SC dock workers - worth remembering on primary eve.

[Truth2Tell]

On this primary eve in South Carolina it's worth remembering what the progressive fight is all about. So let's remember the "Charleston five."

From: onthewaterfront.com

...longshoremen in South Carolina confronted attempts to wipe out the state's most powerful black organization. When a danish shipping company began to shift their transportation to a non-union firm in 1999, Local 1442, in Charleston South Carolina, mobilized to protect their hard-won rights. What followed culminated in a protest in which 660 riot police arrayed against fifty dockworkers, a group that grew to 150 before the night was over. Four black and one white longshoreman - subsequently known as the Charleston five - were held for twenty months under house arrest on trumped up felony charges of inciting a riot. Within the politically conservative, racially charged and religiously fanatic political climate of the South, the un assuming local union president, Ken Riley - supported behind the scenes by a militant AFL-CIO staffer - created an international, grass roots campaign in defense of the arrested longshoremen. From Australia to Europe to Korea and the entire west coast of the United States, longshoremen threatened to shut down ports, jeopardizing billions of dollars in trade per day...

Much more here: http://www.ontheglobalwaterfront.org/

Watch a video of the attack on the protesting Charleston dock workers here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3630782398230140343

And check out Greg Palast's latest excellent piece on the Charleston five:

South Carolina 2000: Six hundred police in riot gear facing a few dozen angry-as-hell workers on the docks of Charleston. In the darkness, rocks, clubs and blood fly. The cops beat the crap out of the protesters. Of course, it's the union men who are arrested for conspiracy to riot. And of course, of the five men handcuffed, four are Black. The prosecutor: a White, Bible-thumping Attorney General running for Governor. The result: a state ripped in half - White versus Black.

-snip

At the heart of the turmoil in South Carolina in 2000 then, was not so much Black versus White, but union versus non-union. It was a battle between those looking for a good day's pay versus those looking for a way not to pay it. The issue was - and is - class war, the conflict between the movers and the shakers and the moved and shaken.

The dockworkers of Charleston could see the future of America right down the road. Literally. Because right down the highway, they could see their cousins and brothers who worked in the Carolina textile mills kiss their jobs goodbye as they loaded the mill looms onto trains for Mexico.

-snip

South Carolina is union country. And union-busting country. But who gives a flying fart about labor unions today? Only 7%, one in fourteen US workers belongs to one. That's less than the number of Americans who believe that Elvis killed John Kennedy.

-snip

Indeed, the late and lionized King of Union Busters, Sam Walton, would be proud today, were he alive, to learn that the woman he called, "my little lady," Hillary Clinton, whom he placed on Wall-Mart's Board of Directors, is front-runner for the presidency. She could well become America's "Greeter," posted at our nation's door, to welcome the Saudis and Chinese who are buying America at a guaranteed low price.

http://www.gregpalast.com/

Let's not forget what this primary season is all about.

Go Edwards go!

[blindpig]

1. kick n/t

[Truth2Tell]

2. Kick nt