This month we are proud to present part two in our three-part series on noted Maine socialist and naturalist, Normand Wallace Lermond. This episode focuses on Lermond’s political radicalization, his active role in the early socialist movement in America, and his efforts to help the Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth establish the Equality Colony in Washington state. Please listen, share, and enjoy!

The post Maine Mural: A Maine Socialist – Normand Wallace Lermond, pt. 2 appeared first on Pine & Roses.

By Connor Wright

SOUTHIE – Dockworkers in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) have called off their coast-wide strike, after reaching a temporary back-to-work agreement with the U.S. Maritime Association (USMX). The three-day strike was the first shutdown of East Coast ports in almost 50 years.

Roughly 300 Boston dockworkers were among those on strike. Five Boston-area ILA locals picketed Conley Terminal in South Boston, starting Monday and ending on Wednesday night when the ILA and USMX went public with the agreement.

The deal includes a 62% wage increase for dockworkers over the 6-year life of the contract, not far from the union’s original demand of 77%. In exchange, the ILA is extending the terms of the current contract until January 15, to give the union and the USMX more time to bargain a full tentative agreement.

Hotly contested issues are still under negotiation, especially the ILA’s ongoing fight against the automation of dock work. But celebrations broke out on picket lines up and down the coast on Wednesday night, as workers cheered this blow against the shipping companies.

If the ILA and USMX can’t reach an agreement by January 15, dockworkers may hit the picket lines again. That depends on how negotiations play out over the next three months, and how rank-and-file dockworkers judge whatever gains are made in the full tentative agreement.

Movement on Wages, Automation Still a Fight

The strike has been fought on two main issues: wages and automation.

The union has won most of what it demanded on wages, although the new wage scale would have ILA members just starting to pull even with dockworkers in the more radical, West Coast-based ILWU. But automation is an even bigger sticking point – and one the shipping companies are much less likely to give up on.

Automation has been an issue on the docks since the 1960s, when “containerization” (standardized shipping containers) revolutionized work on the docks and helped shipping companies – in the words of one industry website – “shed costly labor.”

In the past, dockworkers’ unions have accepted some level of automation. The ILWU, under the leadership of socialist Harry Bridges, compromised with the West Coast shippers in a series of negotiations in the 1960s, agreeing not to fight job losses from containerized shipping in exchange for massive increases in wages and benefits for the union’s existing membership.

The ILA largely followed suit – although with rampant corruption and mob control in most ILA locals, and a collaborationist approach toward employers, their wage increases were paltry compared to those won by the left-wing ILWU.

Many of these problems, including accusations of a continued organized crime presence, still plague the ILA today. To this day, West Coast dockworkers enjoy higher pay and stronger contracts, and even during the strike, ILA president Harold Daggett faced resurfaced allegations of mob ties and living a luxuriant lifestyle on member dues.

Now dockworkers on both coasts are fighting shippers’ moves toward “fully automated ports” – a process of mechanization that would cut even more union jobs from the docks than were lost through containerization.

At the time of writing, no public agreements have been made on automation in the ILA’s ongoing negotiations with shipping employers.

The Biden Administration Quietly Avoids a Strike

The dockworkers’ ability to shut down the ports was the biggest factor in winning a wage concession from the shipping companies. Without a credible strike threat, the USMX would hold most of the power in bargaining, and could have stonewalled the ILA as long as it wanted to on key demands.

But the strike wasn’t just a contest between the dockworkers and their bosses. The Biden administration has been heavily involved in the negotiations, and played a major role in the deal announced on Thursday.

According to a report from the Washington Post, Biden officials like acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and chief economic advisor Lael Brainard have been meeting with employers and union officials for months, hoping to avoid a major disruption to the economy so close to the presidential election.

These officials’ main intervention seems to have been pressuring USMX to boost their wage proposals to the ILA. It produced some movement early on, when late last month the USMX proposed a roughly 50% raise over six years. But ILA officers dismissed the offer as “fail[ing] to address the needs of our members adequately,” and the strike went ahead.

On the day of the strike deadline, Biden announced support for the ILA’s aims, calling on the USMX to “present a fair offer.” But even more significant than what he did is what he didn’t do – invoke the Taft-Hartley Act.

