#LaborShutItDown4Palestine on D15-16, 2023
End All Complicity With Genocide—Stop Arming Israel!
We welcome growing union calls for a permanent ceasefire to end the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Now, we call on our labor bodies to take the next step of fully embracing the Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel, and of standing in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation and return, by:
- Demanding an immediate end to the siege on Gaza and to all U.S. military aid for Israel.
- Following the example of Block the Boat, ILWU West Coast dockers, and workers around the world who refuse to build or transport weapons destined for Israel.
- Respecting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line by severing ties with Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and by divesting from Israel Bonds and industries connected with Zionist settler colonialism and occupation.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free!
Issued on December 11 by:
Contact: [email protected]
Click here for your organization to endorse
Labor Endorsers (endorse here)
UAW Labor for Palestine RFA Working Group
Vermont Labor for Palestine
Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights
NYC City Workers for Palestine
Coalition of Labor Union Women TX
Student Workers Collective at Dartmouth
Community Endorsers (endorse here)
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)
Palestine Solidarity Coalition at Dartmouth
Upper Valley for Palestine
Friday, December 15: At the workplace and beyond
- Hold a teach-in or moment of silence
- Take and post a group photo, with flags, signs, keffiyehs, buttons, and other symbols of Palestine
- Protest at AFL-CIO and other labor bodies complicit in Israeli genocide
- Leaflet and protest at a nearby weapons plant or military facility
- Devise other creative actions
- Join our social media storm by posting: @AFLCIO @TheSOC #LaborShutItDown4Palestine #EndUnionComplicityWithGenocide #StopArmingIsrael #BDS #DumpIsraeliBonds #DroptheHistadrut #FromtherivertotheseaPalestinewillbefree
Saturday, December 16: Rally Labor for Palestine
Hold a rally like Bay Area Labor for Palestine, or organize a labor contingent at a Palestine rally near you.
Contact [email protected] for educational materials, speakers, and other support.
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Why is Palestine a Worker 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 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 arm 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 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 in Israel Bonds. Today, despite horrendous Palestinian casualties, most labor officials remain silent—or worse.
- Workers can stop Israeli genocide. Fifty 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.
Background Resources
- Stand With Palestinian Workers: Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel! (Labor for Palestine, October 24, 2023)
- US Labor Has Long Been a Stalwart Backer of Israel. That’s Starting to Change (Jacobin, November 11, 2023)
- The International Labor Movement Is Mobilizing for a Free Palestine (Truthout, November 29, 2023)
- Bottom-Up Labor Solidarity for Palestine Is Growing (Labor Notes, August 26, 2021)
- Labor for Palestine: Challenging US Labor Zionism (American Quarterly, December 2015)
