Labor Conference to Stop the War
Oct 21 2007 07:00
Here is an SF Chronicle article about the conference I attended today. I'll post more about it later if folks are interested.
Labor leaders meet in SF to oppose Iraq war
Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 20, 2007
(10-20) 17:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Labor leaders from around the world gathered in San Francisco today to call on workers to stand up and take organized action against war in Iraq, saying that politicians can't be counted on to halt the bloodshed.
Several speakers cited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s as models to follow, saying that both achieved change that would not have occurred if matters had been left in the hands of those running the country.
"Until people get off their asses and do something, there won't be a change," Clarence Thomas, past secretary-treasurer of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 and a third-generation ILWU member, told the audience at the local's hall near Fishermen's Wharf.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour Party member of Parliament in Britain, cited the staggering number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war and the thousands of returning soldiers who have needed psychiatric care to deal with what they faced during battles in that country.
Corbyn told the audience of about 150 labor officials - who came from countries including Japan, New Zealand, Canada and Australia - that the war in Iraq is "a disaster of the grandest scale possible for the people of Iraq and the rest of us."
In an interview later, Thomas said the lesson of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements was that people had to take it upon themselves to bring about change. "The Republicans and Democrats aren't going to do it - elected officials don't lead."
Thomas, whose local and ILWU local 34 co-hosted the conference, and other speakers called on those attending the conference to go back to their unions and begin a dialogue resulting in concrete actions that highlight their opposition to the war.
Several speakers mentioned that while billions of dollars funnel into the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are urgent needs for health care, education, disaster relief and housing that go unmet or underfunded.
In interviews, several leaders acknowledged that they face a tough challenge in trying to energize workers to take anti-war actions in an era when people are not prone to militancy.
Sometimes, they said, what protest does occur gets little attention. Richard Cavalli, president of ILWU Local 34, said that in May "there was an anti-war rally at the Port of Oakland, and we shut down the port for a day. There was very little coverage of that event."
But he said the labor's anti-war effort has to be waged against "this war that came about on a lie about weapons of mass destruction" being present in Iraq. "Today you get these people together in this hall - it's a beginning."
E-mail Susan Sward at ssward@sfchronicle.com
Oct 26 2007 07:50
#2
I was at both the picket on May 19th and the conference this past weekend. The latter had its moments, but overall was pretty boring. Code Pink tried to pass a resolution telling the Local 10 ILWU longshore -- and other transit -- workers to call a "general strike" when the feds implement the Transit Workers' Identity Card (TWIC), but got put in their place when a long line came up to the podium to tell them how vanguardist and substitutionist their idea was. When it was called to vote, it their wingnutty resolution got expediently voted down. The whole pseudo-debate was a GIANT waste of time. I hope Code Pink's cadre of militant moralists got a lesson, though.
gurley wrote:
Sometimes, they said, what protest does occur gets little attention. Richard Cavalli, president of ILWU Local 34, said that in May "there was an anti-war rally at the Port of Oakland, and we shut down the port for a day. There was very little coverage of that event."
But damn, this quote boggles my mind. These piecards desperately need to read Society of the Spectacle. What made the SSA action (only one gate was blocked; we didn't "shut down the port for a day") so powerful was the absence of the parasitic media. The reason: the Oakland pigs blocked all media vehicles and those scum, except one or two, were too lazy to walk half a mile. This forced the protesters to talk with the longshore workers waiting in their cars to get into the port parking lot. So with no cameras and reporters, there were no activist media whores competing to get their spectacularized image on the TV or in the newspaper. With no one's ego to get stroked, people had to talk with port workers and not to the cameras. And I think this was decisive in convincing the port workers to decide to go home. Additionally, as small as it was it has to be one of the most enjoyable protests I've ever been to because it lacked the usual media circus; there's a striking beauty to stripping away an obfuscating layer of mediation.
So if suburban TV viewers didn't get the corporate press' filtered version of the action beamed into their living rooms, the bosses obviously took notice. In the week before the protest, the Wall St. Journal had an article saying that each day a container ship is delayed costs them over $30,000. So with 3 ships delayed for a day, that's nearly $100k. We're going to hurt the bosses in the pocketbook, not through the cathode ray tube [edit] er, guess I'm showing my age -- nor through plasma or LCD flat screens.
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!
HH
Nov 11 2007 02:55
#3
Here is Jack's report on the Labor Conference.
I have some opinions (positive and negative) on the conference and how it was organized. But I don't feel like an internet forum is the best place to air these critiques. If your interested in how this all went down message me and I can give you my little assessment.
-Sam-
Report on the Labor Conference to Stop the War
On October 20 more than 150 trade unionists from across the U.S. and internationally participated in the first ever antiwar conference called for the purpose of spurring workers actions to stop the war. Though many workers were in the transport industry, there were also teachers, service sector workers and soldiers, including one longshoreman who had been sent to Iraq as a National Guardsman.
