Globalized, Except...

Anti-Arab Hysteria Over "Port Security"

FEBRUARY 27—Adding to the racist frenzy over the proposed takeover of some terminal operations at six U.S. ports by Arab-owned Dubai Ports World, the Teamsters union staged demonstrations across the country on February 24 around the slogan, “Goodbye Dubai, Secure America’s Ports!” The Port of Oakland protest was joined by the ILWU longshore union. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) held its own rally today in Port Newark, New Jersey. These rallies are part of a drive, led by Democrats, against the Bush administration’s approval of the takeover, which they denounce as a blow against the “war on terror.”

In the “liberal” advance guard of this jingoist campaign, Maureen Dowd ranted in her New York Times (22 February) column, “Just because the wealthy foreigners who own our debt can blackmail us with their economic leverage, does that mean we should expose our security assets to them as well?” Fearing that Democrats are finally succeeding in their attempt to supplant the Republicans as the party of “national security,” Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have joined in the chorus against the administration. With Bush hoist on his own petard, the Dubai company is postponing taking over port operations, providing time for a face-saving “investigation.” In an earlier chauvinist outburst over the workings of the “globalized economy,” last year a Congressional anti-Communist furor forced the Chinese deformed workers state to withdraw a bid by its state-owned CNOOC company to buy out oil giant Unocal.

The port deal is simply business as usual: The British-owned P&O company, including its U.S. terminal operations, has been bought out by an outfit owned by the emirate of Dubai, which happens to provide the U.S. Navy with a crucial deepwater seaport in the Persian Gulf as well as an American air base. In fact, some 80 percent of shipping terminals in the U.S. today are managed by foreign-owned companies. To be sure, Dubai’s royal family is a bunch of slave drivers. An Australian port workers union statement points out that in Dubai, “foreign workers predominate and trade unions are outlawed. Deportation awaits those who dare to organize.”

Reporting on discussions with Newark longshoremen, the Washington Post (25 February) cogently noted that many workers “took the age-old view that a boss is a boss and a contract is greased.” But the labor bureaucracy has undermined the unions’ ability to fight against the port bosses by buying into the government’s “war on terror,” which is nothing but a pretext for the rulers’ imperialist depredations from Afghanistan to Iraq and for ripping up the rights of immigrants, black people and labor at home. During the ILWU’s 2002 contract battle, Thomas Ridge, then Bush’s Homeland Security chief, warned the union president that a strike would “threaten national security”—a concrete demonstration that the “war on terror” and war on the unions are one and the same. Nevertheless, the ILWU tops signed on to the “war on terror,” offering that its own members would help police the docks.

Both the ILWU and ILA supported the 2002 Maritime Transportation Security Act (MSA). If fully enforced, the MSA would bar access to port terminals by workers convicted of a felony in the previous seven years. This is a particular threat to the hard-won union jobs of blacks and Latinos, who have been on the receiving end of the racist “war on drugs.” Yet a February 23 ILWU press release complains that the union “has repeatedly appealed to federal authorities to enforce port security regulations—but to no avail” and demands the strict enforcement of several MSA regulations. Moves to jack up policing of the docks also threaten the largely immigrant and non-union port truckers, a number of whom are Arab. But the ILWU press release demands that the government “thoroughly screen all vehicle drivers” at terminal gates, undermining any efforts to organize the port truckers and setting them up for further police scrutiny.

At the February 24 Oakland protest, which drew about 100 people, former ILWU Local 10 executive board member Clarence Thomas warned against xenophobia and racial profiling and declared that the issue was “about capital” and “privatization” of the docks. So what was he doing addressing a rally whose sole purpose was to whip up xenophobia and anti-Arab racism…and chanting “Goodbye Dubai” with the rest of the labor fakers? The ILWU Local 10 tops are masters at providing a “progressive” veneer for the chauvinism and class collaborationism of the U.S. labor bureaucracy. For his part, Democratic Oakland mayor Jerry Brown called for “an active political movement to take back the United States.” The last time we know of that Jerry Brown made his presence felt on the docks was when his cops fired wooden bullets, pellet-filled “sting bags” and concussion grenades on antiwar protesters and ILWU longshoremen in April 2003 (see “Shipping Bosses, Police Collude in Cop Rampage,” WV No. 802, 25 April 2003).

Fighting against poisonous “war on terror” chauvinism, on 9 February 2002 some 300 unionists, immigrants, blacks and youth rallied in Oakland around the demands: “No to the USA-Patriot Act and the Maritime Security Act! Down with the anti-immigrant witchhunt!” Initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee and the Labor Black League for Social Defense, this rally—with black longshoremen at its core—was the first time that organized labor mobilized in defense of its immigrant brothers and sisters targeted under the “war on terror.” ILWU Local 10 officials were among the endorsers of the united-front rally, which was addressed by Clarence Thomas. The Spartacist League speaker at the rally, Brian Manning, stated:

“The workers and the capitalists have irreconcilable interests: the capitalists want to extract as much profit as possible, drive down wages, etc. The capitalists have a state to help them do this—the cops, the courts, the prisons—and then they try to scam you and say this is democracy.... A class-struggle leadership in the trade unions must be forged, a leadership that knows who our friends are and who our enemies are. We need a workers party to fight for a workers government.”

—“‘Black Rights, Immigrant Rights Go Forward Hand
in Hand’,” WV No. 775,
22 February 2002