Chicago, IL – Over 10,000 marched here, July 20, to condemn Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. The protest began with a die-in of young people. They held the names of Palestinian civilians who have been killed. The names of all the over 400 dead were read. One of the readers was Ahmed Hamad, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine-Chicago, who lost six family members in Gaza when Israel bombed their house.

The marchers filled the streets for ten blocks with a sea of Palestinian flags. “After two weeks of protesting, this is the largest protest in Chicago and the largest in the country so far,” said Hatem Abudayyeh of the U.S. Palestine Community Network, who co-emceed the rally.

#ChicagoIL #Gaza #Palestine #PeoplesStruggles #Israel #Rally #Activism #ChicagoIllinois #MiddleEast

Chicago, IL – Dr. Matar speaks for the Syrian American Forum July 2, as people gathered here, for a third week in a row of protests, to say, “Hands off Syria! No new wars!”

The Anti-War Committee-Chicago (AWC), the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, the March 19th Coalition and the Syrian American Forum are organizing the rallies. Kait McIntyre of AWC announced that this week and again next, “Chicago’s protests are part of a national coordinated effort called by the United National Antiwar Coalition, A.N.S.W.E.R., United for Peace and Justice and over a hundred other groups.”

#ChicagoIllinois #ChicagoIL #Syria #antiimperialism #ChicagoAntiWar #DrMatar #Assad #MiddleEast

Chicago, IL – The largest immigrant rights march since 2008 took place here today, May 1. Ringing with the call for “Legalization for all,” the mostly Latino crowd took the traditional route from Union Park, and ended in Federal Plaza.

#ChicagoIllinois #ChicagoIL #MayDay #immigrantRights #legalizationForAll

But in December, he was given a two-week suspension without pay. The charges against Randy stemmed from his defense of a coworker in his duties as a union steward.

What led management to suspend Randy?

Several of the departments in the hospital, including Environmental Services, Central Sterile Supply, Patient Transport, Dining Services and Material Management, have a terrible history of violations of the union contract, such as failing to meet the deadlines for providing information, failing to respond to requests for meetings and allowing grievances to go unanswered.

Randy won’t tolerate the union contract being treated this way, and is forceful in demanding the respect of these managers. This is the first reason that management has attacked him.

Randy is their scapegoat

Why is this suspension happening now? In November 2011, there was a murder that occurred in the Medical Center. A man killed his ex-wife after management put them both on the same shift, together with her new boyfriend. All three employees involved worked in Environmental Services and the incident exposed the failures of the management methods in that department.

These methods include: -- Disrespect of employees: BSWs should be recognized for their contribution to keeping the hospital free of germs. Instead they get yelled at and told to work harder. -- Overwork: As the medical center has multiplied the number of patients it sees, the work load on every building service worker has increased. -- Denial of benefit time usage: Management doesn’t want employees to use benefit time for vacation and sick leave. -- Divide and conquer: In order to keep workers from uniting against them, older workers are pitted against new; men against women; and nationality against nationality. —Discipline equals punishment: Workers get written up all the time. They work in fear of being moved to a new assignment or work area; of the loss of pay if suspended; and the ultimate threat of loss of their job.

Shadow of the plantation

There’s another underlying reason for the attack on Evans: racism. UIC is an employer whose labor relations were built on white supremacy. When UIC was built in the 1960s, the administration created a racist, two tier pay system. Mostly white workers in Urbana were paid one rate; mostly Black workers in Chicago were paid $1 or $2 an hour less. This system stayed in place until Local 73 grew strong enough to win the Urbana pay grades for all (see Fight Back article http://www.fightbacknews.org/2001fall/chiworkerswin.htm )

What management gives with a tea spoon, they take away with a shovel

When the workers – Black, Latino and white – won that victory in 2001, it didn’t bring an end to the system of racist discrimination at UIC. At the time of the victory over the pay disparity, there were almost 400 BSWs at UIC. Today there are only 250. This was management’s revenge for the workers victory in 2001: downsizing. Today, each worker is doing the work that had been done by two.

Taken together, this labor system is what led to the toxic climate in which the murder took place last year. Rather than dealing with this underlying tension, management is sweeping it under the rug. Are workers angry? Of course they are! Working hard in the face of disrespect, while top bosses get rich off their labor, makes people angry.

The murder last year put the spotlight on hospital administration. Now management is taking the attention off them and putting it on Steward Evans.

