Rev Left Radio - Dockworker Power: Racial Justice, Class Struggle, and Proletarian Internationalism

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

History Professor Dr. Peter Cole (previous guest from our IWW episode) joins Breht again, this time to discuss his fascinating new book Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area. We discuss the labor history of dockworker unionism, the racial justice campaigns that workers in Apartheid South Africa and the United States partook in, the impact of these labor struggles on local cultures, proletarian internationalism, and so much more.  Check out Peter's book here:  https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/48ydk2be9780252042072.html  Learn more about Peter here:  http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/cole.php  New RLR Shirts Here:  https://goodsforthepeople.com/all-goods/revolutionary-left-radio  Outro Music: 'Hot October' by Wood Spider LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hey everyone, Brett and I just wanted to let you all know that we now officially have Rev Left shirts for sale. We collaborated with Goods for the People, which is a communist clothing line started by a previous guest of the show and some of his comrades. We worked with them to create the design, and the shirts come in a variety of colors, styles, and sizes. The revenue from each shirt goes to simultaneously support our show and Goods for the People. So if you are at all interested, we will provide a link in the show notes. We really appreciate the comrades over at Goods for the People, and we deeply appreciate everyone who listen to the people. to and supports Rev. Left Radio. Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio.

On today's episode, we have historian Peter Cole back on the show. He was on our previous episode about a few months ago that we did on the IWW and the history of the IWW. He's back on this time to talk about his new book, Doc Worker Power, Race, and Activism in Durbin in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a fascinating book covering the struggles for racial justice and class struggle, tying them together, showing their connections across space and time. We talk about how workers in South Africa would strategically use their power as dock workers in support of dismantling the apartheid state and how workers in San Francisco, dock workers have and continue to shut down work and throw up strikes in solid,

solidarity with racial justice activism and racial justice movements. We talk about the recent shutting down of the West Coast ports in solidarity with George Floyd protests in an honor of June 10th. And so this history is not just history. It's very much alive and well today. And hopefully we'll continue to be alive and well in the near, medium, and long-term future. So without further ado, let's get into this wonderful interview with historian Peter Cole on his book, Dock Worker Power.

Enjoy. Hi, my name's Peter Cole. I'm a professor. I teach history. I work in a place called Western Illinois University. It's a small town called McComb that's halfway between St. Louis and Chicago. I also am the founder and co-director of something we call the Chicago Race Right of 1919 Commemoration Project, which is an ongoing public art project in the city of Chicago.

And, yeah, that's good enough for me, eh? Yeah, awesome. Well, you've been on before to talk about the IWW, which was a fan favorite. And so I even mentioned in that episode that we'd have you back on to talk about this new book of yours on dock workers, longshoremen, unions, racial justice, etc. I really loved in our IWW episode how you wove in. the sort of the racial dynamics and the fight for racial justice into that broader sort of story about the IWW and you do the same thing with the dock workers, which I think is

really fascinating and really worth emphasizing. Before we get into the details of the book itself, what was your inspiration for writing this book and sort of what do you hope to accomplish with it? Well, in a way, sort of the subjects that you sort of very nicely summarized are basically the issues that continue to sort of fascinate me. And so a lot of my research examines somewhat similar subjects in different places and times, hopefully adding something new. But, you know, in the case of San Francisco, my book is about San Francisco Bay Area and Durbin and dock workers in each, is anyone who knows about the history essentially of this industry and unionism in the United States and radicalism.

Should be familiar sort of with the history of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the West Coast dock workers. I was new about it. I was drawn to it when I was finishing up my first book, Wobbley was on the waterfront. I started to meet some people who were in the ILW and the Bay Area, essentially activists, older activists who were often interested in history, including a man named Don Watson, who was a. historian by choice but had been a was a retired clerk from the LW Local 34 and so he was the first LW member I met and he was also a historian he wrote about the history of his union's activism and so I was drawn to that I also have a long interest in like many people the history of South Africa because of the struggle against apartheid and so there's actually a much longer

version to this story, but like, you know, I wanted to do something that combined U.S. and South Africa. I wanted to sort of study really history of unions that were, had fought, really were at the front of the struggle for racial equality. And that was the sort of the spark. Then I started to build out actually and explore more as I researched further, but was really sort of really being drawn to the history of the LW as an example of an incredibly progressive, you. And union, especially on the fight for black equality. And then similarly in being interested in what can me as an American learn from this really one of the great social movements of the 20th century, the struggle against apartheid. Absolutely. So in this book, you focused on dock workers

in two main places, San Francisco, Bay Area in the United States, and Durbin in South Africa. I believe that's the third largest city in South Africa, if I'm not, if I'm remembering correctly. And in the introduction, you said you were also interested in de-emphasizing nation-states in your analysis. I know you touched on this a little bit, but maybe you can go a little deeper. Why did you choose these two cities specifically, and why is de-centering nation-states important for this overall work? Yeah, well, again, I say often to people when I'm talking to people in or about the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, that if you don't know the centrality of the port to the city and the culture and the centrality of the people, who worked in the port to the city and the culture, you actually don't really know the Bay Area near as well as you think, because it's this really, this union and its members

have really been for upwards of 100 years central to pushing the Bay Area to become a more accepting place, really. And so it also was up through the 19-teens and 20s, like the most important city in the West, and really into the 1970s, the most important port city on West Coast. So basically, America's conquest of the Pacific, if you will. That's really a San Francisco story, right? Like the port of San Francisco, L.A. is now a bigger port for a number of reasons, starting from the 70s and 80s, but really for most of America, San Francisco. And again, the dock workers are such as an important yet somewhat lost part of that story. And so, for example, why do the beats that a lot of people know about, right, move into North Beach? What's North Beach? Well, it was a working class, but it was also a maritime neighborhood. And the reason that North Beach was North Beach was because really the dock workers and sailors who worked in were these international people who came in and out of the port, but also are sort of much more diverse in culture and ethnicity and nationality and race, diverse in terms of sexual tastes, diverse in terms of all sorts of things where it drew other cultural radicals that, of course, the hippies sort of are drawn to San Francisco. by the beats almost and so okay so if you're thinking about the cultural history of late 20th century san francisco it's the dock workers and sailors really are fundamental to understanding that

