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Port of Sacramento: Cops Assault Black Longshoremen Defend Bay Area ILWU Members! OAKLAND—U.S. imperialism’s “war on terror” came home to the American working class again on August 23 when two black longshoremen from San Francisco International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, Aaron Harrison and Jason Ruffin, were viciously assaulted and arrested by West Sacramento cops. According to an Internet posting signed by seven members of Local 10, the two had worked that morning at the Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) terminal in Sacramento and were on their way back from lunch when security guards insisted on searching their car. Harrison and Ruffin questioned the guards’ authority for the search and called their Local 10 Business Agent for advice. This enraged the security guards, who were immediately joined by city cops. Dragging the workers from the car, cops assaulted, maced and handcuffed them, and the two were jailed on charges of trespassing and obstructing a police officer. These charges are completely false! The two workers had been dispatched by the Sacramento ILWU local and had already shown their Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) work IDs. They had every right to call their union business agent. The ILWU should mobilize a show of force to protest this victimization of its members and send a signal to the cops, judges, PMA and its hired thugs that further assaults on the union will not be tolerated. But to date the Local 10 leadership has taken no action in the workers’ defense. The pretext for the assault was a new maritime security regulation, which shows the threat to labor posed by beefing up “port security.” For its part, the ILWU International has supported such measures, seeking only to ameliorate certain provisions while pointing the finger at the largely immigrant port truckers as the “real” security threat. The “war on terror” is pushed by both the Democrats and Republicans to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a vast increase of the state’s repressive powers. The 2002 Maritime Security Act (MSA) mandated transportation security ID cards requiring background checks on workers and the banning of those with felony convictions. This poses a racist purge of the workforce, since blacks and Latinos have been particular targets in the “war on drugs.” Meanwhile, security guards like those who attacked Ruffin and Harrison are in many ports organized into the ILWU! Security guards work as auxiliaries of the cops, who “serve and protect” the property owners who make their profits off the exploitation of labor. Cops and security guards out of the unions! Local 10 was a key component of a 9 February 2002 labor-centered demonstration in Oakland against the MSA and the draconian USA Patriot Act. That demonstration, initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee and the Labor Black League for Social Defense, struck a blow against the facade of national unity sought by the U.S. government after September 11 and pointed to the need for the working class to mobilize in class-struggle actions against the “war on terror,” independent of and in opposition to the capitalists and their state. The PDC has sent a letter in defense of the two longshoremen to the Yolo County Office of the District Attorney. A court hearing for Ruffin and Harrison is currently set for October 4 at 8:30 a.m. in the Yolo County Superior Court, 213 Third St. in Woodland, CA. All out in solidarity! Drop the charges!
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