After Building Progressive Power Among House Democrats, Jayapal Passes the Torch

 to Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) 

The outgoing CPC leader is proud of empowering the caucus to fight for "an economic agenda that worked for working people and poor people."

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on December 5, 2024.
(Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

After six years at the helm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dedicated to "building the infrastructure" necessary to effectively fight for key policies on Capitol Hill, term-limited Rep. Pramila Jayapal is determined to ensure that the CPC's incoming leaders "are as successful as possible."

Jayapal (D-Wash.) spoke with Common Dreams on Wednesday about her time leading the caucus of nearly 100 lawmakers whose legislative priorities include "comprehensive immigration reform, good-paying jobs, fair trade, universal healthcare, debt-free college, climate action, and a just foreign policy."

She was elected first vice chair of the CPC in June 2017, just months into her freshman term in Congress. Explaining her foray into leadership, Jayapal affectionately said, "I blamed it all on Keith Ellison," a Minnesota Democrat who was then a congressman and caucus leader and is now his state's attorney general.

"He was very encouraging," she said of Ellison. "He knew that the whole reason I was running, because he had heard me talk about it on the campaign trail... was because I wanted to strengthen the power of the progressive movement inside Congress and figure out how we could be more effective working on the inside and the outside, which I was coming from."

Jayapal, who was born in India and came to the United States as a teenager for college, founded the immigrant advocacy group Hate Free Zone—which later became OneAmerica—after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Residents of the Seattle area elected her to Congress in 2016, during her first term in the Washington State Senate.

In politics, Jayapal has shared stories from her own life with the world, publicly writing and speaking about her experiences as an immigrant woman of color, a woman who had an abortion, and a mother to her trans daughter. She has welcomed the mentorship of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the first woman of color to co-chair the CPC and, as Jayapal put it on Instagram earlier this week, "one of the most courageous and effective progressive leaders I have had the privilege to know."



U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) talk with reporters in Washingotn, D.C. on May 31, 2023. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Backed by leaders like Ellison and Lee—who is leaving Congress after this session—Jayapal jumped into the CPC hoping to transform it into "a caucus that could really have the power to stand up for working people and deliver." In 2018, she was elected co-chair with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and following 2020 caucus rule changes, she became a solo chair.

"What I realized when I came in is that we didn't really have the infrastructure we needed to support us to be powerful as a bloc of votes," said Jayapal, who utilized the skills and connections she developed as an organizer in the role she is now preparing to leave.

"I was able to come in and not only think about how you build power on the inside, but also how you coordinate with the outside," she said. "And that inside-outside strategy, and the trust I had, and the relationships I had, were really critical to my success in building the infrastructure here in Congress and sort of coalescing the movement around a set of priorities that we were then able to fight for and stand up for."

Jayapal recognized the need to hire staff and reform CPC rules to boost meeting attendance and caucus cohesion. She explained that "I felt very strongly about leadership transition to build the bench, and so I put in term limits for the CPC chair as well."

Thanks to that policy, she will pass the torch to Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) early next month. Jayapal, who will be chair emerita, told Common Dreams, "I'm just really proud to have built an infrastructure that I can pass on to the next chair that just wasn't there before and will continue to get better, of course, with new leadership."

The 35-year-old incoming chair will be joined by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as deputy chair and Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) as whip. They will face a Republican-controlled Congress and the second administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

"I'm honored to build on the legacy of Chair Jayapal," Casar said after the caucus election earlier this month. "I've fought back against extremist, egocentric autocrats in Texas for my entire adult life. The Democratic Party must directly take on Trump, and it'll be CPC members boldly leading the way and putting working people first."

Related: New Progressive Caucus Chair Ready to 'Fight Billionaires, Grifters, and Republican Frauds'


Trump won his first presidential contest the same day Jayapal was initially elected to Congress. On that night in November 2016, before the White House race was called, Jayapal described her victory as "a light in the darkness" and told supporters that "if our worst fears are realized, we will be on the defense as of tomorrow," according toThe Seattle Times.

After four years of fighting the first Trump administration, CPC members kicked off 2021 with a fresh opportunity to advance progressive policies: Although the Senate was divided, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and President Joe Biden was sworn in—despite Trump contesting his 2020 loss and inciting an insurrection.

During Biden's term, which ends next month, the Jayapal-led caucus has successfully encouraged the Democratic president to pursue various executive actions promoting access to contraception, climate action, corporate accountability, higher wages, lower costs for essentials, and relief for immigrants from countries in crisis, among other priorities.

The caucus also played a significant role in enacting major pieces of Democrats' Build Back Better agenda. In the summer of 2021, Jayapal made clear to Congress and the president that House progressives would withhold votes from what became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—unless they also passed legislation on the climate emergency and social issues.

Biden signed the infrastructure bill in November 2021—followed by the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The delay was largely due to obstructionist then-Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who ditched the party in the aftermath and are both leaving Congress at the end of this session.

Although Jayapal wishes the second bill would have passed sooner, and tackled the country's childcare and housing crises, she said that she is still "particularly proud" of what the caucus was able to accomplish with that battle. As she told Common Dreams, "There would be no Inflation Reduction Act without Build Back Better, and there would've been no Build Back Better without the CPC."


Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks at a "Go Bigger on Climate, Care, and Justice" rally on July 20, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

 (Photo: Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Green New Deal Network)


Those two legislative packages were "about changing the way that we thought of government's ability to fight for working people," she continued. They "were about delivering results to people that would matter, whether it was in terms of great jobs, whether it was in terms of taking on climate change, whether it was in terms of driving down the cost of prescription drugs, [or] unrigging the tax system so that the wealthier began to pay their fair share."

"All of those things were kind of fundamental and core to an economic agenda that worked for working people and poor people," said Jayapal, who has personally championed legislation including the College for All Act, Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, Housing Is a Human Right Act, Medicare for All Act, Transgender Bill of Rights, and Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act—partnering with Senate progressives such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the founding chair of the CPC.

