Teamster Head At NYC Local Lauds Smalls’ ‘Bravery,’ Calls on Union to Press Trump for His Release

Amazon Labor Union co-founder Christian Smalls seen here in 2022.

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By Joe Maniscalco

The secretary-treasurer of IBT Local 808 in New York is calling on his union leadership to press for the release of Amazon Labor Union co-founder Christian Smalls after Smalls was reportedly seized and beaten by Israeli military forces this week while helping to bring food and other aide to the starving people of Gaza.

“That was a very brave act on his part and it is what the US labor movement needs to be doing to show solidarity in the face of genocidal actions in Israel,” IBT Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera told Work-Bites on Wednesday.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported on July 26 that the civilian vessel Handela carrying Smalls and 21 others was “violently intercepted by the Israeli military” while attempting to deliver life-saving supplies and had “its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized.”

Yesterday, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition further reported on Instagram that “upon arrival in Israeli custody, U.S. human rights defender Chris Smalls was physically assaulted by seven uniformed individuals” who “choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs o violence on his neck and back.”

“I’d love to see [Teamsters leadership] make some appeal to [President Donald] Trump to release him and make sure he’s healthy and find out why did they have to beat him up,” Silvera continued.

Twenty-one civilians from a dozen countries were aboard the Handela when Israeli military forces took over the ship about 40 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

Silvera further said that Smalls’ pioneering organizing efforts at the JFK 8 Amazon warehouse on Staten Island beginning in 2020 had trade unionists in the United States “feeling good about ourselves” and that Smalls will “go down in the annals of labor history.”

“We have a labor movement that is bearing witness to the most horrendous actions that we have seen in the last 30 to 40 years,” Silvera added. “We heard about Rwanda and Serbia, but it wasn’t in our faces, we didn’t see the dead bodies every day.”

Also on Tuesday, current Amazon Labor Union President Connor Spence put out a statement from ALU IBT Local 1 via social media, demanding “the immediate and unconditional release of all detained activists aboard the Flotilla, an end to targeted racist treatment, and we call on the broader labor movement to take a stance for Palestinian liberation.”

“Gaza has been under a relentless and inhumane military assault for nearly two years,” Spence said. “This genocide has caused mass starvation, the forced displacement of millions, and the intentional deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians. There is an immediate need for unrestricted food and medical aid to Gaza.”

Silvera  invoked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous lament about the “appalling silence of good people” in stressing the need for the US labor movement to be about much more than just “contracts,” “grievances,” and “labor day parades.”

He also drew direct parallels between the Israeli military’s reported assault on Smalls with the way IDF-trained cops in this country routinely police communities of color.

“The Black man in America is the equivalent to a Palestinian in Gaza,” Silvera told Work-Bites.

Efforts to reach the Teamsters and AFL-CIO for comment on this story by press time this afternoon were unsuccessful.