Malcolm X Inter/Nationalist

MALCOLM X - May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965

Malcolm X Inter/Nationalist 

Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland/ 2002 
by Mike Alewitz


The Ardoyne area had been the flash point of struggle against racist loyalist mobs that have come out to protest the right of Catholic children to attend Holy Cross School. It has been called "the Little Rock of Northern Ireland." The mural was an effort to give expression to the idea of a working-class solidarity that transcends national borders. I chose Malcolm X as the central image, because he was a nationalist who understood that we also had to build an international movement to transform society.


In a shameful and criminal act, the mural of our martyred revolutionary leader was painted over by Sinn Fein at a time when they were attempting to reach an accommodation with Loyalist and the British occupation forces. The action of Sinn Fein is no different than if they had painted over a tribute to Bobby Sands.

Malcolm X speaks to North Belfast
BY LAURA FRIEL
An Phoblacht/Republican News · Thursday 22 August 2002


Mike Alewitz of the American based Labour Art and Mural Project has travelled the world bringing his street paintings of working class issues to countries as diverse as Iraq and Germany. 


Inspired by the images of Holy Cross, this summer Mike came to North Belfast to share his visual message of international solidarity and struggle with the people of Ardoyne.


As a political muralist Mike has a formidable reputation both within the USA and internationally. His most famous work, the Pathfinder mural in New York, reproduced on numerous posters and book covers, has become an image instantly recognisable in many countries throughout the world. [Later mutilated and destroyed by the US Socialist Workers Party - ma]


Denied expression in most mainstream mediums, Mike sees mural art as an important mechanism through which working people can address political and economic marginalisation.


"It's working people talking to the world," says Mike. The main focus of Mike's art has been the depiction of labour issues and union struggles but for North Belfast he chose Malcolm X as his theme for the mural.


"Malcolm X was the greatest voice of Black nationalism," says Mike, "but he was also an internationalist. He understood the interconnection between nationalism and internationalism. I hope that the imagery will encourage people to read Malcolm X not just as an American leader but as a World leader."


But Mike has already been pleasantly surprised by how many ordinary people in North Belfast recognise the image. "People here already know who Malcolm X is," says Mike, "I guess that's a reflection of the level of politicisation within these communities."


The mural also includes images of Holy Cross and Little Rock. "Television footage of the children of Holy Cross being attacked as they made their way to school immediately reminded me of the image of children being confronted by an angry mob in Arkansas," says Mike.


US President George Bush and British PM Tony Blair are also included in the mural as a couple of poodles. "I would like to take the opportunity to denounce the criminal activities of the US and Israeli government against the people of Palestine," says Mike.


Despite being sympathetic to the struggle for freedom and justice in the north of Ireland, this is the first time Mike has actually visited here to witness the ongoing problems of ordinary communities like Ardoyne,


"I didn't realise the level of segregation and victimisation," says Mike, "or the ongoing level of violence being endured by people within this community."


Mike Alewitz is travelling home from Belfast this week but his mural will ensure that while he may have gone, he will not be forgotten. And he promises to visit again.

______________________________

US Artist Inspires New Street Art
Irish News
(20/08/2002)
By Judith Maas


AN American artist has drawn on the history of the United States civil rights movement to inspire a new Belfast mural.


Mike Alewitz has painted murals around the world and lectures on the subject in a US university, and yesterday he brought his talents to Northern Ireland.


Belfast artists invited Mr. Alewitz to join them in the city and offered him the chance to create a new mural for the Ardoyne area of north Belfast.


Being free to choose his own topic, Mr. Alewitz dedicated a wall in Havana Walk to black power leader Malcolm X.


"Malcolm X was the greatest voice of black nationalism and also of black internationalism. He saw the black struggle in the context of the working class struggle," he said.


"There is something to be learnt from that. I am not here to explain the Irish struggle, but there is the fact that the American civil rights movement was able to convince white working class people of their rights.


"The images of Holy Cross children are similar to the children of the civil rights movement. They were faced with similar problems."


He argued against seeing the Troubles as a religious conflict and called for working class unity.


"It seems that the struggle is between Catholics and Protestants, but that is not true. The struggle is two-fold. There is a struggle to unite Ireland. All you have to do is to take a look at the map to see why," he said.


