East Bay DSA organizes local Labor for Palestine

Thousands of union members, workers, and activists gathered and marched at the Bay Area Labor for Palestine Rally on December 16th, 2023 (photo by Rene Pak Morrison)

An orientation to labor opens a unique opportunity for solidarity

For years, EBDSA has worked to reforge the link between union militants and the socialist movement. This places a strategic wager that rebuilding unions into fighting, democratic vehicles for working-class struggle and organization is not just desirable in and of itself (although it is), but that it’s also a necessary condition for a vibrant, strong socialist political current to survive and thrive in this country. 

In EBDSA this work has taken the form of a chapter jobs program, a local EWOC formation (the East Bay Workplace Organizing Committee or EBWOC), impressive labor solidarity work on the picket lines, and robust political education around the centrality of workplace struggle to winning material gains for the working class. This multifaceted approach means that EBDSA members have built relationships with union members and workplace militants in a variety of workplaces, brought some of them into DSA, or gone into union workplaces themselves. 

When it became clear in October that Israel was engaging in a genocidal military campaign against Palestinians, EBDSA Labor Committee members sprang into action and began meeting to pull together unions around concrete demands on the US state in a public rally, and created a template resolution for union members to adapt and try to pass through their unions. 

Within a few weeks, the effort had spread beyond EBDSA and began calling itself Bay Area Labor for Palestine (with the blessing of the pre-existing national Labor for Palestine formation). Members of more than a dozen local unions were soon attending Bay Area Labor for Palestine’s weekly meetings and comparing notes on how to pass resolutions through their unions, counter bad faith smears on their unions from pro-Israel groups, and prepare for a December rally. 

Bay Area Labor for Palestine successfully coordinated rally plans with local Palestinian- and Arab-led organizations, which meant that the rally formally brought together the local Palestinian liberation movement and representatives of the local labor movement. A boisterous spirit of unity and solidarity permeated the rally and march, with two thousand participants.

UAW 2865 members gather as a bloc at the Bay Area Labor for Palestine Rally (photo by UAW 2865 on twitter)

What’s next?

Some socialists worry about an overemphasis on workplace organizing, pointing out the importance of politics and principles to build beyond just “trade union consciousness”. The involvement of workers from newly formed unions who we’ve supported through EBWOC (like the Trader Joe’s Union local 4 in Rockridge and the Berkeley Ecology Center) and existing unions where EBDSA has members or relationships (like OEA and SEIU 1021) in Bay Area Labor for Palestine show that we’re not just cultivating a workplace only focus, but a broad politics of solidarity beyond the workplace. Union members where we didn’t have pre-existing relationships are also involved, indicating that this spirit of solidarity attracts like-minded workplace militants who see the connection between workplace struggle against the boss and global struggles against militarism and imperialism.

Bay Area Labor for Palestine is not just an EBDSA project. It’s a grassroots grouping of union members seeking to support and develop workplace organizers who can advance the cause of Palestinian solidarity in our unions. In some union locals, that means passing a ceasefire resolution. In others, where that’s already been accomplished, it can mean trying to divest pension funds from Israeli companies, or pressuring the AFL-CIO to back a ceasefire. 

Our experience in the East Bay shows that a multi-faceted approach to labor organizing can pay unexpected dividends in other areas of our work, like international solidarity. As DSA chapters continue to deepen our labor work across California, our ability to move in concert with unions and union members will hopefully increase the leverage, power, and will of the labor movement to challenge US imperialism at home and abroad.