United Teachers of Los Angeles: No Endorsements for Congressional Genociders

Los Angeles teachers have drawn a line in the electoral sand to send a message to congress members tethered to the Israel lobby. On 12/17/25, the governing body of United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), a union representing 35,000 California educators, passed a motion that the union should refrain from endorsing any candidate for public office, who as a member of the U.S. Congress voted to send weapons to Israel. The rationale before school site leaders in UTLA’s House of Representatives read, “Politicians should not be rewarded for enabling a genocide nor in perpetuating Israel’s periodic bombing attacks on Palestinians.”

As the largest local in the 310-thousand member California Teachers Association, UTLA can wield significant power within the more conservative CTA to influence political endorsements in a safe blue state, where in 2024 Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump statewide 58.5 % to 38.3%, and in LA County 70% to 26.5%.

Moreover, UTLA’s rejection of congressional genociders could encourage the country’s largest labor union, the three-million member National Education Association (NEA), to support candidates who recognize Harris’ failure to break with Biden on Gaza may have cost the Democrats the election in seven swing states.

Scholasticide

The motion to condition political endorsements passed UTLA’s House of Reps, 56% to 44%, after winning support from the union’s Human Rights Committee and Raza Educators Committee. Marc Wutschke, a former UTLA board member, and Kathleen Hernandez, a retired teacher and longtime antiwar activist, authored the successful motion to condition endorsements. Said Wutschke, “Our motion will encourage other teachers unions and the labor movement as a whole to reject candidates who vote for genocide and scholasticide, the annihilation of an educational system through the bombardment of schools, colleges and libraries. As teachers, we are mobilizing our power to stop this ongoing genocide in Gaza, where Israel continues to violate the ceasefire, bombing civilians, blocking aid trucks and barring paper and pencils for Gaza’s school children.”

Who voted for genocide in Gaza

Although the UTLA motion to condition endorsements leaves wiggle room with the words “should refrain from endorsing” and does not include a time frame for evaluating congressional votes, it might be instructive to look at a few highly publicized “ayes” to send additional weapons to Israel in the months and years following October 7th, when Israel’s carpet bombing of schools, hospitals and refugee tents shocked the conscience of the world.

On April, 20, 2024, only seven California House representatives, two in the Los Angeles area, Judy Chu (D-Pasadena) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), voted against the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act that allocated another $17 billion in military assistance for Israel. Chu and Waters are also co-sponsors of H.R. 3565, the Block the Bombs Act, which would prohibit the sale or transfer of weapons–bunker busting bombs, tank ammunition– to Israel unless Israel complied with international law.

In contrast, several Los Angeles area congress members running for re-election voted for the Israel supplemental, including Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro), Ken Calvert (R-Diamond Bar), Robert Garcia (Long Beach), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), and Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks). Garcia–who boycotted Netanyahu’s July 2024 address to Congress– is among the 59 co-sponsors of the Block the Bombs Act, but the other LA-area lawmakers who voted for the supplemental are not listed as co-sponsors with Garcia, Chu and Waters.

Primary challengers

Educators behind the recent UTLA motion are not collectively campaigning for primary challengers and belong to diverse political parties, but the potential impact of their motion on the 2026 primaries merits analysis with the caveat that redistricting under Proposition 50 could alter the landscape.

Gomez vs. Gonzales-Torres

Jimmy Gomez represents Central, East and Northeast Los Angeles County in a congressional district that spans such diverse neighborhoods as Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights and Mount Washington. Gomez, first elected in 2017, won re-election as recently as 2024 with a ten percent margin over challenger David Kim, an attorney who ran on a pro-Palestine anti-war platform.

With Gomez once again facing a progressive opponent in 2026, the UTLA motion could help send challenger Angeles Gonzales-Torres to Congress to replace Gomez in a solidly blue district. Gonzales-Torres, former president of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council and daughter of a deportee, is endorsed by the political action committee Justice Democrats that catapulted AOC to Congress in 2018 upon defeating 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in New York City.

Gonzales-Torres participated in the UCLA encampment to protest Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and could build a mighty grassroots door-knocking campaign of pro-Palestinian activists and teachers enraged over Gomez’s fealty to the Israel lobby. Gomez’s constituents in Eagle Rock have protested his votes with a banner that reads, “JIMMY GOMEZ, STOP TAKING MAGA MONEY. REJECT AIPAC AND UDP.” (United Democracy Project-AIPAC super-PAC). According to Track AIPAC, which mines data from OpenSecrets.org and FEC.gov and endorsed Gonzales-Torres, Gomez has accepted a whopping $2,522,106 in Israel lobby contributions over the course of his congressional campaigns.

Sherman vs. Levine

Come 2026, Rep. Brad Sherman will again face a progressive challenger in his district that runs from Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills to Malibu and Brentwood. In 2024, Shervin Aazami–a former legislative director endorsed by Jewish Voice for Peace Action– had hoped to oust the “corporate Wall Street Democrat.”

This time it’s Jake Levine, son of former Congressmember Mel Levine, taking on Sherman, the AIPAC-endorsed incumbent who crusaded for the Israel Visa Waiver Program.

In contrast, Levine championed climate sustainability in the Biden administration, serving as the first chief climate officer for the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, where he invested federal funds in the Palestinian private sector to build support for a two-state solution.

Track AIPAC pegs Israel lobby campaign contributions to Sherman at $637,427.

Padilla & Schiff

Over in the U.S. Senate, California senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff repeatedly vote to fund Israel’s genocide, paying little heed to an October 2024 UTLA motion in support of Senator Bernie Sanders’ Joint Resolution of Disapproval (JRD) to block 35,000 500-pound bombs to Israel. The UTLA motion read, “As educators, we have watched for one year as Israel has decimated the education system for current and future Palestinians, destroying every university in Gaza and forcing children to attend school in refugee camps or not at all.”

In opposing Sanders’ 2025 discharge petition to restrict bombs to Israel, Padilla and Schiff sided with the Republican majority in the Senate. Padilla and Schiff previously rejected Sander’s 2024 JRD, as the California representatives accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Israel lobby. According to Track AIPAC, the Israel lobby has contributed a staggering $6-million to Schiff, $104-thousand to Padilla.

EJP-LA

Wutschke and Hernandez are both supporters (along with this author) of Los Angeles Educators for Justice in Palestine (EJP-LA), which with 41 voting members of the UTLA House of Reps constitutes a formidable voting block or 16% of the union’s 250-member governing body. That influential percentage increases when a less motivated sector of the body skips meetings.

UTLA’s pro-Palestine teachers are, as fictional news anchor Howard Beale said in the film Broadcast News, “mad as hell” and “not going to take it anymore” when it comes to the Israel lobby–apoplectic over support for Palestine–bankrolling candidates who pledge allegiance to Israel as an ethno-nationalist state.

EJP-LA (HOR), with support from UTLA’s human rights and raza educators committees, has shepherded several successful motions on Palestine, including one to sever professional development and curriculum ties with the Anti-Defamation League “because it conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism to suppress debate,” and another to put the union on record in support of CalSTRSDivest, a campaign for the $380-billion teacher retirement system to divest from companies such as Lockheed Martin, Palantir and Caterpillar that profit off war, surveilance and genocide.

The UTLA HOR motion to condition candidate endorsements comes as the Israel lobby moves to censor classroom discussion of Palestine.

Signed by the Governor over the objection of every major education union and association, CA AB 715 would in 2026 establish an “antisemitism prevention coordinator” to oversee curriculum, professional development and enforcement of complaints against teachers. With the American Arab Anti-Discrimination filing a lawsuit in federal court to enjoin implementation of AB 715 on constitutional grounds, UTLA plans to submit an amicus brief in support of the ADC should the complaint reach the appellate level.

In the meantime, Los Angeles teachers outraged over Israel’s murder of 20,000 children in Gaza refuse to allow special interests to silence class debate or pressure UTLA to endorse candidates arming Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

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