ILWU Local 10 Resolution: Fight Police Terror! Mobilize Labor to Stop Attacks By Cops and White Supremacists! Build United Front Working Class Action!

WHEREAS, the cop shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin has sparked justifiable protests against continuing racist police terror, and

WHEREAS, a white supremacist in complicity with police killed two protesters and wounded others, and

WHEREAS, the professional ballplayers in the NBA, MLB, NFL, all in labor unions, have decided to strike to protest and express their outrage over these racist killings and inspired others across the country, and

WHEREAS, President Trump sent federal troops to Portland, Oregon to quash protests against systemic racism and police repression; and

WHEREAS, the feds have grabbed people off the street in Portland and taken them away in unmarked vans for participating in Black Lives Matter protests recalling U.S.-backed military juntas in Latin America in the 1970s; and

WHEREAS, Trump has called Oakland a “mess” and threatened to send troops here in clear reprisal for ILWU longshore workers shutting down all West Coast ports on Juneteenth and mobilizing thousands to protest and march from the port and to rally at Oscar Grant Plaza (Oakland City Hall) demanding, stop police terror and end systemic racism; and

WHEREAS, police in cities and states governed by Democrats have wantonly killed African Americans, from Oscar Grant in 2009 to George Floyd in Minneapolis this year, and now shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times in front of his traumatized three boys as he was entering their car, and

WHEREAS, this bloody, racist repression happens daily in black ghettos and Latino barrios in the United States; and

WHEREAS, labor in order to emancipate all the working people and oppressed must defend the right to protest and join our brothers and sisters in the forefront of the struggle against all forms of racist, sexist and homophobic attacks;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that

1.) We demand that, to defend the right of free speech and protest, cops and feds get out of occupied Portland and Kenosha; and

2.) Police must be removed from all unions and labor bodies, as they are the repressors of workers’ strikes and enforcers of racist “law and order” against African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and immigrants; and that

3.) We support the mobilization of the entire labor movement independently of the Democrats and Republicans in worker actions and a united front to stop the growing racist fascistic terror encouraged by Trump and his Neo-nazi cronies.

4.) We need to prepare for mass national working class united front strike action to force Trump out in his efforts to terrorize Blacks and other working class communities in order to prevent them from voting and attempting a coup to stay in office.