Participants heard speakers from Japan, Britain and the U.S. underscore the repressive, anti-union legislation that has been passed in these countries. Despite such laws, Takumi Shimizu, Executive Board member of Doro-Chiba the Japanese railway workers union, reported that they defiantly organized a 4-day strike March 2003, at the start of the war stopping several hundred trains. Doro-Chiba and ILWU Locals 10 and 34 were two of the unions present that had actually taken actions at the workplace against the war. Police shot Local 10 longshoremen and antiwar protesters with so-called nonlethal weapons in the port of Oakland at the start of the war. And on May 19, 2007, ILWU workers honored a picket line, mainly of Oakland school teachers, at the same Stevedore Services of America (SSA) terminal of earlier police attack, this time without incident. War profiteer SSA is attempting to penalize workers with up to one month off work for honoring the picket line,. Teachers and antiwar activists vowed not to allow this victimization.
There were several attempts to prevent the conference from getting off the ground. First, the day before the start of the conference, San Francisco police threatened to come in to take care of antiwar “troublemakers”. Local 10 told the cops to back off and asked the organizers to double security. Then at the last minute, the insurance carrier told the union officers that they weren’t going to provide insurance coverage for the event because of the possibility of violence. Quite amazing since the character of the conference wasn’t qualitatively different than the monthly union meetings which are regularly held in the union hiring hall. Considering that the hiring hall is occasionally used for professional boxing matches for which insurance is readily available, the insurer’s last minute denial of coverage didn’t hold water.
Then there was the matter of Robert Mashego, Vice President of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, being denied a passport and visa. Brother Mashego had applied to renew his passport 6 months prior to the conference. One week before the conference he was informed by the South African government that his passport would be ready the week after the conference. The New York Times (Free Speech Groups Sue Over Visa Denial 9/26/07) reported that new antiterrorism laws had been used to prevent critics of U.S. foreign policy from entering the country. Certainly, union leaders like Brother Mashego and his union SATAWU have been critical of the U.S. wars in the Middle East, but that is no reason to ban them from our antiwar conference. His message would have been that trade unions have the power to change governments. Labor strikes in apartheid South Africa were instrumental in bringing down that racist regime.
Despite these attempt to undermine the conference, organizers were determined to proceed. Welcoming remarks were made by Richard Cavalli, President of ILWU Local 34, who played a key role in the May antiwar action on the Oakland docks and Tim Paulson, head of the San Francisco Labor Council. President Betty Olson-Jones of the Oakland Education Association, the teachers’ union whose members anchored the May dock picket line called for solidarity actions amongst unions to oppose the war. Jack Heyman, the chair, recounted how ILWU Local 10 had initiated an antiapartheid action on the docks in 1984 that helped to bring down the South African government, acknowledging three of its organizers, who were conference participants, Leo Robinson, Howard Keylor and Larry Wright. Heyman also pointed out the decisive role played by French dockers’ actions in the port of Marseilles in ending the French imperial wars in Indochina and Algeria. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party Member of Parliament drew attention to the catastrophic human toll of this bloody war. And Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist whose son died in the Iraq, made an emotional appeal to stop the war that both the Democrat and Republican parties vote to continue funding it. Just before the conference broke for workshops on the war, participants were fired up by Clarence Thomas, Local 10 former Secretary-Treasurer, who inveighed against the war, calling on trade unionists to raise the struggle from protest to resistance at the workplace.
Workshops included “Soldiers and Vets Against the War”, “War and the Destruction of Civil Liberties”, “Middle East, The War for Oil and Empire”, “Class Struggle and the War” and “Racism, Class and the War at Home”. This last workshop heard a tape from Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and political prisoner on Pennsylvania’s death row, who made a special audio tape for the conference.
The plenum or closing session entertained action-oriented motions from the participants. The main motion calling on workers to initiate proposals for actions in their unions passed with some amendments, tightening up and expanding the original motion. Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist and chair of the workshop “Workers and Vets Against the War” introduced a motion calling on the Canadian government to allow the scores of U.S. soldiers in that country to resist fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, be allowed to stay. The motion passed unopposed.
Vigorous debate was heard on a motion by CodePink demanding workers organize a general strike against the war. Those opposed to the motion pointed out that while a general strike is a grand idea the working class is not yet ready for one and to call for one now without the material conditions for such a political strike would only add to a sense of defeatism and cynicism. A number of speakers said that limited workers’ actions are possible, for instance, teachers’ striking and having a teach-in with students in high schools and colleges. Bob Crow, General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union of Britain made the point that it must be workers themselves who decide what action to take through democratic discussion at their union meetings. Bob Mandel of the Oakland Education Association and an organizer of the May 19 antiwar action on the docks made a substitute motion which CodePink accepted calling on unions to initiate actions where and when they can.
