Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, September 19, 2023

SF ANSWER office suffers major fire damage. Your support needed!

 

DONATE:

https://www.answercoalition.org/sf_donate?utm_campaign=2023_09_17_lc_fundraiser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

 

Dear Friends and Supporters of the ANSWER Coalition,

 

An early morning fire on Thursday, Sept. 14 caused massive damage to our offices on Mission Street. It appears that the fire started in the lot next to our building, turned into a two-alarm blaze, and took fire-fighters more than three hours to fully extinguish. Thanks to their skill and courageous action our building was not completely destroyed. But it will take at least several months to restore it to use. We are awaiting an investigation and assessment of what if any of the contents – our several-thousand-book library, a very large collection of historical materials, computers and other office equipment, etc.– are salvageable.

 

This disaster occurred just as we were in the midst of reconstructing and refurbishing the building, painting the main meeting room, installing a new ramp, doors and entryway for disabled persons, redoing the storefront windows and the marquee.

 

Multiple organizations are now using our office for activities and we were about to announce a new name for the building: the Mission Liberation Center. Such centers are now operating in cities across the country. That will of course have to be put on hold.

 

The loss of the use of our building for an extended period of time creates a serious problem for carrying out our work, but we have no intention of being sidelined. From opposing the blockade of Cuba and providing critically needed humanitarian aid, to support for the many labor struggles taking place from coast-to-coast, to resisting the U.S. war drive against Russia and China, to fighting toxic racism in the Bayview, and much more, ANSWER will continue our work on vital international, national and local issues.

 

We are asking everyone who values our work to express your solidarity at this time of greatest need. While many of the costs of repair will be covered by insurance, not everything will. If you are able to help with a donation, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Progress Unity Fund.

 

Thank you in advance for your solidarity,

 

Richard Becker

Western Region Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

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Zaid Abdulnasser, the coordinator of Samidoun Network’s chapter in Germany, and member of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, is currently being threatened by the German state that his residency as a Palestinian refugee born in Syria will be revoked due to his political engagement in Samidoun and Masar Badil.

 

In the face of this attack, more than 130 international organisations, unions, and political parties, have expressed their absolute refusal of Germany’s ever increasing repressive measures against Palestinian refugees and their fundamental right to struggle for their liberation and return.

 

We call for organisations to join us by signing the statement under the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

 

To financially support the legal defence of Zaid and other Palestinians in Germany bearing the brunt of the state’s repressive measures against Palestine, you can make a donation to the following account:

 

Name: Rote Hilfe e.V.

IBAN: DE55 4306 0967 4007 2383 17

BIC: GENODEM1GLS

Note: Palaestina gegen Repression

 

We, in Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, declare that all attacks against us by the zionist occupation, its organisations abroad, and by Western imperialist countries and right-wing, racist media, have not and will not change our absolute commitment to defending and supporting the Palestinian prisoners movement, and to struggle for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Sign the statement!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffcsikMQR1lwvPqukzYCQpCzSZwLy28RXY8tYdGNxzlgugOA/viewform

Download the poster, take a selfie or group photo, and send it to us at: 

samidoun@samidoun.net

@samidounnetwork (Instagram) 

@SamidounPP (Twitter/X)!

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Leonard Peltier’s Letter Delivered to Supporters on September 12, 2023, in Front of the Whitehouse

 

Dear friends, relatives, supporters, loved ones:

 

Seventy-nine years old. Mother Earth has taken us on another journey around Grandfather Sun.  Babies have taken their first breath. People have lived, loved, and died. Seeds have been planted and sent their roots deep below red earth and their breath to the Stars and our Ancestors.

 

I am still here.

 

Time has twisted one more year out of me. A year that has been a moment.  A year that has been a lifetime. For almost five decades I’ve existed in a cage of concrete and steel.  With the “good time” calculations of the system, I’ve actually served over 60 years.

 

Year after year, I have encouraged you to live as spirit warriors. Even while in here, I can envision what is real and far beyond these walls.  I’ve seen a reawakening of an ancient Native pride that does my heart good.

 

I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.

 

I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people. 

 

We are still here.

 

Remember who you are, even if they come for your land, your water, your family. We are children of Mother Earth and we owe her and her other children our care.

 

I long to turn my face to the sky. In this cage, I am denied that simple pleasure. I am in prison, but in my mind, I remain as I was born: a free Native spirit.

 

That is what allows me to laugh, keeps me laughing. These walls cannot contain my laughter – or my hope.

 

I know there are those who stand with me, who work around the clock for my freedom. I have been blessed to have such friends.

 

We are still here and you give me hope. 

 

I hope to breathe free air before I die. Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me. 

 

I love you. I hope for you. I pray for you. 

 

And prayer is more than a cry to the Creator that runs through your head.  Prayer is an action.

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

DOKSHA, 

LEONARD PELTIER

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

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Drop the Charges on the Tampa 5!

Sign the Petition:

https://peoplespetitions.org/tampa5

 

The Tampa 5—Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio—are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.

 

On July 12, 2023, the Tampa 5 had their second court appearance. 

 

The Tampa 5 are still in the middle of the process of discovery, which means that they are obtaining evidence from the prosecution that is meant to convict them. They have said publicly that all the security camera footage they have seen so far absolves them, and they are eager to not only receive more of this evidence but also to share it with the world. The Tampa 5 and their supporters demand full transparency and USF's full cooperation with discovery, to which all of the defendants are entitled.

