The author is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and an activist with the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in Seattle. She participated in some of the actions reported here, and assisted the legal support team for those who were arrested.
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The actions this past week focused on opposition to the use of the Port of Tacoma—a civilian port—to support the “revolving-door policy of redeployment” for an occupation that has killed more than 4,000 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
The USNS Brittin returned to the Port of Tacoma on July 29, unloading 900 vehicles from the 4th Stryker Brigade 2nd Combat Infantry Division that had returned from Iraq. During its most recent 15-month tour of duty, 37 soldiers assigned to this division were killed.
Over the course of the struggle, 15 people were arrested. Most have been arraigned or will be arraigned by Aug. 8, and pre-trial hearings have been set. Charges were not filed against one protestor who had been tasered by a cop while standing with his arms crossed.
The actions are a continuation of the port demilitarization movement in the Northwest, which includes Port Militarization Resistance and other groups. The movement started two-and-a-half years ago and has involved hundreds of people in the Puget Sound region, protesting the militarization of the ports in Tacoma and Olympia, Wash. More than 150 people have been arrested in PMR actions to date.
For the first time, the direct action resistance left the immediate vicinity of the port and instead moved to the area near Fort Lewis, the home base for the Stryker brigade. Police were taken by surprise by the activists’ blockades of bridges near Fort Lewis entrances.
The protesters were committed to a strategy of non-violent tactics and were prepared to face arrest. For their part, the Tacoma police, assisted by the Lakewood PD and Washington State Patrol, proved they are truly the tools of the ruling class. Two young women were dragged across a police line of bicycles and arrested on July 31. One of the women was dragged by her hair, slammed to the ground, put in a headlock and slammed down again while she repeatedly called out, “I’m not resisting arrest.”
On Aug. 1, the first night the protestors went to Fort Lewis, six demonstrators were arrested, including one who asked police for a badge number. One woman was restrained on the ground by an officer who placed his foot on her back.
On Aug. 2, protestors returned to the Fort and used “lockboxes” made from PVC piping to link three people in a blockade. One of these protestors, Patti Imani of PMR, was seriously harassed while in custody and placed in solitary confinement. She was denied an American Sign Language translator despite her hearing impairment.
Earlier that day, many of the PMR activists had attended a previously scheduled demonstration at the gates of Fort Lewis to oppose a new war against Iran. Tacoma activist Tom McCarthy, who had been coordinating the PMR legal support hotline, was arrested as he attempted to drop off signs and a large paper maché puppet representing George W. Bush as a convicted war criminal. McCarthy was charged with littering and “obstructing an officer.”
On Aug. 3, the demonstrators returned to the port to protest in the so-called free speech zone. Towards the end of the day, a police officer sitting in his car threatened a group of demonstrators with his taser. Without warning, he then reached out of the window and tasered Forest Student, who had been standing nearby with his arms crossed.
Student fell to the ground in agony and was taken to the emergency room by police before he was booked into the Pierce County Jail. Although arrested for assault, when he showed up for his arraignment on Aug. 5 he found out that charges were not being filed.
On Aug. 4, the final day of protest at the port, Tacoma police arrested videographer Joe LaSac and confiscated his video camera. For a period of time, police surrounded demonstrators and prevented them from returning to their cars. Eventually the activists were able to safely leave the port.
In an update about the PMR protests, an activist wrote: “The intended effect of these demonstrations is to raise the social and economic cost of the war … We are told that these actions taken to blockade military shipments in the [Northwest] have inspired others in the anti-war movements across the country [to] take more radical and direct action to have a concrete impact on stopping the war. If so much resistance was shown in every port in the country in response to every military shipment, the war would be impossible to continue.”
