Presente

Description

A Dockworker Story

By Herb Mills
Edited by Peter Cole, Stephanie Fay, and Matthew Tallon
Afterword by Peter Cole
Hardball Press

In December, 1980, an officer with the longshoremen’s union in San Francisco learned there was a shipment of military weapons on the docks waiting to be loaded onto a ship bound for the fascist government of El Salvador. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president on a right wing, pro—fascist agenda. The El Salvador government was murdering thousands of its citizens.

Herb Mills, an officer in that ILWU Local, proposed that the union refuse to load the weapons — a direct violation of their union contract that could lead to the officers going to jail and the government taking over the union. Could they stop the shipment and keep out of jail?

Out of his personal diary and historical union records, Mills fashioned a fictional account of that campaign. The names have been changed, but the courage and the daring of the union men and women have not.