capable of providing the much-needed challenge to US imperialism.

It is very difficult to imagine an acceptable tactical choice that results in the marginalization of central issues and the derogation of core struggles to the sidelines of the movement. On the contrary, rather than building unity, such a tactical choice hinders the kind of real unity that has been forged through years of struggle, while strengthening those who have disunited the movement by refusing to recognize these core issues and rejecting a clear anti-imperialist perspective. Thus, it is problematic at a tactical level as well as an overall political level.

Therefore, we believe that it is critical that antiwar organizing not regard these fundamental, key issues, and fundamental struggles, as anything other than inextricable and central to building the antiwar movement. At this time, when the people of Iraq and Palestine are paying daily with their lives against brutal colonial occupiers; when bombing raids, assassinations, mass military lockdowns, mass imprisonment and the attempted fomenting of civil wars and internal conflicts are a constant and vicious reminder of the ongoing colonial occupations; when we are nearing 60 years of occupation in which millions of Palestinian refugees are prohibited from returning to their original homes and land; when we are witnessing new onslaughts against people’s struggles internationally, including the imprisonment of Filipino people’s leader Jose Maria Sison and the killing of hundreds of activists in the Philippines; and when racism in the United States continues to devastate Black, Latino, Asian, Arab, Native and other communities of color within the United States, and the vicious assault of the “War on Terror” continues to terrorize our communities; there is no other place for the movement to go but forward – united as strongly as possible around a clear political program that emphasizes an anti-imperialist perspective solidly confronting these threats.

This is not only a time, however, of devastating assaults. It is also a time of resistance and of popular struggle for liberation. In Iraq and in Palestine, the national liberation movement and the people’s resistance are unbowed and unbending in the face of this brutality, at the very center of the struggle against US imperialism, leading that fight in the most dire of circumstances and with the highest level of courage. In the Philippines, in Colombia, in Haiti, people’s movements grow and continue despite violence, persecution and threats. In the Sudan, in Iran, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Somalia the people continue to resist US threats and war drives. In Venezuela, in Cuba, in Bolivia, in Oaxaca, in Vieques, throughout Mexico, throughout Latin America, popular resistance and people’s movements continue to thrive and grow, engaging in struggles and revolutionary processes that inspire the world. It is a time when oppressed nations and communities within the US are refusing to accept the continuing racist oppression and criminalization that has defined the history of the United States, from the genocide of indigenous people to the genocide of Africans and the horror of slavery to the continuing reality of racist oppression, the prison-industrial complex and police brutality; and it is a time when millions of immigrants have risen to demand their rights. It is a time when the working class of the United States is rejecting the use of their children as war fodder for the imperialist rulers. It is a time, in short, when nothing less is required of us as a movement than to raise the level of our resistance, in terms of our unity and in terms of our collective ability to prioritize the needs of the movement and the needs of the people, and when nothing less is required of us than political clarity that places all of these core struggles against US imperialism at the center of our work and that refuses to diminish, mitigate or ignore any of them.

This is a call for the future of the antiwar movement in the United States. It is a call to all of us to examine and develop our political organizing and our grassroots work, and a call to all of us to ensure that our demonstrations shall indeed call to end the war, and shall, inextricably, centrally, address the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, support the Right to Return for Palestinian refugees, emphasize the struggle against racism at home and abroad, and provide support to the movements of people in the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, the Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon and everywhere else in the world where people are threatened by imperialism yet continue to resist. This is the way forward, rather than backward, and it is the path needed by the movement today.

It is time to march on September 15. It is time to march on September 29. These demonstrations must be massive and strong. And we call on the organizers of the September 15 demonstration, and all future demonstrations, to place these concerns at the center of their work, and to include these demands in their core demands and main call for the demonstration. Anything else is much less than what is needed now. It is time to move forward together, in struggle and in unity to challenge and confront US imperialism at the center of its power.

In struggle,
Organizational Endorsements:
Al-Awda Nebraska
Al-Awda New York
Al-Awda Vancouver
Arab American Union Members Council
Arab Muslim American Federation
American Iranian Friendship Committee
Harlem Tenants Council
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
New Jersey Solidarity – Activists for the Liberation of Palestine
New York Committee to Defend Palestine
Palestine Solidarity Group – Chicago
Students for a Democratic Society – University of North Carolina at Asheville
Students for Justice in Palestine – DePaul University
UMMA (United Muslims Moving Ahead) – DePaul University

Individual Endorsements:
Musa Al-Hindi, member, coordinating and executive committees, Al-Awda,
Palestine Right to Return Coalition*
Dr. Masad Arbid
Dr. Naseer Aruri
Nellie Hester Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council*
Lumumba Bandele, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement*
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Khaled Barakat, Al-Shorouq Newspaper*
Dr. Hisham Bustani, Writer and Activist, Secretary, Socialist Thought
Forum (Jordan)*, Founding Member, Resistant Arab People’s Alliance
(Pan-Arab)*
Joe Carr
Bernadette Ellorin, Secretary-General of BAYAN USA*
Kamau Franklin, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement*
Lora Gordon, Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago*
Dr. Nidal Habash, Jordan
Samia Halaby, Palestinian artist and activist
Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council*
Basem Khader, Palestinian Activist
Nada Khader, WESPAC Foundation*
Michael Letwin, New York City Labor Against the War*
Vanessa Lucas, co-chair, Philippines Subcommittee, National Lawyers Guild*
Khalil Maqdesi, Campaign to free Ahmad Sa’adat*
Ellie Ommani, activist with NoWar Westchester*
Ardeshir Ommani, American Iranian Friendship Committee*
Merrilyn Onisko, co-chair, Philippines Subcommittee, National Lawyers Guild*
Brenda Stokely, New York City Labor Against the War*
Zein Rimawi

*Organizations for identification purposes only.

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Posted in LFP Statements, NYCLAW, U.S. Labor News, UFPJ