Author: lililoof

I’m trying to educate myself about the port action, how corporations and unions understand the port of Oakland, how it pertains to the truckers and the city as well as the Occupy movement. I’ll be updating this all day. In the meantime:

• Here is the West Coast Port Shutdown’s official site.
• Shut Down the Port focuses mainly on Portland.
• Here is what the Charter for the City of Oakland has to say about the Port, and the Board that governs the port as well as the airports, because. Some items of interest:

1. Section 717.3 talks about funds and how they’re allocated. Ninth and last on that list is the item concerning how monies could (conceivably, but never practically) return to the City of Oakland: “Ninth: For transfer to the General Fund of the City, to the extent that the Board shall determine that surplus moneys exist in such fund which are not then needed for any of the purposes above stated.”
2. Surprising (to me—I’m new to city charters) was the conflation of transportation by sea, land, and air, such that hubs for all three fall under the Board of the Port of Oakland’s jurisdiction:

Section 717 (1). All Port facilities, airport facilities and terminal facilities of any kind or character are hereby consolidated and shall be operated as a single project by the Board in the interest of transportation by land, by sea and by air, it being hereby found and determined that transportation facilities of all classes implement and augment each other to such an extent that the same must in the public interest be operated singly and under one central supervision and control. Wherever in this Charter the terms “port”, “project”, or “facilities” are used, the same shall include all facilities under the jurisdiction of the Board, irrespective of whether the same shall be port or airport facilities or other real or personal property or equipment of the Port and related improvements, structures or facilities.

1. Section 726 explains that the Board’s power includes the ability to apply terms, conditions and limits to federal uses of the port and its surroundings:

Section 726. Without denial or disparagement of other powers now held by or that may hereafter be given to the City of Oakland or its legislative bodies under or by the Constitution or the laws of the State of California, the City Council and Board of Port Commissioners are hereby authorized and empowered to grant and convey all or any portion of or interest in the tidelands and submerged lands located in the Middle Harbor area of the City, lying between the Estuary of San Antonio and Seventh Street, and westward of Bay Street extended southerly, to the United States of America for public and governmental (including military or naval) purposes, subject to such terms, conditions, and reservations, if any, as the Council and Board shall deem proper.

• A thorough and extremely useful overview of the tensions surrounding the port action–thanks to Evan Rohar and Eduardo Soriano-Castillo at Labor Notes (via @AhabLives).
• Emily Loftis’ article for Salon on how Occupy is redemocratizing labor, and how the unions are caught in an uncomfortable place between occupiers and the Democratic Party. This piece is not without its problems; see the comments for why.
• ILWU International President Robert McEllrath’s letter rejecting Occupy solidarity—and asking that Occupiers not mention the dispute with EGT as a reason for the port occupation. Raises the neverending (and, to my mind, insoluble) question of what “solidarity” means, particularly when it’s unwanted.
• Gavin Aronsen’s article for Mother Jones on the scope of the projected shutdown and the complicated question of union involvement.
• A summary of the conflict between ILWU and EGT at Labor Notes: “EGT Development, a consortium of three companies, wants to operate its new $200 million grain terminal in Longview using non-ILWU labor, despite a contract with the port requiring it to do so. When the ILWU protested, the company signed up with an Operating Engineers local.” (This story is illustrated with a photo of ILWU International President Robert McEllrath being detained by police.)

In a series of protests since July, ILWU members and supporters sat down on train tracks and occupied the new terminal, resulting in 100 arrests. As picketing continued, no trains had attempted to bring in grain shipments since July. But last week a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order at the request of the National Labor Relations Board, which said ILWU pickets had harassed EGT workers.

• An open letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports–especially important, since the truckers are the most vulnerable members of this whole mess, and probably suffered the greatest (proportionate) economic hardship as a result of both the port action and of the lack of a union:

Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?

