West Coast Longshoremen will stop work to protest war!

Truth2Tell

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Wed Mar-05-08 12:47 PM
Original message

West Coast Longshoremen will stop work to protest war!

From an email I recieved this morning:

For Workers Strikes Against the War!

ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq,
Afghanistan

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on
May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a
February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International
president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting,
"One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers
to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to
the war in Iraq."

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to
undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that
this mobilization of labor's power is to take place on May Day, the
international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the
resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular
war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic
candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want
to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of
U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the
strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded
Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war.
Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the
United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war
parties of U.S. imperialism - Democrats and Republicans - and none of the
capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already
killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon
killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force - that of the
international working class.

The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop
work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations
throughout the United States and internationally. The ILWU should be commended
for courageously taking the first step, and it is up to working people
everywhere to back them up. Wherever support is strong enough, on May 1 there
should be mass walkouts, sick-outs, labor marches, plant-gate meetings,
lunch-time rallies, teach-ins. And the purpose of such actions should be not to
beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted
for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the
working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

...

More on this here: http://www.labournet.net/world/0802/ilwu1may2.html

and here: http://sbindymedia.org/for_workers_strikes_against_the_war