How riots in UK’s Southport expose the web of disinformation and lack of accountability
Four individuals, including a Pakistani newsmaker, played a critical role in instigating one of the UK's most violent riots in recent memory.

Usman Azeem

Published August 20, 2024

DAWN

What do a British businesswoman, a Pakistani newsmaker, a foreign country, and a cigar-puffing kickboxer have in common? It might seem like the beginning of a joke, but it’s no laughing matter for the Punjab Police, which is currently investigating links between these disparate individuals, how they may have contributed to one of the UK’s most violent riots in recent memory, and exposed the extreme vulnerability of British Muslims and their places of worship.

England was hit by a series of race riots earlier this month after the tragic stabbings of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party on July 29. The teenager charged with the murders was identified as Axel Rudakubana, whose identity was disclosed after an exceptional court ruling.

But before that, far-right extremist elements spread the narrative that the stabbings were committed by an undocumented Muslim immigrant, who was on a terror watch list.

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Studies show that this falsehood was viewed over 420,000 times on social media platforms, with a reach of more than 1.7 billion, becoming a lightning rod for Islamophobic anti-immigrant vitriol, which set off a firestorm of attacks resulting in numerous loss of lives, threats to blow up mosques, as well as major property damage.

On the surface of it, the four individuals mentioned at the beginning of this piece share very little in common. Yet all of them have played critical roles in instigating the violence, which reflects the sinister nature of digital disinformation, and how it can incite real-world hatred and horror. It also indicates how limited personal accountability is when it comes to the creators and spreaders of false narratives on social media and serves as a cautionary tale to those who believe what they see online without questioning it.

The businesswoman

Bernadette Spofforth is the successful managing director of a clothing company. Her profile on Linkedin states that she is a “forward thinking and creative individual”, who lives an affluent life, residing in a £1.5 million farmhouse in Cheshire. In her personal life, however, she actively comments and advocates for a number of right-wing conservative positions.

She was a prominent campaigner against the Covid lockdowns and net-zero climate schemes, appearing on national television as well. Before deleting her account, she had tens of thousands of followers on X (formerly Twitter) commenting on new developments regularly.






Just hours after three girls were murdered in Southport on July 29, Spofforth wrote on her account on X: “Ali Al-Shakati was the suspect, he was an asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year and was on an MI6 watch list. If this is true, then all hell is about to break loose.”

This post, according to a comprehensive investigation by UK’s Daily Mail, was the first to claim that the Southport attacker was a Muslim, an asylum seeker, and on the MI6 watch list. When confronted by the evidence, Spofforth took no responsibility, saying, “I’m mortified that I’m being accused of this. I did not make it up. I first received this information from somebody in Southport.”

However, she did not back this claim with any evidence and deleted her account soon after.

According to the Daily Mail, she deleted this post later, but it didn’t stop the fire from spreading. The post content made its way to other accounts and websites, fanning the flames, and eventually leading to the violence. However, she took no responsibility for what transpired and said: “My post had nothing to do with the violence we’ve seen across the country. But I acknowledge that it may have been the source for the information used by a Russian news website.”

What website was that?

The foreign ‘adversary’

Enter Channel3Now, a media outlet regularly posting click-bait news content designed to engage and spread. Research analysts say that clickbait sites like Channel3Now are actively involved in using trigger events — of significant national prominence — to generate content that is made to engage the reader/viewer at an emotional level rather than through factual information. Channel3Now is no different, using its website and social media accounts to run sensationalist headlines and stories, with or without evidence.

With outlets like these, it is very common for their staff to pick up on the chatter on social media, and use it to develop their content. Their logic is simple: if it’s already spreading on social media, we need to ride the wave to build our own engagement. The Spofforth post, which had become viral by then, was picked up by Channel3Now’s social media accounts, once again naming the stabbing suspect as a Muslim asylum seeker who was on the MI6 watch list. The post was viewed nearly two million times before it was deleted.











Making the waters even murkier, another research article by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) revealed that the website claims to be based in the US, but actually started 11 years ago as a Russian-run YouTube channel that posted videos of rally driving in the country.

“The YouTube channel had not posted Russian-language content for 11 years, and could have been bought and repurposed by unknown actors. Channel3 News’ website was created in the summer of 2023, and one of four Facebook pages that use the same name and branding was repurposed twice — once in 2023 and again in May 2024, when it became ‘Channel3 Now’. This page’s administrators are based in Pakistan and the United States….The website itself employs a US-based company that cloaks IP addresses — a common tactic used by online actors trying to conceal their identities,” it said.

The Russian angle is not entirely confirmed, though TBIJ and Daily Mail have both made this claim. But this is not a new phenomenon even if true. Russian sock-puppet media outlets have previously used disinformation in the Westminster and Salisbury Novichok attacks.

Instead, what is of interest is: who was running the site. Because the connection doesn’t end at Moscow. It ends in Lahore. Which is why the Punjab Police is currently involved.
The Pakistani newsmaker

A major investigation by UK’s ITV news, which featured a field trip to Pakistan, ended with the residence of a Lahore-based man who claims to be an independent journalist and is the administrator of Channel3Now. BBC’s investigation also uncovered him as the key person behind the scenes. It has come as a shock that the Southport riots, which have largely targeted British Muslims, including British Pakistanis, were incited by a media outlet partially run from Pakistan.

The man in question claims to be an independent journalist who mostly covers crimes in the US. The media outlets also found his links to multiple other clickbait news accounts, including Fox3Now and Fox7Now, which claim to be American news sites, but are clearly impersonating other major news websites. In fact, Fox3Now and Fox7Now were subject to legal action last year when the American broadcaster Fox successfully fought to regain control of the web addresses on intellectual property grounds.

Fox3Now has been involved in its own share of clickbait-driven disinformation. In 2022, its account sent out a tweet claiming that an active shooting was taking place at Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City, US. The post went viral on X, leading to mass panic, with mall visitors describing the incident as “terrifying”. The post wasn’t taken down until almost two hours later, with the media site admitting there was no active shooter. The sounds which the site claimed to be gunfire were in fact caused by a faulty popcorn machine.

Interestingly, Fox3Now wasn’t the only one spreading this. Other affiliated accounts also ran the same story, including Channel3Now, showing a synergistic relationship between the ‘news’ outlets.






The same occurred in the case of the Southport attacks. Due to the rumours swirling on the identity of the attacker, Channel3Now picked up on the posts being shared online and used them to develop its own breaking news story.





The story remained on its website till July 30, when its headlines removed any mention of ‘Ali al-Shakati’, or the stabber being an alleged asylum seeker. Moreover, a screenshot of the website, obtained from Wayback Machine, shows that the same day, a new story titled “Southport stabbing suspect 17 year old-born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents” was posted, while the original story “17 year old boy arrested in connection with the stabbings in Southport, England” — which was posted 19 hours earlier — mysteriously edited out any mention of Ali al-Shakati.






However, digital forensic analysis shows that the URL or weblink of the original story continued to reference Ali al-Shakati.

Despite attempts by the Channel3Now team to remove any connection to the article, they remained unsuccessful, prompting the outlet to issue an apology on July 31. But by that point, it was too late to stop the rumour mill and the violence that followed.






ITV and BBC independently investigated the administrators behind the site, and tracked down the Pakistan-based journalist. When confronted with the evidence, he continued to maintain that the article had nothing to do with the violence, saying: “Ek chotay se article se itna ishtiaal kaisay phail sakta hai?” (How can so much chaos be spread by such a small article?).

He instead blamed the people of the UK for not addressing the misinformation “peacefully” and causing mayhem. At the same time, he also stated that he had nothing to do with the article and that it was posted by his UK-based staff, who have been fired. Nonetheless, Lahore Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Faisal Kamran has stated that the Punjab Police is analysing the claims made by ITV News and has initiated a probe.





The kickboxer

Despite Channel3Now’s attempts at damage control, the real damage was only starting. High-profile users on X, particularly those associated with the far-right, including anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson and former GB News presenter Laurence Fox, began to share the rumour as if it was a fact.

The major source of this was Andrew Tate, an infamous British-American kickboxer turned influencer, who is known for his extreme misogynistic views. In a series of posts, Tate, citing the ‘illegal migrant’ rumour, blamed the government for being soft on immigrants and claimed that the Western civilisation was under threat.

A series of inflammatory posts, all citing this disinformation, went to his nearly 10 million followers from X, and from there to millions in the UK. In fact, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, arguably the most outspoken right-wing politician in the country, cites Tate as his source for the information.





















It’s important to note that Tate’s posts have still not been taken down. So obviously he was remorseful, right? Nope. On August 8, Tate appeared on a news show on YouTube, where he was asked point blank if he would apologise for spreading falsehoods. Not only did Tate refuse to apologise, but he said he wasn’t wrong about the story, except for the ‘illegal’ part. He also said that he had no reason to target Muslims, given that he was a proud Muslim himself.






Like others, he too refused to take responsibility for the violence that ensued.
The aftermath

The digital narratives of the Southport riots reveal two tragedies.

The first is about the propensity of online falsehoods to stoke violence in the real world. A rumour which began from a minor influencer’s account led to widespread panic and anger directed towards communities which had nothing to do with the original attack, without confirmation from reputable sources.

Psychologists refer to this as “confirmation bias”, whereby we are more likely to believe stories that align with our worldview and reject those that do not. Social media has accelerated this process, creating echo chambers where people with the same views corroborate each other and spread the same content among themselves while denying or rejecting any contradicting information. It explains why disinformation is not an individual-led effort, but rather a community-led one, and demonstrates the ease at which false information can do so much damage before it is stopped. We have seen several examples of this.

The second tragedy is the lack of responsibility from the key actors involved in this farce. The Cheshire-based businesswoman claimed she heard the rumour from somewhere, and posted it without verification. Yet, she stated that she was not responsible for what happened.

The Lahore-based investigative journalist said a small article cannot lead to such violence. And, the British-American kickboxer/influencer claimed that what he spread remains embroiled in truth because of the larger pattern of migrant crimes. It’s not without a hint of irony that two of these actors, who helped create the fiasco that has made millions of Muslims insecure in the UK, are proud Muslims themselves.

In all these cases, there is a tendency to absolve the self from the heinous nature of what followed. One may call it denial, a kneejerk response to legal action, or just a general lack of introspection and personal accountability. But it is nonetheless reflective of our general attitudes towards consuming information on social media, where we believe first and analyse last.

It remains the quintessential approach that prevents us from taking any responsibility for believing and sharing false information. Yet each of these individuals, in their own way, played a crucial part in stoking the flames that led to the riots, and that is undeniable. Falsehoods, and their ability to instigate such horror, is no joke

The Corporate Power Brokers Behind AIPAC’s War on the Squad

An In These Times investigation reveals the individuals behind AIPAC’s election war chest: nearly 60% are CEOs and other top executives at the country’s largest corporations.



Branko Marcetic
June 3, 2024
Published in
June 2024
IN THESE TIMES

LONG READ 

On the eve of a high-profile Democratic primary in April, incumbent Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) wasn’t giving a speech or knocking on doors.

She was at a Passover Seder.

The representative and members of her campaign team joined supporters and their families at a home in Pittsburgh’s historically Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the site of a deadly 2018 attack where 11 Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life Congregation were murdered by a white supremacist.

At the Seder, as the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza raged in the background, Lee and her fellow peace activists reflected on the trying months since October 7, 2023. Organizers who criticized Israel’s brutal response to Hamas’ attack had been smeared as anti-Semitic and apologists for atrocities. Exhausted but optimistic, they spoke about creating a larger movement that would span race, class and age.

“It felt so palpable,” recalls Lauren Maunus, who was at the Seder. Maunus is the political director of IfNotNow, an American Jewish group opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. ​“What we’re trying to build,” Maunus says, ​“we are building in real time.”

Lee tells In These Times that the Seder felt like ​“a reclaiming of our movement.”

“There had been such an attempt to drive us, our communities, away from each other,” Lee says, ​“using our pain, our traumas, our oppression.”

The following night, Lee stepped up to a lectern to address cheering supporters as the first-term congresswoman beat her primary opponent by more than 20 points, with the race called less than 90 minutes after polls closed.

“It’s a good night,” Lee told the crowd, adding: ​“Last time, two years ago, if you were here and you remember, it was a longer night.”

Lee’s victory two years prior was a nailbiter. She saw a 25-point lead evaporate as the United Democracy Project — a Super PAC created during the 2021-2022 election cycle by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — poured $2.4 million into a deluge of attack ads in the final month. Lee squeaked out a win by just shy of 1,000 votes.

But the story of the two-year turnaround in Lee’s electoral fortunes is about more than one congresswoman’s career or one political contest. It is a tale about the intersection of the pro-Israel lobby and corporate, right-wing politics.

An In These Times analysis of the hundreds of people and organizations financing AIPAC’s push to elect conservative, pro-Israel Democrats shows the lobby’s electoral efforts are largely in line with the interests of Wall Street and other corporate actors — the same interests that have, for years, fought to maintain a status quo of free market fundamentalism.

Peace activists rally outside the New York offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on February 22 to decry the lobby’s influence on U.S. politics.Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images

It’s also a story about the progressive resistance to this onslaught of money poisoning American democracy, a pushback that may finally be weakening AIPAC’s influence.

By training its sights on left-wing members of Congress, AIPAC is setting up a battle not just over U.S. policy surrounding Israel and Palestine, but for the soul of the Democratic Party — and a progressive future.


A PARTY PROBLEM


Hardline supporters of the Israeli government were confident that the political fallout from October 7 would finally spell doom for the Squad, the group of diverse, Bernie Sanders-inspired left-wing members of Congress that includes Lee and fellow progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). Members of the Squad had come under fire after calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, suggesting U.S. military funding to Israel should be conditional, and voting against a House resolution that backed Israel and blamed the rising Palestinian death toll solely on Hamas.

“This is a scarlet letter that far-left candidates will have to wear,” Democratic strategist Jake Dilemani told Jewish Insider at the time.

Mark Mellman, another Democratic strategist and one of the founders of Democratic Majority for Israel — a Super PAC that, like AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, was created to boost pro-Israel primary challengers against left-wing congressmembers — believed ​“the savagery of Hamas has moved the center of gravity in a pro-Israel direction.”

After October 7, United Democracy Project (UDP) began running digital ads against Lee and Bowman, maligning them for their refusal to back the singularly pro-Israel House resolution.

Eliding the fact that Lee and other Squad members had vocally condemned the Hamas attack, one such ad read: ​“Fourteen hundred Israelis slaughtered by Hamas. Women raped. Babies beheaded. Over 200 hostages. But Summer Lee was one of just 10 votes in Congress against condemning Hamas’ terrorism.”

Before long, Slate reported that AIPAC was expected to spend the gargantuan sum of $100 million during the 2023-24 cycle to unseat high-profile Israel critics in Congress, including Lee and other members of the Squad.

AIPAC wading into elections was nothing new. The lobby has been a powerful and influential force in U.S. politics for many years — and, according to James Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, ​“AIPAC coordinated the PACs that existed prior to dark money.” In such cases, Zogby explains, ​“These 15 PACs will give to this guy, and these 20 to that guy, and by the way, each one of these PACs has someone on their board who’s on AIPAC’s board of advisors.”

But the sheer scale of AIPAC’s spending — enabled by Supreme Court decisions that have unleashed the distorting influence of big money in elections — and the tactics being used are more recent developments. These pro-Israel groups now directly intervene in Democratic primary races, flooding the airwaves with negative ads maligning progressives in the eyes of loyal Democratic voters.

Former Ohio state senator and Sanders campaign surrogate Nina Turner was among the first targets of this strategy during her 2021 run for Congress. Much like Lee, Turner was the overwhelming favorite for an open blue congressional seat in northeast Ohio but saw a massive early lead vanish under a nearly $2 million avalanche of negative advertising by Democratic Majority for Israel that painted her as a disloyal extremist.

The ads funded by the pro-Israel lobby ​“kind of say the same thing: Here’s these radicals … who are scary, who are not aligned with President Biden,” explains Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, a left-wing electoral organization.

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“They told me they didn’t recognize me anymore, that Palestinians have no rights [and] that if I didn’t ‘disavow’ the Squad, they were going to come at me with everything they had. And that is, in fact, what they did.”


Turner recalls a conversation with a former ally who does business in Cleveland: ​“They told me they didn’t recognize me anymore, that Palestinians have no rights [and] that if I didn’t ​‘disavow’ the Squad, they were going to come at me with everything they had. And that is, in fact, what they did.”

Since Turner lost that election, a spate of progressives have been ousted from their seats, including establishment-friendly politicians like former Democratic Reps. Donna Edwards in Maryland and Andy Levin in Michigan, whose sole offense appeared to be criticizing illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and supporting a two-state solution (both of which are stated positions of President Joe Biden and many mainstream Democrats).

Levin, who comes from one of the country’s most prominent political and Jewish families, lost his seat in 2022 after redistricting pitted him against another incumbent for the new, open seat. AIPAC put more than $4 million toward defeating him.

“We were buried by [that] avalanche,” Levin recalls.

Those backing Israel’s assault on Gaza now hope to deliver another bloody nose to the Left, in particular by defeating Bowman and Bush, the politically vulnerable duo that made up the Squad’s 2021 class and are also outspoken critics of the Israeli government. Bowman has referred to Israel as an ​“apartheid” state, while Bush has condemned what she calls ​“Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign” and ​“atrocities against Palestinians.”

The most recent public polls (conducted by groups hostile to Squad members in March and February, respectively) show Bowman trailing his primary challenger George Latimer by 17 points, while Bush was trailing opponent Wesley Bell by 22 points. AIPAC’s PAC (a separate entity from UDP, its Super PAC) has already funneled $1.3 million to Latimer, in its largest total donation to any candidate this election cycle. The PAC also gave $555,000 to Bell.

In mid-May, UDP made its first expenditure on the Bowman-Latimer race in New York, spending $1.9 million to place ads charging that Bowman ​“has his own agenda” and ​“refuses to compromise, even with President Biden.” By the end of the month, that spending figure rose to nearly $8 million, the most the Super PAC has ever spent in a single race. At the same time, UDP poured roughly $240,000 into the Bush-Bell race in Missouri, a number that’s expected to grow significantly in the coming weeks.

Democratic operatives familiar with both races told The Intercept in May that AIPAC is forecast to spend more than $20 million against Bowman and Bush in each primary, including through negative ads funded by UDP. Neither AIPAC nor UDP responded to In These Times’ requests for comment.


Since fall 2022, some of those in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have twice tried to ban Super PAC funding from primaries through a resolution to the Democratic National Committee. But the resolution was never even raised for debate, despite having 31 co-sponsors, including four state party chairs and two vice chairs. ​“When it comes down to it, they want the option to interfere in the primary elections if they feel that’s in the interest of the [party],” says former Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer, who co-authored the resolution.

The impact of the party’s refusal to rein in outside spending has become apparent. As she competed for reelection this year, Lee apparently became a target of billionaire Jeff Yass, who put $800,000 into a group called Moderate PAC, which helped finance ads accusing Lee of ​“opposing President Biden” at a time when abortion rights and democracy are under threat from former President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress.

The irony runs deep: Yass was not only reportedly invested in one of Trump’s companies, but he’s also a prolific funder of right-wing causes and the largest single campaign donor overall this cycle, with 99% of the more than $70 million he’s spent going to Republicans.


Protesters march near AIPAC headquarters in Washington D.C. in support of a free Palestine on March 13.Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images
“This may have been pioneered by AIPAC, but Big Pharma isn’t stupid, the tobacco industry isn’t stupid, the fossil fuel industry isn’t stupid. Why won’t they just say: ‘Great idea, AIPAC. Thank you very much. We will pick the nominee of both parties and that’ll be great for us to advance our interests.’”


“As a progressive and a Democrat, I don’t want to have Republicans coming in and picking nominees,” Levin says. ​“This may have been pioneered by AIPAC, but Big Pharma isn’t stupid, the tobacco industry isn’t stupid, the fossil fuel industry isn’t stupid. Why won’t they just say: ​‘Great idea, AIPAC. Thank you very much. We will pick the nominee of both parties and that’ll be great for us to advance our interests.’”

Or, as Bush recently explained to Politico, ​“AIPAC and their Republican mega donors are targeting Black and brown Democratic incumbents with the same right-wing playbook across the country.”

The data analyzed by In These Times shows these worries are not misplaced.


FIRE VS. THE SQUAD


An In These Times analysis found that the 528 individuals and corporations who gave to UDP between January 2023 and February 2024 are largely top-level executives from the finance and real estate industries, along with a smattering of billionaires and other members of the 1%. Nearly 60% of UDP donors are high-level executives, including CEOs and other corporate officers.

This dynamic is essentially flipped when it comes to those funding Squad members like Lee, Bowman and Bush, whose 2023-24 donor pool is made up of just 4% CEOs and other top executives, while 60% are non-executives.

The list of donors to UDP includes dozens of current or former AIPAC officials, indicating their passion to maintain unconditional U.S. support for Israel. But a deeper look into the backgrounds of those funding the Super PAC suggests that foreign policy isn’t their sole motivation.

“It’s not just their personal pro-Israel interests that they’re advancing,” says Charlie Blaettler, senior campaign strategist at the progressive Working Families Party, which has supported several electoral campaigns of Squad members. ​“A lot of folks are also advancing their own professional and business interests with these donations.”

Many of the donors to UDP are true blue Democrats — donors like the Hillary Clinton-superfan Haim Saban (whose company once produced the Power Rangers franchise) and former Blackstone Senior Managing Director Steve Zelin (who backed the 2020 presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden).

But UDP’s single biggest donor is Jan Koum, the multibillionaire former CEO of WhatsApp and prolific Republican donor. He has also been a major funder of groups like Friends of Ir David and the Central Fund of Israel, which fund and support illegal Israeli settlements. Koum’s propensity for sharing pro-Trump and anti-immigration stories from outlets like Breitbart and Fox News made news in 2018.


Design by Rachel K Dooley
Nearly 60% of UDP donors are high-level executives, including CEOs and other corporate officers.


UDP’s heavy reliance on right-wing (even hard-right) oligarchs comes into stark relief when looking at its most elite donors. As of February, 43 individuals and corporations had given $200,000 or more each to UDP this cycle, accounting for $25.5 million, or 55% of total contributions. Of those, 26% are either primarily Republican donors or Trump donors (or both). Trump donors include the Kraft Group, helmed by billionaire Robert Kraft (the New England Patriots owner whose friendship with Trump goes back decades), as well as billionaire Bernie Marcus (the co-founder and former CEO of The Home Depot, who has promised to keep financing Trump’s presidential bid even if the Republican nominee ends up behind bars).

AIPAC itself has become increasingly aligned with far-right politicians. The lobby has notoriously endorsed hundreds of anti-abortion candidates and election deniers since 2021, including recent Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson in North Carolina, who has a long history of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic comments.

“Big money interests are always on the hunt for elected officials that will do their bidding,” Turner explains. ​“Behind the curtain though, these groups could care less about the Democratic Party itself or the people who live in my district who need clean water, housing and jobs.”

Nearly half of UDP’s donors work in what’s collectively known as the FIRE sector — finance, insurance and real estate. WinnCompanies, for example, founded by Arthur Winn, is a member of the National Multifamily Housing Council, a powerful landlord and rental housing trade association. It was part of an industry coalition that lobbied Biden in June 2021 to end the pandemic-era eviction moratorium, a moratorium vocally backed by members of the Squad and successfully extended (albeit temporarily) thanks in large part to the efforts of Bush, who spent four days sleeping on the steps of Capitol Hill to pressure the White House to prolong the policy.

Squad members have also been highly critical of the private equity industry — a subset of the finance sector heavily represented among UDP donors — for, among other things, driving up housing costs.

