The protests were organized by Direct Action to Stop the War against two shipping companies with Pentagon contracts, APL and Stevedoring Services of America (SSA). Protesters had arrived early in the morning carrying signs that read "Embargo War Cargo," hoping to shut the terminals down. As people slowly picketed in the street blocking the gates, a line of cops in battle gear, reinforced by two dozen police on motorcycles, ordered the crowd to disperse--and then opened fire.

"I got hit in the back twice as I was walking away," Susan Quinlan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Everybody was walking away and they continued to shoot for a little while." The police continued to fire on a small group of about 150 left after the larger crowd had dispersed. The cop attack at one of the largest ports in the country made national news. The outcry in the Bay Area was immediate.

"The protest was totally peaceful," said Steve Stallone of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), who was on the scene. "The police suddenly gave a two-minute warning...then began firing objects and grenades into the crowd." ILWU Local 10 organizes workers on the Oakland docks.

Longshoremen Kevin Wilson stated he was "standing as far back as I could. It was very scary. All of that force wasn’t necessary." Though the ILWU wasn’t part of the protest, a union official was arrested. "Our guys were standing in one area waiting to go to work," said ILWU Local 10 president Henry Graham, "and then the police started firing on the longshoremen. Some were hit in the chest with rubber bullets, and seven of our guys went to the hospital."

The previous week, management from both APL and SSA met with port officials and police brass to coordinate efforts to prevent the planned demonstration from blocking terminal gates. "The goal was to keep the gates open," said Port of Oakland spokesman Harold Jones. "How they [the police] decided to do that, however, was not under our control."

Oakland police chief Richard Word defended the cops’ actions, as did Oakland mayor Edmund Brown, Jr. The protesters wanted to "occupy and take over the port and shut it down. The city is not going to let that happen," Brown said. "Oakland is second-to-none in its support of peaceful assembly and protest." As the outrage over the police action continued unabated over the following days, Brown refused to back off from his support for the cops. "We also have people saying this [the protest] was sabotage. They wanted to stop the shipments to the men and women on the front."

Oakland police insisted that their response was justified because they were being pelted by debris from the crowd. Eyewitnesses dispute this claim. Joel Tena, an aide to Oakland vice mayor Nancy Nadel, was sent to the protest as an observer. "At no time did I see protesters act in a provocative way or throw any projectile," he said. Four Oakland City Council members have now called for independent investigation into the matter, as has the ILWU and the Alameda County Central Labor Council.

The day after the cop attack a regularly scheduled City Council meeting was jammed with people upset by the previous day’s events. One hundred signed up to speak at the meeting, including several of the injured longshoremen. The first 13 speakers all criticized the cops. When City Council president Ignacio De La Fuente tried to end the impromptu speakout, the audience began to chant and protest his action. He closed the meeting and left under police escort. A special city council meeting has now been called for April 28 to further discuss this issue.

Direct Action to Stop the War was the main organizer of the port protest. The group was also the principal sponsor of civil disobedience actions in San Francisco’s financial district at the start of the war. "If the government and war makers won’t stop the war, we’ll shut down those institutions...that make war possible," it proclaims on its web site. "We will raise the economic, social, and political costs of waging this war, and continue to stop business as usual until the war stops."

Like other radical groups with a petty-bourgeois outlook, Direct Action’s strategy and tactics flow from disillusionment and pessimism. In an "Open Letter to the People Who Live and Work in San Francisco and the Bay Area," the group said that "We had tried traditional avenues of influence to stop this war. We lobbied our politicians. We marched in permitted rallies millions strong. We signed petitions, prayed, and held vigils for peace.... Yet these pleas fell on a deaf Administration."

Its leaders hope that determined, "moral-witness" type action by small groups of committed activists will force the U.S. capitalist class to reconsider imperialist military assaults. Direct Action’s strategy, however, more often than not targets working people. The financial district shutdown only made life miserable for working people on their way to work or school. In its "open letter" the group stated "we are aware that shutting down the San Francisco financial district inconvenienced many people. While we and others may suffer disruptions and lost wages, we ask ‘What is a human life worth being taken in your name?’"

Lack of confidence and cynicism toward the toiling masses runs through the group’s proclamations and practice. In a report on the group’s web site on the police attack, one Direct Action activist wrote, "If the ILWU was willing to come out and stop the shipment of war supplies it would be a great victory...[but] we must not wait for them or expect them to do so. Amerikans (sic) benefit from this system of imperialism that we are here opposing, and as a group they will not come out and bite the hand that feeds them...it is misleading to tell people that workers in this country are going to stand up against war."

Richard Jimenez, a truck driver from Chowchilla, was blocked by the protests from delivering his load of almonds at the port. This demonstration "is not going to stop the war. It is stopping us," he said, in a remark typical of opinions of other working people here. "We don’t carry bombs. We can only throw almonds at Saddam."

Bill Kalman is a member of UFCW local 120 in San Lorenzo, California.  
 
 
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