Support the UC 4811 Strikers! Campaign to Stop Funding War; Dialogue on Immigrant Rights

IN THIS ISSUE OF THE ORGANIZER:

• United Auto Workers Local 4811 Strike Points Way Forward for Labor – Editorial by Coral Wheeler

• French Workers Party (PT) Holds Mass Rally to Demand “Stop Funding War!”

• PT Greetings on Palestine to the Rally Participants by the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI)

• OPEN FORUM ON IMMIGRATION

(a) The Bipartisan Attack on Immigrants: An Interview with Aly Wane (Tempest Magazine)

(b) Immigrants in Dialogue: A Comradely Response to Tempest

• International Appeal: Stop War Funding & First List of Endorsers in the United States (still time to endorse)

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UAW Local 4811 Strike Points Way Forward, Needs Urgent Labor Support!

Editorial by Coral Wheeler

For the last week, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 – the union that represents academic student employees, student researchers and postdocs at the University of California (UC) — have been on an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike. In an historic display of solidarity and courage, the union called the strike as a direct response to the brutal police suppression of free speech on campus.

On May 1^st and 2^nd, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) police in riot gear arrested more than 200 peaceful student protesters and academic workers exercising their legal right to demonstrate on the UCLA campus against the death, destruction and human suffering directed at the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The union immediately filed an unfair labor practice charge against UCLA, and later amended it to include further repression against protestors at UC San Diego (UCSD), UC Irvine (UCI), and other UC campuses. This incredible escalation of the recent massive wave of student-led protests shows the potential power of labor combined with student activism to enact change.

This strike must be supported by the broader labor movement immediately!

Student movements have long played an important role in social justice struggles. From the 1968 occupation of several Columbia University buildings in protest against the university’s ties to military research during the Vietnam War, to a massive student strike in 1970 against the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the fatal shooting of unarmed student protesters at Kent State University by the National Guard and at Jackson State College by local police, to the Soweto Uprising in 1976 in South Africa, in which thousands of Black school children took to the streets to protest the apartheid government’s policy of enforcing education in Afrikaans, student movements have always been a powerful force for the rights of oppressed and marginalized.

The University of California itself has a history of students standing up to apartheid regimes. In 1989, students across the University of California system launched a prolonged strike against the university’s investment in companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. The protests were part of a larger national and international movement that eventually pressured the UC system and many other institutions to divest from South Africa, contributing to the global pressure that led to the end of apartheid.

The strength of the student movements has been shown again in the recent historic uprising of students across the United States demanding that their tuition dollars and university endowments not fund the Zionist dispossession of the Palestinian people and the colonization of their homeland. But this particular ULP strike highlights an even more important dimension to the student protests.

UAW 4811 was one of the earliest unions in the U.S. to call for a ceasefire and de-escalation of the war in Gaza and was instrumental in the International UAW taking up this same call. The union is a combination of the newer UC postdoc union with UAW Local 2865. Formed after a massive strike wave of students across the University of California system in the 90s, Local 2865 was the very first student-worker union in the United States.

The powerful combination of the recent student movement against genocide, with the ability of the students to strike over their treatment as workers, means that this is not just a protest, but thousands of student workers and researchers withholding their labor as a way to fight the ongoing brutality of Israel against the Palestinian people, with the full backing and funding by the U.S. government.

The courage and initiative shown by these students and workers demonstrates the potential for organized labor to fight against the erosion of civil liberties, and to end U.S. military support of Israel.

The situation now demands a unified response from all sectors of the working class. The actions of UAW Local 4811 exemplify the kind of militant solidarity needed to challenge the military industrial complex and the twin parties of capitalism, both of which support the ongoing slaughter.

Therefore, it is imperative that the AFL-CIO, local California labor councils, and all unions nationwide heed the call of UAW Local 4811 and support this pivotal strike. We must mobilize resources, extend our solidarity, and issue statements defending the rights of students and workers to protest.

To stand with UAW Local 4811 is to stand for the power of united action and against genocide. No more U.S. tax dollars to arm Israel! Down with genocide! One democratic and secular Palestine from the river to the sea!

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French Workers Party Holds Mass Rally to Demand “Stop Funding War!

Full Conference Hall hears speakers from Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, Kanak (New Caledonia), France, Congo, Burkina Fasso, Germany, and Spain

As early as 2:30 pm on June 2, rally participants – 1,800 strong – entered the Espace Charenton hall in groups. The room quickly filled to capacity. Some came from far away, others took the metro. All had high expectations of this rally, for the times are serious.

