United Public Workers for Action

13 hours ago

S.F. Symphony’s struggles take center stage in Fauré’s Requiem
datebook.sfchronicle.com/classical/review-s-f-symphony-s-struggles-take-center-19914225?_gl=1*167…..
Rebecca Wishnia November 17, 2024Updated: November 18, 2024, 4:24 pm
The San Francisco Symphony Chorus in a performance at Davies Symphony Hall.

As contract tensions between talent and management escalate, it’s hard to see what the immediate future holds for the San Francisco Symphony. But one thing is clear: Musicians stick together.

Long before any notes of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem were sung at Davies Symphony Hall on Saturday, Nov. 16, the orchestra’s instrumentalists led a long ovation in support of their colleagues in the Symphony Chorus. It was a heartening show of solidarity in an evening that otherwise felt disjointed.

These fine performers have had much to contend with over the past many months. After a three-day strike in September that canceled what were to be the season’s opening performances of Verdi’s Requiem, the Chorus’ 32 union members remain without a contract.

SF Symphony: Renewed protests over wage and budget cuts
Members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in a 2022 performance at Davies Symphony Hall.

The choristers made their case, via leaflets distributed outside the hall before the weekend’s concerts, for a multiyear agreement that preserves the current performing minimums and provides for compensation growth. During the program’s first performance on Friday, Nov. 15, Symphony management sent an email to ticket holders detailing its position of maintaining current wage rates for choristers and reducing the Chorus performances from 26 to 23 in the current season. (The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the union singers, has since published its response.)

Meanwhile, the orchestra members’ own contract is set to expire on Sunday, Nov. 24. As if this weren’t enough, the musicians are also mourning the loss of soprano Aimée Puentes, a longtime Chorus member who died last month.

In stressful times, the first line of defense is a good leader. Guest conductor Kazuki Yamada had the unenviable task of uniting everyone for these first concerts back for the Chorus, and he unfortunately seemed to struggle in the role during Saturday’s performance. The 45-year-old conductor got his start as a choirboy in his native Japan; he’s now music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, a position once held by the great Simon Rattle. Yamada surely knows this music well, yet under his leadership, Fauré’s Requiem — and the rest of the pieces on the program — failed to cohere.

Guest conductor Kazuki Yamada led the San Francisco Symphony in works by Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel and Dai Fujikura.

Photo: Zuzanna Specjal
Indeed, in this performance of an inherently beautiful piece, it was difficult to find much beauty. From Yamada’s first downbeat — a gesture too ambiguous for the unison declamation to land — the ensemble pulled apart. The textures were muddy, phrases were directionless and tempos were punishingly slow. The Chorus, prepared by Director Jenny Wong, sang with inconsistent vowels and, shockingly, the occasional insistence of individual voices. It sounded like a first reading.

The other pieces on the program had their bright spots, and in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, that light was soloist Hélène Grimaud.

To be sure, circumstances weren’t ideal. In the slow movement, Yamada couldn’t quite get the strings to move; in the finale, his conducting seemed to weigh the music down. The balance was off. But when Grimaud played alone, she revealed herself to be the same musician audiences have admired ever since her Symphony debut in 1993 (the same year she released her magnificent first recording of this piece). She phrased with utmost rhythmic nuance, especially in the unaccompanied aria of the slow movement and in her encore, the Bagatelle Op. 1, No. 2, by contemporary Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Her technique was flawless as ever; the first-movement piano cadenza, a fluent cascade of virtuosic arpeggiation and trills, was a joy.

Pianist Hélène Grimaud was the soloist in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major.

The program had another highlight in the U.S. premiere of “Entwine” by London-based composer Dai Fujikura. In this short 2021 work, Fujikura takes fleeting gestures of not entirely unfamiliar sounds — the woodwinds playing flutter-tongue, the trumpets fanning their mutes — and reconfigures them in rich new harmonies. At first, the instrumental consorts seem to be in their own worlds, but gradually, the music connects them.

Some of the entrances were unintentionally blurry, but with the help of Yamada’s introductory spoken remarks, the piece’s premise — a composer’s longing for community during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — came across. Put yourself back in that time: no gathering, certainly no touching.

“Maybe,” Yamada said, “through music we can do something.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the current contract was set to expire. It expires Nov. 24.

Rebecca Wishnia is a freelance writer. This article has been provided in partnership with San Francisco Classical Voice. … See MoreSee Less

San Francisco Symphony

www.sfsymphony.org

The San Francisco Symphony is an award-winning symphony, led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

United Public Workers for Action

1 day ago

Demand President Biden Declare an Emergency in East Palestine, Ohio
only.one/act/east-palestine

Positive progress: On July 3rd, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine officially requested that President Biden issue a Major Presidential Disaster Declaration for the East Palestine train derailment and chemical disaster. Now, President Biden must approve the request.

We are urgently asking you to sign this petition addressing the continued humanitarian crisis in East Palestine, Ohio, and the surrounding communities.

Only President Biden has the power to approve Ohio Governor Mike Dewine’s request for a disaster declaration in East Palestine. By approving the request, President Biden would enable the federal government to give residents the financial relief and comprehensive environmental testing that they desperately require.

This video is part of a documentary series featuring the stories of those still living through the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. It was filmed over several months by The YEARS Project, an Emmy-winning content creator for the climate movement. See the rest of the stories @yearsofliving.
This disaster was – and is – one of the worst in U.S. history. On the night of February 3rd, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. To this day we do not know all of the toxins involved, but can confirm that the following toxic chemicals – vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylene glycol, isobutylene and ethylhexyl acrylate – were found in the air, soil, and water around the crash site.

