THAT MORNING IN THE PORT
On April 7th, 2003, a group called Direct Action to Stop the War set out to shut down APL (American President Lines), a shipping company in the Port of Oakland. The firm was profiting from the war in Iraq by transporting munitions; it even took pride in its history of military contracts.
Direct Action's intention was to let APL know that war profiteering was not something to boast about, and the plan was to set up a nonviolent community picket line in hopes that the longshoremen and truckers wouldn't cross it. Everyone wishing to participate in this endeavor was invited to assemble at the West Oakland BART station. I got there at 6:50 a.m. and found about a hundred protesters who were waiting for rides in a makeshift shuttle of cars that was taking people to the docks, about a mile away.
Three of us got into a small car. Minutes later we arrived at the Adeline Street Bridge and found that the police had closed it off to incoming autos. The cops seemed to have set up a picket line of their own, apparently to tell us that we shouldn't approach the port.
Could we just walk in? Apparently so. We strolled past the police and set out across the bridge, which was actually a lengthy overpass that straddled a huge railroad yard. Presumably the bridge would take us to the docks, but I'd never been there before and wished I had a map; I wasn't even sure we were in the right place. Where were the other protesters? There seemed to be just the three of us; myself and my two companions.
The starkly bare concrete bridge gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I was heading into a place of no return, crossing over into some no man's land. Having been caught in a mass arrest just two weeks before, I felt wary of entering a place where I could easily be trapped.
The bridge curved around for a quarter of a mile, becoming Middle Harbor Road which wound around past the dockyards. On one side of that road were the railroad tracks, and on the other were row upon row of stacked container boxes going off into the distance. Behind the rows of boxes rose the tall, grotesque, loading cranes which bore an eerie resemblance to the alien invaders of H. G. Well's War of the Worlds. If there were any ships in port, I couldn't see them. Nor could I see any sign of the antiwar demonstration we'd come to take part in.
"There they are!" one of my companions said at last. We were near the end of the bridge and could finally see picket signs and banners in the distance, another quarter mile ahead of us. They were apparently at a gate entrance of APL.
As we got closer I could make out a long, drawn-out, circular picket line consisting of a couple hundred people, and when we finally got to where they were, we joined them and took up their chant, "War is for profit! Workers can stop it!" Along one side of us was a row of riot police who pressed uncomfortably close to us. I just tried to ignore the police as we walked past them.
I'd only been there a few minutes when a woman with a bullhorn called out, "We need ten people for a tactical team."
A tactical team? I didn't understand quite what that was, but a number of others stepped out, ready to go. Is this something I might get arrested for? - I wanted to ask, but didn't. I was frightened, but if they needed me, I felt I'd better go. I set out with the others, walking westward along Middle Harbor Road. One of the women began a chant and the rest of us took it up, chanting as we strode along, getting ever deeper into the port area.
It didn't look or feel like any port I'd ever seen before. No water and no ships were in sight, only an endless chain link fence which separated us from the equally endless rows of stacked containers. There were no buildings along this part of the road, and no sidewalk either, just oily gravel that crunched beneath our feet. It looked like a region of vast distances with this single road. Now and then a semi rolled past. A helicopter was hovering in the sky overhead, like a mechanical bird of prey. The din of its motor filled the air around us.
Eventually the shape of a building loomed up ahead at another gate in the fence; someone told me this was the main gate of APL. As we got closer, we could see banners and picket signs. There appeared to be a fairly large contingent of protesters there, maybe a couple hundred, but we were prevented from getting within a hundred yards of them by lines of riot police.
On this side of the police lines, we were only a couple dozen in number - the protesters I'd come with and others who were scattered about in small groups. There were also a few with green armbands, indicating that they were legal observers. We stood there, impotently watching our companions in the larger contingent up ahead which seemed to be trapped behind the police lines.
"I think they're holding a meeting," said a fellow standing near me.
"A meeting?" I queried. "At a time like this?"
"They have to decide what they're going to do."
It seemed quite obvious when he said it, but it did impress me as impressive to see democratic principles being applied even now. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much we could do to support those people. They'd been pushed away from the gate where they'd been picketing, and it was now guarded by some of the riot police. The cops nearest us were trying on their gas masks, but for the moment at least nothing seemed to be happening.
So what about our original mission - to hold a demonstration that would persuade the longshoremen to go home for the day?
"That's already happened," a woman whose name was Ingrid told me.
"It has? Did the dockworkers respect our picket line?"
"Yes, they did."
So our demonstration had succeeded. But I'd wanted to be part of it, and I was now learning to my chagrin that by the time I'd arrived at about 7 a.m., it was all over with. "I missed it?" I gasped unbelievingly. "But how could that be? I was here at seven, as I was told."
Ingrid told me what had occurred.
Knowing that we were coming - our protest had been widely publicized in advance; it was even in the Oakland Tribune - the shippers had phoned their employees, telling them to come in an hour early. But our people got wind of that and passed the information around to as many as possible. Some 300 protesters had arrived as early as 5 a.m. Unfortunately I hadn't been one of them.
So our objective seemed to have been achieved. I looked again towards the contingent trapped behind police lines, but they weren't there now; they seemed to have disappeared. Then I saw their banners moving in the distance, heading away from us, deeper into the port area. How much farther did that road go? I kept wishing I'd brought a map.
Then I saw Dave, a person I knew from other protest activities. He'd just arrived about the same time as I, but he knew the port geography rather well and told me that the next three gates along the road belonged to SSA.
