Report on the June 9, 2001,
demonstration in Columbia, South
Carolina, to free the Charleston 5 dockworkers.
Two buses left New York City on Friday, June
8, 2001, carrying a labor-solidarity contingent bound for Columbia. The bus
trip was subsidized by the South Carolina AFL-CIO and locals 1422 and 1771 of
the International Longshoremen’s Association, with perhaps some local
funding from the New York City Central Labor Council (CLC). On our bus alone
there were members of all sorts of local NYC unions, and representatives
of the Transport Workers’ Union and the CLC. Among political groups or
parties, on our bus alone were the International Action Center (IAC), the
International Socialist Organization (ISO), and the League for the
Revolutionary Party (LRP), and perhaps more who had not yet identified
themselves by distributing their literature.
On the bus ride, we were able to see a
videotaped interview of Ken Riley, in which he explained, among other things,
that part of the reason the police and state cracked down so hard on his local
was their efforts on behalf of South Carolina’s Democratic Governor Jim
Hodges, during his 1998 campaign.
After about 14 hours of bus travel, we arrived
in Columbia. At the demonstration there was a huge Teamsters truck out of
which the introductory program was microphoned: a Native American (a black
Cherokee) delivered the opening prayer--one of many to come. Several union
functionaries and bureaucrats spoke as we waited for the largest delegation of
solidarizing dockworkers: those from Atlanta. There were several buses full of
dockworkers and their supporters from Florida as well. But the Atlanta
delegation was 10 busloads. When they arrived, we walked with the crowd toward
the Statehouse, passing out some copies of the leaflet below. There were
various other locals and other industrial sectors, like UNITE, the garment and
textiles union; these various union locals came out in color-coordinated
T-shirts, with their own banners, and there were several such groups--more
than 5, maybe more than 10--of these humongous crowds of red or blue or yellow
or some such combination. And these union contingents were predominantly
black--nearly all black, which raises the question of whether their shops and
locals really are that black or whether the white coworkers didn’t
feel it important enough to ride a bus for that long from Florida or Atlanta
or wherever else they came from. This is not to say there were no white
workers among these huge contingents: there were plenty. It’s just that the
blacks predominated. When we arrived at the Statehouse, we found
representatives of all the left sects and parties, from the publishers of The
Militant to the CPUSA, and from Worker’s World to the Spartacists. Some
even had tables set up on the sidewalk in front of the Statehouse. There were
even two groups of anarchoid youth: one was punkish, gender-integrated, and
had no banners and no white dreadheads; the other was mostly men, had a big
banner and an anarchy-symbol flag they stuck into the ground, and dreadlocks,
along with paint-splattered pants, appeared to be obligatory.
Upon our arrival at the Statehouse, I would
estimate that the crowd was anywhere from 1500-2000 people at its height.
People drifted away during the speeches.
For good reason they should have, although I
fear simple weariness was the reason for the drift: The speakers, mostly union
bureaucrats (like Linda Chavez-Thompson) and SC Democratic officials, were
overtly religious, patriotic, and civil-rightist. There was hardly even a
whiff of Black Power rhetoric. (John Sweeney and Jesse Jackson, who is from
South Carolina, were scheduled to appear but did not.) I stopped paying much
attention, except for one Korean man, a Daewoo worker, who delivered a
resounding message of solidarity, and stressed the international nature of our
struggle.
We don't want to dwell on the terrible
speakers and officialdom too much, but one unfortunate expression of this
ideology still deeply rooted in the working class was the explosive applause
at the mere quotation by the president of the United Mine Workers of
"Free at last, free at last...." You know the rest. Thankfully,
Democratic and democratic ideology does not seem as powerful: one shameless
Democratic functionary delivered a line about how union workers had to keep on
voting Democratic. He got a minimum of applause. Then he decided to say that,
while labor is loyal to Democrats because Democrats are friends of labor,
labor should also be prepared to work with Republicans. He got even less
applause.
We noticed that the police presence was
minimal. Less than 50 officers in all, to my eyes, for probably 2000 people at
one point, whereas the dockworkers, 200 at most, confronted 600 cops on
January 20, 2000. We decided that the appearance of 50 cops was misleading:
the Democrats and the union bosses were subcontracted deputies today.
