Media Blackout of Labor Opposition to Iraq War Continues

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

You wouldn’t know it from reading, watching, or listening to the “mainstream” media, but many of the largest labor organizations in the United States have passed resolutions demanding that U.S. troops be brought home from Iraq and the war be ended. On July 19, the ILCA published an article on the media’s failure to cover this turn of events.

Back then the story was already huge. In a reversal of the support that labor has traditionally given to wars, some of the largest unions, the SEIU and AFSCME, and the California Federation of Labor, had recently passed resolutions against the Iraq War, joining early leaders of opposition, including the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, the United Farm Workers, UNITE, the IWW, and the ILWU Hawaii Local 142 and ILWU San Francisco longshore local 10, later joined by the ILWU International.

This story has grown dramatically since July, as the media blackout has continued unabated. The Communications Workers of America (many of whose members work in the media), the Postal Workers (APWU), the Mail Handlers (a division of the Laborers’ Union

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