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California Public Records Expose Israel Lobby Censorship
I reviewed the appeals.
The CDE lacks authority to discipline school personnel, and the appeals I reviewed did not recommend teacher discipline. Teachers, however, have been told by their school districts to remove their keffiyehs and steer clear of stating as fact that Israel exemplifies “settler colonialism.” If an LEA or CDE finds a complaint has merit, it may order school districts to implement teacher training in antisemitism in consultation with a Jewish or Israeli organization. These orders open the door for Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to teach teachers that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and discriminates on the basis of national origin.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations based on someone’s birthplace or ancestry—but does not prohibit criticism of a sovereign state, which is protected speech according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The CDE’s release of files reflects the department and school districts’ tendency to conflate anti-Zionism (opposition to Israel) with antisemitism (bigotry toward Jews for being Jewish). Under AB 715 (D-Zbur) legislation that establishes an antisemitism coordinator to police instruction and teacher training, this confusion could get a lot worse because AB 715 incorporates the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which promotes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Teachers and their allies can, however, revolt: March on Sacramento, challenge Zionist teacher training, file their own complaints, and collectively teach Palestine across school departments and districts.
The following is a review of some of the CDE’s cases addressing allegations of antisemitism or discrimination against Jews or Israelis.
Banned!
Sammy Obeid speaks on "The Abortion Joke That Got Me Banned From High School" (Image via Comedy Calculus)
In 2025, the principal of Mountain View Los Altos High School banned popular Lebanese-Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid after he cracked jokes about Israel at an after-school on-campus event in 2025 hosted by the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The school investigation report (IR) read, "During the event, the comedian made antisemitic remarks: about the Israeli Prime Minister getting cancer, calling the Prime Minister a supervillain, and how Israel does not believe in abortion so it can bomb more Palestinians.”
Months earlier, on November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Nevertheless, the district concluded, after berating the Muslim students for inviting Obeid—that the comedian’s performance was antisemitic. The CDE agreed and ordered the district to further revise its guest speaker policies to include strict vetting and get-off-the-stage intervention should an administrator believe the speaker’s conduct discriminated against a protected group on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, and physical or mental disabilities.
P.S. For the record, abortion is legal in Israel as long as women obtain approval from the Israeli Pregnancy Termination Board.
San Ramon Valley HS
In another example of conflation, the CDE ordered (11/24/25) San Ramon Valley High School to deliver teacher training on antisemitism to all social studies teachers after the department ruled a teacher’s class statements were proof of discriminatory bias against Jewish and Israeli students. The department’s fact finding said the teacher told students that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Hardly breaking news. Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Doctors without Borders, and the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry had all determined Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the CDE said the appeal had merit because the teacher did not cite sources and present an opposing viewpoint. The Department ordered San Ramon Valley High School to provide the CDE with evidence by January 30, 2026 that the school had delivered training from someone not affiliated with the school district to ensure that classroom instruction “does not promote a discriminatory bias.”
Anti-Palestinian Racism
The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) defines anti-Palestinian racism as a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.”
A CDE ruling involving New Haven Unified School District might serve as an example of erasing the human rights and worth of Palestinians. After teachers in the summer 2025 Ethnic Studies Social Justice Academy (ESSJA) presented a slide deck describing actions by Israelis against Palestinians as potentially constituting “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism,’ the department said instruction lacked adequate balance and historical context, and cast Israel in a negative light. The department acknowledged that the slides for students also discussed the horrific impact of the Holocaust, the ancient connection of Jews to the land also claimed by Palestinians, and how “the Israeli government is separate from innocent Israeli/Jewish people who stand for justice,” but still...
The department then ordered the school district to train ESSJA teachers and administrators in the “obligation to comply with Education Code 51500, which states that a teacher shall not deliver instruction, and a school district shall not sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias.”
Points for the MAGA team.
Teacher and Community Resistance
Oakland rank and file teachers included P Is for Palestine on their recommended list of resources at a December 2023 teach-in on Gaza; the Brandeis Center for Human Rights objected in a lawsuit against California.
