Protestors Occupy Ports in Oakland and Beyond | NationofChange

Oc­cupy move­ments in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia; Port­land, Ore­gon; and Longview, Wash­ing­ton claimed vic­tory Mon­day when they pre­vented work­ers from load­ing or un­load­ing ships at the three ports.

"We shut it down, peo­ple, we shut it down," An­thony Leviege, In­ter­na­tional Long­shore and Ware­house Union (ILWU) mem­ber, told the cheer­ing crowd at Oak­land's Berth 55, just be­fore 10 a.m. local time.

"I'm im­pressed that so many peo­ple got up at 5 o'clock in the morn­ing... We can't stop here."

About 800 peo­ple showed up for the pre-dawn ac­tion in near-freez­ing weather, chant­ing, "Whose port? Our port!" and hold­ing plac­ards that called for "Sol­i­dar­ity With Long­shore­men Against the One Per­cent" and "Cer­re­mos Wall Street del Puerto".

The protests, stretch­ing from San Diego to An­chor­age, Alaska, aimed at the con­trol of the ter­mi­nals by those whom the Oc­cupy Move­ment has dubbed the "one per­centers", es­pe­cially Gold­man Sachs, pri­mary in­vestor in ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tor SSA Ma­rine.

The port ac­tion was just the lat­est in the tac­tics of the nim­ble Oc­cupy Move­ment that, in Oak­land, began with tent camps, twice de­stroyed by po­lice. Last week it changed course and oc­cu­pied fore­closed homes and on Mon­day, it ral­lied sup­port­ers to shut down work at the port.

"What is amaz­ing about this move­ment is that it re­fuses to be dis­man­tled," said ac­tivist and re­tired uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor An­gela Davis, speak­ing at an af­ter­noon rally in down­town Oak­land be­fore the sec­ond wave of pick­eters left for the port.

"The oc­cupy move­ment has had its tents de­stroyed, has had its en­camp­ments dis­man­tled," Davis said, adding that the po­lice and cor­po­ra­tions be­lieved the move­ment would die when the camps were crushed, but "from those ashes, the oc­cupy move­ment has risen once again, like a phoenix rises."

To pre­vent port work­ers from on and off load­ing ships, an ar­bi­tra­tor had to cer­tify the picket line was a health and safety issue for the work­ers.

Al­though the de­ter­mi­na­tion was made in the morn­ing for both morn­ing and evening shifts, a crowd es­ti­mated in the thou­sands and led by Scott Olson, the young Iraq War vet­eran hit in the head with a po­lice pro­jec­tile in Oak­land on Nov. 2, marched back to the port in the late af­ter­noon to renew the picket and cel­e­brate vic­tory.

They stayed the night and ended up block­ing the 3 a.m. shift at the port, ac­cord­ing to KPFA radio.

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Con­tro­ver­sial clo­sure

The de­ci­sion to shut down the port, how­ever, was con­tro­ver­sial both in­side and out­side the Oc­cupy Move­ment, even though tar­get­ing Gold­man Sachs and its role at the port was not in dis­pute among oc­cu­piers.

"Gold­man ex­ec­u­tives can take credit for many of the fi­nan­cial crises of the last decade, in­clud­ing in­sider trad­ing, fraud, credit de­fault swaps, and sub­prime mort­gages," wrote Michael Siegel, at­tor­ney and Oc­cupy Oak­land ac­tivist.

Still, most unions sat out the port block­ade, nei­ther con­demn­ing nor sup­port­ing it.

The Oak­land Ed­u­ca­tion As­so­ci­a­tion did, how­ever, strongly en­dorse the ac­tion, with Betty Ol­son-Jones, OEA pres­i­dent, di­rectly link­ing port op­er­a­tions to Oak­land school needs.

