Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/2/24: Headline Bias, Birthright Trips, Interview w/ UAW Members Angry At Biden Over Israel

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

This week we have a weekly roundup from our Partners starting with Spencer Snyder looking at Headline Biases in media, James Li looks at the Birthright trips to Israel industry, and Max Alvarez interviews UAW members furious at Biden over Gaza. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Is the news biased? Unbiased news. Unbiased news. We just have so much biased news every day. Of course the news is biased. Differentiate between opinion and fact. We need more objective reporting overall across the board. If you are overwhelmed with fear about getting some of this biased,

impure news, there are services that will tell you what news is biased or unbiased, and there are outlets that claim to not be biased at all. Do you think the news is biased? Especially, it depends what network you're on. I think left-wing, right-wing. 24-hour news

network should be illegal. And they are biased. Okay. Both sides. I think they should just stay back. Exactly. Thank you. Fact-based news outlets, I think we can call them. Mainstream fact-based news. Responsible fact-based news. Fact-based news organization. I mean, yeah, just facts. Why would you want anything else? But you know, it's funny. People are obviously quite aware that the news is biased, but not always so imaginative as to how. Where do you guys get your news? It's kind of sad, but I get a lot of my news

from social media. I normally get my news from, well, I don't get a lot of news. I don't believe in it. Don't believe, I am fascinated by this. Don't believe in the news. No, too much spin. There is a general notion that bias occurs when a position on the political spectrum is apparent,

which is why if someone has to come up with examples of biased news, they might immediately point to Fox or MSNBC. But people tend to overlook many key ways media can exhibit bias. And so to explore this, I asked people to compare a handful of headlines. He has no shirt on. That is psychotic. UN rejects resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in Gaza. US blocks resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in Gaza. US blocks resolution calling for immediate

ceasefire in Gaza. So rejects versus blocks. Rejects versus blocks. Because blocks and rejects means the same thing. Right, rejects is like, ah, we're not gonna do that. Blocks is like, we're stopping it. And UN versus US. I think this more comes down to your inherent feelings

about the UN versus your inherent feelings about the US. Maybe like lots of different nations rejected this thing, US blocks is like, no it was America. Like the whole world doesn't want to come to peace or compromise. Where this one makes it seem like it's just the US that doesn't want to compromise. I think you could look at this in the headline, people will post the headline and say like they don't want a ceasefire but the context is they don't want a ceasefire given the terms of the agreement. This makes it feel more anti-peace

from either the UN or the US perspective. What about the added context that the vast majority of UN nations supported the resolution? I see. Okay, yeah, that makes a big difference. When most of them wanted to... You're right, they both leave out very important detail, which 10 votes against and 145 in favor. Do you not like the idea that you were being tempted to click on something?

I don't like that at all. If you're crafting a headline because you have a constituent of readers that largely agree with your ideas, then people probably like the idea of being incentivized to click on a headline that confirmed their view. The headlines I was asking people to compare were both from Fox News, and the reason headlines are so important is because more than half of people only read the headlines. But clearly, two factual headlines can take you in two different directions, which is why Just the Facts is, let's say, a bit naive. Deadly airstrike hits area of Gaza that many have fled to, and historian Asal Raad on Twitter offers this edit.

Deadly Israeli airstrike hits area of Gaza that Israel told Palestinians to move to. Do you feel like one is more accurate, one's less biased? The second one's more biased. The second one's more biased? Yeah. The second one is trying to convince you that Israel is killing people intentionally. The first one is more statement of fact. Yeah, so I mean here you can directly like easily see that in the second statement they are trying to portray that this was like a very planned move by the Israeli government.

Both are biased because one is like very specifically obviously implicating Israel and one is like avoiding the implication of Israel. So you feel like the second one is just kind of sensational. For me, this news is about the violence that is being spread in the world so i don't care if it's israel spreading the violence or is the palestinians spreading the violence there could be some stages where some palestinians would have done something bad and it's not all of israel doing the strike and it's not all of palestinians doing something which might offend israel it's just a group of people.

So it's important that if you want to go into that news level of detail, then you should be specifying that who is doing this. Do you think one headline is more appropriate than the other? Yeah, I think those are important. So I don't know if they actually did that or not. The second one seems to be having an agenda. The second one says that Israel was trying to basically corral people and lead them into a trap and then drop a bomb on them. Pretty horrific, right?

