Unions Are Taking a Stand for Black Lives

“You represent the potential and the power of the labor movement,” said Angela Davis, the activist and former member of the Black Panther Party, to the assembled crowd. “Whenever the ILWU takes a stand, the world feels the reverberations,” she said, listing the dockworker union’s history of activism—against, for example, the internment of Japanese Americans and apartheid in South Africa, in support of civil rights, and in solidarity with past victims of violence police.