10/26/2023

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, October 27, 2023

     


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"The Rock" on top of Bernal Hill overlooking downtown San Francisco painted October 23, 2023. 

As of October 26, 2023, the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel is now over 7,028 (at least 3,000 of them children—with at least 18,482 Palestinians injured) vs. 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas (30 of them children) and 200 abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA  PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!

FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD WIDELY!

 

To endorse the following statement as a trade unionist, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2tpd2c62Sh5YEVDOr2vmGWTuQArt-6OPQMDwd2wUnfNi_rQ/viewform

 

To endorse as other, please click here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzWaP1U_KOHlH-ou1R3OD8zsuI5BWW1b9H4gtPoFK_lIQB3g/viewform

 

The list of signers will be updated periodically

Contact: info@laborforpalestine.net

Website: laborforpalestine.net

 

Stand With Palestinian Workers: 

Cease the Genocide Now—Stop Arming Israel!

Labor for Palestine, October 24, 2023

 

“We need you to take immediate action—wherever you are in the world—to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade.” An Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel (October 16, 2023)

 

The undersigned U.S. workers, trade unionists, and anti-apartheid activists join labor around the world in condemning the Israeli siege on Gaza that has killed or maimed thousands of Palestinians—many of them children—and stand with Palestinians’ “right to exist, resist, return, and self-determination.”

 

The latest Israeli attacks reflect more than a century of ongoing Zionist settler-colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide, and apartheid—including Israel’s establishment through the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba. Indeed, eighty percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are refugees from other parts of historic Palestine.

 

Israel’s crimes are only possible because of more than $3.8 billion a year (or $10+ million per day) in bipartisan US military aid that gives Israel the guns, bullets, tanks, ships, jet fighters, missiles, helicopters, white phosphorus and other weapons to kill and maim the Palestinian people. This is the same system of racist state violence that, through shared surveillance technology and police exchange programs, brutalizes BIPOC and working class people in the United States and around the world.

 

In response, we demand an immediate end to the genocide, and embrace the recent Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel:

 

1.     To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 

 

2.     To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 

 

3.     To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution. 

 

4.     Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the U.S., funding to it.

 

We further reaffirm the call on labor bodies to respect previous Palestinian trade union appeals for solidarity by adopting this statement, and/or the model resolution below to divest from Israel Bonds, sever all ties with the Israel’s racist labor federation, the Histadrut, and its US mouthpiece, the Jewish Labor Committee, and respect the Palestinian picket line for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

 

Initial Signers on behalf of Labor for Palestine

(organizational affiliations listed for identification only)

Suzanne Adely, Labor for Palestine, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Workers Resource Center; Food Chain Workers Alliance (staff); President, National Lawyers Guild; Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council; Ruth Jennison, Department Rep., Massachusetts Society of Professors, MTA, NEA; Co-Chair, Labor Standing Committee River Valley DSA; Delegate to Western Mass Area Labor Federation; Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC); Block the Boat; Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Jews for Palestinian Right of Return; Corinna Mullin, PSC-CUNY International Committee; CUNY for Palestine; Clarence Thomas, Co-Chair, Million Worker March; Executive Board, ILWU Local 10 (retired.)

 

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Join the national march in solidarity with Palestine!

 

Now is the time to stand with the besieged people of Palestine! Gaza is being bombed by the hour. Its people are denied food, water, and electricity by Israel. Tens of thousands more people are likely to die. We must ACT! People are in the streets every day in their local cities and towns. Now we must UNITE! Join the tens-of-thousands people, from every corner of the United States, who are converging for a truly massive National March on Washington D.C. on Saturday, November 4.

 

Today, the Israeli military deliberately bombed a hospital where thousands of people had taken refuge. The death toll is staggering, and the Biden administration has announced that it is preparing 2,000 troops to support Israel after having already deployed an aircraft carrier battle group and war planes.

 

Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. government, is carrying out an unprecedented massacre in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians are being killed with bombs, bullets and missiles paid for by U.S. tax dollars. This is the latest bloody chapter in the colonial project of Israel, founded with the objective of dispossessing Palestinians from their land.

 

Join us in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 4 at 1pm to demand: End the Siege of Gaza! End all U.S. aid to Israel! Free Palestine!

 

Initial co-sponsoring organizations:

 

Palestinian Youth Movement

ANSWER Coalition

American Muslim Association

The People’s Forum

National Students for Justice in Palestine

Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Party for Socialism and Liberation

U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)

Maryland2Palestine

 

Endorse the march here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIoioEdHTwb1d8Qx9ZbH2a-gsh3aDa3hWSiSMPsAR0scgIfw/viewform?pli=1

 

Buses and transportation centers are being organized in cities and towns across the country. Check back here for updated information about transportation options.

 

Please make an urgently needed donation to support solidarity work with Palestine in this pivotal moment:

https://www.answercoalition.org/donate?utm_campaign=palestine_11_4_national_demo_a&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

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Join us for an exciting Cuba solidarity event coming up on Sunday, November 12th, 4 pm at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley. Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist and filmmaker with the Belly of the Beast media organization, is coming to the Bay Area as part of a national tour. She will be showing two new short documentary films exposing what's behind Biden's Cuba policy. This is an important chance for the Bay Area community to learn about current U.S. policy and show support for Cuba. 

Cuba has been outspoken about its solidarity with Palestine/Gaza during the current crisis.

Liz Oliva Fernández

Liz Oliva Fernández is a 29-year old journalist and on-camera television presenter from Havana, Cuba.  She is the award-winning presenter of the acclaimed documentary series The War on Cuba,  produced by Belly of the Beast and executive-produced by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover.  In addition to her journalism and filmmaking, Fernández is a dedicated anti-racist and feminist activist who co-founded Chicas Poderosas Cuba (Powerful Cuban Girls), an initiative that promotes change by inspiring female leadership and gender equality in Cuban society. 

Liz writes: “As a Cuban Black woman, I feel that the reality in which I grew up and still live is reflected in the stories we have told at Belly of the Beast. We challenge clichés – positive and negative – about Cuba and its people. And we are taking on issues that have been ignored or misrepresented by major media outlets both in Cuba and outside.”

Sponsored by Bay Area Cuba Solidarity Network

Venceremos Brigade, Bay Area and 

Richmond, CA - Regla, Cuba Friendship Committee

More info: bayareacubasolidarity@gmail.com


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Jewish Doctor Speaks Out on Israel and Palestine

Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Canadian physician and author describes his own life experience and expresses his view on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

“I’m personally a Holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army…and then I found out that it wasn’t exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.

“There’s no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous and with deliberate intent—that’s what’s called the ‘Nakba’ in Arabic; the ‘disaster’ or the ‘catastrophe.’ There’s a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you’re not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it’s at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.

“I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations...and this went on, and now it’s much worse than it was then.

“It’s the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can’t even visit!

“So, then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible…people call it an ‘outdoor prison,’ which is what it is. You don’t have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that’s a complete falsity. You think the worst thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.

“And ‘anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite’ is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true.”

