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Solidarity and song at the UALE/LHF Southern Women’s School
This year’s school was held August 2-5 at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, Tennessee. There was great solidarity among the thirty-four participants, women who were primarily on the ground floor, doin’ the work, and they loved the workshops and musical entertainment. Workshop topics included Workplace Safety, Changing Times, Basic Unionism, Parliamentary Procedure, Telling Our Stories, and Effective Leadership.
We began the event with an eye-opening ice breaker, ‘Sharing the Story Behind Your Given Name’. Thursday evening musicians Nell and Michael joined us for some labor history in song, and on Friday we convened at the Nashville Musician’s Hall for a night of fun, food and great music, featuring a dynamic performance by Jonell Mosser, a recording artist and singer from Nashville, along with three friends. She’s a little bit blues, some country, with jazz and lots of soul thrown in. The show stopper was “Stop In The Name of Love” which Jonell sang for the movie “Hope Floats,” starring Sandra Bullock. We sang, laughed and ended the night with Jonell’s amazing rendition of Solidarity Forever.
- Hetty Scofield
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This Week's Labor Heritage Power Hour
On a visit to San Francisco this week, Chris chats with the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Michael Gene Sullivan about their latest musical, “Breakdown”, and then takes a tour with Harvey Smith of the newly-renovated WPA murals in Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.
The Labor Heritage Power Hour airs Thursdays at 1p on WPFW 89.3 FM; check out the podcast here.
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Coit Tower Murals
Twenty-five artists, supervised by Diego Rivera-trained muralist Victor Arnautoff and funded by PWAP, painted fresco murals on the interior of the tower. The themes of the murals are labor and California life during the Great Depression.
Hear Harvey Smith’s tour of the murals on this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour on WPFW 89.3 FM. Photo by Lisa Raye Garlock.
Got labor art? Email it to us! info@laborheritage.org
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A River Man’s Prayer
May I be water in the work of justice
Gently, deliberately wearing away at the rocks of prejudice
Raging righteously in the rapids of fascism
Still as the deepest pool listening to pain suffered from
capitalism
Forever flowing on a lifelong journey to a common sea
A home and food for fish and frogs, snakes and insects, herons,
egrets, and eagles
- Stewart Acuff
Published in Blue Collar Review, PO Box 11417, Norfolk, VA 23517
Acuff is the former National Organizing Director at the AFL-CIO, and the former President of the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council. He lives in Shepherdstown, WV.
Got labor poetry? Email it to us! info@laborheritage.org
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How many bosses does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None: the bosses just change offices and screw the workers!
Sent in by Jimmy Kelly
Got a labor quote (or joke)? Email it to us! info@laborheritage.org
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LHF's comprehensive listing of labor's cultural events: music, films, theater, books, history and more...
Click here to add your labor arts event!
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Orchestra Preview: Dolores
Sun, August 13, 6pm – 8pm
Taube Atrium Theater, 401 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102
Music by Nicolás Lell Benavides, Libretto by Marella Martin Koch. The opera focuses on Dolores Huerta’s struggles, triumphs, and tragedies during some of the most iconic and charged weeks of American history.
Book: Art Works
Tue, August 22, 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Telluride Arts, 220 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435, USA (map)
Ken Grossinger in conversation with Jennie Franks; Ken's new book is Art Works: How organizers and artists are creating a better world together, an inside look at the organizers and artists on the front lines of political mobilization and social change.
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Check out this week's Labor History Today podcast, The Coit Tower WPA Murals: From 1935 to 1943 the Federal Art Project -- a project of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA -- employed some 10,000 artists and craft workers, helping them survive the Great Depression. Chris Garlock gets a tour of the murals from Harvey Smith, who talks about the impact of art then and now.
Pres. Barack Obama signs a $26 billion bill designed to protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from layoffs spurred by budgetary crises in states hard-hit by the Great Recession - 2010
Construction on the St. Lawrence Seaway begins. Ultimately 22,000 workers spent five years building the 2,342 mile route from the Atlantic to the northernmost part of the Great Lakes - 1954
Hundreds of Transport Workers Union members descend on a New York City courthouse, offering their own money to bail out their president, Mike Quill, and four other union leaders arrested while making their way through Grand Central Station to union headquarters after picketing the IRT offices in lower Manhattan - 1935
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LABOR HISTORY QUIZ OF THE WEEK | |
| I.W. Abel was president of which union? | | | |
Last week's quiz: Florence Reese wrote the classic labor song “Which Side Are You On?” She was a Mine Workers union activist and wrote the song after her home was ransacked by Harlan County county sheriff J.H. Blair and his thugs during a 1931 strike
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"The worker must have bread,
but she must have roses, too."
Please CLICK HERE NOW to pledge your financial support to our 2023 program, which this year includes our annual Solidarity Forever Award, the Great Labor Arts Exchange, the DC Labor FilmFest and much more (check out our website for details!).
Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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