coincidentally san francisco will grow because it's the closest port to the gold fields in the sierra nevada that sort of the famous gold strikes of the 1849 50 in durbin it's the biggest port in the well it's the biggest port in africa busiest port and and is one of the more busy ones in the southern hemisphere. And Durbin also has a fascinating, very unique history. The one thing that people might not know off the bat about Durbin is that it has a huge South Asian population because the British basically imported all these indentured servants

to work horrible sugarcane field jobs in the 1800s and early 1900s. And so Durbin actually has this history of being a really important port. It's also actually the closest support to the gold fields of Johannesburg. And so there's like connections in those ways. But then Durbin also has this long history of being really important in the fight for, really, against colonialism and for racial equality in South Africa. With the black people in South Africa's eastern state of Kwa Zulu Natal are predominantly Zulu. and so a lot of the most of the people I study are Zulu but there's another ethnic group also that's called Pondos. Indians actually don't work on the waterfront because of strict segregation

historically and so I ended up trying to explore cities that are really important to their own countries yet also are outward facing yet and also were really involved in social movements for a long time, dock workers specifically as part of larger struggles. And so, you know, no one is really thought to do such a topic. It's not surprising it's so obscure on his face. But, like, it continues to fascinate me because it's like, oh, there's actually a lot of very interesting things in that we can learn something about the other by studying another place, right?

And so comparative projects are interesting also because you're not just looking, diving into one place, but actually trying to understand one by seeing what's maybe universal by looking at another. I see. And that's absolutely fascinating. And I love how you, you know, make it as not just economics. It's cultural. It's political. It's international. And we'll get into the international dimensions of these struggles later on in this conversation. But just to emphasize, just before we move on, that point about decentering nation states. Did you want to touch on that just a little bit? Of course. I'd love to. Well, I mean, we, now. this term transnationalism is much more familiar to many of us. I mean, within academic

circles, but also even in sort of general conversations, a term that really is sort of not obvious what that means and wasn't commonly used, right? But it means to go across nations, right? Because so much of the time we look at, say, the U.S., within the context of the U.S. only we look inward instead of how America is connected to and shaped by the world and vice versa. But at the same time, well, nation states are actually only a recent phenomenon in the history of humankind, right, for just a few hundred years that we had these creatures called nation states. They are so dominant as a way to organize societies now that they seem inevitable and natural. But famously, right, Ursula Gwynn said, right, a couple years ago, like, people

used to think the divine right of kings was natural, right? And now it's not, right? And so she was speaking about capitalism being sort of naturalized as the only way to organize an economy, but we also could be thinking about it in terms of politics, I mean states, right? I mean, not all nation states are actually just one example of how, and so, you know, looking at cities in different cultures instead of just looking through the lens of the national government, the national laws, et cetera, but really sort of drilling down to where city to city, sexually people can relate to that because we all can sort of are in a way like city is an logical form of organization. Yeah, wonderful. I like that about this work a lot. It totally

makes sense when you sort of put nation states in their historical context and sort of denaturalize them and make them the sort of contingent historical phenomenon they actually are and not the assumption we often make of these things as if they're enduring legacies of human civilization and not just ephemeral parts of our cultural evolution. So I like that a lot. Broadly speaking, and this is really essential too for people to understand who might not think about this off the top of their heads.

But why are ports and the workers who make them function so unique and essential to not only global trade, but I mean to class struggle historically and even presently? Yeah. Well, I always like to say that trade is actually is a natural human condition, right, like the exchange of goods, but trade existed before capitalism and trade will probably exist after capitalism, I would say. And so, like, you know, who moves goods, right? Well, those who work in this industry, transportation, but even today, 90% of

goods, raw materials and or finished goods move for part of their journey, right, from beginning to end on ships, right? Like, and so even though it's sort of invisible because humans live on land, right? And even though most of the planet's water, we essentially don't see literally S-E, the work that is done at and sort of near the C-S-E-A, right? And so for the centrality of that industry and the workers, yeah, I always use examples that I think make good sense, which is that phrases that were. we're familiar with are the ship must sail on time because time is money, right?

Like in transportation, literally, the longer it takes to move stuff, the more it costs, right? And so therefore, there is a logic, quote unquote, right, to moving things as fast as possible, right? Well, this logic, especially if you happen to work in this industry, isn't very hard to assess. you very likely can figure it out on your first day on the job or you're told that by your fellow workers or your boss, both who are saying work faster, right, like or work slower. What you've got is basically a natural choke point, right? And so workers stand literally at the crossroads at a place where goods are exchanged, raw materials and finished goods, right? and they understand this, and if they're together well organized, individually that won't work, they actually can stop, right?

And so in every industry, the most powerful tool that a worker has is to strike to stop work, right? That's the logic of capitalism, again, that employers understand that. This is costing me money, right? And so if we go back in time to the origins of the word strike, right? it's a nautical term but in 1768 in London England London being the most important city

and port city in the world in that era the rise of the British Empire it was sailors who wanted a raise who took down the sails of their ship and that's called to strike a sail and that's become the word we all use in English to describe workstaffish, all workstaffich is not

just maritime but that tells us about the centrality of shipping right and the power potentially of workers who are in this industry, right? And although there are fewer workers now who work in this industry, all the rest still applies, right? And so transportation workers generally and people who work in maritime or shipping particularly still have potential power, tremendous power, if they're able to organize work together. Absolutely. I had no idea that strike was a nautical term.

