| Text adopted by overwhelming vote at UNISON National Delegate Conference 16 June 2010 Emergency Composite Motion 1 - |
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Major British labor union votes to endorse Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
At the Oakland, California port:
Hundreds of demonstrators blockade Israeli goods.
From Mondoweiss, June 21, 2010, at:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/update-from-oakland-victory.html
On June 20th an “ad hoc coalition of dozens of community and labor organizations” converged at the Port of Oakland with the goal of blocking, for 24 hours, the unloading of an Israeli ship.
Dockworkers approached but did not cross the picket line. Management insisted that the line should be crossed. An arbitrator was brought in and the union argued that crossing the line posed a threat to the health and safety of workers. The arbitrator agreed and the ship was prevented from unloading for 24 hours...
...Quick follow-up on today's action at the Oakland docks: we won!
Something like 400 or 500 people - many who had also been there at 5:30 in the morning, plus others who hadn't made the first shift - turned up to resume the picket line at 4 p.m. I was surprised there weren't more: I had assumed there would be far more people in the afternoon, with the BART running, but I guess even in the Internet age it's hard to get people out with only a a couple of hours notice.
Still, there were more than enough people to re-create strong picket lines at all three gates to the berth where the Israeli ship was coming in. Faced with the prospect of workers again refusing to cross the picket line and the arbitrator again ruling in their favor, the company that runs the dock (SSA, or Stevedoring Services of America, which has also run the port of Basra, Iraq, since the American invasion in 2003) elected to cancel the evening shift.
The ship docked while we picketed, and presumably it will be unloaded tomorrow - right now we don't have the strength to keep up the picket line indefinitely, and even if we did, we can't really ask the longshore workers to stay off the job forever. But we succeeded in delaying it for a full day, which was exactly what we'd hoped to achieve.
And while none of the local TV stations made it to the 5:30 a.m. picket - despite an extensive media outreach effort - they were there in droves this afternoon. The couple of segments I caught tonight weren't too bad, even though they gave disproportionate time to the two Zionist counter-protestors who camped out, waving Israeli flags, across the street from the afternoon picket. As of 11:00 p.m. PDT on Sunday, Google News finds 284 stories about the action, and my sampling suggests that most of them - such as this story from the Bay Area News Group, which includes the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and most of the other community papers in the region - are fair if not actually sympathetic.
One final observation: the Oakland police were out in force from before dawn until our closing rally at 7 p.m., but aside from bugging us to stay out of the almost completely deserted roadway in front of the pier, they made no effort to interfere with the picketing, even when we blocked the two or three cars that tried to cross the line.
In fact, they weren't even dressed in riot gear, and some of them went out of their way to be polite. Quite a change from their behavior at the same location in April 2003, when we called a similar early-morning community-labor picket to protest a ship being loaded with supplies for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the cops responded by blasting us, without the slightest provocation, with an array of "sub-lethal" toys they had recently received from the Department of Homeland Security, including "flash-bang" grenades and guns firing wooden dowels and bean-bag rounds.
I'll never forget either that action or today's, but this one was a lot more satisfying!
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South African Municipal Workers Union demands that all cities break their ties to Apartheid Israel:
Click on image to enlarge it."SAMWU Declares, Every Municipality an Apartheid Israel Free Zone!"
SAMWU PRESS STATEMENT.
South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU)
04 June 2010.
On SAMWU Web site at:
http://www.samwu.org.za/index.php?Itemid=1&id=621&option=com_content&task=view
At its Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting Friday 4th June, SAMWU unanimously endorsed a motion to immediately work towards every municipality in South Africa to become an Apartheid Israel free zone.
As part of the global Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS) SAMWU has agreed to engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime. Every SAMWU branch will immediately approach municipal and water authorities to become part of the BDS campaign, and to publicly declare their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
This decision was taken in response to the appalling actions of the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people, and especially the recent military intervention against the peace flotilla that aimed to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.
The SAMWU CEC congratulated the ANC Government for exercising diplomatic pressure on the Israeli regime but urged Government to take further steps to isolate the regime until there is a genuine independent democratic state for all the people of Palestine.
