15-16 December 2023: #LaborShutItDown4Palestine: End All Complicity With Genocide—Stop Arming Israel!

#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:

From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free!

Issued on December 11 by

Labor for Palestine (U.S.)

Palestinian Youth Movement

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net

Click here for your organization to endorse

Labor Endorsers (endorse here)

Bay Area Labor for Palestine

CUNY4Palestine

UAW Labor for Palestine RFA Working Group

ALU Democratic Reform Caucus

Oakland Education Association

Vermont Labor for Palestine

Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights

El Hormiguero NYC

NYC City Workers for Palestine

Food Chain Workers Alliance 

Coalition of Labor Union Women TX

Student Workers Collective at Dartmouth

NYC Educators for Palestine

Purple Up 4 Palestine

Brandworkers

Community Endorsers (endorse here)

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Honor the Earth

US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)

Do No Harm Coalition

Sunrise Movement at Dartmouth

Palestine Solidarity Coalition at Dartmouth

Upper Valley for Palestine

Socialist Party NYC

NewYork4Palestine

LA4Palestine

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.

Register your action here

Contact info@laborforpalestine.net 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