 

In spite of this, the charges have not yet been dropped. The case of the five SDS protesters is hurtling towards a trial. So, they need all of their supporters and all parties interested in the right to protest DeSantis to stay out in the streets!

 

We need to demand that the DeSantis-appointed, unelected State Attorney Susan Lopez and Assistant Prosecutor Justin Diaz drop the charges.

 

We need to win this case once and for all and protect the right of the student movement—and all social movements in the United States—to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and to protest.

 

Defend the Tampa 5!

 

State Attorney Susy Lopez, Prosecutor Justin Diaz, Drop the Charges!

 

Save Diversity in Higher Education!

 

Protesting DeSantis is Not a Crime!

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Free Julian Assange

Immediate Repeated Action Needed to Free Assange

 

Please call your Congressional Representatives, the White House, and the DOJ. Calls are tallied—they do count.  We are to believe we are represented in this country.  This is a political case, so our efforts can change things politically as well.  Please take this action as often as you can:

 

Find your representatives:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

 

Leave each of your representatives a message individually to: 

·      Drop the charges against Julian Assange

·      Speak out publicly against the indictment and

·      Sign on to Rashida Tlaib's letter to the DOJ to drop the charges: 

           202-224-3121—Capitol Main Switchboard 

 

Leave a message on the White House comment line to 

Demand Julian Assange be pardoned: 

             202-456-1111

             Tuesday–Thursday, 11:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. EST

 

Call the DOJ and demand they drop the charges against Julian Assange:

             202-353-1555—DOJ Comment Line

             202-514-2000 Main Switchboard 

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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Update on Ed Poindexter and Urgent Health Call-In Campaign

 

Watch the moving video of Ed's Niece and Sister at the April 26, 2023, UN EMLER Hearing in Atlanta: https://youtu.be/aKwV7LQ5iww

 

You can also watch Ed speaking about himself some years ago thanks to Sister Tekla, who was able to interview Ed and Mondo some years ago: https://youtu.be/sps0s4zeJxg.

More of these videos will be forthcoming.

 

Ed needs to be released to live the rest of his life outside of prison, with his family! (His niece Ericka is now 52 years old and was an infant when Ed was targeted, stolen from his home, jailed, framed, and railroaded.)

 

Friends and Comrades,

 

Thank you so very much for your phone calls and communications in support of Ed Poindexter’s health care!

 

We have learned from Ed’s family that a date has been set for Ed to go to an outside doctor to be evaluated for a hearing device. (Thank you, callers!) We have also learned that Ed will not be fitted for a prosthesis within the foreseeable future. The reason for this is that Ed is unable to sit up for more than a few seconds on his own. He is unable to get himself out of bed by himself. Ed cannot go to the restroom without substantial help. There is a fear of him falling.

 

The prison’s response has been to suggest that Ed try harder at physical therapy—so that he might be able to tie his own shoes again and perform basic self-care—but he cannot. Our position is that he is too weak because of the near daily kidney dialysis and multiple other health problems. As you know, he has lost sight in one eye, and is unable to hear. While he may have been weakened by being wheelchair bound for years, the fact that the institution amputated his left leg below the knee (without notice to the family) has made recovery of strength in his legs difficult. Add to this that Ed is extremely ill from kidney disease, and the near daily kidney dialysis artificially making his kidney’s function causes him to vomit his food and makes him ill overall. All of these combined illnesses have resulted in Ed not being able to even hold his frame upright for more than a few seconds.

 

Therefore, in protection of Ed’s basic rights as a human being to health care and human dignity, we demand that Ed be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association Certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. We demand the evaluation be by a physician connected to a reputable hospital so that Ed’s entire condition: eyes, heart (recall that Ed underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2016) kidneys, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing can all be evaluated as a whole.

 

It is the family’s belief that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life that it is irreversible, and we demand an outside doctor also evaluate him for this obvious fact. If it is determined by a reputable doctor that Ed is experiencing a diminishing quality of life; we want his status changed at the prison to reflect this reality.

 

Please call the numbers below and write to demand that Ed be seen by an outside doctor at a state-of-the-art hospital facility—for the purpose of evaluation specifically as to whether his condition is diminishing and irreversible—taken as a whole.

 

Ed Support Committee and Family and Concerned Members of the Community

 

PLEASE CALL, EMAIL AND WRITE:

 

Acting Medical Director Jeff Kasselman, M.D.: 402-479-5931 jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Warden Boyd of the Reception and Treatment Center: 402-471-2861

 

Warden: Taggart Boyd

Reception and Treatment Center

P.O. Box 22800

Lincoln, NE 68542-2800

Phone: 402-471-2861

Fax: 402-479-6100

 

Jeff Kasselman, M.D.

Acting Medical Director,

Nebraska Department of Corrections

Phone: 402-479-5931

Email: jeffrey.kasselman@nebraska.gov

 

Sample Message:

 

“I’m calling to urge that Ed Poindexter, #27767, be given appropriate medical care. I demand that be seen by an outside high ranking National Medical Association certified geriatric physician or team of physicians who specialize in heart, kidney, and geriatric health. I demand the evaluation include Ed’s entire condition: eyes, kidneys, diabetes, neuropathy, amputated leg, serious inability to balance his frame, and hearing. ”

 

You can read more about Ed Poindexter at:

https://www.thejerichomovement.com/profile/poindexter-ed

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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

March 23, 2023 

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

This is Kevin Cooper writing and sending this update to you in 'Peace & Solidarity'. First and foremost I am well and healthy, and over the ill effect(s) that I went through after that biased report from MoFo, and their pro prosecution and law enforcement experts. I am back working with my legal team from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

'We' have made great progress in refuting all that those experts from MoFo came up with by twisting the truth to fit their narrative, or omitting things, ignoring, things, and using all the other tactics that they did to reach their conclusions. Orrick has hired four(4) real experts who have no questionable backgrounds. One is a DNA attorney, like Barry Scheck of the innocence project in New York is for example. A DNA expert, a expect to refute what they say Jousha Ryen said when he was a child, and his memory. A expect on the credibility of MoFo's experts, and the attorney's at Orrick are dealing with the legal issues.