Under Taft-Hartley – a major anti-union law passed in 1947, and still on the books today – the President has the authority to declare a “national emergency” in major labor conflicts, forcing workers back to work for a 90-day “cooling off” period and locking the striking union into government-mediated arbitration.

Presidents from both major parties have used this law to suppress strikes 37 times since it was passed, against workers from many different industries. The repression and forced arbitration of Taft-Hartley was a major factor in the decline of strikes and the weakening of the U.S. labor movement, with effects that are still felt today.

The last time Taft-Hartley was invoked was in 2002, when George W. Bush used it to quash another major dockworkers’ strike by the ILWU on the West Coast. This easily could have been precedent for Biden, but the administration decided not to use the law. Biden even told a press conference during the strike, “I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley.”

Not only did Biden not break the strike, his officials kept up pressure on employers, both public and private, to move even further on wages. According to the Washington Post report, after an all-night call that lasted until 5:30 in the morning, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told shipping executives he would tell the President that the USMX was making a new, higher wage offer to the union.

A source close to the shipping employers told Freightwave magazine that they treated this ultimatum as “marching orders” from the Biden administration. They quickly proposed the 62% raise and accepted the back-to-work plan.

The Politics of a Port Strike

Although in step with Biden’s general pro-union image, Biden’s strategy in the ILA strike was different from his approach to the last labor conflict that threatened a major disruption to U.S. commerce.

In the fall of 2022, during a major contract fight by railroad workers, Biden pushed legislation through Congress forcing a weak contract on rail workers, despite 55% of members across the dozen or so rail unions voting against the deal negotiated by rail union leadership.

So why didn’t Biden intervene to stop the strike? Why did his officials consistently pressure employers instead of the ILA?

One factor is the differences between ILA and the rail unions. The ILA is a single industrial union that has almost all ports on the East Coast and the Gulf organized. Rail workers, on the other hand, are divvied up into a dozen or so competing craft unions, making large-scale actions like an industry-wide strike far more difficult.

The ILA’s low current wage standards are another factor. The 62% figure is impressive on first sight, but it still leaves East Coast dockworkers below the standard set by the ILWU on the West Coast. The pressure put on the USMX was real, but the wage concession was less dramatic than the Post and other mainstream outlets made it out to be.

It’s also important to note that extending the current contract, and agreeing to call off the strike, was a major concession on the ILA’s part. Like most union contracts, the ILA’s contains a no-strike clause, which is now back in effect. That was the quid pro quo in Biden’s deal – a decent agreement on wages, but in exchange for the union giving up their most powerful tool.

The presidential election was likely another major factor. A prolonged strike could have caused shortages, inflation, job losses – a major economic disruption just weeks away from a presidential election in which Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats would be held responsible.

But trying to avoid the strike by locking the ILA into arbitration would have sparked a highly public dispute with the dockworkers, and could have complicated relations with important parts of the U.S. labor movement, which largely supported the strike.

The Democratic Party has been bleeding working-class support for decades. Despite some genuine pro-union moves from the Biden administration – from a more aggressive NLRB to his public support of the UAW strike – Republicans’ growing advantage with workers is hard to ignore. The 1.3 million-member Teamsters union even put out internal polling showing a whopping 58% support Donald Trump for President, over just 31% for Kamala Harris.

It’s possible that the Teamsters poll being released – and that union’s non-endorsement in the presidential race – factored into the administration’s thinking. The Teamsters represent a similar demographic of workers to the ILA: non-college educated, blue-collar industrial workers – exactly the demographic Democrats have struggled to attract. And Kamala Harris is on track to perform worse with union voters than Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Altogether, Biden’s moves in this strike led to the best possible outcome for his administration and Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. Biden avoided a drawn-out strike, put off the thorny struggle over automation until after the election, and shored up the Democrats’ bona fides with a demographic they may need to put them over the edge in the presidential race.

The Fight Continues for Dockworkers

As for the dockworkers, a lot is up in the air. They have won a wage increase, but their job security is still on the line, and they have given up a big part of their leverage by agreeing to go back to work.