that's absolutely fascinating. And even today with all of the technology and the hyperglobalization, I think people sometimes that don't really think deeply about it, sort of assume that like semi-trucks and planes are sort of essential to trade. But as you said, up to 90% of goods, at least at some part of their journey are on ships on the sea. And that's a fascinating, important point in and of itself, but also when you're thinking, as you said, of choke points economically

where workers can strategically strike and take a stand. There's very few things of such import as ports. And so that plays a huge role. And I think we'll continue to play a huge role as history develops and the contradictions between capital and labor globally continue to intensify. So, yeah, that's just a fascinating little aside. And it really grounds the rest of this conversation. And so for the next couple of questions,

I'm going to break it down by location. So I'll do two questions about San Francisco specifically and then two questions about Durbin before we move on. So focusing on San Francisco, can you talk about just some of the history of unionization and class struggle among the dock workers in the Bay Area, maybe highlighting the aspects that you find most important or interesting? Of course, it's my pleasure. So, I mean, San Francisco, again, first and foremost, was a port city, like in the logo of the city is essentially a ship and a sailor with an anchor. But in the Bay Area, dock workers are, one, not the only group of workers who are organizing in the mid and late 19th century. San Francisco becomes actually a very militant working class town in the late 19th and early 20th century.

That's not unique. A number of American cities as the industrialized did so. It was just so San Francisco is not as large as a lot of these eastern cities, and it's really much more maritime is so visible. like even now geographically if you spend time in the barrier right if you're in the city of san francisco is on this peninsula so you're surrounded by water you get a sense of that and because it's hilly you often have views right of out into the san francisco bay which is vast it's literally the best port on the west coast of north america right like i mean that's why it has a relatively narrow mouth the golden gate right but then it opens up to this huge thing even now um Oakland is really the center of the port And if you spend time in the Bay Area again, if you take the BART, these trains between San Francisco and Oakland or drive, the highway, right? You go right by the port. And so you actually see the port. It's very visibly central.

And actually, that's, I think, a beautiful thing. Because in many places, the port has physically relocated to a distant place that's invisible again. And even though it's really important, I always use the example of London, England, isn't a port anymore. It's all been basically redeveloped waterfront. And the biggest port is a port in England that no one's ever heard of, even though it's one of the biggest ports in the world and one of the biggest in Europe. But everyone's heard of London, right? So in San Francisco, anyway, getting back to San Francisco,

I think the most interesting things are sort of well-known, but relatively speaking, but still are foundational during the Great Depression. In the 1930s, stockworkers and workers and many other industries were really fed up. both at suffering but also at capitalism. And so there's this huge spike in unionism, political activism of various sorts, particularly the Communist Party, but also other groups. And it's out of this fervor that 1934 San Francisco dock workers lead the entire West Coast in a strike, nickname the big strike, shut down the entire West Coast, all ports up and down

the coast for six weeks, right? And in the midst of that, right, I mean, repeatedly, The city and the state and the federal government tried to end the strike, including using force. And on July 5th, 1934, two San Francisco strikers or sympathizers were killed by the police, right, in what became nicknamed Bloody Thursday. And this union, therefore, similar to the current police rebellions, right, is very aware that it's sort of foundational strike that there was ultimately six workers on strike were killed during the course of the strike by police. and out of this also came a famous Australian immigrant leader named Harry Bridges who came out of the rank and filed but became the de facto leader of the strike up and down the coast considered a communist although he denied membership but that he openly was a leftist and

he had been previously a wobbly and out of this big strike that's victorious right like the union basically wins wage increases hours cut control based basically of union-controlled hiring hall instead of being exploited on the job in the hiring process that union would control the work and more. And then for the next few decades, they became nicknamed the Lords of the Docs where dock workers were probably the best paid blue car workers in the West, maybe the country, right? And immediately embraced radical racial equality on a scale that

Some other unions were doing, but very few of those are still around today in the 21st century. And so 30 years before the modern civil rights movement achieved the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right? This union self-integrated its ranks, right? And then fought actively in its union, in other unions, in the city and region and country for black equality on a scale that very few institutions did, became its Bay Area, local black majority by the mid-60s, led by a black man at first named Cleofus Williams, the first black president of Local 10. And up through today, right, has been this incredible force in the Bay Area for radical racial equality, right? Like, I mean, and although the big strike in Harry Bridges and that 1930 stuff is well known within labor circles, and although it's appreciated that this

is a very progressive union, no one actually had ever written about so, thoroughly, I guess, that this union fought so hard for racial equality, but then also fought for farm workers who were predominantly Latino, right? Like, fought against the war in Vietnam, fought in solidarity with the San Francisco civil rights movement, including the student strikes in San Francisco in the late 60s, were fundamental to making the occupation of Alcatraz by American Indians for 18 months possible and more, right? And so the history of this union punching above its weight, you might say, is sort of tremendous, in my opinion, and deeply shapes the institution still, the union that is, but also, again, one of the main reasons I would say that the barrier has become the sort of place it is relatively progressive when it comes to a number of issues, but including not just toleration of diversity, but embrace.

you might say of multiculturalism of different sorts. Wow, that's absolutely fascinating. And, yeah, somebody who is relatively well up on labor history in the U.S., that's something that I didn't know about either, so that's really fascinating. Can you talk a bit about how the dock workers, and you touched on it a bit, maybe you can go deeper on that too, how the dock workers in San Francisco just sort of broadly impacted local culture, and maybe you could talk a little bit more about the fights for racial justice. Yeah, of course. I mean, we could think about sort of nowadays, right, although I'm a

historian, right, like, why did Anchor Steam brewery workers organize with the LWU last year, right? And why did in 2020 the LW shut down the West Coast for eight hours on June 10th, the first union in the history of the United States to ever essentially stop work in honor of June 10th, but also in solidarity with the George Floyd protests, right? Like a, and so this has a long history, right, to it. It predates the 1930s. There was militancy on the waterfront before that time. It just never had sort of ultimately developed into a long-term durable union, right?