I mean, that's just a mess over there in Gaza. If both are completely correct, the second one's more appropriate. The fact that Israel told Palestinians to move there, is that true? It is. Oh. Well? I would say that there is some confusion about what constitutes sensationalism. Namely, the difference between a needlessly graphic headline versus a set of facts that

just happen to be kind of shocking. But the question of who gets sensational or graphic versus neutral headlines is where a lot of bias comes in. This from The Intercept. Here's one from the New York Times. The article was originally headlined, What We Know About Tyree Nichols' Lethal Encounter with Memphis Police.

And then they changed it later to, The Questions That Remain a Year After Tyree Nichols' Death. Do you think they're both representative? Death. This is actually from the same article. Those are both pretty neutral, I would say. Both neutral. But open-ended, trying to get you to click on it.

They're both relatively passive, though. It's like not saying he was killed. It's saying a lethal encounter and a death. So both of them are not, like, that aggressive in the headline. You mean, like, are both of them kind of, like, pretty fair? Like, not too biased in a way? Just framing it as a death versus a lethal encounter with police. You know, they're not trying to throw the police under the bus,

but at the same time, there's definitely some questions that need to be answered. I think that you could say like that's what happened. Yeah, both of them. I'd say the first one mentions that he was killed by the police. And the second one just says that he died. Oh. Okay. I think the first headline has stronger wording.

Like it makes you feel something more, like get a stronger rise in reaction out of people. In terms of the feeling that you get as you're about to read it, totally different. I would say the questions that remain are probably a little more biased. The people I spoke with were basically all generally aware that everyone has bias. Obviously, the goal is for accuracy and to convey a story faithfully, but to get rid of bias, for the most part, not entirely possible. A few people I spoke with did seem to be quite sensitive to the idea that a certain headline

might be attempting to seduce them into clicking by eliciting emotion, or that a certain headline was sensational. But what certain people think they're looking for is actually the aesthetic of neutrality, I would say. Because writing a headline about a crime, but leaving out the perpetrator of the crime, is not to achieve neutrality. And if a piece of news has an emotional impact, that doesn't preclude objectivity. Sometimes a story is just shocking. And if a story is shocking, there is no reason to neuter the details, so to produce an emotionless headline.

With that being said, I am biased. And that will do it for me. My name is Spencer Snyder. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics. Link in the description.

Liking and sharing always helps. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next one. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too.

So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important,

and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I never found my people. I never found my place.

And finally, I landed and I found my friends. And being here in Israel is just a life-changing experience to finally land where I was supposed to be always. The people, the experiences, and just like the joy that we had on this trip, I'm gonna cry. It's like I've never had such a meaningful yet fun experience in my entire life ever. Founded in 1994 by Charles Bronfen and Michael Steinhardt in cooperation with the Israeli government, Birthright Israel, or simply Birthright,

is a free 10-day heritage trip to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights for young adults of Jewish heritage between the ages of 18 and 26. The purpose being to strengthen diaspora Jews' connection to Israel and increase a sense of Jewish identity. But can a free trip really be free? Seems too good to be true, right? There has to be a catch. But there isn't one. You're not going to be roped into long, boring religious seminars or be told what to think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And If Not Now is targeting Birthright in a campaign, urging the group to, in its words, tell the truth about the Israeli occupation. You have to learn about Israel. You have to learn about Palestine. This is my country. I'm a Jew and this is my country and I'm not living anywhere.

My Palestinian identity is going to. I'm a Jew. This is my country. And I'm not leaving anywhere. No Palestinian, Israeli. It's going to send me away from here. They specifically banned trip organizers from planning trips that involve meeting with Israeli Arabs. There's people on this trip who've been asking questions and trying to engage. And we have not been able to do that. And as a result, five's five of us who've been leaving. Birthright and what it does by refusing to discuss, show the occupation,

or even allow us to hear from Palestinians, what it's really doing is hiding the occupation from young American Jews like myself. Birthright is funded in large part by the Israeli government, along with support from influential donors like the Adelson, Blavatnik, and Kraft families of the world.

And with such significant backing from Israel and organizations known for their deep ties to Zionism, one has to wonder whether the experiences of young Jewish adults on birthright trips are shaped more by the vision of these benefactors than by a neutral exploration of Israel and of the Jewish heritage and identity. So birthright and name alone is fucked. Like, it's really problematic, right? Because what it's essentially saying is that these diaspora Jewish youth who have never been to Israel, who may have no family in Israel, have no genetic or ancestral ties to Israel,

can decide to go on a trip that says, this place is your right by birth. You deserve to be here. You are welcome back. Meanwhile, Palestinians who have been displaced from the land that's currently occupied have no right of return. Joining us today to provide our insights

and perspectives about birthright is Katie Bogan. She is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Nebraska and a prominent voice in the anti-Zionist Jewish community. Welcome, Katie. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really delighted to be here. All right.