Whether the ILA can win restrictions on further automation – either at the bargaining table or back on the picket line – is unclear. The fight against automation and job loss has been a long-term one for U.S. labor., including the rise of “artificial intelligence” that played a major role in the recent actors’ and writers’ strikes.

A lot depends on how negotiations unfold over the next 90 days, and – if they stall again – the ILA’s willingness to take their members back on strike.

Connor Wright is a member of Boston DSA and a labor reporter for Working Mass.

Editor’s Note: The following remarks were delivered by ROC DSA’s Internal Organizer Skye, at the March to End Fossil Fuels, held Friday, September 27 and organized by Metro Justice and other ROC DSA allies.

Poverty. Global warming. The ongoing genocide in Palestine. These are just some of the threats of our time, and to win against them we must recognize they are all the same struggle: The struggle against capitalism. It is the capitalist’s endless quest for profit that keeps workers deciding between whether to buy groceries or to pay their ever increasing rent. It is the war profiteers who benefit when they sell a bomb that is used to wipe out a Palestinian family. It is the owner class putting their own interests over those of the working class that is killing our planet! Let’s tackle these one by one. 

Every megayacht and private jet polluting our atmosphere represents the unpaid wages of the workers who put in the labor that allowed the capitalist to purchase their fancy toys in the first place. Wages that could have provided their family financial stability, put food on the table, bought a house, put a kid through college. It is the workers who do the work, it is the workers who should reap the reward! 

Locally, there’s a company you might have heard of, RG&E. They extract 100 million dollars in profit from their rate payers Every. Single. Year. That $100 million in profit goes to their shareholders, including those of their parent company Iberdrola, which isn’t even based here! It’s all the way in Spain!

Imagine what we could do with that money if we, the ratepayers, owned RG&E: We could lower rates, keep more local union jobs, and build more publicly owned renewable energy. A future that is not dominated by the insatiable profit motive means a future that is bright, clean, and democratic. 

Lastly, how does Palestine fit into all this? Since October 7th, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, with US supplied bombs. Bombs you and I paid for. The official count is close to 40,000 dead, but we all know it’s higher than that, with uncounted bodies trapped under the rubble throughout occupied Palestine.

It is in the best interests of the shareholders of Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, and right here in Rochester—L3HARRIS—to continue the genocide and keep the sale of weaponry flowing.

This genocide is directly impacting the climate. The climate impact of the first 60 days after October 7th was equivalent to burning 150,000 tons of coal; almost half of this from US cargo aircraft flying weaponry and equipment from the US to Israel. That was just the first 60 days—we’re on day 356. To save lives and the planet, this genocide must end. 

These struggles stem from the same cause: capitalism, and that demands a united response. A movement bound together in common cause, a movement united in solidarity, a working class movement to advance the cause of socialism! 

The post Chapter Statement: All the Same Struggle first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Boston, MA – Boston DSA, today and every day, stands in solidarity with our LGBTQ+ siblings. Yesterday, known far-right groups protested a scheduled drag queen story hour at the Somerville Public Library, which culminated in a bomb threat. These right-wing provocateurs screamed at community members to repent and that they were “devils,” accused them of molesting children, and told them that they were going to hell. Upon receiving news of the bomb threat, one immediately told volunteers and attendees that this was proof that nobody wanted them in Somerville. Boston DSA members, including Somerville City Councilor Willie Burnley Jr., joined those in other organizations to provide support, escorts, and safety for the families arriving at the event. Once forced to clear the property because of the bomb threat, these volunteers from Boston DSA as well as many other arriving community members rallied across the street, drowning out the far-right activists continuing to protest.

At a time when right-wing extremists across the country are attacking the rights and safety of the LGBTQ+ community, it is disheartening to see such an attack in our own community. This serves as a reminder that fascists pose a threat even in the heart of a progressive state such as Massachusetts. This is far from the first time that we have seen attempts locally to disrupt a drag story hour — in December 2022, our comrades were part of the group that successfully protected a drag queen story hour at the Fall River Public Library from a violent attack by neo-Nazi group NSC.

