Official UAW 4811 Statement Marking One Year Since October 7th, 2023

This Monday, many UAW 4811 members will mourn friends or family among the over one thousand killed or kidnapped in Israel on October 7th, and many will grieve for the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed or incarcerated without trial since then in Gaza and the West Bank. We mark this anniversary with great sorrow over the ongoing devastation in Israel and Palestine, and condemn the new escalation of the conflict into Lebanon. Our hearts break for all of those who have lost their lives or who have lost loved ones over the past twelve months, and all those still suffering. UAW 4811 has not planned or endorsed any labor actions this week. We will continue to be a union for every academic worker at the University of California, no matter their religion or ethnicity; fight for a just and equitable workplace free from violence, discrimination, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia; and stand alongside the global labor movement in calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation.

In May 1970, two days before he died, UAW President Walter Reuther telegrammed President Richard Nixon to protest the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the deaths of four student protesters at Kent State University. He implored President Nixon to “mobilize for peace rather than for wider theaters of war in order to turn our resources and the hearts, hands and minds of our people to the fulfillment of America’s unfinished agenda at home.” Fifty-four years later, as American military aid helps to fuel an escalating regional war in the Middle East and millions of working people suffer under rising inequality and climate devastation at home, UAW 4811 will proudly continue the struggle for Reuther’s vision of peace and justice around the world.