Private equity was, along with a broad crosssection of Wall Street and corporate America, also a fierce opponent of Build Back Better, the $2.2 trillion social spending bill proposed by Biden and championed by Squad members and other progressives. At least a dozen UDP donors, including billionaire Paul Singer, are top executives at firms that are members or directors of the trade group American Investment Council, which fought Build Back Better to its death over the legislation’s tax increases on corporations and executives.

The failure of Build Back Better also came in large part because of the opposition of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (then D-Ariz.), who ​“would do nothing at all on carried interest, so we’re just stuck on that,” according to one Democratic staffer complaining to Mother Jones. Sinema, long a magnet for finance sector cash, was also on the receiving end of the generosity of numerous UDP donors as she gummed up the works for what was supposed to be Biden’s signature piece of domestic legislation. One such donation, of $5,800, was sent to Sinema in September 2021 — the exact time she was actively working to block Build Back Better — from billionaire Trump donor Marc Rowan, whose firm Apollo Global Management is represented on the board of the American Investment Council.


Design by Rachel K Dooley


WIZARD OF OZ POWER


AIPAC’s recent big money onslaught isn’t just about defeating a handful of left-wing lawmakers; it appears to be in service of cultivating an aura of invincibility and enhancing AIPAC’s fearsome reputation as the one lobby you don’t dare cross on Capitol Hill.

“I’ve worked on campaigns where the candidate will say, ​‘I’d like to stay with you guys, but they’re threatening to spend this much money against me and I can’t do it, so I’m going to retract the statement that I made,’” Zogby says.

Geoff Simpson, campaigns director for Justice Democrats, says potential attacks and spending from AIPAC are ​“always one of the first things on candidates’ minds.”

“There’s been at least a dozen conversations with candidates or prospective candidates where AIPAC is one of the first things brought up,” Simpson adds.

Andrabi notes that, recently, the message from some members of Congress is that ​“what’s going on in Palestine is awful … I would call for a cease-fire, but I just can’t risk an AIPAC primary.”

It’s a reputation AIPAC works hard to broadcast, posting a nearly 100% success rate. On X (formerly Twitter) this April, AIPAC announced that all of its endorsements in Pennsylvania came out on top.

But AIPAC also makes strategic choices to maintain that reputation — which suggests the lobby isn’t quite so unbeatable.

As Andrabi explains: ​“They’re desperate to spend money in races, even if it doesn’t really matter or it’s not that effectual, and then claim victory immediately.”

Jewish Insider noted early in the campaign cycle that a ​“sizeable majority” of AIPAC’s list of House endorsees were running for seats that the Cook Political Report rated as far from competitive. In Pennsylvania, all but one of the 13 candidates AIPAC endorsed this cycle ran unopposed in their primaries, and Cook rated seven as uncompetitive in the general election, with only two rated as toss-ups.

Most tellingly, AIPAC only ensured its flawless record in Pennsylvania by eventually deciding not to contest the Lee race, despite having attempted to find a challenger to bankroll.

Lee’s opponent received neither the lobby’s endorsement nor the benefit of UDP’s outside spending. It was a curious move for an entity marshaling astronomical amounts to spend Israel critics out of existence, especially since Lee has accused Israel of carrying out ​“war crimes” and has backed cutting off military aid to the country.

“We know of four or five people AIPAC asked to run against Summer [Lee] in Pittsburgh who told them no, because they didn’t think that Summer was beatable,” Simpson says. The sum AIPAC was discussing putting toward the race, Simpson adds, was between $10 and $20 million.

“To be clear, AIPAC lost because they couldn’t win,” Lee says.

design by rachel k dooley


“To be clear, AIPAC lost because they couldn’t win,” Lee says.

A further examination of the electoral landscape reveals this race was just one of several high-profile failures for AIPAC this cycle so far.

In March, AIPAC fell flat on its face in an early test of its power to shape Democratic primaries after the establishment-friendly Dave Min prevailed in the Democratic primary for Rep. Katie Porter’s seat in Orange County, Calif. UDP ran $4.6 million worth of attack ads against Min, whose pro-Israel stance is tempered with only mild criticism. He won by six points anyway.

In Michigan, two people came forward in November 2023 alleging they had been offered $20 million to run against Squad member Rashida Tlaib. Both refused, even though Tlaib’s controversies since October 7 — including censure by the House for refusing to denounce the phrase ​“From the river to the sea” — should have made her an easy target, at least by AIPAC’s logic.

“I didn’t intend for a private phone call to turn public. But now that it has, here’s the truth. One of AIPAC’s biggest donors offered $20m if I dropped out of the U.S. Senate race to run against @RashidaTlaib. I said no. I won’t be bossed, bullied, or bought,” Hill Harper tweeted on November 22, 2023.

A spokesperson for AIPAC told Politico that they were not involved in the exchange with Harper. Five days later, Nasser Beydoun tweeted that he also ​“was offered $20 million to withdraw from the senatorial race and to run against my friend @rashidatlaib.”

The lobby appears to, at least so far, be staying away from the race.

Still, AIPAC has had a major impact when it chooses to spend. To the extent progressives have neutralized its influence, it’s been the result of deliberate, strategic efforts. Lee’s win, for instance, wasn’t just a matter of the politics around Israel changing at home; she was propelled into office as part of a progressive electoral wave that has reshaped Pittsburgh politics.

“It’s a situation where … if you’re going to run against Summer [Lee], you’re crossing Summer, but you’re also crossing Mayor Ed Gainey, the County Executive Sara Innamorato, and SEIU Healthcare, which has proven one of the biggest power players locally in Pittsburgh and across the state,” Simpson says.

And, he adds, Lee and her team have focused on continuing to provide effective constituent services while delivering money to her district. They boast, for example, of helping deliver $1 billion of federal money to western Pennsylvania for projects ranging from infrastructure repairs and affordable housing to clean energy manufacturing and lead removal.

“We help the constituents with their passports and their Social Security and Medicare,” says Wasi Mohamed, Lee’s chief of staff. ​“There’s a lot of this work that people don’t see.”

As a result, Lee blunted the emergence of a viable challenger while winning the endorsement of not just progressives but AIPAC-backed centrists — including Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, who has emerged as an unapologetic supporter of Israel’s devastating assault on Palestinians.

“They polled extensively in this district,” Lee says of AIPAC, ​“and last I heard, polls are not free, nor are they cheap.”

“It’s sort of like The Wizard of Oz,” Zogby says. “Pull back the curtain and what you see is a pretty sordid mess: a little guy at a computer grinding out hostile ads. They know that Israel is not a winning issue."


By contrast, Bowman and Bush entered the political scene by emulating insurgents like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and unseating longstanding congressional incumbents, leapfrogging the process of moving up through local and state levels. That left them without the level of local party support Lee earned. And, unlike Lee, the two most vulnerable Squad members have also been tagged with scandals that pre-dated October 7. Bowman has been harangued in the press over his congressional censure after setting off a fire alarm in the middle of a House session in September 2023 (allegedly to delay proceedings, an accusation he has denied), while Bush has been fending off attacks over the alleged misuse of campaign funds for security services (accusations she calls ​“simply false”).

According to Zogby, the threat of an AIPAC-funded challenge is intended to coax members of Congress away from the type of brazen progressive positions advocated by Bowman and Bush.

“It’s sort of like The Wizard of Oz,” Zogby says. ​“Pull back the curtain and what you see is a pretty sordid mess: a little guy at a computer grinding out hostile ads. They know that Israel is not a winning issue. … They want to hide their own fear and project the omnipotence and power — ​‘We can’t be bucked, we can’t be beat, so you ought to come on board.’ Unfortunately, all too many members do that.”

In early April, Bowman echoed this sentiment in a #ProtectTheSquad livestream event organized in part by Justice Democrats, saying that AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel cast a ​“paper-tiger Wizard of Oz power.” Determined, Bowman added: ​“We are gonna take down AIPAC this election cycle.”


Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who has called for a cease-fire in Gaza, speaks at a news conference with Rabbis for Ceasefire and other members of the Squad. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is making efforts to unseat the incumbent.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images


REJECT AIPAC


Far from wilting in the face of these attacks, progressives are trying something new. In March, a group of more than 20 progressive organizations — including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats — announced the formation of Reject AIPAC. The organization pledged to put forward a ​“seven-figure electoral defense campaign” to defend AIPAC’s targets in Congress and launch its own lobbying campaign to counterbalance AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill, pressuring Democrats to reject an AIPAC endorsement.

The coalition started coming together after AIPAC’s involvement in the 2022 election cycle. Over the following year, a core group of organizers researched, polled and discussed what the effort could look like, while bringing in more coalition members. The effort found new urgency in the aftermath of October 7 and AIPAC’s renewed focus on progressives.

“It’s taken months and months to get together,” says Andrabi. ​“What accelerated it most definitely was the Israeli military’s horrifying assault on the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, the Israel lobby’s post-October 7 escalation against the Left, coupled with the Biden administration’s stubborn support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, has had a galvanizing effect on grassroots support for progressives, particularly from Muslim and Arab Americans intent on proving that being pro-Palestinian isn’t a political liability. Muslim donors angry about the Democratic response to Gaza ​“have stepped up in a major, major way for our candidates,” Simpson says.

“There’s always been a Palestinian solidarity movement, but not one that is also looking on the electoral track,” says activist and author Linda Sarsour, who helped organize the Reject AIPAC coalition. ​“The Biden administration’s unequivocal support of Israel has forced Muslim Americans to think to themselves, ​‘We have money, we have voters in swing states — why do we not have any influence?’”

Sure enough, many in the Squad saw their quarterly fund-raising totals more than double in the period after the violence broke out in Gaza. Ilhan Omar, a favorite target of the Israel-at-all-costs camp, saw a nearly fourfold rise in her fundraising haul in the final quarter of 2023, while going into the primary, Lee also raised many times more than the amount she had before October. Tlaib’s nearly $3.7 million total that was raised between October 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023, made up 80% of what she raised for the entire cycle, despite the manufactured controversy swirling around her.

“Our No. 1 volunteers were people who said, ‘I’m knocking on a thousand doors because you stood up for justice when it was hard,’” Mohamed says. “That, to me, was the story of this whole election.”


And it wasn’t just fundraising; ground game support also surged. ​“Our No. 1 volunteers were people who said, ​‘I’m knocking on a thousand doors because you stood up for justice when it was hard,’” Mohamed says. ​“That, to me, was the story of this whole election.”

All Squad members, as well as Squad-affiliated progressive Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), have vocally supported a ceasefire in Gaza since October. Another progressive freshman associated with the group, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), joined the call a month later. All were more recently part of the historic 37 Democrats to vote against sending $17 billion in weapons to Israel, and they also voted against the key rule-change cooked up by GOP leadership to get the bill passed through the House. The participation of Frost and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) is especially notable: Both drew criticism two years ago for centrist positions on Israel that they apparently took to head off an AIPAC-funded challenge, and had declined to join Squad members in voting against the House’s pro-Israel resolution last October. (Reached for comment, Casar said, ​“So much has changed since 2022, but I’ve always tried to work toward the safety and freedom of Palestinians and Israelis alike with a focus on human rights.”)

“It’s the movements that they’re a part of,” says Sarsour. ​“These people are responding to the moment that we live in. They’re watching organizing happening all across the country, they’re watching mass mobilization.”

Indeed, critique of Israel and opposition to unconditional U.S. military support is quickly becoming more common within the Democratic Party, as much of the U.S. public has shifted its views to align more closely with the Squad.

Polls show majorities of Americans now support putting various conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel — only five years after Ocasio-Cortez was denounced for simply suggesting that cutting such aid ​“can be discussed.”



THE LONG GAME


Just as the targeting of progressives by UDP donors is about more than Israel, the progressive fightback is, too. ​“I was working for the Sunrise Movement during Andy Levin’s election and I saw these dynamics very clearly threatening the prospects of climate policy,” says Maunus. All the candidates Sunrise supported were under threat by AIPAC, he recalls, ​“because they’re also the candidates that understand the realities in Palestine [and] are criticizing Israel.” Maunus would become central to forming the Reject AIPAC coalition.

Lee notes that ​“AIPAC and its donors are blatant in their actual agenda, [which] is less Israel and Palestine, and more how to keep the Democratic Party from being a party that reflects the interests of marginalized people, of working-class people, of labor, of our environment and of those who are desperate for Medicare for All.”

This resistance to AIPAC’s onslaught and this fight, progressives warn, will last more than a single election cycle, and it will likely see defeats along the way. But its impact is already clear in AIPAC’s inability to unseat Lee and recruit a viable candidate to challenge Tlaib, among other ways.

Simpson says that sometime between six months and a year ago ​“people were writing that the whole Squad was in danger and were going to get wiped out, and now it’s really narrowed to Jamaal [Bowman] and Cori [Bush].” Reflecting on their power and strategy, Turner says the movement has ​“got to play the long game.” She emphasizes: ​“AIPAC has been doing this for decades.”



One part of that long game may look like an aspect of Lee’s campaign, when volunteers were knocking on doors this spring, days before Lee broke matzah at the Seder in Squirrel Hill. Door after door, Lee’s volunteers didn’t just speak to voters about her reelection but engaged in the kind of difficult conversations around the assault on Gaza that have been the source of such bitter division in U.S. society since October 7.

Those conversations did not include just Jewish voters, but Muslim and Arab American communities, along with progressives who feel abandoned by the Democratic Party but remain determined to transform it — in part by planting the seeds of a new coalition capable of beating back the big money interests that further corrode democracy each and every election cycle.

“We have to go and talk to some people who maybe are not inclined to naturally come to us, or have fallen off because of the use of certain issues as wedges against progressives and people of color,” Lee says. ​“Campaigns are not just a vehicle to win elections. They’re also vehicles to drive and create and sustain community.”


Research and fact-checking provided by Riley Roliff, Imani Sumbi, Andrew Ancheta, Eloise Goldsmith, Joshua Mei, Thomas Birmingham and Skyler Aikerson.

Republicans Will Weaponize Rural Suffering as Long as Democrats Ignore It

JD Vance is a poser, but he’s telling a dangerously compelling story about rural America that Democrats are doing nothing to defuse.

Joseph Bullington

IN THESE TIMES

August 19, 2024

  

J.D. Vance is a poser, but he knows how to tell a story.Photo by Alex Wong via Getty Images

The last couple months in U.S. politics have felt like a bad dream — the kind where you’re in a boat drifting toward a waterfall and your arms feel like limp sausages, useless on the oars.

In this waking nightmare, the waterfall is the impending rise to power of the U.S. far right. And your floppy wiener arms are the only things standing between us and that fate: the Democrats and their spineless politics.

Things have gotten slightly less bleak in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention. Joe Biden left the field, and the half-buried carcass of the Democratic Party began to show signs of life. Even a political barbarian like myself couldn’t help but feel little whooshes of excitement when the party’s new standard bearers — Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — proved capable of denouncing the Right with fully-formed sentences.

What terrified me about the Republican National Convention terrifies me still: The Republicans are effectively wielding rural suffering as a political weapon, telling a potent story that—in classic fascist style—deflects the blame onto immigrants and other out-groups.


But let us not confuse this giddiness with evidence of a winning politics. What terrified me about the Republican National Convention terrifies me still: The Republicans are effectively wielding rural suffering as a political weapon, telling a potent story that — in classic fascist style — deflects the blame onto immigrants and other out-groups. Democrats could demolish these racist lies with a compelling story of their own — one that defuses the Right’s fascist messaging and shows how rural whites and immigrants (many of them in rural areas, of course) are actually being robbed and exploited by the very same profiteers, the same rigged economic system. Is this what the Democrats are doing? Of course not — that’s what makes it a bad dream.

In human form, this nightmare of mine has a name, and its JD Vance.

Despite the internet mockery and couch jokes, Vance is one of the Trump Right’s best messengers yet — and not because he has a stranglehold on rural, working-class authenticity. If Vance — a Yale-educated venture capitalist who, in the un-toppable words of my colleague Hamilton Nolan, ​“looks like he sleeps in a vat of lotion” — manages to pass for ​“authentic,” it says more about this comatose strip mall of a country than it does about him. He’s a poser, but he’s good at it — and he’s telling rural America a dangerously compelling story.

