Los Angeles dock workers protest racist nooses

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union marched on Dec. 7 outside the offices of the Pacific

A noose hanging from a Los Angeles port foreman’s truck.

Maritime Association at the Los Angeles port to demand an investigation into the appearance of nooses hanging from port vehicles.

The workers have found five nooses in the past two months hanging from the rearview mirrors or in the beds of vehicles. One was put up by a foreman on the antenna of his truck.

“He just acted like it was no big deal,” said Floyd Mitchell, a security guard who took pictures of the noose the night of the incident. “He said it was a Halloween prank, but if it’s a prank, what’s the punchline?”

“We got to kill this kind of bigotry right now,” Long Beach longshoreman and civil rights activist Eddie Jones said at the protest. “What kind of work environment can you expect when you go to work and find nooses hanging around? It’s intolerable.”

So far, the PMA has done nothing. The foreman who put up the noose is still at work.

During the march, the crowd of mostly African American dockworkers was met by police to discourage the action. But they vowed to continue the struggle against racism.