by Simon J, NPEC + BDS/Palestine Solidarity
Labor has a key role to play in the Palestinian self-determination. Local governments can adopt procurement or investment policies that bar contracts with or investments in companies that are complicit in human rights violations, including Israeli occupation and apartheid. Workers can also push for their unions to adopt resolutions supporting BDS and refuse to legitimize the Israeli government’s violence. State violence, including occupation, relies on labor, and without that labor, the violence is interrupted.
We want to take a moment to call our attention to pro-Palestine resolutions and actions that took place over the summer, in Palestine and around the world.
- In a show of labor power, Palestinian workers led a general strike, the Strike for Dignity, demanding their liberation by withholding the labor upon which Israelis rely.
- Dockworkers in Italy refused to load a ship that was sending arms to Israel.
- In multiple port cities nationwide, people in solidarity with Palestine are calling on their elected officials to prohibit Israeli commerce ships from docking, as well as organizing mass grassroots action to block the boats themselves.
- In historic moves, multiple teachers’ unions have endorsed BDS — the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement — The United Educators of San Francisco, AFT Local 1789 in Seattle, and the CUNY union.
Haymarket’s Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, edited by Sumaya Awad and brian bean, is full of essays about working class struggle and Palestinian liberation, including one from NPEC member Daphna Thier. It is available as a free ebook here.