We stand unflinchingly against the conservatives menacing our community yesterday. The transphobic, far-right demonstration was called by Christine Doherty, an organizer for the “CORR North” branch of the right-wing Massachusetts/Rhode Island hate group CORR and Operations Director in the local fascist group Super Happy Fun America. Also present was Sue Ianni, another officer in Super Happy Fun America. Ianni participated in the right-wing insurrection attempt in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021. In addition to spewing anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, Ianni shouted at one of our comrades, who was wearing a kippah, to “get out of my country.” We want to make it clear that their bigoted actions and rhetoric do not represent the values of our local community or neighbors. 

We are proud of DSA’s work to stem this onslaught and expand our collective rights. Our endorsed Somerville City Councilors, Willie Burnley Jr. and J.T. Scott, are champions for the rights of LGBTQ+ people and helped lead the fight to make Massachusetts a safe haven for gender-affirming medical care. We support free Medicare for All, including gender-affirming care and abortion on demand and without apology, and DSA chapters are fighting to protect trans rights and bodily autonomy across the country.

We will continue to show up to protect our communities. Right-wing hatred and violence have no place in Somerville, Boston, or anywhere.

Thorn West: Issue No. 216

State Politics

• The deadline for Governor Newsom to sign or veto state legislation passed on Monday. Prominent legislation vetoed by the governor include SB 1047, an AI safety bill, SB 961, a bill that mandated new cars sold California warn drivers when they’re speeding, and AB 3129, which would have allowed the state to block private equity purchases of health care facilities. Further roundup here. 

• Newsom approved several bills that derived from the work of the California Reparations Task Force, including one that required the state to acknowledge and formally apologize for the its role in American chattel slavery. However, Newsom vetoed SB 1050, which facilitated restitution for those who had property taken through racially motivated eminent domain, because it relied on a separate bill to establish a Freedmen Affairs Agency, which was stalled just before the legislative deadline.

• It’s rarely noted in media coverage of vetoed legislation, but of the 189 bills Newsom vetoed, 170 passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers. However, the legislature has not overridden a governor’s veto since 1979.

City Politics

• Newly appointed City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson sat for an interview with LA Public Press

• Leaked documents revealed that the state attorney general wants Los Angeles to redraw council districts ahead of the 2026 election, after the most recent redistricting process in 2020 was discredited by scandal.

• Mayor Bass has appointed former Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell to serve as chief of the LAPD. Next, City Council will vote on the appointment.

• Two candidates from DSA-LA’s 2024 endorsement slate have received endorsements from the LA Times: Karla Griego for School Board District 5 and Ysabel Jurado for CD 14. To help get DSA-LA’s endorsed candidates elected, see our event calendar, or sign up for a working group here.

Housing Rights

• DSA-LA was part of a coalition that organized a tenants and workers solidarity march on Saturday to demand affordable rent and liveable wages. This year, the city will reconsider the formula that determines how much  rent on the city’s rent-stabilized units can be raised each year. DSA-LA is organizing to ensure that the adjustments favor tenants; see here for more.

• The city of Los Angeles must increase its zoning capacity by 250,000 residential units to comply with state housing law. The LA Times notes that almost all of this added capacity is currently being planned for already dense areas. This makes it more likely that building the new units will come at the expense of tenants, and will require demolishing existing rent controlled units.

The post Tenants and Workers Rally for Fair Rent and Wages + Gov Newsom Vetoes 16% of 2024 Legislation appeared first on The Thorn West.

Last month, several GRDSA folks traveled to the Straits of Mackinac for a gathering of Great Lakes Water Protectors. We joined a potluck, a kayak paddle-out, a water festival and a day of workshops on a gorgeous campsite.

The impetus for this annual gathering is the struggle to stop the construction of the pipeline tunnel across the Mackinac straits and ultimately shut down Line 5 completely.

In many ways, it’s fitting that this took place over Labor Day weekend. This holiday is disproportionately enjoyed by those who work weekday 9-5 jobs, while many working class people, often doing essential jobs, still have to work.

We know that the current and coming environmental crisis will disproportionately affect working class people who don’t have the resources to adapt to disasters caused by pipeline spills and continued reliance on fossil fuels. These challenges range from access to clean water to mitigating damage from floods and extreme weather events.

