[Being an addendum to my previous essay, “Protests: Accentuating the Positive.”]
1. A Real-Time Validation
I published my essay, “Protests: Accentuating the Positive,” on the night of October 29. It was a reflection on a phenomenon playing out across the liberal democratic world: a public refusal to submit to anti-people, anti-democratic state actions, and a reassuring assertion of democratic resilience.
Within hours of publishing, a notification landed in my inbox that validated these very principles on a global scale. It was PI Briefing No. 34: Jamming the War Machine from Progressive International.
2. The Power of “Jamming the Machine”
Progressive International was reporting on extraordinary developments during the October 30 International Day of Action. On that day, dockworkers across 113 ports in 22 countries and regions—from Genoa, Gioia Tauro, and Livorno to Oakland, Hamburg, and Veracruz—withdrew their labour to halt the transit of arms.
Consistent with the message of Pastor Niemöller’s poem cited in my previous post, these dockworkers refused to remain silent, even at the risk of losing pay or facing severe state penalties. Their concrete action embodied the exact sentiment I added to Pastor Niemöller’s verse: a total refusal to remain quiet about or complicit in the destruction of non-combatant lives, specifically in Gaza.
3. Key Takeaways That Extend the Thesis of My Essay
This real-time validation of my core thesis—refusal to stay silent in the face of autocracy, coercion, and the denial of fundamental rights—offers several vital takeaways:
- The Refusal to Be Complicit: The mobilization reflects a profound moral reckoning inside the workplace. As Simone D’Aversa, a Livorno dockworker who helped found the autonomous collective GAP, observed, the struggle began with recognizing that his own labor had become “extremely involved in war.” This realization led to a personal commitment: “to try to find a way to become something that disturbs this machine from the inside.” For workers like Peppe Marra in Gioia Tauro, where seventeen containers of dual-use steel bound for Israel were blocked, the question is fundamental to basic humanity. Moving cargo that becomes bullets to kill women, children, and men touches the conscience—and as Marra noted, “if it doesn’t touch you, you’re not human.”
- Logistical Disruption vs. State Power: The October 30 action ranks among the largest anti-war labour strikes in post-World War II history, distinguished by its novel international strategy. By uniting workers across the Global North and South, the movement directly confronts imperialism’s logistics apparatus. As Giovanni Ceraolo of Italy’s USB union pointed out, combining picket lines outside the gates with labour refusal inside creates a double impact: political messaging and direct economic damage. Delaying a container ship by even a single day causes logistics delays to pile up, breaking the precise machinery of war and demonstrating that state military authority relies entirely on the compliance of the people who run its physical infrastructure.
- Moral Courage Over State Retaliation: The workers took action knowing full well the risks involved—sacrificing a day’s pay, facing workplace discipline, and defying government orders, such as transport strike bans and fine threats issued by Italian Transport Minister Matteo Salvini. Yet, as Mimmo Macrì of ORSA Porti emphasized, these commercial terminals belong to civil society, not military alliances: “We’re dockworkers who move civilian goods, so we have nothing to do with wars, and we don’t want to.” The workers demonstrated that taking a stand is not a casual outing, but a deliberate decision to absorb personal cost rather than enable state-sanctioned violence.
4. Conclusion
As historian Mukul Kesavan noted in his interview with Karan Thapar on The Wire, persistent acts of public defiance provide the true foundation for hope. The global dockworkers’ strike reminds us forcefully that democracy and moral authority do not reside in executive decrees, government halls, or military commands. They live in the collective courage of ordinary people—whether standing in city streets or picketing on maritime docks—who refuse to let the machine of oppression run uninterrupted in their name.
Sadly, the mainstream media of the liberal democratic world have not seen it to be a story worthy of or important for telling their followers. What does that say about the nexus between liberal democratic states turned illiberal and corporate owned media? And how does that nexus affect the reality, preservation and practice of true democracy?
Resource Link:
PI Briefing No. 34 | Jamming the War Machine | Progressive International
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