"SSA?" I repeated. I'd never heard of SSA, and it wasn't mentioned on our leaflet.
"Stevedoring Services of America. We're picketing them too," Dave said, and told me the company was added to our list after it had been awarded a $4.8 million contract to manage the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. He showed me a leaflet put out by the longshoremen's union; it was quite long, and I only took time to read a paragraph: "This is a preview of how American corporations will be the beneficiaries of this illegal war by securing contracts to rebuild and operate businesses in a post-war Iraq."
I asked Dave what arrangements had been made with the union in preparation for today's action, and he explained that the longshoremen couldn't legally strike to oppose the war. However, if the workers were to arrive at the docks and find a community picket line, they would then have the option of waiting outside the gates and calling an arbitrator to come and make a ruling. Dave had heard the reports that the longshoremen had respected our picket line, but he doubted that they'd actually gone home for the day. They were probably still waiting for the arbitrator.
As for Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), I was to hear more of it in weeks to come - that along with being a war profiteer, the company was also notoriously anti-labor, and had locked out longshoremen the year before in an effort to break the union.
By now even the banners had disappeared from sight, and presumably our companions of that contingent had reached the gates of SSA and joined the protesters already there. Suddenly a loud explosion rang out from approximately where I'd last seen them heading, near a row of trees. A plume of smoke rose into the air above the trees. It was followed by another blast and another plume of smoke. Tear gas grenades?
We could only guess what was going on. We watched for a long time without seeing anything explanatory, and our "lost" contingent didn't reappear. Some people in our group had cell phones, but it appeared that nobody around me had exchanged numbers with the other group, so there was no way to communicate with them.
What should we do now? We began our withdrawal towards the picket line at the first APL gate which was a quarter of a mile back the way we'd come, but as we set out in that direction, we were met by several dozen protesters who'd left there and were coming our way.
A woman whose name I later learned was Liz spoke over a bullhorn and confirmed earlier reports that the longshoremen had responded to our picket line. Bullhorns are a terribly inefficient means of communication and it was hard to hear the details. If she had any information about what was happening down the road, I didn't hear it. Meanwhile, trucks were moving past us.
What followed was a lengthy discussion over what to do next, but before we'd gotten to the point of deciding anything, someone looked back and noticed that the riot police were gone from the main APL gate.
That settled that. We trooped back to the now-unguarded gate and set up a picket line for incoming trucks. There were over a hundred of us here now. Among them I saw an elderly man in a wheelchair whom I recognized as Bob Miller from the Lake Merritt Peace Walk. He must've been quite old, but he was out here with us on this picket line, a real fighting son of a bitch.
Some of the truck drivers passing us on Middle Harbor Road honked and waved peace signs, and we responded with loud cheers.
We'd been picketing this gate for about half an hour when the riot police suddenly reappeared, emerging from an AC Transit bus which they'd apparently commandeered, and started to move in behind us. I don't think they said anything to us; in fact, I never heard the police say anything that day.
So we began our retreat, retracing our steps down the railroad tracks towards the long bridge by which we'd entered. It was half a mile from where we were now. We kept walking, and the police kept following us. I was afraid they might arrest us, but what I didn't understand was that instead of making mass arrests they'd been shooting people with pellet guns. Actually, someone had told me that's what the police were doing, but at the moment I didn't quite grasp the concept - "dowels" and "concussion grenades" were not yet part of my vocabulary, nor was the term "less-lethal ammunition."
It wasn't till afterwards, when people showed me the physical evidence, which included the wooden bullets, the concussion grenade fragments, and the physical wounds those weapons had inflicted, that I even began to comprehend what had happened a mile down the road, at the gates of SSA.
As we retreated towards the Adeline Street Bridge and then across it, we discussed reports that our companions had shut the shippers down. However, there'd been no ships in port, and so our action could've been more effective had it been on another day, observed one person somewhat regretfully. "We did this on the wrong day."
"That's irrelevant," said another. What mattered was that the dockworkers had respected our picket line. This was the first time that the antiwar movement had approached the labor movement in a serious way. "The significance is that we've set a precedent for future actions. If we can shut down a port, we can stop a war."
That was something we in the antiwar movement needed to think about. Today had been a trial run. No doubt the cops were thinking the same thing; what I didn't yet realize was that for the last couple hours they'd also been doing something unprecedented.
When we finally reached the end of the bridge, we tarried a while, watching as the riot police arrived in their commandeered AC Transit bus. They closed off the port behind us, but it seemed a little late for them to be doing that, since it appeared that for the most part we'd accomplished what we'd set out to do.
Three policemen blocked the sidewalk entrance of the bridge. One was carrying a weapon that looked like a grenade launcher, while the other two were armed with shotguns. They held them at the ready, across their arms, not pointing them at us, but the threat was implied. Later on we heard that in police jargon they were called a "Tango Team." They wore bandoleers of ammunition across their shoulders as in a cowboy movie.
They didn't seem to notice the huge old mattress beside them on which was written: shut down the war merchants.
We set out for the West Oakland BART station which had been our assembly place; it was only another half mile. As we walked we conversed. One of the people I talked with was a photographer named Ben, who told me he was going to put photos of the demonstration on the website of Direct Action. I mentioned Bob Miller, the old guy in the wheelchair, and Ben told me he'd gotten some good photos of him.
Then I saw Bob, and greeted him. He didn't respond, and then I realized that he was deaf. I tapped him on the shoulder and grinned and gave him a thumbs up, but I wanted to say something more. How do you say something to a deaf guy? I gave him a hug.