May, 04 2016, 11:15am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Bob Master, (917) 657-6483, rmaster@cwa-union.org
Candice Johnson, (202) 434-1347, cjohnson@cwa-union.org
Eliza Bates, (646) 285-8491 or
Rob Duffey, (646) 463-3267, CWAverizon@berlinrosen.com
Verizon Strikers & Allies Prepare Nationwide Protests as Shareholder Unrest Grows
One day before Verizon's annual shareholder meeting, striking workers, including many who own shares in the company, and their supporters prepare for over 400 protests around the nation on Thursday, May 5. At the same time, dozens of Verizon workers will converge outside the shareholder meeting in Albuquerque, where worker-shareholders will fight for proposals to improve Verizon's corporate governance and end the company's short-sighted decision-making.
NEW YORK
One day before Verizon's annual shareholder meeting, striking workers, including many who own shares in the company, and their supporters prepare for over 400 protests around the nation on Thursday, May 5. At the same time, dozens of Verizon workers will converge outside the shareholder meeting in Albuquerque, where worker-shareholders will fight for proposals to improve Verizon's corporate governance and end the company's short-sighted decision-making. The wave of protests comes as workers enter their fourth week on strike because of the company's insistence on offshoring and outsourcing jobs, and as Verizon faces mounting criticism of its problematic decision-making that shortchanges workers and communities.
"I'm going to Albuquerque to look Lowell McAdams in the eye and tell him how his choice to put short-term profits and executive payouts over the good of the company and its workforce is endangering my family and the families of my co-workers," said Don Dunn, a Verizon field technician for 21 years, a shareholder with over 5000 units of Verizon stock, and President of Local 1108. "Until Verizon changes course and starts investing in workers who can provide quality service our customers deserve, support for our strike will only continue to grow."
In Albuquerque, striking workers, other CWA members, and community and labor supporters will protest outside the shareholder meeting at the Oldtown Hotel. Verizon workers will carry banners calling for a fair contract are planning to deliver petitions to Lowell McAdam from 350,000 customers who have grown increasingly frustrated with the company.
On Thursday, Verizon workers with an estimated $1.3 billion in company stock holdings will vote in favor of shareholder proposals to improve corporate governance and accountability. CWA and IBEW members recently shared their recommendations on shareholder proposals with Verizon shareholders across the country who together own more than 60 percent of Verizon's total shares. Proposals, which have been endorsed by large investors like CalPERS and CalSTRS, include requiring that the Board Chair be an independent director and that future severance agreements be subject to shareholder approval.
"Verizon's CEO makes 243 times more than the average worker, while customers in towns up and down the east-coast can't get the quality service the company promised them," said Richard Hesterhagen, a striking Verizon worker in Staten Island, New York, and a shareholder in the company. "Striking workers aren't just fighting to protect good middle-class jobs, we're fighting for a better Verizon that invests in communities, increases access to broadband and closes the digital divide. That's the vision this company needs, not the short-term payouts for executives that the current leadership is promoting."
For the first time, protests and demonstrations are expanding to Verizon wireless stores outside the strike region. More than 400 protests are planned in dozens of cities, including Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, Kansas City, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Austin, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Knoxville, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. In New York City, an expected 2,000 workers, supporters and elected leaders will march to a Verizon Wireless store on Wall Street and call for a fair contract.
"Verizon strikers are fighting for the future of every American striving to make a decent living. That's why people are mobilizing at hundreds of protests across the country," said Sarita Gupta, Executive Director of Jobs With Justice, which is helping to coordinate many of the protests. "If companies like Verizon keep funneling all of their profits into executive payouts while sending good jobs offshore, it will become harder for the rest of us to earn a fair return on our work."
The growing calls for change of course at Verizon come as public opinion of the company has declined to a three-year low, according to a recent survey from YouGov. Top economists and financial analysts have been raising concerns about the company's short-sighted business decisions and the long-term impact of the strike. Several investment firms have recently lowered their Verizon ratings, including Jeffries, Scotiabank, Sanford Bernstein and Zacks.
Guide to Shareholder Proposals
Verizon workers are concerned with current executive decision-making, including the impact of the strike forced by management, regulatory investigations into Verizon's infrastructure, broken promises to expand FiOS to communities and excessive executive compensation.
Verizon workers, with an estimated $1.3 billion in stock holdings, will vote in favor of a series of shareholder resolutions at the company's annual general meeting, including:
- Proposal #7, Kenneth Steiner requests to amend company's governing documents to require that the Board Chair be an independent director.
- Proposal #8, the Association of BellTell Retirees seeks shareholder approval of future severance agreements (also known as golden parachutes) that grant executives benefits exceeding 2.99 times their base salary plus bonus. If he was terminated in 2015, CEO Lowell McAdam would have received $40.2 million under the current policy.
- Proposal #9, the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers Pension Benefit Fund requests that the Human Resources Committee require executives to retain 75% of the shares they receive has part of their compensation packages.