—Independent Catholic News, October 16, 2023

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/48251

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TERRORISM IN THE EYES OF THE IMPERIAL BEHOLDER - a poem

 

the French word

for rabies

is

la rage -

rage or outrage

 

and 

the French have a saying -

a man who wants to get rid of his dog

accuses it of spreading rabies

 

the people of Gaza

treated as inhuman animals

worse than dogs

are charged

with terrorism

 

come to think of it

what an honor !

 

world war two's resistance

against nazi extermination

was designated

as terrorism

by the Axis allies

 

what an honor !

 

Mandela

was monitored

as a terrorist

by the CIA

 

What an honor !

 

Tortuguita

peacefully meditating

near Israeli-funded cop city

was executed

in cold blood

on suspicion

of domestic terrorism 

 

What an honor !

 

in the spirit of Mandela

in the spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

in the spirit of Tortuguita

in the spirit of Attica

may the anti colonial outrage

of the People of Palestine

contaminate us all -

the only epidemic

worth dying for

 

 (c) Julia Wright. October 17 2023. All Rights Reserved To The family of Wadea Al- Fayoume.


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Ruchell Cinque Magee Joins the Ancestors 

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There will be memorial services for Ruchell Cinque Magee

 

October 31, 2023, at 2:30 P.M.

Forest Lawn

21300 via Verde St

Covina, CA 91724

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors October 17, 2023, after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

 

Ruchell Cinque Magee joined the ancestors last night after recently being released after 67 years of being caged!

 

Ruchell Magee was 84 years old and spent most of his life behind bars. Throughout his sixty-seven years of unjust captivity, Ruchell was one of the first and most consistent prisoners linking mass incarceration and the U.S. prison system to slavery. Ruchell Magee took the name Cinque from the enslaved African Sengbe Pieh who led an 1839 rebellion to commandeer the slave ship La Amistad, arguing that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintained that Black people in the US have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in this country:

 

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.”

 

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery…This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

 

“You have to deal on your own tactics. You have a right to take up arms to oppose any usurped government, particularly the type of corruption that we have today.” – Ruchell Magee

 

Ruchell’s life commitment, political stance and writings point to the need for a prison abolitionist movement to seriously address the historical legacy of slavery, and slave rebellions in order to truly be in solidarity with the millions of people incarcerated in the US. 

 

May Ruchell Cinque Magee rest in power!

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The ongoing Zionist theft of Palestinian land from 1946 to now.

77 years of brutal oppression must end!

End all U.S. aid to Israel now!

For a democratic, secular Palestine!

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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:

 

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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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]



[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) Why Must Palestinians Audition for Your Empathy?

By Hala Alyan, Oct. 25, 2023

Dr. Alyan is a Palestinian American writer, clinical psychologist and professor in New York City.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/opinion/palestine-war-empathy.html
A torn 1948 photograph shows Palestinian women and children walking away from the viewer on a winding road. A fragment of a 1900 map labeled “Palestine” appears above it. The two images are separated by significant space, and the map is upside down.

Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times


I’ve moved back to the United States twice since my birth. Once as a child, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Then again for graduate school. I’d had the privilege of a youth — adolescence and young adulthood — in countries where being Palestinian was fairly common. The identity could be heavy, but it wasn’t a contested one. I hadn’t had to learn the respectability politics of being a Palestinian adult. I learned quickly.

 

The task of the Palestinian is to be palatable or to be condemned. The task of the Palestinian, we’ve seen in the past two weeks, is to audition for empathy and compassion. To prove that we deserve it. To earn it.

 

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched Palestinian activists, lawyers, professors get baited and interrupted on air, if not silenced altogether. They are being made to sing for the supper of airtime and fair coverage. They are begging reporters to do the most basic tasks of their job. At the same time, Palestinians fleeing from bombs have been misidentified. Even when under attack, they must be costumed as another people to elicit humanity. Even in death, they cannot rest — Palestinians are being buried in mass graves or in old graves dug up to make room, and still there is not enough space.

 

If that weren’t enough, Palestinian slaughter is too often presented ahistorically, untethered to reality: It is not attributed to real steel and missiles, to occupation, to policy. To earn compassion for their dead, Palestinians must first prove their innocence. The real problem with condemnation is the quiet, sly tenor of the questions that accompany it: Palestinians are presumed violent — and deserving of violence — until proved otherwise. Their deaths are presumed defensible until proved otherwise. What is the word of a Palestinian against a machinery that investigates itself, that absolves itself of accused crimes? What is it against a government whose representatives have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “wild beasts?” When a well-suited man can say brazenly and unflinchingly that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people?

 

It is, of course, a remarkably effective strategy. A slaughter isn’t a slaughter if those being slaughtered are at fault, if they’ve been quietly and effectively dehumanized — in the media, through policy — for years. If nobody is a civilian, nobody can be a victim.

 

***

 

In 2017, I published a novel about a Palestinian family. It was published by a respectable publisher, got a lot of lovely press, was given a book tour. I spoke on panels, to book clubs. I answered questions after readings. There was a refrain that kept coming up. People kept commenting on how human the story was. You’ve humanized the conflict. This is a human story.

 

Of course, literature and the arts play a crucial role in providing context — expanding our empathy, granting us glimpses into other worlds. But every time I was told I’d humanized the Palestinians, I would have to suppress the question it invoked: What had they been before?

 

A couple of weeks ago, in a professional space, someone called Palestinians by name and spoke of the seven decades of their anguish. I sat among dozens of co-workers and realized my lip was quivering. I was crying before I understood it was happening. I fled the room, and it took 10 minutes for me to stop sobbing. I didn’t immediately understand my reaction. Over the years, I’ve faced meetings, classrooms and other institutional spaces where Palestinians went unnamed or were referred to only as terrorists. I came of professional age in a country where people lost all sorts of things for speaking of Palestine: social standing, university tenure, journalist positions. But in the end, I am undone not by silence or erasure but by empathy. By the simple naming of my people. By increasing recognition that liberation is linked. By spaces of Palestinian-Jewish solidarity. By what has become controversial: the simple speaking aloud of Palestinian suffering.

 

These days, everyone is trying to write about the children. An incomprehensible number of them dead and counting. We are up at night, combing through the flickering light of our phones, trying to find the metaphor, the clip, the photograph to prove a child is a child. It is an unbearable task. We ask: Will this be the image that finally does it? This half-child on a rooftop? This video, reposted by Al Jazeera, of an inconsolable girl appearing to recognize her mother’s body among the dead, screaming out, “It’s her, it’s her. I swear it’s her. I know her from her hair”?

 

***

 

Take it from a writer: There is nothing like the tedium of trying to come up with analogies. There is something humiliating in trying to earn solidarity. I keep seeing infographics desperately trying to appeal to American audiences. Imagine most of the population of Manhattan being told to evacuate in 24 hours. Imagine the president of [ ] going on NBC and saying all [ ] people are [ ]. Look! Here’s a strip on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s Gaza. It is about the same size as Philadelphia. Or multiply the entire population of Las Vegas by three.

 

This is demoralizing work, to have to speak constantly in the vernacular of tragedies and atrocities, to say: Look, look. Remember? That other suffering that was eventually deemed unacceptable? Let me hold it up to this one. Let me show you proportion. Let me earn your outrage. Absent that, let me earn your memory. Please.

