Emergency Picketline Rally

Dear Friends:

The Portworkers Solidarity Committee -- a broad-based coalition of
unionists and activists that was formed to build support for the ILWU
in its contract dispute with the PMA -- calls on you to join with a
caravan of Teamster truck drivers from Stockton, the San Francisco
Labor Council and the Alameda Central Labor Council at an Emergency
Picketline Rally on Saturday, October 5 at 10 a.m. at Port View Park
in the Port of Oakland.

Come to the picket line headquarters in Port View Park and join us in
a powerful display of solidarity with the locked-out ILWU members
who, for the past week, have been manning picket lines around the
clock to ensure that no work is performed on the docks while ILWU
members are locked out of their jobs.

Support for the picket lines remains solid, just as solidarity with
the embattled ILWU workers continues to mount across the country and
internationally. All transportation unions affiliated with the
AFL-CIO -- from Teamsters to rail unions to air transport workers --
have pledged to honor the ILWU's picketlines. The national leadership
of the AFL-CIO, moreover, has denounced the call by Sen. Dianne
Feinstein and others to invoke Taft-Hartley to end the current
employer lock-out.

There will be a volunteer car shuttle service from the West Oakland
BART station to the Port of Oakland for those of you without cars.
The service will run from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then back to the
station following the rally. We urgently need volunteers with cars to
help transport people to and from the West Oakland BART station.
Please contact us to let us know if you can help with the caravaning.

In addition, the Portworkers Solidarity Committee will be organizing
informational leafleting at the GAP stores in Oakland (Lakeshore
Blvd. @ Lake Merritt) and San Francisco (Powell and Market) on
Saturday at 1 p.m. Contingents will be leaving from the morning rally
to these stores. The GAP and its corporate pals are part of the West
Coast Waterfront Coalition, which is pushing George Bush to interfere
in the contract talks with the ILWU and stop the workers from getting
good jobs, fair wages, and health care -- and from keeping their
Hiring Hall.

If you cannot make the morning rally, please join the informational
leafleting at the GAP stores at 1 p.m.

The current struggle of the ILWU is a defining moment for the U.S.
and international labor movement. Be part of this struggle! Join us
on at this picket line rally at 10 a.m., and/or at the informational
leafleting at the GAP stores in Oakland and San Francisco at 1 p.m.

To get to Port View Park, take the Port of Oakland exit off of 880
South, get off at Maritime Blvd. and then make a right onto 7th
Street and take it till it dead-ends at the park.

See you there!

Portworkers Solidarity Committee