Palestinian Solidarity and Social Movement Innovation in the 1973 UAW Wildcat Strike

What makes a boycott a boycott? Does consumer identity need to be involved? Or can an individual or group engage in a boycott through other means of exerting control over the flow of capital? This paper will consider these questions through an examination of one of the most prominent examples of American solidarity activism with Palestine: the 1973 wildcat strike led by predominantly Arab-American workers demanding that the United Auto Workers (UAW) divest from Israel. This paper will think through the relation between “strike” and “boycott” as forms of exerting worker and consumer power at a key moment in the shifting strategies of the American labor movement amid deindustrialization. Identifying the 1973 wildcat strike in solidarity with Palestine as a precursor to the rise of the “comprehensive campaign” as a U.S. labor movement strategy, this paper considers the Palestinian solidarity movement as an underappreciated site for theoretical and tactical innovation within U.S. social movement history.