PAGE 18 | December 16, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Standing Rock
From Page 10
ber. White found what he de-
scribed as a temporary city on
the prairie, a self-policing vol-
untary temporary community
with prohibition on alcohol,
drugs or weapons.
“It is absolutely incredible
what they’re doing to keep this
together, keep this peaceful,
keep it prayerful, and feed
10,000 people,” White said.
White spent a week at Stand-
ing Rock helping out, setting up
stations for supporters to drop
off firewood.
By the end of October, rank-
and-file union members were
maintaining an ongoing “union
camp” within the protest camp,
set up by a group called Labor
for Standing Rock. Labor for
Standing Rock was founded by
Cliff Wellmeng as a way to co-
ordinate rank-and-file support.
Willmeng, a former union Car-
penter from Chicago, is now a
registered nurse at Kaiser Per-
manente and a member of
United Food and Commercial
Workers Local 7 in Lafayette,
Colorado. The group’s Facebook
page, which has over 25,000
likes, includes dozens of video
testimonials from union officers
and rank-and-file members.
On Nov. 10, several hundred
union workers rallied in Oakland
outside Wells Fargo — one of
the pipeline’s funders — in an
anti-Dakota-pipeline event spon-
sored by over a dozen local labor
organizations.
The protest encampment con-
tinued to grow. On Nov. 21 —
three days before Thanksgiving
— police turned water cannons
on Native American protesters in
sub-freezing temperatures.
More than any other issue,
that’s what spurred a group of
Northwest Longshore union
members to take action.
On Thanksgiving Day, Inter-
national Longshore and Ware-
house Union (ILWU) Local 4
put out a call for donations of
cold weather gear for Standing
Rock to be brought to the union
hall. By Monday, Nov. 28,
they’d filled a 14-foot trailer
with warm clothes, boots, food,
propane and other supplies.
Longshore worker Steve Hunt
was calling into ILWU Local 4
to see what jobs were available
when he heard about plans by
Tacoma ILWU Local 23 Presi-
dent Dean McGrath and other
ILWU members to go to Stand-
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ing Rock. Hunt ended up joining
more than a dozen ILWU mem-
bers from Locals 19, 23, and 4
for the trek to Standing Rock.
“I wanted to know the truth,
to find out exactly what was go-
ing on,” Hunt said.
At the camp, finding that
camp donation centers were
backlogged, Hunt volunteered to
help set up tents. He chipped ice
so that canoes could get in and
out. And he worked kitchen
duty, smoking 400 pounds of
meat a day.
“ILWU stands behind an in-
jury to one is an injury to all,”
Hunt said, “and there’s an injury
going on when private security
and police are stamping on free-
dom to protest.”
With the arrival of a contin-
gent of 2,000 veterans, the camp
swelled to over 10,000 people
the weekend of Dec. 3-4. Hunt
was on his way back to Vancou-
ver on Dec. 4 when word came
of a seeming victory for the pro-
testers. The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers announced it was re-
voking its permit to drill under-
neath Lake Oahe on the Mis-
souri River.
The pipeline — for now — is
on hold. It appears to be unlikely
to move forward while Obama
remains president. President-
elect Trump has refrained from
taking sides on the controversy,
but told Fox News Dec. 11 that
he will decide quickly what to
do about it once he’s sworn in.