This all is taking a little longer than we first expected it to take, and that in part is because 'we' have to make sure everything is correct in what we have in our reply. We cannot put ourselves in a situation where we can be refuted... Second, some of our experts had other things planned, like court cases and such before they got the phone call from Rene, the now lead attorney of the Orrick team. With that being said, I can say that our experts, and legal team have shown, and will show to the power(s) that be that MoFo's DNA expert could not have come to the conclusion(s) that he came to, without having used 'junk science'! They, and by they I mean my entire legal team, including our experts, have done what we have done ever since Orrick took my case on in 2004, shown that all that is being said by MoFo's experts is not true, and we are once again having to show what the truth really is.

Will this work with the Governor? Who knows... 'but' we are going to try! One of our comrades, Rebecca D.   said to me, 'You and Mumia'...meaning that my case and the case of Mumia Abu Jamal are cases in which no matter what evidence comes out supporting our innocence, or prosecution misconduct, we cannot get a break. That the forces in the so called justice system won't let us go. 'Yes' she is correct about that sad to say...

Our reply will be out hopefully in the not too distant future, and that's because the people in Sacramento have been put on notice that it is coming, and why. Every one of you will receive our draft copy of the reply according to Rene because he wants feedback on it. Carole and others will send it out once they receive it. 'We' were on the verge of getting me out, and those people knew it, so they sabotaged what the Governor ordered them to do, look at all the evidence as well as the DNA evidence. They did not do that, they made this a DNA case, by doing what they did, and twisted the facts on the other issues that they dealt with.   'more later'...

In Struggle & Solidarity,

An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:

Mr. Kevin Cooper

C-65304. 4-EB-82

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

 

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)

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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system. 

See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings

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Sign the petition:

https://dontextraditeassange.com/petition/

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Tell Congress to Help #FreeDanielHale

 

I’m pleased to announce that last week our client, Daniel Hale, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The “Corner-Brightener Candlestick” was presented to Daniel’s friend Noor Mir. You can watch the online ceremony here. As it happens, this week is also the 20th anniversary of the first drone assassination in Yemen. From the beginning, the drone assassination program has been deeply shrouded in secrecy, allowing U.S. officials to hide significant violations of international law, and the American Constitution. In addition to the lives directly impacted by these strikes, the program has significantly eroded respect for international law and thereby puts civilians around the world in danger. Daniel Hale’s revelations threw a beam of light into a very dark corner, allowing journalists to definitively show that the government's official narrative was a lie. It is thanks to the great personal sacrifice of drone whistleblowers like Hale that public understanding has finally begun to catch up to reality. As the Sam Adams Associates note:  “Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.” We hope you’ll join the growing call to pardon or commute Hale’s sentence. U.S. citizens can contact your representatives here.

Happy new year, and thank you for your support! Jesselyn Radack Director Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) ExposeFacts Twitter: @JesselynRadack

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Laws are created to be followed

by the poor.

Laws are made by the rich

to bring some order to exploitation.

The poor are the only law abiders in history.

When the poor make laws

the rich will be no more.

 

—Roque Dalton Presente!

(May 14, 1935 – Assassinated May 10, 1975)[1]

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[1] Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets.

Poems: 

http://cordite.org.au/translations/el-salvador-tragic/

About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Dalton

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A Plea for the Compassionate Release of 

Leonard Peltier

Self Portrait by Leonard Peltier

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be

Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603

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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811

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Articles

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1) Anguish in an Immigrant Community After a Sheriff’s Deputy Kills 2 Teens

The sheriff in Syracuse, N.Y., had said his deputy acted in self-defense, but footage of the shooting cast the account into question.

By Jesse McKinley, Sept. 18, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/nyregion/syracuse-teens-sheriff-shooting.html

Members of the South Sudanese community attended Dhal Apet and Lueth Mo’s funeral at St. Vincent De Paul Church in Syracuse, N.Y., on Saturday. Credit...Benjamin Cleeton for The New York Times

They buried them both on Saturday: a pair of identical gray coffins, wheeled out of a hillside church and into the adopted hometown of many of the mourners.

 

The two dead — Dhal Apet, 17, and Lueth Mo, 15 — were part of the South Sudanese community here in Syracuse, second-generation émigrés whose parents and friends had fled violence in their home country to come to the seeming safety of upstate New York.

 

For many, however, that sense of security was shaken early on the morning of Sept. 6, when the two teenagers were shot and killed by a Onondaga County’s sheriff’s deputy responding to a call of suspicious activity at a parking lot in neighboring DeWitt, N.Y. The authorities had been investigating reports of two stolen cars and a burglary at a local smoke shop in the hours before the shooting.

 

The Onondaga County sheriff, Tobias Shelley, said in a news conference that the deputy — identified as John Rosello, 34 — had been investigating the burglary and believed the car to be the one involved in that crime. After receiving the call of suspicious activity, the deputy arrived at the parking lot and shot into the car three times as it sped away, with the teenagers inside, after it drove toward him.

