Yahoo! Groups

Akiva Tor
Consul General
State of Israel
456 Montgomery Street, Suite 2100
San Francisco, CA 94104

Dear Mr. Consul General

I am writing you regarding the incident that took place on June 20, 2010, in which a group of anti-Israel demonstrators picketed at the Port of Oakland resulting in members of ILWU Local 10 not unloading a Zim container vessel based on an arbitrator’s determination that the picket line present a “health and safety” risk. The vessel was unloaded the next day.

We want to make it perfectly clear to you and to the people of Israel that our union is fundamentally opposed to efforts to interfere with Israeli ships or cargoes and to the larger “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” effort being directed against Israel. We repudiate such tactics as antithetical to efforts to bring about real peace in the Middle East. We believe that the proper role of the US labor movement is to support efforts to bring about a just settlement that will enable Israel, the national homeland of the Jewish people, and a future Palestinian state to live side-by-side within safe and secure borders, free from war, terrorism, and in mutual respect and recognition.

It is our understanding that anti-Israel resolutions supporting this activity were passed in the Alameda and San Francisco Labor Councils. We wish to assure you that our union was never consulted about these actions and we repudiate them.

Moreover, we are very concerned that events such as occurred June 20 could result in the diversion of freight from the Port of Oakland to the Port of Los Angeles/Lon Beach or other ports along the Pacific Coast. We represent members who provide trucking and rail services for containerized shipping leaving the Port of Oakland and we do not believe that our members’ jobs should be placed in jeopardy because of the efforts of fringe groups to demonize Israel.

We hope what occurred at Oakland will be a one-time event that will never be repeated. We will be urging our brothers and sisters to insure that this is the case.

Marty Frates Secretary-Treasurer

cc: James Hoffa, International President, IBT
Rome Aloise, President, Teamsters Joint Council 7
Randy Cammack, President, Teamsters Joint Council 42
Art Pulaski, Exec. Secretary-Treasurer , CA Labor Federation, AFL-CIO
Bob Balgenorth, President, CA State Building and Construction Trades Council
Josie Camacho, Acting Exec. Secretary-Treasurer , Alameda Labor Council
Tim Paulson, Executive Director, San Francisco Labor Council
Bob McEllrath, International President, ILWU
Richard Mead, President, ILWU Local 10
Members, Executive Committee, Alameda Labor Council
Members, Executive Committee, San Francisco Labor Council
Omar Benjamin, Executive Director, Port of Oakland

Julia: At least the activists didn’t fire guns on the Israeli ship’s passengers, or board the ship illegally in international waters.Figures that nationalists have an amazing way of not even hearing about the crimes of their state, yet blow up the crimes of their state’s enemies at any chance they get…

“And you are lynching Negroes” (Russian: А у вас негров линчуют; literally but at your place negroes are lynched) is a reference to a logical fallacy, whereby the validity of arguments in one area are placed under the dependence of arguments in another area.

Figures that nationalists have an amazing way of not even hearing about the crimes of their state, yet blow up the crimes of their state’s enemies at any chance they get…

However, certain terminals, like the one that hosted the Zim vessel, have open access parking lots with entrances from the public street. Workers park and then walk further inside the terminals to go through the manned security gates.

The protesters were smart in that they blocked the access to the longshore parking lots so they couldn’t park and report to work without the cooperation of the Oakland Police Department to provide crowd breaks.

They were also smart as they started at 5:30 am, well before the ship arrived. The longshore start reporting for work at 6 am, so it effectively shut down the terminal for a whole day.

It seems a simple thing to end this type of nonsense is to limit access to those with business in the port. If they want to protest whatever, they can do it outside the main gate.

The Zim Shenzhen vessel was due to come in at 2 pm Sunday. However that was advanced to 5:30 am, which is not uncommon as it was only 24 hours away in Los Angeles.

That is why the protest worked well. It prevented a morning and afternoon gangs from working the vessel (and the other China Shipping vessel docked at the terminal). They got there before the longshore workers did and blocked entrances to the parking lots.

The port and Zim were well aware of the protest tactics, so rescheduled the vessel to arrive in the late afternoon, to hopefully work at night. However, the afternoon protest thwarted that idea, and the vessel worked Monday and has since departed.

Also, when the protest line went up, the longshore labor were reluctant to cross it for safety reasons. An arbitrator between the PMA and ILWU was brought in and declared the longshore must go back to work if the Oakland Police Department could safely provide ingress/egress. The OPD said it could not (due to crowd size and lack of sufficient officers), so the longshore were not permitted to enter the facility.

There is some history to this. Back in 2002, there was a violent anti-war protest at the Port, and the police went a little crazy and shot rubber bullets at innocent bystanders. Several longshore workers were injured.

Finally, the Port of Oakland is actually ranked 5th in the U.S. for container (TEU) traffic, and 45th in world using the same measure. You are right, the above link with rankings is for short tons, which biases toward ports that ship a lot of bulk ore, metals, oils, and agricultural commodities. Oakland is purely a container port. A better ranking is this one:

http://aapa.files.cms-