So I think the first place that I want to start is maybe your upbringing as it relates to Judaism, Zionism. How were you raised? What ideas, values, beliefs did your parents try to instill in you just as a baseline? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. My grandfather, Stas, and his sisters, Helen and Bella, survived the Holocaust, but they were the only three people in their family to do so. And they were liberated in 1945 and then spent several years in Germany before migrating to the United States in 1949. And so even during that migration process, my grandfather and Helen were given the option to settle either in the United States or to receive a plot of land and a stipend and move to Israel.

And they chose the United States because they had community already here. So it is sort of by the flip of a coin and by a decision made, you know, in 1949 that I am here instead of in Israel. And when I was growing up, my family is an incredibly Zionist family. They really imagined the state of Israel as this land that offered salvation to my grandfather and his siblings after a deep, immense trauma. And so I grew up hearing, as many Jewish youth do in the United States, at every Passover Seder next year in Israel. That really strengthened my tie to this imagined savior space of Israel, this like glittering land where I would never have to face any anti-Semitism. So Israel existed to me absent the construct of Palestine

until I was about 18. And that is when my Zionist unlearning process began. And I started to build my more liberatory pro-Palestine politic. So that leads to my next question, which is, what did you know about Israel, about Palestine prior to going on birthright? Sounds like you did some exploration beforehand. Oh, absolutely. I had friends and family who had begun going on birthright when I was about 16 or 17. And then I started college and learned about Palestine as an occupied land and an occupied state. And I started asking the question to folks who were

returning from birthright, what did you learn about Palestine while you were there? And I remember one of my close loved ones, who I know is sort of a solid progressive, came home and said, oh, do you mean the terrorists? And that gave me such pause. I had never heard her use language like that before. And I said, no, that's certainly not what I meant. So before I went on birthright, I wanted to make sure that I had a solid foundational working knowledge, at least of the region. And I also wanted that learning to be balanced. So I took four different courses on relevant topics, suffering and evil in the Jewish experience, Jewish tradition, Middle East politics, and Arab-Israeli conflict. And these were four

university level courses. And I was also studying to get a BA in political science with a focus on comparative politics. So I took other coursework on apartheid systems and heard the comparisons between Israel and South Africa. And so by the time I finished my college course this topic. So I went on birthright, very prepared to rabble rouse and rouse rabble I did. Right. Well, so what was your experience like? What did you see there? What conversations were had? I have seen some reports, testimonies of people who spoke out against their trip leaders, and sometimes they were dismissed, kicked off the trip. So what did you do to try to challenge the endorsed narrative on your trip? It sounds like that's something that you did. to approach with a lot of pointed curiosity. My tour guide was a veteran of the second Lebanon war and claimed objectivity. And his name was Ayal. And he would always talk about how he was sort of an objective commentator on the politics between Israel and Palestine. And so I would ask,

you know, how does your role as a veteran impact that objectivity? Can you talk about the water crisis? Why is it that Israel has this world-famous desalination technology and can access clean water, and they're not sharing that technology with Gaza, who's isolated on this strip? Can you talk about settlements? How are Israelis justifying settlements in the West Bank when Palestinians live on so little land? And then even when we were on this trip, there were these kind of sleight of hand distraction tactics where we'd be on the bus and they would say, if you look out the right side of the bus, you'll see these beautiful groves and orchards. And I would

immediately go to the left side of the bus and see what they didn't want us to acknowledge. And those were essentially the shanty towns that Arab Israelis were forced to live in, these really impoverished regions that they just didn't want us to recognize because it was a visual representation of the inequity that has worked into Israeli society and sort of the way they treat Arab Israelis or non-Jewish Israelis. I'm curious, when you did bring some of these things up to the trip leaders, what would they say? I got a similar, oh, you mean the terrorists or, oh, Hamas response. And that's, I think, something that actually made me quite angry and frustrated when I was on the trip. And I said to Eyal in front of some other people, you have a group of impressionable young adults, 18 to 26

year old adults who are hearing you repeatedly make the comparison between Palestinian civilians and terrorists, Palestinian civilians and Hamas, which is one small representative group, not the whole of Palestine. And he would sort of get defensive and try to pivot or talk about something else and sort of waved me away as a rabble rouser and tried to speak to me on the trip one-on-one several times about sort of where I had learned the information that I was sharing with other students. And I talked about my coursework with him. And afterwards, he reached out to me trying to encourage me to make Aliyah and to become an Israeli citizen. It's like, you're a critical thinker. You clearly care very much about politics. Essentially, we could use you. Come join us. And all of this more political discourse isn't even getting at young, hot soldiers to come on this trip with you and then wind up having these machinations so that these Jewish diaspora youth can spend time alone with these sexy Israeli soldiers.