Rank and file Oakland educators circulated an Open Letter in spring 2026 calling on the district “to resist the concerted attacks by political groups who slander as 'antisemitic' anyone who criticizes Israeli apartheid and genocide or Zionism.” Yet, the Oakland Unified School District, facing a lawsuit from the CDE, still mandated teachers watch and interact with an Anti-Defamation League 20-minute video “Antisemitism: What Do Educators Need to Know,” which defines antisemitism as “marginalization and/or oppression of people who are Jewish based on the belief in stereotypes and myths about Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel.”
The ADL training stands in dramatic contrast to a teach-in rank-and-file Oakland teachers organized in December 2023, two months after October 7, as Israel dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Objecting to district resources from Zionist-funded organizations, the teachers provided workshop participants with a recommended list of books, films, and lessons.
Across the bay, in San Francisco, in the fall of 2024, a dozen teachers declined to participate in district antisemitism training with the American Jewish Committee, a Zionist organization that boasts on its website, “We stand up for Israel.” Teachers instead chose to attend professional development with PARCEO, a non-Zionist organization anchored in the belief that ending antisemitism is part of an intersectional fight for collective liberation of all people.
Down in Los Angeles, teachers and community members rallied (5/16/26) in front of the Downtown Business Magnet to protest the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decree that ethnic studies and social studies teachers remove “Stop Genocide” posters and Palestinian and Black Lives Matter flags, as well as undergo teacher training on the use of “neutral terms” to describe sensitive topics, including Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Gaza.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
In another act of resistance, K-12 Legal Defense, led by attorney Liz Jackson, and San Francisco law firm Leonard Carder, LLP, filed a motion (5/11/16) to intervene in Brandeis v California on behalf of a group of 10 California families—Jewish and Palestinian parents and students enrolled in public schools.
For teachers walking a tightrope under the watchful eye of an AB 715 enforcer, there are some lessons that lend themselves to a “both sides” debate: South Africa vs. Israel at the International Court of Justice or Zionists vs. non-Zionists on school board adoption of the IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism. In many instances, however, the “both sides” approach fails to acknowledge the power imbalance between Israel and Palestine to leave students confused.
History will not look back kindly on those demanding investigations of educators who dare to teach about Palestine during a documented genocide. Nor will history applaud those who conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism in lawsuits against states and school districts.
Why We Need Solidarity Unionism on an Industrial Scale: The IWW Goes on Tour (Again)
Today, as workers across the country face renewed repression and new (or old) forms of exploitation, we would not be ill-served to look to the example of the IWW for inspiration. We do not seek to romanticize the past, but the conditions the early IWW confronted then are strikingly familiar today: massive concentration of wealth; rampant inequality; and a divided, collaborationist labor movement. Against this world, the early IWW offered a bold vision, one in which workers organized as a class, across every artificial division imposed on them, and fought capitalism right where it hurt: at work. The IWW’s scale, industrial approach, and insistence on worker-led organizing still offer powerful lessons for worker-organizers seeking to break through the barriers that divide us and unite the working class to build a force capable of real, transformative change.
So, how did the IWW become such a powerful force back in 1917? What drew so many workers to this union and inspired them to organize under its banner?
Workers do not need to wait for permission from employers, courts, or labor boards to act collectively; our power begins at the precise point when we collectively recognize our shared conditions and organize to change them.
First, the IWW was committed to a united working class. While other unions excluded workers based on their skill level, gender, race, ethnicity, or trade, the IWW welcomed all workers. Its grand vision was “an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.” The IWW sought to break down the divisions that existed among the working class and unite against our common enemy, the employing class, and it was working. That is precisely why the ruling class feared the IWW.
Second, the IWW was committed to radical democracy and rank-and-file control. Rather than building a union that depended on paid staff, the IWW developed worker-organizers on the shop floor, and all decisions were made by the workers themselves. This model is critical for building a mass movement. It engages large swaths of workers in the struggle; empowers them to take direct, autonomous action; and creates a sustainable model by continuously developing new organizers rather than relying on charismatic leaders or “superhero” organizers. We still see traces of this organizing culture today. The Starbucks Workers United campaign, which was preceded by an IWW Starbucks workers campaign nearly 20 years earlier, has been driven by baristas organizing democratically at the shop level, with workers themselves taking the lead and engaging in collective decision-making rather than relying on external union staff as is still too often the expectation in other unions.
