These dockworkers, who face felony "rioting" and "conspiracy" charges with penalties of up to 10 years in prison, are guilty of nothing more than standing up to union-busting, racism, and police brutality. It is in the interests of all workers, farmers, opponents of racism, and defenders of democratic rights to join the fight to win justice for them.

The attempt by Nordana Lines to use nonunion labor, which the ILA defendants were protesting when 600 cops rioted and attacked them on Jan. 20, 2000, is part of the worldwide offensive of the shipping industry bosses to speed up production, cut crew size, and lower wages. In late March, some 11,000 Brazilian dockworkers at the port of Santos went on strike for 15 days to protest the government’s sell-off of the port facilities. In New Jersey, the pro-employer Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor is challenging the ILA’s right to organize dockworkers in the port of Newark.

The fight against union-busting on the Charleston docks is intertwined not only with the fight to unionize the South but with broader social struggles. Just days before the police attack, many members of the mostly Black ILA Local 1422 had joined a 50,000-strong Martin Luther King Day march in Columbia to demand the Confederate battle flag be removed from the statehouse.

The campaign to defend the dockworkers has struck a chord among working people nationwide, and internationally too. The call by the AFL-CIO to unions everywhere to support and join the June 9 Columbia rally is a welcome encouragement to broaden the fight.

Not only do many workers sense the important stakes in this battle for justice. So do the employer class and its government. South Carolina state attorney general Charles Condon has vowed to prosecute the dockworkers "vigorously" and to defend the "right of South Carolina citizens to refuse to join a labor union"--that is, to defend the bosses’ "right" to freely exploit workers.

The resistance by the workers in South Carolina is part of a pattern of growing resistance by workers and farmers to the assault carried out by the U.S. rulers. These struggles range from the uranium and coal miners demanding medical treatment and compensation for the sickness and death wreaked on them by the mining bosses, to workers refusing to give up their fight against racist police violence from Cincinnati to Miami, to farmers defending their land and ability to make a living, to immigrant workers saying no to the brutality and terror tactics of the deportation police.

These struggles can be tapped effectively to reinforce the fight for justice for the framed-up longshore workers, which in turn can inspire others facing similar attacks.

Let us act to demand: Drop the frame-up charges against the Charleston Five!
 
 
Related article:
Dockworker defense rally gains support  
 
 
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