While the Congressional Progressive Caucus will have new leadership next year, Jayapal plans to remain engaged by providing advice and support as chair emeritus and by co-chairing the CPC Political Action Committee with Casar and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). Under the PAC's current heads—Jayapal, Pocan, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—it "has grown from a $300,000 budget in the 2016 election cycle to raising $12 million over the past three election cycles," the group said Wednesday.

Jayapal told Common Dreams that she is "really proud of the fact that we've had an incredible record" for CPC PAC endorsements. Over the past decade, a majority of pre-primary backed candidates have won their general election races—often "pushing back on big money that came in, dark money that came in, sometimes in the millions," she said, pointing to Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) as examples.

Lee, Ramirez, and Jayapal were all reelected last month, but overall it was a devastating cycle for Democrats, who failed to win control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The outgoing CPC chair is among those who have responded to the results by urging the Democratic Party to reject super PACs and uplift working-class voters going forward.

In a memo earlier this month, Jayapal, Casar, Frost and fellow CPC member Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) called on the next Democratic National Committee chair, whoever it is, to "create an authentic... brand that offers a clear alternative and inclusive vision for how we will make life better for the 90% who are struggling in this economy, take on the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals who have rigged the system, expose Trump's corporate favoritism, and create a clear contrast with Republicans."

Noting Republicans' aim to use their forthcoming federal trifecta to pass another round of tax cuts for the rich, Jayapal said that "when we fight against the tax cuts, the Trump tax scam 2.0, we should tie it to this: The Democratic Party is not beholden to corporate PACs and dark money. We are fighting for the people."

"There's a clear contrast between Trump and his billionaires... and Democrats who are fighting for the vast majority of Americans, the 99% of Americans who are out there struggling every day," she added. "That's the contrast we need to be able to draw."



In her final days as CPC chair, Jayapal is highlighting that contrast by slamming Trump and the billionaires who have his ear, like Elon Musk, for risking a government shutdown—which could begin Saturday—by derailing a bipartisan spending bill this week.

"The past 24 hours is the clearest demonstration yet of what Trump 2.0 will entail: The president of the United States allowing his unelected billionaire friends to control the government and enrich themselves at the expense of working people," she said in a Thursday statement. "We cannot succumb to a government by billionaires, for billionaires."

DR. QUACK AND FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Watchdog Says Dr. Oz Push for 'Medicare Advantage for All' Is Disqualifying

"Oz's deep ties to the private healthcare industry make his nomination to lead our nation's current healthcare system totally egregious," said Public Citizen healthcare advocate Eagan Kemp.


Dr. Mehmet Oz was pictured at an event in New York City on November 21, 2024.
(Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The watchdog group Public Citizen said Thursday that lawmakers should reject President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Medicare privatization advocate Mehmet Oz to lead a key health agency and instead move toward a publicly run single-payer system that would cover all Americans at a lower cost than the status quo.

In a new brief, Public Citizen warned that Medicare privatization efforts—particularly via an expansion of Medicare Advantage plans run by for-profit insurance companies—would likely "move into overdrive" if the Senate confirms Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Ahead of his 2022 Senate bid, Oz backed a plan he described as "Medicare Advantage for All," under which privately run plans would cover non-seniors and "all Americans who are not on Medicaid"—effectively eliminating traditional Medicare.

Public Citizen warned such a plan "would mean huge corporate profits while patients continue to struggle to get the healthcare they need," noting that Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for denying necessary care and overbilling the federal government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year.

"Policymakers should pass Medicare for All to guarantee care for everyone in the U.S., bring down costs for working families, and generate savings for the country as a whole."

"Further privatizing Medicare would increase healthcare costs systemwide by adding further administrative bloat to our healthcare system," the new brief argues. "Our healthcare system is already made up of thousands of health insurance plans offered by numerous insurers as well as state and federal programs that all play some role in paying for healthcare."

"By spending healthcare resources on corporate profit or administrative waste, privatized Medicare would mean Americans pay even more for healthcare than they already do," the brief adds. "We already spend far more than comparably wealthy countries, over $12,500 per capita, compared with peer nations that are spending around half, per capita."

Oz's plan would also benefit companies in which he has invested tens of millions of dollars, according to financial disclosures.

"Dr. Oz owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in shares in UnitedHealth Group, a major Medicare Advantage insurer, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in shares of CVS Health," Public Citizen noted Thursday, citing the filings.

Eagan Kemp, a healthcare advocate at Public Citizen, said in a statement that Oz's "Medicare Advantage for All" proposal "is dangerous to all patients, especially seniors and people with disabilities, many of whom have not received the care they need under Medicare Advantage."

"Healthcare is a right, not a commodity," said Kemp. "Oz's deep ties to the private healthcare industry make his nomination to lead our nation's current healthcare system totally egregious. Congress should reject Oz's nomination and any proposal to further privatize Medicare."

"Instead," he added, "policymakers should pass Medicare for All to guarantee care for everyone in the U.S., bring down costs for working families, and generate savings for the country as a whole."

Public Citizen's brief came as Oz's nomination faced increasingly close scrutiny from congressional Democrats, who have raised similar concerns about the former television personality's promotion of Medicare Advantage and ties to the private insurance industry.

"As CMS administrator, you would be tasked with overseeing Medicare and ensuring that the tens of millions of seniors that rely on the program receive the care they deserve, including cracking down on abuses by private insurers in Medicare Advantage," a group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Oz last week. "The consequences of failure on your part would be grave. Billions of federal healthcare dollars—and millions of lives—are at stake."

"Given your financial ties to private insurers, combined with your view that the traditional Medicare program is 'highly dysfunctional' and your advocacy for eliminating it entirely," the lawmakers added, "it is not clear that you are qualified for this critical job."

'No Contract, No Coffee': US Starbucks Workers Launch Five Days of Strikes

Starbucks Workers United accused the company of "backtracking on our promised path forward" and failing to present a "serious economic proposal" to unionized baristas.


