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OAKLAND, Calif. — Occupy Wall Street protesters want to shut down ports along the West Coast on Monday in a bid to gum up the engines of global commerce.
But organizers who are partly billing this effort as a show of solidarity with longshoremen have not won the support of the powerful union representing thousands of dock workers.
The tension between the century-old International Longshore and Warehouse Union and a still-young protest movement has complicated an ambitious effort by Occupiers.
“Support is one thing, organization from outside groups attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another,” Robert McEllrath wrote in a Dec. 6 letter to ILWU locals.
