Workers Strike Back Rally in Dearborn, MI: No Votes for Genocide!

By Sam White. Published November 1 2024.

With just weeks left before the November elections, two hundred community members and antiwar activists at a Workers Strike Back rally in Dearborn, MI chanted: “No Harris, No Trump, no votes for genocide!”

“There are not sufficient words in the English language to describe the horrors being carried out by Israeli and US imperialism in Gaza and the West Bank,” said WSB cofounder and former Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant in a speech from the rally that soon went viral.

“And now those horrors are being rained down upon Lebanon with the full enthusiastic backing of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. We have the power to take a historic stand against this and potentially to defeat this warmongering candidate, Kamala Harris. Our slogan must be: no votes for genocide.”

Hassan Abdel Salam, cofounder of Abandon Harris, which cosponsored the rally alongside Workers Strike Back and the Jill Stein campaign, explained the strategy of campaigning against Harris and for Jill Stein in Michigan: “The goal is to punish the vice president, to show that she was defeated because of the genocide, and by power, never again allowing genocide to be on the ballot.”

Addressing the crowd of hundreds gathered at Bint Jebail Cultural Center and the thousands more watching via livestream, antiwar presidential candidate Jill Stein put the responsibility for a potential Trump victory where it belonged: on the Democrats. “They [Democrats] could win back the Muslim vote, but they would rather lose the election than stop the genocide. This is on them.” 

An August poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that 40% of American Muslims in the key swing state of Michigan favored antiwar, pro-worker presidential candidate Jill Stein over both Donald Trump, who polled at 18%, and Kamala Harris, who came in at just 12%. 

The Harris campaign has been notably absent from the Muslim communities around Detroit, which overwhelmingly see ending Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, and now Lebanon, waged with the full backing of the Biden-Harris administration, as the number one issue in this election. This absence has left an opening that the Trump campaign has seized upon, securing endorsements like that of Amer Ghalib, the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, and opening a field office in that city cynically displaying “Vote Peace, Vote Trump” window signs.  

It is a stunning indictment of Harris and the Democratic Party that Trump was able to masquerade as a “peace candidate” in this election.

Workers Strike Back members have been on the ground in these communities since the start of October answering the lie that Trump is in any way less full-throated in his support for Israel’s genocidal war than the sitting Vice President and convincing voters who correctly draw a red line at her complicity in genocide to vote for Stein, a genuinely antiwar and pro-worker candidate, instead. 

As Sawant explained, “Voting for Trump also will not send a message that we oppose the genocide. Trump and the Republicans are also fully on board with this genocidal war. Trump says he will finish the job. We need a new major party for working people. An antiwar party.”

In conversations outside coffeehouses, mosques, grocery stores, and public colleges, hundreds of community members shared that they had no intention of voting for Kamala Harris, with many planning to stay home — or in other cases, vote for Trump — out of a desire to punish Harris for supporting genocide. 

Some had already heard of Jill Stein and planned to vote for her, but many hadn’t and were relieved to learn that there was a candidate in the race who unequivocally opposes the genocide and occupation of Gaza and calls for an immediate end of all US military aid to Israel. By making the case for Stein as a genuine antiwar, pro-worker candidate on the ballot, and that Trump is no less of a warmonger than Harris, we convinced many of those planning to stay home or vote for Trump to instead cast their ballots for Stein.

Many we spoke to were also impressed by Stein’s call for a $25/hr minimum wage and Medicare for All, policies that would transform the lives of millions in working-class communities like Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and three locals of the United Auto Workers union. Talking with community members, Workers Strike Back members found that it was lost on nobody that that the Democrats can find billions of dollars to back Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s refugee camps and Beirut’s residential neighborhoods at the same time that families in Wayne County struggle with a cost-of-living crisis and the hollowing out of public services on the Democrats’ watch. 

“Trump has boasted about his union-busting practices. He is a billionaire himself, and represents the interests of the billionaire class,” said Jessie Kelly, a UAW Local 160 member at General Motors and member of Workers Strike Back, at the Dearborn rally. “But Harris isn't fighting for our best interests either. It's almost more insulting for Harris to claim she's pro-union while never actually doing anything that uplifts the working class.”

It is shameful that in this context, the leaderships of major unions like the UAW, despite backing ceasefire resolutions under pressure from their rank-and-file, have lined up in support of the warmongering, strikebreaking vice president. In addition to efforts to get out the vote for Stein, Workers Strike Back has worked to support members of the UAW and other unions in fighting to rescind these undemocratic endorsements of Harris. 

“As an autoworker and a union member, I’m proud to vote for Jill Stein,” Kelly continued to resounding applause. “We need to do this as a step toward building our own antiwar, working-class party.” 

Whether it is Harris or Trump who wins the White House, the Israeli state’s genocidal war will not be stopped without a mass antiwar movement backed by the power of organized labor and broken completely from the Democrats. This is among the most pressing reasons Workers Strike Back will be hosting an organizing conference on February 22, 2024 in Seattle on the next steps for launching a new mass antiwar party for working people. 

Most immediately, this means first and foremost breaking this election for the Democrats in Michigan and building the strongest possible antiwar vote for Stein nationwide. From October through election day, Workers Strike Back members and volunteers who have signed up at rallies and meetings will be on the ground and on the phones, talking to Michigan voters to turn out every possible vote for Stein. 

“The line of history runs through Michigan,” said Sawant, closing her speech to cheers of approval. “Harris and the Democrats have crossed that line, the line of genocide. Let’s punish them. Let’s defeat them. Solidarity.”