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.
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."
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