Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
1)
"Charges Against Oakland 25 Antiwar Protesters Dropped" --
reprinted from Oakland Tribune (April 23, 2004)
2)
"Civil Liberties Victory in Oakland Courts: All Charges Dropped
Against Port Anti-War Protesters; Longshoremen Plan Mass March on
Washington," by Jack Heyman
*******************
1) Charges Against Oakland 25 Antiwar Protesters Dropped
Criminal charges filed against protesters arrested last year during an
anti-war demonstration at the Port of Oakland were dropped Thursday,
ending a year-long saga that added another blemish to the city's police
department.
Deputy District Attorney Julie Dunger announced the decision to drop
charges during an early morning hearing in which defense attorneys had
planned to push for the setting of trial dates.
Noting protesters demonstrating in subsequent rallies remained peaceful
and the police department changed its crowd control tactics, Dunger said
there was no reason to proceed with the criminal cases.
"It's been a year since that day," she said. "In that time,
there have been peaceful and lawful protests. During that time, the
Oakland Police Department has changed its procedures. In light of these
facts, the people, at this time, move to dismiss all charges."
The half-dozen or so protesters attending the hearing gasped in jubilation
and began shaking hands as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Don Clay
read off each name followed by Dunger asking for dismissal.
"This is a big relief," said Lindsay Parkinson, 24, one of the
24 protesters and a longshoreman who were arrested. "It was something
that was in the back of your head all the time."
Protesters were arrested on April 8, 2003, after a violent confrontation
with police who fired wooden dowels, bean bags and rubber bullets at a
crowd of more than 100 who were blocking the entrances at two maritime
terminals.
While police said they fired after protesters threw objects at them,
videotapes failed to prove that claim. In addition, many protesters had
wounds on their backs, indicating they were trying to run away when police
began firing.
Police reports obtained by ANG Newspapers last June suggested most of the
90 officers sent to the port that day didn't see protesters throw rocks,
bottles or metal objects.
The incident sparked condemnations from newspapers across the nation. Even
the U.N. Commission on Human Rights joined the fray, placing Oakland in
the same category as Indonesia, Burundi and China as a government that
wrongly used excessive force.
Despite the national outrage, city and police department leaders continued
to defend their actions, saying the filing of the charges proved they
acted correctly.
"It's a good thing they did (file charges). It vindicates our
deployment and shows we did things the way they should have been
done," police Lt. Howard Jordan said at the time.
"The mayor has full confidence in the police chief ... and feels
(police commanders) are reasonable and compassionate people," a
representative for Mayor Jerry Brown said a day after the confrontation.
But on Thursday, those who supported the police the loudest remained
silent. The mayor said through a representative it was "premature to
comment."
Police Chief Richard Word also declined comment and deflected calls to
Deputy Chief Pete Dunbar, who said the district attorney's decision was no
reflection on how police acted.
While declining to say the department erred in its handling of the
incident, Dunbar said it has changed crowd-controlpolices and has since
worked peacefully with protesters.
Last December, Word instituted a ban against using wooden pellets and
motorcycles as ways to break up large crowds. That change included a
restriction on the use of bean bags and established "protest
liaisons," who meet with protest organizers before an event.
Defense attorneys said that ban probably helped the district attorney make
the decision to drop the charges. Many speculated the only reason the
criminal cases dragged on were an attempt to give the department political
cover.
"They finally realized they didn't really have any evidence,"
defense attorney Bobbie Stein said. "The only reason they were
charged was political pressure."
Stein said much of that evidence, which included transcripts of police
communi-cations and video tapes, showed officers arrested protesters
without saying why.
Defense attorneys said they were not surprised by the decision to drop
charges given the evidence, the costs involved and work associated with
setting trial dates for two dozen defendants.
But while protesters said they were pleased the case was dismissed, some
said more needs to be done to hold police accountable.
"I feel liberated but I feel frustrated too," said Kevin
Kachadourian, 48, who was arrested. "The district attorney and the
Oakland Police Department need to be held more accountable. They should be
the ones charged with something."
