UAW Divest From Genocide UAW International: DROP ISRAEL BONDS
The United Auto Workers International holds over $400,000 in Israel military bonds. Join hundreds of UAW members in demanding they divest.
Our union is a global beacon of solidarity and worker power. We were one of the first major unions to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and an arms embargo on Israel. Thousands of our Arab members are impacted directly by the genocide. All of us are touched by US policy which has sent $17 billion US tax dollars to Israel this year, all while we lack healthcare, robust free public education. In 1974, workers at UAW local 600 staged a one-day walkout in Dearborn which successfully pushed the IEB to divest from Israel bonds. UAW must again take a clear stand in support of human rights, justice, and our members’ well being. Join the UAW Arab Caucus and UAW Labor for Palestine in calling on the IEB to divest.
Join us in emailing the UAW International Executive Board. Tell them to divest from Israel bonds.
Posted onOctober 1, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine Supports Palestinian Trade Union Call for Worldwide Work Stoppage on October 7!
Labor for Palestine Supports Palestinian Trade Union Call for Worldwide Work Stoppage on October 7! We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024
Endorse the Action: https://tinyurl.com/ENDORSEOct7riseforgaza
Read online: laborforpalestine.net
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Call from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions and the Arab Trade Union Confederation To all trade union organizations around the world 15 minutes for decent work and life for Palestinian workers and people
On October 7, workers around the world commemorate World Day for Decent Work, a date on which unions reaffirm one of their most important principles: defending the right of workers, without discrimination, to decent work.
This date also reminds us of a full year s·ince the occupation deprived Palestinian workers of their right to go to work and subjected the Palestinian people to all forms of oppression and systematic destruction of the foundations of a decent life, foremost of which is the right to work.
To address this injustice faced by the workers and people of Palestine, let us all stop working for 15 minutes to remind the international community of the suffering of Palestinian workers and people, and to reaffirm the global trade union movement’s commitment to its principles, which support peoples’ right to emancipation, freedom, and self-determination.
7/10/2024 Jerusalem time 12:00 let the trade union voice be heard: No social justice, no decent work under occupation.
**More than 40,000 victims and 100,000 injured, half of whom are women and children. **Poverty rate: 55% Economic losses: 2.3 billion dollars. **Reduction of workers by more than 65% in Palestinian institutions. **500,000 workers have lost their jobs. Unemployment rate: 51%. **450 millions USD per month is the cost of depriving Palestinian workers of their wages. **Prices of goods have increased by 600% in gaza.
For Coordination contact campaigns@pgftu.org WhatsApp 009627 9005 2002 00970597904498
Comments Off on Labor for Palestine Supports Palestinian Trade Union Call for Worldwide Work Stoppage on October 7!
An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 Issued by: UAW Labor for Palestine, Labor for Palestine National Network Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine
Our living conditions in the US are connected to Palestinian freedom. Biden and Harris send billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, all while our schools, employers and local governments raise fees and cut services — money that should go to healthcare, housing, education and freedom for all. But even as Israel extends its genocide in Gaza and greater Palestine to Lebanon, its economy is in a tailspin. Let’s strike while the iron is hot and refuse to work for genocide. Join us for a Week of Rage with a Student-Labor Day of Action October 7. Continue with a month of rolling actions, pickets, and walkouts at your school or workplace.
Links to our Call for Action and Organizing Toolkit in bio. and here: Call to Action: https://tinyurl.com/riseforgaza Organizing Toolkit: https://tinyurl.com/riseforgaza-toolkit
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Posted onSeptember 23, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 (UAW Labor for Palestine and Labor for Palestine National Network, Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine)
An Injury to One is an Injury to All: We Won’t Work for Genocide! CALL FOR MASS LABOR ACTION STARTING OCTOBER 7, 2024 Issued on September 23, 2024 by: UAW Labor for Palestine and Labor for Palestine National Network* Endorsed by: National Students for Justice in Palestine
This past year, we have witnessed the Israeli regime genocide hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, throughout greater Palestine, and now into Lebanon, using weapons provided by the US under a Democratic administration.
Despite the opposition of the vast majority of Democratic voters and millions of others, and as Israel expands its genocide into Lebanon, the Biden-Harris administration will not stop the genocide. With major union leaders unwilling to go beyond mere words, workers must use our greatest leverage—the ability to collectively withhold our labor, alongside other action—to respond to urgent Palestinian trade unions’ appealsforsolidarity.
We are workers from every sector whose labor is directly or indirectly implicated in this genocide. We call upon all workers—unionized and nonunionized—to heed this call. We draw inspiration from students taking material risks in their struggle to end their universities’ complicity in genocide and settler colonialism. Across the country, Gaza Solidarity Encampments demanding divestment and an end to collaboration with Israeli academic institutions were violently repressed with thousands of students and academic workers arrested, some still facing charges. We must stand with students as they continue organizing against the genocide and its escalation into Lebanon despite heightened repression. Together we have the power to disrupt the genocide weapons supply chain ourselves.
Our working and learning conditions in the US are directly connected to the fate of Palestinians. Billions of our tax dollars and labor are sent by the US government to facilitate a genocide instead of supporting universal healthcare, education, or housing while our most basic rights are under attack. We must apply economic pressure on the US-to-Israel pipeline. With Israel’s economy in a tailspin, now is the time to divest from and demilitarize empire.
We will begin a rolling mass mobilization of students and workers on October 7, which marks one year of Israel’s intensified genocide in Palestine, building and escalating every two weeks:
October 21: organize additional sectors to participate in and expand this mass action
November 4: further expand and heighten the action, escalating to blockades of workplaces complicit in the genocide, including research labs, factories, and logistics that supply the Israeli military
We must also end all complicity with settler colonialism by demanding our colleges adopt BDS and our unions divest from Israel Bonds and break ties with Zionist organizations, like the racist Histadrut and genocide-supporting Jewish Labor Committee.