But the OWU impacts, I think, local culture in a number of different ways, right? And I think sometimes we want to think about this. and sort of culture, small, sea, right? So, for instance, like the ILW has a drill team where, starting in the mid-60s, an African-American member named Josh Williams, nicknamed Captain, he had been in the Army, but he was enlisted, forms this basically step organization,

sort of dances or sort of engages in step dancing, right? And that sort of ties into traditional African-American fraternity, culture but also military culture and a number of ILW members in local 10 but also up and down the coast are military veterans and so created this group that say 10 guys 20 guys now some women in that who wear traditional longshore uniforms carry the traditional longshore cargo hook and perform it all sorts of public events right and so they marched in the 60s and 70s in anti-war rallies but they also would march in like a chinese new year right like events um and they would march in solidarity with farm workers on a number of occasions when i have a cool photo in my book of them participating in a farm worker solidarity rally right like uh and so they're just part of the community and so they do things that are not explicitly political in any means but actually are what you could call a working class culture um that really is attempting to sort of reach beyond um

the immediate members of the union. And I think that's, you know, a sort of very interesting way that these dock workers, Captain Josh passed away a few years ago, but the drill team continues to perform. It's usually in the Bay Area, but sometimes beyond, like in Madison and what 2011 was it, the drill team flew in and did some events in Madison when they occupied the state capital. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. But, you know, and so like, you know, San Francisco dock workers, of course, don't just live in San Francisco proper anymore. They live, the great majority live in the East Bay because of the high cost of living, which is even, of course, high in the East Bay, right?

But, you know, in terms of connecting, again, dock workers, culture, and fight for racial justice, I'll give you one other example that I feature in one chapter in my book, right? In the 50s, in early 60s, in many American cities, the federal government often collaborated with city governments to basically, quote-unquote, redevelop urban neighborhoods that were supposedly blighted, were in decline, and as many of us know, those were often non-white communities, right? And so in San Francisco, the largest black area was called the Fillmore. It's traditionally, it was called the Western Edition in San Francisco. but the Fillmore was being one of these neighborhoods that that was being targeted by redevelopment resulting in thousands of houses being torn down right tens of thousands of people displaced predominantly African Americans right like is it coincidence of course not this happened in city after city right like James Baldwin famously called it Negro removal and so what what the dock workers

did after basically this clearance happened like where there's vacated destroyed city blocks to be redeveloped. The OW took some of its pension funds and built worker, well, they built a housing cooperative that was affordable to working class people and was the first private development that was anti-racist, so it was intentionally open to people of all our ethnic racial and national groups. And it's called St. Francis Housing Cooperative. And a thousand people lived in that community, right? Hundreds of units. It's still around today, the St. Francis Housing Co-op. It's now this area is sometimes called Japan Town. It's an example, again, this is not the first, right? There was actually a number of unions, especially in New York City, built worker-owned

housing cooperatives, some of which that still exist to this day. It's an example of what it took, it used its own resources to do, right? But it did so in a way that was both essentially affordable to working class people to become homeowners, but also intentionally open to all people regardless of ethnicity or race. That's another example, right, of how the ILW did something away from the job, right? And so a lot of us think about unions about what do they do for the members. That's important. A lot of my book really focuses on how these unions use their power in various ways in order to fight for causes that weren't just about themselves, but also how to improve their community, their country, and their world.

absolutely beautiful, beautiful history. And something you said in the beginning of that question was the recent strikes for Juneteenth and in solidarity with the George Floyd protest. And this is a big, important, significant move by labor. And it received almost no mainstream media coverage. And a big reason for that, I think, is that what the ruling class and their proxies in the media, liberal or conservative, what they can't see. stand and they won't allow to get out is this idea that you could marry the black liberation

struggle with class struggle that it that becomes a huge threat to the hierarchy of class and race in this society and so you know they can do some some black liberation stuff on this side and maybe we can talk about some teacher strikes on this side but when the two start meeting up and combining their forces the ruling class really trembles and I think that's part of the reason why corporate media would not shine a light on what is genuinely historical event in the context of these historical protests, et cetera. And a lot of what they, a lot of what I think the ruling class wants is to satiate these protests with, you know, symbolic gestures of, you know, whether they're good or bad, you know, tearing down statues, for instance, is a good thing. But as long as

they can keep it in the realm of the symbolic, they're good, right? But once the demands and the changes start to become material and foundational to hierarchies of class and race in this society and how they are interwoven, I think you'll see a lot in the ruling class, do whatever they can to stop that from developing. So I just think that's an interesting point worth pointing out. And then just because we're going to move on to South Africa now, I just want to reiterate this idea that, you know, we're just touching on highlights from the book. The book itself is obviously going to go much deeper into this stuff. So if you have any connections to the Bay Area or to the West Coast, if you live there now or have family or friends or any sort of history there at all,

I would highly recommend getting this book and learning about that because of the interwoven and complex web of culture and politics and economics and history that you'll find there. And really, you know, I think it really will shine and shine a huge light on the West Coast history through the lens of labor and racial justice, which I think is profound and fascinating. So having said that, let's go ahead and move on to to now Durban in South Africa. Can you talk about some of the history of unionization and class struggle

among the longshoremen of Durbin? Of course. Well, Durbin really is bounded to support city, right? The British in the early 1800s already have taken control of the Dutch colony in the western Cape, where the city of Cape Town is. On the west side of Africa,

the southwest corner is Cape Town, right? And it's on the Atlantic Ocean. But the British, of course, course have this huge empire in the east and wants also to have a sort of an outpost on the eastern coast of Africa, the southeast coast on the Indian Ocean. And basically the Portuguese have the best harbor in the sort of that in southern Africa is called Maputo now, but it used to be called Lorenzo Marquez. So the British basically decide that they're going to want this place. Of course, people live there, Zulu and other people, right. But the British in the early 1800s

find this quote-unquote harbor and then that becomes the city of Durbin and Durbin has always been there for a sort of maritime place facing outward to the Indian ocean it's also if you've ever had the chance to go or look at a photographs right like the harbor is also very central like the city is sort of sort of organized around it the old city and so even though the port also moved in the same way it moved from San Francisco to Oakland, it moved from the essentially northern part of the harbor to the southern part in the late 20th century. It's still very physically visible, which is another thing. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful city. And like actually, San Francisco has some big hills, although they rise

up off the continental shelf. And it's a beautiful subtropical place. I always say, if you know Miami, Miami, Florida, my home place, great in the winter, terrible in the summer, right? That's sort of what Durbin's about, right? Like, but South Africa was really important to the British, once diamond and then especially gold, right, are sort of mined in central Southern Africa in the late 1800s. And so Durbin is the way out, right? South Africa will then start to industrialize somewhat based around mining and then other industries.

