For Immediate Release: October 1 2024

Contact: northnj@dsanj.org 

 

North NJ DSA stands in solidarity with the International Longshoremen’s Association as the clock ends on USMX’s disgraceful responses to the union’s demands. As multinational corporations move their wealth around, the ILA stands on business demanding what the nation’s largest maritime worker union, and all workers deserve–more. 

 

We support the locals in North Jersey, and call on DSA members to support active pickets at ports from Maine to Texas.

In addition, this strike also coincides with the one year anniversary of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Let us remember that the capitalist bosses who are cracking down on the rights of dockworkers are also providing critical backing for Israel’s settler-colonial war in Palestine and Lebanon. An ILA strike could potentially halt arms shipments to Israel and make a firm show of solidarity with the Palestinian working class.

 

To truly have worker interests in mind, the U.S. government must side with those striking as well as refocus the trillions of taxpayer dollars funding war and genocide overseas into creating quality jobs and public services for all back at home, from education to healthcare. However, we cannot rely on the political establishment to achieve this as both Republicans and Democrats have repeatedly deferred to corporate and imperial interests and crushed workers’ strikes.

 

It is incumbent that DSA and the socialist movement pick up this fight. We encourage the sharpening of class consciousness among rank and file workers taking part and taking notice of this strike by drawing links between imperialist wars abroad and repression at home. We support the workers in this moment while calling on union leadership to fight for their rights as well as demand an end to illegal arms shipments to Israel, which directly violate Section 6201 of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. We stand with said leadership and remain firm if the Biden administration attempts to intervene in the strike, as it did during the 2022 railroad strike, for it is within the union’s right and power to hold the administration to account for its flagrant and immoral violation of domestic and international law.

 

When the shipments that make our economy move come to a halt, we’re all reminded by the power of an organized working class and the withholding of our labor to fight for a better society.

 

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Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA is building a working class movement from the bottom-up, establishing a democratic socialist presence from the workplace to our neighborhoods and broader society.