Alert! Martial law in the Los Angeles harbor!! [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK]

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- URGENT - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY!

 

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Subject:	Alert! Martial law in the Los Angeles harbor
Date:	Fri, 12 Apr 2002 11:39:14 -0700
From:	Ernesto Nevarez
To:	truckersUnite <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Distribute widely!!!!


A massive high profile task force composed of mutliple police and other agencies has swarmed upon the Los Angeles harbor these past three days.  Initial reports are that they are checking for equipment safety, emissions, dyed diesel, and anything and everything that can cost drivers more money.  Latest report is that even the INS is involved.

First, here in this harbor we have activist that in spite of not having all their documents  are strong unionist.  Is President Bush making a statement?  Has the INS ever raided the Enron Building in Houston?????  NO!! INS is only used as a weapon to attempt to shut up and divide the labor movement.

Now, there is no one more concerned about the environment that myself.  I was a co-founder of the Harbor Coalition Against Toxic Waste back in 1982, before it was popular and way before the Sierra Club Port Task Force.  And I also assisted CRASH in fighting triples in the mid-1990s.  However, economically beating a small percentage of drivers to the poor house is NOT the solution to our environmental or safety concerns.  Federal law, cfr49 section 376.12,  makes it very clear that the MOTOR CARRIERS must be responsible for the trucks.  Even under the state BIT program the firm must take responsibility for trucks that it leases.  The federal leasing regs require the firm's to assume responsibility and the BIT program allows them to assume responsibility.  However, at the end of this week we should have about 300-500 truck drivers with tickets that should had been issued to the motor carriers!  I doubt that a single ticket will be issued to the firms for violating DMV code section 4453.5 which requires the trucking companies to register the truck in their names which would make it the recipients of the other tickets as well.

We must let the environmentalist and community and students know the truth of all of the little white lies and lip service that they have been getting regarding the local industry.  Initial reports that these latest raids at the workplace have totally PISSED OFF the workers!  There will be a response.

The PATRIOT ACT.  It seems that the actions in the Los Angeles harbor are being closely watched by industry operatives and their Police agencies.  This egroup is no exception and careful discretion should be used when posting.  Personally I don't give a shit and will continue to organize for social change and the ending of SELECTIVE NON-ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW BY POLICE AND REGULATORY AGENCIES.

In the meantime the "radical" student movement discusses extreme political propaganda, "intellectual masturbation", and the environmentalist applaud each other on being politically correct over "organic" finger foods.  Sorry for the extreme sarcasm and generalization but the shit is flying down here in the harbor. It is a War Zone, it is Palestine.   I knew that our organizing was of a serious nature but I never expected an Israeli style invasion of the harbor!!!!

Society; labor, community, and students, must take back the damm harbors!  

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Mario Savio
Sproul Hall Steps
University of California, Berkeley
December 3, 1964

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