Tyree Scott 1939-2003
Fighter for oppressed workers
By Jim McMahan
Seattle
Around 700 people gathered at Mercer Middle
School here on July 12 to celebrate the life of Tyree Scott,
who died of cancer in June. Scott was a civil rights and labor
leader, beginning in the late 1960s, who became a
Marxist-Leninist in the struggle against capital.
Scott was born in Hearne, Texas, in 1939. He and his family
moved to Seattle in 1966 after he came home from the Vietnam
War. A skilled electrician, he was denied construction jobs due
to racism. So he began to organize.
Workers of color couldn't get the better-paid construction
jobs back then. In 1970 he founded the United Construction
Workers Association, which mobilized Black, Latino, Native and
Asian workers. They shut down hundreds of construction sites to
win affirmative action. Sea-Tac Airport was one project not
complying with affirmative action. Hundreds of UCWA workers
went out on the tarmac and blocked planes from moving into the
terminal. They also blocked the ticket counters.
Those who may think affirmative action was handed out on a
platter by the courts don't realize how many arrests, threats,
beatings and jailings workers like Scott took to get those
jobs.
After winning victories in Seattle, Tyree Scott organized
teams to take the struggle to dozens of cities in Texas,
Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
In 1972 Scott joined with Filipino cannery workers and
Latino farm workers to form the Labor Employment Law Office.
Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, Filipino organizers who had
joined with Scott to form LELO, were both assassinated in 1981
for organizing workers and opposing the Marcos dictatorship in
the Philippines.
During the anti-apartheid struggle, Scott was instrumental
in a campaign to stop the Port of Seattle from trading with
racist South Africa.
In 1990 he and his family moved to Mozambique for two years
to work on irrigation projects in solidarity with the besieged
liberation struggle there.
In 1997 Scott brought together workers from 10 different
countries for a conference on common strategies for dealing
with capitalist globalization. He influenced countless young
activists in the months leading up to Seattle's World Trade
Organization protests in 1999. He and LELO also brought in
workers' representatives from Mexico and from COSATU, the union
federation in South Africa, to represent their own struggles
against corporate globalization before the WTO.
Scott worked as an electrician for the Port of Seattle
repairing the waterfront cranes. He retired in 1999. He
returned to the Port in 2003 to help his co-workers on the
maintenance crew organize against the privatization of their
jobs by the union-busting Stevedoring Services of America.
Scott raised six children, along with his partner Beverly Sims
and his previous partner Estella Scott.
Tyree Scott wanted to be known as an ordinary worker.
Speaker after speaker at his memorial said he would never back
down from a struggle.
Reprinted from the July 24, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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