"Secondly, it is a struggle of the working class. Unification wouldn't solve problems of education, unemployment and poverty."


Malcolm X, who was murdered in 1965, is depicted in a 3 metre high portrait. To his left and right there are corpses painted in orange and green.


"Do you see the green and orange corpses in the painting? The only ones that gain here are the capitalists," he said.


Dogs shown being walked by two pigs depict US President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair, he explained. He said it was reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm.


"Orwell didn't have confidence in the working class. I would be more positive. I have seen people change," said the muralist, whose work features in a recently published book Insurgent Images: The Murals of Mike Alewitz.


Mr Alewitz will discuss his work in a slide show at 8pm tonight in An Chulturlann on the Falls Road. Entrance is free.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 

April 22, 1870 – January  21, 1924

Lenin at the Wheel

Detail/ Labor Solidarity Has No Borders

by Mike Alewitz

Library for Social Studies & Research/ 23' x 48'

South-Central LA - 1990 

LABOR SOLIDARITY HAS NO BORDERS

 

PEOPLE'S ART TEARS THROUGH L.A. TINSEL

Alewitz has drawn on the agitprop tradition popularized by countless workers' movements. His work is a frank admission that all art takes sides.

 

By Eric Gordon

Special to the Guardian

May 1990

LOS ANGELES

 

South Central Los Angeles lies far from the towering decorator suites of television's "LA. Law." This part of town has a large Third World population, high unemployment, a big drug problem and a police department famous for riding roughshod over the rights of anyone who happens to be of the wrong color.

In the midst of this neighborhood, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research was founded in 1963. Its doors are open to readers and researchers interested in books, posters, films, recordings and all manner of archival material relating to the labor movement, the struggles for peace and social justice, the women's movement and other progressive causes.

For years, plagued by unsightly graffiti, staffers at the library had appealed for a mural to grace its walls. Such outdoor murals are a recognizable feature of the Los Angeles cityscape, thanks in large part to the Social and Public Art Resource Center.

Never having heard of the library. New Jersey painter Mike Alewitz, known in New York for the oft-desecrated Pathfinder Mural, and for his labor union projects with the United Auto Workers, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, the United Mineworkers and other unions, applied to SPARC to paint a mural on the-dual themes of international solidarity with undocumented workers and organizing to protect the interests of all workers. Choosing Alewitz out of a hundred artists submitting proposals for this community, SPARC put his idea together with the library's request, and offered him the commission.

Alewitz worked on the 23-foot by 48-foot gessoed surface in April and May 1990, assisted by four students from nearby Manual Arts High School. The formal dedication of the library's north wall, at which numerous labor, cultural and community leaders spoke, took place May 15th.

The mural on the outside gives appropriate clues as to what is inside, for as William Doyle, president of the library, pointed out both the mural and the library exist to give the working class the knowledge it needs to gain power.

"In Los Angeles," Alewitz says, "we see a microcosm of world events. Millions are uprooted and driven from their homelands by economic and political repression. They seek a better life here, which for a great majority will remain unrealized. Instead, they will become victims anew, through other forms of economic exploitation, racism and the ghastly Hollywood culture which demeans and stereotypes their culture."

The mural depicts a mass of working people streaming toward the electrified, barbed-wire Mexican border from the distant, smog-shrouded city of Los Angeles. They wield a magnificent tool of their own creation, designed to cut through the frontier. On the right, the captains of local industry (grapes, wine, garment, pharmaceutical, machine tools, aeronautics, shipbuilding) look on in horror as their profits are threatened. Their mascot, the bloodsucking monster of imperialism, guards the pile of gold that has been created by labor. On the other side stand the legions of paper-shuffling bureaucrats, all of them plugged in to the middle-class conformity emanating from the TV monitor. Overhead, the sun that shines on all breathes out a banner held up by worker-angels, while a projector from the top of the tower spells out the title of the mural, "Labor Solidarity has no Borders," in English, Spanish, Korean and Farsi.

Clearly, Alewitz has drawn on the traditions of agitational propaganda (agitprop) popularized by countless workers' movements of the past. The influence of the Mexican muralists is self-evident.