 

The two teenagers were later found nearby, one already dead, the other dying. The car’s driver had disappeared, but Sheriff Shelley referred to both of the deceased teenagers as suspects in the burglary, saying that things had happened “very quickly and hectically.”

 

He has justified the shooting, saying that Deputy Rosello had acted in self-defense. He was trapped between the vehicle and a heavy metal-and-wood workbench sitting in the parking lot, Sheriff Shelley said. “He had nowhere to flee to,” the sheriff said, adding, “The deputies have a right to defend themselves by whatever means necessary.”

 

But that narrative was punctured, in part, when the state attorney general, Letitia James, released security footage on Tuesday showing the deputy ramming the car and easily evading it before shooting. The deputy was uninjured.

 

Sheriff Shelley did not respond to a request for comment after the attorney general’s report, but Ms. James’s Office of Special Investigation is conducting an investigation into the incident. The Onondaga County district attorney, William Fitzpatrick, has said he is deferring to Ms. James. “The truth and facts will eventually be known,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

 

The impact of the deaths has already reverberated through the community of African-born residents and their descendants in Syracuse, which — like many upstate cities — has welcomed thousands of refugees and other émigrés in recent decades.

 

Chol Majok, a member of the Syracuse Common Council who is a former refugee from South Sudan, said his focus at the moment was not to cast blame but to hold his community together.

 

“When we came to this country, we were looking for second chances in life,” he said, adding, “There is tremendous faith, in our community, in this country. And everything it has to offer.”

 

He added: “We have been just trying to tell to the community, especially as people that are in a position of leadership that are South Sudanese, is that we keep the faith, the faith that helped us cross the oceans and brought us to this land, that that faith still shines and still burns. And that’s what we lean on.”

 

Still, the pain of the deaths is palpable. Reached by phone, Pothwei Bangoshoth, the father of Dhal, the 17-year-old who died, said he was too grief-stricken to speak about his son. But his anger seemed clear on Facebook, where he posted a pointed message along with the video released by Ms. James’s office.

 

“It’s one of the ways that police use to murder teenagers in America,” he wrote. “So, watch out for your child. My child has already passed. Let’s stop this police brutality in our society.”

 

Walt Dixie, a prominent local activist, said he was appalled and bewildered by the deputy’s actions before backup arrived. “Why are you trying to take this on all by yourself?” Mr. Dixie said, adding, “To ram a car in like that? I know that’s not how you do it.”

 

The sense of outrage extends beyond the African population, said H. Bernard Alex, the president of the Syracuse Chapter of the National Action Network, noting what he called a sometimes adversarial relationship between the sheriff’s department and the city’s broader Black community.

 

“They are angry because — as one young man said to me — he said, ‘I knew that this was coming, but I didn’t think it would be kids,’” Mr. Alex said.

 

Mr. Alex and others in his organization were particularly troubled by the fact that the deputy had not turned on his body-cam, saying in a statement last week that the actions of the sheriff’s office have “diminished the public trust” between “the African and African American communities who call Syracuse and Onondaga County home.”

 

Mr. Alex — who is also pastor of Victory Temple Fellowship Church, a Baptist church in Syracuse — acknowledged that there are sometimes divisions between traditional Black communities and newly arrived African residents in Syracuse.

 

“They have to try to fit in somehow with African Americans, in school and neighborhoods ,” said Mr. Alex, whose wife is Liberian. He said that “African Americans are not always kind to Africans.”

 

Others in the African community say that the challenges of living in a new environment — with daily stresses like money — can be steep.

 

“What happens is that most of these kids, they don’t have the support that they need,” said Hanson Goeso, a Liberian who is the founder of a local semiprofessional soccer team. “Family working, dad is working, and so now you have kids raising themselves with the influence of the outside world. And you get situations like this.”

 

At the site of the shooting, in a downtrodden mobile home park, some said that they felt sympathy for both the teenagers and the deputy. William Marvin, who lives about 300 feet from the shooting site, says he heard the gunshots that morning, which alarmed his dog, Bear.

 

“I don’t like how it’s being spinned that the cop is a kid killer,” said Mr. Marvin, 50, a driver who is a volunteer firefighter, adding, “When someone is behind the wheel of a vehicle, you got a split second to think, you don’t realize how old they are, it doesn’t cross your mind.”

 

He added: “For everybody to paint this sheriff out to be some bad guy, he’s not. He was doing his job to be protecting the community he’s serving.”

 

The funeral services on Saturday, held at a Catholic church on Syracuse’s north side, drew several hundred mourners, who listened as the pastor, Severine Yagaza, a Tanzanian, spoke of the pain of the family and the deaths of two “sons of Sudan,” whose oversized portraits sat on easels nearby.

 

As the coffins were wheeled away, several of the mourners broke down, weeping into each other’s arms as the procession to the burial began. Two of those standing outside the church were Riny Ayol, 39, and Lueth Yak, 46, both of whom were from South Sudan and know the families.

 

Mr. Yak said that the South Sudanese community “never thought they would go through this” in Syracuse, considered one of the “best places to live.”

 

“We never thought that it would hit the South Sudanese in Syracuse,” Mr. Yak said. “The Syracuse community has been a welcoming community, we feel at home here,” adding that some Sudanese who move elsewhere end up moving back.

 

Mr. Ayol echoed that, expressing both sorrow at the boys’ deaths and the circumstances, still murky, of that morning.

 

“The crime that happened, it’s not worth taking someone’s life,” he said.