After Camille Adoue, who headed the Workers Party electoral slate in the upcoming European Union elections, opened the rally, the international speeches followed in rapid succession. The room gave a standing ovation to Kanak leader Romuald Pidjot of the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FNLKS).

An emotional moment soon followed when Suheil Yassin, a Palestinian student and activist in ODSI [One Democratic State Initiative], referred to the letter for “Tomorrow’s Palestine” – signed already by 20,000 Palestinian activists [see separate posting at www.socialistorganizer.org].  Participants were extremely proud to be there to hear the Russian and Ukrainian activists side by side, and to see them finish their speeches hand in hand!

Adama Coulibaly’s [Burkina Fasso] evocation of the ongoing wars in Africa and a message from activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo sent shivers down the spine of the room. Reme Martin from Spain and Peter Hintermeier from Germany highlighted the issues raised by the workers’ movement in the fight against war. “All these wars are but one, that of capitalism,” asserted a message read out on behalf of the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International [see attached].

From the railway workers to the employees of the City of Paris, not forgetting the employees of MA France, the class struggle was very much in evidence.

Christel Keiser and Daniel Gluckstein presented the proposal of building a class struggle party, a party which, while describing the problems facing the working class as they are, takes action for unity. The presence of a large number of young people was noticeable. When the representative of the Fédération des jeunes révolutionaires [Federation of Young Revolutionaries] called for an organized fight for socialism, the applause was overwhelming.

After the presentation of the international meeting of young revolutionaries in late August, an appeal was made for financial support for this youth initiative. The appeal was well received. It was 5 p.m. when the singing of the “Internationale” erupted, signaling the end of the rally.

“I want to tell those around me that I have seen and heard the fraternity among the workers of all these countries in the struggle against the capitalists’ war,” stated a young activist upon leaving the hall, echoing the sentiment of all in attendance.

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Camille Odoue addresses crowd. Camille heads the list of PT candidates in upcoming EU elections

Excerpts from the Greetings (on Palestine) Sent to the Rally Participants by the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI)

“The Fourth International rejects with contempt the accusation of anti-Semitism leveled against us by the defenders of Zionism. The life of the child crushed under Israeli bombs in Rafah in 2024 is as precious to us as that of the Jewish child massacred by the Nazi troops in Warsaw in 1943″.

Recalling that “for 76 years, the Palestinian revolution has not given up, despite repression, despite massacres and, it must be said, despite numerous betrayals”, the message stressed that “the recent conference organized by the OCRFI highlighted the need to fight for a Palestinian Constituent Assembly.

“For 75 years, the people of historic Palestine have never had the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights to determine their future. Their fate has always been imposed from outside by the will of the great powers. Since 1947, the only possible democratic solution for all the inhabitants of Palestine, including all those expelled from it in 1948 and their descendants, the only possible solution, whatever their origin or religion, is the immediate establishment of a single secular and democratic Palestinian state on the entire territory of historic Palestine, a state that will guarantee equal rights to all its citizens. …”

To the question: “Who will take part in the elections to the Palestinian Constituent Assembly?”, the supporters of a democratic solution will answer: All the inhabitants of Palestine expelled in 1948 and their descendants will be able to take part, all of them, including Israeli Jews who, breaking with Zionism, decide to consider themselves Palestinian citizens ready to take their place with equal rights in this democratic process.”

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June 2 Paris rally participants

International Appeal: STOP FUNDING WAR!

(excerpts)

[For the full text of the Appeal and the first list of signatories in multiple languages , go to: https://tinyurl.com/yeywar96 . Below are excerpts from the appeal that deal with some of the obstacles that face working people in their fight to end the war funding to Israel and Ukraine.]

Workers and young people the world over are suffering the consequences of this war: the hundreds of billions [of dollars] engulfed in the war economy are fueled by the destruction of public services, workers’ rights, schools and hospitals. In all our countries, workers and young people want the billions to be spent on the needs of young people and the population, not on war.

This is why we are insisting on the absolute urgency of stopping the funding of wars, stopping the funds voted by our respective parliamentary [Congressional] representations; funds for war in particular for Israel, without which the massacre in Gaza could not continue; funds for war to fuel the war in Ukraine.

