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Fighting Against Racism - And For a Better Paycheck - On the Docks

Richman, Shaun
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21831/dock-workers-ilwu-durban-south-africa-apartheid-harry-bridges-strike-labor

Publisher:  In These Times
Date Written:  03/04/2019
Year Published:  2019  
Resource Type:  Article

Dockworker labour solidarity. Heavily references two books: 'Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area' by Peter Cole and 'Choke Points' essays edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness.

Abstract: 

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Excerpt:

The story of the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), its legendary founder Harry Bridges, and the 1934 San Francisco general strike he led is broadly familiar to Americans who enjoy romantic stories of derring do from the labor movement’s past. Less familiar may be the union's struggle for anti-racist hiring and layoff policies on the docks, and its crucial allyship in various civil rights struggles....

As a racially integrated union with a large black membership, the ILWU naturally played a leading role in connecting the labor and civil rights movements. The Bay Area locals were key organizers of a local 1963 civil rights demonstration, in addition to organizing one of the farthest-traveling contingents to that year’s famous March on Washington. They formed the membership backbone of the local chapters of the NAACP and Urban League. They pressed successfully for fair employment and housing laws in Oakland, and the union used its pension fund to build racially-integrated cooperative housing in the rapidly gentrifying Fillmore neighborhood in San Francisco.

Durban dockers, too, have notably refused to unload ships under contract with Israeli corporations in protest of what they call—and they have some license to say this—“an apartheid regime.” And their solidarity activism doesn’t end there. In 2008, they prevented a bloodbath by turning away a Chinese shipment of armaments that the embattled president of neighboring Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, had ordered in a last-ditch effort to prop up his regime.
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