The immediate aftermath from the 38-car pile up was devastating: Animals died by the thousand in contaminated waterways, and a cloud of toxic chemicals, so large that it could be seen from space, blanketed the town.

Months later, businesses lie shuttered, gardens rot, and many can’t access independent testing to see how many toxins are in their home, food, and water.

Previously healthy residents now suffer from bloody noses, burning throats, nausea, and in some cases, life-threatening health conditions. Scientists say the poisonous chemicals could stick around for decades.

To make matters worse, the clean up effort has been led by Norfolk Southern – the same company responsible for the disaster. It’s not only a conflict of interest, it’s an insult to those affected, and Norfolk has left thousands without proper care.

Three days after the derailment in East Palestine, Norfolk Southern – the company responsible for the derailment – conducted a controlled burn of the spilled chemicals. The EPA says it was not consulted. · The Years Project
The next step towards justice and recovery is for President Biden to officially declare the train derailment in East Palestine an emergency. Only he can exercise this power, which would immediately open the area up to emergency resources from the federal government.

And there is reason for hope. The Unity Council, a grassroots group made up of affected residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania, is working tirelessly to bring attention to this crisis. We’re partnering with them on this critical campaign, and with your help, our call to action can be heard around the world.

“If we do not stand together, we will be forgotten.” – Hilary Flint, Unity Council board member from Enon Valley, Pennsylvania.
Please sign and share this petition today to urge President Biden to approve the Major Disaster Declaration for East Palestine. Your action can make a real difference in ending this humanitarian crisis and help secure a safer future for all affected residents.

15,936 of the signatures reflected on this page are carried over from a successful petition on Only One urging Ohio Governor DeWine to request a disaster declaration for East Palestine … See MoreSee Less

Demand President Biden Declare an Emergency in East Palestine

only.one

#DidWeForget about East Palestine? More than three months after the town’s toxic train derailment, residents still lack the basic assistance they need to survive.

United Public Workers for Action

1 day ago

Trump’s Nominees Are Being Hand-Picked to Enact a Dangerous Platform the Koch Brothers Made Public 44 Years Ago
wallstreetonparade.com/2024/11/trumps-nominees-are-being-hand-picked-to-enact-a-dangerous-platfor…

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2024 ~

President-Elect Donald Trump/ Charles Koch
Tens of millions of Americans rise each morning and pray they are awakening from a bad dream about the President-elect’s plans to put a plethora of outrageously unfit people in charge of critical federal agencies that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we feed our children, our ability to obtain healthcare, social security for the elderly, response to disasters and so forth.

What few Americans understand is that this plan is very real, dead serious, and was hatched 44 years ago by two fossil fuel billionaire brothers – Charles and David Koch. The plan was publicly released as the Libertarian Platform when David Koch ran for Vice President of the United States in 1980. David Koch died in 2019, leaving his brother, Charles, who turned 89 this month, to relentlessly push to install the platform, notwithstanding that his past fossil fuel policies have played a key role in heating the earth to the point of no return, causing unprecedented wild fires and drought in New York City at this very moment – as well as hundreds of deaths from unprecedented flash flooding here in the U.S. and around the globe this year.

To understand the dangerous agenda behind Trump’s nominees, consider what was written in that 1980 Platform:

“We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”

“We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”

“We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”

“We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”

“We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”

“We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”

“We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”

“We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

“We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”

“We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

“We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”

“We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”

“We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”

“We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”

“As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”

“We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”

To quote Senator Bernie Sanders, “The agenda of the Koch brothers is to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years that has protected the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable in this country.”

After decades of floundering on implementing their agenda, the Kochs finally realized that the key to moving the agenda forward was to first accomplish the stated goal of “the repeal of federal campaign finance laws” so that billionaire money could control who gets elected to public office. That was accomplished under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United in 2010, and its progeny, ushering in unlimited corporate and billionaire spending in elections. Americans have been losing ground to the dark Koch agenda ever since.

According to research at the Washington Post, megadonors plowed $2.5 billion into the current election cycle – twice the amount they contributed in the 2020 election cycle.

Americans got a peek at Charles Koch’s plans for the dystopian future of the U.S. during Trump’s first term in office. The campaign funding mechanism Koch used back then was known as Freedom Partners. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the Koch front group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of his administration. And like a dutiful courtier, the Trump administration responded quickly. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency – done. Appointing industry shills to run federal agencies – done.

In addition, Freedom Partners funneled its own staff into key jobs in the Trump administration to hasten the enactment of its agenda.

Charles Koch has spent the better part of his adult life planning his assault on the federal government and gradually implementing the components he needs to succeed. As we have previously written, those include the following:

Meeting secretly with big political donors twice a year to plot a coordinated strategy to put their chosen people in public office;

Meeting at his private club with a sitting Supreme Court justice who will then rule on key legislation that benefits his interests;

Funding an organization that then sluices money to the wife of the Supreme Court Justice;

Running a highly sophisticated voter registration database, data mining and get-out-the-vote operation called i360, in order to pack Congress with people who will pursue an antiregulatory agenda;

Installing dozens of its lawyers and operatives into the highest offices of the federal government;

Running a sprawling, opaque trading operation that could potentially be raising the prices of the fossil fuel products it sells via the futures market;

Funding a sprawling network of taxpayer-subsidized front groups to deny climate change and foment hate;

Providing funding to groups involved in sending a mob to attack the seat of the federal government on January 6, 2021;

Funding groups that use dark money and propaganda to put lifetime justices on the highest court and to promote legislation friendly to the fossil fuels conglomerate.