[That is why we say]:

• To the members of the U.S. Congress, who are public members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and who, on April 20, voted to support $61 billion in war funding for Ukraine and $8 billion in war funding to arm Taiwan against China

• To the MEPS [European Members of Parliament] of the Socialist and Social-Democrat group, and of The Left groups (including La France Insoumise, the Bloco de Esquerda, etc.) who, in the European Parliament, on 32 occasions and again last February approved tens of billions in funding for the war in Ukraine. … To all of them we say:

You who were sent to sit in these parliaments to represent the interests of the workers in the face of capitalism, militarism and exploitation; you who, up to now, have trampled underfoot your commitments by bringing your help to the war instead of opposing it, it is up to you to either hand in your mandates [step down], or else make use of the parliamentary forum to explain to the people the nature of the war and initiate the struggle.

Yes, it is necessary to break with this policy of war, with the funding of war, and to abide by the mandate of the majority of workers and peoples on both sides of the Atlantic: no support for chauvinism, no support for our governments, no support for war. It’s time to end the fighting and the financing of the fighting.

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OPEN FORUM

The Bipartisan Attack on Immigrants: An Interview with Aly Wane

(excerpted from Tempest Magazine’s April 21 posting, with Tempest’s permission. The full article can be accessed at their website: https://tempestmag.org.)

by Aly Wane and Dana Cloud

Dana Cloud sat down with immigration justice activist Aly Wane to discuss how Democrats and Republicans, despite differences in rhetoric, have the same border agenda.

Dana Cloud: A few weeks ago, as you know, Biden and Trump both visited the Texas-Mexico border. Biden was selling his immigration bill that Trump encouraged Republicans to vote against. Even though Biden is pushing for more resources for border policing, Trump claimed (in his articulate way) that the U.S. is being overrun by the “Biden migrant crime.” Trump emphasized crimes committed by migrants. My perception is that his rhetoric of monstrosity regarding immigrants has a different tone from Biden’s, but do you think that they are essentially proposing similar controls?

Aly Wane: Yes. I’ve been an activist on this issue since at least the mid-2000s. And I would say that the Republicans have worse rhetoric and oftentimes Democrats have great rhetoric. At the end of the day, however, both parties are law enforcement parties.

Biden is proposing very, very similar things. In fact, the Biden administration has doubled down on some of Trump’s worst excesses in his desperation to get a deal after this last attempt at getting a deal failed, and I want to be clear that from my perspective as an activist, that immigration proposal was the Democrats basically giving everything to the Republicans.

There wasn’t even any kind of negotiation about maybe a path to citizenship for folks with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), for example, which is like the lowest of lowest bars, but even that wasn’t included. And I want to remind folks that Biden recently has been talking about how he wants to pass a deal with Trump.

That’s his whole thing: He’s so desperate to get something going that he’s inviting Trump to the table. The deal that was already rejected was already basically giving everything to the Republicans that they wanted. The only reasons they rejected it were that they wanted to humiliate Biden, number one, and number two, they want to propose something even worse under Trump.

And so when Biden’s inviting Trump to the table in negotiation, what he’s saying is, I’m absolutely willing to cave in even more on immigration. So all that is to say is that, unfortunately, right now Republicans totally own the narrative on immigration.

Democrats are playing on the same narrative field that the Republicans are, which is that right now we’re in the midst of a crisis. Therefore, the logic goes, we need to add more border enforcement. We need to add more drones. We need to add more agents. All of that. There is very little having to do with any kind of relief.

The Dems, instead of actually standing up for immigrants and wanting to solve the crisis, which would involve a lot more on the relief side, are saying, yes, yes, things are really bad, so let’s add more money for enforcement. That’s what the two-party system has been throwing at the issue for years.

The more enforcement you put into the system, the more you choke off the avenues for people to come legally, the more you’re going to create bottlenecks that are going to create crises.

And so it’s this very vicious cycle that keeps happening over and over again with Republicans and Democrats thinking that enforcement is going to solve the issue when more enforcement is actually what is creating all of these so-called crises.

DC: Can you speak a little bit more about the content of this bipartisan compromise that Biden has been pushing? I’ve heard it described as cruel and draconian. Did you want to speak to the effects or the consequences for the migrants themselves of these policies?

AW:  If you look at the proposals, they want to add numbers to the detention bed mandate, for example, to add the number of people who would be required to be detained. Incarcerated. I’m not sure how many people are aware that there are these detention bed contracts that a lot of private prison corporations sort of sneak into immigration legislation.

A certain number of beds are guaranteed, which obviously creates an entire incentive for the immigration enforcement system to capture as many people as possible. So the bed mandate is one thing.

