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| An Occupy Tacoma activist during informational picketing and leafleting on 12 December at the main roadway entrance to the Tacoma port facilities. Port workers -- unhappy with Occupy Oakland's efforts to close West Coast seaports in defiance of union contracts -- were nearly unanimous in their horn-honking applause for Occupy Tacoma's refusal to participate in the closure campaign. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2011. |
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It's Divide et Impera again: Port Shutdown Fight Renews Schism
Whether by tactical brilliance or dumb accident, Occupy Tacoma has dodged a bullet – actually an ideological artillery barrage – that is blasting a huge gap between organized labor and the Occupy Movement on the West Coast.
The barrage has been launched by an Occupy Movement faction that claims to be “pro-worker,” but by its hostility to collective bargaining agreements is as effectively anti-union as any band of Teabaggers.
Originating in Oakland (California), this faction – notably intolerant of other viewpoints – now dominates most of the West Coast seaport cities, with Tacoma among the very few exceptions.
While Occupy Oakland was giving collective bargaining the finger by demanding a 12 December shut-down of all West Coast seaports – an action that would have violated any number of labor contracts – Occupy Tacoma's General Assembly followed the advice of its union members and voted instead for informational picketing at the main entrance to the Tacoma shipping terminals.
Ostensibly OT's decision was based on the fact the Oakland faction's corporate targets are not present in the Tacoma seaport. But the strength of organized labor was surely a factor: Washington state has the third highest per capita union membership in the U.S., 19.8 percent, and union membership in Tacoma, which in addition to being a major seaport has managed to retain a small but relatively healthy industrial base, is said to rank third amongst the nation's cities.
Oakland's supporters claim to be “progressives.” But they spout the same anti-union rhetoric uttered by the Green Party or the staunchly capitalist MoveOn.org branch of the Democratic Party. The union-bashing content of such rhetoric is indistinguishable from that spewed by the traditional enemies of economic democracy, but the “progressive” disguise of its sources makes it far more insidious.
Not surprisingly, the antagonism between pro-union and anti-union Occupiers is often fierce and contentious, as in the heated debate that preceded the 7 December GA vote.
Thus on the 12th about a dozen supporters of the Oakland faction stormed out of Tacoma's Occupation Park to join the port-closure effort in Seattle, which was unsuccessful but culminated in several arrests.
The validity of the accompanying charges of police brutality – typical at all such events in Seattle – is underscored by recent U.S. Department of Justice findings that confirm the institutional savagery of the city's police force.
Unfortunately the arrests whether in Seattle or any other seaport city obscure the fact the core issue in the port closure controversy is not police brutality but class struggle – specifically how the One Percent, the Ruling Class, has already divided the 99 Percent, the Working Class, into mutually hostile factions.
In this instance the divider is the arrogant refusal of the Oakland group to recognize the elected leadership of two unions – the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – and the unions' jurisdiction in matters relative to the West Coast ports.
Contrary to the anti-union propaganda disseminated by some Occupiers, the power of ILUW and Teamster locals to strike – a requirement if the ports were to be closed – is severely restricted by contract. The same collective bargaining agreements also typically prohibit unions from recognizing unsanctioned picket lines.
Those who denounced the two unions for refusing to endorse the proposed closure were seemingly indifferent to the fact violations of such contracts are typically punished by hefty fines.
Most likely the port-closure advocates were from such comfortably bourgeois backgrounds they were simply ignorant of labor law and unionism in general. But it's also possible some were agent provocateurs, infiltrators planted by the Ruling Class to destroy Occupy Movement solidarity.
In any case the growing size of the Oakland faction has turned what began as a local squabble into an increasingly bitter controversy that could jeopardize vital labor/Occupy partnership throughout the nation.
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At the root of Oakland's stance are a pair of well-documented beliefs unique to the United States and particularly prevalent on its West Coast.
One of these is a perverse notion of anarchy as an ultimate form of permissiveness, a viewpoint not derived from Bakunin or any other advocate of utopian anarchy as the most humanitarian form of governance, but rather from Ayn Rand and her doctrine of predatory selfishness as the highest virtue – the formal basis of capitalism's credo of infinite greed as maximum good.
The other belief, which begins at the Appalachian divide and intensifies as one goes westward, is contempt for what is generally termed “East Coast intellectual bullshit” – an ethos of essentially European values and principles that include strategic and tactical mindfulness and the discipline required to maintain worker/veteran/student solidarity.
Not surprisingly, this is precisely the solidarity that remains characteristic of Occupy Wall Street and its more faithful daughters. These include Occupy Tacoma, in which union members remain influential enough to have rescued OT from the anti-union juggernaut that – despite its superficially pro-worker rhetoric – became so evident on 12 December.
Again we see the influence of local union strength on local Occupations: New York state has the highest per capita union membership in the United States, 24.3 percent, with NYC's top amongst the nation's cities.
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Union sources say the Oakland faction's defiance has provoked anger far beyond ILWU and Teamster ranks, driving a wedge between the entire labor movement and nearly all the Occupation groups on the West Coast.
Sadly what is occurring is the re-inflammation of the socioeconomic differences by which the One Percent divided us – the 99 Percent – into mutually hostile camps during the Vietnam Era.
The elitist scorn expressed by the Oakland faction's effort to position itself as superior to the ILWU and the Teamsters in the port-closure matter is ultimately no different from the arrogance of those bourgeois Caucasian liberals who tried to take over leadership of the African-American Civil Rights Movement during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Another manifestation of this same arrogance – which is by definition an expression of identifying with and supporting the oppressor – occurred when the draft-exempt academic elite of the Vietnam Era positioned themselves as morally superior to those of us whose economic circumstances left us no choice but to serve in the military.
As in each of these historical instances, the resultant divisiveness served the One Percent by severely weakening our 99 Percent solidarity.
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The lessons here are many, each vital to the Occupy Movement's success.
Of greatest importance is to note how quickly cultural differences – for example the West Coast's xenophobic disdain for what it considers “East Coast attitudes” – can be manipulated into toxic barriers to solidarity. The antidote is making reinforcement of 99 Percent solidarity the central consideration in every action – precisely the principle Occupy Oakland ignores.
Equally significant is the divisive potential of socioeconomic differences: blue collar, pink collar, white collar. Men and women from non-union white-collar and pink-collar backgrounds have long been conditioned to believe they are innately superior to those of us from blue-collar and union backgrounds.
But this is another Big Lie that cleverly protects the One Percent by fostering divisions amongst the rest of us. If we are to achieve genuine solidarity, we in the 99 Percent must grow beyond such prejudices. Growth includes but is not limited to learning to defer to union leadership in such matters as port closures. Unions are after all among the last remaining vestiges of our constitutional democracy.
I realize that for some – especially those reared on capitalist notions of white-collar job-superiority – the required process of letting-go is a difficult and even terrifying prospect. It is made harder still by the fact we in the U.S. 99 Percent have all been conditioned to live our lives by Ayn Rand's heartless principles: “me first (fuck you).”
But revolution is never easy. And the alternative – another triumph of the One Percent (exactly as the One Percent triumphed over all but two of the rebellions of the 20th Century) – is infinitely worse.
LB/18-31 December 2011
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Because I have been invited back to Typepad (lorenbliss.typepad.com), this essay appears simultaneously on Typepad and on BlogSpot. After the New Year, I will again post on Typepad exclusively, and eventually the Outside Agitator's Notebook material that appeared on Blogspot (August-December 2011) will be transferred to Typepad. Meanwhile, thank you for your faithful readership...and to all of you the most fulfilling and contented New Year possible.
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