 

I don’t hesitate for a second to condemn the killing of any child, any massacre of civilians. It is the easiest ask in the world. And it is not in spite of that but because of that I say: Condemn the brutalization of bodies. By all means, do. Condemn murder. Condemn violence, imprisonment, all forms of oppression. But if your shock and distress comes only at the sight of certain brutalized bodies? If you speak out but not when Palestinian bodies are besieged and murdered, abducted and imprisoned? Then it is worth asking yourself which brutalization is acceptable to you, even quietly, even subconsciously, and which is not.

 

Name the discrepancy and own it. If you can’t be equitable, be honest.

 

There is nothing complicated about asking for freedom. Palestinians deserve equal rights, equal access to resources, equal access to fair elections and so forth. If this makes you uneasy, then you must ask yourself why.

 

***

 

Here is the truth of the diasporic Palestinians: They are not magically diasporic. Their diaspora-ness is a direct result of often violent, intentional and illegal dispossession. One day a house is yours; one day it is not. One day a neighborhood is yours; one day it is not. One day a territory is yours; one day it is not. This same sort of dispossession is grounded in the same mind-set and international complicity that is playing out in Gaza.

 

I’m a poet, a writer, a psychologist. I’m deeply familiar with the importance of language. I’ve agonized over an em dash. I’ve spent afternoons muttering about the aptness of a verb. I pay attention to language, my own and others. Being Palestinian in this country — in many countries — is a numbing exercise in gauging where pockets of safety are, sussing out which friends, co-workers or acquaintances will be allies, which will stay silent. Who will speak.

 

Here’s another thing I know as a writer and psychologist: It matters where you start a narrative. In addiction work, you call this playing the tape. Diasporically or not, being Palestinian is the quintessential disrupter: It messes with a curated, modified tape. We exist, and our existence presents an existential affront. As long as we exist, we challenge several falsehoods, not the least of which is that, for some, we never existed at all. That decades ago, a country was born in the delicious, glittering expanse of nothingness — a birthright, something due. Our very existence challenges a formidable, militarized narrative.

 

But the days of the Palestine exception are numbered. Palestine is increasingly becoming the litmus test for true liberatory practice.

 

In the meantime, Palestinians continue to be cast paradoxically — both terror and invisible, both people who never existed and people who cannot return.

 

Imagine being such a pest, such an obstacle. Or: Imagine being so powerful.

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2) Death Penalty Focus

Kevin Cooper lawyers urge CA Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject biased and inaccurate innocence investigation of his case, via email.



 


































Dear DPF Supporters,

 

We wanted to update you on the Kevin Cooper case, which we have written extensively about over the years.

 

Cooper, who has been on California's death row for 35 years, is asking California Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject the findings of an investigation into his case by the law firm Morrison Foerster that was released in January.

 

He included his request in a detailed rebuttal to the Morrison Foerster report. Orrick's 77-page response (and an additional 364 pages of exhibits) methodically debunks the report point-by-point, and asks Newsom to appoint a new special counsel consistent with his May 2021 Executive Order: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/5.28.21-EO-N-06-21.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=dd296879-52f5-4989-ae18-1bb47d76bb17

 

Morrison Foerster failed to conduct an independent innocence investigation and has produced a report "riddled with a steadfast commitment to 'stick to the script' the prosecution has been peddling for the last 40 years," Orrick states.

 

Newsom's order called for an investigation into Cooper's 1985 death penalty conviction for a quadruple murder in San Bernardino County in 1983. The instructions were to "conduct a full review of the trial and appellate records in this case, and of the facts underlying the conviction, including facts and evidence that do not appear in the trial and appellate records. The firm's review shall include an evaluation of all available evidence, including the recently conducted DNA tests."

 

But Morrison Foerster didn't do what was asked. Instead, its report was shockingly and openly biased toward the San Bernardino County District Attorney and Sheriff's office. The law firm relied on "expert" witnesses who weren't experts, dismissed legitimate questions about evidence that had been destroyed, gone missing, and showed signs of tampering. It ignored documented Brady violations, and the pervasive racism surrounding the case, and failed to interview relevant witnesses.

 

Orrick's report states that "Special Counsel’s Report is filled with confirmation bias, incompetent analyses, and conclusory statements that are unsupported by any reasoned analysis. Incompetently, Special Counsel did not seek to uncover significant issues bearing on Mr. Cooper’s innocence, including an improper police investigation, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective assistance of counsel."

 

The rebuttal refers to a similar recent investigation of the Richard Glossip case in Oklahoma, another man sentenced to death despite similar credible evidence of innocence. That pro bono investigation, conducted by the law firm Reed Smith, involved 30 lawyers, three investigators, and two paralegals devoting more than 3,000 hours to interviewing jurors, experts, and witnesses, including civilians and members of law enforcement. The result was five reports that concluded that Glossip's trial could not "provide the basis for the government" to take his life.

 

"This serious and comprehensive review. . . stands in conspicuous contrast" to Morrison Foerster's report "that is devoid of even identifying what process Special Counsel followed. . . and perhaps most importantly, what witnesses he interviewed and what documents he reviewed," Orrick stated.

 

"When Mr. Cooper was tried almost 40 years ago, law enforcement failed to pursue the multiple, concrete leads on all possible suspects in their investigation of the Ryen/Hughes crimes and instead utilized all their resources to pin the guilt on a man who is innocent. Special Counsel tragically repeated this senseless and grave error," Orrick said.

 

As a result, Cooper is now asking Newsom to "select new unbiased and fully vetted special counsel to conduct such an investigation and ensure that such counsel has the requisite experience to conduct that investigation with professional, experienced, and qualified investigators."

 

You can read Orrick's full report here:

https://deathpenalty.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Orrick_2023.06.20-Rebuttal-Memo-to-Special-Counsel-Report.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=dd296879-52f5-4989-ae18-1bb47d76bb17

 

Death Penalty Focus

500 Capitol Mall, #2350  | Sacramento, California 95814

415-243-0143 | information@deathpenalty.org


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3) US auto workers and activists in Michigan show up for fired VU Manufacturing workers in Mexico

Amid the ongoing UAW strike, US auto workers are standing up for their Mexican brothers and sisters at VU Manufacturing, which shut down a newly unionized facility along the Mexico-US border in August.

By Ashley Bishop, October 24, 2023

https://therealnews.com/us-auto-workers-and-activists-in-michigan-show-up-for-fired-vu-manufacturing-workers-in-mexico
On October 18, former VU Manufacturing workers held signs reading 'Blacklists are illegal' and 'Workers united are never defeated' while protesting the employment blacklist and lack of severance pay in front of the city government buildings in Piedras Negras.

Amid the ongoing UAW strike, US auto workers are standing up for their Mexican brothers and sisters at VU Manufacturing, which shut down a newly unionized facility along the Mexico-US border in August.


