Over 500 members of the Painters, Plasterers, Glaziers, and Hod Carriers unions marched on city hall today in San Francisco. The march was to express solidarity with striking Painters, Locals 3 and 4 and Local 66 of the Plasterers Union. The more popular chants were “no contract, no work” and when passing non union construction sites,“scabs go home”.
Several of us involved with the local Charleston Defense Committee passed out leaflets for the Saturday, July 21 meeting, at Local 10 in San Francisco, at which ILA local president Ken Riley will be speaking.
We also distributed petitions that called for dropping all charges, criminal and civil, against the 5 longshoreman and the local. The only problem we had was we ran out of petitions. We had absolutely no problem getting the Building Trades workers to sign on. We got names and phone numbers.
While the ILWU, especially Longshore Division has done a great job building this campaign, we’re at a stage now where we have to reach out further.
Besides the San Francisco Bay Area, there are, or in the process of being built defense committees in Atlanta and Seattle. In Boston, MA the work is being done by the local Jobs with Justice organization.
At a conference I attended in Chicago last month, in which Ken Riley also attended plans were made by supporters in Madison, WI, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and a lot of other cities, too numerous to mention here, to build support committees in those cities. AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney, has sent out a letter to all International Union Presidents, and major labor councils (state and metropolitan) calling on them to raise funds and to build support committees in their area. Free the Charleston 5!
Ken Morgan, Local 6