And they'll say, you know, maybe you all will fall in love on this trip. Maybe you'll meet your soulmate. And I remember even on the trip that I attended, there were two Israeli soldiers who clearly were into each other. for the Americans, basically clarifying that they were there to seduce us, not only, you know, literally, physically, emotionally, but seduce us into kind of the sexy glittering promise of the state of Israel and of Zionism. That, okay, that's, I haven't heard of that situation. It didn't come up in the research I did or in the promo video for Birthright. So you're saying part of the mission, because one of the questions I was going to ask is Birthright is in part funded by Israel, but it's also in large part funded by these Zionist

organizations and wealthy families in the US. So what do you think the true objectives are of the people who fund this trip? What are they trying to accomplish? In addition to maybe what you alluded to, which is making or encouraging Americans to move to Israel? Yeah, well, I think some of the goals of the trip are revealed by the age limits. The lower age limit for attending is 18. And the upper age limit is 26. These are people who are likely reproductively viable, who would have plenty of time to fall in love with an Israeli, get married and have babies, who are likely of an age bracket where they are able to commit to conscripted service and will be able to serve with their bodies for the Israeli occupation force. I will not call it the IDF. I'm sorry, I can't do that. And I really think if this were about sharing Jewish culture and just having people make Aliyah

and building the population of Israel, there wouldn't be the stringent age limit that there is. And there's a limit for going on birthright if you've been to Israel before for any longer than three months. So not only do they want these young people to go who could get married and make Jewish babies or who could provide service to the IOF, but they want folks to not have a significant background on the state of Israel or to have spent much time there before they attend, which I think

also speaks to the potential brainwashing, like the socialization effort that is being made by these Zionist organizations and funders. Yeah, that's disturbing to hear. And I want to maybe try to give a balanced perspective. Was there positive parts of the trip? Absolutely. I think in terms of connecting me to my faith as a Jewish person and to my religion as a Jewish person, it was stunning. My father is a single father. My mom is Irish Catholic, but my dad is Jewish. And my dad raised me as Jewish

from being a small child. But because I grew up in a Hasidic Chabad and my lineage, my Jewish lineage is patrilineal, I wasn't able to convert. And the Chabad was fairly conservative in terms of its gender politics and didn't feel like a good match for me. So I didn't have a bat mitzvah when I was growing up. And when I was on birthright, they provided everyone on the trip the opportunity to have a b'nai mitzvah. So I wound up being bat mitzvahed at the wall in Jerusalem, having this beautiful spiritual experience and crying with other folks who were making their conversion process more official. And that was a profound, heady experience of just, like, this is my transition to Jewish adulthood. And now I have committed to being a Jewish woman for my life. Yeah, I think this is really important

to discuss. And I do want to touch, I know we're, we've touched on it lightly, anti-Semitism that you brought up, because I think it is a very real thing, not only in the US, but all over the world. Although I do think there is a little bit of danger in that that term is being thrown around, I think a little too haphazardly right now to mean much of anything. It's in danger of kind of just meaning nothing. So I'm wondering what your personal, I know you touched on it when you were a kid, but what has been your personal experience with antisemitism and what do you think should actually be done to combat it? Yeah. Well, one example is when I was living in Rhode Island, I spent a lot of time as a grassroots organizer with the group Never Again Action, which is a Jewish youth group, community

organizing group meant to prevent any kind of identity-based violence. And so I was protesting ICE detention facilities in Rhode Island. I was at counter protests against the Proud Boys when they came to Rhode Island. And the starkest experience of anti-Semitism I ever had was members of the Proud Boys sharing my contact information on Stormfront, the White Pride Worldwide website, and doxing me. So they called my cell phone and told me that they were going to come to my home. They had my home address. I had to contact police and have a patrol car on my street for several days because the threats were legitimate and threats to safety. And I think there's a conflation happening here between the violence of language and actual threats to safety.

