All Out this Labor Day with Banners Demanding “Stop Arming Israel!”

EDITORIAL of The Organizer (August 7, 2024)

Organizing by union locals, regional, and state labor councils for this year’s Labor Day rallies (Monday, September 2) is underway. These Labor Day rallies are a closely watched annual ritual when unions join together to show their collective strength to the nation. 

On July 21, seven national unions, representing more than 6 million workers, called upon President Joe Biden “to halt all military aid to Israel”. Mark Dimondstein, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) president, spoke forcefully at the July 24 rally in Washington D.C. organized to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s harangue before Congress. That was a great start. Now the work to mobilize in force has to begin. There is no time to lose. Every day that passes by, even every minute matters.

The Israeli military has slaughtered nearly 40,000 Palestinian people so far and laid waste to the Gaza Strip using U.S. weaponry. Today, one-half of the 2.3 million people in Gaza — one million infants, girls, boys, women, and men — are suffering from acute respiratory infections, including pneumonia; half-a-million have debilitating diarrhea; more than 100,000 have contracted acute jaundice syndrome, or suspected hepatitis A. Skin infections are surging — scabies and lice as well as fungal, bacterial, and viral infections. Polio, which has been eradicated in much of the world, may now break out in epidemic proportions. So reports the World Health Organization while noting that these are preventable diseases spreading rapidly because the Israeli military has destroyed essential infrastructure and driven almost all of Gaza’s residents from their homes. 

“The situation is indeed dire,” decried Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the WHO director for the Eastern Mediterranean region. The Israeli military has designated only one area of the Gaza Strip as a “humanitarian zone” and “that area,” reported The New York Times (July 30), “keeps shrinking.” The vast majority of Gaza residents are now pressed into 13 percent of the Gaza Strip — only 18.2 square miles — a small area of dunes and fields along the coast with little water and food, most living in makeshift shelters and tents next to a sewage system of informal dumping sites, described by Chitose Noguchi, deputy special representative of the U.N. Development Program, as giant pools of human waste and garbage.

Union rank-and-file contingents in small numbers have been part of community solidarity rallies and actions across the United States and internationally. Now is the crucial moment to broaden labor’s reach. 

Look at one state: Michigan. There are 564,000 union members in Michigan, 134,000 of whom are UAW members, 30,000 in SEIU, and 120,000 are represented by the MEA, Michigan’s NEA affiliate, three of the six national unions who spearheaded the joint union statement to Stop Arming Israel. To say that union activism and mobilization in Michigan, as elsewhere, makes a difference is an understatement. This is one of those historical moments that require action. It is not the time to hesitate.

The Labor Fightback Network has issued a call: “All Out this Labor Day with Banners Demanding “Stop Arming Israel!” (see below) We urge readers of The Organizer to sign on, get engaged, and promote this effort in your union locals and internationals as well as solidarity organizations. This Labor Day, U.S. workers can demonstrate that the historic labor slogan remains the battle cry:

• “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.”

• All out this Labor Day with banners demanding Stop Arming Israel!

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

“All Out on Labor Day with Banners Demanding “Stop Arming 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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ENDORSEMENT COUPON

[.   ] I endorse the Statement above.

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(please fill out the form and send it to alanbenjamin2013@gmail.com)

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

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

STATE

(please fill out the form and send it to alanbenjamin2013@gmail.com)