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In an exclusive interview with World Israel News, Prof. Jeffrey Lax says he hopes an outrageous commencement speech made by a radicalized antisemitic graduate strengthens his group’s case against the law school.
By Atara Beck, World Israel News
The commencement speech by City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law graduate Fatima Mousa Mohammed, delivered on May 12, alarmed not only Jews, but also patriotic Americans. They were outraged not only by her vicious lies against the State of Israel, but even more so by what seemed to be a call for the destruction of America.
Some are calling for the school to be defunded.
.@RitchieTorres is spot on here. This hater can spout her hate where she pleases but it should not be at the publicly funded @CUNY school of law. Her antisemitism destroyed this commencement and it must be roundly condemned and should not have been sanctioned with public funds. https://t.co/Hvtrzubcum
— Barry Grodenchik (@BarryGrodenchik) May 29, 2023
Mohammed’s speech was “even worse than last year’s hate spewed by Nerdeen Kiswani,” tweeted S.A.F.E. CUNY (Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY) – a non-profit that advocates for Zionist Jews systemically discriminated against and excluded by the CUNY. Furthermore, according to the tweet, “CUNY Law, under state investigation, tried to hide this video.”
Following a complaint by S.A.F.E. CUNY against the CUNY School of Law several months ago because of its unanimous adoption of BDS as policy, the school has come under investigation.
In her address, Mohammed said she “want[s] to celebrate CUNY Law as one of the few, if not the only, law school to make a public statement defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.
“This is the law school that has passed and endorsed BDS [anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] on a student and faculty level,” she affirmed, before listing vicious and false claims against the Jewish state.
Prof. Jeffrey Lax, business department chair at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College and founder of S.A.F.E. CUNY, told World Israel News in a telephone interview that he hopes Mohammed’s speech, which is now out in the open, will help their case, stressing that the implementation of BDS, a discriminatory boycott, is a violation of New York law.
“We filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights and the New York City Commission on Human Rights,” Lax said. “We hope that this evidence will help solidify the claims against CUNY Law.”
But anti-Israel propaganda was not the most alarming part of Mohammed’s speech, which included “rage” against American institutions and values and encouraged “revolution.”
Although Mohammed acknowledged and praised the law school’s encouragement of anti-Israel activity, she nonetheless slammed CUNY Central, which “continues to fail us, continues to train and cooperate with the fascist New York Police Department, the military, that continues to train [Israeli] soldiers to carry out that same violence globally.”
The U.S. legal system, she said, is “a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.”
“May the rage that fills this auditorium dance in the hallways of our elementary schools…may it be the fuel for the fight against capitalism and racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world…by any means necessary…
“We will protect the fight that brings us all closer to the fall of all oppressive institutions – a reality that is only myopic and unrealistic to the oppressors, but is the inevitable future for the oppressed, for oppressed people everywhere.
“Far greater empires of destruction have fallen before, and so will these. And so, to the class of 2023, the fight begins now.”
“What I find truly incredible is not just that Mohammed’s speech is clearly evil – I’m not interested in a random evil student, even though she’s now a graduate. What I’m much more interested in is that the faculty most likely saw that speech and approved it,” Lax said in the interview.
The speech “was very close to incitement. When you call for rage against Zionists and capitalism – to me, that’s like calling for an insurrection. But the thing that stood out most is that CUNY Law livestreamed the entire graduation ceremony, and as soon as it was over, they wiped it from the internet, from their website.
“My group made a freedom of information request for the video. Of course, they wouldn’t want to give it to us; they made it public.
“To me, a big part of the story is: I think the reason they initially wiped it off the internet was to keep it away from investigators, because in that video, Mohammed gives the perfect example of how BDS policy is being actively implemented at the law school, and that is damning evidence against the law school in the state investigation against them.”
S.A.F.E. CUNY, Lax continued, “followed up with a letter to New York State, alerting them to the fact that CUNY Law tried to conceal evidence and obstruct the investigation by preventing them from seeing the video, which shows that BDS is truly being implemented there.”
WIN: How dangerous is Mohammed?
“I think that when people talk about the First Amendment – and no one believes in the First Amendment and pushes it more than I do – they have to realize that there are extreme exceptions, like incitement to violence. When she calls for rage against Zionism, against capitalism, against the police and the U.S. military – to me, that comes very close, if not actually there, to incitement to violence and an insurrection against America.”