While the possibility of either being charged is remote, protesters will
have a chance to argue their case through a federal lawsuit filed against
the department and the city.
That case, filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil
Liberties Union of Northern California, seeks monetary damages for medical
expenses, lost wages, interference with school, damage to career and
numerous civil rights abuses.
Lawyers representing clients in that case said Thursday's dismissal of
charges does not legally affect their civil rights case but could put
additional pressure on the city and police department to settle.
In addition, with criminal charges dropped against the protesters, those
charged can now join the civil suit, lawyers said.
Karen Boyd, a spokesperson for City Attorney John Russo, said city
attorneys have been working with the protesters lawyers in hopes of
creating a settlement similar to that in the Riders case.
In that case, the city agreed to a unique $20 million settlement in which
half went directly to citizens who were falsely arrested and the other
half went toward revamping the police department.
-----
(This article is reprinted from the April 23, 2004 issue of the Oakland
Tribune. It was written by staffwriter Paul T. Rosynsky.)
**********
2) Civil Liberties Victory in Oakland Courts: All Charges Dropped Against
Port Anti-War Protesters; Longshoremen Plan Mass March on Washington
By JACK HEYMAN
(Note: This article first appeared in CounterPunch magazine on
May 12, 2004)
"This is a victory we're all gonna celebrate!", exclaimed
Charles Braves, deacon of the predominantly black Charleston, South
Carolina longshore union. He was talking about the April 22 court decision
by the Alameda County District Attorney's office to drop all of the bogus
charges against antiwar protesters and a longshore union official arrested
after being attacked by riot-clad police in the port of Oakland a year
ago. The Charleston longshoremen, themselves the victims of a police
attack in their port, had participated in one of the several rallies held
between the headquarters of the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda
County Superior Court House. The Bay Area protest rallies, crammed in
between the police building and the courthouse, had become both a metaphor
for and a test of civil liberties in America since 9/11.
The day after the police attack in the port of Oakland, the New York Times
quoted OPD Chief Richard Word as saying that police dispersed the crowd at
the behest of the maritime companies. American President Lines (APL) and
Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) were being picketed for
war-profiteering. SSA, a hostile anti-union outfit, received a "no
bid" contract by Bush to run the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Maritime
employers had even admitted that they met with the police and the Port
Commission three days before the April 7th demonstration to discuss how to
handle the protest. The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, the
state's anti-terrorist agency, "warned" police that they could
expect violence from the protesters. This was not so much a "police
riot" as it was a planned police attack. The Department of Homeland
Security paid Oakland police nearly 1/2 million dollars for their
"services".
The District Attorney's bogus charges against the defendants were filed
nearly two months after the police attack and only when they learned that
a press conference was being called to announce a civil suit against the
OPD with the lead plaintiff being the longshore union, ILWU Local 10. Many
of the nearly 50 people injured were shot in the back, including 9
longshoremen on their way to work. Several required hospital emergency
room treatment. One hitch: the police were not allowing ambulances for
protesters in the port area. It was beyond the classic case of blaming the
victim for the crime: now, unconscionably, the victims had to suffer until
medical attention could be found. Even the U.N., which sanctioned the U.S.
war against North Korea, and later, Vietnam and NATO's war in Yugoslavia,
cited the Oakland police violence against anti-war activists as a
"human rights" violation.
The real sideshow in this political circus is "progressive"
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who from the very beginning defended the
indefensible police onslaught. Police had maintained that they fired on
demonstrators with "less-than-lethal" weapons only after they
were pelted with rocks and bottles. Even police videos show this to be a
lie. Nevertheless, while the Oakland school system is bankrupt, Brown was
doggedly protecting his "boys in blue" by pursuing this costly
and unwinnable litigation. A "blue ribbon" panel appointed to
investigate, disbanded before it even convened. The City Council and the
Citizens' Police Review Board (CPRB) held public meetings on the police
attack which had been characterized by the New York Times as the most
violent "clash" during the Iraq war. One member of the CPRB
announced that he had resigned because the Board was a sham that
whitewashed police atrocities.
