BT Forum “Class Struggle on the Waterfront – Lessons from the ILWU”
Saturday March 25th from 9-10:30am
University of Massachusetts Amherst in Campus Center 903.
On May 1, 2008 25,000 dockers belonging to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down every port from San Diego to Seattle to protest the occupation of Iraq. One of all too few anti-war strikes in U.S. history, it was not the first time the ILWU, one of the most militant unions in the U.S., engaged in labor action directed toward political ends. In 1999 the ILWU conducted a similar action in solidarity with the imprisoned former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Previous actions also included 1973 boycotts to protest Pinochet’s U.S.-backed right-wing coup in Chile and 1984 actions against apartheid in South Africa, winning praise from Nelson Mandela. The origins of this militancy did not spontaneously arise among the multiracial dockers union. From the 1934 West Coast strike, one of the foundational struggles of the CIO, to the Cold War tribulations of ILWU leader Harry Bridges, to the class-struggle program of the Militant Longshoreman led by Bolshevik Tendency supporter Howard Keylor, workers who identified as revolutionary Marxists played important roles in injecting class-struggle politics into the union in a manner that offers important lessons for the future.
This forum is part of the Building Worker Power conference. Conference events will be held on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the following locations: the UMass Amherst Campus Center (CC), the Old Chapel (OC), and the Integrative Learning Center (ILC).