4000 Rally to Support the "Charleston 5"
Some union members have said they would consider boycotting S.C.
By Dave L'Heureuz and Lee Bandy

Felony charges against five Charleston dockworkers are an attempt to silence labor unions in South Carolina, one of the least unionized states, speakers said at a Saturday rally in Columbia.

"They want to bust unions in South Carolina," said Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. "Are we going to let them? No!"

Police estimated that 4,000 people, many from out-of-state union locals, attended the march and rally in downtown Columbia.
Union leaders circulated petitions calling on Gov. Jim Hodges to intervene on behalf of the "Charleston Five." They hope to present the petitions to Hodges on Monday.

The leaders also vowed that dockworkers will stop work at every unionized port in the world on the same day the five dockworkers first appear in court. Police from six agencies were out in force during the march and rally but reported no incidents or arrests, said Harold Reaves, executive assistant to Columbia Police Chief Charles Austin.

Several people, however, were treated for heat exposure, Reaves said. The South Carolina AFL-CIO and the S.C. Progressive Network organized the rally to defend the five dockworkers. The five, all members of International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 in Charleston, remain under house arrest, pending trial. 

They face charges of rioting and conspiracy to riot brought by Attorney General Charlie Condon months after several hundred dockworkers scuffled with 600 police at the Port of Charleston on Jan. 20 of last year.

The unionized dockworkers had been protesting a Danish company's decision to hire non-union workers at the port. Ten people were injured in the fracas, and eight were arrested. However, a judge later threw out those initial charges for lack of evidence. Speakers said the charges lodged by Condon, a Republican who is running for governor, were an attempt to capitalize on South Carolina's historic hostility to organized labor.

"Part of the greatness of America is the right to protest," said Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers. "How long will South Carolina let its workers be exploited? Not long!" Condon was criticized for the charges lodged against dockworkers Kenneth Jefferson, Elijah Forde Jr., Peter Washington Jr., Rick Simmons and John Edgerton. "You didn't know the rest of the world was watching," said Ken Riley, president of Local 1422. "Well, Charlie, take a good look."

Most of the unionized dockworkers at the Port of Charleston are black, which has attracted the interest of the NAACP and other civil rights groups. "Charlie Condon has brought together the labor movement and the civil rights movement," said Bill Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unions. In a statement issued Saturday, Condon said the unions' account of the Jan. 20, 2000, incident was "nothing but a fairy tale."

Condon said police in riot gear "worked several hours to disperse the crowd" and that protesters "hurled beer bottles, bricks, rocks and broken railroad ties." Condon said he would not be "bullied or intimidated" into dropping the felony charges against the five dockworkers. "These riot cases will be prosecuted. Period," he said in the statement.

Saturday's rally drew union members from North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, New York, Puerto Rico, the West Coast, Canada and even South Korea. During the parade, which started at Memorial Park, marchers chanted "Free the Charleston Five" and carried placards announcing their support for the dockworkers. John Simmons and Donnie Gill, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 23 in Tacoma, Wash., traveled across the country to attend Saturday's rally.

"We're starting to see the potential we can have when we band together," Gill said. "We have to show the powers that be that union people are serious." Union worker Annie Jackson said she came in from New Orleans because "union workers need some help here." "I think it's despicable the way this state treats its workers," she said. Steve Harris, president of his local union in Macon, Ga., said he came to support the "solidarity of union members who are unjustly treated in this state."

"This demonstration is just the beginning," Harris said. "You thought the Confederate flag was big. This is going to be bigger."
Harris said unions eventually might conduct their own economic boycott of South Carolina, as the NAACP has done to protest the Confederate flag on the State House grounds.

Emma Jean Davis, a retired Atlanta schoolteacher, said Saturday's rally brought to mind the brutality that civil rights protesters faced 40 years ago. "You have a right-to-work state and they do everything in the world to tear unions up," she said. "South Carolina needs to come into the 21st century. It's living in the Dark Ages." Several relatives of the five dockworkers also spoke Saturday, including children who said their fathers no longer can attend their school events.