This morning, I was confronted by my union rep and was told that campaigning at the UAW constitutional convention could cause my company to fire me. I reported this to the federal monitor in this letter below.
If I am being threatened with termination for fighting for the rank and file at a union convention, I can't imagine what other workers are facing in terms of intimidation. I have watched the UAW bureaucracy treat multiple delegates here in an anti-democratic manner, and I was told by multiple long-time UAW members that this is the least democratic convention they have ever seen. Workers must take action against these betrayals.
***
Dear Monitor:
At around 9 AM this morning, in the hallway outside the floor of the convention, Mr. Lehman was threatened with being terminated from his job for campaigning for delegates to nominate him. Local 677 President Mike Shupp approached Mr. Lehman and told him that UAW International Representative for Heavy Trucks Doug Irvine communicated to Mr. Shupp that Mr. Lehman could be fired from his position at Mack Trucks. Mr. Shupp communicated this threat to Mr. Lehman by saying that if Holly Georgell, Director of Employee and Labor Relations at Mack Trucks, found out Mr. Lehman is campaigning for his nomination at the convention, he could be fired.
Election Rule 4-4's "Freedom to Advocate" provision states, "Any threats, intimidation, retaliation, penalty, discipline, or improper interference of any kind, or any similar conduct is strictly prohibited, and reports of such violations shall be investigated by the monitor." Election Rule 4-5,'s "Retaliation and Discrimination" provision states that the proscription of "threat of retaliation" against a Union member "specifically includes each member's freedom...to run for or seek to run for International office as a Candidate."
As a result of these threats, Mr. Lehman has temporarily stopped campaigning outside the convention hall out of fear of losing his job. Mr. Lehman has lost several hours of campaigning time as a result of the intimidation. The harm is irreparable if not remedied immediately--today.
We demand that the Monitor initiate its obligation under the rules to conduct an investigation into the intimidation of Mr. Lehman, including by investigating whether other delegates are being threatened if they nominate Mr. Lehman. The proper remedy for the ongoing violation is for Mr. Lehman to be given 5 minutes to address the full convention before the nomination of candidates.
The trial and sentencing of black track-and-field athlete Karmelo Anthony, found guilty of murdering Austin Metcalf, who was white, has become a major political flash point in Texas.
I asked Socialism AI how Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. He created nothing, but appropriated vast sums from the working class by leveraging his monopoly power and relationships with the capitalist state. Musk is a capitalist welfare king.
https://t.co/vfL7TaNnBj
In a ceremony in Kiev’s National Military Cemetery May 24, Ukraine’s political-military leadership re-interred the ashes of the WWII Ukrainian nationalist, fascist leader and Nazi collaborator Andriy Melnyk - Ukraine repatriates remains of Andriy Melnyk
https://t.co/I8wYFJf8xG
And @nytimes whitewashes this Nazi collaborator as "divisive 20th-Century hero" "criticized as a Nazi collaborator and lionized as an anti-Soviet resistance leader." It whitewashes Zelensky's glorification of him as moving with views of Ukrainians during the war. This is all fake.
Today, as a Ukrainian-Jewish and a scholar of the Holocaust, I feel deeply ashamed.
I never could have imagined that in my country — the country where the Nazis murdered 1.5 million Jews, the country of Babyn Yar, the very symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, a country that claims to be fighting for “freedom and democracy” — a Nazi collaborator and OUN leader like Andriy Melnyk would be buried with full state honors.
Men under Melnyk’s leadership served in the Auxiliary police under Nazi. They hunted Jews hiding in attics, basements, forests, and barns, desperate to survive the Holocaust. They guarded ghettos and camps. They marched Jews to execution sites. And they took part in the shootings alongside the Germans.
By the spring of 1943, the Holocaust in Ukraine was nearly complete. The Jewish neighbors were gone — murdered before the eyes, and often with the assistance, of Melnyk’s followers. And it was precisely then that Melnyk supported the creation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, whose members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler.
And today, the president of my country — a man whose own relatives were murdered by the Nazis — kneels before the coffin of this Nazi collaborator.
One could hardly imagine a greater humiliation for Jews. It is a humiliation for everyone who once believed that “Never Again” meant something in contemporary Ukraine — a country where militant ethnic nationalism increasingly dictates the politics of memory, and national identity.
The BBC/PBS co‑production Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution is presented as a fresh exploration of the “forgotten British side” of 1776.
@NATO@UKNATO@FCDOGovUK@DefenceHQ "One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ass for a lion."
https://t.co/l22aKyjAah
Today Ms. Rachel courageously delivered drawings from Dilley detainees (including several by the El Gamal kids) to the House/Senate.
Both parties are responsible for Dilley's existence; product of a deeply rotten political order.
Close Dilley now (& hands off the El Gamals)!
The death of historian Gordon Wood 3 weeks before the 250th anniv. of the Declaration of Independence is a terrible tragedy. He kept the revolutionary fire burning & defended its legacy when NY Times 1619 Project attacked it from right wing identity politics standpoint. RIP!
The “Great American State Fair” debacle: Trump’s megalomania and extreme isolation
One of the centerpieces of the anniversary is a mixed martial arts cage match scheduled to take place June 14 on the South Lawn of the White House.
https://t.co/Ktb8iuOkIk
More proof that the immigration court system is an anti-democratic farce.
Immigration Judge Amy Lee orders dead non-citizen deported, finding "insufficient proof of death."
You can't make this up!
My Life remains a work of undiminished significance. A great memoir must, of course, be very well written. It must also convey...a sense of what it was to be alive at a particular time - Trotsky’s My Life: Imperishable contribution to Marxism & literature
https://t.co/8StTdBAo7I
This week in #history: June 1-7
⏩Massacre of royal family in Nepal
⏩Teton Dam collapse kills 11 in Idaho
⏩US Supreme Court upholds convictions of Communist Party leaders
⏩Pilsudski chooses crony as Polish president
https://t.co/vggJ6LAJ2Y
Piker reminds one of Trotsky's description of Kerensky: "He had no theoretical preparation, no political schooling, no ability to think, no political will." He has "that kind of eloquence which operates neither upon mind or will, but upon the nerves."
https://t.co/u0UdgBzo3C