Take action with us and fight for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Will you join us?
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*Labor for Palestine National Network Member Organizations
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1.9 million people have now been displaced in Gaza. People are already starving and a full-scale famine could occur in at any time.
Families in Gaza are in need of your urgent support!
While Israel is causing death, injury, and trauma, MECA’s staff and local partners in Gaza are on the ground responding to the most urgent needs of children and families–food, clean water, medical aid, psychological support, and more.
Thank you for supporting children and families in Gaza!
Posted onSeptember 11, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Appeal from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions on the occasion of a year of resistance to genocide
Appeal from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions on the occasion of a year of resistance to genocide
[September 11, 2024]
Brothers and Sisters of trade and workers’ unions in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world.
We write to you once again from Gaza as we approach the one-year mark since the start of this genocidal war – a year of torture, pain, and suffering; a year in which our people have faced forced displacement, a war of starvation, death bombs that rain on the heads of civilians, and the almost complete destruction of life from the bombardment of homes and their inhabitants, schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches; a year in which we have witnessed the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure, the systematic destruction of civil society, and the near complete destruction of the offices and headquarters of most unions.
Despite these harsh conditions, we have done everything possible to aid our communities with our limited resources. This is the cruelest ethnic cleansing campaign we have experienced throughout the past 76 years of occupation; this unprecedented monstrous aggression of Israel has increased the torment of the Palestinians in Gaza through the demolition of homes over the heads of their inhabitants and the deprivation of electricity, water, fuel, medicine, and necessary medical supplies due to the suffocating siege on the Strip for the seventeenth consecutive year.
The number of martyrs that Israel has killed in this devastating war exceeds 40,700 casualties, most of whom are women, children, and thousands of workers and their families, in a toll unprecedented in modern history, with more than 16,700 children and 11,300 women counted among them. More than 94,100 people have been injured or wounded. More than 12,000 citizens are trapped under the rubble, in addition to the destruction of hundreds of hospitals and the bombing of refugee camps for the displaced, leaving children prey to epidemics, diseases, and malnutrition, now including a polio epidemic.
In the face of this tragic reality, we continue to bury our loved ones while facing daily genocide that is unprecedented in modern history, whether in terms of its horrific crimes or the use of weapons of destruction and death.
Despite all this, we heal our wounds and raise our voices in international forums, calling on the free world and the global labor movement to stand in a broad and pressing solidarity campaign with our people in Gaza.
We, in the Federation of Palestinian Workers’ Unions, amidst the legendary resilience of our people and their rejection of displacement policies, continue to live on our land despite cases of internal displacement, fleeing inevitable death, where the percentage of displaced people has exceeded 80% of the population. These citizens have endured extremely harsh conditions in mobile tents for several months, far from civilian life, in severely inhumane conditions. Additionally, in the areas of Gaza and the north, which have long been subjected to forced starvation and the loss of most necessities, our people have chosen patience and endured suffering over abandoning their homes and original homeland.
From the heart of Gaza, on behalf of ourselves, the General Federation of Palestinian Workers’ Unions, and all workers who have been forcibly unemployed since the onset of this brutal and destructive war, and in continuation of our communication with you to strengthen our resolve and express our gratitude for your support with us, we emphasize the following:
We appreciate your solidarity with us on International Workers’ Day in response to our previous call. We would also like to congratulate the seven labor unions in the United States – the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), the National Education Association (NEA), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the United Electrical Workers (UE) – representing more than 6 million workers for their courageous stance and public call on the Biden administration to cut off all military aid to Israel immediately.
We call on all unions to take similar courageous stands. Your efforts have made the movement for Palestine indispensable and demonstrated the power and importance of international labor solidarity. The call for a ceasefire is a reasonable, necessary, and courageous first step, but all union councils and local governments must supplement these calls.
We recognize that the thousands of bombs being dropped on our heads and the heads of our children are American-made. We call on all unions to elevate the level of their political pressure, strategies, and tactics to demand an immediate end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We call on you to follow the lead of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) in the U.S. by adopting resolutions supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demanding that the Biden administration end all military aid to Israel.
We highly appreciate the role of the dock workers unions in Africa, Europe, and other ports in taking action to stop the flow of weapons and disrupt the financial networks that finance the bombing of our people. We ask you to refuse to deal with military shipments to Israel through all military ships and logistics companies, especially Maersk and ZIM.
We affirm that the essential goal of issuing this appeal is to mobilize your efforts and the efforts of all free people of the world to deepen the occupation’s isolation and strengthen global solidarity with the struggle of our people, especially on the labor union front in the world as a whole, not just the United States.
We emphasize that we do not bet at all on the occupation workers’ union “Histadrut” to stop the aggression or compel the war criminal ]Netanyahu to stop the war. Still, instead, it comes in the context of internal disputes and the bias of this union in favor of the opposition regime, whose hands are also stained with the blood of our people and which considers itself more committed to the continuity of the occupation state.
Dear trade unionists and professionals in North America, Europe, and around the world,
Our appeal to you is not just words but a cry from the depths of wounds and pain, from under the rubble and from among the tears of orphaned, bereaved, and hungry children. We address your consciences to stand together in the face of this significant humanitarian disaster created by the occupation and its sponsors in the West, headed by the U.S., because we believe that the world is not a place for neutrality in the face of injustice, but rather an arena for testing human values and moral principles. Let your solidarity with us be a light in the darkness of bias, and let your courageous positions be the voice of truth in the face of falsehood. We, with our souls and bodies, continue to resist the death that is imposed on us, and we trust that you will continue to raise the banner of solidarity and struggle to stop the aggression and to live a dignified life for a freedom that is not negotiable and for a justice that does not bow to anyone.