A street in rural Pennsylvania’s ​​Schuylkill Haven named “Forget Me Not”Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein via Getty Images


In his RNC speech, Vance spoke to the pain of small towns and rural areas ​“cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class,” places where ​“jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.” As prosperity bled out of these communities, he says, drugs poured in, and he talks about losing people he knew to the overdose epidemic. Then he’s on to lambasting stagnant wages and the rising cost of housing and the growing impossibility, for many people, of buying or even renting a place to live. Who among us can’t relate to this pain? Who has not struggled with opioids or shitty wages or finding affordable housing or has not at least known someone who has? These are defining features of modern American life, especially in rural parts.

And, critical to the story he’s telling, Vance names the cause of this misery, the villains responsible for it: ​“America’s ruling class” (so far, so good) and the ​“millions of illegal aliens” they let into the country to steal your jobs and houses and deal drugs to your kids (and there’s the dark, fascist twist we were waiting for). This story also includes a hero, a savior named Donald Trump, who if reelected will take revenge on the ruling class and embark on a campaign of mass deportations.

Mainstream Democrats have responded with weak sauce, attacking Vance and Trump for the swindlers they are but failing to offer a compelling alternative story.

On immigration, they too often mumble about secure borders and try to sound like Republicans. Harris, for example, has tried to position herself as tougher than Trump on the border, citing her time as attorney general of California and her support for the bipartisan border security bill that Trump helped undermine. And as to what’s causing the rural suffering Vance is speaking to directly, they don’t offer much of an answer at all (unless you count selling camo campaign hats).

This is a grave mistake — politically because more than a third of rural voters could actually be persuaded, and morally because this suffering is very real. And the villains, too, are real, but they have much more in common with Vance and Trump than the immigrants they demonize. Because the truth is that rural areas haven’t been so much ​“left behind” as systematically raided.


A farmhouse sits abandoned and decaying in rural Arkansas.Photo by Rex Lisman via Getty Images


In a 2021 essay called ​“Hollowed Out Heartland, U.S.A.,” Marc Edelman, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Hunter College, documents how, since the 1980s, ​“financial capital has developed imaginative new ways to strip and seize” rural assets, ​“whether these be mutually-owned banks, industries, cooperatively-owned grain elevators, local newspapers, hospitals, people’s homes or stores located in towns and malls.”

At the same time, the merciless logic of capital continues to drive small-scale farmers off the land in favor of bigger and bigger operations — massive monocrop biodiversity deserts dependent on expensive machinery and drenched in the fertilizers and pesticides peddled by massive agribusiness companies. Less farmers means less kids in the local school system, less customers for struggling local businesses, less of a town. And the people who remain do so at great risk to their health: A recent study found that, because of heavy pesticide use, merely living in a farming town is as dangerous as smoking.
Capital has treated many rural areas as resource colonies, places to plunder and cast aside.


“The lion’s share of the vast wealth that rural zones produced and continue to produce has accrued to shareholders in corporations and financial institutions headquartered in a handful of distant, economically dynamic urban centers,” writes Edelman. Capital has, in short, treated many rural areas as resource colonies, places to plunder and cast aside. It’s no mystery why rural people might feel they’ve been cheated and robbed — they have been.

 
This process has spread banking, news, food and maternity-care deserts across vast swaths of rural America. The consequences are dire: Banking deserts mean less access to credit, newspaper closures are associated with increased government corruption and community disintegration, and lack of access to maternity care contributes to the United States’ soaring rates of maternal and child mortality. The rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States has quadrupled since 2002, and drug overdoses now kill more Americans every year than were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.


A couple waits before receiving lunch at the Hope Center, which has been a staple in Hagerstown, Md., since 1955, providing shelter for the unhoused and resources for those struggling with addiction.Photo by Spencer Platt via Getty Images


“As once vital communities and neighborhoods hollowed out, losing their institutions and the capacity to appropriate the wealth they produce, despair and anxiety triggered violence and addiction,” Edelman writes. ​“Scholars and the media have underestimated the human toll of this crisis.”

This pain, given direction by a story, can easily become rage — and a potent weapon in the hands of Republicans (who have no intention of solving these problems, of course, but know an opportunity when they see one). The Left must defuse this weapon by telling the true story of the plundering of rural America.

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Joseph Bullington 

  

J.D. Vance’s Appalachian Graveyard
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Trump, Vance and the Right-Wing Counter-Revolutionaries
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Given direction by a new story, this pain could cease to successfully wedge off rural whites, as Vance and company are betting it will. It could instead be a source of unity that offers rural people a place in a shared struggle against the real villains. Against the drug companies that exploited the dead-end emptiness of American life and fueled the overdose epidemic that’s killing our friends from West Virginia to Chicago. Against the private equity funds and corporate landlords and vacation-rental companies and land speculators that are driving us from our homes in small towns and big cities alike. Against the chemical companies poisoning the Midwest with their pesticides and the Gulf Coast with their factories. Against this system that creates profit by feeding people and their beloved places into the meat grinder of the economy. Against the logic of the sacrifice zone itself, and all those who push it and profit from it.

As Democrats gather in Chicago this week to build out a platform, that’s the story I’ll be listening for. But I won’t be holding my breath, because the villains in this story — the villains plundering us all — also write some pretty hefty campaign checks, and the Democratic Party, by and large, seems more willing to let the boat flounder toward fascism than to name them.


Joseph Bullington grew up in the Smith River watershed near White Sulphur Springs, Montana. He is the editor of Rural America In These Times.

Why Is the UAW’s Federal Monitor Involving Himself in the Union’s Stance on Gaza?

The monitor tasked with overseeing the union’s compliance with a federal consent decree is inappropriately challenging the union’s call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Andy Levin and Sanjukta Paul 

August 8, 2024

IN THESE TIMES

UAW President Shawn Fain calls for a cease-fire in Gaza at a news conference in Washington D.C. on December 14, 2023.Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

As Michigan lawyers involved in labor law and policy, we were shocked to see that the federal monitor overseeing the United Auto Workers’ return to good governance has twice commented on the union’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That matter is completely outside of the monitor’s scope, and his improper interference in the union’s affairs calls into question his ability to continue to serve effectively in this role.

Let’s look at how we got here. In January 2021, a U.S. federal judge entered a consent decree—a negotiated, court-authorized settlement — to resolve fraud and corruption charges filed by the Department of Justice against the UAW, several of its officers, and management figures at Chrysler (now Stellantis). The civil and criminal charges concerned kickbacks, bribery and other wrongdoing among certain union officers and corporate managers, constituting clear misuse of union funds and members’ trust.

That matter is completely outside of the monitor’s scope, and his improper interference in the union’s affairs calls into question his ability to continue to serve effectively in this role.


That consent decree led the court to appoint a private lawyer to serve as a monitor to oversee compliance with the decree. It also led to the ​“direct election” of UAW leadership for the first time, after members voted to exercise this right pursuant to the decree. That election resulted in victory for a self-defined reform slate, as current union President Shawn Fain and his running mates won a majority of executive board positions.

Fain was immediately faced with bargaining to renew contracts at Detroit’s Big Three automakers, the heart of the union’s historical and current membership and one of the central pillars of unionized work arrangements in the United States. Fain took a radically different approach to bargaining than his predecessors and emerged with a historic contract with each automaker, winning massive gains in wages, benefits and pensions, ending ​“tiers” that pitted workers against each other, and even creating avenues to bring workers in the automakers’ emerging battery plants under the master contract.
The UAW announcement was politically significant, as the union has been a powerful messenger supporting President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.


The new leadership then launched a wave of ambitious organizing drives — practically before the ink on these contracts had dried — while embracing the union’s storied social justice legacy. (For example, the UAW helped bankroll the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.)

