Tidbits - Mar. 11, 2021 - Reader Comments: Senators Against Minimum Wage; Jim Crow - Voter Suppression; Capitol Rioters; Cornel West; Iran Nuke Deal; China; British Royal Racism; Student Activism Scholarships; International Women's Day; resources; more
Re: The Millionaire Senators Who Voted Against the Minimum Wage (George Lessard; Florence Punch; Mary Bang)
Re: A New Form of Jim Crow: Ari Berman on the GOP’s Anti-Democratic Assault on Voting Rights (Judyth Hollub; Howard Harawitz; Mark Mason; Patty Conner Krockel)
Palace Guard -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Re: The Capitol Rioters Had a Lot in Common With a Lynch Mob (Daniel Millstone; Ben Maurer; Paul Richards; Kali Tal; Paula Cooey)
The Bizarre Amazon Boycott That Its Unionizing Workers Never Asked For (Aaron Mak in Slate)
Re: Biden Forges Ahead with His Pro-Union Agenda on Several Fronts (David Bacon)
Voter Oppression -- cartoon by Pat Bagley
Re: Why Cornel West’s Tenure Fight Matters (Pamela Altmeyer Alvey; Eleanor Roosevelt)
Re: Rejoining the Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Enough (Patricia Dowling; Paul Buhle)
Re: More China Debate (Dan Morgan; Ethan Young)
Re: Dr. Seuss “Cancelled”? There’s Nothing New About Cutting Racism From Children’s Books (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Royal Racism -- cartoon by Clay Jones
Republican Senators -- poem by Seymour Joseph
Every single person deserves a good job and a union. (Working Families Party)
Take Action:
Student Activism Scholarships - Application Deadline: April 2 (Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund)
Resources:
March 8 - International Women's Day (Zinn Education Project)
International Working Women's Day - IWWD - Street Fighting Women -- poster by Mike Alewitz
Workers & the World, Unite! DSA for PRO Act Campaign Launch Call w/ Naomi Klein, Sara Nelson & more
#DefundThePolice resources at the click of a button (Black Lives Matter Global Network)
Announcements:
Lecture Series: A White Historian Reads Black History, with Susan Strasser - March 10, March 20, April 24, May 15, June 12 (Alexandria Black History Museum)
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? - March 13 (Pan African Film + Arts Festival)
As Goes Unions, So Goes the Republic: Participation & Democracy at Work, in the Community, and at the Ballot Box - March 15 Seminar with Jane McAlevey (Center for the Study of Law and Society and Center for Law and Work)
Labor History Reading Group + Film: Exploration of Southern Women Textile Workers - March 16 (East Side Freedom Library)
Lessons from America’s Radical Industrial Unions with Toni Gilpin - March 16 & 17 (Havens Wright Center for Social Justice)
Book Talk: “Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes” with author Adam Hochschild - March 24 (Lower East Side Preservation Initiative - LESPI)
Re: The Millionaire Senators Who Voted Against the Minimum Wage
Every Republican senator and 8 Democrats voted against adding a $15 minimum wage to the pandemic relief package.
George Lessard
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Isn’t it wonderful to know that in the states of Maine and Delaware in particular the Democratic constituents will never need anything from the representatives they elected! Seriously, are they really going to expect support for anything they bring to the table? Folks need to really get to know their candidates before they place that vote. Just me........
Florence Punch
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Each one of them did NOT consider their constituents when they did this. I hope it costs them their seats.
Mary Bang
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: A New Form of Jim Crow: Ari Berman on the GOP’s Anti-Democratic Assault on Voting Rights
Minority Rule. It makes me want to smash something!
Judyth Hollub
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Face it! We are a fake democracy.
Howard Harawitz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Abolish the Senate.
Mark Mason
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The Jim Crow Scums must be defeated ....again.
