Port Shutdown Pledged Despite Union Rejection

Occupy Wall Street protesters want to shut down ports up and down the West Coast on Monday to gum up the engines of global commerce.

But organizers who are partly billing this effort as a show of solidarity with longshoremen have not won the support of the powerful union representing thousands of dock workers.

The tension between the century-old International Longshore and Warehouse Union and a still-young protest movement has complicated an ambitious effort by Occupiers to build an identity bigger than their recently dismantled tent camps.

Occupy groups in such cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, Portland, Ore., Tacoma, Wash., Seattle, Anchorage and Vancouver plan to blockade their local ports.

They believe they have the support of rank-and-file longshoremen, regardless of what union leaders say.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)