Justice for the Charleston Five.Charleston, South Carolina South Carolina, state of the SE United States. It is bordered by North Carolina (N), the Atlantic Ocean (SE), and Georgia (SW). Facts and Figures Area, 31,055 sq mi (80,432 sq km). Pop. (2000) 4,012,012, a 15. On June 9, thousands of dock-workers and union members rallied in solidarity with five longshoremen, dubbed the "Charleston Five," who are charged with "felony rioting." (The Charleston Five are pictured above, from left to right: Kenneth Jefferson, Rick Simmons, Peter Washington, Elijah Ford, and Jason Edgerton.) All are members of the predominantly black International Longshoremen's Association The International Longshoremen's Association is a labor union representing longshore workers along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and inland waterways. Local 1422 and 1771. The incident occurred on January 20, 2000, when a Dutch Nordana vessel docked at the Charleston port and started to use nonunion nonunion /non·union/ (non-un´yun) failure of the ends of a fractured bone to unite. non·un·ion n. The failure of a fractured bone to heal normally. labor to unload its cargo. Several hundred police officers were guarding the nonunion workers, while hundreds of Longshoremen picketed and marched. What happened next is in dispute. The Post and Courier reported that, "Longshoremen charged into the police line but were held back. Soon, many were throwing rocks, bricks, and other debris.... Police clubbed several protesters." Bill Fletcher, a senior AFL-CIO AFL-CIO: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. AFL-CIO in full American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations U.S. official, says, "The police came to provoke a riot. A peaceful protest was broken up by a brazen alliance between the state and a nonunion employer." Fletcher says that Ken Riley, head of Local 1422, "had his head split open by a cop" for trying to calm down a heated exchange between one of his members and a police officer. The clubbing of Riley enraged en·rage tr.v. en·raged, en·rag·ing, en·rag·es To put into a rage; infuriate. [Middle English *enragen, from Old French enrager : en-, causative pref. the picketers, Fletcher says. The union movement is going to bat for the Charleston Five, as is the NAACP NAACP in full National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization. It was founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for African Americans; W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. . More actions are on the drawing board, says Fletcher: "Dockworkers are committed to shutting down the docks all over the country when the trial starts." For more information, call the Campaign for Workers' Rights in South Carolina at (803) 798-8300, or go to the AFL-CIO web site at www.aflcio.org. |
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