While the White House lauds the men and women of the U.S. Merchant Marine, the foundation for the preservation of that industry is being undermined. Workers and their families will be discarded, and an essential U.S. industry will be outsourced.
World’s seafarers’ and dockers’ unions demand immediate end to seafarer humanitarian crisis - call for governments to confront the Flag of Convenience system that enables exploitation and fails to protect seafarers.
Seafarers are not expendable, and must not be treated as collateral damage in regional or international conflicts. The men and women of the U.S. Merchant Marine require more for assurance than facile bombast from the current administration.
The web of Atlantic trading routes and solidarity among maritime workers, many of them Black, meant fugitive slaves’ chances of reaching freedom were better below deck than over land.
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