I don't believe that the statement from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, is inherently violent. That to me implies a right of return, full humanity and enfranchisement as political actors for Palestinians who choose to return to their homeland, a secular state where folks can exist with equal rights regardless of their religion and regardless of their ethnic background, and a deconstruction of ethno-nationalism in Israel, Palestine. That to me is a beautiful mission. It is not a threat of violence. Yeah, before we go, I want to try to do maybe a little thought experiment. If you could try to straw man for us the Israeli perspective. Specifically, I know that you're a huge advocate for the LGBTQ community. So one of the arguments that I've heard a lot is they, meaning Hamas, or you could argue

Palestine or the Arab world in general, they're religious extremists. Israel, we're the ones that want peace, but every time we've offered peace, they refuse. We are the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. If you as a queer person try to go to Gaza or what was, I guess, once Gaza, you'd be persecuted. So despite all of these civilian deaths, you'd be a fool not to support Israel. What are your thoughts about this particular argument? Is there a case to be made here? No. I think the argument is absurd. So first of all, that wholesale erases the safe existence of queer Palestinians and queer chasms. There are absolutely Palestinian organizers who are queer

and who are advocating for the liberation of queer community. And if you are in a position where you are being mass murdered, where you are being exterminated and you are fighting for your life, what space do you have cognitively, emotionally, or literally to advocate for queer liberation? I also think Israel is not a liberal democracy. It's an ethno-nationalist state. There are citizens there who do not have the same rights because of their race, ethnicity, and the way that they're born. There have been efforts, eugenics efforts in Israel to stop, for example, Ethiopian Jews from reproducing, and this was admitted by the Israeli Minister of Health in 2014. Any of those behaviors stop Israel from really being considered a legitimate liberal

democracy. And I do think this concern of if we allow Palestinians the right of return, or if we come to the table and try to negotiate, they're going to want to wipe all of us out. That is projection because we did that because Jews and Zionists and Israelis came to Palestine and exiled 700,000 people and have slowly been enacting violence. And we are worried about retribution. People are concerned that they will do to us what we did to them. There's been this sort of post-Holocaust embodied violence of do unto others what has been done to you. And that I think really takes Israel off the table as a liberal democracy. And this argument that that Palestine is the aggressor off the table as well. That's a, I think, a compelling argument. And I just want to thank

you for sharing your perspective. I learned a lot in this short conversation. So for those who want or are interested in hearing more of your perspective, where can people find you? Yes, absolutely. So I am on Instagram at k.w.bogan, just first initial, middle initial, last name. And I'm on TikTok as at sexuality scholar. My academic research is on sexual functioning outcomes among survivors of sexual abuse and trauma. So if you're interested in my work there, I would say follow me on Sexuality Scholar, but I talk about my pro-Palestine politic and being sort of Zionist critical on both platforms. All right, everybody go follow Katie. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your

perspectives with us today. Thank you so much. It was lovely chatting with you. That is it for me this week. I hope this conversation was as helpful and informative for you as it has been for me. If you enjoyed it, I highly encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. Of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points. And as always, thank you so much for your time. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, do they, like, rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.

Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music

that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on breaking points. On Wednesday of this week, Sean Fame, the reform president of the United Auto Workers, who led his union through last year's historic stand-up strike at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, formerly endorsed Joe Biden for president in the 2024 general elections on behalf of the union, which represents 391,000 active members and more than 580,000 retired members. Fain famously refused to endorse Biden or any other candidate last year, warning that the union's coveted endorsement would need to be earned, especially when it came to how candidates responded to the auto workers strike in September and October.

But Fain's endorsement of Biden and Biden's subsequent acceptance of that endorsement was greeted with defiance from a contingent of rank and file UAW members who argue that with this endorsement, the union is contradicting its own stated support for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Endorsing Joe Biden for president, Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist, whose administration has been the number one military, financial, and political supporter of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is a clear and blatant contradiction that undercuts Fain's and the UAW's stated commitment to, quote, standing for justice across the globe. And some UAW members took direct action to disrupt Biden's address to the union on

Wednesday in order to hold the union leadership to their own words. Here is cell phone video from the action which workers shared with us. For this Breaking Points exclusive edition of The Art of Class War, I got to interview three of the union members who disrupted Biden's speech on Wednesday. Less than one hour after they were dragged out of the event by secret service, I sat down and spoke with Shahinaz Ghanid, Nikki Thomas, and Johanna Kingslotsky of UAW Local 2710. Here's our conversation, which we recorded from the Real News Studio here in Baltimore. My name is Shaheen Azganit. I am with UAW Northeastern University organizing and higher education. I am a fourth year JD PhD student in criminology and criminal justice. And we just won our election back in September. So we are new to the UAW.