On Tuesday, Sept. 26, protesters affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW), Labor Notes, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD, the rank-and-file reform caucus within the UAW), the Democratic Socialists of America, Latino/a Workers’ Leadership Conference, and Casa Obrera del Bajío gathered outside of VU Manufacturing’s headquarters in Troy, Michigan, to deliver a list of demands in support of 400 Mexican workers in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, who were recently laid off by the company. VU Manufacturing shut down the newly unionized facility along the Mexico-US border in August, while 71 workers were still in their employ.

 

The protest was organized by the Mexico Solidarity Project—an independent organization focused on building connections between workers and left organizations across the US and Mexico—in partnership with Labor Notes, under their joint Mexico Solidarity Project Labor Support Committee.

 

VU Manufacturing, a second-tier auto parts supplier that produces interior pieces for automakers like Stellantis, GM, Toyota, and Tesla, began laying off workers in April. The layoffs were set in motion back in August 2022, when workers voted against the company-preferred corporate union, Confederacion Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), in favor of an independent union, la Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana (la Liga). 

 

When it appeared that VU was deliberately stalling and attempting to run out the clock on the six-month contract negotiating period stipulated by Mexican labor law, la Liga and the Border Workers Committee, a workers’ center based in Piedras Negras, filed a complaint using the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism of the US-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA), which replaced NAFTA. The Rapid Response Labor Mechanism allows Mexican workers and their representatives to file a formal complaint against companies believed to be acting in violation of Mexican labor law with the US Department of Labor and the Office of the US Trade Representative. US authorities are expected to then press for an expedient resolution.

 

This complaint resulted in a six-month remediation plan between VU and la Liga. The remediation plan, agreed upon by Mexico and the US, detailed actions to address VU’s failure to bargain in good faith with la Liga, as well as other labor violations committed by the company. However, workers and activists say that little to no progress had been made when the remediation period ended on Sept. 30—more than a month after VU had already closed down the plant. 

 

On Oct. 10, less than two weeks later, the US Department of Labor announced that their agency has closed the workers’ case against VU Manufacturing, without any sanctions or other disciplinary actions against the company as permitted under the USMCA. Deputy Undersecretary of Labor for International Affairs Thea Lee stated her “disappointment” over closing the case, adding, “we knew employers would not choose compliance in every instance.” The case is now the responsibility of the Mexican government. 

 

The last 71 workers have not received their legally mandated severance pay and have been left without access to company-managed savings accounts. Former VU workers also report being blacklisted from work within the maquilas that employ the majority of workers in Piedras Negras due to their association with the plant.

 

“The people, the workers, are desperate. They want their money and they need it,” said Victor Sevilla, one of the 71 VU workers who did not receive severance pay. “And the only way that they’re really going to get it is by pressuring the owner of the company in Michigan.” Sevilla also lost access to his company-managed savings account, which he says he was using to save up money for the Christmas holiday. 

 

Despite the recent closure of the case, activists say they are still working to fulfill the list of demands presented to VU headquarters in Troy, Michigan. 

 

The demands cover the immediate needs of VU workers like severance and unpaid wages for the 71 laid-off workers, restitution for two union organizers who were unjustly fired, and an end to the employment blacklist in Piedras Negras, which workers and activists believe is being led by the CTM. 

 

“They did not want to take the list of demands. They were pretty indignant that we were there,” Zach Rioux, a labor organizer based out of Detroit who coordinated the action on the ground, told TRNN. “They overreacted and started to yell, which, to me, is pretty rich—to be so indignant in a situation where VU has acted so illegally and cruelly towards their workers.” 

 

Activists are also continuing to demand sanctions against VU Manufacturing to prevent the company from reopening under a different name and continuing to export goods to the US. Additionally, they are calling for a public forum with labor authorities from Mexico and the US to discuss the lessons of the VU campaign and how the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism of the USCMA can better respond to violations of workers’ rights going forward.

 

Meizhu Lui, co-coordinator of the Mexico Solidarity Project, said via email: “Neither the VU workers nor their supporters in Mexico and the US consider it ‘case closed’ until justice is done.” 

 

On Oct. 18, former VU workers and activists protested in front of the city government offices in Piedras Negras. “The factories here refuse to give us jobs. We are, apparently, on a blacklist here, in the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila,” said Miguel Ángel Fraga Martinez, a former VU worker. “Even those of us that did receive severance pay, the money is already gone, because we haven’t been able to get stable work.”

 

The coalition is continuing to organize further actions to pressure the authorities of the US and Mexico.

 

VU Manufacturing had not responded to activists’ demands before the case was closed.

 

“If the labor mechanism is allowed to fail like this—and you can only say that this is a failure—it sets a very bad precedent for the future,” said Jeff Hermanson, a longtime organizer in Mexico and the US. “This is a test of the commitment of the labor authorities in both countries to the functioning of this agreement of the labor rights chapter of the USMCA.”

 

“I think that means that it’s also a test case for all of us who are supporting the workers, and who are on the side of the working class in the US or Mexico, to stand up and say that we’re not going to let this happen. Companies can’t do whatever they want with workers’ lives,” said Charlie Saperstein, a labor activist and organizer with the Border Workers Committee in Piedras Negras. “I think the protest that happened [on Sept. 26] is a perfect example of that.” 

 

Sean Crawford, a UAW auto worker and founding member of UAWD, has worked for GM since 2008 and was among the first groups of workers to be hired under the 2008 contract, which introduced the tier system.

 

“Back in 2019, I was a member of UAW Local 598 at Flint truck assembly. And we make heavy duty pickup trucks there. These are the same pickup trucks that they make in Silao, Mexico, where Israel Cervantes used to work,” says Crawford. “So, he led a campaign to refuse overtime in solidarity with striking GM workers in 2019 and I just thought that was fantastic.”

 

Israel Cervantes worked at the GM plant in Silao, Mexico, for 13 years. He was one of several workers fired for the act of solidarity described by Crawford. After being terminated, Cervantes and the other workers who had been fired formed an organization called Generating Movement (a play on “GM”) to organize workers in the plant, which led to workers not only voting out their existing, corrupt union, but subsequently voting to be represented by an independent union, Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores y Trabajoras de la Industria Automotriz (SINTTIA).

 

Cervantes, who is now an organizer with Casa Obrera del Bajío, came out to the protest in Troy, Michigan, to support VU workers and to walk the picket line with striking UAW workers. 

 

“It’s important for UAW workers to get the sense of solidarity from other countries, such as the solidarity message that was sent from the auto workers in Brazil, as well as the rubber industry workers from Puebla, Mexico,” said Cervantes, adding that workers in other countries understand that it’s important not to give in to the demands of the company by speeding up production or working overtime, to not work against the striking UAW workers in the US.

 

“We work for the same companies. It’s right there, there are GM plants in Mexico and the whole supply chain criss-crosses the border. So, if capital can be on both sides of the border, we should be on both sides of the border,” echoed Rioux.

 

Cervantes and Crawford met for the first time at the protest at VU Headquarters. In a moment, linguistically facilitated by Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes and captured on video, Crawford thanks Cervantes for his “brave act of solidarity” during the 2019 UAW strike before shaking hands.

 

“The cool thing about meeting him is, really, he’s just a normal guy like you and me,” Crawford told TRNN after meeting Cervantes at the protest. “And, to me, that just goes to show that these big acts that can really change the world and change the narrative, they’re done by just average working class people who decide they’ve had enough. And that’s pretty cool.”