Starbucks workers were pictured at a picket line in New York on November 16, 2023.
(Photo: Victor M. Matos/Thenews2/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Starbucks workers launched five days of escalating strikes across the United States on Friday, accusing the coffee giant of reneging on its commitment to engage in productive bargaining talks with the union that now represents more than 11,000 baristas at over 500 stores nationwide.

The walkouts will start in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle on Friday before expanding "coast to coast" amid the holiday rush, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) said in a statement announcing the strikes.

SBWU said the strikes are a response to Starbucks "backtracking on our promised path forward." In February, the two sides agreed to "begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve both collective bargaining agreements for represented stores and partners."

But SBWU said late Thursday that the company—which repeatedly violated labor law in its bid to crush a union movement that has spread widely since 2021—has "yet to present workers with a serious economic proposal."

"This week, less than two weeks before their end-of-year deadline," SBWU said, "Starbucks proposed no immediate wage increase for union baristas, and a guarantee of only 1.5% wage increases in future years."

The strikes are expected to ramp up daily through Christmas Eve unless Starbucks "honors our commitment to work towards a foundational framework," SBWU said.

Striking baristas are also asking allies to help bolster organizing efforts at Starbucks by "hosting small flyering events at not-yet- union stores" during the five days of walkouts.



Friday's walkouts come as Amazon workers are also striking at multiple delivery hubs across the country over the e-commerce giant's refusal to engage in contract negotiations.

Earlier this week, unionized Starbucks workers voted overwhelmingly in support of authorizing a strike to protest the company's alleged unfair labor practices and to set the stage for a strong contract.

"It's time to finalize a foundational framework that includes meaningful investments in baristas and to resolve unfair labor practice charges," Silvia Baldwin, a Philadelphia barista and bargaining delegate, said in a statement. "Starbucks can't get back on track as a company until it finalizes a fair contract that invests in its workforce."

"Right now, I'm making $16.50 an hour," she added. "Meanwhile, [new Starbucks CEO] Brian Niccol's compensation package is worth $57,000 an hour. The company just announced I'm only getting a 2.5% raise next year, $0.40 an hour, which is hardly anything. It's one Starbucks drink per week. Starbucks needs to invest in the baristas who make Starbucks run."

Starbucks workers to strike in three US cities, threaten nationwide action


Starbucks employees will strike on Friday in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle, escalating labor tensions during the pre-Christmas rush. The strike, organized by Starbucks Workers United, targets improved pay and conditions following stalled negotiations. The action coincides with an Amazon walkout, amplifying holiday season disruptions.


Issued on: 20/12/2024 - 
By: NEWS WIRES

Unionized workers at Starbucks in the United States are walking off the job Friday in a strike that is set to spread over the following days © David Ryder, AFP

Workers at Starbucks will walk off the job Friday in three US cities in a strike their union threatened could spread around the country in the busy run-up to Christmas.

The announcement, which will initially affect stores in Los Angeles, Chicago and the firm's home city of Seattle, comes as online giant Amazon was also hit by a walkout in the crucial final shopping days of the festive period.

Starbucks Workers United, which says it represents baristas at hundreds of outlets around the country, said its action was aimed at forcing the company to improve pay and conditions after months of negotiations that it said have gone nowhere.

"Nobody wants to strike. It's a last resort, but Starbucks has broken its promise to thousands of baristas and left us with no choice," a union press release quoted Texas barista Fatemeh Alhadjaboodi as saying.

The strike, which the union says will hit more outlets every day until Tuesday, comes as Starbucks grapples with stagnating sales in key markets.

Former Chipotle boss Brian Niccol was brought on board this year with a mandate to staunch a decline that saw quarterly revenue worldwide fall three percent to $9 billion.

"In September, Brian Niccol became CEO with a compensation package worth at least $113 million," thousands of times the wage of the average barista, said union member Michelle Eisen in the statement.

The union said Starbucks had not engaged fruitfully for several months, and threatened it was ready to "show the company the consequences."

"We refuse to accept zero immediate investment in baristas' wages and no resolution of the hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practices," said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United.

"Union baristas know their value, and they're not going to accept a proposal that doesn't treat them as true partners."

Starbucks did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

(AFP)

Fallout of Assad’s ouster in Syria ripples down the Mediterranean to Libya

Analysis

The loss of its military power in Syria has led Russia to turn its sights on Libya. Could the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria see the strengthening of his Libyan counterpart, Khalifa Haftar?

20/12/2024 - 
By: Leela JACINTO

Handout satellite image released by Maxar Technologies shows the Russian naval base at Tartus, Syria on December 13, 2024. © AFP

The reports began trickling in barely 24 hours after Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad was ousted.

“Several Assad regime officials arrive in Libya’s Benghazi,” read a headline on a local Libyan news site on Monday, December 9 – the morning after rebels arrived in Damascus to find the Syrian president had fled.

While Assad was taken to Moscow, Libyan news reports said “a number of Syrian officials” loyal to Assad had landed in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. No details of the fleeing officials were provided, although officials at Benghazi’s Benina airbase and global flight tracking sites confirmed the plane landing.

By the end of the week, air traffic between Syria and Libya had increased. Russia was withdrawing significant amounts of military assets from Syria, primarily from its Khmeimim airbase in Latakia, and transporting them to Libya, according to several news reports.

With Assad’s sudden fall, Russia was scrambling to manage its considerable military facilities and personnel in Syria.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Moscow was in touch with rebels in Damascus. Fighters from Syria’s rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) were posted on the outside perimeter of Russian military facilities, journalists in Syria reported. Outsiders were not allowed into the high security zones.

More than a week after Assad’s ouster, in a critical development, the Syria-Libya traffic had expanded to the sea.

Russia had begun moving naval assets on the Mediterranean from the Syrian port city of Tartus to Libya, according to US news reports. An unnamed US defence official told CNN this week that “Moscow has increased pressure on Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar to secure Russia’s claim to a port in Benghazi”.