One of the Oakland 25 defendants, a legal observer, said the KGB in her
native Ukraine never treated her as badly as the OPD. In 1997 before he
was elected mayor, Brown participated in a similar picket protest in the
port of Oakland in support of Liverpool, England dockers, blocking trucks
from entering the marine terminal. He even faxed a message:
"Congratulations on your efforts to advance and protect the right of
working people to join in solidarity. Free speech is the cornerstone of a
democratic society." To date, Brown, who only a few years ago said
big business donors had corrupted both parties and was talking about an
alternative political party, has not uttered a word of criticism of the
police violence nor of international maritime companies with whom the
police colluded.
With the implementation of IMF-type capitalist "free trade"
agreements, port workers around the world have especially been targeted
for increased government repression. In Rotterdam and Barcelona last
November, dockworkers protesting a union-busting measure in the European
Parliament to privatize the ports, were viciously attacked by police. And
since the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Bush administration has steamrollered
its anti-labor agenda. During West Coast longshore negotiations in 2002,
Defense (i.e. War) Secretary Rumsfeld and Homeland Security Czar Ridge,
threatened to occupy the docks with troops, ostensibly for "national
security" reasons, if there were any dockworker protests that delayed
ship sailings.
The Bush administration's coercion paved the way for a lockout of
longshore workers by Pacific Coast maritime employers, which shut West
Coast ports down for ten days. Hypocritically, this was not deemed a risk
to national security. This, in turn, was followed by Bush's invoking of
the Taft-Hartley Act at the request of Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein,
which forced longshoremen back to work under conditions demanded by the
employers. No politician in Washington, Democrat or Republican, spoke out
against the longshore union being shackled by this slave-labor law.
Moreover, the "war on terror" with its attendant legislation,
the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, ad infinitum as well as the
imperialist war in Iraq enjoy bipartisan support. How do working people
solve this political conundrum without wading into the "lesser of two
evils" swamp?
Longshore Local 10, which has inspired many by its stands on social and
political issues through dock actions -- against South African
anti-apartheid, in solidarity with anti-WTO protesters in Seattle, for
freedom for black political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, in protest against
the bloody Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile -- now is calling for a
Million Worker March on Washington on October 16th ( www.millionworkermarch.org
), independent of both the Democrat and Republican Parties. Organizers say
it's time for the working class to stop being the whipping boy for
capitalist greed -- no more cannon fodder for imperialist wars, defend
workers' rights, civil rights and civil liberties, an end to the piracy of
public institutions through privatization, increased funding for social
needs like health care, education, housing and jobs.
The power of workers, they say, has to be harnessed into a massive protest
mobilization in Washington to demonstrate to the ruling class that their
political monopoly will no longer go unchallenged. The momentum for the
longshoremen's call for the march seems to be growing with endorsements
from the San Francisco Labor, Charleston (South Carolina), the Albany and
Troy, New York Labor Councils, Long Island City Teamsters' Local 808, an
IBEW local in Philadelphia, the Northern California Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists, the Black Caucus of the Teamsters Union and other unions
and community groups around the country. Danny Glover and Dick Gregory
have signed on as well.
The last time longshoremen were shot by police,in 1934, it provoked a
general strike in San Francisco. It is a history that is imbedded in the
culture of longshore workers on the West Coast waterfront. AFL-CIO
officials have either been intimidated by or bought into Bush's "war
on terror" and the Iraq War, but not so the rank and file. Portland
longshore worker Jack Mulcahy intoned,"If the ports had been shut
down when police fired on longshoremen and the antiwar activists, maybe
the government would never have filed charges." Government repression
and employer takeaways are the tinder that fuel the fire for mass marches.
-----
Jack Heyman was the longshore union official arrested during the
anti-war demonstration in the port of Oakland. He has been active in ILWU
solidarity actions since the militant 1984 anti-apartheid action in San
Francisco. For more information visit: www.defendilwuba.com