Leading Labor Voices Speak Out …

UAW President Shawn Fain: “We will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice.”

On May Day, International Workers Day, UAW President Shawn Fain became the first national union leader to support the student protests and oppose the mass arrests of almost 2,000 students on at least 40 campuses across the United States. [as tracked by the Washington Post. The number of arrests may be higher as protests are taking place on at least 154 campuses and not the 40 tracked by the Washington Post.]

“The UAW,” Fain declared, “will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice. Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong,” Fain explained, “and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong. We call on the powers that be to release the students and employees who have been arrest, and if you can’t take the outcry,” Fain declared, “stop supporting this war.”

Fain’s support will be tested as UAW locals, if not the international itself, act. The leadership of UAW Local 4811, representing 48,000 University of California graduate students, post-docs, and other academic workers held an emergency meeting on May Day at which they approved holding a strike authorization vote dependent upon the administration’s handling of the protest. The ink wasn’t dry on the decision before the university called in the LAPD and tactical units for a pre-dawn raid on the student encampment. The police tore down barricades, leveled the tents, deployed stun grenades and tear gas, shot rubber bullets. Two hundred ten people were arrested.

Polling the membership may take place as soon as this week. “This is the defining issue of our generation,” said Rafael Jaime, a graduate worker at UCLA and co-president of UAW 4811, “and it’s really important for all, not just workers at the University of California, but across the entire nation, to speak up and to ensure every worker has the right to speak on this issue.” 

Earlier in the week, on Monday, faculty members at Columbia University, wearing orange vests, linked arms to form a human wall at the entrance of the student encampment as police arrived to disperse it. Professors at Emory University in Atlanta, where the police have been especially brutal, staged a campus walkout Monday, too, chanting “hands off our students.”

Also on Monday, 700 faculty at the University of Texas, Austin — where state storm troopers and police had rampaged, on foot and horseback, in a military action using flash-bang grenades, attacking students with pepper spray and dragging them across campus — members of the UT Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement of “no confidence” in the University president and demanded that all criminal charges be dropped against students and “others” who were arrested.

At Indiana University, more than 3,000 faculty, graduate workers, students, staff and alumni have called for the resignation of President Pamela Whitten.

Over 250 City College faculty (City College is one of the campuses of the City University of New York), calling themselves “CUNY on Strike,” organized a coordinated sick-out (no work) action for May Day in defiance of their union, the Professional Staff Congress/AFT Local 2334 which had cited reactionary New York State labor law. — Mya Shone

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CNN Reports on College Campus Democrat Organizations

Dear Editors,

Your readers might be interested in this CNN news story. I have highlighted the most important point. Clearly these young Democrats need to break with the Democrats and find their way to LCIP [Labor and Community for and Independent Party]. – A subscriber, Brooklyn, NY

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Letter from a reader

The dire situation on the ground in Gaza, which many young Americans are routinely exposed to in real-time through social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, has emerged as a significant concern for many Democratic organizations, liberal outside groups and other Biden allies worried about youth voter turnout in the 2024 election.

Those anxieties came into view again last week when the traditionally modest College Democrats of America sounded the alarm, saying in a statement, “The White House has taken the mistaken route of a bear hug strategy for (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and a cold shoulder strategy for its own base and all Americans who want to see an end to this war.”

“It should be made abundantly clear that calling for the freedom of Palestinians is not Anti-Semitic,” the group wrote, “and neither is opposing the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government.”

The decision by leaders of the CDA – which for many years operated under the wing of the Democratic National Committee – to take such a bold stand and potentially endanger its standing with senior party leaders drew immediate attention across ideological lines. But the College Democrats insist their worries are also rooted in what they see as the Biden campaign’s unwillingness to grasp the scope of how difficult it is becoming to engage young voters. …

Polling of young voters on the Israel-Hamas War, specifically about its effect on Biden’s campaign, presents a mixed picture.

A Harvard/Institute of Politics poll conducted in March showed that young Americans supported a permanent ceasefire in Gaza (51% versus 10% who were opposed). An Economist/YouGov poll from April found that 32% of adults younger than 30 sympathized with Palestinians (compared with 13% who sympathized with Israelis). Only 18% of young voters approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Harvard/IOP poll.