History will not be kind to those who downplay this threat or enable it through their silence. … See MoreSee Less

Trump’s Nominees Are Being Hand-Picked to Enact a Dangerous Platform the Koch Brothers Made Public 44 Years Ago

wallstreetonparade.com

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2024 ~ Tens of millions of Americans rise each morning and pray they are awakening from a bad dream about

United Public Workers for Action

1 day ago

UCSF Medical Staff Reveal Efforts to Censor Pro-Palestine Speech
theintercept.com/2024/11/19/ucsf-medical-palestine-speech/

NO ROOM FOR EMERGENCY
UCSF Medical Workers Reveal Efforts to Censor Pro-Palestine Speech
Illustration: The Intercept

Jonah Valdez
November 19 2024, 8:00 a.m.
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IN DECEMBER, BRIDGETRochios, a nurse practitioner and midwife at the University of California, San Francisco, showed up to work wearing a keffiyeh.

Later, she and other co-workers started coming to work wearing “Free Palestine” pins, as well as hospital ID badges shaped like a watermelon, a pro-Palestine symbol.

Rochios, whose work includes addressing health disparities within reproductive health care, had been moved by reports of Israel’s targeting and destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and health care system, and started wearing the items as a show of solidarity with Palestinian women and babies, as well as her medical colleagues in Gaza.

Supervisors ordered Rochios and her colleagues to remove the pins, threatening them with suspension or termination. Most complied, but Rochios refused.

In April, she traveled to Gaza where she spent a month delivering babies at a maternity hospital in Rafah and the al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. She saw some of the many delivering mothers who have suffered under dire conditions in Gaza.

“The people who are really ‘unsafe’ are the women who I was supporting in labor as literally bombs were dropping.”
A week after she returned to the U.S., her supervisors at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, one of the graduate school and hospital system’s 10 campuses, placed Rochios on a three-month paid administrative leave for “insubordination.” Her suspension was renewed in September after she again refused to remove her watermelon pin. She may still face further sanctions, including termination. University representatives have told her that several colleagues and patients said the pin made them feel “unsafe.”

“The people who are really ‘unsafe’ are the women who I was supporting in labor as literally bombs were dropping and shaking the walls of our hospital,” Rochios told The Intercept, recalling moments during Israel’s invasion of Rafah. “Women who have not had prenatal care at all; women who went to walk to the hospital in labor and have a baby, and then two hours later, walk back home to their tent where they did not have running water, where they don’t have enough food or hydration to breastfeed, no clean water, or money to buy formula for their kids.”

Medical professionals, especially those who have treated patients in Gaza’s and Lebanon’shospitals over the past year, have spoken outabout atrocities carried out by the Israeli military. Doing so at UCSF, one of the country’s most elite medical institutions, may come at a price.

Rochios is one of nine health care workers at UCSF who spoke with The Intercept about their experiences of censorship and punishment after speaking out about human rights for Palestinians as a part of their research and medical work.

UCSF declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions or multiple phone calls over the course of a week. A UCSF spokesperson said they were concerned that the accounts of UCSF employees were being “taken out of context.”

RUPA MARYA, AN internal medicine physician and professor at UCSF, is perhaps the most notable and vocalamong those who have received pushback. In her social media posts in January, Marya, an expert in decolonial theory, questioned the impacts of Zionism as “a supremacist, racist ideology” on health care and drew immediate criticism from pro-Israel colleagues and Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener.

The university then published a statementacross its social media accounts addressing the posts without naming Marya, disavowing her statements as “antisemitic attacks.” Wiener thanked UCSF for the statement. A flurry of online attacks against Marya followed, including racist and sexist attacks and threats of death and sexual violence. Wiener has continued to single out Marya on social media.

In September, Marya wrote a new post on social media that UCSF students were concerned that a first-year student from Israel may have served in the Israeli military in the prior year, then asked, “How do we address this in our professional ranks?”

DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA – NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Read Our Complete Coverage
Israel’s War on Gaza
The following month, the university placed her on paid leave and suspended her ability to practice medicine pending an investigation into the post. The university has since reinstated her ability to give clinical care, but she remains banned from campus, including the hospital where she worked.

“I wanted to protect people who have lost family members,” Marya said. “People are being murdered, doctors are being disappeared, hospitals are being bombed — you have this traumatized community in UCSF. I’ve been trying to give voice to the experience of the Muslim, Indigenous, Black, SWANA” — Southwest Asian and North African — “students who are afraid, like deeply afraid.”

The Center for Protest Law and Litigation, a First Amendment group, is assisting Marya in obtaining public records of possible communications about her social media posts between UCSF, Wiener, and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the school’s largest donor that has in the past donated to pro-Israel propaganda groups. The center filed suit for the records after the university failed to produce documents after nine months of back and forth, during which the school claimed such records are exempt from freedom of information laws.

In a statement sent to The Intercept, Wiener said Marya’s social media posts “crossed a line,” accusing her of using “an antisemitic conspiracy theory targeting Jewish doctors” and an Israeli medical student. He said concerned UCSF faculty and students brought the January and October posts to his attention. “I then called out those posts as antisemitic, just as I have called out homophobic, transphobic, racist, and Islamophobic statements by various individuals,” he wrote.