The Libyan port warning had a whiff of déjà vu.

Moscow’s attempts to secure naval access to eastern Libya, an area controlled by strongman Haftar, have been alarming officials in Western capitals over the past few years. Destabilised and divided during more than a decade of conflict, Libya has been an ideal entry point into Africa for Russia.

But Western concerns over Russia’s growing influence in Libya and the neighbouring Sahel region have not translated into any thwarting action on the ground. And so the warnings, by unnamed US officials, of Russia’s naval ambitions in Libya continue to make periodic headlines in US newspapers.

Read more Russia woos Libya's Haftar with an eye on a naval prize

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has notched up the geostrategic scramble, sending ripples thousands of miles across the Mediterranean Sea, a vital maritime zone connecting the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

All about that naval base

Russia has a critical naval facility in the Syrian port city of Tartus, which houses elements of the Black Sea Fleet and is Moscow’s only repair and replenishment hub in the Mediterranean.

Established by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the Tartus naval base was expanded and modernised by Russia after the 2011 anti-Assad uprising, when President Vladimir Putin used military might to back his Syrian ally.

Russia’s reward came in January 2017, when it signed a free-of-charge 49-year lease with Syria, granting Moscow sovereignty over the Tartus naval base. The lease could be automatically extended for further 25-year periods if neither side objects.

While HTS-led rebels now controlling Syria have allowed Russia to withdraw its military assets so far, the future of Moscow’s permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean is far from certain.

“We're yet to see what will happen in terms of the Russian presence in Syria. Obviously they come out weaker in the sense that the man they have invested in has gone. But the crown jewel of Russian foreign policy in Syria was not necessarily Assad. It was the military bases that they held there, that enabled power projection in the Mediterranean. That's still being negotiated right now and I think Libya is part and parcel of this strategy,” said Emad Badi, nonresident senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Atlantic Council.

With Assad’s fall, the focus has now shifted to Libya’s 1,700-kilometre Mediterranean coastline, of which the eastern chunk is controlled by Haftar’s armed coalition.

“The Russians are now more dependent on Libya. This gives Haftar a stronger hand to play. Haftar is always trying to play countries off one another, so he will feel even stronger,” said Tarek Megerisi, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Fathers, sons and lessons in kleptocracy

In the course of an intrigue-packed military career, Haftar has switched sides, worked with rival powers, and managed to save his skin while amassing a fortune.

Dubbed “the strongman of Cyrenaica” or eastern Libya, the 81-year-old warlord began his military career in Muammar Gaddafi’s army before deserting to the US, where he spent two decades, gaining US citizenship and clocking up other monikers such as “America’s man”.

But over the past few years, Haftar has adroitly turned into “Russia’s man”, using a template set by Assad, his Syrian strongman counterpart.

Haftar, like Assad until his ouster, holds power by relying on close-knit family ties. In the octogenarian Libyan warlord’s case, his lieutenants are his sons, who occupy lucrative posts and top military ranks in eastern Libya. The most prominent among them, Saddam Haftar, is widely rumoured to be the chosen scion of “Clan Haftar”.

Read moreHaftar's sons rise in the east, bringing 'corruption, death, destruction'

The links between the Haftars and the Assads run deep, according to Frederic Wehrey, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Khalifa Haftar and his sons had long been bolstered, both directly and indirectly, by the Assad regime through a common ideology of authoritarian kleptocracy, networks of illicit businesses that enriched the two regimes, and mutual military aid from Russia,” noted Wehrey in a recent blog.

Human and drug trafficking links

The trafficking networks linking clans Haftar and Assad have been documented in numerous reports.

They were often physically linked by Cham Wings, a private Syrian airline sanctioned by the EU and US for laundering money and supporting the Assad regime.

The plane with Assad regime officials that landed in Benghazi on December 8, just hours after Damascus fell to rebels, belonged to Cham Wings, according to Libyan news reports.

Investigated by Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency, for its involvement in human trafficking, Cham Wings was the subject of a February 2024 investigative report by Spanish daily EL PAÍS and Lighthouse Reports, a Dutch journalism collaborative.

The report tracked the trafficking of Syrians and Bangladeshis from Damascus and the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka to Benghazi. The migrants then reached the EU with the help of “perpetrators often acting under the protection of the Hafter [sic] family,” noted EL PAÍS.

The exclusive agent for Cham Wings in Libya, Mahmoud Abulilah Al-Dj, denied the accusations in an email to EL PAÍS.

But the US Treasury Department sanctions listing for Al-Dj mentions an additional allegation: drug trafficking.

“Al-Dj used his Syria-based Al-Ta’ir Company (Al-Ta’ir) to receive cargo tied to Captagon shipments and open a major smuggling line linking Lattakia [sic] to Benghazi, which has resulted in huge profits for Captagon traffickers,” noted the Treasury Department press release.

Trade in the amphetamine drug Captagon helped bankroll the Assad regime after the imposition of international sanctions. The extent of the Captagon state-capture was in plain sight following the Syrian president’s ouster, with videos of abandoned manufacturing sites spilling with pills and portions.

Russian flights to Libya, Turkish ones from Libya

Despite the reams of evidence detailing Haftar’s illicit business networks, the US and its Western allies continue to engage with the strongman of Cyrenaica.

“American and European intelligence are well aware of the relationship between Haftar and the Russians. But for some crazy reason, American policy seems to be that they can bring Haftar onto their side. And so, if anything, they continue to empower and help Haftar, even though he is a Russian proxy at this point,” said Megerisi.

The Western approach to handling Libya has focused on calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces and an inclusive settlement between the country’s internationally recognised government based in the capital, Tripoli, and the eastern players beholden to Haftar.

But the West has displayed neither the capability nor the will to turn words into action on the ground.

Foreign powers continue to operate in Libya but the US and EU is not among them.