WIN: Mohammed’s speech was interrupted several time by enthusiastic applause. There was no audible booing or challenges to her claims. What does that say about the law school and the graduates in attendance?
“What I heard was resounding applause. It says to me that the New York Bar Association should reconsider its accreditation of CUNY Law School because, again, I believe that speech was an incitement to violence. We need to find out whether the administration saw and approved that speech before it was given.”
It’s strange that the speech would be endorsed, only to be wiped off the internet immediately after being delivered. Perhaps the person who approved it was not the same person who wiped it off the internet immediately?
“Sometimes, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. I don’t want to speculate because I don’t know. And maybe she went slightly off script. We don’t know. I think we need that information. We need to see the speech that was given to the school – if it was given to them beforehand. We need to see who approved it. These are questions that demand answers.”
WIN: We know that there’s a lot of radicalism on American college campuses in general. Jews and Zionists have a hard time, they have to deal with so much anti-Israel propaganda and discrimination. But what happened now at CUNY Law School – is that above and beyond?
“I’ll put it this way. That was the worst commencement speech that I have ever heard in my entire life. It’s not even close. And that includes last year’s address by Nerdeen Kiswani. This call for defunding the American military – what does that mean?”
WIN: Could Mohammed be prevented from practicing law as a result of her speech?
“I hope that happens. One part of admission to the bar is a character interview, in which someone designated from the bar would assess whether her character is becoming for an attorney. I believe that she should be turned down. Whether or not that happens will solely depend on who that person interviewing her is.”
The post Does CUNY School of Law support ‘revolution’ against America? appeared first on World Israel News.
Should Christians idealize dictatorships or even suggest dictatorship for America? In the current “postliberal” moment, there’s a new Christian authoritarian chic. Recent examples include a conservative Christian finding virtue with East German communism, and another extolling a “Protestant” Francisco Franco for America.
The first example is American Conservative editor Helen Andrews, who’s Eastern Orthodox, in a book review called “What Soviet Nostalgia Gets Right.” Andrews laments the decline of birthrates in East Germany after communism fell, perhaps due to the “end of universal subsidized daycare and lavish ‘birth-year’ maternity leave, which had been a jewel of the East German welfare state.” There was also the “loss of a sense of purpose.”
And Andrews notes:
Most post-Soviet countries are more prosperous now than in 1990, after experiencing temporary declines during the period of “Shock Therapy.” But drug use and street crime, which had been rare in East Germany, were brought in with reunification, along with pornography and sex shops. Those old-timers who have sensed a rise in overall disorder and degeneracy have a point.
And:
The bargain that East Germany offered is basically the one China offers now: Stay out of politics, and we will leave you alone, and in return, we will deliver rising living standards. Most people are happy to take this deal, and in the case of China, the rest of the world doesn’t condemn them for it. Twenty years ago, the vast majority of Chinese graduate students stayed in America after earning their doctorates. Now the trend is to return to China. They are voting with their feet.
As to East Germany’s infamous police state, Andrews says: “Even pervasive surveillance, excruciating for independent thinkers, was an annoyance at most for the average person. And regarding complaints about East Germany’s lower standards of living compared to West Germany, Andrews responds:
In fact, by many of the indices of consumer wealth—percentage of households owning a car, a fridge, a washing machine, a TV—East Germany performed very respectably, especially by the end of the 1970s. If its consumer products were fewer and shabbier than the West’s, its leaders said, with some justification, this was made up for in other ways: free health care and daycare, subsidized public transport, excellent schools.
Andrews blames West Germany for isolating East Germany in a virtual “trade embargo” at least until 1970.
Of course, Andrews’s ultimate point is not to glamorize East Germany but to deride liberal democracy and free markets. She writes that “for millions of people who lived under a different system, the superiority of liberalism wasn’t obvious. To take their views seriously is also to consider the possibility that alternatives exist now, too.”
What are those “alternatives” to liberal democracy?
For American Reformer editor Joshua Abbotoy, it’s possibly an American one-man personal dictatorship. He tweeted: “Basically, America is going to need a Protestant Franco.” American Reformer is an online Calvinist publication at least adjacent to Reformed advocates of a “magisterial” Protestant confessional state. Another postliberal Reformed online polemicist, Nick Solheim of American Moment, supportively tweeted his endorsement, along with a pro-Franco podcast.
