If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below.
December 12, 2011
Contact: Kari Koch, media@shutdowntheport.com, 503-567-8694
Over 500 Portlanders Join Historic West Coast Pork Blockade
PORTLAND, Ore. – Today over 500 rank and file union members, non-union workers, unemployed, retired, veterans, and other members of the 99% march on,”Wall Street on the Waterfront” at the Port of Portland.
Portlanders rallied at Kelly Point Park at 6am. Banner teams had already been dispatched to terminals 5 and 6 in advance of the gathering. At Kelley Point Park the organizers for each terminal squad gathered their teams behind 6′x8′ banners saying “Shut Down the Ports, Shut Down the 1%”. The squads split into the two teams and marched to the terminals. At the terminals, the hundreds of workers and activists began marching in a community picket line in front of the terminal gates. The pickets are on-going and will be reinforced by the community rally at 4pm.
The West Coast Port Shut Down specifically aims to disrupt business-as-usual for Wall Street on the Waterfront.
Goldman Sachs, a well know Wall Street institution, is the majority shareholder of Stevedore Services of America (SSA), which provides services, equipment and labor at Terminal 2, and full operational management at Terminal 5 at the Port of Portland. LA port truck drivers are in a labor struggle with SSA for what the drivers term a ‘sweatshop on wheels’. 17,000 truck drivers are on strike in Los Angeles to demand their right to organize and for safe working conditions.
EGT is a multinational grain export corporation. Bunge Ltd is the largest partner in EGT who reported $2.5 billion in profit in 2010 and has direct ties to Wall Street. Locally, EGT is refusing to honor the Longshore worker union contract in Longview, WA.
“By shutting down work at the ports it’s one more day that Goldman Sachs and Wall Street firms are unable to create profit at the expense of workers,” said Kari Koch, organizer with the Shut Down the Ports Working Group of Occupy Portland. “Today was an enormous success! We showed that we will not stand for corporate profits at the expense of working people, we will not stand for attacks on workers, and we will not allow our schools to be closed, social services slashed, and families to be impoverished by their greed!”
The community picket is organized by Occupy Portland with the support of rank and file union members. Occupy Portland has been engaging directly with rank and file port workers multiple times a day during the organizing; and numerous rank and file union members are active in the working group. The vast majority workers chose to respect the community picket at Terminals 5 and 6.
“The support from workers at the port has been incredible. We were out at the ports talking to workers multiple times a day during the organizing of this action and today we see them honoring the community picket,” says Jordan McIntyre rank and file union painter “Occupy is a place for union members, non-union, and the unemployed to gather together to fight for change.”
There will be a rally at 4:00 PM at Kelley Point Park and a second community picket will begin after that. Actions will be continuing up and down the West Coast for the remainder of the day.
###