The struggle against Line 5 is also deeply related to indigenous land and water rights as it trespasses on tribal land and threatens access to traditional food sources. They would be disproportionately hurt if it were to ever break, despite having no say in its construction or maintenance. Every day Line 5 is allowed to operate risks disaster, if it were to fail it would cause incalculable damage to our environment and drinking water for generations. That’s why it’s so important we protest it every chance we get, only a mass movement of those most affected can finally remove this threat.

The post Protect Our Water: End Line 5 appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, October 2 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1630 Haight)

Wednesday, October 2 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Thursday, October 3 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1630 Haight)

Thursday, October 3 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (In person at 1916 McAllister and on Zoom)

Friday, October 4 (11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Canvass (Meet in person at 876 Valencia)

Friday, October 4 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, October 4 (5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Voter Guide Research Party: Candidate Edition! (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 5 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Jackie Fielder for D9 Supervisor Mobilization (Meet at TBD)

Saturday, October 5 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach Training (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 5 (4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Bay Area Benefit Concert for Gaza: Nurturing Sumud (In person at Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, 1433 Madison Street, Oakland)

Sunday, October 6 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Mega Mobilization for Dean Preston (Meet at Jefferson Square Park at Turk & Laguna)

Sunday, October 6 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Palestine Mobilization: One Year of Genocide, One Year of Resistance (In person at Valencia & 16th St)

Monday, October 7 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Monday (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, October 7 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Reading Group: Marx’s Wage Labor and Capital (On Zoom)

Wednesday, October 9 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): October General Meeting (In person at 2973 16th St and on Zoom)

Thursday, October 10 (6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister and on Zoom)

Saturday, October 12 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Location TBD)

Sunday, October 13 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Jackie Fielder for D9 Supervisor Mobilization (Meet at TBD)

Sunday, October 13 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Canvass (Meet at TBD)

Monday, October 14 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister and on Zoom)

Monday, October 14 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at 220 Golden Gate)

Monday, October 14 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (On Zoom)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Bay Area Benefit Concert for Gaza: Nurturing Sumud

Join your DSA SF comrades and our coalition partners on Saturday, October 5th at a benefit concert for Gaza, in support of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people facing this ongoing genocide. This will be a night of Palestinian art and culture, with performances by Ramzi Aburedwan & his Dalouna Ensemble featuring Ouday Al Khatib. All proceeds of the event will be donated to the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance (MECA). MECA has been instrumental in providing emergency assistance to families who have fled their homes. 

Want help covering the ticket cost for you or a friend? Reach out in the #palestine-solidarity Slack channel and we will buy tickets for you!

Palestine Mobilization: One Year of Genocide, One Year of Resistance

This October marks one year since Israel’s ramping up of the ongoing Palestinian genocide, we will be hitting the streets with Palestinian Youth Movement, AROC,  and others from the Palestinian Action Network coalition to commemorate the lives lost and honor the continued resistance of the Palestinian people. Please join us at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 6 at 16th St & Valencia. RSVP to join the Signal chat for our contingent; we will sort out our exact meeting point and time from there.

Volunteer with the Dean Team This Week!

Come volunteer with the Extreme Dean Team this week. We have five different opportunities for you to show up and show out:

• 10/1: Turnout Tuesday (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister)
• 10/2, 10/3: Phonebanking (5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1630 Haight)
• 10/5: Canvass with SF Young Dems (Meet at 10:00 a.m. at Alamo Square at Scott & Hayes)
• 10/6: Mobilize with Edward Wright for BART, SF Latino Dem Club, and the Harvey Milk Club (10:00 a.m. at Jefferson Square Park at Turk & Laguna)

Dean’s office is also open 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. every day and always looking for volunteers. Drop by if you’re interested in helping the campaign!

Maker Monday

Join the Tenderloin Healing Circle and the Palestine Solidarity & Anti-Imperialist Working Group in an art make at the office on Monday, October 7 at 7:00 p.m.! We’ll be crafting buttons and flyers with lino prints, markers, and more.

No Appetite for Apartheid in SF!