And Durbin is really the most important port in South Africa and, like I said earlier, and the entire continent subsequently. And so those who work on the ships, they have the same potential power. And those workers, just like in Melbourne, Australia, just like in, I don't know, Lagos, Nigeria, just like in Hamburg, Germany, figure this out, right? Like, this is anyone who works in this industry will learn basically how interesting it is in some ways because you meet people from around the world, hear stories, get news from people from around the world on a daily basis. right like this is before the internet right like a and interact with people right and but also learn that okay what I'm doing is actually really important right I am the key to sort of moving things in and out of not just Durban but South Africa and so these dock workers figured this out and for

the same reasons workers in many industries have done so they started to collectively organize before they had unions but they would stop work right why they want to raise right and so the fact that all the workers were of the same ethnic group, Zulu at first, and later some pandos. That helped, right, because it's easier to get along with people who you think you're alike, right? And so there's, we don't want to sort of forget that piece too. But basically, dock workers in Durbin, who are often called dockers, which is also an English slang, were, A, really important to the local economy, B, very quickly developed a history of Milton C, the first documented strike in Durbin is of dock workers, right?

And then continue to do it. Fast forward into the mid-20th century, World War II, right? Well, if you're a black South African, what do you care who's fighting us war in Europe, right? Like, all you know is that the British and then the Afrikaners, who are the Dutch ancestors, South Africans, oppress you know. So there was actually lots of strikes happening in World War II and Durbin because it was a great opportunity. There was huge labor shortages.

The Suez Canal is closed for much of the war. All these ships are coming around the Indian Ocean, right? And Durban is actually a really important place. It's a great opportunity to try to make some more money, right? Of course, the fact that they were so poor was also not just because of the work they did, but because black workers, whatever work you did in South Africa got paid poverty wages, right? And so even before apartheid, which has a system technically isn't begun until 1949, right, like there was horrific racial oppression that preceded that. When black workers start organizing, even if it's for material short-term gains, that is a huge threat to the entire system, right?

Because unlike in America where black people make up historically, say, 12 or 13 percent of the population, they're the majority of the population in South Africa. And so essentially the white minority rulers are always freaking out any time black workers demonstrate some power because they appreciate, as you were saying earlier, the foundational role of essentially economic wealth to essentially wealth power and control. And so even when I argue these strikes are really about wage increases, they also always have to be understood as having a racial component central, which partially explains. is why the state always cracks down so hard on these strikes that I described in the 1940s and 50s. But then by the late 50s, dock workers are increasingly in Durbin coordinating their actions with overtly anti-apartheid political groups, the most well known as the African National Congress or the ANC. Now, legally, black workers didn't have the same rights as white workers, so legally black workers couldn't go on strike.

So they use the term stayaways, which is just another word for a strike. But also for dock workers, they weren't breaking the law, regardless of the able, because dock workers never actually had a job traditionally. You only get hired that day for a job, right? And so now we call this precarious work. Traditionally, this would have been called casual work. Whatever you call it, it means that technically you're not on strike if you don't report for work because you didn't have a job, right?

So if one person doesn't report for work, it's no big deal. But if everybody in the workforce collectively decides tomorrow, we're not going to turn up for to get hired, you have essentially a strike. And so Durbin Dockers struck almost more than any other group of workers in any city in any occupation of South Africa in the 40s and 50s, right, which was resulted in ultimately a massive overhaul of the entire hiring system and mass firings of workers because Durban dockers, despite being allegedly weak, right, because they were black in an apartheid society, demonstrated tremendous power, again, at a central note of the entire South African economy, right?

And so several chapters in my book explore basically the anti-apartheid activism, right, of Durban dockers. Beautiful. Beautiful. Let's get into that right now. How did the dock workers in Durban impact local culture, but specifically I want to know about them joining the fight against apartheid and racial injustice in South Africa and how that sort of played out? Yeah. Well, I mean, in terms of culture, again, for if this is predominant, nominally an audience that's not South African. Blacks were restricted in ways that are hard to imagine, even in the U.S. context, right? So, for example, blacks would have to get permission to move to cities. Cities by definition were white. Any black person in a city would have to carry on their all times a pass. And if that pass didn't document that they had the right to be in the

city, which meant one had a white employer, then you could be deported back to your homeland quote-unquote, based on your ethnic group. And it didn't matter if you'd lived in a place for a month, a year, 10 years, never had been back to your homeland. But the homelands were rural places similar to American Indian reservations, you might say. So that blacks had to, there was on the apartheid regime, which is very fascistic, exerts a lot of state control, including of a sort of authoritarian police power. right so that all black workers had to have these passes you had to get permission to move to the city

which meant you had to have a white boss right um and so Durban dockers are all from rural quasi-zulu essentially sometimes called Zuland right rural places outside of Durban and you would only be able to come by yourself you couldn't go with your family right and so it's an all-male occupation traditionally and so women and children and this was the case for minors who also went up to Johannesburg would leave their families behind it would maybe only see them for a month a year at Christmas time, right? And so you have an all-male workforce that was also because of the nature of the industry was housed near the waterfront in what they were referred to as hostels. Now, the effect of this among other things is that

