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This page is dedicated to Russ Allen, Labor Educator
Labor Media
Contents:
News and Announcements:
Upcoming:
November, 2007 Washington, DC USA
Photo Exhibit: "Unembedded"
Labor, Peace, and Public Health
The American Public Health Association (APHA), Labor Caucus and Peace Caucus are working together to bring a nationally touring photo exhibit called "Unembedded" to the AFL-CIO in November. This extraordinary exhibit of 60 images tells the story of the impact of war on Iraq - on the lives of its people "on the ground" where the war is being waged. The exhibit also includes interpretive panels about the war's effect on human health and the environment in Iraq, as well as its impact on returning American veterans, their families, and communities.
"Unembedded" is a book and photo exhibition project that brings together four photojournalists who have worked extensively in Iraq outside the confines of the U.S. military's official "embedding" program. The book and exhibit give audiences a nuanced view of the violence in Iraq that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.
The exhibition will be held in November 2007, in conjunction with the APHA Annual Meeting and Public Health Exposition in Washington, DC.
Location: AFL-CIO Headquarters, 815 16th Street, NW, Washington DC 20006.
Hours: Sunday, Nov 4: 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Monday, Nov 5: 7:00 am to 10:00 pm (including opening reception)
Tuesday - Thursday, Nov 6-8: 7:00 am to 7:00 pm
Opening reception: Monday Nov 5, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm, will feature leaders from APHA, the Labor and Peace movements, and a special presentation byphotojournalist Kael Alford, who will discuss her experiences while “unembedded” in Iraq.
For further information, please contact:
Alan Baker
APHA
202-777-2441
alan.baker@apha.org
Pamela Wilson
Labor Caucus/DPE, AFL-CIO
202-638-0320, Ext 12
pwilson@dpeaflcio.org
Patrice Sutton
Peace Caucus
415-407-8806
psutton2000@yahoo.com
For more information about the book and photojournalists: http://www.unembedded.net/main.php
Excellent Labor Book Available
Michael Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 2007)
As Cornell West, Princeton University, says of the book: "A magisterial treatment of this neglected period, Michael Honey is to be saluted!"
This account is a riveting, thorough, fascinating story that weaves history, politics, and social justice issues together seamlessly. It is the story of Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights struggle was focused on Dr. Martin Luther King and the sanitation workers who undertook a courageous strike due to dire conditions. It tells of those who worked hard to improve conditions and bring about justice, and those whose lives were affected. It is not the usual history of the top down. A refreshing account that seeks to bring hope and light to the events and conditions facing workers in Memphis, the over 500 pages keeps you pulled in. This is the way history should be told.
Michael Honey's earlier books include Black Workers Remember, An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle, (University of California Press, 1999) and Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, Organizing Memphis Workers, (University of Illinois Press, 1993).
Michael Honey is Professor of African-American, Ethnic and Labor Studies and American History at the University of Washington, Tacoma, Washington.
For details on Michael Honey and his most recent book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (W.W. Norton, 2007): http://faculty.washington.edu/mhoney/
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Going Down Jericho Road
Review by Ellie Blalock, WIFP
Dr. Michael Honey, a professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma, recently published a new book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign, recounting the 1968 sanitation worker riots in Memphis, Tennessee. Amid the “plantation mentality” that defined southern politics at the time, black workers were kept in poverty by white supervisors and trade brotherhoods that were able to force them into the lowest-paying positions, with few options for social mobility. Anger reached a crescendo on February 1, 1968, when two sanitation workers were killed by a trash compacter after seeking shelter inside of a truck during a downpour. This horrendous event, on top of years of meager pay and no benefits, led to a strike, beginning on February 12, of almost 1,300 workers. The strikers faced great obstacles, one of which was the inherent danger in arguing for workers’ rights and organized labor amid the anti-communist sentiment of the 1960s and 70s. The reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., working on his Poor People’s Campaign throughout the American south, adopted the Memphis conflict as his own, eventually giving his life for the cause, which would prove instrumental in turning the tide of white supremacy.
Honey’s work is extremely engaging, addressing the sequence of events while seamlessly incorporating the histories of key players in the struggle as well as the social and cultural environment of the time. Honey’s fluid prose will not disappoint those seeking an eloquently-written piece of non-fiction, but the book’s greatest strength is its ability to draw attention to the lesser-known actors who truly fueled the Memphis strike and who brought the cause into the national spotlight. Going Down Jericho Road is an important book for anyone who wishes to understand more fully the complexity of the civil rights movement and how it affected all levels of American society.
Michael Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (W.W. Norton, NY, 2007)
Mother Jones (1837 - 1930)
Born Mary Harris in 1837 in Cork, Ireland, the woman who would become Mother Jones immigrated to North America with her family as a child to escape the Irish famine. She spent her early years in Canada and trained to be a dressmaker and teacher.