Yes. And hello, my name is Nikki Thomas. I am also at Northeastern University with GenU-UAW as a higher ed organizer. I'm in the bioengineering department, if anybody cares. I'm Johanna. I am a fifth year PhD candidate and teach as well at Columbia University. I'm getting my degree in English and Comparative Literature, and I'm a member of UAW Local 2710. Awesome. Well, again, can't thank you all enough for making it on this call. We are recording this on Wednesday, literally one hour after the UAW President Sean Fain endorsed President Joe Biden in the 2024 elections on behalf of the UAW. And y'all were there at the event in Washington, D.C.,

along with other union members, making a statement, protesting, demonstrating in the midst of this event, calling for an immediate ceasefire, demanding that the UAW, you know, continue to hold President Biden and his administration accountable for their complicity in continuing to support the ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza. I wanted to just ask uh since we are lucky enough to have the three of you on here if we could just go back around the table and and have y'all give our viewers and listeners a play-by-play of what happened today from start to finish yes so um i want to give the broader context first that a group of us within the UAW has formed called Labor for Palestine. UAW Labor for Palestine.

UAW Labor for Palestine. And we have been organizing, and particularly during this UAW conference, the CAP conference, around more actions related to pushing our elected officials to support a ceasefire. So the UAW had already passed internal resolutions and we knew that the International Executive Board, including President Sean Fain, supported a ceasefire in Palestine. And now it was time for us to really show that we wanted to make sure that our political endorsements were going to align with that. So that's the context of the broader week. We got about a thousand signatures in the span of from Monday to now, so three days, from our members, 750 at this conference, and then many

members sent the link to the petition back to their own home units as well and we got signatures that way. And throughout the conference we have been demonstrating every time that someone has gotten on the stage who doesn't want to talk about the issue, we've erupted in chance of ceasefire now. We did this with Bernie, we did this quite a bit. We're lobbying on the Hill as well to get our elected officials to support a permanent, not just a temporary ceasefire. And we spoke to the International Executive Board because there was a lot of rumors going around that they were going to endorse Joe Biden,

even though he has still refused to align himself with the UAW's position on a permanent ceasefire. And we felt, and the members who signed on to that petition felt that that was not okay. That the UAW really needs to stick to our values and stick to the statements that we had made and that President Sean Fain had made, that we weren't going to just hand out endorsements to politicians. They needed to get in line on the issues that labor cares about. And ceasefire is an issue that labor cares about. So we stood up today because the International Executive Board did not listen to us and did not listen to its membership and went ahead to endorse

President Biden anyways. We stood up. We had a Palestinian flag that said UAW labor for Palestine. We started to chant ceasefire now while having our fists up with a solidarity fist. And we were immediately rushed by Secret Service agents who grabbed us at some point anywhere from between half a dozen to a dozen were surrounding us and dragged us out in a line as we were still holding on to the flag, trying to rip the flag out of our hands. They knocked two of our members over. They tried to knock me onto the two of them while they were on the floor. You can see that in the video with me trying to push back against the person who was holding me and who was trying to push me onto the other two that are sitting here next to me and we were ultimately dragged out of the conference hall and removed from the um floor that it was happening on in the in the conference hotel yeah um that was a pretty good summary of everything that happened. There's not much to add on, though.

I will say you will probably see like maybe different statements about how other UAW members chanted over us while we were while we were chanting. And I definitely think we've talked to a lot of people actually at this conference over the last few days who have come up to us and have been supportive on a personal level. But when it comes to this, they seem not ready to publicly come out and support in the way that we did today. And I think a lot of it has to do, I'm sure we'll get into this later, but I think a lot of it has to do with fear. Like our politics these days are all about fear. The Republican Party runs on fear. The Democratic Party runs on fear. And there's a big, there's a lot of talk within the UAW about fear of losing their jobs, fear of what's coming next. And so I think this is a reflection of that. But I am extremely disappointed, especially since it's coming off of multiple speeches by President Sean Fain that seem to say the exact opposite of what happened today and what President Biden was saying today. And if I'm being quite frank, very disappointing considering this morning Rashida Tlaib came and spoke with us as well and spoke to our