Inspired by long-standing Palestinian boycott tactics and the BDS call, the Palestine Solidarity Anti-Imperialist Working Group are canvassing local stores and asking them to pledge to become Apartheid-Free by dropping products from companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and colonization of Palestine. It’s time to turn up the heat on this apartheid regime and take apartheid off our plates!

Want to show your support? Sign our Apartheid-Free Pledge so business owners know how popular this movement is with their local customers. After signing the pledge, we would love to see you at any of our upcoming campaign strategy sessions and canvassing days. Check dsasf.org/events for updates.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

By Connor Wright

SOUTHIE – Port of Boston dockworkers went on strike at the Conley Terminal in South Boston last night. Five locals of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) joined the picket line together, representing some 300 workers across all Port of Boston facilities, a local ILA official told Working Mass.

The strike is part of a larger coastwide strike of East Coast longshore workers. Workers at Conley Terminal are joining almost 45,000 fellow ILA members on strike at ports all along the East Coast, after their master contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) expired at midnight on Monday.

The ILA is striking over wages and to prevent further automation of the ports, a longstanding issue for workers in the industry. The master contract has protections against “fully automated” ports that replace large numbers of workers with machinery, but employers have been pushing the interpretation of that language. The union cited violations in an Alabama port as part of their rationale for striking.

“Even though the ILA’s members worked tirelessly during the pandemic to ensure that the nation’s commerce flowed and continue to sacrifice time with their own families so that goods can arrive in the homes of other families throughout the world, still, due to corporate greed, employers refuse to compensate the ILA’s members fairly,” the ILA said in a written statement to Working Mass.

“Over the last several years, the net revenues of these companies have grown astronomically from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars while the ILA members’ wage increases do not even cover the cost of inflation. The ILA is fighting for respect, appreciation, and fairness in a world in which corporations are dead set on replacing hardworking people with automation.”

“We are prepared to fight as long as necessary,” ILA President Harold Daggett wrote in a statement posted on Facebook, “to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve.”

The last coastwide dockworkers strike was in 1977. For most ILA members this is their first time on strike.

Connor Wright is a member of Boston DSA and a labor reporter for Working Mass.

Photo Credit: Henry De Groot

Statement of Solidarity with the International Longshoremen's Association

For Immediate Release: October 1 2024

Contact: northnj@dsanj.org 

 

North NJ DSA stands in solidarity with the International Longshoremen’s Association as the clock ends on USMX’s disgraceful responses to the union’s demands. As multinational corporations move their wealth around, the ILA stands on business demanding what the nation’s largest maritime worker union, and all workers deserve–more. 

 

We support the locals in North Jersey, and call on DSA members to support active pickets at ports from Maine to Texas.

In addition, this strike also coincides with the one year anniversary of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Let us remember that the capitalist bosses who are cracking down on the rights of dockworkers are also providing critical backing for Israel’s settler-colonial war in Palestine and Lebanon. An ILA strike could potentially halt arms shipments to Israel and make a firm show of solidarity with the Palestinian working class.

 

To truly have worker interests in mind, the U.S. government must side with those striking as well as refocus the trillions of taxpayer dollars funding war and genocide overseas into creating quality jobs and public services for all back at home, from education to healthcare. However, we cannot rely on the political establishment to achieve this as both Republicans and Democrats have repeatedly deferred to corporate and imperial interests and crushed workers’ strikes.

 

It is incumbent that DSA and the socialist movement pick up this fight. We encourage the sharpening of class consciousness among rank and file workers taking part and taking notice of this strike by drawing links between imperialist wars abroad and repression at home. We support the workers in this moment while calling on union leadership to fight for their rights as well as demand an end to illegal arms shipments to Israel, which directly violate Section 6201 of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. We stand with said leadership and remain firm if the Biden administration attempts to intervene in the strike, as it did during the 2022 railroad strike, for it is within the union’s right and power to hold the administration to account for its flagrant and immoral violation of domestic and international law.

 

When the shipments that make our economy move come to a halt, we’re all reminded by the power of an organized working class and the withholding of our labor to fight for a better society.

 

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Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States. DSA is building a working class movement from the bottom-up, establishing a democratic socialist presence from the workplace to our neighborhoods and broader society.

The post Statement of Solidarity with Striking ILA first appeared on North NJ DSA.