In her early 20's, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a dressmaker, and then to Memphis, Tenn., where she met and married George Jones, a skilled iron molder and staunch unionist. With four children, Mary was well on her way to an unremarkable life when tragedy struck. A yellow fever epidemic in 1867, which killed hundreds of people, also took the lives of Mary's husband and all four of her children.
Mary moved back to Chicago and returned to commercial dressmaking. She opened her own shop, patronized by some of the wealthiest women in town. According to one account of her life, Mary's interest in the labor movement grew when she sewed for wealthy Chicago families. "I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front," she said. "The tropical contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care."
Tragedy struck Mary again when she lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. After the fire, Mary began to travel across the country. The nation was undergoing dramatic change at this time, and industrialization was changing the nature of work. She moved from town to town in support of workers' struggles. In Kansas City, she did advance work for a group of unemployed men who marched on Washington, D.C. to demand jobs. In Birmingham, Ala., she helped black and white miners during a nationwide coal strike. Mary organized a massive show of support for Eugene Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, after he served a six-month prison sentence for defying a court order not to disrupt railroad traffic in support of striking Pullman workers.
In June 1897, after Mary addressed the railway union convention, she began to be referred to as "Mother" by the men of the union. The name stuck. That summer, when the 9,000-member United Mine Workers called a nationwide strike of bituminous (soft coal) miners and tens of thousands of miners laid down their tools, Mary arrived in Pittsburgh to assist them. She became "Mother Jones" to millions of working men and women across the country for her efforts on behalf of the miners.
Mother Jones was so effective that the United Mine Workers sent her into the coalfields to sign miners up with the union. She agitated in the anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania, the company towns of West Virginia and the harsh coal camps of Colorado. Almost anywhere coal miners, textile workers or steelworkers were fighting to organize a union, Mother Jones was there.
She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. In 1912, she was even charged with a capital offense by a military tribunal in West Virginia and held under house arrest for weeks until popular outrage and national attention forced the governor to release her.
Mother Jones was deeply affected by the "machine-gun massacre" in Ludlow, Colo., when National Guardsmen raided a tent colony of striking miners and their families, killing 20 people-mostly women and children. She traveled across the country, telling the story, and testified before the U.S. Congress.
In addition to miners, Mother Jones was also very concerned about child workers. During a silk strike in Philadelphia, 100,000 workers-including 16,000 children-left their jobs over a demand that their workweek be cut from sixty to fifty-five hours. To attract attention to the cause of abolishing child labor, in 1903, she led a children's march of 100 children from the textile mills of Philadelphia to New York City "to show the New York millionaires our grievances." She led the children all the way to President Theodore Roosevelt's Long Island home.
In her eighties, Mother Jones settled down near Washington, D.C. in 1921 but continued to travel across the country. Unable even to hold a pen in her fingers, in 1924, she made her last strike appearance in Chicago in support of striking dressmakers, hundreds of whom were arrested and black-listed during their ill-fated four month-long struggle. She died at the age of 94 in Silver Spring, Md. and was buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Ill.
Sources:
AFL-CIO, "Mother Jones", www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/history/history/jones.cfm; Collins, Gail, America's Women, 2003, p. 287-289; The Illinois Labor History Society, www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/majones.htm; photo from George Meany Memorial Archives.
Workers Independent News Service
WIN -The Workers Independent News Service is a daily radio news service which focuses on the issues and concerns of working families and their labor unions. WIN is broadcast on radio stations across America. The primary objective of WIN is to raise the media profile of working people by having our headline news broadcast on commercial radio in every major market on every business day. (Go to http://www.laborradio.org to hear WIN news.)
Prior to the creation of WIN, no single nationwide news service focused on issues affecting the daily lives of working people, their unions and their communities. Today WIN is broadcast daily on over 45 commercial radio stations.
What issues does WIN cover?
Examples include union/community living wage victories, changes in labor rights legislation, job outsourcing trends, community alliances in support of sweatshop workers, union organizing in third-world countries and analyses of pension abuses. WIN covers our concerns that tend to be overlooked by mainstream media or presented with a biased view.
Why does WIN use radio? There are other ways of delivering
news.
Radio is a powerful force, with some 12,000 AM and FM stations
broadcasting to millions of listeners every day. Studies of radio
listeners reveal that high numbers of working people listen to
radio during drive time (5:30 to 9:00 AM and 3:30 to 7:00 PM.)
Radio is a convenient way of learning about news developments.
We listen to radio while getting ready for work, driving to work
or having a beer after work. Radio is a way of easily reaching
millions of working people.
What products does WIN offer?
WIN currently offers three products: a daily two and a half minute
headline newscast (Monday through Friday), a daily 30-second "Dow
Bob" report on economic issues, three 2 minute feature stories
each week, plus two Mike Konopacki labor cartoons formatted for
print and the web. WIN offers all of our stories in print form
to subscribers. Other products are being developed.
Where are WIN's offices?