SAMWU pledged its active support to the Coalition for a Free Palestine (CFP), and also congratulated its sister union SATAWU for refusing to handle Israeli goods at the ports.
Finally the CEC urged all unions and civil society organisations to join in this crucial campaign, to take whatever action they can to further isolate Israeli Apartheid, and to be a positive part of the solution to the terrible humanitarian catastrophe that faces the Palestinian people.
For further comment contact Steve Faulkner, SAMWU’s International and Equality Officer on 0828175455
Issued by;
Tahir Sema.
South African Municipal Workers' Union of COSATU.
National Spokesperson.
tahir.sema@samwu.org.za This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Office: 011-331 0333.
Cell: 0829403403.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
"Rachel Corrie’s Alma Mater Calls for College Divestment"
“Rachel Corrie’s story is very important to many of us at Evergreen and in greater Olympia. Various movements to end the occupation have been active on campus at least since Rachel’s death in 2003. Palestinian solidarity runs very deep here. Evergreen encourages critical thinking and students tend to be very anti-occupation.” –Nathan Schuur, TESC Divest student organiser.
Getting Out the Vote
Voter turnout and support for the resolution result from doggish campaigning by Schuur and nine other student organisers. “It’s the end of the quarter here, so we were all very busy with school, but we all found time to organise get-out-the-vote activities almost every day,” Schuur said. “We gave presentations to classes, we dropped in on student group meetings to tell them about the resolutions, we canvassed at campus events, and we knocked on every door in campus housing.”
When civil rights activist and former political prisoner Angela Davis spoke on campus during election week, Schuur and another organiser asked her to support the resolutions and gave her a Palestinian keffiyeh prior to the event. She then mentioned the importance of voting for divestment during her talk, according to Schuur.
Anna Simonton, another TESC Divest organiser and second-year student at Evergreen, said that the organisers used three key ideas when advocating among their peers: human rights, accountability, and transparency. “We wanted to convey that there are these atrocities going on in which the U.S. is complicit, and the only thing that’s going to change it is a grassroots effort of BDS,” Simonton said. In addition to the message that “here’s a problem and here’s what you can do,” Simonton found students to be especially responsive to the point that “there’s no transparency in our college at all.”
Academic Transparency and Accountability
As a public institution, the college cannot receive direct donations. The TESC divestment campaign specifically targets money that donors give to the college through a non-profit organisation called The Evergreen State College Foundation, whose goal, according to Simonton, “is to get the biggest possible returns on that money. To this end, the foundation struck a deal with the University of Washington to pool Evergreen’s endowment, worth about $7 million, with the UW’s, worth somewhere around $2 billion.”
Since more than 60 investment firms manage the UW Consolidated Endowment Fund (CEF) the Evergreen Board of Trustees has historically claimed itself unable to maintain oversight on its funds. In actuality, the CEF already has regulations that prevent it from investing in the tobacco industry or any company doing business with the Government of Sudan, meaning that mechanisms do exist for specifying how the money is invested.
The Board has also previously discharged divestment responsibility by saying that the UW Consolidated Endowment Fund is doing Evergreen a favour. Simonton summarized this perspective from the trustees’ eyes: “We can’t ask the folks at UW for anything else because they are giving us such a great deal by allowing our measly $7 million to be pooled with their $2 billion.”
Next Moves
Simonton considers this position a challenge to the TESC Divest campaign, but suggested that “with pressure from UW students, and good communication between Evergreen and the UW, the entire CEF could divest.” The campaign’s success this spring makes such a move seem possible. Once the student vote came through, the Evergreen student government, The Geoduck Student Union, passed its own resolution supporting the measures with a unanimous vote. Also since the resolutions’ passage only a week ago, the campaign has garnered more than 1,400 petition signatures from outsider supporters. At the US Social Forum in Detroit later this month, Simonton and other Evergreen activists will participate in the BDS People’s Movement Assembly, where they will connect with BDS organisers from UC Berkeley, Hampshire, and University of Michigan Dearborn.