Local 73: The only defense workers have

With management like this, workers need union stewards like Evans, a person who is not afraid to speak up.

Local 73 is defending Evans. The union has grieved the suspension, will file an unfair labor practice charge against UIC for targeting a steward for union activity and continue to fight managers who behave like this.

This is not a threat: this is a promise. Human Resources at UIC needs to learn the difference.

#ChicagoIllinois #ChicagoIL #UniversityOfChicago #SEIULocal73 #RandyEvans #JoeIsobaker

Chicago, IL – An Israeli legal theorist and former officer in the Israel Defense Forces spoke Feb. 25 at the University of Chicago. Professor Amos Guiora helped provide the justifications for ‘targeted killing’ programs like the one pursued by the Obama administration. 40 protesters, including ten from the campus’ Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), turned out.

The talk, titled “Legitimate Target: A Criteria Based Approach to Targeted Killing,” laid out a formula developed and used countless times by the Israeli government before ultimately being adopted by the Bush and Obama administrations. Joe Iosbaker, a member of the Anti-War Committee of Chicago, said, “Guiora’s talk shows a clear tie between Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the U.S. drone killing program.”

The Bush administration criticized targeted killings by Israel, but the failure of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made Bush and then Obama turn to killer drones to continue the attacks on people who resist U.S. domination. Like Israel, the U.S. uses self-defense as the justification for the drone wars. “When Guiora was Israel's Legal Advisor for the Gaza Strip, he said Palestinians killed and injured are ‘legitimate targets,’” said Hatem Abudayyeh of the United States Palestinian Community Network. “Guiora’s use of words like ‘collateral damage’ and ‘legitimate targets’ has now been adopted by the U.S. to cover the thousands massacred by extrajudicial U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.”

According to Kait McIntyre, an organizer with the Anti-War Committee, “We are holding this protest to say no to the drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or Palestine; no to the Israeli occupation of Palestine; no to the threats of new U.S. wars in Syria, Iran or in Mali; and we want the money spent on war to go instead to meet human needs.”

After the picket, most of the crowd packed into the talk by Guiora. He criticized the U.S. administration for mishandling the drone killing policy and called for a judicial review of any targeted killings. When he claimed that Israel had always been a model of morality in their occupation of Gaza and targeted killings of Palestinians, the students couldn’t take it anymore. The entire front row of the audience stood up, picked up their folding chairs, turned around and sat back down with their backs to the speaker. A short time later, the protesters walked out.

Leyla Gutierrez of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Chicago made the following statement about the protest:

“The presence of yet another former member of the Israel Defense Forces on the University of Chicago campus should be reason enough to come out in protest, but when said member is also supporting the targeted drone killing by the United States government, resistance becomes imperative. The presence of members of various anti-war and pro-justice organizations around Chicago, including the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)-Chicago chapter and the Anti-War Committee of Chicago was definitely felt at the International House event—“Legitimate Target: A Criteria Based Approach to Targeted Killing”—this Monday.

“Initially we sat down and listened to former IDF member Amos Guiora criticize the blurring of lines within the rule of law that Obama's White Paper on drone policy has created. He voiced opposition to the excess of power the executive branch has when it comes to drone killings. Soon enough, however, he mentioned his 20 years’ experience in the IDF as a foundation to his views on morality in armed warfare. At this point, it became too much to bear and we turned our chairs around in protest to his ramblings. He had lost all credibility. Sami Kishawi, President of SJP-UChicago, explained to the public our reasons for opposing this man's ‘authority’ on the subject of morality in targeted killing, while various audience members also voiced their disapproval of his words. Guiora thanked us in Hebrew for ‘our politeness’ and those of us who speak Hebrew answered ‘you are welcome’ and ‘thanked’ him for his supposedly factual and informative lecture. At this point, we decided it behooved us to walk out since the words of this self-proclaimed ‘peace-lover’ became comical.

“The Administration was not supportive of our measures, encouraging us instead to dialogue through Q & A. Taking part in such a Q&A would not have been a viable option since the University has a history of filtering out difficult questions in controversial events. People who wish to address questions to the speaker are required to write them down and hand them to a third party who then decides which will be asked to the speaker. This policy has been in place since Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister, delivered a speech at the University of Chicago in 2009.”

#ChicagoIllinois #ChicagoIL #Palestine #HatemAbudayyeh #Drone #MiddleEast