In January 2020, Turkey, a NATO member, intervened in Libya to support the Tripoli administration when it came under attack from Haftar’s forces. Aided by a deployment of thousands of anti-Assad Syrian fighters, Turkey managed to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

While Ankara and Moscow back opposing Libyan sides, the two powers manage to work together in the oil-rich North African nation, a coexistence founded on economic interests.

Turkey has signed hydrocarbon deals with the Tripoli authorities while scooping up contracts in the “reconstruction bonanza controlled by Haftar’s sons” in the east, noted Wolfram Lacher from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in a recent briefing.

The understanding between Ankara and Moscow has seen some eyebrow-raising travel over the Mediterranean in recent months.

“There is a rapport and a friendly competition, let's call it, between Turkey and Russia in Libya,” said Badi. “We're seeing Russia deploy assets to Libya, and Turkey repatriate some of its mercenaries from Libya due to Syria-related developments. So it's an interesting nexus on that front.”

As the year closes with the Assad clan on the losing end and the Haftars on a winning spree, analysts are wary of predicting what the cards read for 2025.

“Russia is moving things into Libya because Libya is already an established hub for them. It's a rational move by Russia, not an escalatory one,” said Megerisi. “It's probably worse news for the conflicts that are ongoing in places like Sudan, Niger, Mali, because a lot of the equipment that comes to Libya ends up going to other theaters where there is active combat. So we might see an escalation in those regions in the future.”

Israel army says troops shot Syrian protester in leg

ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OF THE GOLAN HEIGHTS 

By AFP
December 20, 2024

A child looks on as Israeli soldiers patrol in Jubata al-Khashab, in the UN-patrolled Golan Heights buffer zone, which Israeli troops entered after the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad - Copyright AFP Aris MESSINIS

The Israeli military said its forces shot a protester during a demonstration against the army’s activities in a village in southern Syria on Friday, injuring him in the leg.

Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on December 8 Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.

In a move widely condemned internationally, Israel also sent troops into a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and beyond, calling it a defensive and temporary measure.

“During a protest against IDF’s activities in the area of Maariya in southern Syria, IDF (Israeli military) called on protesters to distance themselves from the troops,” the military told AFP.

The village is just outside the southern point of the UN-patrolled zone.

“After the troops identified a threat, they operated in accordance with standard operating procedures against the threat… The protester was shot in the leg,” the military said.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the Israeli troops were stationed at a barracks in the village.

“During a protest condemning the Israeli incursion, a young man was injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire in the village of Maariya, in the Daraa region,” the Observatory said.

Israeli forced from Al-Jazeera barracks “opened fire directly at the demonstrators,” wounding the man in the leg, it said.

– Israelis ‘sowed fear’ –

A villager from Maariya told AFP that Israeli soldiers had been entering his village and other nearby villages in recent days.

“When the Israelis entered … they sowed fear and horror among the people, the children, the women,” Ali al-Khalaf, 52, told AFP.

“So much so that some people fled to other nearby villages. They (Israeli troops) entered the villages of Maariya, Aabdyn and Jamlah,” he added.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled zone.

During the visit Netanyahu reviewed the army’s deployment in the area, his office said.

Hours after Assad was overthrown, Netanyahu had ordered Israeli troops to seize the buffer zone.

Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with Netanyahu saying it was in response to a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”.

Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.

Netanyahu said his country has “no interest in confronting Syria. Israel’s policy toward Syria will be determined by the evolving reality on the ground”.

Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa accused Israel of “a new unjustified escalation in the region” by entering the buffer zone but said “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war” prevents it from entering new conflicts.

Israel conquered around two-thirds of the Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it. The United States, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, is the only country that has recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan.

Pentagon Admits Number of US Troops in Syria Much Higher Than Previously Disclosed

"How does the Pentagon 'recently learn' that it has more than double the number of U.S. troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?" asked veteran journalist Jeremy Scahill.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder holds a press briefing at the Pentagon on October 1, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia.
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 20, 2024

COMMON DREAMS

The Pentagon acknowledged Thursday that it had been providing journalists and the public with an inaccurate count of the number of U.S. troops deployed to Syria, with a spokesperson for the department telling members of the press that the actual figure is two times higher than what was previously disclosed.

"We have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 U.S. troops deployed to Syria," Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing on Thursday. "In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher, and so asked to look into it. I learned today that in fact there are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria."

Ryder said the roughly 1,100 additional U.S. forces are considered "temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements," while the other 900 troops are "on longer-term deployments."

There is also an undisclosed number of private U.S. contractors operating in Syria, as The Intercept's Nick Turse has reported.

Progressive lawmakers, and some Republicans, have argued that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Syria given the lack of clear legal authorization for their continued presence.



The Pentagon spokesperson could not provide an exact date on which the extra 1,100 troops were deployed to Syria, but he said they were there "clearly before the fall" of former President Bashar al-Assad's government earlier this month.

The U.S. maintains it was not involved in the rebel offensive that toppled the Assad government, and on Friday a delegation of senior American officials arrived in Damascus for the first U.S. diplomatic mission to Syria's capital since Assad's fall.


Drop Site's Jeremy Scahill, who has long reported on covert U.S. military activities overseas, expressed incredulity at Ryder's comments during Thursday's briefing.

"How does the Pentagon 'recently learn' that it has more than double the number of U.S. troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?" Scahill asked.

'Unprecedented' Lawsuit Targets 2 US Lawmakers for Backing Israeli Military Aid

"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said one plaintiff.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) speaks during the news conference in Washington, D.C. 
(Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

More than 500 California residents on Thursday took the latest legal action against U.S. leaders in an effort to stop the government's support for Israel's assault on Gaza, with taxpayers represented by two Democratic U.S. House members filing a class action lawsuit against the lawmakers for voting in favor of Israeli military aid.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by the law firm Szeto-Wong Law, live in 10 counties in Northern California and are represented by Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson.

The specific legal tactic being used by the plaintiffs is "unprecedented," according to the group Taxpayers Against Genocide, and hinges on Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in April.