 

Creative Commons License

 

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.


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4) Solidarity Between American Activists and Palestinians — Including a Rebuke of Biden

By Charles M. Blow, Oct. 25, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/opinion/palestine-biden-activists-israel.html
A pro-Palestine demonstration in Brooklyn on Oct. 21.
Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times

Since the heinous Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s declaration of war against the terrorist group, I have been going over and over a question I’ve not been able to answer fully: During this episode, why has the Palestinian cause sparked so much passion among veteran activists of the movement for Black lives?

 

Last week, I wrote that this could be traced to the ideological lens and residual energy of a younger generation attuned to protest and the ideas of equality and justice. But after interviewing several prominent activists in recent days, I realize there’s more to explore in the critical dynamics fueling that passion, which is born, in part, out of longstanding personal connections and a common sense of purpose.

 

There are two pivotal events that seem to have ignited the new era of solidarity between some young American activists and the people of Palestine. The first came in the form of Palestinian activists expressing support on social media for the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., which activists describe as an uprising, not just a series of protests. Palestinians provided not just moral support, but offered practical tips that, as activist Cherrell Brown told me, included advice for protesters about how to protect themselves from tear gas.

 

Around that time, a small delegation of Palestinians even traveled to Ferguson and St. Louis to meet with American activists. This all created a moment of bonding around a shared sense of resistance.

 

The second event was a 2015 pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories organized by Ahmad Abuznaid, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian American who co-founded the Dream Defenders, a group of activists who came together in response to the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin.

 

The small delegation included some people who would also become central in the American movement, like the journalist and scholar Marc Lamont Hill.

 

When we spoke, Abuznaid, who has been criticized for his support for B.D.S., a movement calling for boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel, said he has led or been a part of several delegations to the Palestinian territories focused on what he describes as the injustices caused by the Israeli occupation.

 

These trips help not only to develop strong bonds between communities half a world away from each other, but also to connect the issues facing them. Hill, who lost his job as a CNN contributor after he gave a speech at the United Nations about Israel and Palestine that was condemned by groups including the Anti-Defamation League, would go on to be a co-author of a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics.”

 

The events during this period reinforced a sense of internationalism among activists and connected a present solidarity with a historical one. It called back to a time when an American figure as notable as Malcolm X spoke out for the Palestinian cause.

 

Even activists who didn’t make these journeys describe coming to this cause in part through personal connections with Palestinians and Palestinian Americans.

 

And unlike some conflicts around the world, this one continues to play out in full view, in traditional media and social media. As the comedian, actress and activist Amanda Seales told me, this crisis has an urgency around it that others don’t because “we’re able to see it” in an unfiltered way.

 

The other thing that I initially underestimated is the level of criticism of the Biden administration for its response to this conflict and what effect that might have in 2024.

 

Shaun King, a former writer for The Daily News who has millions of followers on Facebook, Instagram and X, the site formerly known as Twitter, posted recently about how he would not vote for President Biden next year because of his embrace of Israel.

 

King, who has never been a strong Biden supporter and is far from a mainline Democrat, told me, “I feel like a voter without a candidate.”

 

While most activists I spoke to didn’t sound a note as strident as King’s about their voting intentions, several of them sounded an alarm about a possible wave of voter disappointment on the left over Biden’s stance in this conflict.

 

As Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, told me, he couldn’t think of a more “demobilizing experience” for young, democracy-minded, multiracial coalition voters than an escalating war and escalating human suffering “with the understanding that our country and our government could have done more to prevent it.”

 

Tiffany Loftin, who describes herself as a civil rights activist and labor union organizer, and is a former national director of the N.A.A.C.P. youth and college division, said she would have a difficult time casting her ballot for “somebody who supported genocide” of Palestinians, which is how she characterized Biden’s position in the Israel-Gaza war. “I don’t know if I can do that, Charles,” she said.

 

The questions for the Democratic Party and the Biden administration are: How much of their support base does this discontent represent, and how much voter abstention can they absorb?

 

A lot will happen next year, and public attention will inevitably turn to other issues and controversies, but in a tight presidential race, an increasingly disaffected activist base on the left could be disastrous for Biden, and in a rematch with Donald Trump, that could be disastrous for our democracy.


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5) U.A.W. and Ford Reach Tentative Contract Agreement

The deal, subject to approval by union members, could ease the way for deals with General Motors and Stellantis and end a growing wave of walkouts.

By Neal E. Boudette and Noam Scheiber, Oct. 25, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/business/economy/uaw-ford-contract-agreement-strike.html
A group of people holds picket signs demanding “Fair Pay Now” and declaring “No Deal, No Wheels.”
The United Automobile Workers union has staged a growing wave of walkouts aimed at factories making some of the automakers’ most profitable models, including a Ford assembly plant in Chicago. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The United Automobile Workers and Ford Motor have reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year labor contract, the union announced Wednesday, nearly six weeks after the union began a growing wave of walkouts against the three Detroit automakers.

 

The union said the deal included a roughly 25 percent pay increase over four years, cost-of-living wage adjustments, major gains on pensions and job security, and the right to strike over plant closures. It called on striking Ford workers to go back to work while the tentative agreement awaits ratification.

 

Shawn Fain, the union president, said in a livestream on Facebook that the accord would be submitted to the U.A.W. council that oversees relations with Ford at a meeting in Detroit on Sunday. If the council approves, the union will submit the contract terms to the company’s 57,000 union workers for their verdict.

 

“We made history,” Mr. Fain said. “We told Ford to pony up, and they did.” He said the terms included an immediate 11 percent wage increase upon ratification.

 

Ford issued a brief statement that said in part, “We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract with the U.A.W. covering our U.S. operations.”

 

The union continues to negotiate with General Motors and Stellantis, whose brands include Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.

 

“We know it breaks records,” Mr. Fain said of the tentative agreement with Ford. “We know it will change lives.” But he underlined that it was up to union members to deliver the ultimate verdict.

 

Two weeks ago — when it said it had reached the limit of what it could afford without hurting its business — Ford offered to increase wages 23 percent, adjust pay in response to inflation and cut the time for new hires to rise to the top wage, to four years from eight. The other companies have made similar offers.

 

But the U.A.W. pressed for greater concessions, ratcheting up the walkouts and aiming them at factories producing some of the automakers’ most profitable models.

 

“This is a major victory for the union after years of erosion by inflation, division by wage tiers and other real issues in the workplace that made people angry,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who has followed the U.A.W. for more than three decades. “It sets a standard for other workers throughout the economy.”

 

President Biden, who had championed the union’s cause and joined a picket line on a visit to Michigan last month, hailed the accord. “I applaud the U.A.W. and Ford for coming together after a hard-fought, good-faith negotiation and reaching a historic tentative agreement,” he said.

 

The union said the agreement would ultimately lift the top wage to more than $40 an hour, giving a member working 40 hours a week a base pay of more than $83,000, not including overtime and profit-sharing bonuses, which were more than $14,000 in 2022.

 

The current top wage is $32 an hour, or about $67,000 a year based on a 40-hour week.

