Leo Robinson, ILWU Local 10 pensioner. Photo by David Bacon.
The following are excerpts from a tribute to ILWU Local 10 pensioner Leo Robinson by labor author and photographer David Bacon:
Leo Robinson was a Black leader of the longshore union in San Francisco. He died this week. For many of us, he was a lifelong companion, an example of what being an internationalist and a working class activist was all about.
He was a tremendous speaker. The best photograph I ever took of Leo was while he was talking in a union meeting about safety conditions on the docks. He had the full attention of every union member in Local 10’s cavernous waterfront union hall. Leo was an agitator, but people listened to him because what he said made sense to them. He knew how to speak their language.
Leo’s political commitment’s extended beyond South Africa. He worked for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He protested police brutality in the Oakland where he lived for many years. He defended the union he loved, and unions and workers everywhere.
Most important, Leo Robinson believed that immediate changes were important because they are steps to a more just world. He once spoke in a packed church in West Oakland to the ones he called the “young comrades.” He described his vision of a more just society, in which working people weren’t exploited for private gain, one that would abolish racism and sexism. He gave that vision a name – socialism — at a time when the media claimed that socialism was dead, and capitalism was the best humankind could hope for.
“I know that’s a lie,” he shouted out. “The world depends on us, on our labor. And we have the right to decide what kind of world it’s going to be.”