• Steve Stallone at Counterpunch outlines the history of this kind of action, particularly as it pertains to the ILWU. He characterizes the Occupy movement as picking up on a long ILWU, and explains the goals of the shutdown:

This time the Occupiers are doing it to highlight the nasty anti-union tactics of a major international food and grain conglomerate, Export Grain Terminal (EGT), whose majority owner, Bunge Ltd. is a multi-national company busting unions from Texas to Bulgaria to Argentina and is also deeply involved with corporate takeover of food systems, displacing local agriculture with soybean monoculture. EGT is trying to break the labor standards and jurisdiction of the ILWU by bringing in scabs to load their grain ships at the Port of Longview.

In Southern California, at the huge port complex of Los Angeles/Long Beach, the Occupy blockades are adding another political target. They will focus on the terminal of one of the worst offenders of the 1% on the Coast—Stevedoring Services of America (SSA)—to highlight the plight of the port truckers. These “independent contractors,” mostly immigrant workers who haul the shipped containers to warehouses and other points of destination, have been trying to organize into the Teamsters for over a decade so they could bargain and raise their pathetic pay.

The full text can be found here, with all 61 signatories.

“We, the undersigned members of the Department of Mathematics at UC Berkeley, strongly condemn the actions of the UC Berkeley and Alameda County police forces on Wednesday, November 9. It is our assessment that officers in those forces attacked students who were plainly not engaged in violent activity. We maintain that the use of violence against peaceful protesters is not justified. Therefore, we ask that Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, on behalf of the University community, rescind his message of November 10 condoning the conduct of the police. We call upon the Chancellor to take all necessary steps to ensure that the campus police never again attack unarmed students engaged in peaceful protest.”

Via studentacitivism.net. The original, as a .pdf, is here.

Chancellor Linda Katehi November 22, 2011
UC Davis

Dear Chancellor Katehi:

With a heavy heart and substantial deliberation, we the undersigned faculty of
the UC Davis physics department send you this letter expressing our lack of
confidence in your leadership and calling for your prompt resignation in the wake
of the outrageous, unnecessary, and brutal pepper spraying episode on campus
Friday, Nov. 18

The reasons for this are as follows.

• The demonstrations were nonviolent, and the student encampments
posed no threat to the university community. The outcomes of sending in
police in Oakland, Berkeley, New York City, Portland, and Seattle should
have led you to exhaust all other options before resorting to police action.

• Authorizing force after a single day of encampments constitutes a gross
violation of the UC Davis principles of community, especially the
commitment to civility: “We affirm the right of freedom of expression within
our community and affirm our commitment to the highest standards of
civility and decency towards all.”

• Your response in the aftermath of these incidents has failed to restore
trust in your leadership in the university community.

We have appreciated your leadership during these difficult times on working to
maintain and enhance excellence at UC Davis. However, this incident and the
inadequacy of your response to it has already irreparably damaged the image of
UC Davis and caused the faculty, students, parents, and alumni of UC Davis to
lose confidence in your leadership. At this point we feel that the best thing that
you can do for this university is to take full responsibility and resign immediately.

Our campus community deserves a fresh start.

Sincerely,
Andreas Albrecht
(chair)
Marusa Bradac
Steve Carlip
Hsin-Chia Cheng
Maxwell Chertok
John Conway
Daniel Cox
James P. Crutchfield
Glen Erickson
Chris Fassnacht
Daniel Ferenc
Ching Fong
Giulia Galli
Nemanja Kaloper
Joe Kiskis
Lloyd Knox
Dick Lander
Lori Lubin
Markus Luty
Michael Mulhearn
David Pellett
Wendell Potter
Sergey Savrasov
Richard Scalettar
Robert Svoboda
John TerningMani Tripathi
David Webb
David Wittman
Dong Yu
Gergely Zimanyi

I have to preface this by saying I feel like an idiot for spending all that time “detecting” duplicity in the Chancellor’s and the President’s letters to us, when they were gleefully admitting to it all along in their e-mails. Then again, I guess it’s good to have proof.

Via reclaimuc comes this selection from a California Public Records Request which revealed a 300+ page pdf of email correspondence between UC Berkeley deans, chancellors, public relations officers, cops on how to stop the building occupations in Fall 2009.