 

Recent hires who make considerably less than the top wage will see their pay nearly double over the life of the contract, the union said.

 

The tentative deal with Ford could increase pressure on the other companies to reach an agreement with the union. In the past, once the union reached a deal with one automaker, tentative agreements with the others quickly followed. But that history may not be as relevant now because the U.A.W. had never struck all three companies simultaneously until this year.

 

Altogether, about 45,000 workers at Ford, G.M. and Stellantis are on strike across the country, including 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest, and almost 10,000 others at Ford factories in Illinois and Michigan.

 

The companies are investing billions in a transition to battery-powered vehicles, a financial commitment that they say makes it harder for them to pay substantially higher wages. Last week, Ford’s executive chairman, William C. Ford Jr., said the union’s demands risked damaging the ability of Detroit automakers to compete against nonunion companies like Tesla and foreign rivals.

 

“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others are loving the strike, because they know the longer it goes on, the better it is for them,” he said. “They will win, and all of us will lose.”

 

The U.A.W. makes a different case: that success in its contract battle with the Big Three will give it momentum to organize autoworkers at other companies as well.

 

It began its walkouts when the companies’ union contracts expired in mid-September. It won immediate support from Mr. Biden, who called on the automakers to “ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts” and briefly joined workers on a picket line at a G.M. plant near Detroit late last month.

 

The union initially demanded a 40 percent wage increase over four years — an amount that union officials have said matches the raises the top executives at the three companies have received over the last four years. Those raises are also meant to compensate for more modest increases the autoworkers received in recent years and concessions the union made to the companies beginning in 2007.

 

In addition, the union called for an end to a system that pays new hires just over half of the top wage of $32 an hour. It demanded adjustments that would nudge wages higher to compensate for inflation. And it wanted a reinstatement of pensions for all workers, improved retiree benefits and shorter work hours.

 

G.M. and Stellantis faced the most recent escalation of the U.A.W. walkouts when the union called out 6,800 workers at a large Ram pickup truck plant in Michigan on Monday and 5,000 workers at a G.M. plant in Arlington, Texas. That factory makes large sport utility vehicles including the Chevrolet Tahoe, the GMC Yukon and the Cadillac Escalade.

 

“Ford knew what was coming for them on Wednesday if we didn’t get a deal,” Mr. Fain said. “That was checkmate.”

 

On Tuesday, G.M. reported a third-quarter profit of $3.1 billion, a 7 percent decline from a year earlier, owing in part to the strike. Ford is scheduled to announce its third-quarter earnings on Thursday.

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6) Israel’s Army Is Ready to Invade Gaza. Its Divided Government May Not Be.

In the 20 days since Hamas attacked, Israel’s Air Force has pounded Gaza and its troops have gotten into position. But its leaders disagree about what to do next.

By Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman, Published Oct. 26, 2023, Updated Oct. 27, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-invasion-delay.html
People in a field of debris inspecting damage.
Khan Younis, Gaza, after an airstrike on Thursday. Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

To understand the reasons for the delay to Israel’s invasion, the reporters spoke to 13 Israeli officials, military officers and foreign diplomats.

 

Its troops are massed on the Gaza border and described as ready to move, but Israel’s political and military leaders are divided about how, when and even whether to invade, according to seven senior military officers and three Israeli officials.

 

In part, they say, the delay is intended to give negotiators more time to try to secure the release of some of the more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups when they raided Israel three weeks ago.

 

But Israeli leaders, who have vowed to retaliate against Hamas for its brutal massacre of civilians, have yet to agree on how to do so, though the military could move as soon as Friday.

 

Some of them worry that an invasion might suck the Israeli Army into an intractable urban battle inside Gaza. Others fear a broader conflict, with a Lebanese militia allied to Hamas, Hezbollah, firing long-range missiles toward Israeli cities.

 

There is also debate over whether to conduct the invasion through one large operation or a series of smaller ones. And then there are questions about who would govern Gaza if Israel captured it.

 

“You have a cabinet with different opinions,” said Danny Danon, a senior lawmaker from Likud, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing party.

 

“Some would say that we have to start — then we can think about the next stage,” said Mr. Danon, a member of the foreign affairs and defense committee in the Israeli Parliament. “But we as the leadership, as statesmen, we have to set the goals, and the goals should be very clear,” he said. “It shouldn’t be vague.”

 

Disarray has swept Israel since terrorists from Gaza overran a swath of southern Israel, killing roughly 1,400 people, briefly capturing more than 20 villages and army bases and outmaneuvering the most powerful military in the Middle East.

 

The shock of the attack has shaken Israelis’ sense of invincibility and raised doubts and debate about how their country should best respond.

 

Immediately afterward, the government called up around 360,000 reservists and deployed many of them at the border with Gaza. Senior officials soon spoke of removing Hamas from power in the enclave, raising expectations of an imminent ground operation there.

 

But nearly three weeks later, the Netanyahu government has yet to give the go-ahead, though the military says that it has made a few brief incursions over the border and that it will make still more in the days ahead.

 

The United States has urged Israel not to rush into a ground invasion, even as it pledges full support for its ally, but domestic considerations have also played a role in the delay. Beyond the hostages, there is concern about the toll of the operation and uncertainty about what exactly it might mean to destroy Hamas, a social movement as well as a military force that is deeply embedded in Gazan society.

 

When asked what the military objectives of the operation are, an Israeli military spokesman said the goal was to “dismantle Hamas.” How would the army know it had achieved that goal? “That’s a big question, and I don’t think I have the capability right now to answer that one,” the spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said at news briefing a week after the attack.

 

One immediate concern is the fate of the hostages, and the negotiations, mediated by Qatar, to secure the release of at least some of them, according to an Israeli official, three senior military officers and a senior foreign diplomat familiar with the talks. The Israeli government wants to allow more time for those talks to make headway, perhaps to secure the release of captured women and children.

 

While there is little internal disagreement about allowing a small window of time for further negotiation, there is a dispute between the military establishment and parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s government about what to do if the negotiations fail, according to the officials and officers.

 

The military leadership has already finalized an invasion plan, but Mr. Netanyahu has angered senior officers by refusing to sign off on it — in part because he wants unanimous approval from members of the war cabinet he formed after the Oct. 7 attack, according to two people present at cabinet meetings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters.

 

Analysts believe that Mr. Netanyahu is wary about unilaterally giving the go-ahead because, with public confidence in his leadership already decreasing, he fears being blamed if the operation fails.

 

“All indication is that he’s going to try and stay on,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group.

 

Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment for this article, referring a reporter instead to a speech the prime minister made Wednesday night in which he promised to destroy Hamas, without describing the method or timing of such an operation.

 

“We have set two goals for this war: To eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governing abilities, and to do everything possible to bring our captives home,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

 

He added: “We are preparing for a ground incursion. I will not detail when, how or how many, or the overall considerations that we are taking into account, most of which are unknown to the public.”

 

The ambiguity appears to reflect divisions in the cabinet about whether to permit a full invasion of Gaza, which might plunge ground troops into daunting urban battle against thousands of Hamas fighters hiding within a network of tunnels, hundreds of miles long, dug deep beneath Gaza City.

