Monday, October 1, 2001
By Steve Stallone
Victory in the Charleston Five case is sweet, but it also has the salty taste of hard-working sweat. Although the final chapter was written by a judge in a solemn courtroom surrounded by lawyers, it was the tireless organizing by thousands of labor activists that beat back the attempt to jail these men and destroy workers’ rights to picket in defense of their jobs and their union.
To appreciate the enormity of this victory you have to step back in time and step into the shoes of a black longshore worker in today’s South Carolina. When they began picketing against a small non-union beachhead operation in their port in 1999, they couldn’t imagine anyone caring about their plight. When the politically connected Republican state Attorney General—who had chaired the George W. Bush for President campaign in South Carolina—came at them with secret grand jury felony charges, imagine how much like a Jim Crow tar-and-feather, hang ’em high railroading this seemed.
Then imagine what it must have felt like when the ILWU extended the hand of solidarity. Within weeks of the indictments, ILA Charleston Local 1422 President Ken Riley made a quick trip to the West Coast, told the story of the Charleston Five and went back home with checks for more than $100,000 for the legal defense fund.
The South Carolina labor movement and its allies, the AFL-CIO and international dockers got involved and grassroots local defense committees sprung up everywhere. Then $50, $100, and $500 donations started coming into the defense fund from union locals and community groups from places they never heard of.
Thousands and thousands of people joined in, writing letters, donating funds, demonstrating, marching, organizing. Their fundraising made it possible to assemble a crack legal team the Five needed to counter the resources of the state of South Carolina. Their activism raised the case’s profile and turned up the politically heat. Last summer, before Sept. 11, “60 Minutes” sent a crew to Charleston and interviewed the key players on camera.
All the accumulated, collective and organized activity made the difference, made it one of those times when truth and right did matter, when power had to defer to justice.
The felonies that carried five to ten year prison sentences melted away to misdemeanor fines of $100. Five men gained their freedom and we’ve all gained a little more breathing room.
But it’s only half a victory. While the Five have beat the criminal case, a civil lawsuit is still winding through the courts. Winyah Stevedoring, Inc. (WSI), the stevedoring company that ran the scab operation the Charleston locals were picketing, is suing the three locals, their presidents and 25 individual union members for the $1.5 million it claims it lost because of the picket action. The only real difference between the criminal case and the civil case is that instead of trying to jail the unionists for picketing, WSI is trying to bankrupt them. The Charleston defense movement is now switching gears and turning to the WSI case. Stay tuned—The Dispatcher will soon have more details on fighting that case.
