"Occupy" Protests Block Major West Coast Ports
Demonstrations target Goldman Sachs profits, but some dock workers complain.
| Posted Monday, Dec. 12, 2011, at 4:20 PM
Photograph by Natalie Behring/Getty Images.
Protesters are no longer occupying Wall Street around the clock, but on Monday they flexed their power by partially shutting down some of the West Coast's busiest ports, the Associated Press reports.
The port protests ranged along the coast from Long Beach, Calif., to Vancouver, B.C. The ports that closed some terminals in response to the demonstrations included those of Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., and Longview, Wash.
The generally peaceful protests were designed to cut into the profits of the big corporations that run the docks—or "Wall Street on the waterfront," as some protest signs had it. Though they're manned by unionized longshoremen, the ports are "economic engines for the elite," according to another of the protesters' alliterative slogans.
The demonstrations targeted two companies in particular: port operator SSA Marine and grain exporter EGT. SSA is partly owned by Goldman Sachs, notes Bloomberg News. But some dock workers complained they were the ones hurt. “They are targeting the wrong people,” Mike Gardner, 42, a crane operator from Portland, told Bloomberg. “The corporations are still making money today. We are not.”
Meanwhile, Occupy protesters in New York took their message to Goldman Sachs directly, marching around the bank's Lower Manhattan headquarters. Some carried a puppet "vampire squid," the New York Observer noted, a reference to Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi's famous description of Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity." The NYPD reported 17 arrests.