 

Instead, ministers are also considering a less ambitious plan involving several more limited incursions that target one small part of the enclave at a time.

 

Within the military establishment, there is concern that Israel’s goals will be blurred if Mr. Netanyahu follows through on his promise on Wednesday to simultaneously seek the liberation of all the hostages while also attempting to destroy Hamas. The first goal requires negotiation and accommodation with Hamas’s leadership, while the second requires its annihilation — a difficult balance to strike, two senior military officials said.

 

In a sign of internal division, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pointedly did not describe rescuing the hostages in a speech on Thursday evening as one of Israel’s military objectives.

 

The mutual suspicion between the military and the prime minister runs so deep that civil servants have barred the military from bringing recording equipment into cabinet meetings, according to two people present. They interpreted the move as an attempt to limit the amount of evidence that could be presented to a national inquiry after the war.

 

Mr. Netanyahu has appeared unusually isolated since the Hamas attack, amid cratering poll numbers and accusations that his chaotic leadership over the past year had set the stage for the catastrophic security failure on Oct 7.

 

Few members of his government have given him their unqualified backing since the day, with many simply saying that scrutiny of the government’s mistakes should wait until the war ends.

 

“I’m saying in the clearest way possible: It is clear to me that Netanyahu and the entire government of Israel and everyone on whose watch this happened bears responsibility for what happened,” one government minister from Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Miki Zohar, told a radio station on Thursday. “That is also clear to Netanyahu. That he also bears responsibility.”

 

As recriminations begin, some allies have tried to deflect blame from the prime minister.

 

A former Netanyahu aide began a social media campaign to prolong Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza before any ground operation begins. And Aryeh Deri, a lawmaker and longtime supporter of the prime minister, told an interviewer on Monday that the army had only recently readied a plan to invade Gaza.

 

The Israeli news media interpreted the assertion as an attempt to suggest that it was the army — not the prime minister — that needed more time to prepare.

 

But the ramifications of the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath extend far beyond Mr. Netanyahu’s personal fate, said Mr. Plesner, the analyst.

 

The shock of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Arab armies briefly overran Israeli defenses before being rebuffed, “changed Israeli society and the trajectory of the Israeli state,” he said.

 

“This event will probably be even more consequential,” he said.


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7) Democrats Splinter Over Israel as the Young, Diverse Left Rages at Biden

As a raw divide over the war ripples through liberal America, a coalition of young voters and people of color is breaking with the president, raising new questions about his strength entering 2024.

By Reid J. Epstein and Anjali Huynh, Oct. 27, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/us/politics/biden-democrats-israel-2024.html
President Biden clasps his hands beneath his chin, holding a pen.
President Biden is facing new resistance from an energized faction of his party that views the Palestinian cause in the context of social justice. Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The Democratic Party’s yearslong unity behind President Biden is beginning to erode over his steadfast support of Israel in its escalating war with the Palestinians, with a left-leaning coalition of young voters and people of color showing more discontent toward him than at any point since he was elected.

 

From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, in labor unions and liberal activist groups, and on college campuses and in high school cafeterias, a raw emotional divide over the conflict is convulsing liberal America.

 

While moderate Democrats and critics on the right have applauded Mr. Biden’s backing of Israel, he faces new resistance from an energized faction of his party that views the Palestinian cause as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that dominated American politics in the summer of 2020.

 

In protests, open letters, staff revolts and walkouts, liberal Democrats are demanding that Mr. Biden break with decades-long American policy and call for a cease-fire.

 

The political power of the Israel skeptics within the party is untested, with more than a year remaining until the 2024 presidential election. Their efforts have been fractious and disorganized, and they have little agreement on how much blame to lay at Mr. Biden’s feet or whether to punish him next November if he ignores their pleas.

 

And yet Mr. Biden is already struggling with low Democratic enthusiasm, and it would not take much of a slip in support from voters who backed him in 2020 to throw his re-election bid into question. His margin of victory in key battleground states was just a few thousand votes — hardly enough to spare a significant drop-off from young voters alienated by his loyalty to a right-wing Israeli government they see as hostile to their values.

 

At its heart, the turbulence over Israel is a fundamental disagreement over policy, setting it apart from challenges like voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy, which Mr. Biden’s allies believe can be solved with better messaging. The president, who has for decades positioned himself in the middle of his party and has navigated Democrats’ ideological and generational divide for the first half of his term, now confronts an issue that has no easy middle ground.

 

Perhaps most concerning for Mr. Biden is that in the halls of Congress, the most critical Democratic voices are Black and Hispanic Democrats who helped fuel his 2020 victory. As of Thursday, all 18 House members who had signed onto a resolution calling for an “immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine” were people of color.

 

“We process pain, deprivation and cruelty personally, having either encountered it in our current lives or having had historical connections to it with our ancestors,” said Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, one of the cease-fire resolution’s co-sponsors. “So we understand that cruelty and war and violence do not have positive outcomes.”

 

For Democrats in Congress and in liberal groups in Washington, pressure to oppose Mr. Biden’s Israel policy is bubbling up from younger, more progressive staff members who have grown up in an environment more doubtful about Israel.

 

Hundreds of former staff members who worked for the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts this week signed open letters urging them to introduce a similar cease-fire resolution in the Senate.

 

The senators have resisted such calls, but Mr. Sanders this week urged a “humanitarian pause,” a position that some other liberal lawmakers and groups have begun to embrace and that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said “must be considered.”

 

Other progressive lawmakers, however, argue that such a pause does not go far enough.

 

“A humanitarian pause, what is that?” said Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who introduced the cease-fire resolution. “We need a cease-fire. We need to stop bombs from being dropped on hospitals and on schools and communities.”

 

At MoveOn, the liberal activist group that endorsed Mr. Biden in April, younger staff members revolted after the organization issued an initial statement condemning the Hamas attack that ignited the current war without addressing Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians.

 

“There was a vocal percentage of our staff that did express their opinions,” Rahna Epting, MoveOn’s executive director, said in an interview. “I reminded them that ultimately we need to go to the members and see where they are.”

 

MoveOn’s latest statement on the war, a petition, underscores the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and states that “President Biden and our leaders must publicly call for an immediate cease-fire.”

 

Differences over Israel policy have caused conflict even among the nation’s top union officials. The executive committee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. addressed the issue during a tense meeting on Monday night that was dominated by a 30-minute anti-Israel monologue from the president of the American Postal Workers Union, who described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jew.”

 

Many on the left, however, acknowledge that Mr. Biden remains preferable to a Republican alternative in 2024. Ms. Epting said MoveOn could “support President Biden and apply pressure to him at the same time.”

 

Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Sanders who is among the most vocal proponents of a cease-fire, condemned Mr. Biden’s hug-Israel approach — but said he would not withhold support for Mr. Biden next year over the differences.

 

“Is this worth losing an election to Trump and all that would bring? No,” Mr. Duss said. “At the same time, I think it’s on Biden to understand where his voters are.”

 

For many on the left, sympathy for the Palestinian cause stems from the same feelings of powerlessness that fueled the protests after George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

 

“There’s definitely a direct correlation,” said DaMareo Cooper, a co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a collective of progressive community groups. “When we say Black Lives Matter, what’s really being said inside of that statement is a history of oppression.”