not only are you together on the job, not only are you the same ethnic group, you're also actually together off the job all the time, right? Like you drink together because that's one of the few things you're legal allowed to do, right? And you can't even go to other parts of the city without some journey, which may cost money, but also might result in police harassment. And so the culture is very tight, right? Durbin dockers on what in that area was called the point, right? And, well, the combined suffering, right, of poverty but also racial, or you might also

call it national oppression resulted in across the country over many decades. case, right, this very sort of wide and deep struggle against apartheid that the state constantly responded to with mass repression resulting in exile, killings, imprisonments, bannings, underground activity, et cetera, right? And so Durban dockers in the Bay Area, excuse me, in Durbin are really important, right? So that their labor activity is really important. And also then, after the big wave of repression that happens, the biggest being in the early 1960s that result in all political organizations ban that are anti-apartheid imprisonment for the most famous person Mendoza but also for thousands of others, right? The movement goes into exile, right? And this

becomes known as the so-called quiet decade where inside the country activism is very small because of mass repression. Durbin Dockers in 1969 pull off the largest strike among black workers since the repression, right? And then in 71 threatened the strike and in late 72, strike again. And then in early 1973, other workers go on strike in the city of Durbin, which has an industrial base too. Setting off what in South Africa is

called the Durban strikes, which is a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa. It's like comparing it to, I don't know, the civil rights explosion in the early 60s in the United States. And so it essentially reignites the domestic struggle against apartheid.

So one chapter of my book explores how Durbin Dockers played a what I consider, I'm not the first, mind you, but to sort of argue that Durban dockers are really pivotal to the Durban strikes, and so it should be appreciated essentially more than they are for being important to the national struggle. Wonderful. Yeah, that's just an incredibly fascinating history. It reminds me when you're talking about how the city centers were for white people and black people had to have a special pass to be allowed in that sector. It reminds me of Franz Ph. Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, and one of the things he does, among many other things in that book,

is he talks about how in a colonial situation, the colonists and the natives are separated spatially into whether different parts of towns or different parts of the country. Obviously, it manifests in apartheid South Africa as like city centers being places for white people, the colonial sector, if you will. In the U.S., and so far as it's a colonialist empire, you have reservations for indigenous people and you have redlining and ghettos, inner city areas for black people, and even today that legacy continues to live on. And so in every colonial context, as Franz Fanon pointed out, you have this spatial separation on top of many other forms of separation, disconnection. I just thought that was worth pointing out. But now that we've covered San Francisco and Durbin, let's go ahead

and talk about the sort of international dimensions of these struggles. Can you talk about how workers and unions in both ports, engaged in solidarity with international movements, strategically using their power in their own countries to sort of assist struggles for justice and other ones? Yeah, so in the Bay Area, the LWU's Bay Area Local is called Local 10. Like I mentioned earlier, it was a black majority by the mid-60s. In the early 60s, Local 10 for the first time refused to work a vessel that was carrying cargo from South Africa.

That was because a small group of activists, anti-apartheid activists, Americans, African-Americans, but led by a white woman, actually, in San Francisco, who collaborate with a black leader within the union so that when they threw up a small community picket, when a Dutch ship came in with South African cargo, these workers would refuse to cross this picket line and would for essentially 24 hours not work this ship, right? Like, to my knowledge, that's the first documented case of

American workers stopping work in order to protest apartheid South Africa. Why would this group of people do this? Well, many are African-American, although at that time not most. I haven't even talked much about the fact that many of the

members of the LW are on the left. The reason it was actually so progressive when it came to racial equality is because many of the leaders and members of the union were communists, chotskyists, wobbles, socialists of different sorts, who are generally more internationalist in their thinking. And the obvious horrors of apartheid were already known. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, many people in the 60s who were from the U.S. were aware of and critical of South Africa and its racial oppression.

In the mid-70s, however, after a student uprising in Johannesburg's sister city of Soweto, an African-American named Leo Robinson and Local 10, a native Oaklander and son of a dock worker, along with Larry Wright, who was a white member of Local 10 and who was a so-called red diaper baby. His parents were both communists. He actually was a – this guy, Larry Wright, was as a child, was in the film Salt of the Earth that his father helped create. And other African-American and white members of Local 10 who were left-wing, but also very knowledgeable about and sympathetic to African liberation,

get permission from their union to form the Southern Africa Liberation Support Committee. So their union says, okay, we're going to have a rank-and-vile committee that will educate us about oppression in Southern Africa, not just South Africa, but also Mozambique, Southwest Africa, Rhodesia. And then starting in the mid-70s and then increasing in the 80s, these dock workers occasionally would refuse to work cargo from South Africa. Most famously in 1984, where for 10 days, members of Local 10 refused to unload cargo from South Africa as a pressure tactic.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the congressman from the East Bay, Oakland-Burkeley area, Ron Delums, whose father was in Local 10, was the, the leading figure in the House of Representatives pushing for sanctions against South Africa in Congress, right? And so you have this multi-tiered struggle in America to push the U.S. in the Reagan era to be anti-apartheid, right? And I always like to point out that when these workers don't work these ships, they're actually taking money out of their own pockets, right? And so as impressive as activism is of various sorts, if you go to a rally, you generally don't pay to go. But these guys, and at that time it was still all male, were choosing to basically

earn less money, not feed their families, right, on behalf of people that they had never met and maybe never would meet, right? And that is a sort of international solidarity that's not unique to this story, but is when workers do these sorts of things, right? They're actually they've put money on the table, right? And so that's sort of amazing. I use, as a parallel to that in Durban, right, where in 2008 Durban dock workers refused to unload weapons from China that were intended for their neighboring country of Zimbabwe, right? And so I talk in both of these places how dock workers have engaged in solidarity with people in other countries for freedom, you might say. Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful history. I mean,

