Diaspora Dispatches Vol. 1

Welcome to the first edition of Diaspora Dispatches!

We hope this will be an ongoing series of first-person accounts of Bundist actions and reactions around the world. With this series, we hope to show that the resurgence of Bundism does not just live online, but in the streets, organizing against antisemitism and Zionism and in solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples.

In our inaugural edition, we hear from khaveyrim from the Chicagoland Jewish Labor Bund, the D.C., Maryland and Virginia (DMV) Bund, and the Golden Gate Bund.

Want to share a dispatch from your corner of Diaspora? Just send us an email at spekter@derbund.org.

Chicagoland Jewish Labor Bund

IG: @chicagobund

The Chicagoland Jewish Labor Bund is slowly building interest and awareness of Bundism among leftist Jews in the Chicago area. 

We had our inaugural event on June 20th in partnership with Polish leftist group Sokoły. Videos and photos from the event can be found on our IG.

I've also been representing the Bund as part of an anti-Zionist Jews speaker series – which is run by a local Palestinian grassroots collective – called Jews Against Genocide. Another speaker involved in that series is also a member of the Chicagoland Bund.

I also repped the Bund at a recent book event for "Safety Through Solidarity," handed out our brochures, and made many great connections there.

Finally, the Chicagoland Bund was a co-sponsor of a screening of Israelism at PO Box Collective earlier this summer. I met many people there who were interested in learning more about the Bund. Now, since I live in a very neoliberal, Zionist suburb where I have already been subject to doxxing and harassment, I've decided to have a screening of the film at my local library. JVP Chicago is on board to co-sponsor and I hope to also pull in If Not Now Chicago and Tzedek Chicago (where I'm a member). We plan to do outreach at all the local synagogues, even though they are all Zionist. Hopefully without me getting doxxed again 😅

We also hope to eventually get Rava going which we hope to be a prototype of a replacement for Hillel. I'm in touch with Jewish anti-Zionist groups on several local campuses and we also want to include young Jews who aren't in college and aren't ever going to college.

-- Anna Tarkov, Chicagoland Jewish Labor Bund

DMV Bund

IG: @dmvbund

The DMV Bund is lucky to be located near so many organizations that have been doing work in non and anti zionist spaces for a long time. Members continue to organize in these spaces fighting for Palestinian Liberation. Additionally, the DMV Bund has been preparing a presentation for political education that would be used to introduce the general public to Bundism and efforts to revitalize the Jewish Labor Bund. Lastly, members of the DMV Bund recently took part in a Radical Yiddish Language Course taught by local Yiddish speakers. People who took the course are interested in creating a space for continued Yiddish practice which could be organized by the DMV Bund.

Golden Gate Bund

IG: @goldengatebund / Linktree

Northern California Bundists have been slowly organizing as the Golden Gate Bund. Northern California's robust activist community keeps everyone busy so the GGB is focused on outreach to Jewish leftists in existing communities while engaged in solidarity work and appropriate outside communications. In the past few months the GGB has: 

- Developed an "about us" outreach zine for distribution in our activities and communities
- Wrote to the California Jewish Legislative Caucus to admonish several Democratic legislators who helped defeat a Labor priority bill to extend unemployment benefits to striking workers in retaliation for Labor's support of calls for ceasefire in Gaza
- Organized a letter co-signed by six other Bund locals to the judge overseeing the federal government's consent decree with the UAW demanding for the removal of Federal Monitor Neal Barofsky for his abuse of power in targeting the UAW's leadership for their support of the membership's demand of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Send your Diaspora Dispatch to spekter@derbund.org to be featured in future newsletters!