The second thing is basically the decimation of the asylum system. Now, to be clear, the problem with the U.S. asylum system started way before Trump. I still remember in 2014 when international human rights organizations were decrying the U.S. detention system and asylum system under Obama, but that got very little notice.

Biden’s way to deal with this crisis is to enshrine some of the ways in which Trump had decimated the current asylum system. There are provisions in this legislation going towards reducing the ability of people to get asylum.

Democrats are playing on the same narrative field that the Republicans are, which is that right now we’re in the midst of a crisis. Therefore, the logic goes, we need to add more border enforcement. We need to add more drones. We need to add more agents. All of that. There is very little having to do with any kind of relief.

This reminds me of what was happening in the mid-1990s. In the mid-1990s, you had Bill Clinton, who was a president whom Republicans considered to be way too liberal. As a way to overcompensate, he pushed the [1994] crime bill. [The senate version of the bill was originally drafted by then-Senator Joe Biden.] But then he pushed incredibly draconian immigration laws that are at the heart of this detention explosion and this deportation explosion.

Those 1996 laws were really bad. And now when I think about 2024, it’s a similar thing.

You have a Democratic Party president who doesn’t want to be seen as too lax. Therefore, he’s going to push draconian immigration policies, thinking that it will help him. The thing that is different though is that there is a movement now in a way that there wasn’t back in the 1990s. So I don’t even understand why Biden is regressing to old Democratic Party strategies of just going along with the Republican narrative instead of trying to change it.

I think that over the past 20 years, Democrats have created an atmosphere and a regime where it is easy to pass enforcement issues, but anything having to do with release is seen as too weak or dangerous. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell your readers that the “War on Terror” turbocharged the entire immigration conversation.

So ever since then, any kind of immigration negotiation starts with a “national security concern.” They’re always going to start with more border patrol agents, more ICE agents, more money for prisons.

DC: So what, in your view, should we activists and the readers of Tempest and your people and my people, what should we be doing now?

AW: I always go back to what’s happening at the grassroots. Wherever you are, I’m sure there is a local activist group that is doing work that’s important for migrants. I would certainly emphasize doing any anti-deportation work or any work that would support immigrants.

That may not be straightforwardly political, but that might be helping migrants get access to basic resources, food, clothing, and health care. All of those things matter. This is what I’m thinking about as I’m trying to create this workshop for Black migrants.

DC: And so what about you? Like, what is your relationship to the electoral process and the Democrats?

AW: I’m still fully undocumented. On a personal level with this election, it’s literally the first time that I asked myself, if I could vote, would I vote for Biden? Even if it were a state where it mattered, I don’t think I could. I’ve tried as much as possible to stay away from just being like one- or two-issue voters, but it’s Palestine

Children are being slaughtered as they are trying to access international food aid. And we’re being asked to look past that. No. Biden is absolutely complicit in genocide right now. That makes it much, much harder to make the case for the lesser evil.

DC: What would you say to readers who may be worried about Trump’s alignment with the far-right?

AW: I do believe that a Trump presidency would be worse. But Palestine is a major red line. I was surprised at how well the uncommitted campaign has gone in Michigan. The numbers were much larger than I thought they would be. At first, Biden and his team were like, well, it’s just a couple of Arabs and Muslims, I guess, we don’t need to worry about it.

Then they looked at the numbers, they were like, well, maybe it’s Arabs and Muslims and young people. They’re trying to convince themselves that it’s okay. I think they’re looking at a potential iceberg.

I don’t know any pro-Palestinian activists who looked at Biden’s plan for aid to Gaza and said, yes, he nailed it. No, it has infuriated more people, because, as you probably know, the issue is not the resources, the issue is access to resources.

Biden is absolutely complicit in genocide right now. That makes it much, much harder to make the case for the lesser evil.

We should say to Biden, just tell Israelis right now to let the food in or we’re cutting off at least your military aid. The fact is that Biden can’t even cross that bottom line. At the end of the day, he’s ideologically committed to this genocide.

DC: Is there anything else you would want to say about any of these issues before we wrap up?

AW: All I want to do is send love to activists and organizers. I know it’s hard. We’ve been immigration activists for ten, fifteen years or more. Sometimes folks wonder, what is even the point?

We keep having to fight the Democrats on this. Like with Republicans, it’s always clear. We understand where Republicans stand. But it’s just that every time there’s even the slightest ripple in the water for Democrats, the first group of people that they throw under the bus is migrants. I want to send some love to those folks and remind them to find support in their own communities, and not so much sustenance in the political system which we just can’t count on.