WIN is headquartered in Madison Wisconsin but also has staff in
New York City and Washington D.C. We hire reporters as necessary
throughout America and other parts of the world.
What is WIN attempting to accomplish?
WIN wants to make our issues part of the public dialogue. Working
people's stories, issues and interests are often overlooked by
media organizations. The emphasis on dramatic incidents, warfare
and the lives of the wealthy and famous tend to drown out everyday
issues important to working people. WIN is about changing the
face of news so that working people's lives and interests are
reflected in the news. WIN takes a working person's perspective
and examines the actions and statements of our political leaders
and candidates.
Why does WIN focus on news?
WIN produces news rather than commentary because a news format
reaches more listeners. Most working people listen to commercial
radio news. WIN chose a format appropriate to commercial radioa
brief headline newscast, a 30 second economic report (Dow Bob)
and periodic longer feature reports. Our objective is to be broadcast
on 300 stations each day and to be heard in every major market.
How does WIN get on the air?
Although several options are available, the best alternative involves
our reaching out to cooperative labor unions who help us find
stations or talk show hosts willing to run WIN products.
Alternatively, WIN can be sponsored by Local unions which pay
for the WIN radio segment and receive advertising time for their
Local in return. We recognize that local unions are key to our
breaking into local radio markets by helping us make contact with
talk show hosts, by sponsoring our news (buying advertising time)
and by giving us tips that lead to news stories and feature stories.
How does WIN pay its expenses?
Radio stations or talk show hosts either pay us directly for
our services or allow us a percentage of the advertising related
to the WIN segment. We receive direct contributions from Internationals
and Local unions, other organizations and individuals. Unions
who contribute to WIN receive text, cartoons and streaming audio.
When is WIN typically on the air?
WIN's headline news service and economic report is made available
to subscribing radio stations by 11:00 PM each day. Typically,
but not always, WIN news is run during the next early morning
drive time. Some radio stations run WIN's news later in the day
or run feature stories or the Dow Bob at various times throughout
the day.
How can Local unions help besides contributing to WIN?
· WIN always needs news tips. If you are aware of a
developing news story or have an idea for a feature story, please
contact us at 608-251-0185.
· Place the WIN logo on your web site. The logo service
allows web site visitors to listen to the news without leaving
your site!
Listen to WIN! Go to www.laborradio.org
For more information call Frank Emspak, Executive Producer 608-262-0680 or e-mail frank.emspak@uwex.edu
WIN thanks The Newspaper Guild for its support! Your contribution helped keep labor radio on the air at a crucial time.
Executive Producer-WIN
608-262-0680
Labor links:
Labor Radio Workers Independent News Service (WINS)
WINS is a unique service devoted to providing news about the issues and activities of working families and their unions to media outlets across America.U.S. Labor Against the War
Six National Unions, 2 State Federations, 20 Central Labor Councils and 150 Local Unions and Labor Coalitions Oppose Bush's War Against Iraq
British Columbia. The society is named after Arthur "Slim" Evans, an early BC labour leader and activist.
He is most well known as leader of the 1935 On to Ottawa Trek of single unemployed men demanding
work and wages from the federal government during the depression of the 1930s.
"Jobs with Justice (JwJ) is a national campaign for workers' rights. Working through coalitions of labor, community, religious and constituency organizations, Jobs with Justice is fighting for workers' rights and economic justice."
overcoming the problems of child labor, forced labor, and other abusive labor practices. We promote enforcement of labor rights internationally through public education and mobilization, research, litigation, legislation, and collaboration with labor, government and business groups.
"Women Working Worldwide is a small UK voluntary organisation working with a global network of women worker organisations. It was started in 1983 when a group of researchers and activists came together to organise a conference on women and the international division of labour. Women Working Worldwide's aim is to support the rights of women workers in an increasingly globalised economy in which women are used as a source of cheap and flexible labour. The focus has been on industries which have relocated to the developing world, particularly the textile and garment and electronics industries."
"The Labor Heritage Foundation works to strengthen the labor movement through the use of music and the arts. "THE GREAT LABOR ARTS EXCHANGE (GLAE) A gathering of union members, union staff, union officials, artists, labor educators and youth who use songs, art, poetry, theater, skits, posters, cartoons, and film to strengthen the labor movement."
Songs of the Labor Movement Labor Movement Songs
WINS accesses and assembles news from unions, labor and social justice activists, and community groups from across the country. WINS ' staff includes bi-lingual producers enabling us to reach most sections of the working population. WINS then packages and the material for distribution to and airing on radio stations. Our producers and reporters come from a diverse background that encompasses journalism in all fields of media, from print to radio, video to the Web. We share one common goal: to create media that puts people over profits and empowers citizens to become journalists in their own right.
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Media Democracy Activities
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
1940 Calvert Street, NW
Washinton, DC 20009-1502
phone: 202-265-6707
www.wifp.org