Long live Palestine and its people… and victory for the working class!
Glory to the martyrs of the working class and all the martyrs of Palestine, humanity, and freedom.
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
Signatory:
Basheer Al-Sisi is a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions—City of Gaza.
Dr. Salama Abu Zuaiter is a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions—City of Gaza.
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نداء صادر عن اتحاد نقابات العمال الفلسطينيين
بمناسبة مرور عام على الصمود و مقاومة الإبادة الجماعية
إلى الأخوة والأخوات في النقابات العمالية والمهنية في أمريكا الشمالية وأوروبا وحول العالم
نكتب إليكم مُجدداً من غزة، ونحن نشارف على اكتمال عام كامل من حرب الإبادة الجماعية. عامٌ من
العذابات و الٱلام والمعاناة. عامٌ واجه فيه شعبنا النزوح القسري، وحرب التجويع والتعطيش، وقنابل
الموت التي انهالت على رؤوس المدنيين الآمنين، والتدمير شبه الكامل للحياة من تدمير المنازل على
ساكنيها وتدمير البنية التحتية بالكامل والتدمير الممنهج للمجتمع المدني، وتحطيم مكاتب ومقرات معظم
النقابات.
وعلى الرغم من هذه الظروف القاسية، فقد بذلنا كل ما في وسعنا لتقديم الإغاثة لمجتمعاتنا بالموارد
المحدودة التي لدينا. إنها حملة التطهير العرقي الأكثر وحشية التي شهدناها خلال 76 عامًا من الاحتلال؛
فهذا العدوان الإسرائيلي الوحشي وغير المسبوق زاد من معاناة الفلسطينيين في غزة، فهدم المنازل فوق
رؤوس أهلها، وحرمانهم من الكهرباء والمياه والوقود والأدوية والمستلزمات الطبية الضرورية بسبب
الحصار الخانق على القطاع للعام السابع عشر على التوالي حتى الآن، تجاوز عدد الشهداء الذين قتلتهم
إسرائيل في هذه الحرب المدمرة حتى ساعة نشر هذا البيان أكثر من 40,700 شهيد معظمهم من النساء
والأطفال، والآلاف من طبقة العمال وأسرهم في حصيلة غير مسبوقة في التاريخ الحديث، وأكثر من
16,700 طفل، و 11,300 من النساء. وأكثر من 94,100 جريحاً ومصاباً، ويقبع ما يقارب 10,000
مواطن تحت الأنقاض، إضافةً إلى تدمير مئات المشافي، وقصف مراكز إيواء النازحين، وترك
الأطفالفريسة للأوبئة والأمراض وسوء التغذية وصلت حد وباء شلل الأطفال ، وغيرها من جرائم الحرب.
في ظل هذا الواقع المأساوي، نواصل دفن أحبائنا، بينما نواجه الإبادة الجماعية اليومية التي لم يشهد
التاريخ مثي لًا لبشاعتها سواء بالجرائم المروعة أو بأسلحة الدمار والموت. ورغم كل ذلك، نلملم جراحنا
ونرفع أصواتنا في المحافل الدولية، داعين العالم الحر وحركة العمل الدولية للوقوف في حملة تضامن
واسعة وضاغطة مع شعبنا في غزة.
إننا في اتحاد نقابات عمال فلسطين، وفي خضم الصمود الأسطوري لشعبنا ورفضه لسياسة التهجير
واسمراره في الحياة على أرضه رغم حالات النزوح الداخلي هربا من الموت المحقق والتي تجاوزت فيها
نسبة النازحين ما يفوق عن 80 % من المواطنين والذي عاشوا ظروف قاسية جدا في خيام متنقلة لعدة
اشهر بعيدا عن الحياة المدنية وفي ظروف لاانسانية قاسية جدا عدا عن مناطق غزة والشمال التي تعيش
منذ فترة طويلة حياة التجويع الاجباري وفقدان معظم مقومات الحياة ولكنهم آثروا الصبر وتحمل المعاناة
على أن يتركوا بيوتهم وموطنهم الاصلي فإننا ومن قلب غزة وباسمنا وباسم الاتحاد العام لنقابات عمال
فلسطين وكافة العمال المعطلين قسرا عن العمل منذ بداية الحرب الهمجية المدمرة، واستمراراً لتواصلنا
معكم لشد أزرنا، وشكركم على تفاعلكم معنا، فإننا نؤكد على التالي:
نثمن وقوفكم معنا في يوم العمال العالمي استجابة لندائنا السابق. كما نود أن نهنئ النقابات
ونقابة عمال البريد الأمريكية ،)AFA( العمالية السبع في الولايات المتحدة –جمعية مضيفات الطيران
والاتحاد الدولي ،)NEA( والرابطة الوطنية للتعليم ،)IUPAT( والاتحاد الدولي للرسامين ،)APWU(
ونقابة عمال الكهرباء المتحدة ،)UAW( ونقابة عمال السيارات المتحدة ،)SEIU( لموظفي الخدمات
التي تمثل أكثر من 6 ملايين عامل، على موقفها الشجاع والداعي علنًا لإدارة بايدن لوقف – )UE(
جميع المساعدات العسكرية لإسرائيل فورًا.
ندعو كافة النقابات إلى اتخاذ مثل هذه المواقف الشجاعة. لقد جعلت جهودكم الحركة من أجل
فلسطين أمراً لا يمكن تجاهله وأظهرت قوة وأهمية التضامن العمالي الدولي. إن المطالبة بوقف إطلاق
النار خطوة جيدة وضرورية، ولكن يجب أن تُستكمل هذه المطالبات من جميع المجالس النقابية
والحكومات المحلية المختلفة.