 

Susan Beachy contributed research.

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2) Striking Autoworkers Are Cool to Biden’s Embrace

The president has highlighted his pro-union credentials, but inflation has eroded blue-collar livelihoods and chilled support for the president on the picket lines.

By Trip Gabriel, Sept. 18, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/us/politics/uaw-strike-biden.html

United Auto Workers members conversed as they gathered on a picket line Sunday outside the Jeep Toledo Assembly Complex in Toledo, Ohio. Credit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times

President Biden, who calls himself the most pro-union president ever and has sided with striking United Auto Workers — calling for “record contracts” as the union walked out on Friday — has yet to convince many rank-and-file U.A.W. members that his sentiments are more than just nice-sounding words.

 

That was the prevailing view in interviews with two dozen striking workers for Ford and Jeep in Michigan and Ohio this weekend. Many, including some who voted for him, said inflation had so undercut their wages that they felt pushed out of the middle class, laying the blame with Mr. Biden.

 

Despite the president’s “middle class Joe” persona, and his potential 2024 rival Donald J. Trump’s record and rhetoric undermining unions, many autoworkers were not convinced that the current Oval Office occupant was the one more forcefully on their side.

 

“I can’t tell when he speaks to the public if he’s being told to say it or if he’s genuinely saying it,” Jennifer Banks, a striking worker, said of Mr. Biden’s pro-union remarks on Friday during which he unequivocally backed the U.A.W.

 

Ms. Banks, a 29-year Ford employee, was picketing on Saturday at the company’s vast Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne. A sign outside Gate 2 warned, “Absolutely no foreign vehicles allowed!”

 

The ambivalence toward Mr. Biden underscores an ongoing challenge to his re-election, as Democrats try to stanch any more bleeding of blue-collar support after three years of inflation and high interest rates.

 

Mr. Trump, in the meantime, has continued to appeal to union voters, renewing his attacks on China, immigrants and liberal priorities like renewable energy, issues that fueled his historically large inroads with white, working-class voters in 2016 and 2020.

 

Ms. Banks, 50, a political independent who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, said that in a potential rematch between him and Mr. Biden she would be torn, because she doesn’t like much of what Republicans stand for.

 

“I think our president is not as strong a president as we need,” she said. “I’m hoping somebody can replace him. I hope it doesn’t leave me no choice but to vote the other way.”

 

An hour’s drive south of Wayne, Beverly Brown was the strike captain for a team of workers who attach the hoods to Jeeps at the massive Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio. “No Justice, No Jeeps” was written on a vehicle’s window. Ms. Brown, 65, voted for Mr. Biden but said that when it came to backing working people, “I don’t think he’s doing enough.” Neither did she view Mr. Trump as an ally of working people, saying, “Everything he’s done up until now proves otherwise: He’s for the rich.”

 

On Friday, 13,000 workers at three Midwest plants, owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — the parent of Jeep and Chrysler — walked out in what the U.A.W. called a targeted strike, demanding nearly 40 percent raises over four years, the end of a two-tier system in which newer workers get lower pay, and the restoration of benefits that the union gave up during the Great Recession in 2008.

 

Despite Mr. Biden’s decades-long emphasis of his roots in Scranton, Pa., and his well-honed brand as a hero for the middle class, strikers did not necessarily see him as their champion. Their wages, which range from $18 to $32 an hour, have eroded significantly amid rising prices, many said, with an apparent political cost to the White House.

 

A lengthy strike that reduces the supply of cars and drives up prices could force the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates high, with repercussions for Mr. Biden’s re-election.

 

“Back when I hired in here, there was a middle class,” Garth Potrykus, 68, a longtime electrician in the Ford plant, said. “The middle class — they’re gone.”

 

Ford, he said, hires waves of temporary workers who earn below fast-food wages. “They might hang around two or three weeks, then they go down to McDonald’s and they make more money,” he said. “How are those people ever going to afford the, quote, American dream?”

 

Mr. Biden has centered his re-election campaign around the idea of “Bidenomics,” his record of infrastructure, high tech and clean energy spending aimed at creating good industrial jobs and shrinking income inequality. Despite those broad policies, Mr. Potrykus, eyeing his own expenses, said he didn’t see either Democrats or Republicans as fighting for the working class.

 

“I don’t think either party is really interested in that,” he said. “It’s a war on us now. You’ve got the super rich and then you’ve got the poor.”

 

That many union workers don’t automatically align with Democrats and reject Republicans, who often support policies that suppress blue-collar pay, has confounded Democratic strategists since at least the era of the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. Large numbers of Republicans in Congress last year sponsored legislation to weaken organized labor by allowing workers in all 50 states to opt out of union dues.

 

Mr. Trump, who also supports “right to work” laws, has a mixed record on organized labor. In office, he renegotiated a North American trade deal to give more protections to American workers. But lately he has attacked U.A.W. leadership, saying in an interview broadcast Sunday that its leaders, along with the carmakers and the Biden administration, were in cahoots to force a transition to electric vehicles made in China.

 

While union leaders almost universally endorse Democrats for president because of their pro-labor agendas, a sizable rank-and-file contingent votes Republican, often over conservative social issues.

 

In 2020, Mr. Trump won about four in 10 voters in union households, according to exit polls and an internal survey by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Michael Podhorzer, a former longtime A.F.L.-C.I.O. political director, said that was hardly surprising. “The demographics of union members are the ones who’ve been trending away from Democrats for quite some time,” he said. This is particularly true of industrial unions.

