By Steve Stallone

            After nearly two years under the cloud of felony prosecution, the Charleston Five declared victory Nov. 8. With a trial date just a week away, the prosecution offered a plea bargain that amounted to a little more than a parking ticket fine.

            The deal effectively acknowledged that the state of South Carolina had no case against the four black members of International Longshoremen’s Assn. Local 1422 and the one white member of ILA 1771. All along the defense maintained that South Carolina’s politically ambitious Attorney General Charles Condon targeted the Five in an opportunistic appeal to prejudice. Local 1422 stood out as a strong, politically active, predominantly African-American union in a right-to-work state that still flies the Confederate flag on its Capitol grounds. The international movement that ultimately freed the Five quickly recognized the high stakes in the case. A successful prosecution would threaten all U.S. workers’ right to picket in defense of their jobs—and the right of workers and communities of color to defend their interests in the political arena.

            With the criminal case against the Five victoriously resolved, the movement is now turning its attention to defeating the civil lawsuit that came out of the conflict—a million dollar claim against the Charleston locals and some of their members by the scab stevedoring company that was picketed.

            The case arose after a routine picket turned into a police riot, South Carolina indicted the Charleston Five—Elijah Ford, Jr., Ricky Simmons, Peter Washington and Kenneth Jefferson of longshore Local 1422, and Jason Edgerton of clerks Local 1771—on felony rioting and conspiracy to riot charges that carried up to five to ten years in prison.

The Charleston ILA locals had been peacefully picketing the Danish ship Nordana since it started using scab labor to load and unload a few months earlier. Then on Jan. 20, 2000, some 600 riot-clad police backed by armored vehicles, horses, dogs, helicopters and paddy wagons attacked the ILA line. In the ensuing melee, a number of the workers were injured, including ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley, who ended up with 12 stitches in his head. Nine unionists were arrested on misdemeanor trespassing or disorderly conduct charges that were resolved with a little community service.

            But the Attorney General Condon, a right-wing Republican running for governor, decided to stake his political campaign on getting tough on the black unionists. After Condon brought felony charges against eight longshoremen in Circuit Court that were thrown out for lack of evidence, he got a secret grand jury to hand him indictments of five union pickets on felony rioting charges.

            The five longshore workers never had a chance to hear what evidence was presented against them, nor did they ever get a chance to present evidence in their defense. Nonetheless, they were tarred as criminals and slapped with house arrest. They were confined to their homes between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. unless they were at work or attending a union meeting. This punishment without trial or conviction would last some 21 months.

            Members of ILWU longshore Local 10 saw a small photo and caption about the incident in The New York Times and contacted their brothers in Charleston. At the next Local 10 meeting the members voted to send then-Local 10 President Lawrence Thibeaux and local executive board member Jack Heyman to South Carolina to investigate and offer solidarity. While in Charleston they invited Ken Riley to address the ILWU’s Longshore Division Caucus.

            Riley told his story to the Caucus March 1, 2000, and the longshore delegates immediately realized the serious implications of the attack on the right to picket and the racism inherent in this case. The Caucus voted to give $50,000 to the legal defense fund and took on the case as a political cause. (Local 10 had already donated $5,000 and Local 13 soon after added another $50,000.) The movement built from there.

            The Charleston ILA locals were among the most active unions in South Carolina. So the state AFL-CIO immediately threw its resources into the case, as did the South Carolina Progressive Network, a coalition of some 40 active community and political organizations. The movement quickly had a strong local base.

            Soon the national AFL-CIO got wind of the movement and President John Sweeney threw his support behind it. Then-Special Assistant to the President Bill Fletcher took on the task of organizing and coordinating a national movement, helping set up local defense committees in many cities across the country. The AFL-CIO also assigned several staff members to work full time building the movement. The ILWU organized active local defense committees in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and the Puget Sound, leading the West Coast part of the movement.

            In the meantime Ken Riley toured the country furiously, drumming up support everywhere he went. Telling his story to anyone who would listen, the charismatic Riley raised tens of thousands of dollars for the defense fund and inspired unionists and social justice activists to take on the cause as their own. As the movement’s war chest grew, the political pressure on Attorney General Condon to drop the charges mounted.

            Through the ILWU’s international connections and the International Dockers Council the Charleston Five movement became an international cause celebre. Spanish dock workers of the Coordinadora union played a crucial role when they boarded a Nordana ship loaded by the Charleston scabs and informed the captain that any future scab-loaded ship visiting their port would run into trouble. Nordana quickly found a way to negotiate a new contract with the Charleston ILA locals.

            The movement showed its depth and breadth last June 9 when 7,000 people convened on the capital of South Carolina to demand the charges against the Charleston Five be dropped. Contingents and representatives from across the U.S. and around the world swelled the local crowd. AFL-CIO Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson led the many international union presidents, including ILA President John Bowers. ILWU President Jim Spinosa and Vice President Bob McEllrath led scores of ILWU members, and dockers union delegates turned out from ports everywhere, leaving no doubt that the labor movement would not permit any of its brothers to do time for picketing.

