Tag: Harry Bridges

For the second consecutive year, the ILWU Local 10 will be withholding its labor for eight hours to commemorate May Day. This May Day, Local 10 is calling for a “National Day of Mourning” for Black and Brown unarmed victims of police killings across the country. Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been invited to speak May Day. Danny Glover will appear at one of the rallies.

Leo lives in every navy blue or ash T-shirt with brown, beige, Tan, ivory, hands circled in solidarity, In every fiery speech during San Francisco strikes and Port Of Oakland shutdowns, in fights for health care, cradle To grave, in housing, library, post office and school struggles, In good fights against fracking and in the Occupy Movement …

Leo Robinson was a Black leader of the longshore union in San Francisco. He died in mid-January. For many of us, he was a lifelong companion, an example of what being an internationalist and a working class activist was all about. When Leo Robinson spoke, he had the full attention of every union member in Local 10’s cavernous waterfront union hall.

As pressure builds for the Dec. 12 West Coast port shutdown, the capitalist owners and their media have begun a battle of ideas to blunt this powerful threat to their profits and control. But ILWU member Clarence Thomas says: "We don’t cross community picket lines. These ports are the people’s ports. Ports belong to the people of the Pacific Coast."

On July 16, 1934, the four-day San Francisco General Strike began as strikers and National Guard battled for control of the shut-down city. Longshore strike leader Harry Bridges went to Black churches on both sides of San Francisco Bay to beg the congregation to join the strikers on the picket line and promised that when the strike ended, Blacks would work on every dock on the West Coast.

"On April 4, when working people across this country demonstrated in solidarity with the Wisconsin state workers, the longshore workers of Local 10 in San Francisco did what they’ve always done ... the ports of San Francisco and Oakland were shut down in solidarity ... Now the employers’ group ... is trying to put an end to workers’ solidarity actions by intimidating the longshore union through a court suit." - Trent Willis. On Monday, April 25, at 11 a.m., join the mass action to support ILWU Local 10 at the PMA San Francisco headquarters at 555 Market St.

Local 10 of the ILWU is calling for a labor and community rally on Saturday, Oct. 23, 12 noon, at City Hall, near 14th & Broadway in Oakland, to demand justice for Oscar Grant and the jailing of killer cops. Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the Black community. Get ready for the rally Friday, Oct. 22, 6:30 p.m., with a screening of Minister of Information JR’s film ‘Operation Small Axe’ plus revolutionary art by Black Panther Minister of Culture Emory Douglas at the Black Dot Cafe, 1195 Pine St., West Oakland.

Be sure to listen to the archived Wanda's Picks Radio for Feb. 11, when the guests are Cynthia McKinney in the first hour and Guy Patrice Lumumba and Lisa F. Jackson, director of the film, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," in the second. Extraordinary radio! Superb mix of arts and politics!