Thousands of supporters filled the streets of Oakland, California on Friday, June 19th and stand in solidarity with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which enacted a planned work stoppage at the Port of Oakland — along with the shutdown of all ports along the West Coast — to honor Juneteenth.
Civil Rights icon Angela Davis addressed the crowd at the Port of Oakland before the march. “Thank you for shutting down the ports today, on Juneteenth … the day when we renew our commitment to the struggle for freedom,” she said.
“We don’t want to just ask for things to get better. We wanna say, ‘It’s going to get better or else,’ ” Boots Riley, the filmmaker, musician, and activist, told the crowd.
“With the ILWU’s history of advocating for the end of police terror and violence we decided to put a call out,” Trent Willis, president of the ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco, said when the stoppage was announced.
The protest on Friday was peaceful — with a minimal police presence — and a majority of attendees wore face coverings to limit the transmission of COVID-19.
Michael Brown Sr. — father of Michael Brown Jr. killed by Ferguson police in 2014 — spoke at the event.
Many of the previously planned events for Juneteenth weren’t taking place in the Bay Area. But the protests sparked by the deaths of black people by police — including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade — gave many people a renewed reason to take to the streets together.
Boots Riley told the crowd the Juneteenth port shutdown was essential because labor organizing is part of the answer t o the “question of power”: “Because our power comes from the fact that we create the wealth. Wealth is power, we have the ability to withhold that power. We have the ability to withhold on labor, and shut shit down.”
People along the march route.
“What we need to do is: Wherever you work, wherever you are during the day, that’s where you need to be organizing — because we need to be able to shut this down,” Boots Riley told the crowds. “We need to show them we ain’t asking, we’re telling. And that we’ll stop the world and make them motherfuckers jump off.”
After the march, people gathered at Oscar Grant Park to show their solidarity for Black Lives Matter movement.
Proteseters wore masks to limit the potential to spread COVID-19, and some included the words “I Can’t Breathe” — the words spoken by George Floyd when he was killed by police in Minneapolis on May 25th.