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Immigrants in Dialogue: A Comradely Response to Tempest, “The Bipartisan Attack on Immigrants: An interview with Aly Wane”

By E.J. Esperanza

On April 24, 2024, Tempest published an interview with Aly Wane, a renowned Black immigrant rights’ activist that I’ve had the pleasure to follow on social media for some years. Mr. Wane and I share not only our lack of legal status (though I am DACAmented and Mr. Wane doesn’t have even that minimal protection), but also the same timeline with regards to our involvement in the immigrant rights movement: the early 2000s.

Mr. Wane recounts how over the past 20-plus years both political parties have pursued a nearly identical policy when it comes to immigration: enforcement, albeit with different rhetoric. Mr. Wane warns us, however: “You should really pay very little attention to what politicians say; you should almost exclusively pay attention to what politicians do.” He’s right.

For the past 20 years both parties have supported: mass-for-profit detention, mass deportations, and cruel family separations.

“That’s what the two-party system has been throwing at the issue for years. And I promise you, if they pass even more enforcement, we’re going to be back here in another year, another year and a half, two years, however long, because all it is, is making the crisis worse.

“The more enforcement you put into the system, the more you choke off the avenues for people to come legally, the more you’re going to create bottlenecks that are going to create crises. And so it’s this very vicious cycle that keeps happening over and over again with Republicans and Democrats thinking that enforcement is going to solve the issue when more enforcement is actually what is creating all of these so-called crises.”

Mr. Wane explains President Biden’s latest attempt to out-Trump Trump with his unprecedented asylum ban:

“Biden is proposing very, very similar things. In fact, the Biden administration has doubled down on some of Trump’s worst excesses in his desperation to get a deal after this last attempt at getting a deal failed, and I want to be clear that from my perspective as an activist, that immigration proposal was the Democrats basically giving everything to the Republicans. … The only reasons [the Republicans] rejected it [was because] they wanted to humiliate Biden. …”

This bipartisan agreement to ban asylum and to further militarize the border, is only helping reinforce the criminalization of refugees, and ingrain the false notion that asylum is too lenient even though asylum is a legal right people fleeing persecution have that is rooted in the United States’ international treaties and obligations.

“The asylum system … [i]t’s a very stringent process. You can go through all of that and still, even back then, not get asylum. Now it’s gotten to a place where, if you are able to get asylum now, you are pretty lucky. … So this is very much in line with what I was saying earlier; … where both parties are actually contributing to the problem by making the asylum system [even] worse.”

The U.S.-Mexico border is already the deadliest border in the world. 500 plus refugees die on the U.S.-Mexico border every year because of this enforcement; 711 in 2022 alone. Numbers that are likely undercounted because bodies are often never found in the desert.

Of course, we migrate out of desperation. We migrate because U.S. corporations have cannibalized our societies south of the border and the world over; because U.S. multinational corporations have imposed repressive regimes to exploit cheap labor and resources in our home countries. Between 1994 and 2006, NAFTA displaced over 6 million poor farmers from the Mexican countryside by privatizing land and repealing one of the historic gains of the Mexican revolution as codified in its constitution; CAFTA in 2005 did the same to the societies of Central America. Add to this the effects of climate change and war.

Enforcement in the U.S. is the flipside of this coin. As Mr. Wane reiterates: “Both parties are law enforcement parties.” The enforcement laws of 1994 and the immigration bill of 1996—the current immigration system we are living under—were yesterday’s “solutions” to the inevitable and foreseen displacement of millions of people that would arrive on U.S. shores. Enforcement is the ruling class’s solution to our displacement.

Indeed, Mr. Wane intuits as much when he reflects on another period when enforcement had this much bipartisan support: the mid1990s.

“In the mid-1990s, you had Bill Clinton, who was a president whom Republicans considered to be way too liberal. As a way to overcompensate, he pushed the [1994] crime bill. [The senate version of the bill was originally drafted by then- Senator Joe Biden.] But then he pushed incredibly draconian immigration laws  that are at the heart of this detention explosion and this deportation explosion. Those 1996 laws were really bad. And now when I think about 2024, it’s a similar thing.”

This is the corporate rich’s solution to the symptoms of poverty. To police poverty. To criminalize poverty. To scapegoat poverty. Everything but address the corporate greed that is at the root of our forced migration.

When Mr. Wane is asked what we should do about this, I don’t disagree with Mr. Wane’s minimum program: immigrants need help with “basic resources, food, clothing, and health care.” “Doing anti-deportation work.” He’s right, “all those things matter.” But I posit to him, that unless we find a way to break the lesser evil trap of the two-party system, we’ll continue in this vicious cycle.