Abbotoy later added: “I don’t personally want Franco or Pinochet. Their regimes were less than ideal in many ways. I want a virtuous citizenry capable of self-governance. But at this point you need to have your head in the sand if you don’t see parallels to 1930s Spain.”
The point behind the Franco endorsement was that at least Franco knew how to manage the Left. His management was defeating Spain’s leftist regime in a brutal civil war, killing tens of thousands of opponents, incarcerating hundreds of thousands, and reigning through a one-man, one-party dictatorship for almost 40 years until he died.
Spain’s choices in the 1930s were indeed grim. The Republican regime, although elected, bolshevized through its reliance on support from Stalin. Factions within the regime waged a “red terror,” killing thousands of priests, lay Catholics and other perceived opponents.” Their victory likely meant a communist or at least pro-Soviet Spain.
Franco of course was backed by Mussolini and Hitler, who expected Franco to join them in their eventual war with the world. To his credit, Franco, although sending “volunteers” to fight with the Nazi invasion of the USSR, declined to war against the West. After winning his own civil war, he waged his own “white terror,” which often involved working thousands of adversaries to death in concentration camps. Among other crimes, children of adversaries, often before their imprisonment and ultimate death, were stolen and awarded to Franco supporters.
Across four decades, no opposition to Franco was tolerated. Spain’s Catholic hierarchy supported him against the leftist Republicans but later chaffed under his rule, when it was clear that their privileged status required subservience to him. Among other powers, he claimed authority over appointing bishops. Spain’s Catholic prelates later broke with the dictatorship, especially after Vatican II affirmed religious freedom with other human rights, and supported Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy.
Abbotoy, in his defense of Franco, noted the “Republicans intended to carry out a pogrom against Christian peoples in Spain, and Franco stopped it.” More specifically, Franco defended the Catholic Church, which was the only fully legal religion in Spain. He was not interested in defending other Christians or religionists. Protestants, with Jews and others, were banned from a public presence in Franco’s Spain and could not directly own property or openly publish their religious materials. Typically, Protestants worshipped in private homes or in disguised buildings, which sometimes were still closed by the police. Under Franco’s law, “no other external ceremonies or manifestations than those of the Catholic religion shall be permitted.” Protestants were banned from government and faced obstacles even in private industry. There were no legally recognized Protestant marriages. In 1956 the only Protestant seminary was closed. Catholic religious instruction in schools was mandatory.
American Protestants, both Mainline and Evangelical, commonly complained about Franco’s suppression of Spanish Protestants, for whom they prayed. As Franco was a Cold War ally who hosed a U.S. airbase, the U.S. said little to nothing about Franco’s repressions.
Advocating for a “Protestant” Franco echoes a new generation of Calvinist theocrats like Stephen Wolfe, author of In Defense of Christian Nationalism, which advocates for a “theocratic caesarism.” In this vision, a Calvinist ruler would privilege Reformed believers over Catholics and others, which is farcical.
Wolfe’s fantasy aside, there can be no “Protestant” Franco because Protestantism is the direct opposite of dictatorship. Protestantism, with its stress on the individual believer’s direct connection to God, is intrinsically subversive. Dictators like Franco, no matter their own religion, typically fear and suppress most forms of Protestantism, which they see as uncontrollable.
“Liberalism” and modern democracy are largely the fruit of Protestantism. Most Calvinists and others who stressed humanity’s total depravity ultimately realized that no ruler or small clique can be trusted with arbitrary power. There must be constant safeguards and counterbalances. No hierarchy, ecclesial or political, merits complete trust.
In contrast, dictators, by nature, even when “Christian,” inevitably are tyrants, jailing, torturing, and killing their enemies, stealing from the public treasury, operating on fear and paranoia, and unwilling to surrender power. Some of us are old enough to recall “Franco is still dead” jokes from the mid-1970s. Franco, of course, retained power beyond his cognitive and physical capacities. Late night comedians wondered: “Is Franco still dead?” Thankfully, he is.
Neither of the writers, Andrews or Abbotoy, are old enough to recall much of the 20th century, whose dictators perpetrated epic crimes on hundreds of millions. Some young post-liberals think our own times are uniquely terrible. But contemporary America is superior to a single day under Franco, communist East Germany, or any dictator.
The post Christian Dictatorship Chic? appeared first on Providence.
The ten surviving Israeli agents were whisked on an emergency military flight back to Israel.