Wiener, as a part of the legislature’s Jewish Caucus, previously targeted K-12 school districts for teaching history lessons that were critical of Israel, dismissing them as “bigoted, inaccurate, discriminatory, and deeply offensive anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda,” according to a January letter to state lawmakers. He decried the online threats against Marya, calling for an investigation.

Exterior view of the UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion under a clear blue sky, San Francisco, California, April 8, 2024. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
People walk towards a devastated building at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on June 11, 2024. Israeli troops conducted raids in November and March on Al-Shifa hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. The medical facility, the largest in the Gaza Strip, was reduced to rubble after an Israeli operation in March, the WHO said. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)
UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion in San Francisco on April 8, 2024, left, and a devastated building at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on June 11, 2024. Photos: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images and Omar Al-Qatta/AFP via Getty Images
THE SCHOOL’S CRACKDOWNhas been broad, targeting professors, doctors, and medical staff.

Doctors have had their lectures mentioning Gaza scrubbed from the internet or canceled outright. They have been accused of antisemitism and creating an unsafe work environment, and banned from lecturing entirely. Staffers, nurses, and students have been suspended for speaking out in solidarity or for acts as simple as wearing a watermelon pin or hanging a pro-Palestine symbol in their offices. Dozens of employees have criticized the ongoing silence from UCSF and its failure to condemn Israel’s war on Gaza, accusing the school of favoring pro-Israel views.

“This is really unprecedented where this university in particular has stepped in and taken such a strong stand in support of some speech and opposition to other speech,” said Dan Siegel, a longtime Bay Area civil rights attorney who is representing several UCSF employees facing discipline. “It’s really remarkable to me that there is so much content-based discrimination here.”

For the past 30 years, Siegel has represented faculty and staff across the UC system in employment and workplace issues. Before October 7, he had never seen such a widespread effort to punish employees for speaking out about a specific issue.

“Look, I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but aren’t people made uncomfortable by 40,000 dead in Gaza?”
“Among the supporters of the Israeli government, this is a cynical and manipulative effort to limit debate,” he said. “They’ve promoted an atmosphere where you’re a student at the university or a patient at the hospital, and it becomes perfectly normalized for you to say or for someone to champion your saying, ‘I feel uncomfortable as a Jew because of people saying these things,” said Siegel, who is Jewish.

“Look, I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, but aren’t people made uncomfortable by 40,000 dead in Gaza or the efforts taking place in the West Bank to steal Palestinian land?” Siegel asked. “Those things make me feel uncomfortable — so now we’re all going to be censoring each other’s speech because it makes us uncomfortable, and that really can’t be the criteria for limiting speech.”

In late July, a group of House Republicans, including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., told UCSF they would investigateallegations of antisemitism made by employees and patients at the institution. The members of Congress threatened to withhold all federal funding, including Medicare and Medicaid payments, from the school and health care system. Their investigation is a part of a larger partisan effort, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., targeting universities whose students and faculty have been vocal critics of Israel.

THREE UCSF PHYSICIANS have been banned from giving lectures after mentioning the negative health impacts of Israel’s war on Gaza or the apartheid health system in the Occupied Territories.

Jess Ghannam had received pushback for his scholarship in the past. In 2012, an attendee of one of his lectures about Gaza at UCSF called the police on him, saying they didn’t feel safe with him on campus, Ghannam recalled. Later that year, a student burst into tears and ran out of a lecture Ghannam was delivering at UC Davis and later filed a complaint alleging that Ghannam had created an unsafe learning environment. (UC Davis launched a formal investigation, which eventually saw the complaint dismissed.)

Related
She Exposed a Prestigious Medical Journal’s Silence on the Holocaust. Now She’s Asking About Gaza.
In his 25 years at the university, Ghannam never had any of his lectures canceled outright. He is a well-known speaker who has shared his research on the consequences of war on displaced communities, such as Palestinians, in many venues over the past two decades. And he helped establish mental health and medical clinics for Palestinians, interviewing Palestinian torture survivors who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons.

In September, he was scheduled to speak to first-year medical students, after a group of medical students had met with the university’s deans to push for more education around Palestine.

Student protest calling on the UC system to divest from its investments in Israeli companies while gathering outside of UC San Francisco's Rutter Center, where a meeting of the UC Board of Regents was held at the University of California, San Francisco, Wednesday, July 17, 2024. (Thomas Sawano/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Student protesters outside of UC San Francisco’s Rutter Center call for the UC system to divest from investments in Israeli companies as the UC Board of Regents holds meetings inside the university, in San Francisco, on July 17, 2024. Photo: Thomas Sawano/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
Then, four days before the scheduled talk, Ghannam heard from the course instructor that his lecture was being canceled. The instructor said there wasn’t enough time to provide “wraparound services” for students, or peer support or support services, for those who may be distressed by the topic, Ghannam said.

Students responded with outrage. Ninety-five medical students signed a letter addressed to school officials, calling the cancellation “an act of intentional erasure of historical harms that continue to affect our communities and our profession” and alleging that it was part of “a pattern of suppression that seemingly targets any element of acknowledgement or advocacy for the health of Palestinians, despite UCSF’s claimed position as a bastion of social justice.” The students went on to host Ghannam independently, allowing him to give his lecture in front of about 100 people.

