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The new FERA plan, however, moved steadily forward toward
implementation. A mass demonstration of seamen against the plan and against
"forced labor" in Baltimore in mid-April was followed by a march of an interracial
group of 80 seamen and longshoremen to the William Plunkert's office at FBRA in
Washington. (While in Washington, when the government attempted to send
marchers who had blisters and other injuries from the march to segregated medical
facilities, the marchers forced government doctors to see them all at once.)
Simultaneously there were sympathy strikes by the crews of five ships in Baltimore
harbor and the longshoremen on two Baltimore docks. Despite these efforts, at the
end of April the seamen were forcefully evicted from the Anchorage, and, on May
2, Greenstein wrote Plunkert that "our controversy with the seamen has been
worked out. The seamen have capitulated completely. ^
Greenstein's letter represented either wishful thinking or was duplicitous:
the struggle was by no means over. But the seamen had lost an important battle
over relief and were now on the defensive. When on May 5 Greenstein cut off
relief to all seamen who had not re-registered under the new plan (despite the fact
that only 200 had done so), a demonstration of a reported 75 seamen attempted to
enter his offices, was turned away by police, and then "besieged" the offices of the
Transient Relief Bureau until the police again intervened. A seamen's delegation
met with Greenstein the next day, demanding that relief to non-registered seamen
be continued. He refused. That night Greenstein and representatives of the
Waterfront Unemployment Committee and the Socialist Party-led People's
Unemployment League spoke at the Kindergarten of Economic Literacy at Johns
Hopkins University; the WUC speaker accused Greenstein of discriminating
against seamen, and Greenstein replied that the real issue was that the seamen had
been using relief as a weapon to fight strikes. Unfortunately, the PUL speaker
appeared to undercut the WUC by praising Greenstein as "A very excellent
cooperator" with their organization.^^
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