Patty Conner Krockel
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Palace Guard -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Rob Rogers
March 10, 2021
robrogers.com
Re: The Capitol Rioters Had a Lot in Common With a Lynch Mob
Try why don’t you Robbie Meeropol’s essay on the mob that charged the Capitol on January 6th. Anti-Semitic racists who literally wrapped themselves in the confederate flag while they planned lynchings. Those of us from the old days should savor the changes we and our movements have wrought. Robbie, a child of Julies and Ethel Rosenberg gets this column into Time magazine which, in 1953, beat the drums for the judicial lynching of his parents. We have pushed and shoved and moved The society. Thanks to Portside for the link.
Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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No they were!! Especially to. Pence, Ms. Cortez and Pelosi
Ben Maurer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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So true. Read Julian Bond's "Time to Teach" about the Civil rights movement and it is so clear how the hate and violence of today derives from the mobs who rained hate and violence back then. It is visceral and should give us all reason to think.
Paul Richards
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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They *were* a lynch mob. They just didn't find the people they intended to kill. So they killed cops instead.
Kali Tal
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Exactly.
Paula Cooey
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
The Bizarre Amazon Boycott That Its Unionizing Workers Never Asked For
We spoke to the people behind it, and they swear they’re not secretly working for Amazon.
By Aaron Mak
March 9, 2021
Slate
Megan Varner/Getty Images // Slate
A nationwide campaign to boycott Amazon is going viral this week as workers at the company’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, push to form a union. But there are a few issues: The actual organizers behind the effort in Alabama have nothing to do with the boycott. Some labor experts say this kind of boycott could ultimately hurt the union drive. And to experienced labor activists, the obscure group behind the boycott has raised some red flags, leading to speculation that either they don’t quite know what they’re doing, or they’re actually some kind of anti-union cutout.
Because a successful union drive would be a first in an Amazon facility, the campaign organized by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union has garnered national attention. Figures like Stacey Abrams and Danny Glover have thrown their support behind it. President Joe Biden released a video last week supporting “workers in Alabama.” Amazon’s efforts to subvert the union have also received widespread scrutiny. The company launched a bizarre anti-union campaign on social media and has reportedly been forcing employees to attend anti-union meetings, changing the timing of traffic lights near the facility to frustrate organizers, and posting “Vote No” signs in the bathroom stalls. The Bessemer facility’s 5,800 employees are voting until the end of the month.
Read full story here
Re: Biden Forges Ahead with His Pro-Union Agenda on Several Fronts
(posting on Portside Labor)
While this article usefully points out many pro-labor initiatives of the Biden administration, the "Fairness to Farmworkers Act" or as it's actually called, the "Farm Workforce Modernization Act" deserves much more than this deceptive mention. That act, introduced last week again, after passing the House under Trump and failing in the Senate, is actually a bill that would vastly expand the H2-A guestworker visa program and institute mandatory use of E-Verify throughout agriculture. For that reason it is being opposed by many farmworker unions and advocates, although not the UFW. It is not at all a "pro-labor" proposal. For more background, readers can read the Oakland Institute's report, Dignity or Exploitation — What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?
David Bacon
Voter Oppression -- cartoon by Pat Bagley
Pat Bagley
March 1, 2021
The Salt Lake Tribune
Re: Why Cornel West’s Tenure Fight Matters
Clearly, Harvard isn’t “all that”, just a cowardly bastion of ivy and bigoted repression funded by the deluded and deniers of reality. How sad!
Pamela Altmeyer Alvey
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Isn't "risky" and "controversial" the whole point of even having "academia?"
Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Rejoining the Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Enough
What bothers me about this article is it’s “a plague on all your houses” approach. It’s written from a point of superiority - like a reasonable arbiter among squabbling children - here’s one example: “Curbing Iranian intervention in Syria and Yemen will require acknowledging that Tehran has security concerns that can only be assuaged if the US encourages its adversaries to change their behavior as well.”
That language doesn’t recognize the sovereignty of Syria for example - which is internationally recognized as a sovereign country. When Syria invites its ally Iran to come in and help them defeat al nusra etc, that’s not Iranian intervention. That is Iran responding to a request by an ally.