By World Israel News Staff
The Israeli victim of a fatal boat accident in northern Italy was a Mossad agent, Italian media revealed on Tuesday.
According to the Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica,’ the deceased man was a former Mossad official, but his name was withheld due to Israeli sensitivities.
According to the publication, the ill-fated boat carried a total of 23 individuals at the time that it capsized. Among them were 19 Italian and 10 Israeli intelligence officers, both active and retired. Initial reports had said the group had gathered to commemorate a birthday but other reports later said it was a high level intelligence meeting.
The Israeli team and their Italian counterparts swam to the shore and were promptly rescued. Alongside the Mossad agent, three other people, including two Italian intelligence officers, lost their lives in the incident.
The ten surviving Israeli agents were whisked on an emergency military flight back to Israel.
The Italian intelligence agents were secretly transferred out of the hospitals they had arrived at in an attempt to keep their identities hidden, Italian media reported.
The post Mossad agent killed in capsized boat in Italy, others spirited home on military jet appeared first on World Israel News.
A devastating event occurred off the coast of Alaska on Sunday when a charter fishing boat sank, taking one life and leaving four people unaccounted for.
The Sitka-based fishing charter company, Kingfisher Charters, alerted the Coast Guard to the missing vessel with its five passengers. The 30-foot aluminum boat was last seen near Sitka, an Alaskan city and borough near the state capital of Juneau.
The Coast Guard launched a search mission Sunday evening and, the following day, found the body of one man without a life vest. The boat was found submerged near Low Island, a mile east of Shoals Point on Kruzof Island.
The rescue teams searched an area of 825 square miles for over 20 hours using helicopters and boats, although the waves at the time reached heights of 6 to 11 feet. Despite the efforts of the Coast Guard and its partner agencies, the four missing individuals were not found, and the search was called off at 9:30 p.m. Monday.
The identities of the deceased and the missing persons have not yet been released. Kingfisher Charters provides all-inclusive fishing packages and guided trips on 30-foot power boats that accommodate up to six anglers.
The tragedy of the sunken charter boat in Alaska serves as a reminder of the dangers of the sea. The Coast Guard and other agencies worked hard to try and locate the missing individuals, but to no avail. Our hearts go out to the loved ones of those affected during this challenging time.
Ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has opened the floodgates for Israeli-Arab gang warfare to spill over into the Gulf state.
The post WATCH: Are the Abraham Accords paving the way for Israeli-Arab gang violence? appeared first on World Israel News.
Workers at Barboncino pizzeria in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, are unionizing with Workers United. (Courtesy BWU)
From my seat at the bar of the popular Crown Heights pizzeria Barboncino on Memorial Day evening, I could see Jared Berrien, a pizza chef, or pizzaiolo, who has worked at Barboncino for about a year, stationed outside of the restaurant’s wood-fired hearth. Berrien told me that the volume of orders that come in on a night like this one makes the work resemble an assembly line. I could see he wasn’t wrong: between delivery orders and in-person dining, it was hard to keep track of the number of pizzas he was plating.
“After doing prep work and rolling dough at the start of a shift, I’ll plant myself in front of the oven or toss out dough for the next five to seven hours,” says Berrien. “I’ll be in one spot the entire time, only running off the line to get water or go to the bathroom.”
A week before my visit, workers at Barboncino — both those in the back of the house like Berrien and those in the front, the servers and bussers and bartenders like Mike Kemmett, who flitted from one end of the bar to the other on Monday night, mixing cocktails and helping patrons decide which of the restaurant’s many pizzas to order — filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is one of the ways workers can organize a union. Organizing with Workers United, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate that is behind the Starbucks union drive, the Barboncino workers hope to become the first stand-alone unionized pizzeria in New York City.
Few food-service workers in the United States are unionized. Should Barboncino Workers United (BWU) succeed, it could kick off other union campaigns among the city’s restaurant workers. Once Workers United organized one Starbucks, that model was quickly replicated across the country; the union hopes that, despite the differences in one campaign at a megacorporation versus many campaigns at smaller businesses, the similarities in the type of work and the worker-to-worker organizing model used in the Starbucks effort might create a domino effect in the restaurant industry.
While BWU has asked for voluntary recognition from Emma Walton and Jesse Shapell, who took over ownership of the restaurant from chef and indie filmmaker Ron Brown late last year, they say that they are prepared for an NLRB election in which all of the restaurant’s workers would vote in a secret-ballot election. Of the roughly forty nonmanagement employees at Barboncino, a supermajority have signed union-authorization cards.
