7/26 ILWU 10 Organizing Meeting For Labor/Community Rally:Justice For Oscar Grant! Jail Killer Cops
7/26 ILWU 10 Organizing Meeting For Labor/Community Rally:Justice For Oscar Grant! Jail Killer Cops
Longshore workers call for labor/community rally for:
Justice for Oscar Grant! Jail Killer Cops!
A labor/community organizing meeting is called for this Tuesday
7 PM at the Longshore Hall in San Francisco
You are urged to attend!
Information from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Please forward!
26 July 2010 - Following the outrageously light-weight conviction-- involuntary manslaughter--given to ex-BART cop Johannes Mehserle, who murdered the unarmed Oscar Grant in cold blood in 2009, longshore workers in Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) have called for a labor community rally at City Hall in downtown Oakland.
Calling the Mehserle verdict "another example in a racist justice system where police officers go free for killing young black men," the longshore workers resolved that "the labor movement organize a mass protest rally...with participation from community groups, civil rights organizations, civil liberties organizations and all who stand for social justice [to] demand jail for killer cops."
Now projected to be held on Saturday, October 23rd, the labor community rally will be about two weeks before the scheduled sentencing hearing for Johannes Mehserle. (Mehserle faces a maximum of 14 years, and could get off with a lot less than that!)
Organizing Committee Meets Tuesday
An organizing committee to organize for and implement this rally has been called for Tuesday, July 27th, at 7 PM, at the Longshore Hall in San Francisco. The hall is located at 400 North Point St, at Mason, a couple blocks from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Some of Oscar Grant's family members will be present at this meeting. Local community organizations are invited to attend. Your presence is important to help make this rally a well-organized a large event in Oakland!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC) has decided to participate in this important event. Organized in 1999 to promote labor actions to free Mumia, we worked closely with elements in the longshore union and Oakland teachers, helping to bring about labor actions by both later that year. Longshore workers shut down all ports on the West Coast, and led a march of 25.000 through the streets of San Francisco, to demand freedom for Mumia.
This was part of a strong tradition in which the ILWU has used similar actions to protest the reactionary Pinochet coup in Chile, oppose apartheid in South Africa, and revive the tradition of May Day as international workers holiday. Most recently, Local 10 honored a labor/community picket to stop the unloading of an Israeli ship, in solidarity with the victims of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. And, about two dozen longshore workers showed up to oppose the pro-cop, pro-Mehserle rally in Walnut Creek last Monday. One said that the protesters outnumbered the Mehserle defenders by at least 4 to 1.
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia wants to see the labor/black/community alliance become as strong as possible. We have worked most recently to defend journalist JR Valrey, and activist Holly Works, both of whom faced frame-up felony charges stemming from the street protests in January 2009 following the police killing of Oscar Grant. We know that labor actions, and a labor community alliance, are vital to free political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, who faces an imminent court decision which will give him either death or life in prison for a crime he didn't do.
Charged with killing a cop in 1981, Mumia represents the direct opposite of the Oscar Grant case: be a black man, be in the wrong place at the wrong time, be accused of killing a cop, get executed or life in prison even though you didn't do it, versus: be a white cop, be recorded on camera killing an unarmed black man who was lying face down on the pavement, get off with a slap on the wrist. We see these sorts of racist atrocities as part of a system that's got to go.
Come to the organizing meeting for a labor/community rally in Oakland to demand: Justice for Oscar Grant! Jail killer cops!
7 PM, Tuesday the 27th of July 2010
Longshore Hall - Henry Schmidt room
400 North Point St @ Mason
near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francsco