This past week, the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area — long a cen­ter of union­ism, social jus­tice move­ments and rad­i­cal­ism — took cen­ter stage. Patri­ot Prayer is a right-wing orga­ni­za­tion with a demon­strat­ed his­to­ry of incit­ing racist vio­lence, most obvi­ous­ly in Port­land , Ore., while iron­i­cal­ly assert­ing peace­ful inten­tions. The far-right group declared it would ral­ly in San Fran­cis­co on Saturday.

What role should the labor move­ment play in beat­ing back the resur­gence of fas­cism? Resis­tance, while a pow­er­ful con­cept, is far too vague. Local 10, the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area branch of the Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore and Ware­house Union (ILWU) — and per­haps the most rad­i­cal union in the Unit­ed States — demon­strates what can be done.

Local 10 took a lead role in orga­niz­ing counter-protests that con­tributed to the San Fran­cis­co event being can­celed the day ahead of its sched­uled event. The union’s role in this wave of pop­u­lar mobi­liza­tions demands consideration.

At its August 17 meet­ing, Local 10 passed a ​“Motion to Stop the Fas­cists in San Fran­cis­co,” which laid out mem­bers’ oppo­si­tion to the ral­ly and inten­tion to orga­nize. This res­o­lu­tion enu­mer­at­ed the union’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, start­ing with Don­ald Trump’s ​“white­wash­ing this vio­lent, dead­ly fas­cist and racist attack [in Char­lottesville] say­ing ​‘both sides are to blame,’ and his attack­ing anti-racists for oppos­ing Con­fed­er­ate stat­ues that hon­or slav­ery adds fuel to the fire of racist violence.”

The dock­work­ers called out Patri­ot Prayer for incit­ing vio­lence. “[F]ar from a mat­ter of ​‘free speech,’ the racist and fas­cist provo­ca­tions are a dead­ly men­ace, as shown in Port­land on May 26 when a Nazi mur­dered two men and almost killed a third for defend­ing two young African-Amer­i­can women he was men­ac­ing,” they declared. The union called for a protest against Patri­ot Prayer’s sched­uled ral­ly in San Francisco.

The motion end­ed with an invi­ta­tion to ​“all unions and anti-racist and anti-fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions to join us defend­ing unions, racial minori­ties, immi­grants, LGBTQ peo­ple, women and all the oppressed.”

As Ed Fer­ris, Local 10 pres­i­dent and one of the lead orga­niz­ers suc­cinct­ly declared in a recent inter­view with Dr. Suzi Weiss­man on KPFK, ​“A woman [Heather Hey­er] was killed by Nazis on Amer­i­can soil and that’s absolute­ly unacceptable.”

Local 10’s planned counter-march received wide pub­lic­i­ty in the Bay Area and across Cal­i­for­nia via the inter­net, mass media and social media. Thou­sands would like­ly have joined the anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tion, were it not for the rally’s can­cel­la­tion. While Local 10 was hard­ly the only Bay Area group to mobi­lize, they played a role in inspir­ing oth­ers to take action. As San Fran­cis­co Against Hate not­ed on Face­book, ILWU Local 10 ​“has a long his­to­ry of fight­ing against racism” so ​“many oth­er SF com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als who stand against white suprema­cy, misog­y­ny and homo­pho­bia, will be march­ing from Longshoreman’s Hall to Crissy Field to protest.”

After its first ral­ly was foiled, Patri­ot Prayer attempt­ed a sec­ond at the city’s famed Alamo Park. How­ev­er, thou­sands of counter-pro­test­ers — includ­ing ILWU mem­bers and union elec­tri­cians and teach­ers — got to Alamo Park first and occu­pied it, over­whelm­ing what few fas­cists and white suprema­cists appeared. These pro­test­ers joined anoth­er large con­tin­gent in the city’s Mis­sion dis­trict, long a work­ing-class neigh­bor­hood now suf­fer­ing from rapid gentrification.

On Sun­day, the focus shift­ed to the East Bay city of Berke­ley where far-right forces planned to gath­er. Yet, once again, anti-fas­cists out-orga­nized the right. Upwards of 5,000 peo­ple appeared, includ­ing — once more — Bay Area dock­work­ers and union teach­ers. Among ILWU mem­bers present was Howard Key­lor, a 90-year-old who led the anti-apartheid boy­cott that Local 10 con­duct­ed in 1984 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with South Africans.

Yet, dock­work­ers have not been immune to the ris­ing tide of hate. Ear­li­er this year, mul­ti­ple noos­es were found on the Oak­land water­front, which fol­lowed the dis­cov­ery of racist slurs spray paint­ed on port equip­ment. The African-Amer­i­can Long­shore Coali­tion, a cau­cus of black long­shore work­ers with­in the ILWU, has led the efforts to com­bat such racism. In late May, about one hun­dred work­ers stopped work to protest these racist provo­ca­tions. Der­rick Muham­mad, Local 10’s Sec­re­tary Trea­sur­er, com­ment­ed in late May: ​“We believe it’s a bonafide health and safe­ty issue because of the his­to­ry behind the noose and what it means for black peo­ple in America.”

Instead of pro­tect­ing their work­ers, SSA Marine, the employ­er, respond­ed by fil­ing a com­plaint with the port arbi­tra­tor who ruled this stop­page ille­gal. The port’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor declared, ​“The Port of Oak­land does not tol­er­ate big­otry or dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind,” but offered no spe­cif­ic com­ment on the noos­es or the work stop­page. The Pacif­ic Mar­itime Asso­ci­a­tion, to which SSA belongs and which rep­re­sents West Coast ship­ping cor­po­ra­tions in deal­ings with the ILWU, declined to com­ment for this story.

The ILWU offers an exam­ple of a labor union being wide­ly and deeply involved in social jus­tice beyond its own work­places. It boy­cotted ships load­ing mate­r­i­al for fas­cist and racist regimes in Japan in the 1930s, Chile in the 1970s, and South Africa in the 1980s. It stood as one of the few orga­ni­za­tions to con­demn the intern­ment of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans dur­ing World War II. It active­ly fought racism in its own work­places, cities and nation. The ILWU shut down all West Coast ports, on May Day of 2008 to protest the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion day, 90 per­cent of rank-and-file mem­bers in Local 10 refused to report for work.

In its anti-fas­cist state­ment, the ILWU cit­ed its own ​“proud his­to­ry of stand­ing up against racism, fas­cism and big­otry and using our union pow­er to do so; on May Day 2015 we shut down Bay Area ports and marched fol­lowed by thou­sands to Oscar Grant Plaza demand­ing an end to police ter­ror against African Amer­i­cans and others.”

The labor move­ment has been great­ly weak­ened by decades of anti-union­ism, but the ILWU and Local 10 remain unbowed. Oth­er unions should fol­low their lead. And, for the 89 per­cent of Amer­i­can work­ers not in unions, they must be remind­ed that indi­vid­ual acts of resis­tance — while noble — are nowhere as effec­tive as col­lec­tive action. Sad­ly, there will be many more oppor­tu­ni­ties to act.