“Barboncino’s ownership is aware some of its employees have shown an interest in unionizing,” Walton told me in an email. “Barboncino will continue, as always, to support its customers, community and employees.”
“We’re going to win the election,” says Alex Dinndorf, a server and busser who has worked at Barboncino for almost two years. “It’s not even going to be close.”
If you ask Kemmett why he and his coworkers decided to unionize Barboncino, he’ll mention an incident he refers to as “poop night.”
It was the summer of 2022, when the restaurant was still owned by Brown, and Kemmett was working when a pipe exploded. The leak led wastewater to flood the basement, mixing with cleaning products and insect removal chemicals that were stored there.
Tasked with cleaning up the mess, Kemmett, a busser, and a dishwasher used trash bags to create “fisherman’s pants” before wading into the almost knee-high water, he says. “We were marching around in the muck, filling up these bins and ditching the water anywhere we could.”
When they finished, Barboncino was still meant to be open for another two and a half hours. They say they were told to resume serving food.
“Which was crazy,” says Kemmett, “because the basement is where hundreds of trays of dough are prepped and stored.”
Workers pause for a drip check in the Barboncino basement. (BWU)
He says that the shift manager that night knew this was an absurd request, but Brown had told him that if the pair refused to resume service, he would consider it a “mutinous act.” (Brown did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.) Kemmett and the busser decided to leave, even if it meant being fired.
He ended up throwing out the clothes and boots he had worn during the shift. On the way home, Kemmett called Brendan O’Connor, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member who was working at Barboncino at the time. Kemmett wanted help finding a lawyer to defend himself and the busser if they were fired. They kept their jobs (Kemmett says the shift manager helped cover for them), but he and O’Connor spoke again.
“I said, ‘So I didn’t get fired, but this is still wrong,’” remembers Kemmett. “‘Maybe we should do something bigger.’”
Within twenty-four hours, O’Connor had contacted the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC), a joint project of DSA and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America that offers organizing assistance to workers who are in the early stages of what might become a union campaign.
“Two days later, we were in contact with EWOC and starting the whole process,” says Kemmett.
Shortly after Walton and Shepell took over ownership of Barboncino, the workers circulated a petition requesting a staff meeting. They wanted a raise, disciplinary protections, and input on the restaurant’s employee handbook, particularly as it pertained to handling sexual harassment by customers — an incredibly common complaint in the industry.
Dinndorf says that around three-quarters of the restaurant’s workers signed the petition. A staff-led meeting took place in November, and the workers read testimonies about what a living wage would mean for them. The restaurant’s front-of-house workers receive $10 an hour plus tips, a rate that they say has not increased since Barboncino opened in 2011. They want to raise that to $15 plus tips. Back-of-house workers say that their pay varies widely: an inexperienced young employee might start at $18 an hour, while those more senior may begin at $22 or $23.
Asked about these numbers, Walton wrote, “Barboncino offers a competitive hourly wage that complies with minimum wage requirements.”
A worker moves pizza boxes. (BWU)
Dinndorf says that the owners agreed to a follow-up meeting in January, at which they refused to increase wages or negotiate disciplinary protections, though they later granted raises to some back-of-house workers. By that point, the employees were already speaking with Workers United.
“It was one of the most popular things we’ve done in the campaign,” says Dinndorf of the decision to organize with Workers United. “They offer so much help that we can’t even use it all.” Every Barboncino worker with whom I spoke echoed that sentiment.
Dinndorf also says that the choice to work with Workers United helped overcome divisions between front-of-house and back-of-house workers within the pizzeria, an obstacle in almost every organizing campaign in food service. When BWU began to form, the organizing committee was primarily led by front-of-house workers, who tend to be the prototypical downwardly mobile, college-educated white millennial.
“All of these people who are in the service industry are normally in a kind of antagonistic division of labor together,” explains Dinndorf. “Part of overcoming that was joining a big organization so we can say, if the owners threaten to close the restaurant down, we have lawyers and people who we can trust.”
Berrien was another key to breaking through those divisions. He has more than a decade of experience in kitchens ranging from diners to fine dining; at Barboncino, his duties include making pizzas and salads, prepping the kitchen, making dough, and thinking up specials and the staff meal.
