On This Day

Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.

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20 June

OaklandZimPicketMASS ACTION PLUS WORKER SUPPORT DEFEATS ISRAELI SHIPS
On this day in 2010, a mass demo was in place at Oakland Port, California, chanting “Free, Free Palestine, Don’t You Cross Our Picket Line”. Union members spoke to drivers, pickets sat down in front of cars. The San Francisco Labour Council and Alameda County Labour Council mobilised hundreds of trade unionists to back the demo called by the Labour Community Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Workers arrived for the day shift and refused to cross the picket line on grounds of “health and safety”.

 

العمل الجماعي ودعم العمال يهزم السفن الإسرائيلية

20يونيو

 في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2010 ، تجمع عدد كبير من المتظاهرين في ميناء أوكالند، كاليفورنيا ، وهم يرددون "فلسطين حرة حرة ، لا تتعدوا خط اعتصامنا". تحدث أعضاء النقابة إلى السائقين، جلس المعتصمون امام السيارات. قام مجلس العمال في سان فرانسيسكو ومجلس العمال في مقاطعة ألاميدا بتعبئة مئات النقابيين لدعم الأحتجاج الذي دعت إليه لجنة المجتمع العمالي تضامناً مع الشعب الفلسطيني. وعندما وصل العمال لأداء مناوبة عملهم اليومية، رفضوا عبور خط الاعتصام على أساس الألتزام " بارشادات الصحة والسلامة".

 


Repeated in 2021
For the seventh year in a row, Israeli-owned ships have not been allowed to unload in the Port of Oakland. On June 4, thousands of supporters of the Palestinian struggle conducted six simultaneous picket lines during two work shifts to “Block the Boat.” Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 honored the picket lines, refusing to work the ship.

In a tremendous victory of worker and community solidarity, the Israeli ZIM-operated ship was forced to leave the port at 6PM - with all of its cargo still on board.

The action was the culmination of a weeks-long virtual standoff between protesters and ZIM. The Volans was originally scheduled to dock in Oakland on May 18, but it lingered off the California coast for 17 days while protesters tracked its movements on the internet and prepared to descend on the port at a moment’s notice. AROC spread the word at a May 15 pro-Palestinian protest in San Francisco about its plans to blockade the ship, and activists set up a text message alert system that over 5,000 people eventually signed up for. The group speculated that the Volan’s delay in docking was a result of their plans. 

The day of action began when hundreds of demonstrators assembled at 5:00 a.m. to prevent workers from entering the berth where the Israeli-owned ZIM ship had docked. Picketers fanned out to six entrances used by the dock workers.

Members of ILWU Local 10 and other union members stood around in groups, refusing to cross the picket line and talking to protesters. Truckers driving through the Port of Oakland sounded their horns in solidarity with the protest.

The Israeli ship actually left the harbor before the official start of the second shift in the evening — a strong measure of the success and strength of the Block the Boat action.

The solidarity action was organized by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and supported by many progressive groups in the Bay Area. According to AROC, the blockade of the boat was in direct response to an international call sent out by Palestinian labor unions asking workers around the world to support Palestine by refusing to handle any Israeli goods or cargo.

Friday’s ship blockade was an eye-catching show of strength by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. But it wasn’t the first time protesters at Oakland’s port have attempted to bring international trade to a halt. Seven years ago, another ZIM-operated ship was prevented from unloading in Oakland. And the current blockade and the 2014 action are just two chapters in a long history of pickets, protests, and strikes on Oakland’s waterfront.

Extending a radical history of the Port of Oakland and Bay Area longshoreman protests
One of the first and biggest shutdowns at the Port of Oakland was on May 9, 1934, when East Bay longshoremen joined workers at every West Coast port by walking off the job. The strike, which lasted over 83 days, was in response to harsh labor conditions imposed on dockworkers by shipping companies. The companies tried to break the strike by recruiting non-union laborers to work the waterfront, and police violently attacked the striking workers. Two longshoremen in San Francisco died at the hands of police. The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, as it came to be known, resulted in the unionization of all West Coast ports in the United States under the auspices of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, or ILWU. Ever since, the union’s members have respected many picket lines and refused to cross them, in part due to the threat of violence when the police become involved.

In 1976, a Black longshoreman from Oakland named Leo Robinson took inspiration from a student uprising in Soweto, South Africa, and formed the Southern Africa Liberation Support Committee, which raised awareness about apartheid among West Coast dockworkers. Years later, workers organized strikes in Oakland and San Francisco against South African apartheid, refusing to handle cargo bound for that country. Perhaps the most notable was in 1984 when the committee showed Last Grave at Dimbaza, a documentary about the conditions facing South Africa’s Black population, during an ILWU Local 10 meeting. After seeing the film, the union members unanimously voted to refuse to unload South African cargo and staged an 11-day protest that attracted hundreds of supporters.

International boycott actions
Last month members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union refused to offload a ZIM ship in Durban. The workers were heeding a call from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions for solidarity. Dockworkers in Livorno, Italy also refused to load a shipment of arms going to Israel.

In 2014 AROC - Arab Resource and Organising Centre launched the Block the Boat coalition in response to Israeli shipping line ZIM attempting to dock in Oakland and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) refused to offload ZIM’s cargo in solidarity. The company had not tried to dock in the city again until the week of June 5 2021. Activists throughout the country vowed to block any ZIM ship that tries to offload in their cities.

The 2010 “Zim” action was recognised as a direct echo of Local 10’s fight against apartheid in 1984, when members refused to work South African steel and coal for 11 days until the employer obtained a Federal injunction to break the boycott. Interviewed on video during the “Zim” picket, Local 10 Executive Board member Clarence Thomas stated [1]

“This is a historic occasion. Everyone remembers the action taken by the community and labor in 1984 at Pier 80 in San Francisco, where the “Nedlloyd Kimberley” was picketed.”

Sweden, India, Turkey, Australia - dockworkers solidarity with Palestine - and South Africa:
Members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union SATAWU, affiliated to COSATU, refused to work the Zim Lines “Johanna Russ” – which sailed from Haifa at the height of the invasion – when it arrived in Durban in early February 2009. On the eve of that action, COSATU wrote:

“SATAWU’s action on Sunday will be part of a proud history of worker resistance against apartheid. In 1963, just four years after the Anti-Apartheid Movement was formed, Danish dock workers refused to offload a ship with South African goods. When the ship docked in Sweden, Swedish workers followed suit. Dock workers in the San Francisco Bay Area and, later, in Liverpool also refused to offload South African goods. South Africans, and the South African working class in particular, will remain forever grateful to those workers who determinedly opposed apartheid and decided that they would support the anti-apartheid struggle with their actions.

“Last week, Western Australian members of the Maritime Union of Australia resolved to support the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and have called for a boycott of all Israeli vessels and all vessels bearing goods arriving from or going to Israel.

 73-minute video of the June 2021 Oakland Port picket that turned away the Israeli Zim line ship