Politics

S. Priya

Assessing risk in pro-Palestine organizing

The checkpoint assembled before our eyes. One second the workers’ cars were pouring out of the factory parking lot; the next they were forming a snaking line, windows lowering. The union stewards outside were amiable as they talked to their colleagues: How’s it going? Long day, huh? Yeah. So what’s all this? Oh, you know, just some rabble-rousers. Protesters, like the other day. Best to just drive right by. Will do, boss. See ya tomorrow.

Or so I imagined. I was trying to read lips from the sidewalk, but the distance was too great, and the December wind kept blowing my union members for peace sign into my face so violently that I couldn’t see or hear much. All I knew was that we were in hostile territory. Before this expedition, our small group of organizers had done enough Facebook stalking to ascertain that the weapons workers we were trying to appeal to were, most of them, true believers: patriots, veterans of American wars, doomsday preppers wrapped in flags in their profile pictures.

Still, they were fellow members of our union, even if they were part of a different local, even if they were working in a plant producing crates of ammo and armaments for mercenary export. The half dozen of us gathered on the sidewalk were not from the factory. We worked at universities, where we’d been organizing against the Gaza genocide since October 7; most of us were immigrants and people of color. That our union also represented weapons workers had been a horrifying but promising discovery. At this point, in late 2023, we believed that nothing mattered more than locating a strategic site in the ongoing massacre and finding a way to disrupt it. Perhaps we could organize our fellow union members to bring their factory to a halt.

There was a chill in the air when we showed up to the plant, flyers in hand, determined to make contact. We had packed our hand warmers. We had readied our talking points (The fruits of your labor are being used to slaughter innocents in the West Bank and Gaza). We had sent a scout the day before, who told us that the 3 pm shift change was an ideal time for a visit. Most importantly, we had assessed our collective comfort with entering a sensitive location where there were a lot of weapons around. The plan was to do an initial canvas, then keep coming back in hopes of talking to more workers. If we could identify allies on the shop floor, morally necessary outcomes — walkouts, strikes, even factory closure — might follow. Off the shop floor today, outside the supply chain tomorrow, we thought.

Not so simple. The weapons workers were guarded almost as fiercely as the ammo they made. The simple geography of the plant — a three-hundred-thousand-square-foot complex with a gated employee lot and only two exits — seemed designed to thwart us. We had imagined we would approach workers as they walked to their cars, but we now saw that doing so would require braving an enclosed lot ringed with no trespassing signs. In the howling wind, we debated our next move. Some of us wanted to enter the lot anyway: “The workers walk out of that door,” we said, pointing to the employee exit. “We have to intercept them before they get into their cars.” But others were less eager. They reminded the group that our action had not been established as high risk. The collective needed to honor the preferences of the most circumspect among us; even one or two people going into the lot would endanger everyone, including visa holders and others who could not afford to be arrested. “Maybe we should just stay on the sidewalk and catch them as they drive out?” one organizer suggested. Before anyone could disagree, another comrade spoke up: “I think the sidewalk is a good start; we can talk to any bystanders too.” A consensus was forming. The rest of the group, I knew, would follow.