“That’s the clear message: You can’t talk about Palestine, you can’t talk about genocide.”
“If you talk about Palestine,” Ghannam said of his critics’ perspective, “if you talk about the health consequences of genocide, and the negative impact of genocide and settler colonialism, it’s OK to talk about it in any other people except Palestinians — and then if you do try to talk about it in the Palestinian context, we’re going to shut you down.”

“I mean, that’s the clear message: You can’t talk about Palestine, you can’t talk about genocide.”

LEIGH KIMBERG had a similar experience. Kimberg, a medical school professor, primary care doctor, and leader in the field of violence prevention and trauma-informed care, had lectured at UCSF’s continuing education program several times in the past decade.

In April, she gave a 50-minute lecture and dedicated six of those minutes to a discussion of the health of Palestinians in Gaza. She argued that you cannot speak on trauma-informed care without mentioning the genocide in Gaza and described the connections between the liberation of Black, Palestinian, and Jewish people. She also decried antisemitism during her lecture.

Still, the following month, administrators told Kimberg that they had received complaints from attendees who called her speech “biased and antisemitic,” which prompted the school to remove the recording of her talk from the school’s website. When she protested the video’s removal, she said the school barred her from giving lectures at the program.

The ban was lifted after multiple emails from Kimberg and Siegel, who is representing her, but she was told that her future talks must comply with the program’s rules. She also received pushback from her division at the school of medicine, where colleagues have referred to her as “inflammatory” or “not trauma-informed.”

Healthcare workers in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 2024, at the March for Gaza, part of a national day of action against the war. Photo: Leigh Kimberg
Kimberg began to speak out about Palestine publicly last October, and her Palestinian colleagues welcomed her perspective as a person of Jewish ancestry. Her grandparents had fled antisemitic violence in Poland and Lithuania, and three of her relatives died in the Holocaust. But her colleagues also cautioned her of the backlash to come.

“We do want to warn you that the second you advocate for Palestine, you will be called ‘antisemitic,’” Kimberg recalled from earlier conversations with Palestinian colleagues. “It doesn’t matter that you’re Jewish — in some ways, it will be worse — but you will definitely be called ‘antisemitic’ if you say anything to value Palestinian life.”

“And that has been my experience.”

SUCH DISCRIMINATION ISwhat led Keith Hansen, a former chief resident of surgery at UCSF, to conceal his Palestinian heritage throughout his career. As chief resident in the fall of 2023, Hansen would send daily emails to his co-workers at the trauma surgery department at San Francisco General Hospital, highlighting updates across their field. In one of those emails in October, as reports of Israeli strikes on hospitals in Gaza began to compile, he skipped the updates and instead asked his colleagues “to take a moment to acknowledge that doctors and surgeons and patients, just like us, were being bombed by the Israeli government.”

Hansen received positive feedback for the email from his co-workers, but in his monthly review to assess his performance as a resident, an attending physician referred to Hansen as “a polarizing figure” because of the email.

In May, as student activists continued to occupy a protest encampment at the school’s Parnassus Heights campus, Hansen gave a lecture as chief resident about his work in organ transplantation along with health inequities of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation.

During the talk, he also disclosed his Palestinian heritage, something he had never done in his career. He shared that he was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees, his mother from Ramallah and his father from Jenin. After running through data showing health disparities between Palestinians living under occupation and Israeli citizens, as well as the targeting of physicians in Gaza, he called on the university to do more to address such issues. He referenced other UCSF initiatives, such as fundraising to protect doctors and scholars in Afghanistan and Ukraine. He went on to call for an academic boycott of institutions “complicit in the genocide and medical apartheid.”

Following his talk, several colleagues lodged complaints against him that he was creating an unsafe working environment. The chair of his department also directed him and other speakers not to mention “anything political or anything that didn’t have to do with graduation.” At graduation, he said people he had previously gotten along with avoided him.

“Everyone kind of shows their true colors once they find out your background.”
“There’s that term — ‘liberal except for Palestine’ or ‘humanitarian except for Palestine’ — and a lot of people as soon as they hear you’re Palestinian just change their entire view of you,” Hansen said. “And it has changed my relationship — I mean, there were people at graduation who didn’t talk to me, who I had known for years and always got along with really well. Everyone kind of shows their true colors once they find out your background.”

At the same time, pro-Israel speakers have been invited to campus while Palestinian voices have been opposed. Among those speakers were Elan Carr, a U.S. Army veteran and CEO of the Israeli American Council, an influential pro-Israel lobbying and advocacy group. UCSF’s Office of Diversity and Outreach invited him to speak during May’s Jewish American Heritage Month.

Nearly 100 faculty, medical workers, and students wrote to the diversity office, protesting Carr’s talk, citing his role at a counterprotest against student encampments at UCLA that turned violent a month earlier, as well as his endorsement of transphobic comments on social media. Carr’s speech on “the persistence of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel discrimination, and campus antisemitism” went on as planned.

The same office declined to sponsor and publicize an official screening of documentary “Israelism,” which was hosted by the school’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. The film centers on the advocacy of anti-Zionist Jewish activists.

SOME STAFFERS HAVE been disciplined for a speech act as quiet as wearing a pin.

Shortly after October 7, Rosita, a nurse at UCSF who gave only her first name out of fear of being doxxed by pro-Israel activists, started hand-making watermelon pins for her co-workers to attach to their hospital ID cards, green glittery resin disks with a small rubber watermelon glued on top.

