Occupy Oakland shuts down morning shift at the Port

Here's a short clip from this morning (about 6 hours ago.  We marched from the West Oakland BART station (Subway) to the Port and by 10 am it was clear that the morning shift (members of the ILWU) was not going in and the port was shut down. Washington, Portland Oregon, Seattle and Vancouver were also shut down.  We will be going back tonight to shut down the night shift.

The leadership of the local Labor movement all directly opposed or refused in the most cowardly way to support the action.  The history of the working class in the US is a rich and militant history.  The present leadership are totally wed to the market and capitalism through what they call the Team Concept (see other articles on this blog on the Labor movement) and shamefully allow the Occupy Wall Street movement to do what they should be doing, which despite the reduced union membership in the US could bring the US economy to a halt and transform the balance of class forces in this country.

Whatever weaknesses the OWS movement has, the opposition in many ways to political action for example, these actions are extremely positive as the movement has shown that the way to move forward is through mass action and open defiance of the law, something that the Labor leadership refuses to do except when it comes to their own members. The Labor hierarchy along wiht their allies in the Democratic Party will continue to make efforts to derail this movement and direct it in to an effort to elect Obama and the Democrats this coming year.  How successful they will be remains to be seen as we are living in a unique and volatile period.