Patricia Dowling
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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an important essay
Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
(posting on Global Left Midweek)
Your coverage of China and the Uighurs has not examined the role of Islamist extremism (remember US support for the Taliban, al Qaeda and so on) and separatism. Uncritical acceptance of the anti-China cold war propaganda does you no credit, or credence as an anti-imperialist source. Here is another view: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/18/us-media-reports-chinese-genocide-relied-on-fraudulent-far-right-researcher/
And here is some information that counters the 'accepted truth' in the west:
The real truth on Uyghurs which is used to taint China
https://www.newsbred.com/article/the-real-truth-on-uyghurs-which-is-used-to-taint-china
Dan Morgan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Portside has never cited Adrian Zenz, the target of the first article you refer us to. But we do cite non-rightist sources reporting atrocities in Xinjiang. We are asked to believe that they are all false, or the threat of Islamist terror in China warrants such repression. There is no discounting claims that Islamists have been operating in Xinjiang. We agree that China is subjected to a flame war in the West that increases the threat of physical war. But Muslims are already subject to real war on numerous fronts. Even based on the threat of subversion claimed by China's defenders, the extent of repression in Xinjiang by most accounts is staggering. In this scenario, should China be exempt from investigation?
Ethan Young
Re: Dr. Seuss “Cancelled”? There’s Nothing New About Cutting Racism From Children’s Books
(posting on Portside Culture)
99.9 of the OMG CANCELING SEUSS outrage is coming from Boomers who have no conception of anything that occurred in the world before 1955, and who cannot abide the thought the world has changed, in any way, since they were eight years old.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Royal Racism -- cartoon by Clay Jones
...Since a few details had come out about the special, I didn’t expect any big surprises and wasn’t looking forward to it. I was actually dreading it. Two hours for this? Man, I’m dedicated to my craft. But If I can sit through Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, then I can sit through just about anything.
I expected to be bored and the entire thing to just be trivial pop culture stuff. I was wrong. It was interesting. I expected the couple to come off whiny and entitled. I thought I’d roll my eyes at them and have trouble sympathizing. Instead, I was angry.
Who starts a conversation worried about a baby’s skin tone? Who does that? You’re supposed to be excited about an upcoming birth in your family. If nothing else, you shouldn’t be racist to members of your own family.
Here’s the dirt: Someone in The Firm, as the royal family and the organization that operates it is referred as, brought this up to Prince Harry as a major concern. Apparently, they were afraid of how it would look for the royal family if it had a black member, or at least one darker than Meghan. And it’s not the point as to how dark the baby would be. The issue here is that it was a concern.
When Harry married Meghan, I thought it was a bigger deal that she was divorced and an American. I didn’t think her being of mixed race was any kind of issue at all. Sure, there are racists out there who still get upset over mixed couples in Cheerio commercials but I thought the majority of us, those who didn’t vote for Trump, were over it. Even if you’re not racist, you may have still been surprised by this…20 years ago maybe.
If nothing else, I thought nobody in the royal family would concern themselves with it. I was wrong. Who was it? Harry wouldn’t say....
Clay Jones
March 8, 2021
Claytoonz
Republican Senators -- poem by Seymour Joseph
I would speak to those
who once were beaming children,
rapt in games and camaraderie,
whose hearts beat to the rhythm
of those whose cares were theirs,
but now a faded memory.
I would speak to those
whose paths took turns away
from moral suasion,
and self became predominant,
absent ethical persuasion.
I would speak to them
and ask if they remember me,
as children we were one in thought
and feeling as well as needs.
And they would smile and then go off
to where their wiles are wrought,
to where their self-indulgence leads.
Seymour Joseph
March 11, 2021
Every single person deserves a good job and a union.
Every single person deserves a good job and a union.
#proact #unions #peoplescharter #jobsandcare
Working Families Party
Student Activism Scholarships - Application Deadline: April 2
Less than a month left for student activists and organizers to apply for up to $15,000 in scholarship funds! Share widely!
More information:
March 8 - International Women's Day (Zinn Education Project)
The United Nations first observed International Women’s Day on March 8, 1975 and its history can be traced earlier. The observance emerged from from the labor movement in 1909, when the Socialist Party of America designated February 28 to honor of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against unfair working conditions.