            All the while the legal case ground on slowly. The outpouring of donations to the legal defense fund allowed for a top-notch team of attorneys and private investigators to build a solid case. And the movement’s incessant letters, faxes, emails and calls to Attorney General Condon kept reminding him that although he may have thought he could pick off a small black local in a southern right-to-work state, he had started a much bigger fight than he bargained for.

            The Charleston locals, the South Carolina AFL-CIO, the Progressive Network and the assigned AFL-CIO staffers put on a big push in the last few months before the trial, mobilizing local community support. The big yellow “Free the Charleston 5” signs designed for the June demo sprouted all over town. Religious leaders all over the state came together to plead for dismissal of the charges. The Charleston mayor, city council and police department all wanted the charges dropped. Even the local media, which started off parroting Condon’s position, began running stories sympathetic to the Charleston Five.

            As the trial approached, the prosecution’s case began to unravel. Condon did not show at the pretrial conference Oct. 3, but sent two young attorneys general in his place. The prosecutors offered a plea bargain under which the defendants would plead guilty to misdemeanor charges with just time served and community service and the felonies would dropped. Smelling victory in the prosecution’s sudden reasonableness, the defense attorneys declined, saying they wanted complete vindication.

            Judge Victor Rawl set the court date for Nov. 13. He also expressed concern that further pretrial publicity might make selecting a jury in Charleston difficult and admonished both sides to keep quiet until the trial. He then scheduled a motions hearing for Oct. 11.

            Not half an hour after the hearing Condon appeared on a local TV news talk program announcing the date of the trial. He went on to equate the defense’s position with the reasoning of the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center.

            This inappropriate and inflammatory remark on television, especially coming after Judge Rawl specifically instructed the attorneys to keep a low profile, sent the defense attorneys off to file a motion that Condon be removed from the case for misconduct.

            The day before the hearing at which the judge was to consider the motion to boot Condon, the Attorney General made a surprise announcement that he was removing himself from the case. He handed it over to First Circuit Solicitor Walter Bailey of the adjacent county with “full authority and complete discretion to make all prosecutorial decisions.” Condon explained his move by saying that he wanted to take the spotlight off himself so the case could move on. The defense smelled a rat abandoning a sinking ship, but still pursued, and got, an order from the judge barring Condon from any further input into the case.

            Shortly after Condon’s exit the house arrest was lifted and further plea bargain negotiations continued while the legal team prepared for the court date. Up and down the West Coast, across the country and in ports all over the world the labor movement and its allies were preparing for an international day of action—coordinated demonstrations and industrial actions—in support of the Charleston Five on the first day of the trial.

            The international dockers unions had made threats of industrial actions and port shut downs on the day of action. Global shipping companies, not knowing where they might get hit around the world, let the South Carolina Ports Authority know that this prosecution was not worth the cost to them and that the local people should resolve the matter before the trial began. The Ports Authority, an important part of the South Carolina business community, relayed these concerns and the fact that the case was giving the Port of Charleston a publicity black eye to the political powers in the state.

            Then a week before the trial, with political pressure mounting, the prosecution came up with a new deal. The charges would be reduced to a non-violent misdemeanor of “riot, rout and affray,” where no weapons were used and no injuries were incurred. The punishment would be a $100 fine each and the Five were not even required to admit any guilt. They could plead “no contest” and even deny guilt and the case would be finished. The conviction would be so minor that it would be expunged from their records in three years if they had no more arrests in that time. The Five took the offer.

            “This is a tremendous victory,” Ken Riley said.

            Having won the criminal case, the movement’s attention is now focusing on the civil lawsuit. Winyah Stevedoring, Inc., the company that hired the scabs the union longshore workers were picketing against, has sued the three Charleston locals, their presidents and some 25 individual union members for the $1.5 million it claims it lost as a result of the picket.

            Just as the labor movement could not allow union members to be jailed for exercising their legal right to picket, it cannot allow union locals and union members and their families to be bankrupted for picketing.

            “How can union people be held responsible for a company’s financial losses from a picket line?” Riley asked. “Isn’t that the point of a picket—to put economic pressure on an employer?”

            The ILWU fought and won a similar case three years ago after the picket of the Neptune Jade. Community protestors picketed the ship when it arrived at the Port of Oakland carrying cargo loaded by scabs employed by the company that had sacked the Liverpool dockers. The longshore employer group, the PMA, tried to sue for its alleged loses. The ILWU fought off every legal move to force it to turn over information on the picketers and threatened coastwise action if the PMA continued its witch hunt against them. The case was eventually dropped.

            The defense attorneys have gotten the WSI case moved from state to federal courts where they feel they have a better chance to have some if not all of the complaints dismissed early next year before an actual trial. The local defense committees are continuing to raise money for the legal expenses.

            “In times like these we have to cherish our victories,” Bill Fletcher said. “A year ago this case was set to be a slam dunk for the prosecution. The fact that we turned it around was a great success for the labor movement. We need to learn from that. And the courage of these locals in an anti-workers state should say to the rest of the union movement that we have to invest in organizing in the South.”