Clarence Thomas is a retired executive board member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in the San Francisco Bay Area. He issued this statement for the Oct. 30 International Day of Action of Dockworkers in Solidarity with Palestine.
Solidarity greetings, all, on this second International Day of Action of Dockworkers in Solidarity with Palestine, Against Genocide and Militarism! This is the largest worker movement against war in history. And it’s being initiated by dockworkers, the most critical workers in the supply chain of international commerce, “the mother’s milk of capitalism!”
Dockworkers possess a long history of solidarity with international workers’ struggles against authoritarianism, fascism, imperialism and racism. “ILWU policies and actions on foreign affairs have always been built on the belief that international labor solidarity and world peace are the cornerstones of social and economic justice for all workers, including the membership of the ILWU.”
ILWU Local 10’s international solidarity actions started in the 1930s with longshoremen blocking the shipment of supplies to the rising fascist movements in Europe and Asia. In December 1938, members walked off the job and refused to load 8,500 tons of scrap iron onto the SS Spyros, a Greek freighter.
Led by Harry Bridges, our union’s first international president, this action was taken for two reasons: standing in solidarity with Chinese Americans and with China, which was being occupied by Japan, and protesting raw materials from the United States being manufactured into Japanese munitions used against Chinese civilians.
When Bridges was questioned about this strategic and effective rank-and-file solidarity action at the point of production, in clear defiance of United States foreign policy regarding trade with Japan, he said: “Interfere with the foreign policy of the country, sure as hell! That’s our job, that’s our right, that’s our privilege.”
In July 1940, Congress finally granted President Franklin D. Roosevelt authority to restrict and ultimately ban defense exports and scrap metal to Japan. The union’s anti-fascist action was fully vindicated less than three years after the Spyros walkout, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It’s in that tradition and spirit that dockworkers in France, Greece, the Basque Country, Italy, Morocco and Turkey are saying no to shipments of weapons of war to Israel to be used against the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and other occupied Palestinian territories.
These courageous dockworkers are taking the most concrete measures workers worldwide can take when their respective governments refuse to say no to genocide, displacement, and the destruction of all social, political and economic structures of Palestinian life. Workers are withholding their labor, disrupting the supply chain. In maritime ports throughout the world, the ships will not be sailing on time today! Shipping, rail, trucking and commercial aviation schedules will be disrupted like a massive configuration of dominoes falling one after another.
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