News & Updates

I’m really looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow night at the DC Labor Chorus’ annual Favorite and Sacred Songs Concert (still time to get your free tix here!) and just wanted to remind you that you can support the Chorus by contributing here, and you can also double your tax-deductible contribution to the Labor Heritage Foundation – thanks to the Straus $10k Matching Grant, which will match every dollar you give -- when you give here. Also, I know 2025 seems a long way off but our annual 2025 MLK "Gonna Take Us All" Ball is coming up on January 19, and you can RSVP here now for what will definitely be a fun and inspiring party to kick off the New Year!

- Chris

Like this newsletter? Share the wealth and pass it along to colleagues, friends and family!

The Power of Union

(above) Members of CWA Local 38061 Ed Blazina (left) and John Santa (right) hold the picket line through their third holiday season on strike in their fight for justice at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 

Photo credit: Alex McCann, Pittsburgh Union Progress, member of CWA Local 38061.) Donations to the Striker Fund allow striking workers to cover rent, utilities, car repairs, and unexpected bills while they continue to fight. Strikers have a big fundraising goal: $50,000 to get through a third holiday season in this fight. Help them make it happen with a donation.

- CWA newsletter

"Eat my picket sign, not my retirement!"

(below) From the strike by 55,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers; read more in Labor Notes. Sent in by Al Bradbury.

Keep Marching

Alex Newell · Shaina Taub · Broadway Inspirational Voices; this is one of the songs that will be performed at Saturday’s Favorite and Sacred Songs Concert by the DC Labor Chorus; FREE; RSVP HERE

“Direct Action” screen print by Josh MacPhee; available at JustSeeds, in the LHF Shop

Spotted labor art or know a labor arts organization or performer who should be included in the LHF shop, email us at info@laborheritage.org? Email us at info@laborheritage.org

We are a gentle, angry people

And we are singing, singing for our lives

Singing for Our Lives, Holly Near (One of the songs on Saturday’s DC Labor Chorus concert program)

Ode to Weirton, WV

I crossed the Ohio River after 400 miles

Cycling through the burned out Steel town of Weirton, WV

I’m home again to rust and young men in muscle cars

The grocery store is now a Family Dollar

And the steel mill closed two months ago

“Save Our Mill” signs on storefronts

I remember a priest friend Fr Bill Graham worked the Ohio River towns in the 80s when those mills closed

His eyes glanced down when he mentioned another suicide

Working class towns have public parks with the toys of war for children to play on

Preparing them young

The young employees in Subway gave me the news

“They closed Our Steel Mill and made it a battery factory”

There are pathways out of Wierton

The age-old practice in these communities Cannibalizing the young

The lucky few make it to freedom

The rest watch the parades

Save a few bucks at the Dollar Tree

And eventually are sucked into the Trump brigades

James Walsh, Romero Theater Troupe; see his photos here

CLICK HERE for our complete labor arts calendar; look for our Labor Arts Calendar edition on Monday

WEEKEND LABOR ARTS CALENDAR

UNION (online screening)

Friday, December 6, 2024, 8:00 AM until Thursday, December 12, 2024, 5:00 PM

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York. Through intimate cinema vérité, UNION chronicles the extraordinary efforts of an unlikely group of warehouse workers as they launch a grassroots union campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Led by the charismatic but underestimated Chris Smalls, the diverse band of workers start the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and embark on a journey against one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. Sponsored by Rhizome DC, a community art space in Takoma, Washington, DC.

Favorite and Sacred Songs Concert (DC Labor Chorus)

December 7, 2024, 7:00 PM until 9:00 PM

Washington Ethical Society, 7750 16th Street, Washington, DC  

December 6, 1869

214 African American delegates meet in Washington, D.C., to form the Colored National Labor Union as a branch of the all-white National Labor Union created three years earlier. Unlike the NLU, the CNLU welcomed members of all races. Isaac Myers was the CNLU's founding president; Frederick Douglas became president in 1872.

The National Colored Convention in session at Washington, D.C. / sketched by Theo. R. Davis

A tale of two Detroit murals: Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power. Diego Rivera’s famed Detroit Industry murals, commissioned by Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932, champions industrial and technological progress and the factory workers who fueled it. In contrast, Walter Speck and Barbara Wilson’s 1937 untitled mural, which originally hung in the UAW Local 174 union hall and now hangs behind the reference desk at the Reuther Library, champions the progress those industrial workers made laboring for their own welfare via union action.

LAST WEEK’S QUIZ: The founding convention of the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions was held in Pittsburgh, PA on November 15, 1881. It urged enactment of employer liability, compulsory education, uniform apprenticeship and child and convict labor laws. Five years later it changed its name to the American Federation of Labor.

Carsie Blanton on “Rich People” (11/22)

Animation Heroes, Assemble! 11/15

No Contract, No Wordle! (11/8)

A Wild Woman Sings the Blues and Walks The Line (11/1)

“Solidarity” mural saved in Chicago (10/25)

No Union, No Dancing (10/18)

Chippendales Dancers’ Newest Act – Unionizing! (10/11)

Not Playing Around: World of Warcraft Workers Win Union (10/4)