“Without U.S. weapons and aid, Israel could not carry out its war”

With more than 23,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza by the Israeli regime since October, and 85% of the population in Gaza forcefully displaced and 93 % experiencing crisis-levels of hunger, the international solidarity movement to free Palestine and end the siege on Gaza continues to grow like never before.

In the United States, activists are increasingly demanding that labor stop U.S. war shipments to Israel. On January 13, 2024, over 2,500 activists took matters into their own hands and shut down the fifth largest port in the United States: the port of Oakland, in San Francisco Bay. Converging at 5am in the cold rain, activists with signs that read « Labor for Palestine » organized a massive community picket line that the International Longshoremen Workers Union Local 10 respected and refused to cross, officially shutting down the port.

The ILWU has a long history of actions in solidarity against oppressive regimes. In the 1980s, the ILWU refused to load or unload cargo from apartheid South Africa. On January 13, 2024, by refusing to cross the community picket organized by over 2,500 activists that descended on the Oakland Port, the ILWU Local 10 closed operations at the port in support of Palestine for at least the fourth time since 2014.
As Jimmy Salameh, a longshoreman with the ILWU Local 10 stated during the demonstration, “I’ve worked at the port for ten years plus, I can say for a fact that there was no business as usual out here today. How could there be in the middle of a genocide? » Without U.S. weapons and aid, Israel cannot carry out its war against the people of Palestine. U.S. labor can and must stop this genocide.

Report from the blockade of the port in Oakland (California, USA), 13 January 2024 E.J. Esperanza