The official website for the day provides a timeline, excerpted here:
1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.
1910
In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen.
A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day — a Women’s Day — to press for their demands.
The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs — and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament — greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.
1911
Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women’s Day was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland on March 19. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office, and end discrimination.
However less than a week later on March 25, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants.
This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day events. 1911 also saw the Bread and Roses campaign and the Bread and Roses Strike (in 1912) with a majority of women textile workers.
For Women’s History Month, we feature profiles of women in the labor movement. View more resources women’s history and labor history.
Zinn Education Project
A collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change
PO Box 73038 Washington, D.C. 20056
Phone: 202-588-7205 | Email: zep@zinnedproject.org
International Working Women's Day - IWWD - Street Fighting Women -- poster by Mike Alewitz
Poster by Mike Alewitz / 2017
Now shortened to International Women's Day, IWWD first began as a proletarian holiday.
On February 28, 1909, in New York, commemorations marked the previous year’s demonstrations by thousands of female garment workers demanding higher wages, shorter hours and an end to child labor.
The New York events inspired German Marxist women to propose the first International Working Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany and the US.
IWWD got its big boost with the advent of the Russian Revolution. There, the March 8, 1917 women’s demonstrations sparked the massive uprising that led to the overthrow of the Czar. The new revolutionary government championed the rights of women throughout the Soviet Union and globally.
The holiday spread internationally and took a big leap forward with the advent of the second wave of the feminist movement, beginning in the 1960s.
Like the global working-class holiday May Day, IWWD has its roots in the proud history of militant struggle by North American workers that has been suppressed and needs to be reclaimed. We can start by using its historic name.
Sisterhood is powerful!
Happy International WORKING Women's Day!
Images:
Some gave their lives. Most went to jail. All understood that change only comes when we take it to the streets.
Some of the amazing, militant women that I’ve had the honor to paint in my murals and banners:
Frida Kahlo (Activist Artist), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (IWW Agitator), Harriet Tubman (Armed Abolitionist), Louise Michele (Commune Insurrectionist)
Emma Goldman (Anarchist), Mother Jones (Mine Workers Organizer), Rosa Luxemburg (Socialist Revolutionary), Sojourner Truth (Abolitionist/ Feminist)
Clara Lemlich (Strike Leader), Lucy Parsons (Labor Organizer), Lucille Thornburg (CIO Organizer), Rachel Corrie (Solidarity Activist)
Audre Lorde (Feminist/ Poet), Grace Lee Boggs (Marxist Philosopher), Karen Silkwood (Union Activist), Coretta Scott King (Civil Rights Leader)
Mike Alewitz
Workers & the World, Unite! DSA for PRO Act Campaign Launch Call w/ Naomi Klein, Sara Nelson & more
In the 20th century, major gains for the working class in the original New Deal were achieved through militant labor organizing. Rebuilding this capacity is crucial to winning the world we want.
No matter who's running the government, only a radicalized and organized working class can win transformative reforms that can make the 21st century livable for all.
To solve our climate and economic crises, we need a Green New Deal.
To win a Green New Deal, we need mass worker power.
To build mass worker power, we need to pass the PRO Act.
That's why, in the first 100 days of the Biden administration, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are launching a push to pass the PRO Act, which would strengthen unions, the power of the working class to organize on the job, and our collective capacity to win a just transition to a green economy for all in the years ahead.
Join us for a campaign launch call on Sunday 3/7 with special guests Naomi Klein, AFA President Sara Nelson, and others to be announced soon!
Get more info at: dsausa.org/proact
#DefundThePolice resources at the click of a button (Black Lives Matter Global Network)
All eyes are on Minnesota this week -- where the trial for Derek Chauvin was supposed to begin on Monday but was delayed over an appeal to add another charge.
This process will be lengthy, and it will be hard to relive -- so please, remember that while there are millions of us in this movement, we are one. We are in this moment, and every moment, together.
