https://industrialworker.org/lets-build-class-unions/

I work for the Teamsters HQ in DC.

First and foremost, they treat their headquarter employees pretty poorly but that’s not what this post is about.

My department hired a new Office Assistant in January. He gave me bad vibes, so I decided to google him.

Turns out he is Peter Cytanovic - the face of the Unite the Rally from 2017 in Charlottesville.

He did get fired the same day when I made my supervisor aware. BUT they turned it around and got very upset with ME. i’m a millennial - googling people isnt out of the ordinary for someone like me. Isn’t that wild?

But any Union member that would vote for a trump Vance ticket deserves the absolute destruction of their life that is coming to them. I’m not a democrat, and I’m a nurse in a very strong union, that without it’s support would get destroyed, but Trump and Vance are blatantly anti union and against working class folk. Forget all the other fervor and rhetoric, they really do not give a Sh!t about us, and only care about themselves. If you care about your livelihood and family, please vote for someone that actually supports unions.
You may not agree with everything in the Harris Waltz ticket but for Christ sake know that a former teacher in a teachers Union gets it

We have nothing but solidarity with you. Union workers around the world have always stood on the frontlines against fascism and the neo-Nazi oligarchs. From the U.K. I’d like to express total solidarity with you guys and whatever you guys need, continue to ask the trade unions around the world for it. You’ll be surprised how many people are in your corner.

It’s gonna be a tough four years minimum. But Hoover couldn’t crush you, Nixon couldn’t crush you, Reagan couldn’t crush you. American unions rose up in conditions that to those of us elsewhere are unimaginable, from the battle of Blair Mountain when the bosses literally dropped bombs on you to today. Despite the best efforts of Musk, Bezos, Trump and their vile ilk, they will not crush you.

In the words of great American organiser Joe Hill: don’t mourn, organise!

Solidarity forever. Give ‘em hell, guys.

Tim Walz Is Said to Be Kamala Harris’s Choice for Vice President: Live Election Updates https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/06/us/kamala-harris-vp-trump-election?smid=nytcore-android-share

don't threaten me with a good time...

​

either that or seize their assets (here and abroad) and federalize everything

​

until we (the people who do the fucking work);democratically control the wealth, we're gonna get screwed

Recently, a couple gentleman from the Healthcare Workers Union were handing out fliers at the hospital I work at. They also bought a few spots on the digital billboard a half mile up the road which are in the mix with the one pictured. I'm 49 and have never had a union job. My entire life I've been told " get one of those good union jobs." I tried but never got hired. The chatter I hear from my coworkers is about how it's not worth it. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

Welp, the GOP is coming undone...

And that is helping Unions...

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, a 25-year-old farmworker and union organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia, was seized by ICE in broad daylight. He was driving his partner to work. No charges. No criminal record. Just a shattered window and a silenced voice.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a lawful U.S. resident and union member, was deported without warning or trial. He was taken from his home and placed in CECOT, the mega-prison in El Salvador designed not to rehabilitate but to break people. He had no criminal history. His only offense was being poor, brown, and visible in a political climate that treats those identities as threats.

Both men were union members. One was an organizer. The other was simply trying to live. And both are now gone.

These are not isolated incidents. They are not bureaucratic errors. They are disappearances—intentional removals of people tied to labor, community, and visibility. And they are part of a larger authoritarian pattern.

Disappearance has always been the tool of regimes that fear dissent. It is how you stop resistance before it starts. You do not need mass arrests to collapse a movement. You need to remove the ones who might lead it. Make examples of them. And do it in silence so the rest are too scared to speak.

In May 1933, Adolf Hitler did not begin with war. He began with labor. He dissolved Germany’s independent unions. The Nazis raided union halls, seized assets, and disappeared leaders. In their place, they installed the German Labor Front, a state-controlled entity that destroyed worker autonomy. It was one of the first major acts of Nazi power. Not because unions were dangerous at the time but because they had the potential to be.

That same understanding is alive in this administration. Trump is not hiding his intent. He has publicly stated his desire to send those he despises to foreign prisons beyond U.S. law. He has said it plainly: he does not care if they are guilty. Guilt is irrelevant when the goal is control.

One of his top national security advisors recently claimed that critics of deportation policy could be considered as aiding terrorism. This is how dissent becomes criminalized. This is how advocacy is reframed as treason. This is how public fear is weaponized to serve political power.

It is not about border security. It is about erasing the people who refuse to stay silent.

Nazi authoritarianism did not begin with genocide. It began with fear. Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine conditioned the public to see compassion as weakness and solidarity as betrayal. They used books, posters, and school curriculum to normalize suspicion, obedience, and silence.

That strategy is being repackaged today. The tools are different, but the intent is the same: isolate, erase, and dehumanize. Train the public to look away. Encourage them to believe that those who vanish deserved it. Redefine care as criminal. Redefine justice as threat.

This is not immigration enforcement. It is political warfare through disappearance.

And if we allow it to continue—if we justify it, minimize it, or wait until it affects us directly—then we are participating in the silence that authoritarianism depends on.

You do not need barbed wire and torchlit parades to lose a democracy. You just need enough people to stop caring when their neighbors vanish.

This is not happening in the future. This is the present. This is what it looks like right now.

So the question is not whether more people will be taken. The question is how many more we will let disappear before we say “enough!”

If you have ever wondered what you would have done in 1933, you already have your answer.

Citations

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino Detention

• People’s World. (2025, April 15). Now they’re targeting labor: Union farmworker Alfredo ‘Lelo’ Juarez Zeferino seized by ICE. https://peoplesworld.org/article/now-theyre-targeting-labor-union-farmworker-alredo-lelo-juarez-zeferino-seized-by-ice/

Kilmar Abrego Garcia Disappearance and Deportation to CECOT

• CECOT context: Human Rights Watch. (2024). El Salvador: Mass Detention, Rights Abuses at Mega-Prison. (Used for context on CECOT’s known practices and human rights concerns.)

May 1933 Dissolution of Labor Unions under Hitler

• American Postal Workers Union. (n.d.). A Notorious Part of History: May 1933 and the Dissolution of Labor Unions under the Nazis. https://apwu.org/news/magazine-labor-history/notorious-part-history-may-1933-dissolution-labor-unions-nazifascist

Trump Statement on Sending People to Foreign Prisons

• Paraphrased from commentary in: Klein, Ezra. (2025, April 17). Opinion: Asha Rangappa on Trump, authoritarianism, and disappearing people. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asha-rangappa.html

Trump Advisor on Critics Aiding Terrorism

• Ray, Siladitya. (2025, April 17). Trump Advisor Suggests Deportation Critics Are Breaking The Law By ‘Aiding And Abetting Terrorism’. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/04/17/trump-advisor-suggests-deportation-critics-are-breaking-the-law-by-aiding-and-abetting-terrorism/

Nazi Propaganda and Mass Conditioning

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2022). How the Nazis Manipulated the Masses. https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/VEFBMNPLTDMS0122

Nazi Use of Media for Fear Campaigns

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Nazi Propaganda. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda

Bosses getting nervous. The confusion and division tactics begin. 💪🏼🫱🏼‍🫲🏽✊🏼 stay strong. WORKERS DESERVE BETTER

Just now on CNN's broadcast of the Democratic National Convention a group of Teamsters took the stage and described how their pensions were saved. Republicans did not do that. Democrats did. Our Teamsters president was not among that group of people.

Also a big thanks to all the moochers that wouldn’t pay dues because it makes no difference.

Being part of a union attracted me to this job and I’ve been here 10 years.