The campaign, which began August 9, has drawn socialists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, British Columbia, to the docks, union dispatching halls, check-cashing places, lines of port drivers waiting to pick up and deliver cargo, and to rallies to meet and talk with longshore workers. The goal adopted by the socialists of selling 200 copies of the Militant to ongshore and port workers over a week was surpassed in just four days.
Workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) are locked in a fight with the bosses’ Pacific Maritime Association over the right of the union to maintain control of the "hiring hall" and over job security. The Bush administration has threatened to impose the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act and to call in the military as strikebreakers. Rallies condemning these threats took place in several ports along the Pacific Coast on August 12, including this one.
Campaigners in Los Angeles are leading the pack with sales of more than 90 Militants to dockworkers. Twenty-two workers picked up the paper on the first day of the sales effort.
At an August 12 rally in Long Beach, more than 50 were sold, along with a range of books, including two copies of The Working-Class and the Transformation of Learning, Che Guevara Talks to Young People, Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, and Che Guevara y la lucha por el socialismo hoy. More books were sold, along with 19 copies of the Militant, at the union’s dispatch center early that morning.
The firsthand coverage from Argentina and Venezuela grabbed the interest of many workers, as well as the article and statement on their fight.
Campaigners for the socialist ticket in California--Nan Bailey for governor, William Kalman for lieutenant governor, and Olympia Newton for secretary of state--passed out campaign flyers at the rally and signed up half a dozen youth and workers to join in the effort. Both Bailey and Newton campaigned in person here, introducing themselves to many longshoremen.
At the August 12 march and rally in support of the ILWU’s fight for a contract, 43 copies of the Militant and several more Pathfinder titles were sold. The most popular pamphlet was Coal Miners on Strike, five copies of which were sold. Members of the ILWU wanted to learn about the miners’ fight against then-president James Carter, who invoked the Taft-Hartley Act against the United Mine Workers of America during the national coal strike in 1978.
The socialist campaign table at a farm workers’ celebration in Yakima, Washington, August 11 was also well-received. Three people bought subscriptions to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial and several walked away with books. About $120 in Pathfinder literature was sold.
Socialist workers and young socialists will expand their reach to longshore workers over the next several days, visiting the docks in nearby Tacoma, and Portland, Oregon.