occupy the ports partly succesfull

[Sasha]

havent really been following this but it seems at least part of the attempted shutdown yesterday of all western ports succeeded, oakland shut down again as the ILWU respected the picket, Seattle saw violent clashes (which is already a interesting escalation), Longview was closed too and Portland partly

here is a bit too overtly victorious statement from occupy seattle:

Occupy Seattle: A New Phase for the Workers’ Movement SEATTLE, Wash — Monday, December 12th, Occupy protesters and allies shut down several major ports along the West Coast. In Seattle, we stopped all evening work at Terminals 18 and 5, causing millions in profit loss to major corporations Stevedoring Services of America, American President Line, and Eagle Marine Services.


Yesterday’s actions drew a wide swath of the 99%. Protesters of all ages demonstrated, and people of color turned out in large numbers. The protests included a coordinated city-wide high school walkout, a rally emceed by Hip Hop Occupies, and a three mile march to the ports. The shutdown was organized by members of Occupy Seattle in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and with the struggles of LA, Oakland, and Seattle port truckers and Longview longshore workers. Occupy Seattle’s People of Color caucus produced need-to-know guides for the action. The shutdown was solidly an Occupy action, funded by the heartfelt donations of occupiers and their supporters, and a hefty donation from Occupy Oakland. We received absolutely no material support from any union. This was a direct action in the truest sense of the term: it was rapid-fire, organized on a shoestring budget, bypassed stalling bureaucracy, and mobilized the energy of an inspired community united against economic injustice.
The actions were planned with special attention to the long tradition of democracy and direct action within the ILWU. We picketed Terminals 18 and 5 in light of the longstanding ILWU principle of respecting other pickets. Union policy dictates that if arbitrators rule that picket lines are too dangerous to cross, ILWU workers will be compensated for the work they missed.
The protests were wildly successful. Truck drivers and port workers repeatedly expressed support for the protesters, waving and honking as they passed.
Terminal 18—the Port of Seattle’s largest and busiest terminal—was the first to be shut down. Protesters took the main intersection, swiftly forming a blockade of roadside debris to stop the incoming shift, while redirecting outgoing traffic onto one lane. This effectively blocked three gates, while the fourth had been shut down by the port in anticipation of the action. The Seattle Police Department, not protesters, temporarily stopped workers and truckers from leaving the port by forming a bike chain as protesters yelled at them to “let the trucks through.”
Under pressure from protesters, police backed away, but later stopped traffic once again, stating that they were trying to clear the road for police convoys to enter. In solidarity with the protesters, the truckers honked their horns loudly and persistently, and the frustrated calls of the crowd forced the cops back off the road. Occupiers then continued to direct traffic out of the port, delivering flyers of Scott Olsen’s statement to drivers as they passed (see below).
At 5pm, reports came through that the union arbitrator had ruled in favor of protesters, deeming the picket too dangerous to cross. The shipping company called off work at Terminal 18 for the evening. In accordance with union contract, dispatched longshore workers were nonetheless paid for their time.
Protesters then proceeded to Terminal 5, the location of the Port’s only other ship that day, chanting “Whose Ports / Our Ports.” Approximately one hundred protesters formed a human barricade and moving picket line at the terminal gate, while another hundred stood by in support.
Some protesters who remained at Terminal 18 were herded onto the sidewalk. When they tried to maintain the blockade, conflict escalated. The police used pepper spray and flash grenades to disperse protesters, in one case forcibly pulling back the head of a protester to spray him in the face. A few protesters flung road flares and a bag of paint at the police in retaliation. In the resulting chaos, a number of protesters were arrested.
The crowd of Terminal 18 dissipated and joined Terminal 5. After two hours of picketing, the union arbitrator once again ruled in favor of protesters, calling off work at the terminal.
The Occupy Movement Strikes Back
Many of us showed up to this action having learned from the experiences we’ve had in the short months since we began assembling together. Having previous engagements with the police, we knew to protect ourselves. Legal observers and medics were interspersed through the crowd, and the majority brought bandannas and scarves to cover their noses against flash bombs and other chemical weapons utilized by the police. Some of us sported the goggles that we learned to use after pepper spray incapacitated activists during the march on Chase Bank.
Occupy Seattle’s action was one of the last in the day, following successful port shutdowns in Longview, Portland, Oakland, and other places. A hundred of our friends in Bellingham continued to break the flow of capital by protesting on the railroads, some locking themselves to the tracks in defiance. Solidarity was extended to us even from Japan, where the International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba made a statement of support.
We send our sincere thanks to Oakland and Portland for extending their protests in response to the police aggression in Seattle that left several of our friends with stinging eyes and ringing ears. We extend our support and love to Houston and San Diego, where the police have used similarly aggressive tactics.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the unemployed, the underemployed, the incarcerated, and the 89% of the working class who don’t belong to unions. We stand in solidarity with students protesting education cutbacks and rising debts, with low-wage workers protesting union-busting, with those facing foreclosure, and with the unemployed. We believe that a workers’ movement does not merely belong to the unionized, nor does it recognize imposed political borders. This is the building of a new movement. We rise from our roots in the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and anticolonial struggles across the world.



