Justice for the Charleston Five - longshoremen charged with felony rioting - Brief Article

Progressive, The, August, 2001

Charleston, South Carolina

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 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 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 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 the picketers, Fletcher says.

The union movement is going to bat for the Charleston Five, as is the NAACP. 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.