May 1 protest and boycott in the Harbor area
I was really interested in seeing how the local businesses, especially the Port, reacted to the May 1st actions, so I stayed on this end of town and did a survey on my bike. After walking from my house to Walled City to pick up my bike, I rode out to Banning Park in Wilmington, hoping to check out the troquero rally in the park.
The first thing I noticed was how eerily quiet the streets were. Sure, there was traffic, but it was much lighter than it normally would be. Along Pacific Avenue, many of the businesses were shuttered, both Latino supermarkets were closed, and both of them had signs indicating their support and solidarity with the marchers.
Moving on out of Pedro, I made my way to Wilmington, along Harbor Boulevard. According to the AP, Port Spokesperson Teresa Adams-Lopez claimed truck traffic was down 90% at the Harbor yesterday, and boy did it show. The most trucks I saw at any of the gates were two trucks headed in to Yang Ming and one leaving. No lines, no traffic, nothing. It was dead down there. No picket lines or other actions by the truckers at any of the terminals, as far as I can tell, and they didn't use theier trucks to impede traffic or block the bridge, as they have in the past, either.
Coming up Avalon from Harry Bridges, I began to see more shuttered stores. I'd say 4 out of 5 businesses in Wilmington were closed for the day. Even most of the big chains, Ritmo Latino, Famasa, Value + Markets, etc... were shuttered and empty.
I arrived at Anaheim and Avalon just in time to catch the tail end of a small march by some locals, mostly families and young people, going down Anaheim towards the 110 after rallying at Anaheim and Avalon for a while.
Moving on towards Pacific Coast Highway, towards Banning Park, almost every business except for the ILWU credit union and the Post Office were shuttered. There was massive solidarity all the way to PCH, and on PCH, most of the non-corporate businesses were closed. I saw one angry guy hovering outside an auto insurance business, yelling into his cellphone "What do you mean you're closed today?", which I found pretty amusing.
Arriving at Banning Park, I had expected to see a gathering of truckers, given that they all had to be somewhere, but almost none were to be found. About a dozen guys from the Pacific Drivers Association were hanging around two tables, being "educated" about the plight of the "workers" by a pair of Marxist white college students who've probably never worked a day in their lives, which I found amusing, and the drivers seemed to find pretty irritating. One of the drivers had a shofar, which he was blowing in repsonse to supportive beeps from passing motorists. Supposedly they were going to have a rally there later, but no one seemed to have any details, and the lack of a stage or PA made me wonder just how well planned or attended their rally would be.
Even though their rally was a non-starter, I'm sure that the real impact of their strike was felt at the Ports and that their support of the boycott and protests was real and most likely occuring in downtown LA.
The first thing I noticed was how eerily quiet the streets were. Sure, there was traffic, but it was much lighter than it normally would be. Along Pacific Avenue, many of the businesses were shuttered, both Latino supermarkets were closed, and both of them had signs indicating their support and solidarity with the marchers.
Moving on out of Pedro, I made my way to Wilmington, along Harbor Boulevard. According to the AP, Port Spokesperson Teresa Adams-Lopez claimed truck traffic was down 90% at the Harbor yesterday, and boy did it show. The most trucks I saw at any of the gates were two trucks headed in to Yang Ming and one leaving. No lines, no traffic, nothing. It was dead down there. No picket lines or other actions by the truckers at any of the terminals, as far as I can tell, and they didn't use theier trucks to impede traffic or block the bridge, as they have in the past, either.
Coming up Avalon from Harry Bridges, I began to see more shuttered stores. I'd say 4 out of 5 businesses in Wilmington were closed for the day. Even most of the big chains, Ritmo Latino, Famasa, Value + Markets, etc... were shuttered and empty.
I arrived at Anaheim and Avalon just in time to catch the tail end of a small march by some locals, mostly families and young people, going down Anaheim towards the 110 after rallying at Anaheim and Avalon for a while.
Moving on towards Pacific Coast Highway, towards Banning Park, almost every business except for the ILWU credit union and the Post Office were shuttered. There was massive solidarity all the way to PCH, and on PCH, most of the non-corporate businesses were closed. I saw one angry guy hovering outside an auto insurance business, yelling into his cellphone "What do you mean you're closed today?", which I found pretty amusing.Arriving at Banning Park, I had expected to see a gathering of truckers, given that they all had to be somewhere, but almost none were to be found. About a dozen guys from the Pacific Drivers Association were hanging around two tables, being "educated" about the plight of the "workers" by a pair of Marxist white college students who've probably never worked a day in their lives, which I found amusing, and the drivers seemed to find pretty irritating. One of the drivers had a shofar, which he was blowing in repsonse to supportive beeps from passing motorists. Supposedly they were going to have a rally there later, but no one seemed to have any details, and the lack of a stage or PA made me wonder just how well planned or attended their rally would be.
Even though their rally was a non-starter, I'm sure that the real impact of their strike was felt at the Ports and that their support of the boycott and protests was real and most likely occuring in downtown LA.
3 Comments:
I heard from various sources including the TV news that 90 percent of the port truckers boycotted. It's an interesting question why not that many of them showed up at the rally.
90 percent was the statistic being dispensed by Theresa Adams Lopez, the POLA spokesperson. Those gates were dead quiet from my perspective. Port operations weren't really impacted that much. Both retailers and shippers planned for the boycott and scheduled around it, and the ships in harbor could still load an unload off of and onto the docks.
I think that the people organising the rally may only represent a small portion of the drivers. They certainly didn't have their shit together enough at the park to look like they represented 12,000 drivers. Sure they had some screenprinted shirts with a logo, but I didn't see the paraphenalia I would expect from a well organised group. The websites advertising the rallies were editable by anyone - you could go there and put up a notice for anything.
These troquero job actions have always been organized in a very decentralized way, via word of mouth, CB radio, Nextel, and the colectivos at the individual companies. Don't mistake the lack of spiffy nylon windbreakers or expensive sound systems for a lack of organization. One thing these guys are good at is leveraging their "non-employee" status--a status imposed on them by the transportation industry and an anti-worker Federal government to keep them from unionizing--against the industry via concerted work stoppages that would get them hauled into court (or enjoined under Taft-Hartley) if they had the legal status of unionized employees. This puts the logistics/shipping industry in a bind: if you ask the government to order them back to work, you're admitting that they're really employees subject to the direction of an employer, and thus eligible to organize and bargain collectively under the NLRA.
That's the kind of power that makes well-choreographed rallies with shiny banners and glossy pamphlets sort of beside the point. So far the problem has been getting all the drivers to exercise that power for more than a day or two at a time. It's hard enough for them to pay their bills when they're working.
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