By Steve Stallone

 

The campaign in defense of the Charleston longshore workers continues to gather support on the Coast, across the country and around the world, turning up the heat on the state of South Carolina to drop the charges against the Charleston 5.

Five longshore workers from International Longshoremen’s Association Locals 1422and 1771 at the Port of Charleston, South Carolina have been hit with felony rioting charges punishable by up to five years in prison after 600 riot-equipped police attacked their picket line set up against a scab operation at their port Jan. 20, 2000. The ILWU has joined an international movement demanding the South Carolina state Attorney General drop the bogus charges. The movement is also demanding the civil lawsuit, brought by the stevedoring company that hired the scab workers, against the ILA locals and 29 of their members for $1.5 million in alleged financial damages caused by the picketing also be dropped. Unions and other community and civil rights organizations are also raising money for the legal defense fund and planning protest actions for the first day of the trial.

In Northern California ILWU members organized into the Labor Committee in Defense of the Charleston Longshore Workers put on a series of events to raise public awareness of the issue and to money for the defense fund. ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley, accompanied by Local 1422 Vice President Robert Ford and two of the Charleston Five, Elijah Ford and Peter Washington, addressed a standing room only crowd at Berkeley’s La Pena Cultural Center Thursday night, Feb 22, in an educational forum sponsored in conjunction with the local chapter of the Black Radical Congress as part of the BRC’s “Education not Incarceration” campaign. That event raised more than $600 for the defense fund and the BRC signed up a number of people to do more support and fundraising work.

The next morning the Charleston brothers were the honored guests at a labor breakfast at San Francisco’s Crown Plaza Hotel co-sponsored by the ILWU, the California Labor Federation and the San Francisco Labor Council. Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Fed, and Walter Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the SFLC, both pledged their organization’s support and resources to a struggle they characterized as essential to all workers. At that breakfast ILWU’s Stockton, California longshore Local 54 President Dennis Brueckner presented the Charleston brothers a check for $1,000 from his local for the defense fund. That evening Riley addressed another packed house of mostly ILWU members at longshore Local 10’s Henry Schmidt Room. The next night the Defense Committee put on a big fundraising dance party at the Local 10 hall. Along with the more than $800 raised by the sale of a “ILA/ILWU Free the Charleston 5” button designed and distributed by Local 10 Business Agent Richard Mead, the Northern California defense committee raised more than $6,000 over the weekend’s events. The committee also got them further exposure with an appearance on Soulbeat on the local African American TV station KSBT and an extended interview on Pacifica radio KPFA’s labor show with host David Bacon.

In Southern California Riley addressed ILWU longshore Local 13 and clerks Local 63 at their membership meetings March 1. At Local 13 California state Senator Richard Alarcon received a standing ovation as he presented a Senate membership resolution supporting the Charleston 5 to Riley. The members also reaffirmed a motion made at their last meeting to assess themselves $10 per person per month for the defense fund. The issue now goes to a referendum of the membership next month to become final.

Student groups are getting involved in the campaign. Riley and one of the Charleston locals’ attorneys, Peter Welborn spoke at a forum on workers rights and the longshore workers’ struggles at the College of Charleston Feb. 8. Riley will be touring several other campuses in the near future. The Atlanta Committee to Defend the Charleston 5 will be sponsoring events at Spelman College March 9 and 10. Riley will speak at Tulane University in New Orleans March 16 and at the City University of New York’s Queens College Labor Extension March 30.

The South Carolina Progressive Network, which has taken a leading role in the campaign’s organizing in the state, will honor Riley with “Agitator of the Year” and bestow the Charleston longshore workers with its annual “Thunder and Lightning Award” March 13. The event takes its name from Frederick Douglass’ quote that “those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who...want rain without thunder and lightning.”

Riley attended a meeting of the International Dockers Council, a group composed of longshore unions around the world, in Barcelona, Spain at the beginning of February. There the unions’ representatives unanimously pledged to take part in an international day of action, shutting down ports and taking other actions, on the first day of the trial against the Charleston 5.