- Supporters include: CalPERS
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300+ Arrested Outside Schumer's Home During Jewish-Led Seder Against Gaza Genocide
"No one is free until everyone is free," read a banner representing a Seder plate. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Apr 24, 2024
As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared to vote on Tuesday night for a foreign aid package including billions to continue arming Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, roughly 300 protesters were arrested outside his home in Brooklyn for holding an "emergency Passover seder" protest, demanding the U.S. end its support for an assault that has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.
The protest was led by anti-Zionist Jewish organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with a large round banner representing a traditional Seder plate at the center of the protest at Grand Army Plaza, a block from Schumer's home.
Hundreds of people, some wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, linked arms and chanted, "Free, free Palestine!" while blocking traffic and displaying the Seder plate.
"No one is free until everyone is free," read the banner. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Schumer's home has been the site of numerous protests since October, when Israel began its attacks on and blockade of Gaza, which have left parts of the enclave facing famine and the entire population of 2.3 million people suffering from "acute food insecurity," at a minimum.
"A genocide being carried out in our names as Jews demands that we adapt our sacred tradition again, take to the streets, and do everything we can to prevent more death," author and activist Naomi Klein said at the protest.
The Biden administration has approved numerous weapons transfers to Israel, and the Senate overwhelmingly voted Tuesday night in favor of the package that includes $17 billion more in unconditional aid for the Israel Defense Forces.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) were the only members of the Democratic caucus who voted against the funding bill. Fifteen Republicans also opposed the bill over its inclusion of Ukraine aid.
The demonstration at Grand Army Plaza was organized amid a burgeoning protest movement on U.S. college campuses, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students were suspended and then arrested for trespassing last week after setting up an encampment to demand the school divest from all companies that work with the Israeli government.
The student-led protests have been denounced by President Joe Biden and other pro-Israel critics as "antisemitic" and endangering Jewish students, despite the fact that Jewish students have helped to organize the nonviolent demonstrations.
One organizer, Calvin Harrison, told The New York Times that he attended the Brooklyn protest Tuesday night "because I'm a Jew and I was raised to believe that Judaism is about justice."
"Passover is a celebration of liberation for the future," he told the Times. "We can't celebrate liberation for ourselves while we're oppressing Palestinians."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, recalled the group's Liberation Seder in 2016 in New York, where campaigners protested the Anti-Defamation League's support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"Eighteen of us were arrested," he said. "Tonight: [Organizers] led a Seder in the streets demanding Schumer stop arming Israel. Hundreds are being arrested. The movement grows."
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'Blood on Their Hands': 79 US Senators Approve Billions More in Military Aid for Israel
Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of just three Senate Democratic caucus members to oppose the bill, said that "U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government."
Apr 24, 2024
With the support of nearly 80% of the chamber's lawmakers, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a sprawling foreign aid package that includes $17 billion in unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government as it ramps up its catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip.
The final vote on the $95 billion package, which also included military aid for Ukraine and Taiwan, was 79-18, with just three members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—and 15 Republicans opposing the bill.
Sanders called Tuesday "a dark day for democracy," condemning the upper chamber's refusal to even allow a vote on his proposed amendment to cut offensive military aid to Israel from the legislation.
"I voted no tonight on the foreign aid package for one simple reason: U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people," Sanders said in a statement following the vote. "Thirty-four thousand Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded—70% of whom are women and children."
"The housing in Gaza is destroyed; the infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed; the healthcare system in Gaza is destroyed; the educational system in Gaza is destroyed," Sanders added. "Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu's war machine."
The bill, which passed the House over the weekend, now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it in the coming days.
"That Congress passed many billions of dollars for new weaponry for Israel that will be used to devastate Gaza, and could be used in a war against Iran, is deeply disturbing," said the National Iranian American Council.
The 79 senators who voted to pass Biden's foreign aid bill/expand Israel's genocide in Gaza: pic.twitter.com/bVQisvOndd
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) April 24, 2024
Overwhelming congressional and White House support for arms and military support stands in stark contrast to U.S. public opinion, which has increasingly turned against Israel's assault on Gaza in recent months as the grisly death toll and humanitarian emergency have worsened and evidence of Israeli war crimes has mounted.
As Tuesday's vote took place, thousands of Jewish New Yorkers and allies rallied outside of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) home to voice outrage over U.S. lawmakers' growing complicity in Israel's military assault.
"We're here as thousands of Jewish New Yorkers, calling on Senator Schumer to halt weapons funding to Israel as it massacres and starves Palestinians in Gaza," said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, one of the groups that organized the mass demonstration on the second night of Passover.
A Gallup survey released last month found that 55% of U.S. voters—including 75% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 30% of Republicans—disapprove of Israel's military assault on Gaza. A separate poll commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed that a majority of American voters support halting U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.
Since October, the Biden administration has quietly approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel, flouting U.S. laws that prohibit weapons deliveries to countries that are violating human rights or blocking American humanitarian aid.
"As I have said countless times, sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government the munitions it is using to destroy Gaza is wrong and inconsistent with our foreign policy goals," Welch said Tuesday after voting against the aid package. "It is unthinkable that an ally of the U.S. would conduct its military campaign with planes, tanks, bombs, and artillery supplied by the U.S., while impeding access for aid trucks to destitute civilians under its occupation."
"Urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
Days before the Senate vote, mass graves were discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently raided and destroyed. The United Nations Human Rights Office on Tuesday demanded an international probe into the mass graves, noting that bodies of Palestinians were found stripped naked with their hands tied.
"Victims had reportedly been buried deep in the ground and covered with waste," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
One Gaza official toldCNN that a total of 300 bodies were found in a mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and that "there were signs of field executions."
"The U.S. government is arming a regime creating mass graves in Gaza, indeed turning all of Gaza into a mass graveyard," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, wrote on social media Tuesday.
On the heels of the Senate vote, Agence France-Pressenoted that one of its correspondents and eyewitnesses "reported heavy bombardment of several areas of northern Gaza."
"Early Wednesday, hospital and security sources in Gaza reported Israeli air strikes in Rafah, as well as the central Nuseirat refugee camp," the outlet reported.
The anti-war group CodePink said in a statement after Tuesday's vote in the U.S. Senate that "urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
"People and the planet desperately need healthcare, housing, and climate justice, not a further descent into darkness through this massive war bill that funds death and destruction," the group added. "Every elected official who voted in favor of this bill has blood on their hands."
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Defeating 'MAGA Dark Money,' Summer Lee Wins Primary in Landslide
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said the executive director of Justice Democrats.
Apr 24, 2024
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a member of the progressive "Squad," won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, fending off an opponent whose campaign was backed by a billionaire Republican megadonor and ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lee, a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government and leading supporter of a cease-fire in Gaza, handily defeated Bhavini Patel, a borough councilmember in Edgewood, Pennsylvania whose effort to unseat the progressive incumbent was bankrolled by Jeffrey Yass, the state's richest man. Patel actively courted Republican and pro-Israel voters, characterizing Lee as "fringe."
With more than 95% of the vote counted, Lee is ahead of Patel by more than 20 percentage points.
"I am so humbled and proud to win my first primary reelection to be the congresswoman for this incredible district I've spent my life fighting for," Lee said after the race was called in her favor. "Our campaign was built on a record of delivering for our democracy, defending our most fundamental rights, and expanding our vision for what is politically possible for our region's most marginalized communities."
"Our victory is a rejection of right-wing interests and Republican billionaires using corporate super PACs to target Black and brown Democrats in our primaries—be it AIPAC or Moderate PAC or any other MAGA billionaire in Democratic clothing," Lee added. "Western PA is the blueprint for the future all of America deserves."
Opposing genocide is good politics and good policy. #CeasefireNOWÂ https://t.co/A7pnJNskWS
— Summer Lee (@SummerForPA) April 24, 2024
Through the misleadingly named Moderate PAC, Yass—a prolific tax dodger who has been floated as a possible treasury secretary pick if former President Donald Trump wins another term—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting Patel and attacking Lee.
Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn Political Action, said that by ushering Lee to victory, residents of Pennsylvania's 12th District "soundly rejected MAGA dark money."
"MoveOn members are ready to defeat this dangerous flood of dark-money spending against progressive champions and ensure that we continue to elect working-class people to Congress," said Epting.
"Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
During her 2022 campaign, Lee faced and overcame huge spending by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC via its super PAC, the United Democracy Project. But the organization opted to stay on the sidelines this time around, even as it plans to spend $100 million to defeat progressives in this year's cycle amid growing public opposition to Israel's war on Gaza.
"They had every intention of spending in this race—but they didn't, because they realized they would likely lose," Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas wrote in an email late Tuesday. "And that is because all of us had Summer's back and supported her campaign to out-organize AIPAC in every way."
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said Rojas. "Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
While AIPAC ultimately sat out the Pennsylvania race, it is devoting considerable resources to ousting other progressive lawmakers, including Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.).
The pro-Israel lobbying group has endorsed Bush challenger Wesley Bell, calling him a "strong advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship." As The Guardianreported last week, Bell has "raised more than $650,000 in earmarked contributions through the group Democracy Engine Inc. PAC—a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations and lists AIPAC as a client on its LinkedIn page."
AIPAC is the largest donor to Bowman challenger George Latimer, who has supported Israel's war on Gaza and denied that Israel is committing genocide. The Democratic primary for New York's 16th Congressional District is on June 25.
We must be clear-eyed about what's next. @JamaalBowmanNY & @CoriBush are facing an existential threat from AIPAC, their GOP megadonors, and the politicians willing to compromise on core Democratic values to try to take a school principal & nurse out of Congress. #ProtectTheSquad
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) April 24, 2024
Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said Tuesday that following Lee's victory, "we're ramping up to take on AIPAC in Jamaal Bowman's race."
"With a candidate like George Latimer willing to sell their lies to the district, we are going to prove once again that a politician's commitment to their community beats dark money every time," said Weindling. "Whether it's in Pittsburgh or New York, Minneapolis or St. Louis, our generation is going to send billionaires packing and reelect the squad."
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