 

Mr. Biden’s allies dismissed the prospect that his position on Israel would damage him in 2024. Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, one of the most outspoken Democratic supporters of Israel in Congress, said he had been offended by cease-fire calls that did not also demand that Hamas release American and Israeli hostages.

 

“We have to be careful not to mistake a visible vocal minority for a majority,” Mr. Torres said. “The critics of Israel have far more power on social media than in the real world.”

 

Demonstrations against U.S. policy in Israel have spread from the Capitol and college campuses — Cornel West, the left-wing independent presidential candidate, appeared at a rally on Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles — to high schools across the country. Students at several high schools in Northern Virginia walked out of classes this week in a “Humanitarian Walkout Week.” The presidents of George Washington and Emory Universities, among others, condemned anti-Israel slogans chanted at rallies and projected on buildings.

 

An array of liberal groups have adopted the Palestinian cause. This week in New York, one protest sign read, “Reproductive justice means justice for Palestine.” At another demonstration in Manhattan, hundreds marched under the banner of “Queers for Liberation in Palestine.”

 

“I feel very betrayed by Biden,” said Angela Balya, 28, a protester in Manhattan who said she had volunteered for the Biden campaign in 2020. “I definitely will not be voting for him again.”

 

The Sunrise Movement, a coalition of young, progressive climate activists that mobilized on behalf of Mr. Biden’s campaign in 2020, is one such group that has called for a cease-fire. Some in the organization have been “raising questions” about whether they and other young people will mobilize for Mr. Biden again, said Michele Weindling, the group’s political director.

 

“If the Democratic Party and President Biden continue to send weapons and military support to Israel, it threatens to lose our generation, and that’s a very dangerous choice to make ahead of a critical election year,” Ms. Weindling said.

 

The United States’ support for Israel is unpopular with voters under 35, polling has shown, and students at dozens of colleges on Wednesday afternoon walked out of class as part of a nationwide mobilization effort by the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

 

“President Biden has shown to people that there’s virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question of the mass atrocities being leveled against Gaza,” said Kaleem Hawa, who has helped organize student protests with the Palestinian Youth Movement.

 

Few liberal organizations have had as raw a discussion about Israel as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. did at the Monday night meeting of its executive council.

 

Mark Dimondstein, the president of the postal union, argued that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into a single state. He called for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to demand a cease-fire, according to four people familiar with the contents of the meeting.

 

No other labor leader in the meeting offered vocal support for his position.

 

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who is married to a rabbi, responded by asserting Israel’s right to defend itself, the people familiar with the meeting said. Ms. Weingarten said she backed establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “That has been part of the Democratic platform for as long as I can remember,” she said.

 

Mr. Dimondstein, whose union represents more than 220,000 postal workers, said he was “not part of the Democratic Party” and, like Ms. Weingarten, declined to discuss the A.F.L.-C.I.O. call.

 

“I’m not answering your questions,” he said.

 

Some of the left-wing demonstrators’ demands fall well outside the American political mainstream.

 

“The occupation and the existence of Israel is not peaceful; there is no ‘maintaining the peace’ with a violent settler state,” read one bullet in an online document posted by the Democratic Socialists of America and shared widely this week among pro-cease-fire organizers.

 

At a protest in Manhattan on Wednesday, protesters chanted, “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.”

 

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.


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8) Aid workers in Gaza are trying to do their work and stay alive.

By Monika Pronczuk, Oct. 27, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/27/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Medical workers push a gurney with a child on it, surrounded by people on a street. In the background are two ambulances.

Emergency workers bringing a wounded child into Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times


Hussam Okal, an aid worker in a U.N.-operated shelter, is trying to help the 22,000 people forced to stay there, while in the same desperate position himself.

 

Israel has ordered more than a million Palestinians to evacuate the north in anticipation of a ground invasion, and the humanitarian situation has become increasingly dire, with the last remaining supplies of fuel, water and medicines running out and organizations forced to make do. Thousands of aid workers, like Mr. Okal, are sticking with their jobs — with little sleep and limited resources — all while trying to stay alive.

 

“We are trying to secure our families, and make them feel safe,” said Mr. Okal, who works for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, and who is staying at the same college-turned-shelter in the southern city of Khan Younis where he works. “But on the other hand, we are trying to serve the displaced people.”

 

As airstrikes scream overhead, “we are working in terrifying conditions,” Mr. Okal said. As of Friday, 53 U.N. staff members were killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to UNRWA, with many of them killed at home or while on duty. All of them were Palestinian.

 

But, the biggest challenge of his job is the scarcity, he said: Scarcity of resources to feed the people who have fled there. Scarcity of time to take care of his own family while he is looking after strangers. Scarcity of security, as Israel pummels the enclave.

 

“We suffer from the shortages of everything,” said Mr. Okal, 51, in a voice message.

 

Husam, a medical doctor in Gaza City, has not left his hometown despite Israel’s calls for evacuation. He has continued to deliver what limited supplies of medicines he can secure across the city, amid Israeli airstrikes and increasing fatigue.

 

“We can’t eat, we can’t sleep,” Husam, 40, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he is concerned about his safety, said in a voice message.

 

At his family home, his mother, who is diabetic, is struggling to get the medication she needs. It is extremely difficult, he said, to tend to patients at the same time he is taking care of his family, including his 6-month-old son.

 

He has seen a lot over the decades he has spent working for aid organizations across the Gaza Strip. But he said his most recent visit to the Al-Shifa hospital, the Gaza Strip’s largest medical complex, left him short of words. The wounded are crammed into corridors, which are already filled with people who have fled their homes and are seeking refuge from airstrikes.

 

“I can’t describe what we witnessed there,” he said. “There is a smell of death in front of the emergency department.”

 

“They have a tent where they are putting dead people, most of them children. Inside the emergency department, people are lying on the floor,” he said.

 

The vast majority of those on the ground are Palestinians, but there are foreign nationals, too, who have stayed to help. Seven miles south of Khan Younis, near the border with Egypt, an UNRWA team has been tasked with the difficult job of assessing civilian casualties and damages to U.N. premises.

 

“We are working 18 to 20 hours a day,” said Hector Sharp, the UNRWA’s head of field legal office. “We sleep whenever we can. We eat when we can. We try to have at least one meal a day.”

 

Unlike Palestinian aid workers who did not have a choice, Mr. Sharp, a New Zealand national who has been working in Gaza for the past three years, made the decision to stay. He is sleeping not in a shelter, but in an office that he shares with his colleagues.

 

The job of his team, Mr. Sharp said, was to visit different sites hit by airstrikes inside the enclave, and to advise on possible violations of international law. But it is a very complicated thing to do “in a situation where the international humanitarian standards are not being given enough consideration,” Mr. Sharp said.

 

In the places they visit, there are thousands of people who have not received enough water, bread or medicines for days.

 

“They are expecting us to bring something, because we are U.N. representatives,” he said. “But we are there to see if all sides respect international law.”

 

“And people can’t eat law,” he said. “They can’t drink law.”


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