Returning to the San Francisco Bay area, Joan met a fellow committed to Trotskyism, Barney Mayes. They lived together and she joined him in editing the weekly publication of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. Waterfront leader Harry Bridges threatened their lives for being against his tactics, and later accused them of being anti-working class and against the Soviet Union. During the longshoremen strikes of 1936-7, beatings and murders, most unsolved, occurred. Joan and Barney wrote "Corpse With Knee Action" under the pseudonym B. J. Maylon. A related story of the waterfront conflicts, "Embarcadero," was unpublished.