there's many more examples of that throughout the world, especially, and now that you mention it, you know, around port specifically, I'm thinking of some Irish struggles and Americans and British workers refusing to unload ships coming from the British Empire in solidarity with the IRA and stuff like that. So it's a wide ranging and deep history. And it's something that I think people on the left today can and should learn so that we can draw a lot of inspiration from. Things are not going to magically get better in this country or many others in the coming decades and the the historical show of worker power and the international proletarian solidarity with other struggles and even as you said sacrificing money and your own well-being to stand

in solidarity with people that you probably've never met across the world and their struggle few things are more inspiring than that in my opinion so there's a lot there's a huge well of inspiration that we can draw we can draw on in these in these histories i do want to move on and talk about the third main theme of your book, which is containerization. And this is something that I'd never even contemplated, never even thought about. I see the images of huge containers being loaded on huge ships, but I never made the connections between technology, automation, what that means for workers, et cetera. So can you please talk about containerization and just sort of highlight the impact that it's had on the industry and on both sides of it, labor and capital?

Of course. I mean, it's so important, but it is quite typically absent from our thoughts. That's not entirely coincidence, but it's not like it's a conspiracy. But there's a great documentary that came out maybe a decade ago called Forgotten Space that looks at containers and shipping, but, you know, separate from the story I tell, as you know, containerization, the transformation of how we move cargo basically in these standardized 40-foot metal boxes. using cranes to lift and load them onto those ships and trains and trucks, revolutionizes global trade, results in a massive increase in trade. But it also results in the choice by corporations, and often nation states, right, to sort of basically relocate industrial production from higher-wage countries to lower-wage countries. And so without containers made in China just does not exist

at the scale that we are familiar with. Right. and so we all should be thinking more about it even though it seems like so random and in some ways simple it's not like a fancy technology like your smartphone yet at the same time it's arguably more important to why the world as we know it economically is the way it is right like i i didn't expect to write this subject either but i the more i read about it the more fascinating i became and the more important i came to believe it was so that i chose to spend a third of my book right exploring the subject, because it turned out that the dock workers on the West Coast, not just San Francisco, but the entire international, right, was the first union of its sort in the world, the first dock worker union, to negotiate the transition. And although some of this was also happening in New York City, San Francisco in a way, is really sort of the first place to experience containerization.

Now, that results geographically in, for instance, the port, essentially the work moving to the East Bay, to the city of Oakland, which is, fine, you know, it's important for local people, but in the larger scale is less important, right? What's really important about it is that, of course, far fewer people will be working, yet productivity will skyrocket, right? And then the questions start to ask, and then we start thinking about the fact that this is similar to many other industries, or maybe every other industry, where technological change drastically changes how workers work, how much they get paid, how many of them there are who's profiting and who's losing, right?

And so technological change in the 21st century is a vitally important issue. This history, in a way, is looking at what happens when a union that's strong is impacted by this. Now, the short version is that they do a relatively good job of protecting the current members, but long term they did not protect, if you will, the total number of workers, right? Like Harry Bridges, who was called a communist, right, sometimes was accused of being a capitalist sell out because what he did was he convinced the members to support it but to shrink from the top they basically got a bunch of money from the employers and said we're going to have fewer workers

so how are we going to do it we're going to basically pay older members to retire early shrink from the top instead of firing the young and we will guarantee that not a single worker will get fired right so over time of course what happens is that people leave the industry and they're not necessarily replaced, now it takes fewer the 10% of the workers to do the amount of work, right, than historically. So over time, not in five or 10 years, but over 40 years, right, we see the massive impact on these workers' lives. Now, however, dock workers, some of us may know, get paid really well, right? Like they're getting a, quote, share of the machine. Now, you could say they deserve all of it. But dock workers in and of themselves

shouldn't necessarily get paid so much more than other skilled blue-collar workers. Why do they? They have power, right? And so they were able to negotiate a relatively good deal for the existing members, but there's far fewer

of them, right? Now you could call these people sort of, again, including Harry Bridges' sell-outs, some people did, because they also gave up some of their power. They basically traded some money for less control over the job. Now, you could also then endlessly engage in arguments, chicken and the egg thing, like, could actually workers have prevented, should they have tried to prevent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but those are, of course, all just hypotheticals.

Now, interestingly, and I'll try to be brief, the contrast to Durbin is where dock workers, although historically strong, have been weakened by apartheid, but also by changes to the nature of the hiring process. And then with containerization, 50% of the workers were fired inside of three years, and workers who remained didn't get paid a single penny more, right? And so although some of my book looks at similarities between Durban and San Francisco, other parts of my book look at the dissonances. And the obvious takeaway is that having a strong union actually helps workers a lot. But over time, importantly, as I end my book, these workers do maintain some of their militant tradition.

and so therefore do things like stop work in solidarity with apartheid resistance, stop work in solidarity with Zimbabweans, fighting against the regime, et cetera. But they are weaker in some ways than they were historically, and it's not clear that will change in the short term, at least. Yeah, I see. And just to really drill down on this point and tying it into something else, containerization broadly, cannot really be separated from free trade agreements, especially that exploded. it in the 80s and 90s, wherein capital would go to different countries, mostly in the global south, so they could pay their workers less.

And then the containerization, sort of technological development, allowed them to do that and then ship the products back to their home country where the workers have less good jobs. Most of them, you know, generations of, let's say, like mine workers or dock workers, now that they've been sort of decimated in their own way,

have to go into lower wage, more precarious work, but capital overall benefits from this while labor in the global South gets mercilessly exploited and labor in the global north gets weakened considerably. Is that a fair way to frame it and tie it into free trade agreements? I think that is. Now, I would just say two things. One, yeah, containers are important, but they're not the only part of the story, right? Like that many governments facilitated corporations moving production, and then for its own benefits, those are super also important to appreciate. It didn't just happen because of the containers. Corporations are creations of our legal systems, and so therefore need approval,

even though they've worked to sort of control them. Now, just an extra wrinkle, right? My work doesn't really look at this, but others do. Famously, some of us might know that back in 1999 in Seattle, Washington, when the World Trade Organization was meeting, The LW shut down the entire West Coast, just like they did for Juneteenth, 2020, they did it in the so-called battle for Seattle, right, where unions and environmentalists were criticizing these so-called free trade agreements, right? Now, for dock workers and other workers in transportation or logistics, right? More trade actually arguably means more work, therefore more money, right? However, these dock workers believing these free trade agreements were actually bad for most workers, if not necessarily,

them, they've always taken a stand, along with most other unions, against these free trade agreements, right? But it's an interesting way to think about, right, like that these workers went against their material self-interest by opposing NAFTA, WTO, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like, yeah, that's worth noting. Absolutely. All right. Well, one more question before we wrap it up.