I look forward to an ongoing dialogue about how to connect the fight for survival (which is a necessary defensive fight) to the fight to free ourselves from both enforcement parties.

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ANTIWAR CAMPAIGN

“Stop Funding War!” – Endorse the Appeal – See First list of U.S. Endorsers

Dear readers,

Dear Readers,

On June 8, Ukraine was given the green light by Biden and his allies in Europe to strike Russia with U.S. weapons, while Ukraine gears up to attack Russian nuclear defenses.

What was inconceivable a few years ago is now becoming a reality. The Biden administration had been stating repeatedly that such support to strikes in Russian territory with U.S. weapons would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight. That pledge has been thrown out the window.

An article in The New York Times by David Sanger reads as follows: “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of the most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine.”

We call on you, our readers, to endorse our “Stop Funding for Ukraine and Gaza” statement. Please send us your name, organization and title, and city and state.

See the first list of U.S. endorsers below. — Many thanks in advance for your support,

In solidarity,

Alan Benjamin and Mya Shone, For Socialist Organizer

ANTIWAR CAMPAIGN

“Stop Funding War!” – Endorse the Appeal (excerpts above) – First list of U.S. Endorsers

Clarence Thomas, Co-founder, Million Worker March, California;  Nnamdi Lumumba, Organizer, Ujima Peoples Progress Party (UPP), Maryland;  Mya Shone, Editorial Board, The Organizer; National Writers Union member (for Id. only), California;  Connie White, Continuations Committee, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), California; Katherine Black, Philly CLUW President Emerita, Pennsylvania;  Gary M. Votour, Treasurer, South Carolina Workers Party, South Carolina;  Marsha Feinland, member, State Executive Committee, Peace and Freedom Party of California, California;  Julian Kunnie, Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation; Black Alliance for Peace (for ID only), Arizona;  Chris Silvera, President, Teamsters Local 808, New York;  Louis Wolf, Co-editor, Covert Action Magazine, Washington, DC;  Don Bryant, President Cleveland Peace Action, Ohio;  Marc Wutshke, Delegate, 2024 AFT Convention, California;  Dan Kaplan, Executive Secretary, AFT 1493 (retired), California;  Marilyn Vogt-Downey, Retiree Advocates, UFT, New York;  Andrea Houtman, Member of Solidarity, for id purposes only; Member of the Green Party, for id purposes only;  Patricia Blochowiak, Cleveland antiwar activist, Ohio,  Ron Dicks, Former International Vice President, Western Region, IFPTE, California;  Millie Phillips, Editorial Board, The Organizer Newspaper, California;  Donna Dewitt, President Emerita, South Carolina AFL-CIO, South Carolina;  Michael Carano, Teamster Local 348, retired, Ohio;  Tim Stinson, Socialist Organizer, Oregon;  Desirée Rojas, President, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Sacramento Chapter, California;  Haldon C. Sutton, UAW Local 1268 retiree in a personal capacity, Florida;  Alan Benjamin, National Organizing Committee, Socialist Organizer, New York;  James E. Vann, Cofounder, Oakland Tenants Union, California;  Marlene Santoyo, labor/community activist, Pennsylvania;  Berthony Dupont, Editor, Haiti Liberté, New York and Haiti;  Ana Fisher, AFT 2121 retiree chapter, California;  Mark Loy, retired trade union activist, California;  Samuel Meyer, community activist, California;  Betty Davis, Black is Back, What’s Happening-WBAI-NY;  Mark Demming, Retired teacher, California;  Dr. Jack Rasmus, author and radio show host, California;  Lita Blanc, Past president, United Educators of San Francisco (for id only);  Wadi’h Halabi, UAW 891, Massachusetts;  Jerry Levinsky, trade unionist, organizer, Massachusetts;  Coral Wheeler, member, CFA (in a personal capacity only);  Olivia Gamboa, activist, Los Angeles, California;  Petros Bein, Organizer, Ujima Peoples Progress Party, Maryland;  Tom Gogan, National Writers Union, New York;  Bradley Wiedmaier, Former Executive Board Member SEIU UHW (United Healthcare Workers West) Current Member SEIU 2015 (for ID only);  Brandon Walker, Organizer, Ujima Peoples Progress Party, Maryland; Katharine Harer, former VP & Organizer, AFT1493, San Mateo Community College Fed of Teachers, California.