Statement in Solidarity with Palestine
United Campus Workers of Virginia (UCWVA) — CWA Local 2265, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Chapter
Co-Drafted by VCU’s Graduate Worker Area Committee, Students for Justice in Palestine, and UCWVA-VCU’s Chapter Steering Committee.
Approved by VCU’s Steering Committee February, 2024.
The VCU chapter of United Campus Workers Virginia is proud to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation. As a wall-to-wall worker’s union including faculty, staff, and students, we condemn all forms of violence against civilians, including the October 7th Hamas attacks and Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on the people of Gaza. We also stand in solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestinian Student Organization, Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, Democratic Socialists of America, and Healthcare Workers for Palestine in calling on Richmond City Council to pass a ceasefire resolution.
We join more than 200 labor unions, including SEIU, UAW, APWU, our parent union CWA, and the national AFL-CIO to call for a full, immediate, and permanent ceasefire and for the release of Israeli hostages held in Hamas captivity as well as that of Palestinians unjustly held in Israeli detention. We further call for the immediate and unrestricted provision of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, an end to Israel’s illegal siege and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and an end to Israel’s racist apartheid system. We call for the return of stolen lands and homes to Palestinians, respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and for the establishment of full rights, freedom, self-determination, and sovereignty for Palestinians.
This past week, Israel issued “evacuation” orders for the nearly 1.5 million Gazans sheltering in Rafah, an area roughly half the size of Richmond. There is, however, nowhere safe to go, as the Egyptian government refuses entry and is currently building a border wall to prevent Gazans from escaping to the Sinai desert. Last Sunday, Israel launched a series of devastating airstrikes on entirely defenseless refugees in the area — many trying to survive in makeshift tents, already displaced from their homes in the north, suffering and dying from cold, hunger, and disease — killing scores of civilians, including many children. Israel continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah, the “safe place” more than 2 million Gazans were told to evacuate to so that they could escape Israeli bombing, beginning the last phase of a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing that has already lasted for more than four months.
As of writing, at least 29,092 people in Gaza, including more than 12,300 children, have been violently murdered by Israeli forces, with the full backing of the United States’ government. More than 69,000 have been injured, with thousands more buried under the rubble, many of whom have likely perished from their injuries. 17,000 children have been separated from their parents, and thousands more have been orphaned, many with no remaining close family members. Israel’s massive military assault has forced 85% of the population to leave their homes and more than half of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged. There are more than 50,000 pregnant people in Gaza, with an average of 180 giving birth everyday with no pre- or post-natal care, anesthesia, adequate nutritional support, or baby formula.
We grieve this senseless loss of life and we decry Israel’s continuing US-backed genocidal assault and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
As public higher education workers, we are sickened by and outraged at Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s educational, cultural, medical and civil infrastructure, as well as abduction, torture, and assassination of healthcare workers, scholars, artists, relief workers, and members of the press. Every one of Gaza’s universities has been destroyed or significantly damaged. National archives and libraries, home to generations of historical and cultural records, have been destroyed. Cultural institutions, mosques, churches, and museums have been bombed. The ongoing assaults have left more than 625,000 students and 22,500 teachers without access to schools; no child in Gaza currently has access to regular education. As of writing, more than 121 journalists have become the victims of targeted Israeli killings. Of 36 hospitals, all have sustained some level of damage, with only 11 even partially functional as of February 13. As of this writing, more than 645 deaths and 818 injuries have resulted from direct attacks on healthcare facilities; hundreds of healthcare workers have been killed, injured, or detained and tortured by the IDF.
As public sector educators, researchers, and workers, we see ourselves in the scholars, journalists, healthcare workers, teachers, and artists who have been targeted and violently murdered by the Israeli forces. We know that our liberation is intimately bound to Palestinian liberation. As such we cannot remain silent about the violence being committed against our Palestinian brothers, sisters, and siblings with material support from our government and the complicity of our institutions and leadership. We commit ourselves to do all we can to end Israel’s genocide, the occupation, and apartheid regime and to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea so that all may live and breathe free.
