​Washington, DC - Together, the Labor Coalition for Community Action, which includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work, rises in solidarity with Native Americans and our allies in protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and defending Native lands from exploitation by corporations and the U.S. government. We advocate for a progressive labor movement rooted in dignity and respect of all peoples, including Native Americans and their families.

Though cited to bring 4,500 jobs, the Dakota Access Pipeline seriously threatens tribal sovereignty, sacred burial grounds, and the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux and potentially 17 million others. As organizations dedicated to elevating the struggles of our respective constituencies, we stand together to support our Native American kinfolk – one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised groups in our nation’s history – in their fight to protect their communities from further displacement and exploitation.

We recognize this systematic oppression that so intimately resonates with many communities of color and marginalized populations, whether it be fighting for lead-free water in Flint to uncontaminated water in North Dakota.

We remain committed to fighting the corporate interests that back this project and name this pipeline “a pipeline of corporate greed.” We challenge the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.

Lastly, we applaud the many labor unions working to create a new economy with good green jobs and more sustainable employment opportunities for all. We also encourage key stakeholders — labor unions including the building trades, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others who would be impacted — to come together to discuss a collective resolution.

​As we just recently recognized Native American Women’s Equal Pay Day and as we approach November – a time that marks not only a significant change in our country’s leadership but also the celebration of Native American Heritage Month – we will continue to campaign and organize for a broader agenda that secures the rights for all working people in all communities. 

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About The Labor Coalition for Community Action (LCCA) - The AFL-CIO’s constituency groups – the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work are unions’ bridges to diverse communities, creating and strengthening partnerships to enhance the standard of living for all workers. The groups also promote the full participation of women and minorities in the union movement and ensure unions hear and respond to the concerns of the communities they represent.
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​Washington, DC – This past Sunday, we marked fifteen years since 9/11 – a particular date of hurt and tragedy in our shared history that has also challenged the fabric of our country and what it means to be American.
 
Kinfolk from Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh American communities have been particularly affected facing unprecedented incidents of hate, racism, and bigotry as backlash from 9/11. In the past few months, we have witnessed arson at an Islamic Center in Florida, two gunned down in Queens, another stabbed to death also in Queens, a woman wearing a religious garb set on fire in New York, the murder of a man on his way to morning prayer, and many others whose stories go unnoticed by mainstream media and the larger national conversation.
 
“Even after 15 years later, we have seen too many hate crimes against our communities. It saddens and angers us to know that my friends and family can’t feel safe at home, work and in their communities,” stated Maf Misbah Uddin, APALA National Executive Board Member and Founder and President of the Alliance of South Asian American Labor (ASAAL). “We have so much more work to do to overcome this entrenched hate and racism within our society.”
 
“From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese American internment to the Southeast Asian deportation crisis, our communities have endured the impact of profiling, criminalization and scrutiny,” stated APALA Executive Director Gregory Cendana highlighting the shared struggle. “Moving forward, we need to train and uplift more leaders at all levels of government, in our community, and in our schools who will stand up against all forms of xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hate.”
 
National President Johanna Hester added: “An individual’s experience in this country shouldn’t be based on one’s proximity to blackness or whiteness. APALA continues to rise for freedom -- freedom from surveillance, profiling, hate crimes on brown and black lives. The conflation of what it means to be American with anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia must come to an end, and that includes reforming government policies that both exacerbate a climate of fear and encourage the mass criminalization of our bodies.”
 
APALA continues to partner with ASAAL, Muslim Advocates, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) to put an end to hate crimes and violence against Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. Below please find some helpful resources and recent actions in our shared struggle for freedom:
 

• Track hate crimes with these resources from Muslim Advocates, SAALT, and Huffington Post.
• Read more reflections on the 15th anniversary in Colorlines, Medium, and Huffington Post.
• Read about NQAPIA’s joint action in Washington, DC this past weekend against legalized profiling.
• Make a commitment to stand on the side of freedom by taking APALA’s #NotYourModelMinority Pledge. 

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​Washington, DC – On September 9th, on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot, prison inmates throughout the country kicked off a peaceful strike against the use of their forced labor and are calling for reforms to prison policies and practices and improved living conditions. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO (APALA) rises in solidarity with these incarcerated folks and voices concern for use of forced labor in a criminal justice system built to criminalize communities of color, including Black folks and the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
 
APALA National President Johanna Hester stated: “It is unacceptable that the use of forced labor in our prison system is a legalized and continued practice. The fact that a disproportionate amount of folks inside are people of color makes it even worse – it basically legalizes a form of modern day slavery within a system meant to cage in people of color, immigrants, and poor folks. APALA stands with incarcerated folks whose labor has too often and too long been exploited by the prison system.”
 
The strikes come at a time where community organizations and advocacy groups are urging the Department of Homeland Security and especially the Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to follow the Department of Justice’s lead to end the use of private prisons and detainment centers. Abuse, mistreatment and poor living conditions are not uncommon in prisons and detention centers, especially in private operated institutions. 
 
“Prison labor has often been cited to reduce the cost of running prisons. Meanwhile, prisons and detention centers are becoming increasingly privatized, and the corporations behind the private prison industry profit from the free labor of inmates and this systematic mass incarceration of communities of color,” added APALA Executive Director Gregory A. Cendana. “Tactics like forced labor serve as a way to deprive folks of any dignity or worth of their work in society. Our criminal justice system needs to focus on restorative and transformative models of justice that value the person as a whole, and we’re calling on the labor movement as a whole to address the rights of workers inside.”
 
APALA is a proud member of AAPIs Beyond Bars, a coalition of labor, education, civil rights and criminal justice organizations that work to address mass incarceration and deportation in the AAPI community. With the coalition, APALA is working to push for more research and disaggregated data on accurate figures of AAPIs behind bars, to disrupt the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline, and to fight for the rights of formerly incarcerated folks and reforms in our criminal justice system.
 

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