Block the Boat Tampa’s fourth round against ZIM Alabama started at 5 a.m. at the Port of Tampa on Saturday, Nov. 1. The action represented a major escalation in the series of protests by people in Florida and became Block the Boat Tampa’s first major victory. Civil disobedience and greater numbers of people delayed the unloading of the ZIM ship for an entire hour.
As in earlier rounds, activists gathered in the cold and rain with signs saying “Heed this line for Palestine,” “All night, all day, no ZIM in Tampa Bay,” and “Israel is arming the world via ZIM Integrated Shipping Services.” Like a military force, 16 law enforcement vehicles, 22 officers and 100 yards of police fence greeted activists at the port entrance.
For three months, Block the Boat Tampa has diplomatically engaged the longshoremen’s union to seek their solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as their resistance to the U.S.-funded occupation, siege and exploitation of Palestinians in Gaza. Finally, activists established a hard blockade of the port at 6:15 a.m. on Saturday.
Parking her car in the middle of three lanes leading into the port, dedicated workers’ and civil rights activist Dezeray Lyn locked herself by the neck to her open car door using a heavy-duty bike lock. Police vehicles immediately swarmed her, pointing their headlights into her face as she sat on the cement during the cold, drizzly hours before sunrise. Large numbers of comrades also surrounded Dezeray, lined up in the street and stared defiantly into approaching police and blocked semi-trailer trucks.
Further up the port entrance, nearly 40 activists took turns using a crosswalk that the longshoremen’s vehicles must use to enter the port. The multinational, militant group of protesters presented a dizzying task for cops harassing protesters, who could focus their attention only on so many of them at a time. Eventually, cops singled out a Muslim man using the crosswalk, grabbed him by the arms, and carried him to the back of their police car. The protest erupted against the unjust arrest, firing up the action.
Liberation News spoke to Gil Bentley, a member of Block the Boat, about the reasons for the action.
“The ZIM Alabama is a part of the greater ZIM Integrated Shipping Services,” he said. “It’s Israel’s largest shipping company. They’re under all sorts of military contracts with them, that if there’s ever a case of war—which is every few months at this rate—they’re required to ship munitions for them. They’re also one of the largest shippers of munitions from a foreign country to the United States. They ship the same caliber bullet that was used to kill Michael Brown in Ferguson. Those are the same bullets shipped on ZIM. They’re also under contract with Monsanto so they can produce white phosphorous, which is the type of stuff that’s used in the horrible bombings that take place in Gaza and in Greater Palestine as a whole. So munitions come into the country, white phosphorous leaves the U.S. and goes into Israel and is used to make bombs.”
Gil also spoke to Liberation about the Block the Boat campaign as a whole:
“Oakland was the one to kick it off and then LA followed suit right afterwards. Then Seattle and a few port cities up in Canada have been successfully blocking the boat across the country, but this has been the first successful delay that we’ve had on the East Coast so far. It’s starting to be picked up in other port cities across the world. I know that the Greek longshoremen’s union and the Spanish longshoreman’s unions have sent letters of thanks and been real supportive of union workers in the U.S. who’ve decided not to cross the picket lines. So things are kicking up in other areas. And there was just recently a solidarity protest in New York that turned out thousands of people to it.”
Feral Peterson talked about the development of Block the Boat in Tampa and what eventually led to Saturday’s successful, militant action:
“Really it started when we caught wind of Oakland. It started with a simple e-mail. And we just started organizing from there, with a group of about six of us in a meeting. This has been going on for about three months now. We’ve been coming to the port and this is our fourth blockade. We’ve also been going to the union hall as many times as we can for the past three months and talking to union workers. That’s pretty much what has led up to this hard blockade. We don’t want apartheid here. This is the longest time we’ve been able to block the boat today. We set up our hard block at about 6:15 a.m. this morning, and that’s about the time the union workers come in to unload the ship.”
Other protesters revealed to Liberation how they arrived at Block the Boat through struggles such as the uprising in Ferguson, the Occupy movement, and personal experiences in occupied Palestine.
Micaela Lyndon told Liberation: “I got involved with activism through Veterans for Peace. I was up in Ferguson and there was a huge contingent for freedom for Palestine up there. I got to see some great speakers. “To have a group of people see the Holocaust in the not so distant past, and see the consequences of just such an intense nationalism to the point of stigmatizing and dehumanizing a group of people—and [Israel] is a part of that—it seems like a victim revictimizing someone else.”
Ricky Steece said: “I’m here pretty much to become more informed and in solidarity with people against genocide. Broadly, it’s something that needs to be addressed, and more people need to be informed about it, just genocide in general and how it keeps repeating itself throughout history, so we can learn what we can do to discontinue that constantly happening. A couple years ago I was more involved with different things all over the country, a lot in the Occupy Movement, in San Francisco and LA, as well as in Oregon. So I’m trying to keep that going. Since Occupy, it seems things have gotten tighter security-wise, the police system and the militarization of the police. It’s cool people, regardless of that, are still organizing.”
Liberation spoke to Nasser Hijaz, a 16-year-old Palestinian American, about why he joined the rally:
“I’m out here because I’m dedicated to where I’m from, my country. I love to be out here protesting what I believe should be right. If we don’t protest what we want, then who else will stand up for us? I go every summer to Palestine. When I’m there, I see how the Zionists are. They will do anything just to bother you or just to piss you off. They kidnap kids right and left. They murder. They don’t care. They have no rules.”
Dezeray was ultimately held for two hours and processed before being released to waiting comrades, who paid her $500 bail on a trespass charge and greeted her with vegan pizza and her favorite coffee. The charges for the other arrestee are unclear, but believed to be for jay-walking. Only one news media station showed up to the internationally significant event. Cops reportedly told them to leave and that they were trespassing.