“A lot of people have their eyes of Evergreen,” Simonton said. “We have to make the Board recognise that they have to answer.” In the case that CEF on the whole will not divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation, “the Evergreen Foundation should pull the money out of the CEF and invest it responsibly,” she said.
Schuur confirmed that “We are a very organised movement with a very wide base of student support and will not back down until the Board listens to the voice of students and ends their complicity in violations of human rights in Occupied Palestine.” Representatives from the campaign will present their demands at a Board of Trustees meeting this Thursday.
International Support
In addition to the endorsement of numerous student groups, celebrities, other university divestment campaigns, national peace groups, and hundreds of individuals across the U.S., TESC received during their campaign a letter of support from students in Gaza, which can be read here: http://www.tescdivest.org/letter.php.
Simonton said that she and the other organisers did not have direct contact with the students in Gaza, so the letter came as a surprise: “I was so stunned when I got this email that I started to cry. I was on autopilot—you know, passing out handbills, saying sound bytes like ‘vote for human rights, vote for human rights.’ That letter really drove it home to me that we’re doing something that affects people.”
______________________________________
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Huge divestment victory at Evergreen State College.
Whole student body votes for divestment against Israeli occupation, at Evergreen State College!
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What's more remarkable is that the decision was not made by a student council and thus vulnerable to veto by just one person, as we saw in Berkeley. No, it was decided through a campus-wide vote. No one, not the promoters of the divestment policy, not its detractors, knew how the students would vote in complete privacy. The results? The divestment vote won by a landslide 79.5%! The Caterpillar vote by an equally impressive 71.8%! The Evergreen College Board of Trustees and Board of Governors actually hold the purse strings of the Evergreen College and the Evergreen Foundation respectively. You can imagine the pressure that will be brought upon them to ignore the student votes. We need you to email them right and ask them to respect the voice of the students and divest! Board of Turstees Direction Carver T. Gayton (tescbot@evergreen.edu) Also, go to http://tescdivest.org/ to sign a petition in support of the students! Immediately after the student vote, the student union passed a unanimous resolution requesting full disclosure of all corporations, including those held through mutual funds, in which The Evergreen State College Foundation and The Evergreen State College are invested and asking the Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors to make public a plan of action for divestment from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine. Please email Mr. Gayton and Ms. Hoemann today and ask them to divest. Many of you followed with baited breath the struggle for divestment at the University of California at Berkeley and San Diego. We sent you this report about the inspiring students from Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Well the attacks on the bill's supporter's, including Jewish Voice for Peace, were vicious and predictable, so we decided to respond and also document what we had learned about how the anti-divestment groups work. We think it's important reading for those working on other campuses. Most important, we interviewed the UC Berkeley student supporters of divestment so you could hear them in their own words. We can't possibly convey how incredibly inspired we were by them, but we think this ten-minute video clip will do the job for us. One thing is certain. If you want to know where today's smart, compassionate, curious and socially engaged students of all backgrounds are gravitating to, it's the campus divestment movement. Congratulations Evergreen. During these very painful times when we see peacemakers being attacked on the seas outside Gaza, in B'ilin and N'ilin and Sheik Jarrah, it's hugely inspiring to see that real change is happening with an entire new generation.  Sydney Levy Director of Campaigns Jewish Voice for Peace PS: A lot of information and misinformation is going around about the Gaza flotilla. Here's a good primer to share with friends and family: Lying About The Gaza Flotilla Disaster | |
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Divestment demanded against Israel-- at Duluth, Minnesota, and at City University of New York (CUNY)
Multimedia--
A group of protestors assembled outside the Duluth Federal Building to have their voices heard.
The protest is sponsored by the Northland Anti-War coalition and the Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign.
The United Nations reports that at least 10 civilians were killed when Israeli forces attacked the convoy. Many more were wounded.
Activists in Duluth say they are demonstrating in solidarity with protestors in the Middle East and around the world.
The U.N. says Israeli forces boarded a six-ship convoy, inbound towards Gaza. The purpose of the fleet was to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and to break the Israeli blockade.
However, Israel attacked the fleet and protestors say they're outraged.