On Dec. 1, 2023, the UAW joined other unions in calling for a ​“ceasefire in Israel and Gaza” and announced that its executive board had voted to ​“form a Divestment and Just Transition working group to study the history of Israel and Palestine, the union’s economic ties to the conflict, and to explore how to achieve a just transition for US workers from war to peace.” The union explicitly tied this move to its social justice history, including ​“mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the CONTRA war” and standing ​“for justice across the globe.”

UAW President Owen Bieber (right) in 1986 cuts up a Shell credit card a news conference to announce the union's support for a boycott of Shell products as part of an international protest against apartheid South Africa.Bettmann

The UAW announcement was politically significant, as the union has been a powerful messenger supporting President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. Biden made history by joining striking autoworkers on the picket line, while Fain has been steadfast in criticizing former President Donald Trump and rebuffing Trump’s attempts to present himself as a friend of workers. That the union took an antiwar stand implicitly critical of the president may have carried extra weight

Of course, whatever positions the union might take on social justice issues has nothing to do with the mandate of a monitor appointed to ensure compliance with norms of financial and organizational probity. What’s more, the legitimacy of the monitor’s position depends on his own probity in sticking to his mandate, lest it seem a federal official is interfering in a union or other organization’s internal affairs or trying to influence it inappropriately.

Yet the Detroit News reported that the monitor could not help taking advantage of his position of power to meddle in a policy matter evidently of personal interest to him but unrelated to the court order. According to emails between the union’s attorney and the monitor, the monitor called Fain to express concerns on a ​“strictly personal level” about the union’s position on the crisis in Gaza.

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Let’s dispense with any notion of a communication about union policy being ​“strictly personal.” The monitor and Fain had, and to our knowledge have, no personal relationship outside the scope of the monitor’s duties. They did not grow up together, work together, socialize together, or anything of the kind. Even if they had such a personal relationship, once the monitor was appointed, communicating about union business outside the scope of his mandate could not be characterized as ​“personal,” given his immense power over the union and its leaders.

In February, the monitor again raised concerns, this time about a statement issued by one UAW Local. He emailed a letter from the Anti-Defamation League (sent to the monitor’s hotline, set up to detect violations of the consent decree) to the union’s legal department, again acknowledging ​“this issue is outside of the monitor’s jurisdiction” while characterizing the issues raised in the letter as ​“serious.” What can it possibly mean for a federal monitor to admit that an issue is obviously outside his jurisdiction but is ​“serious”? How could the union’s leadership treat this as anything but a demand to conform to the monitor’s view or face unknown consequences? As the union’s outside counsel wrote to the monitor, these acts showed ​“a surprising lack of integrity.”

A major escalation during the UAW's historic Stand-Up Strike in fall 2023 was when the union went on strike at Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant.Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images


We concur and note the irony of the situation: the consent decree that defines the monitor’s work is aimed at rooting out precisely the sort of distortions of organizational integrity that could result from the monitor’s meddling. The monitor has acknowledged that the union’s position on U.S. policy in the Middle East is beyond his purview; there is no dispute about this. The impropriety results from the combined effects of this fact with the massive and largely discretionary power he holds over the union and its ability to function in other ways.

Duke law professor Veronica Root Martinez, one of the country’s foremost authorities on monitorships, wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 2023 about the critical need to ensure proper oversight and monitoring of monitors, given that monitors’ activities ​“directly impact[] the public in a variety of ways.” Root Martinez has shown that the variety of monitorship arrangements may require greater regulatory standardization to ensure such oversight in the public interest.

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In this case, fortunately, there can be little doubt that the court already has the authority to provide the necessary oversight. The court has expressly retained the ongoing jurisdiction and authority to implement and oversee its decree as needed, e.g., by handling appeals from the decisions of its appointed agents, including the monitor. Implicit in this retention of authority for immediately foreseeable issues — and also inherent in its more basic powers — is the court’s broader authority to ensure the integrity of the institutional arrangement it has authorized and continues to empower. Other courts too have ​“maintain[ed] supervisory power of [] implementation” in similar situations.

Given the obviousness and severity of the violation, that it was repeated twice, that the speech involves a matter of pressing public concern and the likelihood that other supervised organizations may be chilled in the exercise of legitimate speech rights as a result, we believe the court should seriously consider replacing the monitor.


The court must exercise that supervisory power to curb and remedy the improper conduct that has already occurred. At a minimum, this should include a clearly worded declaration from the court that the union’s speech on issues of global justice and peace (or other domestic or foreign policy matters) cannot be the subject of communications from the monitor, and that he must not seek even indirectly to influence any matter beyond his purview. Given the obviousness and severity of the violation, that it was repeated twice, that the speech involves a matter of pressing public concern and the likelihood that other supervised organizations may be chilled in the exercise of legitimate speech rights as a result, we believe the court should seriously consider replacing the monitor.

The court must craft a remedy that dissuades this or any other monitor from misusing monitorship opportunities to engage in extracurricular arm-twisting — acts of inappropriate influence that are ironically very much in the same genus of interference with union democracy and integrity that the complaint in this case sought to root out, and that the union seemed to be well on its way to resolving.


Andy Levin served as staff attorney to President Bill Clinton’s labor law reform commission and has worked on labor law and policy at the AFL-CIO, for the state of Michigan and as a member of Congress.


Sanjukta Paul is a law professor at the University of Michigan specializing in labor and antitrust law. She previously represented workers, civil rights plaintiffs and labor unions in Southern California.

What Sex Workers Want from Kamala Harris

In an open letter, sex workers laid out how a Harris administration could rein in danger and criminalization

Kim Kelly 

August 19, 2024

IN THESE TIMES

At the top of sex workers' list is decriminalization. Here, sex workers and their allies march at the Third Annual Slut Walk (Marcha De Las Putas) in Queens, organized by Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo and Lorena Borjas Community Fund, demanding an end to transphobic violence, criminalization and discrimination, on Sept. 18, 2020

.Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

Much has been made of the stark contrast between Republicans’ darkly authoritarian message and the ​“happy warrior” approach of Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But the Harris-Walz juggernaut remains heavy on vibes and light on policy; the campaign’s website currently hosts only the candidates’ bios, donate and ​“take action” links, events listings and a merch store.

The perceived malleability of Harris’s platform has encouraged some progressive activists to push her towards specific positions. Harris met with leaders of the Uncommitted movement in Detroit on August 7, who pushed for an arms embargo on Israel. But protesters calling for an end to genocide were escorted out of her campaign rally the same day; the day after that, her national security adviser stated publicly that Harris opposes an embargo. It remains to be seen how much potential there is for people outside the campaign to shape Harris’ approach, but many groups are making their wishlists public.

Among them is SWOP Behind Bars, a branch of the national grassroots nonprofit Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA (SWOP-USA). SWOP Behind Bars provides legal and practical support for incarcerated sex workers and survivors of trafficking, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and forced criminality.

No matter which of the candidates ends up sitting in the Oval Office, it is a stark truth that the workers and survivors these organizations represent will remain at risk of exploitation, abuse and worse. But in a July 30 open letter to Harris signed by sex workers and by advocates for sex workers and trafficking victims, SWOP Behind Bars has laid out its vision of how a Harris administration could rein in the widespread repression, criminalization and dangers that sex workers face.


Protesters in London oppose a U.K. version of SESTA-FOSTA, the U.S. laws supported by then-Sen. Kamala Harris that put sex workers at higher risk, on July 4, 2018.Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images


With an eye towards harmful past positions by Harris, the organizers wrote, ​“There are some concerns we need to address before stepping into the voting booth and checking the box next to your name.”
SESTA-FOSTA: Pushing workers into danger


First among their concerns was Harris’ support as a senator for a package of disastrous laws passed in 2018 under Trump: the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which together are colloquially known as SESTA-FOSTA. While the laws were intended to fight sex trafficking, extensive research as well as sex workers’ lived experiences have shown that SESTA-FOSTA actually hurt the people it aimed to help.


SESTA-FOSTA changed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to allow internet platforms to be held responsible for hosting content advertising sexual services. As a result, websites like Backpage and CraigslistPersonals, which sex workers had long used to advertise, were yanked offline. This was disastrous because the ban on these pages didn’t just limit advertising, but also curtailed a main avenue sex workers used to share information, privately screen clients and work for themselves.



