The DA had been prosecuting 25 victims of the police assault which took place on April 7, 2003 in the Port of Oakland. A year later, the ordeal of these people finally ended in a strange twist.

A year ago on April 7th, police assaulted protesters, legal observers, longshoremen and newspeople with "less-lethal" munitions, injuring several dozen people, some permanently. The attack was the most violent police assault on the antiwar movement during the spring of 2003, and it was later mentioned in a report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. So our city of Oakland is now on the same list as Indonesia, Guatemala and other human rights abusers.

The plan for our port protest on April 7, 2003 had been to peacefully picket the Oakland shipping terminals of two war profiteers, APL and SSA Marine. The goal was to shut them down for a shift by asking dockworkers not to cross our community picket line.

Traditionally, picketing a business is considered a socially acceptable and legal exercise of First Amendment rights. That's because the labor and civil rights movements have spent over a century winning and defending those rights. Now those rights are being called into question once more; had the case been successfully prosecuted, it would have set a precedent that might be used against unionized workers during strikes. After all, striking workers do "disrupt" businesses, and from the viewpoint of corporations, picket lines are a "nuisance."

Indybay coverage: [ Oakland 4/7/03 Compiled Stories I 5/12/03 Return to the Docks Protest I 4/26/03 Rally Against Police Brutality I 4/7/04 Remember the Shots! Return to the Docks! ]