"West Coast Ports Are the New Target for Occupy Wall Street," by Alpha Unit

On Monday, December 12, Occupy Wall Street protests will center around a West Coast Port Blockade, in which protesters plan to “shut down Wall Street on the Waterfront.” According to the organization’s website:

The goal is to disrupt commerce to make the 1 percent, who own the shipping, business, and goods going through the ports, pay for their global austerity attack on working people.

Occupy Oakland is seeking a repeat of the “general strike” it achieved back on November 2. On Monday, Occupy Oakland seeks to create a greater “port blockade” with more than a dozen occupations all along the West Coast. As Gavin Aronsen explains:

Occupy Oakland’s renewed call to shut down “Wall Street on the Waterfront” was sparked in large part by the October firing of 26 port truckers in Los Angeles and Long Beach who wore Teamster T-shirts to work in defiance of their anti-union employer, the Australia-based Toll Group. Monday’s protests are also being billed as a protest against port terminals run by the Goldman Sachs-owned Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) and a show of solidarity with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s rank-and-file – particularly in Longview, Washington, where the union is engaged in a contract fight with Export Grain Terminal, a subsidiary of the agribusiness giant Bunge.

Union leaders sent this San Francisco Chronicle:

I’ll be losing about $700 for the day, and I have to use that to pay for my fuel and truck and all my expenses, but I’m glad they’re going to shut the port down. They need to make a statement. We truckers need better treatment.

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