Can we please stop with this nonsense?
Local 4 members “threatened to rape the daughter of one of the employer’s managers” and implied threats to a manager’s children, chillingly telling the manager that they would “see his children at school” and asking, “Are your children okay today?”
Hooks also charged union members with following through with physical harm against company workers. Local 4 picketers caused a security officer’s leg to be pinned under a moving vehicle; shone spotlights into vehicles coming in and out of United Grain’s terminal, comprising drivers’ vision and causing permanent eye injury to one security officer; and recklessly pursuing United Grain vans.
The list goes on and on, but wouldn’t be complete without rocks and racial slurs thrown against United Grain security officers as well. Some members also threatened to harm workers for Columbia River Pilots, a cargo shipping company.
Of course, calling out union thuggery only gets you called names in turn… but when it does happen, where are the voices from within Big Labor calling this out?
This isn’t emblematic of the labor unions that helped destroy communism in Poland. This is emblematic of something much more terrifying… and the longer it’s swept under the rug, the sooner something truly reactionary happens in turn (which, of course, is what these clowns want).
There’s a definite backlash brewing in America against this sort of violence — whether it comes from the Occupy movement, the progressive left, union thuggery, or the like. Violence simply has no place — zero minus place — in American politics. When it does happen, be on the lookout for those who do not unequivocally condemn it. Too often, they’re in this for the wrong reasons.