 

Mr. Trump emphasized “a set of issues that union members never agreed with Democrats on,” most prominently immigration, Mr. Podhorzer added. Despite the trend, union members still tend to vote five to 10 points more Democratic than similar voters who are not in unions, he said.

 

“People don’t join unions because they’re Democrats or liberals,’’ Mr. Podhorzer said. “People are in unions because that’s where they work.” It’s misguided to expect that “they should be voting like MoveOn members,” he added, referring to the progressive policy group and political action committee.

 

But the union’s membership is not monolithic in its voting patterns. Younger strikers, and particularly nonwhite U.A.W. members, were not as critical of Mr. Biden. Anthony Thompson, 54, said that he, too, struggled to make ends meet, in part because his wife, Uleana, has lupus and medical costs mean the family ends up living paycheck to paycheck.

 

But Mr. Thompson, who joined Ford two years ago and has worked up to $20 an hour, did not blame the president. “I would say he’s doing the best under the circumstances that he can,’’ Mr. Thompson said.

 

Jason Grammer-Gold, 42, a striker at Jeep, said that Mr. Trump’s promises to rebuild the industrial heartland “was all talk” and that he left office with little to show for it.

 

“I don’t feel Trump is for the working American at all,” he said. “His presidency was to get his taxes down.” Mr. Grammer-Gold said that he, his husband and their adopted child recently moved from Ohio across the border to Michigan to live in a state where Democrats control government. “Republicans are passing tons of anti-gay laws,” he said.

 

Outside Gate 2 at the Jeep plant, two longtime workers who met on the strike line, Ronald Flores and Frank Luvinski, each said their pay didn’t go as far as it used to, but they had opposite views of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.

 

“In 2018, I felt like I had finally gotten ahead,” Mr. Luvinski, 52, a Trump supporter, said. “I finally had money in my bank account. And now, I make more money than ever, and I have less. My energy bill just doubled in June.”

 

Across the street, Mr. Flores, 56, had parked his white Jeep Gladiator pickup. “We built that right on the line,” he said. Peeling back a piece of interior carpet, he showed where co-workers signed their names on painted steel.

 

Mr. Flores’s grandfather, son and multiple cousins have been union autoworkers, jobs that helped them build comfortable lives. He drew an analogy between his employer, whom he respects, his truck and Mr. Trump’s campaign promises.

 

“If you say you want to make something great again, when you leave, greatness should continue,” he said. “You leave a legacy. Like Jeep has a legacy. The brand speaks for itself.”

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3) Alabama Has a Horrible New Way of Killing People on Death Row

By Bernard E. Harcourt, Sept. 18, 2023

Mr. Harcourt is a professor of law and political theory at Columbia. He began his legal career representing people on Alabama’s death row and continues to represent people sentenced to death and life imprisonment without parole.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opinion/alabama-executions-botched.html

Vartika Sharma

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death. The first execution will amount to a human experiment, because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way.

 

Late last month, prison guards distributed the state’s new execution protocol to prisoners in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row. One hundred and sixty men and five women await execution in Alabama. They would be secured to a gurney, their nose and mouth would be covered by a mask, and nitrogen would be pumped into their lungs until they suffocate.

 

Alabama is seeking to conduct the first such experiment on Kenneth Eugene Smith, who already survived a botched execution. Last November, Mr. Smith spent hours strapped to a lethal-injection gurney as the execution team needled around in several locations to insert two intravenous lines without success, before calling off the execution. It is hard to imagine a more ghastly ordeal than being marched back a second time to face the executioner and a new method of execution that has the possibility of unknown agony after decades in prison awaiting death.

 

Mr. Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, with the jury concluding that Ms. Sennett’s husband, a pastor, had paid Mr. Smith to kill her. Jurors voted 11 to 1 to sentence him to life in prison with no opportunity for parole. But a judge overruled the jury and ordered that Mr. Smith be executed. Alabama prohibited judges from overriding juries in future capital cases in 2017; it is no longer allowed anywhere in the United States.

 

What happens next to Mr. Smith will be up to the courts.

 

Death by nitrogen hypoxia — by breathing high concentrations of nitrogen, starving a person of oxygen until death — occurs from time to time accidentally. Federal workplace regulations address the risks of nitrogen toxicity on the job. Pilots undergo training involving the loss of oxygen at high altitudes to familiarize themselves with anticipatory sensations. But there are no known uses of nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution that I am aware of, based on my research, so we have no firsthand experience to assess the likelihood of agony and suffering under the typically dire conditions of execution chambers.

 

Executions are conducted not in pristine hospital settings but in a pressure cooker of last-minute, exhausted, careless judgments in a prison chamber. The typical executioner is not a medical doctor but someone who is moonlighting. There are colossal psychological and emotional pressures on prison staff members during executions, which are most often conducted in the middle of the night and result in poor conditions for everyone involved, including the lawyers.

 

Proponents of the nitrogen hypoxia method, also approved by Mississippi and Oklahoma but not yet used in those states, argue that nitrogen gas will quickly render the subject unconscious, with death ensuing within minutes. But there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Should the mask not fit properly and oxygen seep in, the person may be left gasping in agony for air and suffer suffocation. This could result in severe brain damage rather than death. If the outflow is not properly regulated, the person will be asphyxiated by carbon dioxide. There may also be a danger of nitrogen toxicity to the people in the prison workplace or present for the executions.

 

We do not even reserve this fate for dogs or cats. Nitrogen gas asphyxiation was previously used to euthanize pets. However, the American Veterinary Medical Association no longer recommends nitrogen asphyxiation for nonavian animals, citing data that indicates those animals may experience panic, pain and severe physical distress before dying. The group states in its 2020 guidelines that nitrogen gas “is unacceptable” for animals other than chickens and turkeys.

 

What past executions amply demonstrate is that the State of Alabama is not competent at performing the task. It is one thing to “botch” an execution, which is commonly understood to mean that an execution caused unnecessary agony or showed gross incompetence by the execution team. Alabama has botched four of the nation’s nine known botched executions since 2018. It is another thing for a state to preside over both a botched and failed execution, in which the condemned person actually survives. Three of the six known failed executions since 1946, according to my research, have taken place in Alabama, and all of those have occurred since 2018.

 

In February of that year, Alabama executioners spent nearly three hours jabbing my client Doyle Lee Hamm’s groin, ankles and shin bone before they released him from the gurney and he stumbled off in excruciating pain. At the time, he was suffering from terminal cancer and his veins were compromised. Needling his groin during several failed attempts to reach the femoral vein, they apparently hit his bladder. A large amount of blood soaked the gurney near his groin. He survived but ended up dying of cancer in prison.

 

The Alabama execution team then effectively tortured Alan Eugene Miller in September 2022. The state later agreed not to use lethal injection to execute him and he, too, now awaits death by nitrogen hypoxia. And evidence suggests an execution in July 2022 was also botched, though the prisoner, Joe Nathan James, died on the gurney.

 

After each of these horrors, state officials managed to convince the next judge that the next time they would know what they were doing. Then there was the botched and failed attempt to execute Mr. Smith two months later.

 

After that last disaster, Alabama’s governor, Kaye Ivey, imposed a moratorium on executions to investigate these repeated failures. But instead of appointing an independent review commission, as other governors have done, Governor Ivey assigned the task to the state’s Department of Corrections, the very agency responsible for the botched and failed executions. Corrections officials swiftly concluded that they were fully prepared to restart executions, now using nitrogen gas to kill condemned prisoners.

 

Alabama seems unable to stop tinkering, ever more ghoulish, with the “machinery of death,” as Justice Harry Blackmun called capital punishment.

 

Lawyers for Mr. Smith are likely to object to this human experiment on the basis that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against “cruel and unusual punishments.” It is true that Mr. Smith’s lawyers appealed to the court for this method of execution. But that was only because of the twisted logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence, under which condemned prisoners must plead for their preferred alternative method of putting someone to death — and which Mr. Smith’s lawyers did after the nightmare of his failed lethal injection execution. He invoked nitrogen, the alternative available under Alabama statutes, a method the state enacted in March 2018 after the Hamm execution fiasco. But under the Supreme Court’s guidelines, the alternative must be not only “feasible” and “readily implemented,” but also one that “significantly reduces a substantial risk” of suffering.

 

Under the Eighth Amendment, execution by nitrogen is surely unusual because it has never been used as a method of execution in this country or elsewhere, as far as we know. It is also likely to cause needless agony and suffering in the execution chamber. Plus, the threat of a second attempt at execution under circumstances of human experimentation is unconscionably cruel.

 

The recent track record in the federal courts is not comforting, though. The conservative supermajority at the Supreme Court, especially, has recently been lifting stays of execution imposed by the lower federal courts at a frightening pace, in unsigned opinions, without explanation. Their inexplicable behavior in death penalty cases has given rise to an alarming shadow docket. Some of the justices have become, if anything, the nation’s executioners.

 

Of course, that does not mean we can throw up our hands. Moments like these present an opportunity for the justices to step up and lead the country to a higher plane — to what the court, in its Eighth Amendment rulings, has so often called “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” It is often at junctures like these that righteous magistrates come forward to resist inhumanity — like the Portuguese consul general in Bordeaux, France, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who defied expectations and issued visas for refugees fleeing the country in June 1940, saving thousands of lives.

 

Let us hope that the justices exercise their license to practice in the ways exemplified by Sousa Mendes. Let us hope they demonstrate cleareyed analysis and prevent this human experimentation. In the meantime, it will fall on the rest of us to show the world that this is not what we stand for.

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4) Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement

Experts on unions and the industry said the U.A.W. strike could accelerate a wave of worker actions, or stifle labor’s recent momentum.

By Noam Scheiber, Sept. 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/business/economy/strike-autoworkers-labor.html

Members of the United Automobile Workers walked off the job at three plants on Friday. They are seeking a contract with substantial wage increases. Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Since the start of the pandemic, labor unions have enjoyed something of a renaissance. They have made inroads into previously nonunion companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and won unusually strong contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year, public approval for unions reached its highest level since the Lyndon Johnson presidency.

 

What unions haven’t had during that stretch is a true gut-check moment on a national scale. Strikes by railroad workers and UPS employees, which had the potential to rattle the U.S. economy, were averted at the last minute. The fallout from the continuing writers’ and actors’ strikes has been heavily concentrated in Southern California.

 

The strike by the United Automobile Workers, whose members walked off the job at three plants on Friday, is shaping up to be such a test. A contract with substantial wage increases and other concessions from the three automakers could announce organized labor as an economic force to be reckoned with and accelerate a recent wave of organizing.

 

But there are also real pitfalls. A prolonged strike could undermine the three established U.S. automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — and send the politically crucial Midwest into recession. If the union is seen as overreaching, or if it settles for a weak deal after a costly stoppage, public support could sour.

 

“Right now, unions are cool,” said Michael Lotito, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson, a firm representing management.

 

“But unions have a risk of not being very cool if you have five-month strike in L.A and an X-month strike in how many other states,” he added.

 

If the stakes seem high for the U.A.W., that’s partly because the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, has gone out of his way to elevate them. During frequent video meetings with members before the strike, Mr. Fain has portrayed the negotiations as a broader struggle pitting ordinary workers against corporate titans.

 

“I know that we’re on the right side in this battle,” he said in a recent video appearance. “It’s a battle of the working class against the rich, the haves versus the have-nots, the billionaire class against everybody else.”

 

Mr. Fain’s framing of the contract campaign in class terms appears to be resonating with his members, thousands of whom have watched the online sessions.

 

Shunte Sanders-Beasley, a U.A.W. member in Michigan who started working at a Chrysler plant in Indiana in 1999, said she saw the fight similarly.

 

“If you follow history, autoworkers tend to set the tone,” said Ms. Sanders-Beasley, who has served as vice president of her local and backed Mr. Fain’s campaign for the union’s presidency last year. “If we can win back some of the concessions we took, I’m hoping that it’ll be a trickle-down effect.”

 

A successful autoworker strike in 1937, which led G.M. to recognize the U.A.W. for the first time, helped set in motion a wave of union organizing across a variety of industries like steel, oil, textiles and newspapers over the next few years.

 

Labor activists agreed that the current strike could also reverberate across other industries, where workers appear to be paying close attention to the labor actions of the past year. “In organizing meetings, they say, ‘If they can do it, we can do it,’” said Jaz Brisack, an organizer with Workers United who had played a key role in the Starbucks campaign.

 

But the flip side is that the strike could inflict collateral damage that creates frustration and hardship among tens of thousands of nonunion workers and their communities.

 

“The small and medium-sized manufacturers across the country that make up the automotive sector’s integrated supply chain will feel the brunt of this work stoppage, whether they are a union shop or not,” Jay Timmons, the chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement Friday.

 

Higher wages and gains for rank-and-file workers can be good for the economy. But some argue that Mr. Fain’s and other labor leaders’ aggressive demands could discourage businesses from investing in the United States or render them uncompetitive with foreign rivals.

 

“Mr. Fain has to think about this, too — the long-term financial viability of these three companies,” said John Drake, vice president of transportation, infrastructure and supply chain policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

Even those who welcome the union’s aggressive stance say it is fraught with risk. Gene Bruskin, a longtime union official who helped workers at a Smithfield meat-processing plant in North Carolina achieve, in 2008, one of the biggest organizing victories in decades, said he strongly favored the strike and how Mr. Fain and the union are seeking to rally the working class.

 

But he said a long strike could disillusion workers if the union came up short on key demands.

 

“If the U.A.W. fails to make any significant gains, particularly on the two-tier stuff, their future could be seriously harmed,” said Mr. Bruskin, referring to a system in which newer workers are paid far less than veteran workers who perform similar jobs.

 

Mr. Bruskin also worried that the union could effectively win the battle and lose the war if the auto companies respond by shifting more production to Mexico, where they already have a significant presence.

 

The tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies for domestic production of electric vehicles that President Biden has helped secure should limit that shift and help keep manufacturing jobs at home. Many automakers are already locating new plants in the United States to take advantage of the funds.

 

Still, Willy Shih, an expert on manufacturing at Harvard Business School, said the automakers could adjust their operations in ways that undercut the U.A.W. while continuing to produce cars domestically. Automation is one option, he said, as is locating new plants in lightly unionized Southern states.

 

The Detroit automakers have created joint ventures with foreign battery makers outside the reach of the U.A.W.’s national contracts and have sought to locate some of those plants in states like Tennessee and Kentucky. The union is seeking to bring workers at those plants up to the same pay and labor standards that direct employees of the Big Three enjoy, but it has not succeeded so far.

 

Given those threats, the union may feel justified in taking a more ambitious posture toward the automakers. The primary check on shifting work to other states will be the U.A.W.’s ability to organize new plants, especially in the South, where it has struggled to gain traction for years. Experts argued that the union would likely increase its chances of attracting members there if it could point to large concrete gains.

 

“The answer is winning a strong contact here and using it to organize huge groups of autoworkers who are currently nonunion,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal who studies labor.

 

And there are other ways in which being too cautious may be a bigger risk to the union than being too aggressive. Organizers point out that workers are often demoralized when union leaders talk tough and then quickly settle for a subpar deal.

 

Critics of the previous U.A.W. administration accused it of doing just that before Mr. Fain took over this year. “We’d be trying to make sense of how certain things passed in the first place,” Shana Shaw, another longtime U.A.W. member who backed Mr. Fain, said of the concessionary contracts autoworkers were asked to accept over the years.

 

Even Mr. Fain’s habit of framing the fight in broad class terms may prove to be a strategic advantage. A recent Gallup poll found that 75 percent of the public backed the autoworkers in the showdown, compared with 19 percent who were more sympathetic to the companies.

 

The widespread public support suggests that the autoworkers may be operating in a different context from workers in another strike that famously contributed to a loss of power for labor: air traffic controllers’ unsuccessful fight against the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, after which private-sector employers appeared to become more comfortable firing and replacing striking employees.

 

Dr. Eidlin said that while the air traffic controllers failed to court allies in the labor movement, “the fact that Fain and the U.A.W. are messaging more broadly, really trying to build that broad coalition, speaks to the possibility of a different outcome.”

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