A slice of the fruit has been a symbol of Palestinian liberation since the 1980s, when Palestinian artists started to use the depictions of the watermelon, with its red flesh, green rind, and black seeds, as a way to circumvent an Israeli ban on public displays of the Palestinian flag in Gaza and the West Bank. Rosita passed her pins out to interested colleagues at work and to others during pro-Palestine protests.

A watermelon pin attached to a UCSF employee ID card. Photo: Bridget Rochios
In a relatively uniform work environment such as a hospital floor or clinic, custom badge pins are typical ways for medical workers to express themselves. At UCSF, such displays are often political, with many wearing pins that advocate for LGBTQ rights or the Black Lives Matter movement. In the past, UCSF even gave away its own uterus pins meant to affirm reproductive rights, said Rosita, who also helped found the school’s faculty and staff pro-Palestinian group.

“I can tell what type of person you are by the pins that you have on your badge,” she said. “So it’s a sense of pride and solidarity and acknowledgment.”

In all, Rosita said she has made and given away 500 pins. And while many workers received compliments from colleagues and patients, those who wore the pins started to get approached by their managers, telling them the pins were antisemitic and ordering them to remove them under threat of suspension or termination.

In September, Rosita’s manager called her in for a “counseling” session where she was told to remove the pin because a staff member said it made them feel “uncomfortable.” She refused and responded with an email, calling the manager’s request “discrimination and denial of the Palestinian people.”

medical-mission-gaza-feat.jpg
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“My niece is Palestinian,” she wrote in the email. “She is 10 years old. She enjoys collecting Polly Pockets and does jujitsu on Saturdays, studies Arabic on Sundays.”

“She exists!” Rosita added. “I wear the watermelon because she exists!”

Rosita, who is Rochios’s union steward and has been representing her in disciplinary hearings, said she worried she would be met with similar punishment.

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Another staff member faced similar pushback for displaying pro-Palestine symbols. A researcher at UCSF, who declined to give their name due to fear of workplace retaliation, was told by supervisors to remove a sign from their office that said “Queer as in Free Palestine” with a red and pink triangle. The staff member, who is queer, said the sign was meant to express solidarity between the LGBTQ community and Palestinians. They noted that their Mexican LGBTQ flag had been accepted. Leading up to the ban, the researcher had received an online death threat for displaying the symbol, and one community member confronted them inside their office, accusing them of supporting Hamas.

The school told them the red triangle was a Nazi symbol that is being used to promote violence against Jewish people. The ban remains on the staff member’s employee file. Since reporting the death threat, the school has yet to offer a safety plan for the staff member, who as a result has been working remotely since September.

“It’s been really tough. I’ve had to take time off, my mental and physical health is just shot at this point from the stress and anxiety, not knowing whether I’m going to lose my job,” they said.

“My mental and physical health is just shot at this point from the stress and anxiety, not knowing whether I’m going to lose my job.”
Another staffer received a notice of intent to fire her just for discussing accusations lodged against them with colleagues. In January, UCSF therapist Denise Caramagno quote tweeted, to her modest following of 500 users on X, the school’s public rebuke of Marya with the following: “@UCSF is coordinating an attack on its own faculty of color who are asking legitimate questions about social determinants of health. This is a violation of academic speech. How are we to achieve health equity if we cannot ask important questions about systems of supremacy?”

Several months later in May, Caramagno’s supervisor sent an email, flagging that a physician at UCSF sent a complaint about Caramagno’s post to school officials and a complaint officer in the diversity office, calling the tweet antisemitic and questioning Caramagno’s ability to “offer psychological support to Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff.”

Medical workers stage a die-in at San Francisco city hall on January 8, 2024. Photo: John Avalos
Over the past decade, Caramagno helped build the school’s CARE program, which provides resources and support to those on campus who have experienced discrimination, harassment, or abuse. As the co-director, she had remained the point of contact for students to reach out to confidentially and become a trusted source of support to students during difficult moments, including amid protests during the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. She’s regularly called out systemic racism as a part of her role.

“When I see what’s happening in Palestine, it just looks like the most extreme form of racism,” Caramagno said, referring to the genocide in Gaza. “We’re a public health care system, so when we see the dismantling of the public health care system [in Gaza], we have an obligation to call that out.”

While the complaint did not lead to any discipline, she was barred from serving as a point of contact for individuals with reports of antisemitism.

In June, her supervisors caught wind that Caramagno had shared the email from her supervisor that included the complaint with close friends and colleagues, seeking guidance and support on how to proceed. Supervisors told her that she was not allowed to share the email, which they considered confidential. Caramagno and her attorney, Siegel, insist the email was not confidential, which she dismissed as “defamatory.” Even so, by August she was suspended and then received notice of the school’s intent to fire her. She is barred from campus and from contacting her clients.

“I’m a trained clinician in this; I know the laws about confidentiality,” Caramagno said. “I know I had never breached confidentiality, and I never will.”

LAST WEEK, A group of faculty staff and students, including Kimberg and Ghannam, gathered for the first session of the UC People’s Tribunal, a group that aims to hold UC leaders accountable for the school system’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the ongoing displacement of Palestinians.

In addition to the violent crackdown on student encampments across the UC system last spring, school leaders have long shown a pro-Israel bias in their longstanding opposition to attempts by student and faculty groups to join academic boycotts of institutions with ties to Israel. The tactic is part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which aims to achieve Palestinian statehood.