The funding package allocated $26.28 billion in military aid to Israel, which at the time was six months into its bombardment of Gaza and a near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that was pushing the enclave's population of 2.3 million people toward starvation.

Now, Israel has been attacking Gaza for 440 days, and more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught began. At least 77 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Thursday, the same day the class action lawsuit was filed and Doctors Without Borders published a report that detailed how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have imposed "apocalyptic conditions" on the enclave and how humanitarian workers have seen "clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed."

The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued that Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of billions of dollars for the IDF abused the lawmakers' "tax and spend" authority and "illegally forced their constituents into being complicit in genocide."

Huffman and Thompson voted for the funding package, the plaintiffs noted, months after the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, finding that Israel's actions had threatened Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide. The case has proceeded for ongoing litigation since the preliminary ruling was announced.

The votes were also taken weeks after Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, issued an extensive report that found Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza.

"I trusted Congressman Huffman to call for a cease-fire and to demand that the U.S. follow our own laws in addition to international law," said Robie Tenorio, one of the plaintiffs. "But despite overwhelming documented and corroborated evidence, Congressman Huffman voted in April 2024 to send Israel more offensive weapons, all paid for by U.S. taxpayers."

In March, a month before the vote, Democratic lawmakers urged President Joe Biden to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits the U.S. from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance.

The administration threatened in October to cut off military aid within one month if Israel did not prove that it was allowing in sufficient food, water, medicine, and other relief, but the U.S. State Department did not follow through on the threat despite the U.N.'s finding that conditions had not improved.

In January, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued Biden and members of his Cabinet on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals, accusing them of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case was dismissed in July.


The lawsuit filed on Thursday argues that Huffman and Thompson violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and U.S. federal laws.

Norman Solomon, co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group RootsAction, said at a press conference on Thursday that Huffman has consistently said he supports U.S. military aid to Israel because he "opposes antisemitism."

"As a Jewish-American I find that kind of rationale disgusting, outrageous, and sickening," said Solomon.




Leslie Angeline, a plaintiff from Marin County, California and an organizer with the peace group CodePink, wrote at Common Dreams on Thursday about her hunger strike in protest of U.S. support for Israel, which she ended as the lawsuit was announced.

"I want to tell you what 30 days with no food does to a person, and my experience is made easier by the fact that I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and a certainty that I won't have to flee my home at any moment," Angeline wrote. "The women my age in Gaza are not given the same luxuries."

"I wake up each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn't for my government's partnership with the Israeli government this couldn't continue. Our government is sending billions upon billions of our tax dollars to slaughter innocent children, mothers and fathers, entire families with bombs and artillery funded by our country," she continued. "I understand that 'my trauma' is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza must be suffering. I can't even imagine the horrors they're being forced to live through or die from."


Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American and plaintiff from Sonoma County, said it was significant that hundreds of Californians "feel empowered by the ability to take meaningful action."


"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said Barakat, "and our refusal to be complicit."

It’s Becoming Harder to Protest Gaza War on US Campus — and Also to Teach About It


Organizing for labor protections and academic freedom is crucial to combat higher education’s creeping authoritarianism.

By Michelle Chen ,

Truthout

December 20, 2024

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally after marching from University Yard at George Washington University on May 9, 2024, in Washington, D.C.Kent Nishimura / Getty Images

On a crisp November morning in Ithaca, New York, scores of young people gathered on the sidewalk to cheer their classmate, Sriram Parasurama, a second-year doctoral student in horticulture at Cornell University. He should have been working on his research on the connection between trees and fungi, but instead, he was wrapping up a court hearing downtown. He had been banished from campus since his arrest by the campus police department, following his participation in a Palestine solidarity protest on school grounds in September.

Parasurama’s supporters met him and two other students facing similar charges outside the courthouse. A legal advocate for the students announced that after pleading not guilty to charges of “obstructing government administration and unlawful assembly,” Parasurama and another student, Yihun Stith, were offered a deal: a community service stint in exchange for reducing the charges to disorderly conduct. A third student’s case was dismissed on a technicality. The court’s response seemed relatively light compared to Cornell’s initial crackdown on the protest, which triggered disciplinary proceedings and suspension for several participants, whom the administration had condemned for supposedly creating “an environment of intimidation and fear.”

Campus activists remain locked in a protracted battle with the administration about the freedom of expression in higher education, amid some of the largest campus political mobilizations in a generation. Having been stuck in a plodding disciplinary review process since September, Parasurama told Truthout that university administrators are “definitely trying to drag this out, make this as miserable as possible, both … to diminish some of the attention and interest from students and other[s], as well as, I think, just make the process more miserable for me, so that I then agree to [a settlement] that I wouldn’t have [agreed to] a month and a half ago.… Their goal is to get me to shut up and commit to not protesting anymore and just focus on research, or the alternative of kicking me out of the school.”

Expressive Activity

Cornell (where the author is a postdoctoral associate) is one of dozens of universities that have introduced new regulations on when and how protests can take place on campus, erecting bureaucratic barriers for planning and registering protests. Cornell’s enforcement of such rules has created a Kafkaesque review process, leading to extraordinary penalties for student activists, including indefinite suspensions and three-year bans from campus.

But Cornell’s treatment of activism among employees — including teachers, researchers, clerical and custodial staff — is more complex. Graduate student-workers, faculty and staff report that they have faced surveillance, retaliation or job loss for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. The university’s punishment of Parasurama, for example, has not only led to his disenrollment but has also upended his federal grant funding and preempted his employment as a researcher and teaching assistant. Another graduate student worker in Africana studies, Momodou Taal, was also temporarily suspended due to his participation in campus protests and was barred from teaching earlier this semester. However, facing protests from faculty and students, the university eventually backed down from its initial threat to disenroll him, which would potentially have triggered his deportation to the United Kingdom.