One famous story from 1916 captures this culture of rank-and-file democracy:
In 1916 in Everett, Washington, a passenger ferry loaded with Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) free speech activists attempted to dock. On the dock, the local sheriff, along with armed deputies and armed guards hired by local businesses, attempted to block the ship from docking. According to lore, when the sheriff asked, "Who are your leaders?" the response from the ferry was a shout from everyone aboard, declaring, "We are all leaders here." As folk musician Utah Phillips explains, "That scared the tar out of the ol’ law you know’"
The power of the early IWW did not lie in any single leader who could be arrested, bought off, discredited, or removed. Its power lay in the collective capacity of everyday rank-and-file workers to lead themselves.
Finally, the IWW was committed to working-class dignity in its deepest sense. The Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW (1905) famously declares: “Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’ It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.” When the IWW said it wants more of the good things in life, they were not just talking about getting the bosses to fork over a bit more cash. The IWW’s goals are bigger than that. We want a better life here and now. This can be contrasted with the trade union movement, which disheartened (and continues to dishearten) workers by making shady backroom deals with bosses.
The IWW is, was, and will always be a union for and by the working class.
The contemporary IWW is still committed to all of these things, and the grand vision that it set forth in the early 1900s is just as relevant and necessary today as it was then. Its contemporary form is not identical to that of the early 20th century, but the grand vision it set forth remains urgently relevant.
Solidarity and Industrial Unionism
In 1911, Big Bill Haywood, a founding member of the IWW, gave a speech about "the general strike as a weapon of the working class." In response to a question from the audience about political action and what distinguishes the IWW from the AFL, he replied:
The Industrial Workers of the World is an economic organization without affiliation with any political party or any non-political sect. I as an Industrialist say that industrial unionism is the broadest possible political interpretation of the working-class political power, because by organizing the workers industrially you at once enfranchise the women in the shops, you at once give the black men who are disenfranchised politically a voice in the operation of the industries; and the same would extend to every worker. That to my mind is the kind of political action that the working class wants. You must not be content to come to the ballot box on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the ballot box erected by the capitalist class, guarded by capitalist henchmen, and deposit your ballot to be counted by black-handed thugs, and say, “That is political action.” You must protect your ballot with an organization that will enforce the mandates of your class. I want political action that counts. I want a working class that can hold an election every day if they want to.
As Haywood made clear, the IWW did not reject politics so much as it rejected reducing politics to the electoral kind. For the Wobblies, the workplace itself was a political arena. In fact, it was the political arena. It was and remains where workers spend most of their waking hours (and often their sleeping hours). Industrial unionism for the Wobblies was a means of democratizing power where workers actually lived, labored, and were disciplined. Industrial unionism could also extend real political power to workers excluded from or marginalized within formal citizenship. The ballot box is an institution shaped, guarded, and constrained by capitalist power. What mattered, then, was not simply the right to vote, but the collective capacity to enforce working-class demands through organization at the point of production. When Haywood says that he wants a working class that can hold an election every day if they want to, he means that his vision of democracy is not one in which (some) workers get to delegate periodic representation within capitalist institutions, but rather one in which continuous collective power is exercised directly by workers who have wrested control of their workplaces.
For the founding members of the IWW, the fundamental flaw in established labor organizations like the AFL extended far beyond mere conservatism. They argued that the very structure of trade unions was inherently incapable of addressing the monopolistic tendencies of modern capitalism. In the Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW (1905), the founding members of the IWW observed that, as capital became increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few monopolies, the trade union model, focused narrowly on specific skilled crafts, was no more than an obsolete barrier. Faced with the overwhelming power of an employing class that had consolidated industries into vast monopolies, the IWW believed that the AFL's approach of protecting only skilled workers served only to fragment and ultimately weaken the working class.