The People’s group, which presented the tribunal charges at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, focused on the UC’s investments in Israeli companies and the other activities of UCSF’s largest private donor, the Diller family. A collection of foundations created by the Bay Area real estate billionaire Sanford Diller, who died in 2018, gave a massive $1 billion to the school in 2017 and 2018, after giving $150 million over the previous 15 years.

Facade of UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at night with illuminated windows, located at 505 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, California, April 28, 2023. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Facade of the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center in San Francisco on April 28, 2023. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The foundations, named for Diller’s late wife Helen, also donated $100,000 in 2016 to the Canary Mission, a group that aims to blacklist students and professors at universities who are found to be critical of Israel. Once an individual is listed on the Canary Mission site, a flood of cyberbullying messages often follow in an attempt to ruin the person’s reputation. The site has a profile for Ghannam and Marya, accusing both of supporting terrorism and antisemitism. Ghannam jokingly called himself one of the site’s “inaugural” members, or a “first-gen Canary Mission.” The group also recently celebrated Marya’s suspension on social media.

In 2016, the Diller Foundation also donated $25,000 to Regavim, an Israeli NGO that sues Palestinians who try to build homes in the occupied West Bank; $100,000 to Reservists on Duty, a group that pays for Israeli reserve soldiers to travel to U.S. universities to work with students on projects that challenge BDS; and $25,000 to Turning Point USA “for US campus efforts against BDS.” And the foundation has donated to Islamophobic groups American Freedom Law Center and Stop Islamization of America, along with American right-wing conservative groups, Project Veritas and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Jackie Safier, Sanford Diller’s daughter, who now runs the Diller Foundation, has dismissed connections between the foundation and the far-right Zionist and conservative groups in the U.S. and Israel. Given the foundation’s close ties with UCSF, however, faculty and staff who have faced punishment for their pro-Palestine speech have questioned whether the relationship was a factor.

“You can’t walk anywhere at UCSF without seeing Helen Diller’s name somewhere,” Ghannam said. “The foundation’s name is in the front of UCSF, the main entrance, they’ve endowed chairs and faculty positions.”

GHANNAM HAD HOPED to travel to Gaza to assist patients there during this past year, but has been barred due to Israeli travel restrictions into the territory for individuals with Palestinian ancestry. He instead has been forced to watch the conflict from afar, doing what he can with organizing at UCSF, while Israeli strikes kill people he’s close with.

“There’s this awesomeness of feeling the solidarity; people are finally understanding Palestine in ways that they never understood before,” Ghannam said. “But at the same time, the amount of fucking grief and pain that I feel every day with knowing that my colleagues have been killed, that all clinics that we helped build and all the programs we help build and all of the people whose kids I’ve seen grown up over the years and get married — they’re all dead, so there’s this profound sense of grief and guilt.”

Rochios speaking with Al Jazeera for an interview aired on May 26, 2024.Screenshot: Al Jazeera
Rochios’s advocacy on the health inequality experienced by Palestinians in Gaza began by speaking out at home, both at the workplace and at rallies in the Bay Area. When Rochios, who was allowed to travel to Gaza, was working in Rafah in April, she began to share what she was witnessing on television news for outlets such as Al Jazeera.

“While the West seems to not give any weight or validation to Palestinian reporters on the ground, these health care workers have become the journalists, the storytellers, all this information, and it became very clear to me to that it was my duty to try and be a voice to that,” she said.

UCSF escalated its punishment against Rochios this week, moving her from a paid suspension to three days unpaid. She will be allowed to return to work for the first time since June on November 21, but was again ordered not to wear her keffiyeh or watermelon badge. If she continues to wear the items, the school said, she would be in violation of UCSF’s PRIDEpolicies and Principles of Community, which are among several codes meant to reinforce diversity and inclusion within the institution. She expects to be fired, given the climate of repression she and her colleagues have experienced at UCSF.

Through conversations with colleagues in the OBGYN department at the nearby city-run San Francisco General Hospital, Rochios knows that this outcome is not the norm in her profession, even within the same city. Unlike at UCSF, the hospital workers have been able to display their support for Palestine, with some openly wearing sweatshirts that read “Healthcare workers for Palestine.”

“I’ve become such a pariah in this way within UCSF,” she said. “Whereas it exists without issue in a sister hospital in the same city.”

Correction: November 19, 2024, 11:23 a.m. ET
This article originally referred to Rupa Marya as a lecturer at UCSF. She is a professor of medicine. … See MoreSee Less

UCSF Medical Workers Reveal Efforts to Censor Pro-Palestine Speech

theintercept.com

Nine health care workers at UCSF report punishment for speaking out about human rights for Palestinians, or simply wearing a pin.