What is the state of dock worker power today? Do the legacies of radical unionism and the fights for racial justice live on? I know you touched on the Juneteenth show of solidarity, but is there anything else that we can talk about as far as where that industry is today? Well, the answer is there's a lot of interesting things happening. And let me circle back to Juneteenth second. I do want to mention that dock workers in a number of European cities, port cities like Marseille, for instance, in France,

but also in a number of Italian ports as well as in Scandinavia have in 2019 and 2020 refused to load military supplies aboard a Saudi-owned vessel that were intended for the Saudi war that is ongoing in Yemen, right? And so when we talked earlier about

when you talked earlier about how dock workers in the cities I discuss are not the only ones who are engaged in such actions, there's actually actions happening very recently, very similar in motive and very similar in their appearance, yet for a different specific cause, right? Like in the case of the sort of the mass slaughter of Yemenis on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, right? In our country or in my country, the U.S., I think you live in the U.S. also. We famously saw on June 10th, right, like June 19th holiday that black people celebrate the

end of slavery, where workers up and down the coast, on the West Coast, refused to work. They basically used a provision of their contract that allows them to stop work, quote-unquote. Even during a day shift, even during a busy time, they generally don't use this provision, but they did not actually engage in a strike that was illegal, right? They actually just have a really good contract because they have enough power to command such things in their contract. Right. Like, so nevertheless, shutting down the entire import-export economy of the U.S. for a Friday day shift, that actually is significant, right? Now, there were rallies up and down the coast also, but in some places more than others, and the most well-known

one happened in Oakland, right, where it's not surprising again that it was local 10 and its sort of companion, local 34 clerks that were the ones who made the call. to the coastwide division at that get then approved at the coastwide level so that all the ports from San Diego up to Bellingham, Washington stopped work.

And in solidarity, even though it was a separate contract, ILW Canada, British Columbia also stopped work that day in solidarity, right? And it's not even, that's not a U.S. port, right? Like British Vancouver.

But that was also a sort of a little bonus, right? And most famously, of course, Angela Davis, LWU, Local 10, was one of the people who spoke, Boots Riley spoke, actually members of the union spoke, they're not as well known, the uncle of Oscar Grant spoke, I believe, Uncle Bobby, right? And so there was a bunch of huge rally involving the number is variable, let's say 10,000 people, right, shut down the Bay Area, East Bayport, and that was really inspirational, really arguably, Again, I mean, the George Floyd Poachas have so many different components to it and are so important and really we don't know where this is going, right? But Juneteenth was the first concerted example of organized workers taking action in solidarity.

Now, there are actually some other examples of unions and workers engaging in sort of Black Live Matter support. But Juneteenth 2020 is, well, so far the high watermark, right? although noteworthy on July 20th there will be some unions have called a strike for black lives to happen it's not clear actually how many unions or how many members of unions or non-union members will not work tomorrow because we're recording this on July 19th but July 20th will this what will this strike for black lives look like I don't know but if we see more workers as workers engaging in racial solidarity actions, that would be very important.

Absolutely. And so the Juneteenth, 2020 is sort of a blueprint, right? What is possible? Totally. Absolutely. And hopefully it's a sign of more things to come. And like I said earlier, it is the ruling classes ultimate nightmare to see these different movements come together.

I mean, just imagine what would happen if we could shut down the all-American ports until police departments were defunded or black folks got reparations. I mean, these things can really be scaled up and can put a lot of pressure on our ruling class. So definitely just things worth thinking about. And if you operate within black liberation circles, you operate within labor movements. These are things that you can tie together and try to show how one movement can absolutely benefit and be tied to another and how class and racial analysis can bolster.

one another and really bring strength to both movements so beautiful history here so much to learn and it's pointing a way forward that I think we'll see more and more of this as the the years tick by hopefully final question before I let you go Peter what do you hope readers ultimately take away from your book and where can listeners find this wonderful book online well I continued to be like you were talking about really sort of inspired by sort of these multiracial, multi-class, but working class-led struggles. And my book tries to explore some of those issues in two particular places, places that are very important, but, you know, not unique. And so although some of us are drawn to, say, the barrier, right, I'm one of those people. You know, if I live in

Detroit, actually, this stuff still I'd like to think matters deeply. I guess I hope ultimately that we see how although much of the time we as workers and we who are in unions actually aren't doing these sorts of things, the history of social movement or social justice unionism is a tradition that really in the 21st century we should be thinking to expand as much as possible, right? Like that the way forward, I'm not anti- elections, but like it's not only happening with elections. And so if you want radical change, it really has to include worker power at us, at a central focus. As for where one might find the book, well, the University of Illinois Press published the book. You can purchase books

directly from its website. Pals, some people like Pals, they actually are in the union, the LW. They've had some trouble in the last pandemic months, including with their workers. But it is a l w local five represents piles bookworkers and they have an online presence and well rumors has it it sold in other places to online wonderful i'll link to the to the book in the show notes so people can find it easily definitely go check it out it is not just regionally specific this is a huge part of overall labor history and racial history so definitely check it out thank you again peter for coming on it's always an honor and a pleasure to talk to you and without a out, we will do it again soon. Great. Thank you so much for your time and I love the podcast.

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