On February 22nd, the National Labor Network for Ceasefire held its first public event, a webinar with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain and National Education Association president Becky Pringle. They were joined by two congresswomen on the front lines of the demand for a Ceasefire in Gaza, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Summer Lee (D-PA), and Middle East historian, Professor Wendy Perlman, from Northwestern University.
Shawn Fain was the first panelist to speak and took the question head on of why an international conflict should concern US workers. “Our fight is a fight for all of humanity, whether it is a contract campaign or an issue like this.”
President Pringle followed with powerful insights about the need to defend the most vulnerable and explained why both national teacher unions have now publicly called for a ceasefire. “As educators we have a moral responsibility …. to speak out against violence against innocent people, especially children.”
Representative Summer Lee reminded us that “when we first pushed for a ceasefire after we predicted the indiscriminate bombing that was going to come, not many would stand with us ... mostly women of color, to speak out in a counternarrative that our movement is not one of injustice and terrorism, but of human rights.”
Representative Rashida Tlaib talked about the power of collective action — something on which the labor movement was built — as the means to secure a lasting ceasefire. She spoke about the “bloated $886 billion Pentagon budget” and the fact that the Pentagon failed its sixth audit in a row. “We still don’t have clean drinking water in majority of schools in my district. We are literally struggling every single day to address the fact that we have a broken healthcare system that is literally profit driven (providing) sick care rather than true healthcare.... I really think the key to fund the things that many of our members and labor and others around the country right now are demanding, ... is in the Pentagon budget.”
The webinar ended with a call to build even greater labor involvement in the movement demanding a permanent ceasefire, unimpeded humanitarian aid, release of all hostages held by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel, and serious negotiations to achieve a stable peace in Israel and Palestine.
Reposted from the National Labor Network for Ceasefire. Learn more, and sign up for Network communications, at https://www.laborforceasefire.org.