We Are the 99% Too: SEIU 1021 joins Occupy Oakland for Peaceful Day of Action

Published on November 5th 2011

Hundreds of SEIU 1021 members took to the streets of Oakland on Wednesday, joining thousands more in a city-wide general strike that caught the entire world's attention after a peaceful "Occupy Oakland" encampment was brutally smashed by police in the dark hours before dawn a week earlier. Indeed, signs in support of Oakland could be seen on TV throughout the Middle East.

The day's actions were widely reported in the press and don't need much repeating here. Three major marches took off from 14th and Broadway, in front of City Hall and the epicenter of the strike, Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza after a young African American man shot by a transit cop in Oakland a few years ago).

At the first two, protesters surrounded nearby branches of Chase, Citi and Bank of America to demand an end to the rampant foreclosures that have ravaged families and communities across the nation; in the evening, thousands more marched a mile to the Port of Oakland to shut down operations.

All the while, thousands more stayed put at the plaza, site of the now-rebuilt encampment: listening to speeches and music and spoken word poets, hanging with the returned occupiers, visiting booths and memorials, and generally keeping up the buoyant attitude that made the general strike as upbeat as an outdoor music festival.

The crowd was pure Oakland, reveling in its diversity and unity at the same time. Police initially put the crowd at 5,000 strong, which meant there had to be at least twice that many; later reports in fact revised the estimate to 10,000.

The union difference

Like the Oakland General Strike of 1946, this general strike was not a union-led strike either, but unions played a major role nonetheless. As union members, we know how much we're always trying to win the support of sympathetic organizations and the public for our contract campaigns, political actions, elections and more. This time the tables were turned, and organized labor had a chance to show its support for someone else's movement in a tangible way.

Indeed, on Monday and Tuesday the Twittersphere was abuzz with wondering if our local would join the strike, and when our official statement and call to action appeared on SEIU1021.org, word spread fast through Facebook and especially Twitter; we gained more than 80 new followers in just a few days.

Throughout the day, the NewsWire kept hearing from non-union members how glad they were to see unions -- and SEIU 1021 in particular -- taking part in the action. Teachers' unions were out in force. Teamsters Joint Council 17 trucked in thousands of bottles of water, and the Alameda Labor Council set up a food booth and handed out fresh, hot hamburgers and hot dogs for free to a very hungry crowd. SEIU 1021 members and staff donned orange vests and served as safety monitors on the marches.

The Occupy General Assembly hadn't consulted the Alameda Labor Council or local unions before voting overwhelmingly for the action. It was hard to decline the opportunity; at the same time, many locals (including ours) could not tell members to "go on strike," as that would violate the no-strike clauses in many of our contracts and is a decision that only members can make.

Instead, we encouraged members to find legitimate ways to take time off for what labor called a "Peaceful Day of Action." In discussions, SEIU 1021 moved the City of Oakland to let city workers use paid (and unpaid) time off to participate; at least 200 city workers took the opportunity. Other SEIU 1021 members joined in from as far away as Napa and Sacramento.

Union members are the 99% too

Throughout the day, labor's message was that even though this wasn't "our" general strike, we're part of the 99 percent as well.

Like other unions, the International Longshore Workers Union -- the radical vanguard of the Bay Area labor movement since the 1930s -- endorsed the goals of Occupy Oakland, but did not call on its members to strike. Still, when the job orders came into the dispatch hall that morning, most longshore workers made the individual decision to work in solidarity with the general strike. The few jobs ordered eventually got filled, but work started late and slowly.

"We're standing with the 99 percent of people who just want to live and work in a dignified way," said SEIU 1021 First Vice President Gary Jimenez. "We're not getting rich, but we do create the wealth in this nation by the work that we do, and it's not fair that the one percent at the top are hoarding all that wealth instead of reinvesting it back into Main Street so that working families have a chance to live with dignity and respect."

SEIU 1021 Photo Album: "Oakland Occupied" (see album on the bottom right side of this page)

SFist: "Oakland Braces for Occupy General Strike"
Excellent hour-by-hour capture of the day's events, with photos

PBS News Hour: "Occupy Oakland Movement Tries to Flex Muscle With General Strike"

Rachel Maddow Show (Nov. 2) with good background on 1946 Oakland General Strike