George Floyd is one of the many Black people we’ve lost to police violence. We’ve said it once, we’ve said it twice -- we’ve said it a million times: #DefundThePolice.
In the name of George Floyd and countless others -- today, we’re proud to be launching DefundPolice.org -- a one-stop-shop for organizers and advocates looking for tools, resources, training(s), legislation, and policies.
DefundPolice.org is a collaboration between the Community Resource Hub, Movement for Black Lives, Critical Resistance, Interrupting Criminalization, Freedom Labs (PolicyLink, BYP100, Center for Popular Democracy, and Law for Black Lives), Database for Police Abolition, ACRE, Advancement Project, Alliance for Educational Justice, and Black Lives Matter. Our work is always more meaningful when we work together, and we’re proud to be a part of these collaborative efforts toward Black liberation and freedom.
CHECK OUT DEFUNDPOLICE.ORG
Momentum to defund local police departments has taken several forms:
- Reducing police budgets and officers
- Rerouting funds to community-based models, education, health, and social programs
- Removing police officers from schools
- Removing police officers from public transportation systems
- Removing law enforcement as first responders to situations that are not life-threatening
#DefundThePolice means divesting from institutions that kill, harm, cage, and control our communities and investing in housing, health care, income support, employment, and community-based safety strategies that will produce genuine and sustainable safety for all.
For more information and organizing resources on #DefundThePolice, please visit our new #DefundThePolice hub here.
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation
March 10 - 7:30-9:00pm EST Dr. Susan Strasser: "Confronting "Residential Segregation"
Join us for Dr. Strasser’s presentation! The other three in her “A White Historian Confronts …” series include presentations on Slavery, Voting Rights, and Lynching.
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Part 1—Slavery
March 20 - 1:00 PM EDT in Eastern Time
Susan Strasser is an award-winning historian and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She has been praised by the New Yorker for “retrieving what history discards: the taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life.” Her books include Never Done: A History of American Housework, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, and Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. She is Richards Professor Emerita of American History at the University of Delaware.
She has two current projects, and is available to lecture about both. A White Historian Reads Black History is a series of talks for community and religious groups. Snake Oil Revisited is her investigation of the history of medicinal plants in American culture.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? - March 13 (Pan African Film + Arts Festival)
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? - A powerful group of change-makers across multiple generations come together to discuss today’s Black Lives Matter Movement in the context of the struggle for Black Liberation. Panelists include activist and professor Angela Y. Davis, historian and scholar Dr. Gerald Horne, Black Lives Matter activist Dr. Melina Abdullah, and political strategist and journalist Jasmyne A. Cannick. The conversation is moderated by Pan African Film Festival co-founder Ayuko Babu.
Saturday, March 13 - 2:00 - 3:30 pm
Panels is on-demand at paff.org
More information and tickets here https://www.paff.org/paff-institute/
About the Pan African Film Festival
Gearing up for its 29th anniversary, the Pan African Film and Arts Festival (PAFF) is America's largest and most prestigious Black film festival. Each year, it screens more than 200 films made by and/or about people of African descent from around the world. PAFF holds the distinction of being the largest Black History Month event in the country. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has designated PAFF as an official qualifying film festival for live-action and animation short films.
PAFF is a non-profit corporation, founded in 1992 by award-winning actor Danny Glover (“The Color Purple,” “Lethal Weapon” movie franchise), Emmy Award-winning actress Ja’Net DuBois (best known for her role as Willona in the TV series, “Good Times”) and executive director, Ayuko Babu, an international legal, cultural and political consultant who specializes in Pan African Affairs. PAFF is dedicated to the promotion of ethnic and racial respect and tolerance through the exhibit of films, art, and creative expression.
The goal of PAFF is to present and showcase the broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images, help to destroy negative stereotypes and depict an expanded vision of the Black experience. PAFF believes film and art can lead to better understanding and foster communication between peoples of diverse cultures, races, ethnicities, and lifestyles in an entertaining way while at the same time, serving as a vehicle to initiate dialogue on the important issues of our times.