نحن ندرك أن آلاف القنابل التي تُلقى على رؤوسنا ورؤوس أطفالنا هي صناعة أمريكية. لذا ندعو
كافة النقابات لتغيير استراتيجياتها وتكتيكاتها للمطالبة بالوقف الفوري للإبادة الجماعية المستمرة في
)BDS( غزة. ندعوكم إلى تبني قرارات تدعم حركة المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات
ومطالبة إدارة بايدن بوقف جميع المساعدات العسكرية الموجهة إلى إسرائيل.
نثمِّن عالياً دور نقابات عمال الموانئ في إفريقيا وأوروبا وبعض الموانئ الأخرى في اتخاذ
إجراءات لوقف تدفق الأسلحة وتعطيل الشبكات المالية التي تمول قصف شعبنا. نطلب منكم رفض التعامل
مع الشحنات العسكرية الموجهة إلى إسرائيل من خلال جميع السفن العسكرية وشركات الخدمات
Posted onSeptember 7, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Pro-Palestinian Union Members SPEAK OUT: “Factories Are Arming Israel’s Genocide” (NYC City Workers for Palestine, NYC Labor for Palestine Palestine Pre-Rally Labor Day Parade — Status Coup News)
The labor movement joined together to speak out against the violence in Gaza by Israel and for a Free Palestine. Jon Farina covered this event in New York where union members each spoke as to why it’s so important for labor to recognize the need for a Free Palestine and how it ties into unions and labor in general.
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We charge Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party with genocide, and we demand that our unions end all complicity with “Israel!”
After 10 months of escalated genocide in Palestine, and as the Zionist entity and its U.S. partners intensify their horrific reign of terror throughout the region, rank and file union members across the country are descending on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. We are here to tell Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and our union leadership that Zionism and U.S. imperialism are in fact red lines for us.
Many of us have organized for months and decades to push our unions to stand with Palestine. Recently, this organizing resulted in a historic victory–seven of the largest unions in the U.S. called on Biden to end U.S. military funding to “Israel.” But as we continue, day after day, to watch as U.S. bombs massacre Palestinians in schools, hospitals, and refugee camps, we are not content with written pleas from union leaders to the presidential administration presiding over this genocide.
We demand more. We find it deplorable that leadership of many of those same unions, along with dozens of others, dutifully handed over our unions’ presidential endorsements to Kamala Harris–without consulting membership, and without even making any demands. Not only is Harris the sitting vice president in the administration facilitating Palestinian genocide, she hasshown no signs of breaking from her administration’s genocidal legacy. Even in recent weeks, she has repeatedly, publicly pledged her belief in “Israel’s” “right to defend itself.”
As union workers, we have power to go beyond words to take real, material action in solidarity with Palestine–directly pressuring our government and the forces of capitalism that perpetuate colonialism and U.S. imperialism. In Labor for Palestine, we take our cues from the Palestinian Federation of General Trade Unions-Gaza (PFGTU-Gaza), who have called on U.S. unions to end our complicity and to stop arming “Israel.”
We demand that U.S. labor comply with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by divesting from “Israel” Bonds, cutting ties with the racist Histadrut and the Jewish Labor Committee, organizing members to stop arming “Israel,” and ending support for Kamala Harris and all other Zionist political candidates.
We will not allow our movement to be quelled, co-opted, or rerouted into the very system that is committing genocide in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine. The Labor for Palestine National Network will answer the Palestinian trade union call by continuing to build rank-and-file workers’ power to stand with oppressed people in Palestine and everywhere else, until we all are free.
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Pro-abortion rights and LGBTQ+ protesters rally ahead of the start of the DNC
Activists march on North Michigan Avenue on Aug. 18, 2024, in Chicago, host city for the Democratic National Convention. The protest was organized by CODEPINK, a women-led anti-war nonprofit that seeks to redirect tax dollars into health care, education and green jobs. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A crowd of hundreds called for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights Sunday evening in downtown Chicago, getting a head start on a week of protests before the Democratic National Convention kickoff Monday.
Starting with a rally on Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive by the Chicago River, with Trump Tower as a backdrop as the blazing sun set behind the Marina City Towers, demonstrators headed south to the Grant Park monument of Union Army Gen. John Logan, which protesters climbed in an iconic moment during the DNC protests in August 1968.
After an acoustic sing-along by the crowd — “My body, my body/ My choice, my choice,” punctuated by a flute and ukulele — emcee and activist Scout Bratt took the mic to say, “Palestinian liberation is reproductive justice,” a nod to the common thread that ran through speeches and chants during the evening.
“And we reject any political compromises on bodily autonomy,” added Bratt, a spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace and a member of the social justice group Avodah. “Today, we are coming together on the eve of the Democratic National Convention to be sure that they don’t even begin … without knowing our demands.”
The rally and march took place a week after the coalition Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws — endorsed by more than 30 local and national organizations — won a permit for a route on Michigan Avenue following a long legal battle with the city. The lawsuit continues in federal court with representation from the American Civil Liberties Union over the city’s security perimeter ordinance.
The Sunday gathering sought to demand that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency in November, she will commit to sweeping legislation for abortion access and transgender and LGBTQ+ health care, as well as an end to U.S. aid to Israel and a call for a cease-fire.
They hope national legislation will include no gestational bans or viability limits on abortion and a guaranteed minimum income so children can be raised “in a healthy, nurturing environment.” And as trans people continue being targeted by the far right — which the coalition sees as attacks on the bodily autonomy of all LGBTQ+ people — they also demand equal employment and housing rights enshrined in legislation.
