BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org
PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:Indybay-18871872
SEQUENCE:19042855
CREATED:20250103T113700Z
DESCRIPTION:A CELEBRATION OF\nTHE LIFE OF HOWARD KEYLOR\n \nLongtime “Militant 
 Longshoreman” and political activist Howard Keylor passed away in October 
 2024, two months before his 99th birthday. His friends, family and comrades 
 invite you to attend a memorial meeting and educational in his honor 
 on:\n \nJanuary 25, 2025, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.Local 10, International 
 Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)Henry Schmidt Room400 North Point 
 Street, San Francisco (near Fisherman’s Wharf)\n \nLight Refreshments 
 Will be Provided\n \nA veteran of the Battle of Okinawa - an experience 
 that led him to become an anti-militarist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist 
 revolutionary socialist - Howard opposed the atomic bombing of Japan. He 
 quit college to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus 
 strike and became a labor organizer and activist during the McCarthy 
 period, joining the longshore union in Stockton in 1953.\n \nLike the core 
 founders of the ILWU, Howard fought to replace capitalism with socialism. 
 During his decades on the waterfront, including twelve years on the Local 
 10 Executive Board, he initiated, organized and participated in countless 
 picket lines and protests, most notably the historic 11-day strike in 1984 
 against unloading a South African container ship, the Nedlloyd 
 Kimberley, and the 1986 community picket of South African cargo in support 
 of the anti-Apartheid movement. (See the biography below for other actions 
 Howard participated in or organized.)\n \nPlease Join Local 10 and 
 Howard’s Friends, Family and Comrades in a Celebration of Howard’s Life 
 and Work.\n \n \nHoward Keylor - a Brief Biography\n \nBorn in rural 
 Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a 
 member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High 
 School.\n \nAfter enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific 
 Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of 
 Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained 
 with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the 
 military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the 
 deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civilians – a third 
 of the population - made Howard a committed revolutionary communist, 
 anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his 
 life.\n \nUpon completing his military service, Howard enrolled in the 
 College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural 
 workers in the 1948 asparagus strike. During that strike, Howard began his 
 lifelong association with labor leaders Ernesto Mangoang, Chris Mensalves 
 and Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As 
 members of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were 
 attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard 
 transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, 
 Leo Robinson and a majority of ILWU longshore workers, opposed the proposed 
 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman system. This led to the 
 longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and 
 lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.\n \nIn 
 Local 10 Brother Keylor was a founding member of the Militant Caucus, a 
 class struggle rank-and-file opposition grouping supported by the 
 Spartacist League (SL), which based its work on Trotsky’s “Transitional 
 Program” and published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore 
 Militant”. The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and 
 boycotts of military cargo bound for the bloody Chilean junta in 1974 and 
 1978; and a picket of a ship carrying South African cargo in 1977. In 1975, 
 the Caucus spearheaded mass picketing during ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC 
 Glass in Union City, during which picketers physically defeated police and 
 scabs and won a contract for a workforce composed primarily of undocumented 
 Mexican immigrants. Later, when the SL and the Caucus politically 
 degenerated, Howard left the Spartacist League and the Caucus and published 
 his own newsletter, the “Militant Longshoreman”, which was aligned with 
 the Bolshevik Tendency.\n \nBrother Keylor advocated deliberate defiance 
 of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary 
 boycotts and mass pickets. Running openly on the Transitional Program, 
 calling for 30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay, breaking with the 
 Democratic and Republican Parties, forming a worker’s party to fight for 
 a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation 
 and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board 
 of Local 10 for twelve years.\n \nIn 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, 
 amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the eleven-day longshore 
 boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. Howard presented 
 the motion to Local 10’s Executive Board, where it passed unanimously. In 
 1986, Howard participated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community 
 picket line against the Nedlloyd Kembla. When Nelson Mandela spoke at the 
 Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 
 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.\n \nOther 
 actions that Brother Keylor initiated, organized or participated in 
 included the successful mass picket by 1,000 union members which ran scabs 
 off the docks at Levin Terminals in Richmond, in 1983; organizing a defense 
 guard for the Oakland bookstore of the Socialist Workers’ Party in 1985, 
 which fought off several hundred ex-ARVN Vietnamese soldiers; the 1995-98 
 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and 
 march of 25,000 in San Francisco to demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 
 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist 
 war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California 
 ports in protest of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli 
 ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle 
 against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 
 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and 
 protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity 
 where it was needed. He was a revolutionary communist who fought racist 
 police murders and fascist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought 
 for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has 
 always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility 
 in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in 
 the East Bay.\n \nPerhaps most importantly, Howard stood by and upheld the 
 Ten Guiding Principles of the ILWU. They teach that workers should never 
 cross or work behind a picket line, even if directed to do so by their 
 union leadership. “Every picket line must be respected as though it were 
 our own.”\n \n \n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/01/03/18871872.php
SUMMARY:A Celebration of the Life of Howard Keylor
LOCATION:Local 10, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), \nHenry 
 Schmidt Room, \n400 North Point Street, San Francisco (near Fisherman’s 
 Wharf)
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/01/03/18871872.php
DTSTART:20250125T210000Z
DTEND:20250126T000000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR