Sunday, July 1, 2001
by Steve Stallone
I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The trial for the Charleston Five has been postponed again. Instead of going to court in September as we were all expecting, it now seems the earliest these five longshore workers will get their first chance to clear themselves of the fabricated charges of conspiring to riot will be November.
This is bad news because these five men—Elijah Ford, Jr., Ricky Simmons, Peter Washington, Jason Edgerton and Kenneth Jefferson—continue to live under house arrest as they have since January 2000. This means that they must remain in their homes from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. everyday unless they are at work or attending a union meeting, wreaking havoc on their personal and family lives. They are being punished without ever having been tried or convicted.
This outrageous travesty of justice is happening even though a judge threw out the original misdemeanor trespassing charges at the first hearing for lack of evidence. After that the politically ambitious—not to mention right-wing Republican, racist and anti-union—Attorney General Charles Condon convened a secret grand jury to indict them on felony charges. At this closed-door gathering the Charleston Five were not allowed to be present to hear the charges or a chance to present evidence on their own behalf.
But the trial’s delay is good news because it gives our movement to vindicate the Charleston Five more time to organize and mobilize, to get our side of the story out. And that’s happening.
“The momentum is in our favor,” Charleston ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley told me just before press time.
The signs are there to back up his optimism. The AFL-CIO is making the Charleston Five one of its priorities. AFL-CIO Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson marched with Riley and ILWU International officers in the big demonstration in South Carolina last June. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney recently put out a memo to all affiliated International presidents encouraging them to participate in the International Day of Action the first day of the Charleston Five trial. And the AFL-CIO is underwriting an organizing field staff in Charleston to work on the campaign at ground zero.
The movement has gone national. Charleston Five defense committees are now active in New York City, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston and many other cities around the country besides those on the West Coast the ILWU has been leading.
The movement has gone international too. At the International Dockerworkers Solidarity Conference in Southern California July 30-Aug. 2 called by the ILWU, representatives from longshore unions in 16 countries pledged to take solidarity actions the first day of the trial (see pages 6-8).
Increasingly press coverage in both the national and local media has more and more sympathetic to the cause of the Charleston Five. The Charleston City Paper, a popular alternative newsweekly, ran a very favorable cover story on the Charleston Five. Even the mayor of Charleston now supports the Five. Attorney General Condon is becoming increasingly isolated.
Riley says yellow signs supporting the Charleston Five are all over town.
“The sea of yellow is out there and it’s driving them crazy,” he said.