He cites the pandemic as a factor in growing support for unionization among restaurant workers. He lost his job at the time, and he believes similar experiences gave the industry’s workers an understanding of their precarity. He saw that insecurity play out at Barboncino, and it’s what led him to get on board with the union effort, helping convince other members of the restaurant’s back-of-house staff to do the same.
“We had a coworker who was a father, who got fired on the spot because he voiced concerns about management and the way they were running things and that he felt he was getting overworked and not treated right,” explains Berrien of an incident that took place around five months ago. “Another guy was an ex-con who needed a job as a condition of his parole, and he was let go unceremoniously, too.”
Asked about those incidents, Walton wrote, “While Barboncino’s ownership disagrees with these characterizations, Barboncino does not discuss personnel issues publicly.”
The workers want clear disciplinary procedures, such as a three-strikes policy. Kitchens are notoriously intense workplaces, and it’s hard to imagine an environment more in need of a union shop steward that workers can turn to when they have problems on the job. At Barboncino, workers say that the current employee handbook mentions at-will employment a dozen times and that a mandatory arbitration clause has been added as of late that would prevent them from taking the restaurant to court.
Prioritizing protections against arbitrary termination helped win trust among Barboncino’s back-of-house staff, but building unity also required workers like Berrien to talk through his coworkers’ cynicism regarding the possibility of changing the establishment for the better.
“The difficulty with organizing cooks is that we can be used to abuse and adverse working conditions. That can become a sort of badge of honor that we wear as if it’s a cool, badass thing,” says Berrien. “There’s something to be said for that because it builds camaraderie, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve things.” He says that some of those who were most adamant that they weren’t interested in the organizing have since become the union’s most vocal members.
The most capable administrators in the country couldn’t work at Barboncino. The president of the United States couldn’t work a Barboncino line.
“On my very first day at Barboncino, I remember seeing around one hundred and fifty [order] tickets in the kitchen, and there was more delivery than I had ever seen in my entire life,” says Dinndorf, who has worked in the service industry for more than a decade. “I thought, ‘This isn’t a pizza restaurant, this is a pizza factory.’ This is industrial, very fast work: to work as a pizzaiolo here is incredibly hard. The most capable administrators in the country couldn’t work at Barboncino. The president of the United States couldn’t work a Barboncino line.”
When I tell Berrien about Dinndorf’s assertion regarding the president, he laughs in agreement. “It’s skilled labor.”
The workers emphasize that their qualms are with the food-service industry writ large, rather than Barboncino specifically. In fact, they say that it is the pizzeria’s relatively decent working conditions that inspired them to organize.
“We have all worked jobs that were so much worse than Barboncino, and we’ve all had more abusive managers,” says Kemmett. “When speaking with people who have been through worse, we say that the reason we should organize Barboncino is because it’s a good place to work and it could be better. This could be a place where you have real stability.”
“Support for unionization within the industry is bubbling over; it’s volcanic,” adds Dinndorf. “But people are afraid of retaliation.”
It’s a reasonable fear. Starbucks is currently violating labor law at locations across the country, firing dozens of pro-union workers and closing profitable stores that have particularly strong unions. A restaurant owner could do the same. And these are high-turnover businesses, which adds to the difficulty of unionizing them; there’s a reason few unions have tried it before. Asked why pro-union sentiment exists among food-service workers given these obstacles, BWU members mention the inspiration they and their counterparts at other restaurants have taken from the Starbucks unionization drive, citing in particular the youth-led nature of that organizing.
“Organizations like EWOC and Workers United are radicalizing a generation of young people,” says Dinndorf. “This is the accumulation of people being radicalized by work. It’s the product of a lifetime of hard managers.” He recounts feeling near elation upon leaving the group’s first organizing-committee meeting. Says Dinndorf, “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m not at work, but I’m with my coworkers talking about all our problems with our jobs.’ It felt like a complete subversion of what it means to go to work.”
The workers also point out that recent shifts in the US economy have made low-wage service work a long-term job rather than the youthful gig many still view it as. The number of people working these jobs for decades rather than a year or two continues to grow, and with that comes a need to make the work more sustainable. Plus, there is the cost of rent. As housing prices continue to rise in New York, something has to give.
“People talk about our generation as being apathetic, but when we’re organizing, I don’t see any of that,” says Dinndorf. “A lot of people don’t know what a shop steward is, but once they do know about it, they want one. And Barboncino is the prototypical restaurant — if we can organize, any other nearby restaurant can too, and they’ll do it twice as quickly as we did.”
