On October 28th, 2023, our Local Unions passed a statement calling for a #CeasefireNOW and an end to the occupation of Palestine. In the past 41 days alone, Israeli bombs have claimed over 11,000 lives in Gaza. For the last eighteen years, Gaza has been the site of an escalating humanitarian calamity. Walled in by the Israeli occupation, more than two million Palestinians in the most densely-populated place on earth struggle to make a life amid bombing, deprivation, and joblessness. It is only natural that the international working class would take up the cause of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
We urge fellow labor unionists and our UAW siblings to take up this cause by fighting, with all means at our disposal, for an immediate ceasefire and an end to US funding of the Israeli apartheid regime. Instead of subsidizing violence, the Biden administration must fund the needs of working people. The labor movement has a proud tradition of fighting for justice on the international stage. The UAW campaign against apartheid in South Africa helped free the anti-apartheid labor leader Moses Mayekiso from prison. When our union takes to the international stage, we have the power to lift up workers everywhere.