Tacoma was to be the sequel to Seattle, the obvious next step toward "teamster-and-turtle" unity. The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) were battling Kaiser Aluminum over a lockout; environmentalists were targeting Pacific Lumber for clearcutting redwoods. Both companies are owned by S&L sleazeball Charles Hurwitz, and March 27 was set aside as the day to make Hurwitz's life difficult. Organizers had been swarming up and down the West Coast for weeks, rallying activists to Tacoma for what looked to be the largest direct action mobilization since the WTO. So why did the union leadership call it off? The story, as near as I can piece it together, is this: the USWA already has one legal injunction against it for damaging vehicles used by scabs. And when union bigshot Jon Youngdahl heard rumors that the (oh-so-scary) Eugene Anarchists were planning to bring their vandalous ways to Tacoma, he panicked and cancelled the entire affair. The USWA, of course, takes issue with this interpretation, though others involved in the planning will, with varying degrees of reluctance, admit to its truth. For evidence, consider the cancellation notice sent out by Portland Jobs With Justice. The notice reads: "The Steelworker action in Tacoma scheduled for March 25-27th has been cancelled! The Steelworkers felt that the possible legal ramifications of what could happen at the rally was too big of a risk." While they seem to have been accepted by the media, the union's weak excuses should be dismissed as half-assed attempts at damage control. Their first story claimed that the action was off because they had planned to block supplies arriving at the docks and on the trainlines, and that both shipments had been rescheduled. But of course, such a move should have been expected, and presented only a minor difficulty. The union knew more than two weeks in advance that the shipments had been changed. They had plenty of time to find another target. More recently, the USWA's March 22 press release says that they cancelled the protests "in order to concentrate their full attention on the passage of SB 6368, a bill providing unemployment assistance to locked-out Kaiser workers." Pretending for a moment that SB 6368 had even a snowball's chance of passing, one might well wonder what the union is doing that requires its "full attention." The answer (according to the news release): "For more than ten days, locked-out Kaiser Steelworkers have led a 24-hour-a-day vigil at the State Capital..." That's right. The union leaders are claiming that they scrapped weeks of planning and undermined a budding coalition for the sake of a ten-day-old vigil. That's a little hard to choke down. For one thing, it's not at all clear how the Tacoma action could have detracted from the vigil. For another, if that really were the motivating concern, wouldn't the union have simply redirected its forces to Olympia, where they could aid in pressuring the state legislature? Indeed, there was a rally in Olympia on the 27th, but there was little effort made to mobilize for it; it was much smaller than a similar rally the previous week.

So much for official explanations. The real reason for this unfortunate anti-climax is a startling combination of stupidity and cowardice. Stupidity, because it apparently didn't occur to Youngdahl until the last fucking moment that he might not be able to control every aspect of the big event. Cowardice, because the decision to cancel was neither principled nor strategic. Youngdahl handed Kaiser a symbolic victory (to say the least), ordering a retreat without even making the company fight for it. He decided, in short, that it was better to give up the action than to risk losing his position of command, even briefly. Damn near everyone ought to be angry about this. Organizers saw their efforts flushed away without warning. Activists, prepared to take the streets and shut down Kaiser's production, suddenly found themselves in a swirl of rumor and speculation, stories intersecting only with the punchline, "Cancelled."

Even the sympathetic observer ought to be steamed, if only on general principle. But the people who should be angriest are the locked-out workers, abandoned by their leaders on the eve of battle, and abandoned for the most dubious of reasons. Youngdahl feared losing control of the action. But there's no reason he should have had control to begin with; he's just the hired gun. The Tacoma action wasn't planned for his benefit, and the USWA isn't his private corporation. It's a union. It belongs to the workers, and it exists for their sake. Youngdahl seems to have decided in advance that court injunctions and legislative bills make for more powerful tools than the militant action of the working class. He has so much as announced that the jobs of 2,900 workers are of less concern than even a single broken window.

Luckily, the workers have different priorities, and some have shown themselves unwilling to follow Youngdahl's orders. Despite the official cancellation, they've maintained a picketline, and done so without regard to the limits set by the judge's injunction. Every day, for the week prior to the planned event, a crowd of about 50 supporters gathered outside the plant. The line included USWA members, of course--but also longshore workers, students, environmentalists, and activists from the Direct Action Network. On Saturday, March 25, the police responded to the picket by blockading the area, refusing to let anyone near the plant. The Washington State Patrol arrested 21 people on their way to join the picketline (all for minor traffic infractions). And Kaiser's production was effectively shut down for the day. Hence, the workers managed to salvage a worthwhile victory and offered some small taste of what would have been possible with a full mobilization. Their action serves as a reminder of what remains, ultimately, a missed opportunity. It is impressive that the workers could to pull together any action at all, under the circumstances. But they could not fully reclaim the event, as they didn't gather the thousands of supporters previously expected. They managed to organize an action, but they did not succeed in un-cancelling the mobilization. And this is a fact in need of explaining. Part of the blame, surely, falls to the union's supporters in other cities, who never managed to develop direct rank-and-file contacts and were, perhaps, a wee bit hasty about accepting Youngdahl's orders to stay home. But this is obviously not the whole story, and it should be remembered that even the participation of USWA members amounted to only a faction of what it would have been had the leadership not thrown on the brakes. Two possible explanations present themselves. The first is that the bulk of the workers were unwilling to push on without the blessing of the leadership. The second is that the workers were unable to mobilize their supporters without the leaders' help. Probably, it was some combination of the two: It's hard to muster the determination for such a coup, unless you're convinced that your efforts can pay off. In any case, the problem hints at its own solution. What we need, within each union, is a campaign for worker control. The rank-and-file need to be well enough organized that they can direct their own action--well enough organized that they can circumvent the leadership entirely when that proves necessary. Jon Youngdahl might be an idiot and a worm, but he isn't really the problem. Conflicts like this will inevitably arise within unions so long as control of the organization remains concentrated at the top. In the confines of a top-down organization, leaders will always see it as part of their task to keep the workers in line, and militants in the rank-and-file must, of necessity, learn to resist that control. In Tacoma, we saw a strong push in this direction from workers in the USWA. Let's hope it continues, and spreads.