An injury to one is an injury to all

Cop brutality is issue
for labor movement


BY BETSEY STONE
OAKLAND—Police brutality is a labor issue. That was a theme of the rally organized by Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) October 23, two weeks before the sentencing of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop who shot and killed 22-year-old grocery store worker Oscar Grant.

The rally was endorsed by the San Francisco and Alameda County labor councils and other union locals and attracted hundreds of trade unionists, including workers who had never before participated in such a protest.

It also sparked a debate in the union movement about how labor should respond to police brutality. Some questioned whether unions should be involved in issues not directly related to conditions on the job. Others argued that cops are union brothers and sisters, and therefore the ILWU shouldn’t organize protests against them.

Dwight McElroy, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021 in Oakland, was one of the speakers at the rally. McElroy said he received a letter from a cop protesting his participation on the basis that the rally was directed against the Oakland Police Association. “I’m going because I’m against police brutality,” McElroy said he responded. “I’m not anti-cop,” he said, but against individual police who abuse people.

One of those opposed to unions getting involved on any basis was John Arantes, president of SEIU Local 1021 at BART. “Our first and foremost concern is for the safety of our front line workers; who not only rely on the goodwill of the public, but also the support of the BART police from time-to-time,” he wrote in response to the initiative of the ILWU. “Union dues should be spent fighting layoffs, and improving working conditions.”

To counter such arguments, speakers representing the ILWU at the rally pointed to the labor battles on San Francisco’s waterfront in 1934 that led to the birth of the ILWU. After cops opened fire on striking workers then, killing two longshoremen and wounding 109 others, workers organized the historic San Francisco general strike.

Class-conscious workers participating in the discussions pointed to more recent labor battles to explain that police are used to break strikes, to herd scabs through picket lines, and to protect the interests and the property of the employers. This has been the experience of striking French workers in recent weeks, where riot police are clearing fuel depots blockaded by the workers. The cops are acting in tandem with judges handing down injunctions and ordering prison terms for workers who refuse to return to work.

In a press interview Trent Willis, former president of Local 10, spoke about the systematic harassment and terrorizing by cops of working-class communities where the majority of Blacks and Latinos live. Willis pointed out that he, like many ILWU members who are Black, knows what it is like to be pulled over by police for no reason.

Another debated issue was whether to support the demand, raised by Oscar Grant’s family and others, for a maximum sentence of 14 years for Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot Grant. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, a charge that carries a sentence of 2 to 4 years. A 14-year sentence would have meant tacking on a “gun enhancement” penalty, one of the laws passed as part of the “war on crime” that adds a significant number of years to sentences if a gun is used.

Gun enhancement laws have contributed to the huge increase in the prison population in recent decades. Needless to say, they are applied in a discriminatory way against working people, particularly against Blacks. Anything done by workers to legitimize use of such laws only helps strengthen a precedent that is ultimately aimed against the working class. These laws should be abolished, not strengthened through a progressive veneer of being used against police who brutalize working people.

A similar question was posed after Mehserle was arrested, when a demonstration was organized to protest his release on bail. The right to bail, under the eighth amendment to the constitution, is a protection against the repressive apparatus of the state. If we demand this right be taken away from our enemies, given the nature of the capitalist courts, it can only serve to strengthen the standard of denying bail to workers, and working-class fighters.

Police brutality is inherent in the capitalist system. Only when we replace the tiny minority of wealthy families who rule in the interests of their own profits will we be able to rid society of this scourge. Along the road to taking power out of their hands, we need to strengthen the unions and fight to build a labor party, independent of—and against—the Democratic and Republican parties, who represent the capitalist oppressors.

As the economic crisis and attacks on the labor movement and the entire working class continue to unfold, there will be more resistance, including strikes, and opportunities for unionists to unite with others in common action against police brutality. A new generation of workers will come to understand from their own class-struggle experiences the truth of the slogan raised on a large banner at the ILWU rally, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”