Anyhow, we Friends finished leafleting, and it
was time to get back on the bus for the long ride back to the Big Apple. We
expect some responses to our leaflet, because many of the people we handed it
to expressed surprise, doing a double-take at the title, and at least 3 people
were pleasantly surprised at our use of language in the leaflet: we try hard
to keep our language conducive to actual thought. We use no slogans or
catchphrases. But the title was what grabbed a lot of people, who would begin
to refuse, saying "I already got it..." but who would then see the
title and snatch one.
June 10, 2001
Will the Next Civil War Start in
Charleston Too?
Nordana Line, a Danish shipper, decided on
October 1, 1999, after 23 years, to cease recognition of International
Longshoremen’s Association local 1422 and checkers-and-clerks local 1771, in
order to hire a nonunion longshore company, Winyah Stevedoring, to unload its
ships. ila Local 1422 played a leading role in the January 17, 2000, rally of
approximately 47,000 in Columbia, sc, for the removal of the Confederate flag.
Three days later, on January 20, 2000, according to Ken Riley, president of
Local 1422, "a Nordana ship, the Skodsberg, docked in port. It had been
held out a sea a few days so that South Carolina law enforcement agencies
would not have to divide their forces between the huge demonstration of more
than 47,000 people who rallied in Columbia, the capital, on January 17,
demanding the removal of the Confederate battle flag and ‘protecting’ 20
scabs unloading the ship."
That evening, a group of 600 state and local
police, equipped with horses, helicopters, and armored cars, attacked
approximately 200 members of the mostly black Local 1422 of the ILA in
Charleston, sc. They were walking toward their picket line. Eight or 9 were
arrested and charged with misdemeanor trespassing, but the charges were
dropped by the judge. Notorious racist and informal gw Bush adviser Attorney
General Charlie Condon stepped in with a successful grand jury indictment for
5 of the arrestees for state-felony rioting, which can result in up to 5
years’ imprisonment. Winyah is suing the Charleston 5 and 27 other picketing
longshoremen, identified by surveillance photos, for $1.5 million in damages
for violation of the scabs’ right to work.
Why Local 1422? Because it is a highly-paid,
politically-active shop of mostly black workers in a racist state that sells
itself as a haven for runaway factories like France’s Michelin. Only 3-4
percent—the lowest in the us—of South
Carolina workers are unionized, and they make 20% less than the average us
worker, despite being more productive. The state of South Carolina has
extensive experience in racism and union busting, and here, as elsewhere,
since slavery, they often go together. Like the fbi for Birmingham, it
sanctioned the firebombing of Local 1199B organizer Henry Nicholas’s house
in 1969, in retaliation for the hospital workers’ strike. It railroaded sncc
activist Cleveland Sellers into prison on rioting charges shortly after the
February 8, 1968, Orangeburg murder of three antisegregationists.
Why longshore? Because longshore is a key
labor sector, responsible for the transportation of goods produced all over
the world to their final destinations—with "globalization"
increasing such commercial transport traffic, transport in general has seen
more and stronger labor struggles than the rest of the us working class in
recent years—this compels the bourgeoisie to attempt to insure labor
submission, especially in a state like South Carolina, which is trying hard to
"globalize." But since pirate days longshoremen have been aware of
their social power. According to Riley, "Longshoremen in Barcelona,
Tenerife and Liverpool met Nordana ships in their ports and told them if they
didn’t resume using union labor in Charleston, they’d suffer the
consequences in European ports." According to Riley, "longshoremen
in 16 countries have pledged to shut down their ports on the opening day of
the Charleston 5’s trial." So, Nordana went back to union labor in
April 2000, and dropped out of Winyah’s civil suit.
But Nordana’s cave-in is ambiguous at best.
According to a January 5, 2001, report of the Black Radical Congress,
"Nordana said high costs pushed it to abandon the union, so the two sides
sat down with the ila contract to see if they could find a solution. The
contract includes a provision called the ‘small boat agreement’ for
container ships with a capacity of 500 teus (twenty-foot equivalent) or less.