United Public Workers for Action

2 days ago

E. Palestine LIUNA Member Calls For Meeting With AFL-CIO Pres Liz Schuler & For Stafford Act NOW!

A delegation of unionists including a LIUNA member from East Palestine went to the AFL-CIO national office on November 15, 2024 to try to have a meeting with President Liz Schuler to call on her and the AFL-CIO to call for President Biden to institute the Stafford Act for East Palestine so the residents and workers can get healthcare and funds to move out of their contaminated homes. Albright also spoke in front of the LIUNA offices which are next to the AFL-CIO offices.
Albright and other trade unionists have written and emailed Schuler to have a meeting and there has been no response from her or her office.
Chris Albright and his family leave a short distance from the Norfolk Southern derailment and were severely contaminated and he nearly died and has been unable to work and has lost his healthcare.
He and his family have also been unable to move out of their contaminated homes.
They first rallied at the EPA to call on the EPA and Biden to declare East Palestine a Mass Institute Casualty Site under the Stafford Act so they can get healthcare and get out of their homes.
To support this effort write to AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler to call for her to meet with the residents and urge President Biden to take action.
�Call or email AFL-CIO President, Liz Shuler, 202-637-5018, or pressclips@aflcio, and urge her to mobilize the strength of 12 million union members to support her calling on President Biden to institute the Stafford Act for East Palestine residents and workers.�Sponsored by Justice For East Palestine Residents and Workers�www.justiceforeastpalestineresidentsandworkers.com/
The event was sponsored by the Justice For East Palestine Residents and Workers.
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net … See MoreSee Less

Labor Media – Labor Media

www.labormedia.net

The Fight To Protect Public Educaiton & CCSF With AFT 2121 Lecturer Rick Baum youtu.be/cYPbj4tGLfE Public Education is under attack and one of the targets is the community college system and C…

United Public Workers for Action

2 days ago

House GOP Moves To Ram Throught Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power To Kill Nonprofits For Opposing Genocide & Fighting The Bosses
theintercept.com/2024/11/15/nonprofits-trump-bill-gop-republicans/
Dozens of Democrats still support the bill — giving the Republican-controlled House plenty of breathing room to pass it next week.

Noah Hurowitz
November 15 2024, 9:14 a.m.

PALM BEACH, FLORIDA – NOVEMBER 14: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute Gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump has been announcing a number of nominees to fill out his upcoming administration. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Donald Trump at the America First Policy Institute Gala on Nov. 14, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla.Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A CONTROVERSIAL “NONPROFIT killer” bill is back on track after it was blocked earlier this week.

A majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives rejected the bill on Tuesday out of fear that it could grant President-elect Donald Trump the legal tools with which to target his ideological foes, but Republicans are swiftly pressing ahead.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would empower the secretary of the Treasury to designate any nonprofit as a “terrorist supporting organization” and revoke its tax-exempt status, is set to go before the Committee on Rules on Monday for a hearing that could tee up the bill for a new floor vote.

The hearing was announced Thursday evening, just two days after 144 Democrats and one Republican voted against the bill as part of a fast-track parliamentary procedure that required a two-thirds majority.

The bill, also known as H.R. 9495, has come under withering criticismfrom a broad coalition of organizations that say its sponsors are pushing it as a means of cracking down on free speech — particularly speech in support of Palestine. In a joint statement earlier this week, a coalition of Arab American and Muslim organizations pledged to continue to fight the bill.

“This bill was designed to criminalize organizations and activists who oppose the U.S.’s unconditional support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the slaughter of Lebanese civilians,” read the statement, which was signed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, American Muslims for Palestine, and others. “We will continue to stand firm in protecting all organizations’ freedom to speak and operate without fear of political retribution.”

Offices for the chair and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, through which the bill must pass, did not respond to requests for comment.

With pro-Israel groups lobbying for the bill, it gained popularity among House Democrats, in part due to a provision providing tax relief to Americans held hostage abroad.

The reelection of Trump, however, galvanized opponents, including Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who led the charge to reject the bill on Tuesday. Doggett doubled down on Thursday after learning of the newly scheduled Rules Committee hearing.

“In this mislabeled bill, House Republicans are hiding behind hostages,” Doggett said in a statement to The Intercept. “Their rush to reconsider this bill is solely to offer Trump more and more power, while Trump’s nominees for key national security posts this week indicate how he will be using it.”

Simple Majority to Pass

Doggett and fellow Democratic opponents of the bill face an uphill battle to halt the legislation for good. They were able to block it on Tuesday only because H.R. 9495 was put to a House vote under suspension of the rules, a maneuver allowing for legislation to be fast-tracked by limiting debate and barring the addition of new amendments in exchange for the requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass.

Ultimately, 144 Democrats voted no, along with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., barely meeting the threshold to block the bill from fast-track passage. Voting in favor were 204 Republicans and 52 Democrats. The narrow loss — with so many Democrats supporting the bill, opponents had no votes to spare — provoked outrage from supporters of the bill like Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who had spoken in favor of it prior to the vote.

“This shameful partisan play only sets back efforts to halt the abuse of America’s tax code by terrorist organizations,” Smith said in a statementpublished Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee. “Going forward, I encourage our Democrat colleagues to put the defense of our nation and the needs of American taxpayers first.”

Civil liberties groups that had long opposed the bill hailed the vote to block it as a victory, albeit a fleeting one.

The bill is slated for a hearing on Monday known as a markup session, in which committee members may briefly discuss the legislation and propose amendments. If a majority of committee members approve of the bill, whether in its original or amended form, it would move on to another vote on the House floor.

This time, it would likely be put to a simple majority vote. With Republicans in control of the chamber and around 52 Democratic lawmakers showing support by voting for it on Tuesday, the bill would almost certainly pass.

Doggett, however, remained determined: “We Democrats can either post a Yield Right of Way sign or push back to make every effort to protect civil society and our freedoms.” … See MoreSee Less

House GOP Moves to Ram Through Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power to Kill Nonprofits

theintercept.com

A bill to give Donald Trump power to kill nonprofits is still supported by dozens of Democrats — giving the GOP plenty of breathing room.