By Fred Gaboury

People's Weekly World

CHICAGO - Ken Riley, president of Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), brought the story of the "Charleston Five" to Chicago at a meeting in the hall of Teamster Local 705 Aug 17.

In remarks opening the meeting, Jerry Zero, Local 705 secretary-treasurer, said the battle to defend the five longshoremen, who face prison terms of five years on trumped-up charges of felony rioting, was a battle that "crossed all movement lines. The attack on a Local 1422 picket line was a call for total war on activists of all kinds. It is a battle between those fighting to keep the U.S. flag up and the Confederate flag down."

Zero read a statement from Teamster General President James P. Hoffa, in which Hoffa called for turning words of support for the Charleston Five into action in their defense.

"This is not just an attack against organized labor and the decent living standards we have fought so hard to achieve for our members," Hoffa said. "South Carolina officials are attacking the right of its citizens to lawfully speak out against injustice and economic exploitation."

Hoffa said the Teamsters have joined with the ILA and the west coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union in an historic partnership to "make ports in the United States and Canada wall-to-wall union."

Zero promised that 20 busloads of trade unionists will go to Charleston the day the trial of the five opens. "But right now we have to force them to drop the charges," Zero said.

The audience of several hundred listened intently as Riley described the vicious attack by hundreds of police on a Local 1422 picket line in the early morning hours of January 20, 2000. The picketline had been established as a protest against Nordana, a Danish shipping company that had begun using scab workers to load and unload its ships.

Riley said the decision to picket Nordana-owned ships was a matter of defending the local's jurisdiction and its right to load and unload containers. "We had seen some of our other work taken over by non-union companies and decided that we had to defend our core jurisdiction, that of handling containers. Charleston is the nation's fourth largest port and we had to fight."

Riley, who was sent to the hospital by a blow to the head, said the local had been "ambushed" by authorities the night of Jan. 20. He said authorities had ordered the ship to lay off shore for a day in order to avoid the thousands of people who had come to South Carolina to demand that the Confederate flag be removed from the state capitol building. "We didn't mind that," Riley said. "We were at the demonstration, too."

"We saw several busloads of police when we returned from the protest in Columbia," Riley said. "They brought their dogs, armored personnel carriers, searchlights and helicopters. And they emptied the local jail in anticipation of mass arrests of as many as 90 people."

Riley said South Carolina Attorney General Charles Condon was determined to put the Five in jail. "When a lower court dismissed charges against nine of our members, Condon had a grand jury indict three of them and then used ads in local newspapers to find "witnesses" who testified against our members. So five of our members, four of them Black and one white, face jail terms of five years on felony riot charges."

Riley said the campaign in defense of the Five had taken South Carolina authorities by surprise. "Even Condon has backed off, saying that he doubts if any jury will find our brothers guilty. But the time to relax is the day he drops the charges."

Tim Leahy brought greetings from the Chicago Federation of Labor. "The check's right here," he said, as he waved the contribution from the federation for the defense of the Charleston Five.