membership about what it meant to her. So that's all I have to add on that. Anyway, I think it's hard because being here, we just walk around with the keffiyeh and people come up to us and say, like, thank you for doing this. like so many people here are behind the ceasefire demand it's like it's it's a really warm amazing atmosphere and people are like fired up about this and i think uh you know it's true there's a kind of uaw members are known for being fearless but there's a there's in moments a culture of fear that we are known for being fearless, but there's a, there's in moments, a culture of fear that we haven't gotten rid of yet. And so I think, I mean, I, I don't want to speak for all three of us. You guys can chime in, but I think that we're trying to show that you

don't need to be afraid to stand up to power and kind of present another positive option, a positive vision that isn't rooted in just like being afraid of consequences and letting that determine everything. Of course, you have to make a political calculus, but it doesn't have to be rooted only in fear. It can also be rooted in a promise of a better world. And that's what we're trying to create. Yes. Right. I mean, you know, as we mentioned in the introduction to this segment, I mean, at the time that the United Auto Workers formally signed on to the call for a ceasefire in Palestine, they were the largest union to do so. International Employees Union, SEIU, Service Employees International Union, who have also put out a call for a permanent ceasefire. And as y'all mentioned, like Sean Fain himself, you know, has been, you know, really at the forefront of the labor movement speaking out against the violence in Gaza, U.S. support of it. And yeah, how could it not undercut that message to

then kind of turn around and endorse Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed Zionist president of the United States of America, who has shown no signs really at all of ending the U.S., the continual U.S. support for the very genocidal violence that the union was calling to end. So I wanted to sort of ask about that, right, because I think one question folks will have, and especially given the fact that the United Auto Workers is not only, you know, representing workers in the auto industry, but as you three are living proof of, UAW has expanded to a number of other industries, including higher education, where it has a strong foothold in a number of universities around the country.

And that's an important part of the union's membership as well. And I can envision folks watching this and trying to sort of pit that side of the UAW against the traditional blue-collar, roughneck sort of industrial worker side in the auto manufacturing side of the union. So I wanted to ask if you could comment on that, if the folks who signed the petition who have been coming up to you represent the other sides of the UAW, and if you wanted to mention that for viewers and listeners. And also, if we could just go back around the table one more time and sort of talk about why this was so important to you all as union members, as workers, and what your message

is to folks out there who are in a union or who are not about why they should get involved in this fight and what they can do to push for a ceasefire and to end this madness in Gaza? Well, I think my answer will hopefully respond to both of your questions. I think to start off, we want to really fundamentally reject the idea that this is some sort of higher ed workers versus blue collar workers or versus auto workers type of dynamic the people that have that are at this conference and that have been coming up to us and supporting us have covered all the industries that the uaw represents including people who are on the assembly lines for defense companies and are making some of the weaponry that the U.S. is sending to Palestine currently or to Israel, actually.

Sending to Israel to use on Palestinians. Unfortunately, unfortunately. And even those workers are extremely interested and have been talking to us about ways that we can figure out a just transition for the defense industry in this country so that we can keep those good union jobs, but stop using the U.S. defense industry as a way to oppress and colonize other countries, or in this case, to help another country colonize another country. So I want to say that it's all parts of the UAW membership that are on board with this,

and this is not a higher ed only issue. I'd also say that a big part of why this is a labor issue is not just because of international solidarity. We've had calls from trade unionists in Palestine to stand up in solidarity with them, and I think people have heard that, but also because here in the U.S., workers, not just us, other industries as well, have been facing a lot of pushback from their employers when they try to speak out even the most sort of mild level of support of Palestine.

Any even vaguely anti-Israel statement is being used by employers at this point to suspend people, to fire people in various ways, not just at our campuses where we're employed, but in different industries as well. And so I think that part of that fear, as my comrades were saying, is what is motivating people to really be

concerned about voicing the support that they've privately shared with us out into the world. I'd also want to name respectability politics as one of the things that maybe contributed to people shouting UAW, UAW in response to our calls for ceasefire now because every other time we did it at this conference people were in extreme amounts of support and were coming up and congratulating us afterwards but after this particular instance we had the UAW UAW chance and then we had people coming up and say did you know you just disrupted the president did you just know that you disrespected the president I think this idea even though we disrespected the president? I think this idea, even though we live in a democracy, even though we have free speech, some people still

hold on to this idea of treating our politicians like they're almost kings, like royalty that we have to show this particular amount of deference to. And we're rejecting that. We're saying the UAW has power. joe biden would not have come to the uaw looking for an endorsement if workers did not have power in this country we do not need to cow down in fear we need to stand up together and show that workers across this country support a free palestine and support a permanent ceasefire. Right. I definitely agree with everything that Chayana has just said. And just to add on to that, because I know you also asked about like, what can we do? A lot of these conversations that we've been having actually all boil down to

just awareness and education. Like a lot of the conversations I've been having with people, they don't know all the information maybe that we know about what's happening in Palestine or even the history of the conflict. And so a lot of the conversation that we've been having, we have just been going over some of that basic information and every single person I've talked to once I've done that, like go, wow, I didn't realize I didn't know. And so I think when it comes to other unionists trying to do similar kinds of movements in their unions, getting their unions to call for a ceasefire, I think people really have to spend a good amount of time on speaking with their fellow union members and educating them on the truth, because the only thing that they get to see is what