Consequently, the Wobblies championed a radically different vision of worker power, described by William Trautmann at the 1905 IWW founding convention as one in which workers refused to be "bound by the sacredness or the sanctity of a contract." Instead, the IWW sought to unite all workers, regardless of trade, whether capital and state deemed them skilled or unskilled, into a single, cohesive force capable of achieving true economic justice, and thus social and political justice, through industrial unionism. This vision of industrial unionism relied on what Alice and Staughton Lynd would later describe as solidarity unionism, namely a form of organizing in which workers learn to be in solidarity with each other, rejecting the many divisions imposed on them by employers and the state, in order to directly take collective action to improve their lives. For the Wobblies, the union was not to be a service organization that represented workers from above, but rather the self-organization of workers themselves, capable of forming and enforcing their own demands through various forms of direct action that they would collectively and democratically decide. The point was not simply to win better contracts within capitalism, but to cultivate the everyday practices of true working-class democracy and power that would eventually challenge capitalist authority at its source.
Why This Moment Calls for a Return to Solidarity Unionism on an Industrial Scale
Consolidating our power and coming together across entire industries opens up a world of opportunities for what workers can achieve. Our bosses (or our owners, as a co-worker once quipped) already understand this. Capital is always consolidating: Four corporations own a third of all grocery stores in this country, and just 12 corporations own virtually every product and brand on those shelves. The wealth and power accumulated by these corporations is staggering, but the structure is not new. In many ways, the conditions of the 21st century resemble those of the early 20th century, when the IWW emerged in response to monopolies, deskilling, precarious work (what we call gig work is, of course, a new name for an old form of exploitation), and, above all, the concentration of entire industries in the hands of a few powerful capitalists. Then, as now, workers were divided by job, workplace, race, gender, citizenship, whether they were deemed skilled or unskilled, while capital operated across all of those divisions.
If capital organizes industrially, workers must do the same. What if we did the same and organized into a One Big Union? What if we formed cross-workplace organizing committees that brought together workers from different shops within the same industries? It is by building these connections and structures that we will lay the groundwork for industrial solidarity, thereby creating working-class networks that make any one group of workers that much harder to isolate, intimidate, and, ultimately, defeat. Above all, like our Wobbly ancestors, we must begin to practice the basic principle of solidarity unionism: that workers do not need to wait for permission from employers, courts, or labor boards to act collectively; our power begins at the precise point when we collectively recognize our shared conditions and organize to change them.
From another perspective, while wealth inequality is at an all-time high, government repression against activists is at an all-time high as well. That too is another key similarity between our time and that of the early Wobblies. From Prairieland to the FBI raids in Minnesota and Michigan, the government is once again trying to quash dissent; building a militant, industrially organized labor movement is one of the most effective ways to fight back against these attacks. We have to build the power necessary to defend ourselves as a class. Imagine if when the FBI or ICE came to Minneapolis, the entire country came to a screeching halt and we actually shut shit down. Imagine if we went on the offensive instead of always reacting. That is what is possible through revolutionary, industrial unionism.
The Fire Your Boss Tour
The Fire Your Boss Tour marks the first coordinated national organizing event by Wobblies in recent history. In Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Sacramento, California; Denver, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Ypsilanti, Michigan; New York City; and potentially additional cities, Wobblies will once again preach the Wobbly Gospel of industrial unionism, solidarity unionism, and revolutionary unionism. Unlike a traditional speaking tour, where a few "experts" deliver speeches nationwide, this is a decentralized initiative in which local IWW branches organize their own events while collectively coordinating the tour. Depending on the city, events during the tour include workshops on workplace organizing, discussions on organizing strategy, and sessions where workers can share experiences.
Most importantly, each stop on the tour is an opportunity to connect with fellow workers in your region who are committed to building a stronger labor movement. As our precarious working and living conditions increasingly resemble those of the original Wobblies, the principles and strategy of solidarity unionism and industrial unionism are now more critical than ever. Workers of the World, Unite (and RSVP to the tour)!
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