The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 74/No. 42      November 8, 2010

 
Bay Area unionists
protest police brutality
 
BY BETSEY STONE  
OAKLAND, California—“Every union member who has walked a picket line knows that police brutality is a labor issue,” said Clarence Thomas, executive board member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10. He was speaking at an October 23 rally of more than 500 organized by the union local against police killings and brutality here.

In addition to ILWU members, the event drew workers from the Teamsters, American Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union, Sailors Union of the Pacific, Amalgamated Transit Union, and others. “This is the first rally like this I’ve ever been to,” ironworker Dan Brandon told the Militant. “We have a contract coming up. This is important!”

In solidarity with the family of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old who was killed by a transit cop at a BART station in Oakland on New Year’s Day 2009, the ILWU closed down the port for the rally.

The sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot Grant, is scheduled for November 5. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July. Earlier this month Mehserle’s attorney filed a 134-page brief for a new trial.

“As I drive the train through Fruitvale Station there isn’t a day that I don’t think of Oscar Grant,” said BART transit worker Harold Brown, one of many rally speakers. “This never should have happened, and it should not happen again.”

Cephus Johnson, uncle of Grant, and several other speakers demanded that the judge use a state “gun enhancement law” to give Mehserle an extra 10 years jail time over the two to four years possible for involuntary manslaughter.

Gun enhancement laws add years to sentences in cases where a gun is used. They are opposed by many who understand these type of laws are used primarily against working people.

The jailing and conviction of Mehserle came in the wake of demonstrations and widespread outrage after videos of the killing, showing Grant was shot in the back while lying handcuffed on the station platform, appeared online.

Mehserle was the first cop to face a murder trial for a line-of-duty killing in nearly 15 years and the first cop to be convicted for shooting a Black man in Bay Area history.  
 
 
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