As another example of workers’ action the chair highlighted the recent rally in West Sacramento against police attacks on two longshoremen in the port. Port security and police were implementing their version of the “war on terror” targeting port workers. Unity of action around this union campaign could bring together the labor movement, the African American and Mexican American communities, defenders of civil liberties and antiwar activists into a powerful social force against both the “war on terror” and the wars in the Middle East. If they go to trial ILWU will be organizing a major campaign.
(Special thanks to the workers’ collectives Arizmendi and Inkworks for their contributions of pastries and printing respectively. And to the following labor organizations for their donations: SF Labor Council, AMFA, NALC and OEA.)
Jack Heyman 11/6/07
Nov 14 2007 10:26
#4
War is a permanent, deepening and increasingly dangerous feature of capitalist society and every shade of the bourgeoisie uses nationalism in defence of the state and ultimately for preparation for war. Imperialism is the permanent expression of war in decadent capitalism, the trajectory of which over the last one hundred years is there for all to see. The working class, the only possible obstacle to generalised imperialist war, is today in no position bring any of the current wars to a halt. WAW above, and on its website, talks about paralysing docks, a strike against war (loosely) or a "Sick Day of War" in order to bring the Iraq war to an end. There's a presupposition of class struggle here that doesn't at all exist, a supposition of political consciousness of capitalism and the organised means to implement it, which doesn't exist anywhere. The only time such consciousness existed, more or less on a world scale, was around the time of the Russian Revolution and even then was unable to prevent all imperialist war.
The working class in the USA is a long way from the stifling intoxication of the xenophobic and patriotic campaigns after 9.11 (a real act of war against the United States), but it is nowhere near the level of consciousness and organisation necessary to paralyse or even hold up the war machine of the world's greatest imperialist power.
WAW quotes people like Jeremy Corbyn MP, and Bob Crowe union official, both of them supporters of the Labour Party, a political machine that has supported more wars, that have slaughtered more workers on behalf of British imperialism, than the so-called "warmongering right-wing Tories". You definitely don't want friends like these dyed in the wool supporters of imperialism, British state capitalism and anti-American imperialist factions of every kind.
WAW proposed workers taking off a sick day in order to take part in "a sick day of war" (Oct. 26 - see Internationalism. org, the ICC's US section), but this is an individual type action and easily swamped by inter-classist and bourgeois groups, not least the Democrats, who took part in the protest "United for Peace and Justice" the following day.
Discussions about capitalist warfare among workers can only be positive and there's no doubt that the working class, in general, is sick of the war in Iraq - that's the main reason why the British bourgeoisie airbrushed Tony Blair out of the picture. Iraq itself, while a striking illustration of the bankruptcy and irrationality of imperialism, is not the main question. There are old wars simmering and bubbling away all over the planet ready to break out, rivalries taking on more and more centrifugal forces tending to escape the control of the bourgeoisie, growing imperialist instability and chaos threatening - and new wars looming up on the horizon. The question for the working class is to develop its struggle and organisation and not fall for the traps of nationalism and leftism.
Nov 14 2007 21:16
#5
Baboon, I'm in agreement with some, although far from all, of your points but you're under some confusion. WAW is a miniscule front group for an even more miniscule Leninist sect and had nothing to do with the Labor Conference Against War.
Nov 14 2007 22:47
#6
I cannot stand Code Pink for the obvious reasons.
Nov 15 2007 07:21
#7
David is correct. WAW had nothing to do with the planning of the event, I've never even heard of them until now. Organizing was done primarily by ILWU locals 10 and 6 and the Oakland Education Association. I have no idea who is a member of "this or that random sectarian leftist organization". And honestly, I stopped giving a shit about people's personal politics years ago. Unless some sectarian front is trying to strong arm and take over I could care less what party folks belong to. It's none of my business and I have more important things to worry about.
Also, I agree...and I think most conference participants would also agree, that working people in the US are not ready to take large scale collective direct action (in the form of a strike or otherwise) against the war. This was never a goal of the conference. There is the goal , however, of fostering small workplace actions against the war. The hope is that individual unions or workplaces will act creatively and plan actions that make sense for them. Most of the participants would like to see these small workplace actions build into something larger, but that will (obviously) take allot of time, education and struggle. And, as I think everyone agrees...we're not anywhere close to being there yet.
Some critiques include: Too much talk and no real attempt was made to build a structure or system by which we can keep in touch and share resources. It was only mildly representative of unions doing anti-war work in the Bay Area. And, as was mentioned before....it was quite boring at times.
It was useful because it did lay some ground work and started a discussion. The next day 300+ union members marched in the SF anti-war demonstration. There is a desire to move beyond these marches. But it requires some creativity and courage to make it happen.
I could go into more detail. But I really don't want to deconstruct the entire conference online. So, like I said before....if you want my opinion email me 
Oh yea...one thing we all did agree on....
Code Pink sucked
Yes, please post more. I'm very interested in how it went and your personal take on it.