(photo) reports from seattle:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/12/occupy-protesters-barricade-klickitat-sw-and-sw-spokane-police-respond-with-stun-grenades-pepper-spray-and-horses
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/12/photos-from-the-fight-at-the-port
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/13/more-photos-from-yesterdays-port-action
pics

[Smyg]

Rather interesting, given the earlier failures.

[The Douche]

One thing that should be noted is that the turnout in Oakland was much, much smaller than the last port shutdown.

[IndependentCitizen]

Even though they were partly closed, I must send my praises to all those who were in attendance. Was never going to be easy, and at the very least a very brave thing to do. I hope no one is seriously injured in the clashes.

[MattShizzle]

Supported by the port truck drivers - along with descriptions of how horribly they are treated by their bosses
http://cleanandsafeports.org/blog/2011/12/12/an-open-letter-from-america’s-port-truck-drivers-on-occupy-the-ports/



We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.
We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.
Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?
We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.
There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.
The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.
It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers (http://www.alternet.org/economy/153393/how_goldman_sachs_and_other_companies_exploit_port _truck_drivers_%E2%80%94_occupy_protesters_plan_to _shut_down_west_coast_ports_in_protest/).”
But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?
To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.
The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.
We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I have heard that most of the shutdown attempts were successful. Longbeach and LA were broken up by the police. There was some sort of huge tussle with the cops in Houston including an incident where the cops chained protesters to the ground, put a tent over them and then inflated the tent with gas, eith tear gas or pepper spray, I don't know. Its on a youtube video but I can't find it. It will or should be the next "pepper spray cop" meme. Pretty horrendous.

There are stories of horrific police brutality on Daily Kos (a Dem Party blog, I know) of protestors once they were on police custody and the media was not present.


The bus moved to City Hall east. Some of the crowd was in pain, but many
were in high spirits shouting “we are the 99%” and “occupy the jail.”
At one point, the man who I thought was asleep, was asked if he was
alright and did not respond. We had a group shout that there was a
medical emergency- “a man needs help” “help please officer” etc. These
shouts were interrupted by the radio in the front of the bus being
turned up to an unreasonably loud volume (the thought in my head at the
time was “full volume” but that’s something that I can’t verify). Even
typing this right now, my rational brain thinks “this could not have
happened”, but it did, and I assumed that I wasn’t more shocked by it at
the time because I had my hands tied behind my back, urine on my shoes,
people screaming in pain, my wrists throbbing and my knees tilted and
was unable to even sit up properly. He was breathing, but we all were
incapacitated, and there was nothing that we could do, but shout for
help which was responded to by “God Bless America” on the speakers (I
wish I wish I was lying about this) at volume 10. Ie, this was not an
effort to ignore cries for help, it was the opposite. We cried for help
for a person in dire need of medical attention and the officer(s)
responded by turning up the radio so loud that it was painful to hear.
please re-read that until it sinks in. (Dec 13 11:26 AM):‎

Hillary Clinton's scolding of the Russian state (not that they aren't repressive and brutal) is laughable hypocrisy.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/11/1044281/-Occupy-Seattle-Why-We-Shut-Down-The-Port-Part-III
interesting articles
http://www.salon.com/topic/occupy_wall_street/

[9]

I participated in the Seattle blockade. I am extremely busy at the moment but intend to have a report typed up soon

[The Douche]

That tent was pumped with air, not gas.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

That tent was pumped with air, not gas.

Okay. What was the purpose though?