The Palestinian cause is inseparable from the global struggle for workers’ rights, and liberation from an imperialist economic system that enriches the few through the exploitation of workers and the planet. This system profits from the employment of state-supported repression and violence, most intensely against populations in the Global South and communities of color in the Global North. By supporting a network of global military forces and colonial domination, imperialism denies workers access to universal healthcare, affordable housing and education, dignified work, and safe and healthy environments. The struggle to free Palestine is intimately bound to the struggle to liberate humanity from the shackles of an economic system that profits from poverty, war, and environmental ruin. We therefore understand that the liberation of Palestine is the liberation of all of us from this system.
We support the right of every person to express their views publicly and without fear of retaliation, doxing, or censorship. We reject the labeling of criticism of Israeli policies and support for Palestinian liberation (including such phrases as “from the river to the sea”) as antisemitic, a dangerous conflation that leaves Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students and faculty and others who are critical of Israel’s policies vulnerable to attack and censorship. As unionists, we see our struggles as bound up in those of our colleagues. So here, too, do we see the liberation of Palestinians as inherently connected to — rather than in conflict with — the liberation and safety of Jews worldwide. We believe the only path to genuine and lasting peace and security for Palestinians and Jews is the establishment of equal rights, respect, and freedom for all persons.
We can uphold our union’s principles of justice and solidarity by confronting our institution’s complicity in genocidal Israeli policy.
Our demands are as follows:
- We demand that President Michael Rao affirm VCU’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity by condemning the genocide in Gaza and the violence enacted against Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian communities. We demand Pres. Rao release a retraction of his harmful statement issued October 12, 2023 that acknowledges his use of dehumanizing language toward Arabs. We urge him to affirm the equality and right of Palestinians — like all people — to be free.
- We demand VCU divest from Zionist apartheid. We demand transparency about where VCU’s $66,333,000 in total endowment, investment income, gifts, and “other” monetary support comes from and what it is invested into. Divest from all study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, which launder the practical techniques of expropriation and colonization with a neat veneer of academic respectability by sending students from one plot of stolen land to another.
- We demand VCU publicly affirm that the right to free speech and assembly on campus extends to expressions of support for Palestinians. The MCV administration must cease efforts to shut down the ongoing vigil for Palestinian healthcare workers murdered by Israeli forces. Furthermore, we demand VCU immediately stop erasure of the chalk messaging on the Compass led by Students for Justice in Palestine. We call on VCU leadership to uphold VCU’s stated values of freedom, diversity, and inclusion by protecting the rights of all students, faculty, and staff to assembly and demonstration.
Finally, we call on all members of UCW statewide and nationally to join us in action. Here at VCU, we are situated in the heart of Richmond — a site of governmental decision making both at a local and state level. We ask all members of our community to support the voices and actions of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestinian Student Organization, and American Muslims for Palestine, and contact our city and state representatives and urge them to pass a ceasefire resolution. Additionally, we invite all members of UCWVA-VCU to continue to show out to protests, marches, walkouts, teach-ins, and chalking sessions in union gear to demonstrate the crucial link between our union, our university, and the ongoing genocide. As labor organizers, we recognize the significant role of unions in the fight against apartheid and genocide. We recognize the power that each of us holds when we choose to work towards the liberation of Palestinians, whether that be in our work as teachers, healthcare workers, factory workers, delivery drivers, or in any other job. We all have a critical part in this fight and must recognize that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
As students, faculty, and staff of VCU, we collectively hold power over how we respond to VCU’s role in apartheid violence. We must simultaneously remember the violence enacted by VCU in its past and resist the violence that VCU contributes to in its present, both in the Richmond community and in Palestine. We must remain vigilant and speak out against an administration that prioritizes the interests of capital over our shared humanity.
