T.O. 132 – Labor Day 2024: Now Is the Time for U.S. Labor to Mobilize in the Streets to Stop Arms Shipments to Israel!

Posted on August 7, 2024

Statement by Labor Fightback Network (LFN)

Endorsed by Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), Ujima People’s Progress Party (UPP), and the South Carolina Workers Party (SCWP)

• Labor Day 2024: Now Is the Time for U.S. Labor to Mobilize in the Streets to Stop Arms Shipments to Israel!

• Seven National Unions (40% of Organized Labor) are Calling on Biden to End the Arms shipments as the Most Effective Way to Ensure a Ceasefire on Gaza

• Now Is the Time to Show Labor’s Potential Power; Labor Is the Only Social Force Capable of Shutting Down the Supply of Arms to Israel

Dear union siblings and community activists,

On July 21, seven national unions with a combined membership comprising nearly half of all union members in the U.S. took a big step forward for the labor movement. They issued an Open Letter to President Biden, reported in the New York Times, calling for an embargo on delivery of all U.S. military aid to Israel because of its repeated attacks on civilians.

The letter was co-signed by the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), International Union of Painters (IUPAT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Electrical Workers (UE).

The Open Letter reads in part:

“President Biden: We write to publicly call upon your Administration to immediately halt all military aid to Israel as part of the work to secure an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza. “Recent reports only underscore the urgency of our demands. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. “And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and the destruction of basic infrastructure, including schools and hospitals. … “Furthermore, Israel’s refusal to minimize civilian harm and its demonstrated restriction of U.S. humanitarian aid call for a halt to U.S. military aid under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Control Export Act. “Mr. President, the time to act decisively to end this war is now. Stopping U.S. military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so.”

The Open Letter to Biden by the seven national unions represents a giant step for the labor movement and all the oppressed. But a letter is not enough, it must be followed up by a huge labor-against-the-war turnout on Labor Day of unionists and community activists from the seven signatory unions and from the AFL-CIO itself, which needs to begin implementing the resolution of the October 2017 national convention of the AFL-CIO. That resolution reads, in part:

“Whether the candidates are elected from the Republican or Democratic Party, the interests of Wall Street have been protected and advanced, while the interests of labor and working people have generally been set back.” A second convention resolution concluded that, “the time has passed when we can passively settle for the lesser of two evils politics.”

How true! The labor movement needs to assert its independent political power to combat the attacks on working people that Wall Street and Big Business have in store, no matter who is elected in November. When you spend $61 billion for the war in Ukraine, to give but one example, that’s $61 billion less for our hospitals, social services, and schools.

Now is the time to move from words to action.

All Out Labor Day to stop the wars against working people at home and abroad!

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