American media shows them. And as we all know, at this current time, it's full of propaganda and lies. And they've never even heard the other side of this story. So I think that's going to be really important for us even moving forward, that educational aspect of it. Because I think once people realize what's actually going on, that's when they really start standing behind us. Like there were people I talked to over multiple days who on this last day came up and said, hey, we just signed, I just signed your petition. And just to clarify the petition that we have specifically is asking for UAW CAP to not endorse or fund candidates who have not called for a ceasefire. So while what we saw there was like people chanting over us in the background, we are still actively working to make some kind of essentially BDS happen within our union. Yeah, I think that was all great. And I guess I want to add like

anybody who came here to this conference will know that there is no division in UAW between the different industries. This is such a space of warmth and solidarity. Yeah. And people know what our views are because we've been walking around with the kafias the entire time. We all have ceasefire badges on our passes. We gave out stickers. We gave out stickers. People are wearing these all over the place by the way. Like all people are just it's like you just walk around and you hit five people with a ceasefire sticker. It's everywhere right? And we've been chanting getting up in speeches like there are a million opportunities and people people know people with a ceasefire sticker it's everywhere right and we've been chanting getting up in

speeches like there are a million opportunities and people people know that we're in higher ed too uh there are a million opportunities for people to you know say something untoward about us or to us doesn't happen we're only getting thank you thank you for doing that like how can i be part of it we handed out flyers we literally ran out like three or four times of people asking for links to the petition or our website join the movement like this is a big grassroots movement and people here are interested and excited about it the only thing is know, convincing people to move past this initial anxiety that they're still working through of like, what can I do when I'm in a room with the president of the United States and he stands for something different? You know, you have to show people, no, it's safe to do this. You can you can take action to fulfill your vision for a better world.

But they share that vision. And I really, I see our movement growing every single day. The fact that we managed to get like nearly a thousand signatures in the space of a couple of days when we're like all sleep deprived and barely coherent when we're writing a petition. That's like, that's incredible. That's a sign of people being like fired up. And I know there's going to be some some some change in UAW as long as the leadership follows through with their values and listens to their members. Right. If I could add on really quickly to that, even because we've been chanting actually for the entire conference, even right before President Biden came out, people knew we were going to like our members

knew we were going to do it. we were gonna do it everybody knew yeah and we had like i want to say at least like seven different people approach us before to like thank us offer us support they knew they were like if you get arrested we're here for you like that all happened right before so even though like it may seem like we have division i really don't think i don't perceive it that way. We're holding up the solidarity fist. I don't know. It was hard to see because it got blocked by secret secrets. We were not alone. There was solidarity in the room, even if it was difficult to hear.

Our table was full of people from other industries. It was like I'm going to say like 75 percent, 25 percent of like these more conventional factory-type jobs, manufacturing jobs, and then the higher ed books were all sitting at the same table. They asked for a picture together with us before because they knew this would happen. They're holding up their fists like, we're all on the same team here. Everyone offering, can we call a lawyer for you? Can we do anything? Are you concerned about getting arrested? Are you concerned about anything happening can we raise funds jail bond like jail funds like people were expecting us to do this because we've done it i mean we started chanting ceasefire now in the middle of one of sean fain's speeches and he smiled and i have it

on my twitter and on the uaw twitter yeah actually So like people knew and they were happy for us and they were supportive going into it. And I really just do want to highlight that I don't think that there is division between higher ed and the rest of the UAW industries. What we did was in the very spirit of the UAW and in the spirit of unionists in general. That's right. Yes, that's right. And we'll be doing it again until President Biden calls for a ceasefire. That's correct. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Hell yeah. So that was Shahinaz Ghanid, Nikki Thomas, and Johanna King-Slutsky, three union members and organizers with UAW Local 2710. I want to thank our guests again for joining us. And I want to thank you all for watching this segment with Breaking Points.

And be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News Network, with links in the description of this video. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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