The official union button of the Barboncino union. (BWU)
“This is the first thing I’ve ever done in the industry that has been fulfilling,” says Kemmett. “It makes me feel like I’m actually capable of improving things.” He laughs, adding, “I have a reputation for being a grumpy bartender, but these days, I’m pretty peachy at work.”
On Monday night, the owners weren’t on site, and the workers, wearing union buttons they’d made over the weekend, chatted with me and the patron seated next to me at the bar. She was friends with one of them and had stopped into the pizzeria to find out what it means for a restaurant to unionize; she hadn’t known such a thing was possible.
As I ate a cremini and fennel sausage pizza and discussed the ins and outs of union-button design with Kemmett, a soundtrack heavy on 2000s hits played over the restaurant’s speakers. BWU members sang along as they navigated behind the crowded bar. (When Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” abruptly stopped playing, a chorus of boos erupted from the staff.) Some of them had come from what they described as a very positive organizing meeting earlier in the day, and spirits were high. They say tips have been better than usual this week, and customers are writing supportive messages on their receipts. If this is what a unionized restaurant looks like, I’d guess the city’s workers are about to organize a few more of them.
Yulia, an extremely rare and endangered seal who became an overnight celebrity two and a half weeks ago when she was found resting on a beach in Tel Aviv, has been spotted again ashore in Rishon LeZion, despite leading marine biologists’ predictions that she would not return.
The post WATCH: Defying leading experts’ predictions, celebrity seal still in Israel appeared first on World Israel News.
Rabbi Baruch Dov Povarsky, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein’s successor as head of the world famous Ponevezh Yeshiva, compared the late Lithuanian Charedi leader to Moses in his eulogy during Tuesday’s funeral.
Below is a video of the late rabbi’s modest home.
The post WATCH: Small and modest home belonging to late rabbi ‘on par with Moses’ appeared first on World Israel News.
An overwhelming majority of Middle East scholars support boycotting Israel, according to a survey.
By Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner
Over 100 Jewish and non-Jewish organizations on Tuesday issued a fervent letter urging university leaders to reject a boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) resolution being proposed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
The measure, which accuses Israel of being an apartheid regime and committing crimes against humanity, will be considered via electronic ballot from June 15-30, according to the website of Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (AnthroBoycott). Passing the resolution would make AAA the first major academic professional association to endorse the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement since the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) did in 2022.
“An academic boycott, unlike an economic boycott, seeks to suppress the open exchange of ideas, collaboration, and scholarly discourse,” the letter says. “The AA resolution, if passed, not only threatens the core principles of academic freedom but also poses significant risks to the educational opportunities and experiences of your students and faculty, the reputation of your institution and the inclusivity and diversity of your campus community.”
The letter, drafted by AMCHA Initiative, adds that the boycott would have an “irreversible impact on students and faculty” and that “research has shown a clear correlation between academic boycotts and the incitement of anti-Jewish hostility and antisemitism.” Citing these concerns and more, it called on university leaders to denounce all academic boycotts, dissociate with AAA if the resolution passes, and “implement safeguards” that would prevent academic boycotts on their campuses.
Signatories of the letter include Academic Engagement Network (AEN), B’nai B’rith International, EndJewHatred, National Association of Scholars, StandWithUs Center for Combating Antisemitism, Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Zionist Organization of America.
An overwhelming majority of Middle East scholars support boycotting Israel, according to a survey published in Nov. 2022, which shows that only nine percent of 500 responding experts from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the American Political Science Association (APSA) would “oppose all boycotts of Israel.” 91 percent “support at least some boycotts.” 36 percent also favor “some boycotts” but not against Israeli universities.
Established in 1902 and based in Arlington, Virginia, the American Anthropological Association, which has over 10,000 members, has considered boycotting Israeli universities before. In 2015, a measure similar to the resolution AAA members will vote on in June was defeated by 39 votes, with 4,807 votes cast.
80 major Jewish organizations spanning the American political spectrum signed a blistering letter imploring members of AAA to reject the BDS resolution. Drafted by the Alliance for Academic Freedom (AAF) and The Academic Engagement Network (AEN), it said that Israeli universities “work hard to foster Arab-Jewish coexistence” on their campuses and foster viewpoint diversity, which, it noted, includes “support for Palestinian voices.”
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