Time was that the only individuals plying their trade where the land meets the water had four legs. Their shifts were spent selecting victims from watering herds.
Jurisdictional disputes were settled by a sort of arbitration. Sometimes it would be arbitrarily decided that there was enough food for all. Other times the larger of any competing carnivores would arbitrarily eat a smaller one.
Henry David Thoreau observed that all paths lead to water. This is true. Logically it means that anybody at all, with any beef at all, has, and always will have, a possible site for a picket about the docks.
Before the ILWU was expelled from the AFL-CIO watering hole as communists, didn’t we have a seat in that organization’s executive body? Where are we now, or better said, where do we think we are now (compared to much larger organizations)?
The implications here are enormous. How far does it go? We have seen AFL-CIO officials show up at the in-house trial committee meeting of an autonomous Longshore Local. We have seen where that organization extorted that Local through dissatisfaction with the outcome of that Local’s trial, resulting in a member being found guilty of something he had not even been charged with. That was only the result of pretend leaders needing a sacrifice, and being willing to sell out their own, instead of assuming the posture of a 2 legged animal – nothing so vital as jurisdiction.
Didn’t I hear a carnivorous roar when the subject of ILWU intra-port drayage was a topic during the recent negotiations, or was it simply the echo of such rumblings that I had heard in the past?
I, for one, should feel a lot more solidarity if we heard (for once) a remotely friendly sound coming from the leaders of the biggest pack of carnivores on four wheels.
frats
ole