Academic Labor Unions Are Key to Fighting Trump’s Repressive Higher Ed Agenda
AAUP President Todd Wolfson says unions like his are key to fighting Trump’s attacks on the bedrock of democracy.  By Eleanor J. Bader , Truthout  December 5, 2024

Cornell’s “Interim Expressive Activity Policy” has been widely condemned by progressive faculty as a dangerous overreach. While couched in bromides about encouraging “the free exchange of ideas,” the rules explicitly restrict protests that may “disrupt the regular conduct of university teaching, research, business, or other activities”; impede access to university spaces; or engage in “Heckling, interruptions, and other acts that intentionally attempt to disrupt speakers or events.” The policy appears to be a direct response to pressure from pro-Israel politicians and major donors, who have advocated for the suppression and criminalization of Palestine solidarity protests. The targeted application of these rules to student and worker activists on campus has crystallized the fundamental power imbalance in higher education.

The protesters’ goal on September 18, admittedly, was to “disrupt.” Banging pots and pans as they marched into the career fair at the university’s Statler Hotel, activists with Cornell’s Coalition for Mutual Liberation delivered letters “indicting” two employers featured at the fair for “war crimes and genocide.” The companies, Boeing and L3Harris, are major weapons manufacturers that have supplied military technology to Israel with the support of U.S. military aid, and have been linked directly to attacks on civilians in Israel’s war on Gaza. That the protesters were disruptive is not in question — what is in question is the rationale driving the administration’s crackdown. (In an emailed response, Cornell stated that its policy is undergoing a review process, that it has solicited community input, and that it could not comment on individual disciplinary cases.)

“It’s about the university trying to create an image for itself that it can take to donors, take to alumni. And staff, faculty and students are expendable in the process,” David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, told Truthout. And in light of the vitriol Donald Trump and other conservative political figures have heaped onto the Palestine solidarity encampments in recent months, Bateman said, “there’s a real worry that the university will become an arm of the MAGA state in coming years.”

The protest aimed to challenge the business model of the neoliberal university: a corporation that is ostensibly devoted to education but is financed and directed through lucrative industrial partnerships and influential donors. The Department of Defense is one of the top federal agencies funding research at Cornell, contributing about $50 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to the latest research data report. One branch of the university, Cornell Tech, has collaborated with the Israeli military through its partnership with the Israeli research institute Technion, known for developing technologies that have been used in Israel’s military assaults on Palestinian civilians.


“Their goal is to get me to shut up and commit to not protesting anymore and just focus on research, or the alternative of kicking me out of the school.”

The protesters not only embarrassed Cornell by exposing its collusion with Israel’s military industries but also called attention to the university’s role in supplying graduates to the workforces of firms like Boeing and Technion.

“I think Palestine generally as an issue kind of targets the core of imperial structure that … underlies a lot of university institutions, not just Cornell,” Parasurama said. “This Statler [Hotel] rally … was targeting weapons manufacturers, and our own trustees at Cornell have investments in weapons companies. And so this is really striking at the heart, I think, of what’s valued by institutions like these.”
The End of Teaching

This crackdown cannot be separated from the business agenda of U.S. higher education, which has over the past generation eclipsed the intellectual agendas of its scholars and students. It’s becoming harder not just to protest the war on Palestine, but also teach about it. Under the new expressive activity rules, mobilizing to stop a genocide may likely be interpreted as an offensive act that could lead to dismissals or suspensions. There is also the looming threat of students filing federal Title VI civil rights complaints against academic workers who have publicly criticized Israel, based on allegations of antisemitism.

According to Paul Kohlbry, a postdoctoral associate in anthropology specializing in Palestine’s political ecology, “Rather than ever saying, ‘You can teach X and not Y,’ … they allow the popular outside pressure, through Title VI and other kinds of things, to really chill speech. And then, behind the scenes, they just don’t give funds for [teaching about Palestine].” In practice, he noted, the systematic marginalization of progressive scholarship and pedagogy on Palestinian history and politics sends a warning to faculty that “if you try to teach about Palestine like that, you won’t have the backing of the higher ups at Cornell.”

Currently, Kohlbry argues, official programs and events on Cornell’s campus that focus on Israel and Palestine feature a sanitized, “both sides” framing, presenting Palestinian suffering not as a roiling human rights crisis but rather as a question of rival viewpoints between pro- and anti-Israel camps. Kohlbry himself became the target of a police investigation into his involvement with the Palestine solidarity encampment, which was later dropped.

One of the latest targets of the administration’s intensifying scrutiny is “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” a course scheduled for the spring semester with Eric Cheyfitz, a professor in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program. Cornell’s Interim President Michael Kotlikoff recently remarked that while he would not try to block the course from being taught, he “personally [found] the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate and biased view of the formation of the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict.” The Cornell chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association assailed the comments as a breach of academic freedom and political interference with a course that had already been approved by Cheyfitz’s department.

Cheyfitz still looks forward to teaching the course, as he has seen many students express interest in learning about Palestine. “I know people get intimidated because their jobs are on the line,” he said. “But the only way to resist is to teach those courses,” instead of letting outside political pressure circumscribe their curriculum. “Once that is closed down, there’s no point in teaching anymore. What are you doing? You’re just silencing yourself. And that’s the end of teaching.”

The idea that higher education should be insulated from commercial or governmental interference is a relatively modern phenomenon, growing out of a 1915 declaration by the AAUP outlining professors’ freedom to research, teach and engage in “extra-mural utterance and action” without restraint or censorship. These principles went hand in hand with the institution of tenure, which shields professors from retaliation or dismissal without cause.

That kind of intellectual autonomy is “a freedom that sort of sustains and underpins the very enterprise of research, teaching and learning,” said Bateman. However, he noted that the scope of academic freedom has receded steadily as the majority of instructors in higher education become contingent, short-term, or part-time — and excluded from tenure. He advocates for making academic freedom more inclusive and interconnected with other issues of democracy and justice in the education system, so that “anyone who is engaged in research, teaching or learning has to be able to have this freedom.” Academic freedom, in other words, should be embedded “within these other principles [that] apply more generally, such as economic security, workplace economic protections … free-speech principles generally.”

