"The best thing that unions can do is withhold their labor. That's what people in Italy are doing. Three million people went on that general strike." -- Chris Smalls, labor leader speaking on a panel about Palestine. Unlock the full panel by subscribing.
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FEATURING CHRISTIAN SMALLS & NIDAL RAFEEDIE - On Saturday May 9, hundreds of people gathered at the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles for an evening in solidarity with Palestine organized by radio station, KPFK. Part of that event included a panel that Sonali Kolhatkar moderated on labor and Palestine featuring panelists, Chris Smalls and Nidal Rafeedie.
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Chris Smalls is one of the most prominent new labor organizers in the nation today, and rose to fame for his role in co-founding the Amazon Labor Union. He has traveled internationally and all over the US, not only fighting for labor rights but for justice for Palestinians in the face of Israel’s genocide. Just days before he spoke at the KPFK panel in LA, he Chris was arrested by police outside the MET Gala where he protested Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Chris’s new book is called When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class, to be published June 2.
Alongside Chris was Nidal Rafeedie, a Palestinian American labor leader, Vice President of Teamsters Local 1932, and Director of Respiratory Care at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, in San Bernardino County. Local 1932 represents more than 14,000 public sector workers across the Inland Empire, and in October 2024 became one of the first U.S. Teamsters locals to publicly call for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to U.S. military aid fueling the assault on Gaza.
Special thanks to KPFK for organizing and recording this panel.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: Palestinian labor unionists have, for a very long time, been calling on organized labor all around the world, have led the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, and have continued to call on labor to use their labor power to stop Israel's excesses, to stop Israeli crimes. And since 2023, October 7th, the call has only been amplified.
So, I want to spend the majority of this panel having my panelists speak. They're the experts on this, and I'll throw out the question to the two of you. I do solutions journalism, and so I'm always looking at where are people doing things that work, and how can those be replicated? And so we've seen in Europe, we've seen European unions bring their nations to a standstill. We've seen that in countries like Italy and Spain. Last year in particular, there were mass union movements that brought everybody out into the streets, brought their countries to a standstill, and spoke out. And of course, we need that more here than in Europe, given the connection between the US and Israel.
So, what is it about European unions that you think has worked for them? Why hasn't it worked here? And what can be done to get American unions and organized labor to rise up in solidarity for Palestine?
Christian Smalls: Man, that's a great question. Thank you all for being here. It's an honor and pleasure to always come back to LA, which is like my second home, so thank you all. Appreciate it. And that's a loaded question, but you know what? I have the perfect answer because, if you've been following the work I've been doing for the last nine months since I've been released from prison in occupied Palestine, the first thing I did was come to LA, and we did a protest downtown, if y'all remember that, and it was about disarming genocide. This campaign that I created is continuing to help support the dock workers in Italy who've shown exactly what we do when we withhold our labor.
So what you're alluding to is the fact that European unions are not tied to a two-party duopoly like we are in America. They're actually communist unions and socialist unions, and that is one reason why they're able to be more militant, because they still uphold those values. Unfortunately, here, our unions vote blue no matter who, or even worse. Yes. So because they're tied to either party, both parties, they're constrained to the type of politics that our politicians are alluding to when it comes to Palestine. So that's one way to look at it.