Monday, March 15, 2021 | 12:45-2:00 PM
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March 16 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm CDT
The East Side Freedom Library invites you a special version of our Labor History Film and Reading Group for March 2021
The Uprising of ‘34
the award-winning documentary by George Stoney
available to be viewed on Vimeo between March 5 and March 19
and a conversation on Tuesday, March 16, at 7pm, via Zoom
with the film’s editor Susanne Rostock
and
labor historian Mary Wingerd, author of the essay
Rethinking Paternalism: Power and Parochialism in a Southern Mill Village
Register here and we will send you a link for the film and Zoom meeting & a PDF of the essay
For Women’s History Month, join ESFL in an exploration of the lives, work, and struggles of southern textile mill workers. The Uprising of ’34 is a startling documentary which tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance — and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it — challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades. Mary Wingerd’s essay not only explores this system of control, but also unearths the under-the-radar forms of resistance which made this strike possible. And she encourages us to consider other times and places where such control and resistance informed working class life.
The Uprising of ’34 offers a penetrating look at class, race, and power in working communities throughout America and raises critical questions about the role of history in making democracy work today. More than a social document, the film is intended to spark discussion on class, race, economics, and power — issues as vital today as they were decades ago. “The thrust of this film is to give the workers their chance to speak,” said editor Rostock. “We’re very proud of the fact that here’s a film in which they speak for themselves [with no narrator].” ESFL invites you to watch this 88 minute film on your own time and then join us for our conversation in our monthly Labor History Reading Group on the 16th.
Our conversation will feature Susanne Rostock the film’s editor and Minnesota historian Mary Wingerd. Rostock is a director as well as an editor, perhaps best known for her presentation of Harry Belafonte’s life in Sing Your Song [2011]. In an HBO project, she is currently directing Another Night in the Free World which documents the lives of three young women activists from 2012 to the present. Wingerd is the author of Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (2001) and North Country: The Making of Minnesota (2010). Please join us.
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East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier Street
St. Paul, MN 55106
651.207.4926
info@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org
Two talks from activist, author and labor historian Toni Gilpin on radical industrial unionism in the USA.
FREE - Register here
“Class Collaboration or Class War? The Battle to Define Profit, Progress, and the Purpose of Unionism in the 20th Century Labor Movement,” Tuesday, March 16, 12:30pm CT
“‘We’re Not Going to Be Second Class Citizens in the South’: the Radical, Interracial Organizing Model of the Farm Equipment Workers in Louisville, Kentucky,” Wednesday, March 17, 12:30pm CT
Toni Gilpin is a labor historian, writer, and activist who holds a Ph.D in American History from Yale University. She is the author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland (Haymarket Books, 2020) and is co-author (with Gary Isaac and Dan Letwin) of On Strike for Respect: The Clerical and Technical Workers’ Strike at Yale University, 1984-85. Her writing has been published in progressive media outlets and labor-connected journals like Jacobin and In These Times, and she was the recipient of the 2018 Debra Bernhardt Award for Labor Journalism. She contributes frequently to the labor activist magazine Labor Notes, including an ongoing series of movie reviews about films with working class content.
Wednesday, March 24 -- 6:00 pm
Award-winning author Adam Hochschild has uncovered the riveting story of Rose Pastor Stokes—the immigrant firebrand who became one of the most celebrated figures of the tumultuous early 20th century. In 1905, Rose Pastor of the Lower East Side married philanthropist James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of a family whose wealth was likely unimaginable to the former cigar-factory worker. The couple met at University Settlement on Eldridge Street, where Pastor, writing for the Jewish Daily News, interviewed Stokes, a leader among the wave of college graduates hoping to serve the crowded, poverty-stricken neighborhood. Did this unlikely union survive? What became of Rose Pastor Stokes, prominent Socialist, labor activist, and birth control advocate? Hochschild will illuminate this remarkable tale.
Adam Hochschild’s writing often focuses on human rights and social justice. Among his other books are: King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Co-hosted by the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative (LESPI), Village Preservation, and the Victorian Society New York as part of our Women’s History Month programming.