UAWD ConCon Strategy Roundtable: Winning Divestment through a Vision of Class Struggle
The six leaders of UAWD’s team at the 2026 UAW Constitutional Convention discuss the class-struggle strategy that enabled UAWD to lead the effort to divest the UAW from Israel bonds. Standing on the shoulders of decades of Palestine solidarity organizing, the win was made possible through the past year of organizing Local UAWD Chapters grounded in shop-floor struggle and the development of a UAWD ConCon program, which featured resolutions to enable rank-and-file militancy to fight layoffs, fight ICE, and in support of Palestine.
In this roundtable discussion, the leaders of UAWD’s 2026 ConCon team talk through the nuts and bolts of the strategy that UAWD has built, to give organizers a look into the class-struggle political foundation for UAWD’s effort to divest the UAW from Israel bonds. We provide an analysis of what we encountered at the ConCon and how our strategy fared, to give rank-and-file militants across the labor movement a leg up when they engage in struggles within their unions.
We describe how we won divestment not by arguing narrowly for it or other reforms, but by moving Convention delegates through an appeal to a broader political vision of militant trade unionism and working class solidarity. Our ConCon program prioritized resolutions to build capacity for UAW members to take militant collective action to fight layoffs, fight ICE, and stand in solidarity with Palestine. We explain how our ability to build our program and deploy it on the Convention floor was made possible by UAWD’s focus for the last year on organizing Local UAWD Chapters grounded in shop-floor struggle.
We also share a detailed tutorial, looking under the hood to explain how we democratically built out our Convention program, engaging rank-and-file UAW members across the country who are a part of UAWD, working in auto manufacturing, parts production, agricultural manufacturing, legal services, higher ed, and in the public sector. At the ConCon, we deployed our strategy on the Convention floor, assigning roles and planning tactics designed to make sure there was debate about our program and literature distributions to start conversations with delegates about our ideas.
Here are some of the other key take-aways from the discussion:
- The continued dominant role of the old-guard Administration Caucus was on display at the ConCon, with UAW President Shawn Fain as the new caucus leader. Their morning caucus meetings continued to exert control of Local leaders, pressuring delegates who are looking for roles on staff and fear-mongering to quash radical resolutions.
- Seated on the Convention floor, UAWD leaders and delegates saw first-hand how other delegates experienced repression and pressure not to take militant stances, with Local leaders and UAW staff literally pulling delegates down who stood for UAWD resolutions.
- UAWD’s resolution, “Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers,” made a significant impact among Convention delegates and lent credibility to UAWD’s program, receiving broad support on the floor and positivity during our morning literature distributions after it was introduced.
- While the old-guard bureaucracy coordinated to ensure delegates voted down the resolution to fight ICE, the debate over the resolution played an important role in moving the political and moral mood on the floor to enable the divestment win. A cross-sectoral coalition, well beyond UAWD’s contingent, spoke out to advocate for the importance of enabling rank-and-file members to decide to democratically take unprotected strike activity to fight ICE.
