“We came here to ask for a quick ceasefire,” AROC’s Palestinian executive director, Lara Kiswani, told the San Francisco Chronicle. She and the protesters presented themselves in a position to put their bodies in harm’s way, physically blocking the ship’s progress if necessary.
ORCA issued a press release on Monday stating that “Confidential resources imply that the shipment will be loaded with weapons and military apparatus in Tacoma, with a final destination in Israel. “
These Times first contacted the U. S. Coast Guard for more information on Cape Orlando, but the request was forwarded to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In an email, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Jurgensen wrote that Cape Orlando “has lately been under operational control. “the U. S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command. It supports the movement of goods by the U. S. military. “We are not going to be able to do anything Jurgensen declined to provide further details about the ship’s shipment or any other data.
Kiswani takes a bit of a liking to this sort of thing, as the action in Oakland on Friday wasn’t the first time she’s been involved in the herculean task of blocking an entire freighter in an effort to get justice. (She helped organize the “Blockade” The Boat protest in 2014. ) “At the heart of all of this is the fact that the U. S. government is committed to maintaining its strength and its privileges around the world, and the tool for that is the State of Israel,” he said. in an interview with Jacobin in 2014. ” That is why the plight of the Palestinians is so directly related to the plight of all oppressed peoples, because we are in the same boat. “
Carrying signs reading “No Army Aid to Israel” and waving Palestinian flags, protesters began arriving in Oakland at 8 a. m. to call for an early ceasefire and an end to the occupation. Over time, their number grew from a few dozen to a mere 300. , according to Oakland Uprising, and the chants grew louder. In the early afternoon, 3 protesters locked themselves in the shipment stairwell, according to KRON4. The crowd erupted in joy and activists on the floor said they believed at least one employee was in the shipment. Possibly he would have abandoned his task in solidarity.
For some dockers who witnessed all this, this probably wouldn’t have been particularly unusual. The Port of Oakland has long been a site of working-class struggle, and the ILWU’s unionized staff claim to have radical roots, especially since the bloody 1934 coastal strike that saw “ILWU Makes Profits for West Coast Port Staff. “
In 2020, the ILWU also closed ports for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in solidarity with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and all other victims of racist police violence; timed the action to coincide with Floyd’s funeral in Houston, which was attended by Mackay and two other Local 10 representatives. Ten years earlier, the union had shut down the Port of Oakland in protest of the police murder of Oscar Grant.
“We unions deserve to try to be at the forefront of all social struggles, because we perceive that unions have a duty to fight for those who are not limited to our own members,” said Clarence Thomas, an ILWU member and former secretary. treasurer, he told Jacobin that day of the 2020 event.
It would seem that political protests against authoritarianism, acomponenteid, and lethal force are as important a component of the ILWU’s history as seawater and sailors’ knots. Friday was not the first time its members participated, or were part of, efforts to blockade loaded ships. with weapons destined for Israel, or refused to cross the picket lines of the protesters.
“The ILWU officially condemned for the first time the remedy Israel applies to Palestinians in its 1988 convention, pointing to Israel as guilty of ‘state terrorism,'” says Peter Cole, a professor of history at Western Illinois University and author of Dockworker Power: Running and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area.
“In 1935, when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, Local 10 staff refused to load materials aboard an Italian ship. In the late 1930s, after Imperial Japan invaded China, ILWU citizens on the West Coast coordinated with Chinese network protesters to refuse to load materials for Japan. In the 1960s, 1970s, and for 10 days in 1984, ILWU Local 10 refused to unload goods from South Africa in protest of acomponentheid, which was the policy of the racist white minority government. As part of the Arab- and American-led Block The Boat campaign, Israeli-owned boats have been boycotted and sometimes picketed.
In These Times reached out to the ILWU for comment, and to speak with Local 10 President Farless Dailey III about the protests at the ports of Oakland and Tacoma, but was unable to establish contact and did not immediately receive a call.
A Bay Area organizer concerned about the Oakland blockade (and who asked that his call not be published to protect his identity) added, in a personal message to In These Times, what he sees as additional context around cases of similar actions. Police opened fire on a picket line in 2003, it has been understood, through various past port blockade announcements, that Local 10 will show up in the event of a police presence at the port. Many longshoremen are by our side and have been for a while. a long time.
The organizer referred to an occasion on April 7, 2003, when the Port of Oakland was plunged into chaos when Oakland police fired into a crowd of protesters who were organizing a nonviolent anti-war demonstration. As the ACLU reported in the resulting lawsuit opposing the police section and in the city of Oakland, at least 40 other people, in addition to nine Local 10 dock staff, were “injured by giant wooden bullets, bullet grenades, and bean bags filled with bullets in the building. “to the protests against the war in Iraq.
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Kim Kelly is a freelance union journalist and a journalist for Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labour. Asbestos killed his grandfather, a former metalworker, and he hopes to help save others from wasting their own money on occupational diseases.
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