ILWU Crosses $1 Million Fundraising Goal

Dan Imbaglazzio tells how they got there

Retired longshore worker and former Southern California area representative for the Coast Pension and Welfare Committee, Daniel Imbagliazzo stopped by the Random Lengths News office to spread the news that the union had raised $140,000 last year and had crossed the $1 million threshold for Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a charity fighting childhood cancer.

“This is what we’ve done,” Imbagliazzo said, beaming. 

In 2011, the Longshore Division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, or ILWU, formed a committee to reach out to Alex’s Lemonade Stand to contribute to the fight against pediatric cancer. 

Then and now, Imbagliazzo explained that the effort was an expression of the union’s desire to give back to the community. 

“We wanted to do something good with the community for other people,” he said.

To that end, the union formed a committee and organized an event at multiple ports on the West Coast the same day with the union acting together. 

The results were different from the initial plan, but coordinated events in three different ports on the West Coast. They settled on the name, “ILWU Walk the Coast,” for efforts on behalf of pediatric cancer research.

“A lot of people traditionally think that you raise money by walking,” Imbagliazzo said. “Our idea is that each port would have its own separate identity and function unique to them.”

The only thing that is required is that they use the same artwork in their promotional tools and that the events are held on the same day.

Every summer, between late July and August, since 2011, the Longshore Division of the ILWU have raised money on behalf of Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a nonprofit organization committed to raising money for childhood cancer research. It was an “ILWU Walk the Coast” fundraiser. Last year, the union raised its 1 millionth dollar for the pediatric cancer charity named for Alexandra Scott, who developed childhood cancer only days before reaching her first birthday. 

Alex was afflicted with neural blastoma, a common infant cancer because it grows out of immature nerves. More than 90% of those diagnosed with this type of cancer are younger than 5. Alex never went into remission despite going from one treatment to the next from chemotherapy to radiation therapy and experimental treatments. 

In 2000, when Alex was 4 years old, she told her mother, Liz Scott, that she wanted to do something for other children with cancer. She and her brother put up a lemonade stand in their front yard and raised $2,000. By the time Alex died in 2004, with the help of others, she had raised more than $1 million and the work continued. This is a story Random Lengths has published before. 

Alex Scott’s story, six years after her death from cancer, is what drew Imbagliazzo to Alex’s Lemonade Stand. 

“When I read about the child, Alex, the four-year-old child in the hospital saying, ‘I want to help somebody else,’ I fell in love with the child,” Imbagliazzo said.  “And so, we adopted Alex’s Lemonade Stand in the pacific northwest.” 

The union also donated to Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for two years. PanCAN was active until it kind of faded away, the retired union leader said. From 2013 to 2019, it was mostly southern California and Alex’s Lemonade Stand and then he opened it up. 

Imbagliazzo had asked the union officers in San Francisco if he could talk to all the divisions of the ILWU about contributing to Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Originally, this was just a Longshore thing. The ILWU has other divisions. So Imbagliazzo asked for permission to ask the rest of the union to participate in the ILWU Walk the Coast fundraiser for Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Permission was granted at the last convention, which had to be virtual due to COVID-19. In the process, he got the opportunity to ask the entire union and was able to get locals from Canada, Hawaii and Alaska to sign on. 

“So this year, we have, for the first time, a Canadian local to join us.” Imbagliazzo said. “So we’re growing.” 

As pivotal a role Imbagliazzo has played in making the Walk the Coast fundraiser a success, the union leader has a long list of people he feels he owes a debt of gratitude. Imbagliazzo noted during the first ILWU Walk the Coast, his goal was incredibly modest at $20,000. Instead, the Walk the Coast committee raised more than $80,000.

Imbagliazzo credited all the companies and the union locals, including Local 13, 63, and 94.

“I never put out to everybody, ‘this is our goal.’ I just knew I had to work hard and then it happened. And every year we’ve done a little better,” Imbagliazzo said. “One time, I think we didn’t increase and then every year we’ve done better but it wasn’t because I said to the group, just every year, I have to renew and form new relationships with people, companies and locals and tell them thank you for what you do. It isn’t what I do. It’s what we do. Everybody feels good when they do this. You’re part of this.”

ILWU pensioner Walter Romanowski was one of them. Imbagliazzo explained that Romanowski was one of the first people he went to for a donation for Walk the Coast.

“It wasn’t the first time I had gone to him,” Imbagliazzo explained. “The first time I went to him and asked him for money, he said yes right away. By the next year when I had asked him for money … we had formed a relationship. About three or four years in, while we were talking, he asked, ‘Hey what’s your goal this year? And I said, well, I’m hoping for $85,000 … He said, ‘chickenshit. Go for $100,000.’”

Imbagliazzo explained that Romanowski connected him to his network of high-ranking individuals at terminals and businesses across the waterfront, many of whom had worked under him and with him through his many years on the waterfront.

“He had such a good relationship with the people that worked for him,” Imbagliazzo said. “They later became vice presidents at ITS and APM Terminal, and now the new company, Fenix. Those guys went their own way and now they’re all contributors because of Walter. They wouldn’t answer the phone for me. Walter allowed me to use his name.”