At the same time, most workers at institutions like Cornell have neither workplace protections nor academic freedom. Typically working as at-will employees, they can essentially be fired for any reason at any time, as long as it’s not directly outlawed (for example, not based explicitly on gender or racial bias). So for adjunct instructors, office staff, and others who do not have access to tenure, speaking out on Palestine is riskier. Could they be denied a promotion or harassed by coworkers for hanging a Palestinian flag in their cubicle, or attending a campus protest?

Many academic workers, especially staff earning hourly wages, “feel like they can’t attend rallies on campus at all; even if they might get a lunch break in the middle of the day, they feel like they have to be accountable for all of their time on campus,” one staffer (who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of their position) told Truthout in an interview. They added that, although workers have been told that what they do outside of work time is their prerogative, they are wary of political exposure. In reality, workers at Cornell and other institutions have faced surveillance, public smears and retaliation from management over their activism around Palestine. As hourly staff, they said, “in some ways, I have a pretty strong divide between my working life and my private life, but if the university is saying that anything I post on social media could be subject to scrutiny from HR, then it’s like, okay, well, do I really have a private life?”


“I know people get intimidated because their jobs are on the line, but the only way to resist is to teach those courses.”

The ongoing suppression of teaching and dialogue on Palestine hinges on the exploitative economic structure of the corporate university. A four-year liberal arts education has become less about learning than about maintaining a financial and commercial vehicle for corporate and philanthropic investment; an academic machine for generating and laundering profits and political influence. Meanwhile, undergraduate study increasingly centers around preparing students for lucrative corporate careers, while saddling them with wildly inflated tuition rates and crushing student debt.

Yet the drive to corporatize and commercialize higher education hasn’t stopped the right from demonizing colleges as bastions of rabid ultraliberalism. Paradoxically, the conservative caricature of academics as an elite “woke” mob has fueled attacks on affirmative action, diversity initiatives, and other efforts to make academic and campus culture more inclusive, even though in reality universities are becoming more reactionary, authoritarian and — as the crackdowns on Palestine-related dissent have shown — aligned with a right-wing foreign policy agenda.

“There’s something important about not silencing ourselves ahead of possible censure,” said Mike Bishop, a doctoral student in developmental sociology and former staffer who worked on Cornell’s community engagement programs. A crucial challenge to the administration’s “dehumanizing” treatment of Palestine solidarity activists will come from students and workers organizing to “advance this conversation even just a little bit, toward a direction where humanity of all people, especially the people who are most oppressed, is centered,” Bishop added.
Academic Labor

The suppression of activism and teaching about the plight of Palestinians represents how the academic labor force has been subordinated to the business of the university. And it reveals the need for a much more expansive definition of academic freedom and academic labor rights. As long as the freedom to think, speak and organize is seen as the earned privilege of a tiny sliver of the academic workforce, academic freedom will ultimately be treated as disposable whenever the administration deems it inconvenient. Academic freedom cannot be protected or practiced in an academic environment rife with economic inequity. The challenges of organizing a campus community around a cause like Palestine — economic instability, a lack of democracy and autonomy in the workplace, the transience of precarious faculty jobs — are exactly what a strong academic labor movement can help overcome, especially as more and more of the academic workforce is relegated to adjunct or contingent positions.


“If the university is saying that anything I post on social media could be subject to scrutiny from HR, then it’s like, okay, well, do I really have a private life?”

Calling out the commercial interests and corporate exploitation at the heart of the university — as the career fair protesters did — is a crucial part of challenging the neoliberalization of higher education. But so is strengthening the leverage that faculty, graduate workers, and others can wield within the ranks of the academic workforce — through unionization, collective bargaining, and when necessary, withholding the labor upon which higher education’s political economy depends.

Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU), a recently formed union representing more than 3,000 graduate employees, has pursued academic freedom within the framework of labor rights. Last July, CGSU negotiated a memorandum of agreement that commits the administration to bargain with the union over any changes to working conditions that have been imposed through the Interim Expressive Activity Policy. That has provided a layer of legal protection for members like Taal and Parasurama as the union tries to negotiate their reinstatement. (So far, CGSU reports Taal has resumed his studies but remains barred from teaching, while Parasurama’s academic future remains in limbo post-disenrollment.) More broadly, in ongoing bargaining negotiations, the union is advocating for just cause protections, to protect members’ ability to “express themselves as members of society or as representatives of their fields of instruction, study, or research, free from [Cornell’s] censorship or retaliation.”

It is no coincidence that the mobilization of students and workers against the Gaza genocide parallels a surge in labor organizing in higher education, with more than 100 academic worker unions emerging over the past decade and about 20 strikes in the 2022-2023 academic year alone. The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions has identified 35 academic collective bargaining agreements, out of a random sample of 135, that explicitly protect union members against discrimination for political activity. Alongside CGSU, academic worker unions at Rutgers University, Brown, Harvard, the University of Southern California and the University of California system have mobilized, filed federal unfair labor practice charges, and in some cases, launched strikes, in response to their administrations’ restrictions on Palestine-related campus activism.

The protests over Gaza have catalyzed resistance to the corporatization of the university. Yet in the long term, the most effective challenge to the creeping authoritarianism in higher education may be organizing for labor protections in tandem with academic freedom. Because, while university administrations treat higher education like a business, academic workers can reclaim academic freedom and educational democracy in a world of conflict and repression, and redefine what a college campus should provide for everyone who comes there to work, learn and live together with dignity.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at Dissent Magazine, and a contributing writer at The Nation, In These Times and Truthout. She is also a co-producer of the “Asia Pacific Forum” podcast and Dissent Magazine’s “Belabored” podcast, and teaches history at the City University of New York. Follow her on Twitter: @meeshellchen.