Bay Area Activists Protest Iraq War and Anti-Worker Alcatraz Ferry Operator

Submitted by intexile on Sat, 2007-02-03 02:01. Alcatraz | Hornblower

San Francisco area anti-war activists and unionists joined together Jan. 27 to protest both Bush’s war in Iraq and his war on waterfront workers. On the day set aside to demonstrate against the White House plan to “surge” troops in Baghdad, thousands assembled downtown and marched to the city’s waterfront to form the biggest picket line yet at the scab Alcatraz Island ferry pier.

As the throngs filled Market Street, signs calling for the troops to come home intermingled with others urging the boycott of the new Alcatraz ferry operator, Hornblower Yachts Inc. At the front of the march, the U.S. Labor Against the War banner bobbed directly behind
the “Troops Out Now” and Veterans of Foreign Wars’ “Wage Peace” banners.

As the march approached the pier, members of the Masters, Mates and Pilots (MM&P) and the Inlandboatmen’s Union (IBU), the Marine Division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the two unions that had operated the ferries, handed out hundreds of green “Boycott Alcatraz Cruises” picket signs and directed the crowd into a picket line that took over the north-bound half of the Embarcadero.

The workers, members of the IBU and the MM&), have been operating the ferry boats to the island in the middle of the bay ever since the former high security prison was turned into a popular tourist attraction in 1973. Last year, the Bush administration’s National Park Service, which runs Alcatraz as part of its system, took bids for the ferry run. On Sept. 27, 2005, NPS announced it was giving a new, 10-year contract for the ferry run to Hornblower, an organization that runs dinner cruises on the San Francisco Bay out of Oakland with nonunion crews.

When Hornblower took over the operation Sept. 25, 2006, 15 IBU ferry deckhands and 35 MM&P captains, deckhands, customer service reps and ticket agents lost their jobs and the health care coverage for them and their families. Payments toward their pensions ceased.

As the last demonstrators arrived at the pier, a raised flat-bed truck served as the sound stage for a brief rally. A former ferryboat deckhand and member of the IBU, Robert Irminger, thanked the crowd for coming out to demonstrate against “the Republican-donating, union-busting” Hornblower owner, Terry MacRae.

"We must use our power of withholding our labor to end this war. Hooking up the union movement and the anti-war movement is the strongest power in the world."

The assembly then picked up the chant:

"Shut down the union busters! Shut down this war!"

Local beat poet and past poet laureate of the city of San Francisco, Jack Hirschman, read a poem he wrote for the occasion entitled, “The Union Ferry’s Steamin’ Up.”

The Union Ferry’s Steamin’ Up
For the 55 union ferry workers fired
from the Alcatraz touring lines. And
the solidarity of the San Francisco
Anti-War movement with them:
January 27, 2007.

As far out as you wanna travel,
on legs, in the saddle, by car or in the air,
just remember: down here
where privatizing snakes slither,
we all ride the Union ferry
to the Rock and back,
to the Rock and back and forth
with keel sharp enough to lop
them sumabitchin’ vipers.

Their tongues are tied to the war-bone,
to the murderous shock-and-oil bone,
to the profits-at-any-price bone.
Their fangs are honed in the global apple
where their venom lies.

C’mon, mates, the union ferry’s steamin’ up
to split their army so that putrescent
serpents’ nest that has little left but unwilling guns
falls powerless at last. And you get back
what they ordered stolen. And we can all
go to work on the constructions
of a Rock to jail those
Big House and White House
slimy reptiles for ages.

—Jack Hirschman

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