"As an activist for peace and social justice, I am shaken and hurt to the core by Israel's actions," said Carl Sack, an activist.
Protestors say they're asking the State of Minnesota to divest from financial bonds they have with Israel. Demonstrators are also calling upon the U.S. government to send a message in light of what happened.
They're asking the feds to stop sending aid to Israel.
by The Editor
CUNY Graduate Center Advocate
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.“
–Nelson Mandela
Israel’s unwarranted and outrageous attack upon the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is another sad reminder that the leaders of Israel are determined to indefinitely continue and defend the punishing and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and the continued isolation of the West Bank, which has caused and continues to cause immense suffering and loss of life for the Palestinian people.
Deaf to the cries and condemnations of the international community, Israel has pursued a calculated policy of punishment and humiliation against the Palestinians, explicitly designed to create a permanent crisis in the region, thus further justifying Israel’s continued policy of separation and apartheid.
From the terrible 2008 Gaza Massacre to Monday’s premeditated assault upon the Mavi Marmara, Israel has sent a clear signal to the international community that it has no intentions of either abiding by international or humanitarian law, or of negotiating in good faith with the Palestinian people. Faced, like South Africa in the 1980’s, with a clear demographical disadvantage, Israel has chosen to isolate its minority population in a last ditch effort to maintain its implicitly racist policy of Zionist rule.
Because of this, it is now more important than ever, that the institutions responsible for supporting and abetting Israel’s continued aggressions against the Palestinians, including the City University of New York, be forced, at the very least, to end their investment in any company that aids in any way the blockade, isolation, and occupation of the Palestinian territories. Since Hampshire College’s successful and groundbreaking disinvestment in companies that support the occupation of Palestine in 2009, there has been a growing student disinvestment campaign, which has spread to universities across the nation from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, to Columbia and NYU. This movement is dedicated to convincing their college and university budget and finance committees to rearrange their investment portfolios so as to disinvest from companies such as: United Technologies, which manufactures Blackhawk helicopters used by the Israeli military, General Electric, which supplies the propulsions systems for Apache helicopter gunships, also used by the Israeli Defense Forces, ITT Corporation, which provides night vision goggles to the Israeli military, Motorola, which is engaged in a $400 million project to provide radar systems for enhancing security at illegal West Bank settlements, Terex, which provides trucks for logistical support to the Israeli military, and Caterpillar, which provides many of the bulldozers and construction equipment used to build new settlements and to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last March, The UC Berkeley Student Senate passed a resolution, supported in large part by the UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, (the resolution is reprinted below), urging the university to end all investments related to General Electric and United Technologies. The resolution passed the Student Senate but was callously vetoed by the Student Senate President Noah Stern. Currently UC Berkeley students are campaigning to overturn that veto, but UC President Mark Yudof, the same individual who recently raised UC tuition by 32%, has issued statements this month making it clear that the university policy supports disinvestment only in the case of genocide — a ridiculous and incredibly irresponsible high bar to set for taking action. While this may sound like a defeat, the resolution has gained steam and is being proposed at several other campuses in the UC system including UC San Diego and UC Riverside. It is time that the student government at CUNY including the Doctoral Students’ Council, The University Student Senate and the University Faculty Senate, took up the resolution as their own.
In the meantime, it will be imperative these next few weeks that those of us who care about the suffering and humiliation taking place in Gaza remain vocal and outspoken critics of Israel’s policy, and that we call on the US Government to unreservedly and critically condemn the attacks on the Mavi Marmara and the continued blockade of Gaza.
Click here to see the full version of the “Bill in Support of UC Disinvestment from War Crimes”
Dearborn protesters demand divestment against Israel, and a cutoff of all aid to Israel.
Divestment demanded against Israel-- at Duluth, Minnesota, and at City University of New York (CUNY)
The attack on a humanitarian aid convoy by Israel off the coast of the Gaza strip has caused outrage among some here in the Northland.
Multimedia--
A group of protestors assembled outside the Duluth Federal Building to have their voices heard.
The protest is sponsored by the Northland Anti-War coalition and the Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign.
The United Nations reports that at least 10 civilians were killed when Israeli forces attacked the convoy. Many more were wounded.