After nearly five decades on the waterfront, Imbagliazzo noted that the point of the ILWU Walk the Coast fundraiser wasn’t to get everyone to give a lot of money. Rather, it was to unify the entire union by participating in single action for a common good.  

“We’re honest and we got a good charity and we made a marriage together,” Imbagliazzo said. 

Imbagliazzo noted that while union locals had organized food giveaways and toy drives before Alex’s Lemonade Stand, the union had not done one thing together as part of a united effort, at least not since the 1934 general strike. 

“Each local does their own thing,” Imbagliazzo said. “But Alex’s Lemonade Stand is the one thing we all do together.” 

Imbagliazzo said he wrote the resolution with three goals in mind: 

• Do something good for others
• Unite the union
• Let the community know the goodness of organized labor

Early on, Imbagliazzo made it a point to draft Robert York from the ILWU Credit Union and Robert Maynez of the Marine Clerks Association-Local 63 to help lead and organize ILWU Walk the Coast.

In the beginning, Seattle got involved because of a guy named Scott Mason, and then down south, there were Locals 13, 63, 94 and the pensioners. 

“The first people I asked for money from were the pensioners and they were there,” Imbagliazzo said. “It was amazing.” 

The 76-year-old longshore worker recalled how great it was when Liz Scott attended the union’s first fundraiser in 2011. 

“My knees are going like this [demonstrating how his legs were shaking]… I don’t know why I got a case of nerves. She [Liz Scott] looked at me as calmly as possible and said, ‘No. This one’s special.’ She came from the East Coast to babysit me. Then she got in a fire boat for the first time and we got a picture of it.”

Imbagliazzo discussed the highlights of organizing the Walk the Coast fundraiser in the Los Angeles Harbor Area and its transition from an all-day music festival complete with classic car shows and World War II plane flyovers. A few years before COVID-19, Walk the Coast turned toward poker tournaments.

When Imbagliazzo talks about the work of raising money for a worthy cause, he typically focuses the attention on the donors and the workers doing the work, all the while shunning the spotlight. But given the critical role he played in getting the union as deeply involved as it is, it’s hard to miss the personal sense of duty and gratitude that has guided his work in the ILWU.

It turned out he was deeply inspired by his mother, who during the last few years before she died, would give her son a list and tell him to donate $5 for this charity or that one.  

“Imagine it…” he said. “A woman on Social Security and a small pension, and she still shared,” he said. “My mother gave me those kinds of principles. It wasn’t because I sat down on my own and thought, ‘how can I do something good?’” 

Without going into much detail, he explained that he and his older sister were reared by their mother in a single-parent household. He recalled tough financial times in his childhood. When he turned 18, while attending Los Angeles Harbor College, he asked an uncle for help getting a job on the waterfront. Though his uncle wasn’t in the union, he had friends who were. 

So his uncle said, “I’ll see what I can do.” 

Imbagliazzo explained that up til that point, he had never asked a man for anything in his life. A year passed. Then one day, while he was at his future wife’s house, he received a call. It was his uncle. 

“‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Come down here and fill out this application.’ It was for a permanent job. He had found somebody with no family who had nobody for who to speak up.”

The septuagenarian knew that in situations like that people usually would want something in return.

“I was a dumb kid. I didn’t know anything,” Imbagliazzo said. 

The sponsor said he just wanted to see him. The man sized up the 19-year-old Imbagliazzo, then told him, “You’ll do fine. I asked your uncle if I could see you. Good luck to you.” 

Then off this longshoreman went to Homeland, California, Imbagliazzo recounted.  The interaction took two minutes.  

The grandfather of three explained that he searched for his sponsor several years ago to thank him more properly. 

“I wanted to thank him but he passed away and he had no family. There was nobody to say … you know, your father … your uncle … there was no way for me to say…” Imbagliazzo explained. “I realized after so many years what he had given me. He gave me a life. And my uncle too. I gave my uncle a candy dish to say thank you. He didn’t eat candy. The last thing he needed was a candy dish, but that’s what I gave him. I was just lucky. I was just fortunate.” 

Then he said, “But don’t make this about me.”

Imbagliazzo is right about one thing. The story isn’t about him. It’s about believing in the best of humanity.  

Imbagliazzo said, “Here’s my thing. Every child ought to get a chance at life and cancer tries to steal that chance and that isn’t right. I had my chance in life and then I got lucky and was very fortunate. Every kid deserves a shot at life.”

After 57 years of walking this earth as an adult, he was struck by something he read in literature about cancer. And in it, it said, “Cancer doesn’t care about race … gender … or economic standing. Cancer comes after children and adults in every walk of life.” 

“That hit me,” Imbagliazzo said. “Cancer doesn’t care, but people do care, and people want to be part of something.

“I think if you’d lost your wallet, chances are you’d get your wallet back,” Imbagliazzo explained. “ I think people are mostly good. I don’t remember getting too many “no”s when it came to a donation for Alex’s Lemonade Stand.”