His work is a frank admission that art— all art—takes sides. But he has also introduced many subtle references across space and time. He clothes his workers in modem garb: A woman in camouflage recalls the informal "uniform" of the Pittston miners during their militant 1989-90 strike, and the various headgear point up the multiethnic character of the working class.

Many of his figures reflect older sources. A female figure holding a jug comes from ancient Egypt: It is one of the earliest representations of labor in art. A male figure with a   basket   is   Gustave   Courbet's   painting “The Stone Breaker.”

A Sandinista woman spreading seed recalls Jean Francis Millet's painting '"The Sowers." while a man at the wheel restates a classic image by the Soviet photographer Rodchenko.

If the viewer seems to recognize Marx, Lenin, Malcolm X and Rosa Luxemburg in positions of prominent leadership, this is not unintended. The hovering cartoon angels are new versions of baroque cherubs; one, wearing glasses, and unmistakably Leon Trotsky, sends down an energetic blessing. The tower from which the workers flow is modeled after Tatlin's visionary project for a huge monument to the Third International in the early days of the Russian Revolution.

In a gesture of self-quotation, Alewitz has recreated his monster of imperialism from the "P-9 Mural" he painted in Austin, Minnesota in 1985 for Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, during the prolonged strike against Hormel. That mural, celebrated in song by folksinger Charlie King, was destroyed after only a few months when P-9 was taken into receivership by its international union.

Alewitz's mural is one of 15 commissioned through SPARC in its 1989-90 program of "Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited." Funds for the project came from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Arco Foundation and the Hitachi Foundation. So far it has been well received in the South Central Los Angeles community, whose residents well understand its message.

Though the U.S.-Mexican border is the immediate reference, it is impossible to ignore the wider implications North and South, East and West. Labor solidarity must extend around the world. Indeed, as Alewitz has observed, "The future of the labor movement ultimately depends on how it relates to all the world's unorganized and undocumented workers. Will it champion the most oppressed sectors of society?"

The Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research is located at 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. 90044; (213) 759-6063. Its hours are Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

The De-Capitalization of Fall River

Carlo Giuliani 

Murdered by police while protesting the Group of Eight Summit 

in Genoa, Italy, July 21, 2001

The De-Capitalization of Fall River

by Mike Alewitz/ 2001/ Fall River, MA

Dedicated to Carlo Giuliana

Edited remarks by Mike Alewitz, delivered to union rally

Building of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE,) Fall River, MA, July 30, 2001. 

------------------------------- 

Some of you probably don't know who Carlo Giuliana is.   He was a young

Italian activist shot down by a cop while demonstrating in Genoa.  After

they shot him down they ran over him with their jeep.  He was the first to

be killed on one of these demonstrations, but he probably won't be the

last.  There is no important struggle that has not been won at the cost of

our blood.  In addition to murdering Carlo, many others were beaten and

jailed.  

Millions of dollars were spent to isolate the government representatives

from the peoples demonstrations, but it didn't work.  Wherever they go they

are met with protesters.  

The officials announced at the end of the meetings that they had been

traumatized by the demonstrators.  They were victims, not Carlo.

They are going to hold their next meeting out in a remote area of Alberta,

Canada to try to avoid protests.  The WTO is going to meet in Qatar for the

same reason.

Of course they can go hide out, but the demonstrations will continue.  What

we are seeing is the birth of an important new movement.  It's made up of

trade unionists, environmentalists, anarchists, socialists, indigenous

people, human rights activists and many others.  It is a movement for global

economic justice.

What does that have to with a mural in Fall River?  Everything.  When you

drive into this city and look at those stone mill buildings sitting empty,

it is a scene repeated in hundreds of cities and towns across the country.

You cannot begin to deal with the question of the de-capitalization of this

town without confronting the realities of the new global economy.  They took

the industry and left.  They went somewhere else because their profits are

more important than the welfare of the workers.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who work and create the

wealth, and those who don't work and take the wealth.  That is what we show

in the mural.  And that is a very frightening idea to some people.

Why did the Mayor of this city try to stop this mural?  It's not only the

specific image, it's that we are saying we have our own voice.   We are

workers - we aren't supposed to be telling our story on the walls.  We're

supposed to shut up and work.

But whenever workers begin to get in motion, they immediately turn to the

arts.  When the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) knew they might be

getting arrested, they would learn different poems to recite to each other

in jail.  When the sit-down strikes took place in Buffalo, workers formed an

orchestra to serenade the masses from the factory rooftops.  When textile

workers struck in Paterson, NJ, John Reed organized New York artists to

create a great pageant of the strike performed in Madison Square Garden.

We have created this mural in that tradition, because we are looking to the

future - to a revitalized labor movement that extends the hands of

solidarity to our brothers and sisters - wherever they may be.  We are part

of a movement demanding that the obscene profits of the rich - which

get greater every day- be used instead for the betterment of humanity.

The protestors in Genoa and Seattle are fighting for such a world.  I am

therefore dedicating this mural to Carlo Giuliani and new movement for

global economic justice. They represent the future. 

Temporary Sanity

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." - Steve Biko

TEMPORARY SANITY by Mike Alewitz 1999/ Roosevelt School, New Brunswick, NJ  10 x 12'

Temporary Sanity

 

The following remarks are from the inauguration of a mural at the Roosevelt School in New Brunswick, NJ, by Mike Alewitz of the Labor Art & Mural Project/ 1999
 
------------------------------
 
...this mural is the result of a grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.  But when we went off to look for a site, the city of New Brunswick refused us a wall.  Churches refused us a wall.  The Labor Education Center at Rutgers refused.

Why?  Because I wanted to paint about temporary workers...immigrant workers who make up the working poor of this city.   In this mural you will see the vans that come every morning to take workers to the warehouses and factories of this area.  There are so many vans in the morning that the city council passed a law against honking before 8am.

It is these workers who produce the wealth of the state and the nation.  And yet they are invisible.

New Brunswick, home of a world-class research university, which prides itself on its cultural institutions, has no place for the poor.   On weekend nights the streets are blocked off so theatregoers don’t have to have contact with the locals.  If you happen to be poor and African American, and are taking up space for good real estate, they knock your buildings down and ship you out on Route 27, to make room for upscale housing and restaurants.

But the poor are not invisible to us.  They are our parents, brothers and sisters, our children, our neighbors. And the work that they do is important.  They make our clothes.  They build our homes.  They grow and prepare our food.  In fact, they create everything.

Yet we are told that workers have little worth.  Even we educators sometimes fall into that thinking.  That being a worker makes you a failure.  If you don’t go to college you have failed.  That the sign of success is to be a lawyer or investment banker - people that  generally produce nothing.

In 1999, the richest 1% of Americans control 40% of all wealth.  Bill Gates is worth more than the combined Gross National Product of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize.

Workers are earning less, adjusting for inflation, than they did when Richard Nixon was president. Average weekly wages for workers in 1998 were 12% below 1973, adjusting for inflation. Productivity grew nearly 33% in the same period. As families have sunk deeper into debt, household debt as a percentage of personal income rose from 58% in 1973 to an estimated 85% in 1997. Total credit card debt soared from $243 billion in 1990 to $560 billion in 1997.

The most enormous transfer of wealth in history is taking place.  But we are so brainwashed that we think it is the natural order of things.

When you watch TV at night and the people on Wall Street are all excited because they are millions of dollars richer...there is nothing natural about that.  It is not an act of God.  The money didn’t come from thin air.  They took it from us.  Teachers have to struggle with low wages to survive because the money goes to Wall Street.  Temporary workers make a third of what their jobs would be paid, with no benefits, often with the threat of deportation hanging over them.  I won’t even get into what happens to artists.

All this is not because corporations aren’t making money.  Its because they want to make more.

One of the women who works in the cafeteria explained to me that many of the children who go to school here go to sleep hungry... she gets to feed them - that was one of the reasons she liked her job.  There is nothing natural about that.

The same day she was telling me this, I saw a picture of our state politicians holding a press conference about the five-year-old boy who was kidnapped from Cuba.  They are going to be his champion - demand he stay in the US, take him to Disneyland.  They are going to show how great the US is compared to Cuba.

But in Cuba, with all its problems and poverty, children do not go hungry, or homeless, or without health care.  But what do these politicians have to say about the rights of children right here?  Nothing.

In this mural you will see the rubble of the past century, with its broken idols and symbols.   Theodore Roosevelt, after whom this school is named, who represented the conquest for US colonies, would surely be turning in his grave to see the children of immigrant workers in this school...workers he tried to keep out of the country in his own time.

Labor has always created its own symbols.  Earlier immigrants had their own.  The black cat, for example, was a symbol of labor militancy of the Industrial Workers of the World.  They organized textile workers who were immigrant workers from dozens of countries.

And when women textile workers marched in Lawrence MA, they carried banner that said, “We want bread and roses too.”  The bread to represent economic justice, the roses to represent the desire of working people for a life with art, recreation and leisure.

We will create new symbols for the future.  But to do that, we must begin to free our minds.  To express this I have included the words of Steve Biko, one of the great martyrs of the freedom struggle in South Africa.  South Africa has shown us, just as the civil rights movement in the US, that freedom is taken, not given.

As we enter the next century, I believe that the immigrant workers coming to this town and this nation, with their experiences in the labor movements of other countries, will bring us a dose of sanity.  And so we dedicate this mural to the parents of the children of this school, the temporary workers.

I give you Temporary Sanity.

 

Joe Hill's Last Will

 

JOE HILL
by Mike Alewitz/ 5' x 7'/ 1992

Joe Hill 

Wobbly, Fellow Worker, Artist, Musician, Revolutionary

Framed-up by the Utah mining bosses and executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915.

Joe Hill's Last Will

My will is easy to decide

For there is nothing to divide

My kin don't need to fuss and moan

"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."

My body? - Oh - If I could choose

I would to ashes it reduce

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow

Perhaps some fading flower then

Would come to life and bloom again

This is my Last and final Will

Good Luck to All of you,

                                    Joe Hill

Biography: MIKE ALEWITZ

BIOGRAPHY:

Mike Alewitz

Mike Alewitz is a well-known mural painter working in the U.S. and internationally.  

As Artistic Director of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP,) Alewitz has traveled throughout the world creating public art on themes of peace and justice.  He has painted in South-Central LA, New York, Baghdad, Chernobyl, Mexico, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Israel, the Occupied Territories and numerous other locations.

In 1999, Alewitz was named a Millennium Artist by the White House Millennium Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.   In that capacity he executed a highly publicized series of murals painted in Maryland about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

Alewitz has organized cultural initiatives for numerous unions and progressive organizations including the United Mine Workers, Jobs with Justice, Teamsters, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, United Farm Workers and many others.  He taught labor history at Rutgers University, where he was Artist-in-Residence for the NJ Industrial Union Council.

He has spoken and written extensively on political and cultural topics and is the co-author, with Paul Buhle, of

Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz.  His art has been the subject of several documentary films.

Because his work is a voice for working people, his murals have been frequently destroyed. To his knowledge, he is the most censored artist in the US.

Alewitz was a student leader at Kent State University and an eyewitness to the murders of four students in 1970. He was a leader of the national student strike that followed the massacre and has remained a life-long activist in movements for social change.

A former railroad laborer, sign painter and machinist, Alewitz is currently Associate Professor of Art at Central Connecticut State University, where he directs the unique community-based mural painting program. He is the organizer of the annual New Britain International Mural Slam.

Alewitz is a member of United Scenic Artists, IATSE Local 829 and the CCSU chapter of AAUP.  

KAREN SILKWOOD - November 13, 1974

KAREN SILKWOOD - November 13, 1974

History of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union/ Union Action 

by Mike Alewitz 

One of five portable murals/ 7' x 10'/ 1994

http://picasaweb.google.com/Alewitz/HistoryOfTheOilChemical7AtomicWorkersUnion#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

OCAW Reporter/ September-October, 1994

 

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

On Monday, Aug. 29, muralist Mike Alewitz gave the following talk to the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union Convention in dedicating his mural on OCAW history to Karen Silkwood.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

 

THANK YOU, BROTHERS AND sisters. My purpose in being here today is to dedicate this mural, and before I do that, I want to say a few words about culture in the labor movement.

 

In 1913, a young journalist by the name of John Reed visited Paterson, N.J. during the historic silk workers' strike. He wrote an article for a magazine, and said: "There's a war going on in Paterson, but it's a strange war. The violence all comes from one side and it's directed against the workers."

 

John Reed, who was very young at the time, went to the workers. He learned of their struggle. He learned of the years that the workers in Paterson had spent overcoming the craft divisions within their industry. He learned of the years they'd spent overcoming the gender divisions, because there were a lot of women working in the silk mills — and overcoming the national divisions of many nationalities working together that couldn't even speak the same language.

 

He learned about how these workers had forged solidarity, and a unity, that enabled them to shut down Paterson, N.J., to shut down the silk industry there in a great struggle against speed-up and for basic human dignity.

 

In the midst of that historic struggle, Reed went to his artist friends in Greenwich Village, enlisted them in the struggle, and together with the workers, they organized a great pageant, which was a popular art form at the time.

The workers marched from Paterson to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. They rigged up lights over Madison Square Garden that spelled out "IWW" for the Industrial Workers of the World.

 

Audience became performers

 

The workers marched in off the street and onto the stage where they re-enacted the different episodes of their historic strike, and the actual strike leaders, people like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and "Big Bill" Haywood, gave speeches they had actually given during the course of the strike. The workers led the audience in the singing of their strike songs.

 

The audience became the performers; the performers became the audience. It was the greatest pageant that had ever taken place in U.S. history. It pretty much destroyed pageantry as an elitist art form from that time on, because it told the stories of the workers.

 

John Reed understood that the real drama that was going on in society — the real drama in the world — was taking place in the streets of Paterson, not on the stages of fancy clubs in Manhattan. In 1913, the real story was what was taking place in Ludlow (Colorado), and in Paterson, and that has not changed to this day. It is still working class issues that provide the real drama for what is going on in society.

What could possibly be more dramatic than the plight of millions of immigrant workers driven into this country in search for economic betterment or political freedom? What could possibly be more dramatic than the Caterpillar strike going on in Illinois?

 

Genuine drama

 

What could be more dramatic than when oil workers shut down a country, as they have done in Nigeria, and lead a general strike that challenges the very foundations of power in an important African nation? That's genuine drama, not what we're fed on TV. It would be a good special to have — oil workers in a Nigerian strike on an HBO special.

 

Just as the workers in Nigeria realize that they produce the wealth (workers in this country are beginning to realize it too), they also produce ideas of culture. The Wobblies, as IWW members called themselves, understood that very well. Their cultural work was inseparable from their political activity of organizing. So they wrote song parodies, they cartooned. Before they went to jail, they would each learn different poems so they could recite them to each other while they were in jail.

 

Any living labor movement immediately turns to art and culture to inspire its members and those it wishes to win over. That has always been the tradition of the American labor movement. It was a tradition of the sit-down strikers who organized orchestras to serenade their members when they were inside the plant, and then transformed them into brass bands to march around cities when they had won their strikes. These same workers conducted theatre and wrote poetry.

 

That's what our little project — the Labor Art Mural Project (LAMP) — is trying to do. We're attempting to resurrect these traditions. It comes from our experience painting murals with P-9 strikers who waged a bitter strike against the Hormel Meatpacking Co., and with Pittston miners, painting on their walls and writing songs in the struggle against the mine owners.

 

Relearning some traditions

 

Cultural work is one of the traditions that has to be relearned, just like many of the other traditions in the labor movement that have gotten somewhat rusty:

Like the tradition of extending solidarity, wherever it may be, including across borders;
Like the tradition of ignoring illegal back-to-work injunctions handed down by judges in the pockets of employers (there are no legal injunctions — slavery has been outlawed in the United States);
Like the tradition of not voting for employers' political candidates, or the tradition of organizing the unorganized that you've been addressing at this convention.

 

In 1994, just as in 1913, there's a one-sided war going on, and if these traditions are not put back into practice, and if they're not relearned, then as President Wages pointed out this morning, the labor movement will perish.

It's been a privilege for me to sit here listening to some of your initial plans. I believe OCAW is attempting to ensure that the labor movement does not die, and in doing that, you've taken on a responsibility that goes beyond your own members and speaks to the hearts and minds of all workers — workers in other unions, workers who are unorganized, and workers who are just arriving in this country.

 

I believe this is most clearly expressed in your promotion of Labor Party Advocates, in the idea that workers are entitled to an independent voice in politics, just as they are entitled to an independent voice in culture. So here, I must put on my LPA cap on top of my artist's beret and take this opportunity to thank Tony Mazzocchi, who, I believe, has earned a special place in the labor movement. It is not an accident that the clearest voice over the past years in advocating the formation of a labor party is also in the forefront of promoting cultural activities for the labor movement.

The next project of LAMP will be a mural project with mushroom pickers in Eastern Pennsylvania. These workers have self-organized themselves into a union much as CIO workers did decades ago, much as drywall strikers recently did in Southern California.

 

These workers, mostly Mexican immigrant workers, have organized themselves into a union and are attempting to bring themselves into the AFL-CIO. If the labor movement does not embrace these kinds of workers and bring them into the AFL-CIO and into organized labor, someone else will get them.

 

And with that in mind, and with the tasks' that you have outlined in mind, it's a privilege and honor to dedicate this mural to Karen Silkwood.

 

A great heroine

 

Karen Silkwood was a great heroine. Not because she was murdered - the atomic industry has murdered many people. It's not an industry known for is respect of the sanctity of life. This is an industry that conducted tests on retarded children, that gave them irradiated milk and told them they were members of a science club. They've murdered many.

 

It wasn't dying that made Karen Silkwood great, it was how she lived that made her important for us and for the rest of labor. She made a conscious decision to place the interests of humanity and of her fellow workers above the interests of her job, and as some of your officers have pointed out at this convention, that is something that the workers alone can decide to do. No politician, no union official can change the world today; only workers can do that. That was expressed, I thought, very well by all of the artists in the presentation this morning.

 

So I dedicate this mural to Karen Silkwood because she showed us how to live and how to extend solidarity in real life by building her union.

 

They can't kill our movement'

 

I present this mural to you, the elected delegates of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, who represent the great rank and file of this union and those who, in the future, you will organize into its ranks.

 

The bosses killed Karen Silkwood, but they can't kill the union, they can't kill our movement. Karen Silkwood will rise again. Others will fill her shoes, new battles will unfold, labor will march forward.

 

Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of that process, to say these few words, and good luck on your convention. ■

 

Mike Alewitz directs the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP) at Rutgers Labor Education Center where he is Artist-in-Residence for the New Jersey Industrial Union Council. He is a well-known artist painting in the magic-realist tradition, and has organized and executed projects for the United Mine Workers, United Auto Workers and many other unions.

10  OCAW Reporter

September-October, 1994

Students’ mural promoting tolerance u...

 

Students’ mural promoting tolerance unveiled 

NEW BRITAIN — About a dozen Central Connecticut State University art students used their paint brushes to bring attention to their frustration over what they see as society’s Islamaphobia, and their work was unveiled Friday.

Borrowing a quote from the Muslim Quran, “Show Forgiveness, Speak for Justice, Avoid the Ignorant,” the students used a combination of Arabic script and wild-style lettering to create a 40-foot mural for display at one end of the Student Center’s exterior. Designed as a portable banner, the artwork, promoting religious tolerance, can be used as a backdrop or display at other venues or conferences on or off campus.

“Their work speaks to an issue of building solidarity between human beings and not allowing ourselves to be divided by hatred or religious differences,” says Professor of Art Mike Alewitz.
Through his public art class, students learn about the thought process required in creating public art. Students bring ideas to class, discuss them, and determine which ones are feasible, taking their time constraints and resources into consideration. Alewitz says his students’ decision to focus on religious tolerance came from their discussion about the controversy over plans to build a mosque and Muslim cultural center near ground zero in lower Manhattan.

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Mural Artists:  
Brenda Anna Marousek, Ally King, Marissa Janczewska, Rachel Cabaniol, Jeff Glowa, Wiley Akin, Jackie Sidor, Alyssa Lennehan, Zoe Nicole Shaw, Andrew Cusson