Activists in Duluth say they are demonstrating in solidarity with protestors in the Middle East and around the world.
The U.N. says Israeli forces boarded a six-ship convoy, inbound towards Gaza. The purpose of the fleet was to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and to break the Israeli blockade.
However, Israel attacked the fleet and protestors say they're outraged.
"As an activist for peace and social justice, I am shaken and hurt to the core by Israel's actions," said Carl Sack, an activist.
Protestors say they're asking the State of Minnesota to divest from financial bonds they have with Israel. Demonstrators are also calling upon the U.S. government to send a message in light of what happened.
They're asking the feds to stop sending aid to Israel.
by The Editor
CUNY Graduate Center Advocate
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.“
–Nelson Mandela
Israel’s unwarranted and outrageous attack upon the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is another sad reminder that the leaders of Israel are determined to indefinitely continue and defend the punishing and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and the continued isolation of the West Bank, which has caused and continues to cause immense suffering and loss of life for the Palestinian people.
Deaf to the cries and condemnations of the international community, Israel has pursued a calculated policy of punishment and humiliation against the Palestinians, explicitly designed to create a permanent crisis in the region, thus further justifying Israel’s continued policy of separation and apartheid.
From the terrible 2008 Gaza Massacre to Monday’s premeditated assault upon the Mavi Marmara, Israel has sent a clear signal to the international community that it has no intentions of either abiding by international or humanitarian law, or of negotiating in good faith with the Palestinian people. Faced, like South Africa in the 1980’s, with a clear demographical disadvantage, Israel has chosen to isolate its minority population in a last ditch effort to maintain its implicitly racist policy of Zionist rule.
Because of this, it is now more important than ever, that the institutions responsible for supporting and abetting Israel’s continued aggressions against the Palestinians, including the City University of New York, be forced, at the very least, to end their investment in any company that aids in any way the blockade, isolation, and occupation of the Palestinian territories. Since Hampshire College’s successful and groundbreaking disinvestment in companies that support the occupation of Palestine in 2009, there has been a growing student disinvestment campaign, which has spread to universities across the nation from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, to Columbia and NYU. This movement is dedicated to convincing their college and university budget and finance committees to rearrange their investment portfolios so as to disinvest from companies such as: United Technologies, which manufactures Blackhawk helicopters used by the Israeli military, General Electric, which supplies the propulsions systems for Apache helicopter gunships, also used by the Israeli Defense Forces, ITT Corporation, which provides night vision goggles to the Israeli military, Motorola, which is engaged in a $400 million project to provide radar systems for enhancing security at illegal West Bank settlements, Terex, which provides trucks for logistical support to the Israeli military, and Caterpillar, which provides many of the bulldozers and construction equipment used to build new settlements and to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last March, The UC Berkeley Student Senate passed a resolution, supported in large part by the UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, (the resolution is reprinted below), urging the university to end all investments related to General Electric and United Technologies. The resolution passed the Student Senate but was callously vetoed by the Student Senate President Noah Stern. Currently UC Berkeley students are campaigning to overturn that veto, but UC President Mark Yudof, the same individual who recently raised UC tuition by 32%, has issued statements this month making it clear that the university policy supports disinvestment only in the case of genocide — a ridiculous and incredibly irresponsible high bar to set for taking action. While this may sound like a defeat, the resolution has gained steam and is being proposed at several other campuses in the UC system including UC San Diego and UC Riverside. It is time that the student government at CUNY including the Doctoral Students’ Council, The University Student Senate and the University Faculty Senate, took up the resolution as their own.
In the meantime, it will be imperative these next few weeks that those of us who care about the suffering and humiliation taking place in Gaza remain vocal and outspoken critics of Israel’s policy, and that we call on the US Government to unreservedly and critically condemn the attacks on the Mavi Marmara and the continued blockade of Gaza.
Click here to see the full version of the “Bill in Support of UC Disinvestment from War Crimes”
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Demonstrations for action against Apartheid Israel--
--In Baghdad, Cairo, Madrid, Ankara, Washington, and Ann Arbor:
