On the Line in the Port of Oakland (tags)
Dockworkers honored a community picket line in the Port of Oakland on May 19, 2007, and the shipping operations of a war profiteer were shut down for two shifts. Cargo did not move at the SSA terminal that day. It takes only two lines to sum this up, but it took two months to prepare.
Candidate Alexander: Labor, War and Education Connects (tags)
Stewart A. Alexander, a presidential hopeful with the Peace and Freedom Party, applaud the actions of the ILWU Local 10 and Local 34 for lending their strong support to anti-war protesters at the SSA shipping terminals in Oakland, California. On May 19 the Port Action Committee, the Oakland Education Association, along with teacher, students and community activist demanded that the U.S. get out of Iraq and called on other unionists throughout the United States to mobilize in action to stop the war.
Longshore Workers Honor Picket Line, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper in Oakland (tags)
This can be an important first step toward the mobilization of workers power to shut down the war machine, but that requires a sharp struggle against the bourgeois politics of the antiwar groups and union officialdom. The OEA calls for money for schools not for war, as if it were a matter of budget priorities, and the PAC poster made a social-patriotic pitch to “Bring the Troops Home Now, and give them the care they need.” Such “peace is patriotic” rhetoric is a staple of the UPFJ, but all the antiwar coalitions make similar appeals to garner support from Democratic Party liberals. Revolutionaries and class-conscious workers, in contrast, emphasize that this imperialist war must be opposed by class war.