By PETER COLE

Article First Appeared in counterpunch.org: June 18, 2021

Angela’s dream comes true: inducted into ILWU Local 10 on Juneteenth 2021

Clarence Thomas, an African American, third generation Oakland dockworker, and author of recently published “ ‘Mobilizing in Our Own Name’ Million Worker March Movement' “ recently declared: “Sister Angela Davis’s selection as an honorary member of ILWU Local 10 is a testament to her life’s work that embodies what our union stands for. She’s a radical African American female activist-scholar, writer and educator, long in the vanguard of the Black liberation movement and struggle for the emancipation of the working class at home and abroad. She is indeed an internationalist. Her politics and beliefs reflect those of the founders of the ILWU.”

This Saturday, on Juneteenth, Angela Davis—arguably the most widely known and (now) loved American radical of the past half-century—will get what she publicly wished for one year ago. She will join ILWU Local 10. No doubt, Paul Robeson, Harry Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cleophas Williams would be proud!

About the author:

Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University. He wrote the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia, co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW, and edited Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. He is the founder and codirector of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.