Here’s the anarchist newspaper Infoshop’s take on recent media reports:
Tacoma and Seattle rank-and-file members of the International Longshore and Warehousem Union (ILWU) are showing us the way.
Faced with arrogant bosses and a boss-controlled legal system, they have declared that the only way to effectively fight back is to fight back HARD!
When bosses at EGT (a multi-national joint venture) decided they would ship grain from their Longview, Washington facility without using ILWU labor (which has been used for 70 years), they probably assumed things would take what has become the traditional path: legal filings, complaints and counter-complaints to the National Labor Relations Board, etc. They were certainly not thinking of what would happen on Thursday, September 8. On that day between 500 and 1000 Longshoremen and supporters crashed their way into the new EGT $200 million Longview terminal, brushed aside the resistance of security guards, and then proceeded to smash the place all to shit with baseball bats!
Later in the day, 1000 more workers shut down the ports of Seattle and Tacoma when they refused to work. ILWU leaders have declared the action “a wildcat strike”, and have claimed no knowledge of the actions in Longview.
According to the police chief of Longview: “The terminal’s security guards were outnumbered by people with baseball bats. People were busting windows out of the guard shack. They took a security guard out of his rig and drove it into a ditch.”
Tons of grain were dumped from railroad cars and the cars brake lines were cut. In the end 19 arrests were made .
This is a message to the bosses: you will all get the same treatment soon, and the sooner the better.
Resistance, it’s never futile!