The coalition includes pro-Palestinian groups that emphasize the interconnectedness of human rights struggles in Gaza and at home; for instance, anti-war, women-led grassroots organization CODEPINK has said that discussions of reproductive justice within the Democratic Party must consider Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Reproductive genocide, my comrades and friends, is the eradication and destruction of life-giving and life-sustaining resources such as food, such as water, such as medicine, such as medical care,” said Chicago organizer and community leader Leena Odeh of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.
According to reports from the United Nations, miscarriages in the region have increased by 300%, and a shortage of medical supplies means that women are giving birth without pain relief and children are dying without incubators. The largest fertility clinic in the region has been destroyed by Israeli forces, newborn babies face malnutrition and have no access to clean water, and 690,000 women and girls have no access to menstrual hygiene products.
On more than one occasion, speakers forcefully reminded Harris she has to earn their vote. They also repeatedly called out Democratic leaders for what they see as a disconnect between promises and policies enacted at home and abroad.
“We are at a pivotal moment of recognizing and raising cautiousness about all the ways in which the Democratic Party and its brutal policies violently suppress working-class organization and liberation movements. The main line of the Harris candidacy is to vote for them or face fascism, when in fact, the two parties are two sides of the same coin,” said Sultana Hossain, an Amazon labor union activist and co-facilitator for NYC Labor for Palestine.
Nadine Naber, professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and co-founder of Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity, said, “We are here to fight for our bodies and our hearts. And I believe that any movement guided by radical, collective love is like fire.”
Posted onAugust 18, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Labor for Palestine at Not Another Bomb Rally in Brooklyn
Free, Free Palestine!
My name is Michael Letwin, and I’m honored to be here on behalf of New York City Labor for Palestine, UAW Labor for Palestine, and the entire Labor for Palestine National Network, which now includes more than 40 member groups across this country.
On October 16, 2023, Palestinian trade unions appealed to international labor: “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.”
Yet many still ask: Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
An injury to one is an injury to all. Zionism and the Israeli settler-colonial regime—and all “Israel” is occupied Palestine—is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and working class people here in New York City and around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with untold billions in bipartisan US military aid, tax dollars that should be spent instead on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces, including those represented by the UAW—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
Rank-and-file workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States that for the past ten years has refused to handle Israeli cargo.
For all these reasons, we applaud the seven major U.S. unions who recently called on Genocide Joe Biden to end U.S. military funding to the “Israeli” settler-colonial regime. Representing more than six million workers, these include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical Workers (UE).
But words are not enough, and you can’t stop genocide by endorsing genocidal candidates. That’s why the Labor for Palestine National Network is joining thousands of other protesters this week in Chicago to make this real by charging the Democratic Party with genocide, and calling on union leaders to stop endorsing the Harris/Walz slate, which is led by Kamala Harris, #2 in the same administration that is presiding over the ongoing Nakba that has murdered at least 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 months, which Palestinians have an inalienable right to resist.
And amidst unspeakable U.S.-backed Israeli genocide, in Palestinian resistance—and ours, there is hope.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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Posted onAugust 14, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Support L4PNN Organizers Protesting the DNC in Chicago: No Support for Genocidal Candidates — Stop Arming Israel!
Please donate here to make our voice heard at the upcoming DNC protests: No Support for Genocidal Candidates — Stop Arming Israel! TY!
***SUPPORT L4PNN ORGANIZERS PROTESTING THE DNC IN CHICAGO***
Established in April 2004, Labor for Palestine is reclaiming the legacy of working-class solidarity with Palestine in the United States by committing to uplift the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) solidarity call and honor the BDS picket line. As we continue to work towards a permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine, our Labor for Palestine National Network (L4PNN) has rapidly grown to include over 25 member groups in recent months. We believe that by leveraging the unparalleled power of the working-class, we hold the potential to help dismantle apartheid “Israel.”
While we are actively organizing within our labor bodies, at our workplaces, and in our communities for Palestinian liberation, we need your support to expand our efforts even further. Your donation, no matter the amount, will help us continue our critical work and further our commitment to building working-class solidarity with Palestinian resistance while looking towards a future of ultimately ending the occupation. All contributions will help in covering the costs of materials for direct actions—such as rallies, pickets, and teach-ins—and other necessary expenses to sustain L4PNN’s organizing efforts.
We are a grassroots organization fueled by the support of individuals like you who believe in the power of the working-class to effect change. With your support, we can continue to grow our network, educate our fellow workers, and make a real impact in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Thank you in advance for considering a donation to Labor for Palestine. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.
In Solidarity and Struggle, Labor for Palestine National Network
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Posted onAugust 12, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on We Charge the Democrats With Genocide! Join the L4PNN Contingent at the DNC (Labor for Palestine National Network)
We Charge the Democrats With Genocide! No Support for Genocidal Candidates! End All Complicity–Stop Arming Israel! Rank-and-File unionists will be at the DNC to hold the Democrats, and the International Union Leaders who endorse them, accountable.
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Posted onAugust 4, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on NYC Labor for Palestine Statement on Zionist and U.S. Terror and Labor’s Need to Break from Kamala Harris and All Genocidal Politicians
Endorsed by the Labor for Palestine National Network on August 10, 2024.
As we now pass 300 days of escalated genocide in Palestine by the Zionist entity and the U.S., and as the Zionist entity and its U.S. partners intensify their horrific reign of terror across the Middle East, NYC Labor for Palestine expresses our solidarity with the people of Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, and reiterates our call on U.S. labor to abide by the Palestinian trade union call to End All Complicity–Stop Arming Israel.
