LABOR QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Leonard Riley
Chris Garlock | Published on 10/4/2024
“[Charleston, SC is] the place that imported more enslaved Africans than anywhere
in this country,” Leonard Riley, a longtime dockworker and leader of International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA) Local 1422, said in a video posted to the local’s social media earlier this year. “We were the cargo on the ships that came into the harbor. And now, we control the cargo coming through here.”
This quote by Riley captures what makes the strike by the ILA and the power of the union so significant – it is at once both an expression of worker power and of the long struggle for freedom and self-determination for Black workers, particularly in the U.S. South.
From the Southern Workers Assembly newsletter, find out more at southernworker.org | info@southernworker.org. Thanks to Gene Bruskin for sending this in.