Senior citizen woman sitting on tracks treated roughly by police in riot gear; longshore member who tried to help her is pepper-sprayed while handcuffed
LONGVIEW, WA [September 21, 2011] — Dan Coffman, President of ILWU Local 21, two longshore officers and about ten wives and mothers of longshore workers, were arrested today for exercising their First Amendment rights by demonstrating peacefully on train tracks against EGT’s total influence and domination of the NLRB, the courts and the public police.
“Citizens pay for law enforcement to protect the safety of local residents, not to act as private security detail for a multinational corporation that makes billions of dollars in profits every year,” said Dan Coffman, President of Local 21. “EGT has a choice: to play by the same rules as every other money-making grain export terminal in the Northwest or continue to create chaos in the community by breaking the rules.”
Leal Sundet, ILWU Coast Committeeman, said, “Longview longshoremen stood down from their jobs for 30 minutes in silence as a unit train rolled into EGT under the escort of police paid for by the very workers in the community of Cowlitz County that the company is undermining and exploiting.”
Multinational corporation EGT continues to shift its costs to the community as several law enforcement jurisdictions rack up overtime costs to guard EGT’s grain trains, the most recent of which arrived in Longview today under taxpayer-funded escort.
The ILWU Coast Longshore Division represents 4,000 men and women in the Northwest grain terminals and docks.
From a news release by the ILWU Coast Longshore Division.
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