In a period of just 24 hours earlier this week, the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) bombed a densely populated civilian area in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon, killing four civilians and assassinating Hezbollah top military leader Fuad Shukr; the Zionist entity assassinated Hamas Political Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran and Palestinian journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi in Gaza; and the U.S. conducted a strike south of Baghdad in Iraq, killing at least four people. The Zionist entity’s brutalization of Palestine has not relented. Just last night, the IOF once again targeted a Palestinian hospital, bombing the tents of displaced people at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Our hearts are with the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and across the Middle East mourning their martyrs and living in anticipation of an escalating regional war, and we express our solidarity with Palestinian workers in the West Bank currently striking in response to Haniyeh’s brutal assassination.
It does not escape our notice that the latest Israeli escalation, including the murder of Haniyeh, an essential figure in ceasefire negotiations, came just a week after notorious war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was warmly welcomed by Congress and visited with the Biden administration, including Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. By supplying weapons and political support, the U.S. government remains a bipartisan partner in every instance of Zionist war crimes.
With all of this in mind, we applaud the seven major U.S. unions who recently called on Joe Biden to end U.S. military funding to the “Israeli” settler-colonial regime. Representing more than six million workers, these include the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), American Postal Workers Union (APWU), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and United Electrical Workers (UE).
We recognize that this significant step is the direct result of more than half a century of dedicated rank-and-file labor solidarity with Palestinian liberation—alongside a broader global solidarity movement led by Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other BIPOC communities, students, and young people. At the same time, our unions must go beyond pleas with an administration fueling “Israel’s” genocidal war on Palestine. Moreover, it is shameful that higher ups at APWU, IUPAT, NEA, SEIU, and the UAW, have undermined their leverage to stop arming “Israel” by endorsing Kamala Harris, a carceral imperialist and committed Zionist, and #2 in the very administration presiding over the escalated Nakba that has murdered at least 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last 10 months. From Harris’s meeting with Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s operations this week, to her full-throated condemnation of the July 24 D.C. protest of Netanyahu, to her reiteration that “Israel has a right to defend itself” in response to the Beirut bombing, we see no evidence that she plans to break with Biden’s genocidal legacy. Her statements in support of Israel come not only amid this horrifying regional escalation and continued brutalization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but while hundreds of Israelis riot in defense of soldiers arrested for raping a Palestinian prisoner.
U.S. labor must comply with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by divesting from “Israel” Bonds, cutting ties with the racist Histadrut and the Jewish Labor Committee, organizing members to stop arming “Israel,” and ending support for Kamala Harris and all other Zionist political candidates.
We will not allow our movement to be quelled, co-opted, or rerouted into the very system that is committing genocide in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine. The Labor for Palestine National Network will answer the Palestinian trade union call by continuing to build rank-and-file workers’ power to stand with oppressed people in Palestine and everywhere else, until we all are free.
Comments Off on NYC Labor for Palestine Statement on Zionist and U.S. Terror and Labor’s Need to Break from Kamala Harris and All Genocidal Politicians
On March 23, 2024, “in the midst of pain and blood, in the displacement camps, amidst the rubble, and the ruins of our homes, workshops, factories, stores, and institutions destroyed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation, using U.S.-made weapons,” the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza (PGFTU-Gaza) sent U.S. workers, unions, and other labor organizations an urgent May Day appeal.
The PGFTU-Gaza’s appeal salutes “some exceptional examples of unions, clearly demonstrated in leading protests denouncing the Zionist war of genocide being waged on the Gaza Strip.”
However, it also decries the “shocking silence and neglect by the international labor movement,” citing those who have “retreated to verbal positions without taking measures on the ground or pressuring the decision-makers to stop this war of extermination, limiting union activities to conferences and statements and not delving deeply into the need to guarantee humanitarian aid, or influencing international public opinion to expose the truth about Zionist crimes and the practices of the allied countries that continue to support Israel.”
The appeal specifically highlights the need “to ban the occupation’s trade unions [the Histdarut] internationally, as they are partners in the war of genocide. In particular, we call on American unions to boycott these unions to protest their complicity in this genocidal war.”
We further call on the working class and labor bodies across the U.S. to build on the May Day call from Bay Area Labor for Palestine, by taking one or more of the following actions on May 1, 2024:
Withhold labor and rally with a labor contingent for Palestine or amplify demands to stop this genocide within your local May Day action
Hold a teach-in or moment of silence
Post a group photo, with flags, signs, keffiyehs, buttons, and other symbols of Palestinian solidarity
Leaflet and demonstrate at a weapons plant, military facility, or other complicit institution
Storm social media with:
#MayDay4Palestine
#StopArmingIsrael
#BDS
#DumpIsraelBonds
#DroptheHistadrut
#FromtheRivertotheSeaPalestineWillBeFree
Devise other creative actions
Why is Palestine a Labor Issue?
An injury to one is an injury to all. The Israeli settler-colonial regime is part of the same U.S.-backed system of racist state violence that brutalizes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and working class people around the world. With Israel’s knee on their neck, Palestinians can’t breathe, and we unconditionally stand with them, just as they have stood with our struggles for Black and Brown Lives, Standing Rock, migrant rights, and beyond.
Our tax dollars fund Israel. Israel’s crimes are committed with more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid, tax dollars that should be spent instead on badly-needed jobs, food, housing, healthcare, education, and transportation for poor and working people at home.
Our workplaces arm Israel. Many of our unionized factories, logistics, academia, tech, and other workplaces—without our consent—produce weapons, transportation, research, technology, and other materials for the genocidal Israeli regime.
Our unions fund Israel. Our unions are already involved—on the wrong side. In the 1920s-1930s, top labor officials donated millions to the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that spearheaded anti-Palestinian dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, including the Nakba (Catastrophe) that established the Israeli state in 1948. For more than 70 years, they have used our union dues and pension funds to buy billions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
Global working class solidarity is the only way to win. More than ever, in this era of globalization, workers and oppressed people everywhere are up a common enemy. We can’t win if we are atomized by union, or even country. We need international, classwide unity. That means every worker must take on the task of building solidarity with Palestine—today an epicenter of class struggle.