Pri­vate mar­itime busi­nesses in the Port of Oak­land "use rent-free pub­lic land [that] gen­er­ates 27 bil­lion dol­lars an­nu­ally in trade", Ol­son-Jones said. She sug­gested that tax­ing them one per­cent would be enough to pay off Oak­land school debt, re­store full li­brary ser­vices and re­hire ever laid off li­brary worker.

While some long­shore work­ers were promi­nent in­di­vid­u­ally in or­ga­niz­ing the port shut­down, union lead­er­ship op­posed it. Much of the con­tro­versy cen­tered on a labor dis­pute be­tween the ILWU and Ex­port Grain Ter­mi­nal (EGT) in Longview, Wash­ing­ton.

Both the West Coast Oc­cupy move­ments and the ILWU say that EGT broke a promise to hire ILWU work­ers, and both want the pledge ful­filled.

Mean­while, an EGT com­pany spokesman said the com­pany tried to ne­go­ti­ate an agree­ment with ILWU, but that the union wanted a pen­sion plan that was too ex­pen­sive, re­ported the New York Times.

When the Oc­cupy Move­ment began or­ga­niz­ing against EGT with­out the ILWU's bless­ing, ILWU Pres­i­dent Robert McEll­rath re­acted, telling the Oc­cupy Move­ment to stay out of the con­flict.

The ILWU's fight for democ­racy "is the hard-won right to chart our own course to vic­tory", he wrote, warn­ing that the union doesn't want out­siders to adopt the strug­gle as their own, given the dan­ger that they might do so "in order to ad­vance a broader agenda… de­struc­tive to our de­mo­c­ra­tic process and [one that] jeop­ar­dizes our over two year strug­gle in Longview".

Oak­land Mayor Jean Quan pleaded with Oc­cupy Oak­land not to per­sist with the shut­down.

"The Port of Oak­land is not the home of the one per­cent," he wrote. "Rather, it gen­er­ates over 73,000 jobs in the re­gion and is con­nected to more than 800,000 jobs across the coun­try. It is one of the best sources of good pay­ing blue-col­lar jobs left in our city."

The port com­mis­sion wrote that the shut­down would "hurt work­ing peo­ple and harm our com­mu­nity". Even some within Oc­cupy Oak­land ex­pressed con­cern that in­de­pen­dent truck­ers would lose a day's pay. Dur­ing the morn­ing picket at Berth 55, Alameda County sher­iffs tried cross­ing the picket line twice to take a bus into the port area. Blocked the first time by pick­ets, sher­iffs turned the bus around and re­turned on foot, using ba­tons to force their way through the picket line and line up be­tween pro­test­ers and port prop­erty. No one was hurt or ar­rested.

The sec­ond time the sher­iffs at­tempted to drive into the port area, four or five pick­eters with bi­cy­cles stood ground di­rectly be­fore the bus, which soon left the area.

Protests in other cities

From Port­land, or­ga­nizer Tomas Bernal said in a phone in­ter­view that the 300-400 pro­test­ers there also suc­ceeded in shut­ting down the port in the morn­ing. "It's quite his­toric – with only two and a half weeks to pre­pare," he said.

The Port­land ter­mi­nals were also shut down in the evening, Jamie Par­tridge, an­other Port­land ac­tivist, told IPS in an email.

In Longview, where the EGT ter­mi­nal is lo­cated, about 100 pro­test­ers ar­rived at the port's main en­trance. Work­ers were re­port­edly sent home due to safety con­cerns.

But in Van­cou­ver, Long Beach and San Diego, pro­test­ers were un­able to stop work at the port, while in Seat­tle po­lice re­port­edly used flash-bang grenades and pep­per-sprayed demon­stra­tors, block­ing one of the ter­mi­nal en­trances and ar­rest­ing 11.

The Seat­tle Times re­ported that or­ga­niz­ers claimed vic­tory be­cause the work­ers at two ter­mi­nals didn't come to work. The port, how­ever, sent out a press re­lease say­ing the protest had min­i­mal im­pact.

Protestors Occupy Ports in Oakland and Beyond | NationofChange