Under that section working a ‘small boat’ requires the same wages, but
some reduced manning and only a four-hour guarantee as opposed to the
regular eight hours. It turned out that all along Nordana’s ships had
fallen into that category."
We are dealing with capital’s global race to
the bottom, and local or sectoral victories, however important, can only go so
far.
The unions, through decades of collaboration
with the bourgeoisie, not to mention their own racism, are partially
responsible for the sad state of the working class in South Carolina, the
American South, and all over the us, where from a height of about 1/3 of the
workforce in the 1950s, union membership has fallen to about 1/10. It should
be obvious, in these days of increasing layoffs (129,000 manufacturing jobs
lost in May alone), that trade unionism cannot be (and never was) the answer
to the problems of the working class in the us or any other country. What
about the unemployed? What about those forced into the informal or illegal
economy? What about the illegal immigrants who the us government schedules to
satisfy demand for cheap labor and sometimes even scab-type jobs? What about
the legal immigrants who the us government (to save money on educating
domestic labor power) schedules to satisfy demand for special skills, thus
looting other countries’ social spending budgets, requiring other immigrants
to settle for illegality, and condemning us labor power to obsolescence?
However much we appreciate Riley’s comment that "these longshore jobs
are the only jobs in South Carolina where a black can really move up from
below poverty to a middle-class standard of living in a short time if he comes
out and applies himself…. It’s the only job where young blacks who may
have gotten themselves in serious trouble early on in life and paid their dues
to society can get a second chance," it still begs the question of those
left out.
We cannot confront capital’s global race to
the bottom, a lose/lose situation in which the world working class is set
against itself, by buttressing individual points or sectors of the production
process; not even a key sector like longshore. That is true not only in this
case—where Nordana realized it could cut hours and thus wages under the
existing contract anyway—but for just about 23 years now, as longshore has
succumbed to heavy attrition as a result of computerized docks and
containerization. The bargain the longshore unions across the country made in
the late 1970s and early 1980s was a tradeoff: the elimination of large
numbers of jobs in exchange for higher pay for those remaining, and precisely
this eroding bargain is what locals 1422 and 1771 were fighting to maintain
that January night.
And they should have. But we should recognize
that this bargain begs the same question as Riley’s comment above: what
about those left out, perhaps those for whom scabbing becomes the next best
job opportunity?
The only answer, formulaically put, is a
worldwide working-class movement, including the unemployed, the welfare
recipients and workfare laborers, and those under skilled and underemployed
people not lucky enough to land a good union job. This movement would have its
own forms and structures, independent of the machinations of union bureaucrats
and their usual role in short-circuiting struggle and the enlargement of
struggle. It would appropriate the shores and docks, the farms and seas,
smokestack factories and suburban high-tech plants, and of course the urban
centers worldwide, in order to organize and administer these means of
production for direct use, as opposed to profit, and for the full employment
of those currently un- or underemployed, the world over.
Less formulaically and more programmatically
put, if such a worldwide working class movement—a revolution—were to
achieve power in the us, it would need to do something like the following:
- Abolish the us-based world financial
system, and wipe the slate clean of debt.
- Abolish the 50-odd million jobs
(state/corporate bureaucracy, military, law enforcement, prisons, etc.)
that exist because the system is capitalist.
- Retrain such people for useful work.
- Automate as thoroughly as possible the
remaining mindnumbing necessary work.
- Immediately institute a massive program of
exports to the underdeveloped world, to equalize world living standards
upward instead of downward, as capitalism is doing.
- Rapidly and radically shorten the working
day, as quickly as the implementation of 1-5 permits.
This is a minimal program for the early phase of
a successful working-class revolution, which obviously will have to become
worldwide or perish. It’s important to outline the program, because its
simplicity and immediate conceivability give the lie to the bourgeois claptrap
about there being no alternative to capitalism. We can say little or nothing
here what such a large-scale liberation of creativity implies for social life.
("Full employment" is not only a matter of the quantity but of the
quality of labor, its intellectual and skill level, its opportunities for
creativity and engagement!) And we will obviously have to deal with the political
expression of such a movement. We have a long way to go. But, as someone said
back in the teens, "There will be periods of thirty years that will seem
to pass like a single day, and single days that will have the importance of
thirty years."
|