Workers can stop Israeli genocide. More than 50 years ago, Arab and Black auto workers led a wildcat strike and other actions to protest UAW complicity with Israel. Today, we can follow their example in respecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by protesting, bringing union resolutions, and—above all—by mobilizing our collective power at the workplace, as shown by dockers in South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and the ILWU on the West Coast of the United States, which has respected Block the Boat’s community-labor picket line by refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
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.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
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. 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.”
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 resistance—even peaceful ones—are 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:
To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel.
To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.
To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.
Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.
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.
Posted onDecember 3, 2024bylabor4pal|Comments Off on Three Teachers Tried to Give Palestinian Students a Safe Haven — and It Cost Them Their Jobs (The Intercept)
From left to right: Former Baldi Middle School teachers Caroline Yang, Jordan Kardasz, and Emily Antrilli stand for a portrait in Philadelphia on May 8, 2024. Photo: Hannah Yoon
Mohammed, a middle school student in Philadelphia, puts on his “Free Gaza” bracelet as routinely as he brushes his teeth. He often wears a keffiyeh around his shoulders, despite, he said, being told at school to take it off.
“He’s so sure about who he is and what he wants to represent, he doesn’t care,” said Mariam, his mother.
Like many young Palestinian students across the country, Mohammed, who like his mother asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals, has grown more political over the last year. His grandmother lives in the West Bank, and two of his cousins were killed by the Israeli military, part of the civilian death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza.
In November 2023, Mohammed’s English teacher at Philadelphia’s Baldi Middle School, Caroline Yang, and two other seventh grade teachers, Emily Antrilli and Jordan Kardasz, sensed Mohammed and other Muslim and Palestinian students needed a safe place to express themselves. Yang opened her classroom after school. The war was around a month old, and emotions were running high on all sides.
“They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”
The students decided to make posters. One listed names of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers. Another showed a dove between Israeli and Palestinian flags. Some of the posters were adorned with slogans like “End apartheid,” “This is not war, this is genocide,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some of the posters contained red handprints; other handprints showed the red, white, green, and black of the Palestinian flag.
The teachers put up the signs, along with a Palestinian flag, in the school’s commons on November 17, 2023. The new display would accompany the flags of over 30 other nations, including Israel’s. Within an hour, before classes began, the school removed them, according to the teachers and a principal’s report obtained by The Intercept.
Soon, the posters would become the flashpoint in allegations and recriminations that included accusations of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim bias, as well as antisemitism. By the time the dust settled with the end of the school year last summer, the fallout had hit students and teachers alike. Some parents decided to pull students from the school. The three teachers had all left their jobs — and decided to file a federal civil rights complaint.
“Silencing. Erasure,” said Mariam, Mohammed’s mother, who was considering pulling both children from Baldi but ultimately kept them enrolled. “They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”
Posters made by students at Baldi Middle School, as shown in photographs from an Unsatisfactory Incident form filed about one of the teachers, Caroline Yang. Photos: Philadelphia School District
Strife in Schools
Across the country, students and educators who have advocated for Palestinians have faced censorship and professional repercussions. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, is suing a Maryland school district for allegedly placing three teachers on administrative leave for supporting Palestinian rights. Last October, two Minnesota public high school students were suspended for chanting “from the river to the sea.”
In Philadelphia schools, Israel’s war on Gaza had already sparked a furor. Protests erupted after a student podcast was censored by the district, and ad hoc groups have formed to make demands about Palestinian rights from the school system. The district has since suspended the teacher who assigned the censored project and who faced allegations of bias against supporters of Israel. District parents have since petitioned for her reinstatement and questioned the district’s motives.
As for Yang, Antrilli, and Kardasz, the teachers at Baldi, school district communications officer Christina Clark said Philadelphia schools seek to create inclusive learning environments in the full knowledge that their actions will shape students’ lives, but would not comment on personnel matters. Baldi’s principal, Bianca Gillis, did not respond to The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment. In a report summarizing multiple disciplinary hearings, Gillis wrote that the posters and flag caused staff pain and “had a negative and profound impact on Israeli and non Israeli staff.”
“I would not be able to sit right with myself if, as a teacher, I didn’t do anything while a genocide is happening.”
“We encourage all of us, staff, community members, and stakeholders of all kinds, to be the role models they deserve,” Clark wrote in a statement to The Intercept. She said the district has held two student forums to allow dialogue between the communities involved. The district has also partnered with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education for workshops with district and school leaders “to increase understanding of antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
For the teachers, however, facilitating the posters was more than just a nod to inclusivity.
“With that many Palestinian students in our school,” Yang said, “I would not be able to sit right with myself if, as a teacher, I didn’t do anything while a genocide is happening.”
The Backlash
A month after the posters and flag were put up and taken down, the principal recommended that the district suspend the teachers without pay for five days and transfer them to different schools. The subsequent investigation, concluded in April, confirmed the disciplinary measures, though by the time the process was over, the recommendation for Kardasz’s transfer had been rescinded.
In May, with a month left in the school year, district officials ordered the teachers to stop teaching and work from home. Before the suspensions could be imposed, all three teachers resigned. None of them felt that they could be good teachers under the circumstances.
Top/Left: The exterior of Baldi Middle School in Philadelphia on May 8, 2024. Bottom/Right: Baldi teacher Jordan Kardasz wears a watermelon pin in support of Palestine on May 8, 2024. Photos: Hannah Yoon
The punishments were related to allegations that the teachers disobeyed an order to stay neutral on the war in Gaza, violated an administrative directive to email suggestions on ways to support the school community to the principal, broke three district policies, and created a “hostile work environment” for other staff members, according to disciplinary reports obtained by The Intercept. Other teachers, the report said, were afraid of “continued antisemitism” at work.
