Monday, September 29, 2014

ILWU Statement on "Block the Boat"

Nothing is more progressive than threatening workers!
At 6:00 PM Saturday, ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union) Local 10 and 34 represented longshoremen and clerks dispatched to work the vessel ZIM Shanghai at SSA’s Oakland California Terminal were met with hostile demonstrators, effectively blocking all access to the terminal. Longshoremen and Clerks trying to report to work were threatened physically at some points of ingress and their personal vehicles were physically blocked. As such, all personnel stood-by outside of the demonstration perimeters for health and safety purposes. At approximately 8 PM SSA released all personnel from work.

As far as the union can ascertain, the protests are organized by a coalition of individuals and organizations that plan events and create action alerts under the name of “Block the Boat for Gaza” online.

The ILWU is not among the groups organizing the protests, and the leadership and membership of the ILWU have taken no position on the Israel/Gaza conflict.
Indeed, pretty much all efforts to block Israeli boats on the West Coast end up resorting to threatening the dockworkers. Curious, that.

1 comment:

Berel Dov Lerner said...

In my experience, people involved in boycotts of Israel are not really interested in peace; they are interested in the destruction of the State of Israel altogether (although there is some debate among them regarding the extent to which Israeli Jews must "Go back to where they came from"). The boycott is not a form of protest; it is a strategy of economic aggression. Some people attack Israel with missiles, some try to undermine its economy. They are all fighting on the same side, only that the boycotters are more nervous around explosives,