What follows appears on p. 243. It’s an account of that Friday’s arrests, written in its entirety on Thursday, the day before anything had happened. With a note: “We will need UCPD to fill in the blanks asap Friday morning.”

Chancellor Birgeneau replies, asking that the protesters not be referred to as “activists” because that gives them “gravitas,” and requests that a quote from him be added expressing his admiration for the professional way in which the police removed the illegal protesters.

HE ASKED THAT THIS QUOTE BE ADDED THE DAY BEFORE THE PROTEST HAD TAKEN PLACE.

This says everything we need to know about the good faith with which the administration has been operating.

From: Janet Gilmore [jangilmore@berkeley.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 6:45
To: Claire Holmes
Cc: mjc@berkeley.edu, dmogulof@berkeley.edu, jangilmore@berkeley.edu, Margo Bennett
Subject: Draft Wheeler brief for web

Claire,
Take a look, change as needed and please get to California Hall OK, as needed. We will need UCPD to fill in the blanks asap Friday morning.
–Janet

DRAFT

University of California, Berkeley, police arrested xxx trespassing student activists and other protesters this morning (Friday, Dec. 11), hours before the group was set to hold an unauthorized concert inside a classroom building.

According to UC police, xxx individuals were arrested and cited for XXXXXX at XXX {time} this morning {XXX and taken to XXXX jail/Or cited and released!}. The group included xxx students and xxx individuals not affiliated with UC Berkeley.

The activists, who have been protesting against student fee increases and other issues, had maintained an illegal though largely nondisruptive 24-hour presence inside Wheeler Hall since Monday.

However, by week’s end the group began announcing plans for an unauthorized concert featuring guest artists and a DJ — an event that threatened to disrupt final examinations scheduled to take place in that same building on Saturday.

Campus staff spoke with the organizers about the issue, but the activists vowed to go forward. Their publicity materials stated that the concert would begin Friday night and would end “8 a.m. Saturday” and until “the cops kick in the doors.” Final examinations are set to begin inside Wheeler Hall at 9 a.m. Saturday.

“Once the activists refused to reconsider plans to hold an unauthorized all-night concert in an academic building we had to take steps to ensure that finals could go forward,” said Dan Mogulof, campus spokesman. “Our primary responsibility is to the campus’s core academic mission and the 35,000 students who are not participating in the activists’ efforts.”

Campus police are currently monitoring access to Wheeler Hall to ensure that only authorized faculty and staff are allowed in. Classroom review sessions that were scheduled to take place inside Wheeler today will instead take place in XXXXX and as indicated on fliers posted outside of XXXX.

Wheeler Hall is one of the campus’s largest classroom buildings and is open for campus business daily until 10 p.m. The trespassing group, which ranged from a dozen to several dozen at any given time this week, were not authorized to hold events inside the building; nor to sleep in the building overnight. Police cautioned activists every night this week — including Thursday night — that they were subject to arrest and student conduct code sanctions for their actions.

The activists entered Wheeler Hall on Monday and since then had set up information tables inside the building, stashed food and refreshments, posted banners, strummed guitars, played late-night music and declared the building an “open university.” Early in the week they appeared to be taking steps to ensure that their activities would not conflict with classroom review sessions underway inside the building.

p. 245

From: Robert J. Birgeneau
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 8:59 PM
To: ‘Claire Holmes’; Beata Fitzpatrick’; George Breslauer’; ‘Phyllis Hoffman’
Cc: ‘Janet Gilmore’
Subject: RE: DRAFT text for Wheeler story

Hi Claire,
I agree with the basic message. However, we need to find a new word other than “activists” to describe the protesters; that descriptor gives them too much gravitas. I prefer: intruders, occupiers, and/or protesters. Also, assuming that everything goes according to plan, I would like a quote expressing my admiration for the very professional way in which the police managed to apprehend and remove the illegal occupiers.

Bob

UPDATE: And again thanks to reclaimuc, here is how the statement actually appeared the next day. Some differences between the draft above and the statement as it ran are as follows, as noted by reclaimuc (who you should really follow—reclaimuc—because they broke this story over a year ago):