[Paulappaul]

Portland was shut down all the way. Can't really write up a report, not much to say. Pretty peaceful, not much retaliation.

[Summerspeaker]

I was there in Long Beach. We didn't shut down the port but at least stopped traffic for a while. There were lots of anarchists and other radicals involved. Cops did their intimidation thing and despite having some hundreds we lacked the numbers to overwhelm them.

[Ele'ill]

I was at the Portland blockade and can confirm that it was shut all the way down both morning and evening shifts although some minor traffic was let in and out- unrelated to the port's 'operation'. I have heard but not confirmed that 325 Longshoremen were kept home WITHOUT pay. More info on this would be nice.

[MattShizzle]

I have heard but not confirmed that 325 Longshoremen were kept home WITHOUT pay. More info on this would be nice.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit. Thats what the bourgeois do - take food out of the mouths of workers and their families and blame it on those trying to improve their lot. They've had over a century of learning ways to divide us. Hopefully the longshoremen put the blame where it belongs and not on the occupiers.

[KurtFF8]

It seems that the various turnouts were quite low. This is a worse sign than the failure to shut down the ports in my opinion.

I haven't gotten around to reading this but this looks helpful http://labornotes.org/2011/12/west-coast-port-shutdown-sparks-heated-debate-between-unions-occupy

[Ele'ill]

I'm an optimist and I only speak for what happened in Portland but this was the first genuine action that took place away from the city. It's about 20 minutes from the city drive time. There were activist carpools and bus shuttles but it wasn't a 'wake up and walk out' to it type of event. I think this challenged commitment levels.

[praxis1966]

I think the low turnouts in some places, Oakland in particular, could be chalked up to the fact that it wasn't held in the immediate aftermath of some kind of horrible police repression like we saw on October 25th. Incidents like that have a way of mobilizing a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have turned out.

Nonetheless, I was at the Oakland shutdown and from what I understand (though I don't have an online source to back this up), if you combine the participants at the morning and evening blockades there were probably just shy of 10,000 participants. Conservative estimates put the evening march at around 4,000 people, and a comrade that I bumped into at the evening march who had participated in both said the morning march was in fact larger... The blockade was successfully extended to the 3:45 am substitute shift as well, effectively shutting down the Port of Oakland for a full 24 hours.

[Ele'ill]

I think the low turnouts in some places, Oakland in particular, could be chalked up to the fact that it wasn't held in the immediate aftermath of some kind of horrible police repression like we saw on October 25th. Incidents like that have a way of mobilizing a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have turned out.

Nonetheless, I was at the Oakland shutdown and from what I understand (though I don't have an online source to back this up), if you combine the participants at the morning and evening blockades there were probably just shy of 10,000 participants. Conservative estimates put the evening march at around 4,000 people, and a comrade that I bumped into at the evening march who had participated in both said the morning march was in fact larger... The blockade was successfully extended to the 3:45 am substitute shift as well, effectively shutting down the Port of Oakland for a full 24 hours.

Yup and this is good news. While we were at the line here in Portland we heard a report that the numbers in Oakland were at 150 tops. This was during the morning shift shut down.

[praxis1966]

Yup and this is good news. While we were at the line here in Portland we heard a report that the numbers in Oakland were at 150 tops. This was during the morning shift shut down.

lol I don't know how that got circulated around, but it definitely wasn't true.

[ellipsis]

I think the low turnouts in some places, Oakland in particular, could be chalked up to the fact that it wasn't held in the immediate aftermath of some kind of horrible police repression like we saw on October 25th. Incidents like that have a way of mobilizing a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have turned out.

Nonetheless, I was at the Oakland shutdown and from what I understand (though I don't have an online source to back this up), if you combine the participants at the morning and evening blockades there were probably just shy of 10,000 participants. Conservative estimates put the evening march at around 4,000 people, and a comrade that I bumped into at the evening march who had participated in both said the morning march was in fact larger... The blockade was successfully extended to the 3:45 am substitute shift as well, effectively shutting down the Port of Oakland for a full 24 hours.

That and the weather. 10/25 was the best fucking weather you could ask for, warm but too hot. 12/12 was shitty weather, i know i was sick as were a bunch of other folks in the area.

Still they blocked three shifts! now Quan is saying the city can't afford to pay 500 officers to stop another one without the port footing the bill.