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“The ability to work independently online had reduced the need for sex workers in dire financial situations to work on the streets or through an exploitative agency or third party,” independent researchers Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf explained in their 2020 report, ​“Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers,” published in the Anti-Trafficking Review. ​“Not only did working online previously allow sex workers to mitigate harms, it provided some degree of financial security.”

After the ban, sex workers were forced to find alternative means of communicating with clients and planning meetings, including working with pimps who sought to control and exploit them. Without the ability to screen out potentially dangerous clients, workers were left to arrange meetings however they could, cross their fingers and hope to make it home from work unscathed. As one survey respondent told Blunt and Wolf, ​“Everything I know about being safe in sex work is because I was able to speak to other sex workers online.”


SESTA-FOSTA changed that, and Harris’ work as California’s top prosecutor was a major precursor. Harris went after Back​page​.com with gusto, arresting the CEO on pimping charges in 2016. (The charges were later dismissed.) Her lawsuit, along with another in Texas and a parallel Senate investigation, led to federal charges and the site’s shutdown by the FBI in 2018.

In the meantime Backpage had become the boogeyman targeted by SESTA/FOSTA when the bills were introduced in 2017. As a senator, Harris was not publicly involved in drafting or advancing the bills, instead reportedly handling behind-the-scenes negotiations with opposition in the tech industry. Eventually, she signed on as a co-sponsor of the Senate version, SESTA.

The senator may have believed her intentions were good, but the impact SESTA/FOSTA has had on sex workers is devastating — and there is no evidence that it has made a meaningful dent in reducing sex trafficking.

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“SESTA has inadvertently encouraged the abuse it sought to eradicate, as often happens when labor regulations are passed without consulting workers on how to best combat exploitation,” declares the national organization Decriminalize Sex Work on its website. ​“If this law has had an effect on rates of trafficking in the United States, it has evidently only increased the risks sex workers and trafficking survivors face.”

The SWOP Behind Bars letter brought up another disappointing episode from Harris’ tenure as California’s top cop, when she allegedly ignored rampant sexual abuse committed by members of the Oakland Police Department against an underage sex worker. In 2016, a teenage girl using the pseudonym Celeste Guap went public about her treatment at the hands of dozens of Oakland police officers, who knew she was a sex worker and took advantage of their position to initiate sexual contact. Her attorney repeatedly appealed to the attorney general’s office, asking that they intervene in the complex case, but no response came.

“Celeste had tried to report multiple police officers, some of whom she claimed had sex with her while she was a minor and you did not take enough action to investigate or hold the involved officers accountable,” SWOP Behind Bars wrote. ​“The case is a significant example of the potential for abuse of power and the importance of accountability and transparency in policing but you have never made a public statement about it and that is troubling.”

The organization’s letter ends with a list of requests for a possible future Harris administration to consider.

Activists and sex workers demonstrate to bring awareness of sex workers rights in Miami Beach, Florida on Dec. 16, 2023.Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP via Getty Images)

Sex Work Is Work


At the top of the list is a clear call for the full decriminalization of sex work. ​“Consensual adult sex work and trafficking are distinct issues,” the letter explains. ​“The criminalization of adult consensual sex work pushes us into the shadows, making us vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and human rights abuses.”

In a 2019 interview with The Root, Harris was asked point-blank if she supported decriminalization. ​“I think so; I do,” she replied. ​“When we are talking about consenting adults, I think that, yes, we should really consider that we can’t criminalize consensual behavior as long as no one is being harmed. But at the point that anyone’s being harmed or exploited, we have to understand that that’s a different matter.”

“The criminalization of adult consensual sex work pushes us into the shadows, making us vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and human rights abuses.”


The statement showed a marked evolution from 2008, when Harris served as district attorney of San Francisco and dismissed the idea of decriminalization, saying it would welcome ​“pimps and prostitutes to come on into” the city. So perhaps here is the potential for movement toward full decriminalization and away from a position more in line with the so-called Nordic model, which treats sex workers’ clients as criminals. In a sweeping 2016 report, Amnesty International found that Norway’s criminalization of clients seven years prior had led to policing of sex workers and an ​“increased risk of stigmatization, marginalization and violence.”

The letter’s other asks concern improving sex workers’ working conditions and addressing the risks they face from clients, law enforcement, stigma and discrimination. Protection from violence and exploitation is a major priority, and SWOP Behind Bars calls for stronger laws to hold abusers accountable and proper training for law enforcement to improve their behavior towards the community and create safe, respectful avenues for reporting abuse.

The same stigma that complicates sex workers’ relationship with the police — who are (in theory) meant to offer protection — can also follow sex workers into healthcare and social services settings, especially for those who have multiple marginalized identities. ​“We need policies that ensure our right to health, including non-judgmental and inclusive healthcare, mental health support, and social services,” the group writes. ​“This includes addressing the specific needs of transgender sex workers, who face additional layers of marginalization and health disparities.”

“Recognizing sex work as legitimate labor also means ensuring our labor rights."

In addition, the group zooms out to emphasize the need for economic justice and labor rights, noting that many sex workers become involved in the industry due to a lack of economic opportunities and systemic inequalities, and calling on Harris to address those root causes. ​“Recognizing sex work as legitimate labor also means ensuring our labor rights, including the right to organize, unionize, and work under fair conditions,” the letter adds, wisely tying in sex wokers’ lack of representation in the organized labor movement with their broader exploitation.

While many sex workers are classified as independent contractors and thus ineligible to formally unionize, some not only can but have organized themselves for collective bargaining. In the 1990s, when workers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco successfully unionized with SEIU, supported by the National Organization for Women and a strong local sex work advocacy community, they were outliers. Other sex workers union campaigns around the country fell victim to successful union-busting. But workers have won change through other kinds of organizing, including legislative advocacy; just this March in Washington, the advocacy group Strippers Are Workers won a Strippers’ Bill of Rights that creates necessary new protections for the state’s dancers. And the recent unionization wave has swept up the sex work industry: As of 2023, the Star Garden in Hollywood, California, and Portland, Oregon’s Magic Tavern are now represented by the Actors’ Equity Association, a 50,000-member union for live performance professionals.
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Finally, the letter asks that Harris do something to address the whorephobia, harmful narratives and overall stigma that sex workers face, noting that dehumanizing language and policies increase the likelihood that these workers will experience discrimination and violence.

Any administration or politician who professes to care about vulnerable workers must make it clear that they include sex workers in that category — and listen to them when they explain what their community needs. The presidential bully pulpit is a powerful tool, and SWOP Behind Bars is hoping for a future in which a President Harris uses it to recognize their work as legitimate and emphasize respect and dignity that all workers deserve. As they wrote, ​“We need to know that our lives matter to you and that you are committed to learning from past missteps.”

“There are an estimated 2 million criminalized sex workers and another estimated 2 million online content creators (That’s a lot of votes!) who need to know that you are going to be inclusive and respectful regarding their safety and dignity,” the letter reminds her.

Given Harris’ record, it wouldn’t be surprising for advocates to come in hot, but SWOP Behind Bars’ communique maintains a respectful, even friendly tone — while still reminding Harris that millions of sex workers will be watching closely as Election Day draws nearer.

“There are an estimated 2 million criminalized sex workers and another estimated 2 million online content creators (That’s a lot of votes!) who need to know that you are going to be inclusive and respectful regarding their safety and dignity,” the letter reminds her. ​“We see you coming so close to supporting our bodily autonomy — but we’d like to help you frame your narrative to ensure we make forward progress on this very important issue.”

Thanks to the public-facing work of organizations like SWOP Behind Bars, SWOP-USA and others, no one — even someone working on a high-profile presidential campaign — can pretend they haven’t gotten the message. Now it’s on Harris to prove that she cares enough to listen.

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Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist and author based in Philadelphia, PA. She is a labor writer for In These Times, a labor columnist at Teen Vogue and Fast Company, and regularly contributes to many other publications. Her first book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor, is now available from One Signal/​Simon & Schuster. Follow her on Twitter at @grimkim and subscribe to her newsletter, Salvo, here.