Riley spoke at several meetings in the area as part of an international defense campaign for five longshoremen in Charleston, South Carolina, who were indicted by the state on felony riot charges after a mass picket of union members in January 2000 was attacked by 600 riot-equipped state troopers. The union had been holding the picket lines to protest the use of a nonunion stevedore company by the Nordana shipping lines on the Charleston docks. The five union members have been under house arrest for the past 18 months pending a trial schedule for this fall.

Riley also spoke at an August 26 meeting of some 40 workers sponsored by the Black Telephone Workers for Justice in Irvington, New Jersey. These workers, members of the electrical workers union, are employed by Verizon and are fighting to get Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as an official company paid holiday. Ron Washington, president of the Black Telephone Workers for Justice, announced the unionists would help establish a defense committee in New Jersey to raise funds and get out the word about the Charleston Five's fight for justice.

"The South Carolina government is hostile to organized workers," Riley explained to the meeting, "and our union local--with all but two Black members--was there in Charleston at the protests to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse. We organized buses and led the march. We open up our union headquarters to all organizations to meet."

Riley described what he called "the hottest industrial belt in the country along I-95 in the Carolinas." While wages in the Carolinas are lower than in other states and less than 4 percent of the workforce in South Carolina is unionized, longshoremen "make the same wages as they do here in Port Newark, New Jersey," Riley said. The government is targeting the longshoremen's union "because of these and our other activities in defense of workers and against racism." That is the context in which the picket line was attacked and the charges brought against the longshoremen, he said.

At the meeting held in Haledon, Riley announced that an international day of protest will be held the first day of the trial of the five, which the ILA expects to begin sometime in November. The union has made contacts in 18 different nations from Asia to Europe to ports in North America.

ILA Local 1233, which represents workers at the ports in New Jersey, organized a fund-raiser for the Charleston Five while Riley was in town. Willie Davis, president of ILA 1233, announced plans for members of his local to either attend the trial in South Carolina or organize demonstrations in New Jersey. His local will also march behind Riley at the New York City Labor Day parade on Saturday, September 8.

Sponsoring organizations for the August 24 meeting included Bergen County Central Trades and Labor Council; Communications Workers of America Local 1034, Local 1060, and Local 1080; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 827; New Jersey State AFL-CIO; People's Organization for Progress; New Jersey Jobs with Justice; Union County Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute; and the Black Telephone Workers for Justice.

In New York, some 200 people packed into the hall of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) of Greater New York August 23 to hear Riley speak about the defense case. The event was sponsored by the New York City Charleston Five coalition and was chaired by Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the TWU.

Riley explained that the ILA went on an organizing drive among workers at the nonunion outfit used by Nordana, called WSI. A majority there voted to join the union, but the company has appealed the vote to the NLRB.

Three TWU Local 100 stewards presented Riley with $1,000 collected from union members on the job for the defense of the Charleston Five. Another $1,000 was collected at the meeting.

Nancy Rosenstock is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 506. Dan Fein contributed to this article from New York.
 
 
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Chicago strikers join solidarity meeting with Charleston longshore workers  
 
 
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