Victory Over “War on Terror” Frame-Up on the Docks

The working class won a small, but important, victory on October 28 when Bay Area longshoreman Jason Ruffin won a resounding “not guilty” verdict after a three-day trial on trumped-up charges of resisting arrest. In August 2007, Ruffin and fellow Bay Area longshoreman Aaron Harrison, both black, were returning to work at the Port of Sacramento after lunch when they were stopped by security guards who demanded to search their car, citing the maritime security regulations that are part of the government’s “war on terror.” While the two longshoremen were phoning their International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 business agent for advice, the guards called in the notoriously racist West Sacramento police. The police pepper-sprayed Harrison, forced the two from their car, and then handcuffed and threw them in jail on charges of resisting arrest, obstructing a police officer and trespassing (the latter charge was dropped).

For over two years, the vindictive Yolo County district attorney has been dragging Ruffin and Harrison through the courts, determined to uphold the cops’ prerogatives under draconian “war on terror” security regulations. A nine-day trial of both longshoremen ended in a hung jury in January and Ruffin and Harrison’s cases were subsequently separated. During jury selection for Ruffin’s trial, the judge and the D.A. tried to screen out any jurors with pro-union sympathies while dismissing others who spoke of their own negative experiences with the West Sacramento cops. But even after this selection process (out of a jury pool that included only one black person!), the frame-up of Ruffin was so blatant that the jury acquitted him.

Aaron Harrison’s trial is scheduled to begin November 12. The ILWU and other supporters of the two victimized longshoremen should not be lulled into thinking that Ruffin’s victory guarantees a similar outcome for Harrison. As the driver of the car, he was especially targeted by the cops, who reached in and pepper-sprayed him in the face while he was still behind the wheel! Harrison faces a maximum sentence of one year in the county jail. Harrison, like Ruffin, has stood firm in defense of union rights and against the court’s campaign to brand him a criminal.

At court hearings for the two in 2007 and 2008, Local 10 organized rallies at the Yolo County Courthouse that included other unionists from the Bay Area and the Sacramento area. In June, the ILWU’s coastwide Longshore Division Caucus voted to contribute $100,000 toward Harrison and Ruffin’s defense. Now the union needs to mobilize a strong show of support for Harrison on the opening day of his trial.

As the Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—wrote in a July 16 protest letter to the Yolo County D.A.:

“The persecution of these two union members places them on the front line of the defense of labor and immigrant workers against the government’s attacks under the so-called ‘port security’ laws. The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC), implemented at West Coast ports this past spring as part of a ‘national security’ program, vastly increases the government’s ability to ride roughshod over workers on the docks. It is in the direct interest of dockworkers and the labor movement to defend Harrison and Ruffin as part of the defense of the entire working class.”

Mobilize to ensure that Harrison, like Ruffin, beats back this racist, anti-union frame-up! Drop the charges against Aaron Harrison!