“Your actions indicate a select group of teachers exclusively, intentionally and purposefully discussing, planning and engaging students in an activity that was not discussed or approved with the administration of Baldi school and undermined efforts to address a serious and difficult issue for students and staff,” Gillis wrote in a disciplinary report.
“My thought process was that it would start a conversation,” said Yang. “I never thought that it would lead to the backlash that it did.”
In response, the teachers, who were all in their first year at Baldi, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the school discriminated against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, infringed on students’ First Amendment-protected speech, and disciplined the teachers for their support of Palestinian students and Palestinian human rights.
“I want teachers who are going through something similar, who feel silenced at their schools, to know it’s not just them,” said Yang. “The district needs to protect teachers’ right to teach and talk about Palestine, not leave it up to each principal’s will.”
The federal complaint also alleged that the school rescinded accommodations for Muslim students to make an afternoon prayer during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Mohammed and other Muslim students said they had not been allowed to carry out the time-specific prayer. Clark, the district spokesperson, told The Intercept that students can pray during school hours, but prayer should not be held during instructional time to minimize “academic interruption.”
The civil rights complaint and students interviewed by The Intercept, including Mohammed, have also alleged that educators told them to remove their keffiyehs, the checkered Palestinian scarves. (Clark said that Baldi students “may wear keffiyehs on dress down days and during the regular school day.”)
The Department of Education is evaluating the complaint and has not yet made a determination on whether it will open an investigation into the district, according to an attorney who helped the teachers file the complaint.
Censoring Student Speech
In Philadelphia schools, Arabic is the fifth-most spoken language, according to the district, with a large number of Arab students residing in northeast Philadelphia, where Mohammed lives.
At Baldi, the school has instituted “healing circles” led by the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office, with students responding overwhelmingly to a school survey that they feel safe and supported, according to the report from Gillis, the Baldi principal.
In October, however, the school’s assistant principal directed teachers to stay “neutral” on Gaza, according to the teachers. And in November 2023, during an all-staff meeting, Gillis gave a verbal directive that teachers must email her if they have suggestions for ways to support students. The teachers hung the posters and flag despite that order — followed by the response from other faculty members described in internal reports.
Top/Left: Sisters stand next to each other at a park in Philadelphia on June 11, 2024. Bottom/Right: A student at their home in Philadelphia on June 9, 2024. Photos: Hannah Yoon
“Staff members shared concerns of being safe in our building and that the Jewish community felt discriminated against, marginalized and hated,” says one of the disciplinary reports obtained by The Intercept. “Tears were shed in Principal Gillis’ office over the fear of continued Antisemitism.”
The lawyer who helped the teachers file their federal complaint said the school’s actions appeared to be an attempt to punish teachers for facilitating students’ speech.
“I think they’re trying to find a way to censor student speech without running afoul of the law,” said Noelia Rivera-Calderón, an education civil rights attorney and member of Palestine Legal Attorney Network.
The teachers said a double standard is at work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Philadelphia schools. They pointed to the Israeli flag in the commons and another one in Baldi’s main office, next to Italian and American flags. And neutrality is a facade, they said: In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the teachers allege the school had pro-Ukrainian student art on a hallway bulletin board.
In May, Gillis stated that any signage, writing, or clothing that supported “’only one country’ created an unsafe environment, specifically noting that any sign of Palestine was unsafe for Jewish students,” according to the federal complaint.
None of the other displays stirred the sort of controversy or discipline that has erupted over the Palestinian flag and posters. The OCR complaint alleges that disciplinary meetings “made clear that Baldi administration’s concerns with the posters were not procedural but due to their pro-Palestine content.”
“The punishment is not because we hung up posters, the punishment is not because we didn’t have parents’ permission after school, they’re going to say that that’s what it is,” said Kardasz, one of the teachers. “But the punishment is the fact that these posters are pro-Palestinian, they are anti-genocide, they are anti-violence towards Palestinian people.”
“The kids who made the posters believed in a free Palestine before they even knew who the three of us were,” Kardasz said. “They found teachers who they felt comfortable saying that to.”
When Mohammed’s mother Mariam found out about the posters, she said she was ecstatic. She said, “Because that meant that somebody was recognizing them for who they are.”
“Am I Ever Going to See Ms. Yang Again?”
One Baldi student involved in making the posters told The Intercept that a school official had told the student to remove their keffiyeh, they said, because it violated the school uniform.
In contrast, the student said being in Yang’s classroom in November and making posters instilled a sense of pride, “because I knew there were people who stood with us.”
“I thought it was the best we could do to show our solidarity,” said the student, whose mother requested they remain anonymous. “Since you’re still a middle schooler, you can’t do much.”
The student’s mother took her kids out of Baldi and placed them in a private school.
“Having Ms. Yang there just made me feel at peace, like someone cares about Palestinian life,” the mother said. “And the fact that they kicked her out for doing that just made me feel like it’s just not a place I want my kids to be.”
Antrilli, who’s lived in Philadelphia for seven years, is now teaching at a charter school across the river in Camden, New Jersey. That decision wasn’t easy.
“I was ready to have my career with this district,” said Antrilli, who had been in her first year at Baldi. “The district will just keep going the way that it’s going, and it’s going to lose teachers like us who really want to help these kids, and these kids have to still go into these schools and feel this way every day.”
Kardasz, for her part, is teaching at a community college in the Philadelphia suburbs. As for Yang, she isn’t sure if she will return to teaching at all.
Sitting in his living room this past June, Mohammed posed a question to his mother: “Am I ever going to see Ms. Yang again?”
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