FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 22, 2025
CODEPINK Media Contact: Melissa Garriga | [email protected]
MEDIA CONTACT: Chris Smalls [email protected]
National Labor and Community Leaders to Rally at AFL-CIO Headquarters, Urging Labor Leadership to Take Immediate Action to Disarm Israel and Stop Supporting Genocide in Gaza
WASHINGTON - On October 24, 2025, the Coalition of Labor and Community Organizers to Disarm Genocide, led by Chris Smalls, will deliver a petition to the AFL-CIO headquarters. The petition calls on the AFL-CIO to:
- Recognize Israel’s campaign in Gaza as genocide;
- Condemn the abduction and assault of Chris Smalls aboard the Gaza aid flotilla;
- Affirm that attacks on workers anywhere are attacks on all workers;
- Acknowledge Israel as an apartheid state;
- Refuse to ship weapons, divest from war profiteers, and cut all financial ties with the military-industrial complex;
- Mobilize union power to end genocide through coordinated strike actions, building toward a U.S. general strike; and
- Reject genocidal politics by refusing to endorse or fund any politician who has voted for U.S. military aid to Israel.
This action challenges the AFL-CIO to live up to its stated values of solidarity, justice, and internationalism — and to stop U.S. labor’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
WHAT: Disarm Genocide Coalition led by Chris Smalls to deliver a petition to the AFL-CIO calling for direct action against Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
WHO: Speakers include Chris Smalls, Dr. Melina Abdullah, Dr. Jill Stein, Dr. Butch Ware, Hazami Barmada, Chelsea Alionar, and other national labor, community, and movement leaders. They will be joined by dozens of organizers, union members, and advocates from across the country delivering the petition and calling for a moral realignment of U.S. labor. Over a dozen organizations have endorsed the rally, including: Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice - LA, Yalla Indivisible, Palestinian Christians for Justice, Peoples Power Assembly - Baltimore, Veterans For Peace, Teachers Against Genocide, Lifeline For Palestine, Labor for Palestine, BLM Grassroots, Palestinian Youth Movement, and CodePink.
WHEN: October 24, 2025, 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm EST
WHERE: 815 Black Lives Matter Plaza NW, Washington, DC 20006
WHY: AFL‑CIO is the largest federation in the United States, representing over 12.5 million workers and more than 60 national and international unions. Yet in the face of genocide, the federation has been complicit.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, many of them children and women. Amid this devastation, the U.S. has remained the largest supplier of arms to Israel, which human-rights organizations have documented as being used in attacks that violate international humanitarian law.
While tens of thousands of rank-and-file union members have called for a cease-fire, passed resolutions, and taken to the streets in protest, the leadership of the U.S. labor movement remains silent and complicit. The AFL-CIO continues to invest in and enable the war industry—even as weapons produced by union labor and supplied via U.S. taxpayer funding help slaughter civilians and workers in Palestine.
Historically, labor has stood on the side of justice, from fighting fascism to advancing civil rights. Today, that same moral courage is urgently required. The coalition calls on the AFL-CIO to honour its own values of solidarity, human rights and internationalism, and to take real, tangible action to disarm genocide and stand with the Palestinian people.
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