Louis Lingg Sept. 9, 1864 - November 10, 1887

Louis Lingg

Sept. 9, 1864 - November 10, 1887

One of the Haymarket Martyrs, Lingg chose to cheat his executioners by suicide - exploding a blasting cap in his mouth on November 10, 1887

Detail: Louis Lingg, from Teamster Power by Mike Alewitz

"At present I am imprisoned behind iron bars, and can for pastime reflect on this 'land of the free and home of the brave.' Fortunately, those who still believe this land to be 'free' are either fools or knaves. It is my conviction that every intelligent and upright man will admit that the United States of America are nowadays simply and purely the land of capitalistic tyranny and the home of the most brutal police despotism."   

--- Louis Lingg

The following are excerpts from remarks by Mike Alewitz, to a spirited rally at the tenth annual Jobs with Justice meeting, held at Teamster City, Chicago.  The rally was held to dedicate the mural 'Teamster Power.'  The mural, measuring 20' x 130' was painted during September 1997, at Teamster City; to commemorate the UPS strike victory.

 

 

...I originally came to Chicago to participate in a cross-border project that the United Electrical workers union was sponsoring, to paint a mural in Mexico City and one in Chicago, to symbolize international solidarity.  When the UPS strike took place, we realized we had to change our plans.  The UPS strike, and what it symbolized about fighting for the most oppressed sections of the workforce, for those who had the least work and lowest wages, was part and parcel of the same struggle in Mexico.  And so the imagery that exists on that wall relates directly to that which was painted in Mexico.

 

When I went to Mexico City, to the offices of the FAT [Frente Autentico Trabajadores], and agreed to paint Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons into the mural, the workers there were very happy about this, because the Parsons are heroes in Mexico.  These workers understood that there is a great and militant tradition to the working class movement in this country.

 

 

WE MUST RELEARN OUR HISTORY

 

When I came up to Chicago, we had a meeting in this room.  It was packed - a stewards meeting of hundreds of Teamsters - very militant.  People were psyched.  It was a great meeting of militant, mobilized workers in this local, and I asked for everyone who knew of Albert and Lucy Parsons to raise their hands. A couple of hands went up.  Here in Chicago, the home of Haymarket, we don't even know our own history!  We have to relearn our history and we need pieces of art and literature for education that make us grapple with, and relearn, our own past.

 

The Haymarket martyrs were anarchists and socialists who went to their deaths because they felt that the working class movement was worth it.  Their names will live when all of the employers, and those who ran away, are forgotten. What we put on the wall of this building is part of the process of relearning this history, and re-educating ourselves, and understanding that what motivates and mobilizes people in strike-after-strike and action-after-action is not a buck-an-hour more - its the idea that you are building a movement that speaks for your children, that speaks to the future and it is going to transform society.

 

LUCY AND ALBERT PARSONS

 

Lucy Parsons lived and died in poverty.  She was of Mexican and African descent; she was a freethinker; she was a feminist, and she was uncompromising.  During the bleakest periods of our movement, when no one was in the streets, Lucy Parsons was out there.  She went on the streets by herself to sell pamphlets to tell the truth about Haymarket and the labor movement.  She was fearless, as they were all fearless, because they realized that their lives were small in comparison to the future of the working class movement.

 

Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket martyrs that we painted on the wall, fought in the Confederate Army for the slavocracy.  After the Civil War, in response to the militant struggles of African-Americans in Texas, he was won to Radical Reconstruction.  He fell in love with Lucy, and they went off to organize in Chicago. 

 

We are only a few generations removed from Albert and Lucy.  That's how new the working-class movement is. We haven't exhausted our possibilities; we're not at the end of our movement. We are in our infancy...and organizations like the Teamsters Union and Jobs with Justice are just beginning to think out how we can build a labor movement that can win.

 

 

THE TEAMSTERS WERE LED BY REVOLUTIONARIES

 

When I was a teen-age campus activist at Kent State in the late 1960's, I had a chance to meet and learn from Farrell Dobbs and V. R. Dunne.  They were leaders of the general strike led by the Teamsters union in the Twin Cities.  All of these Midwest Teamster locals exist because of the massive movement that was built out of the general strike in Minneapolis in 1934.  This union did not come into being as a gradual process.  It was built as a modern industrial union, as a powerful force for working people, through a massive struggle that shook this country to its foundations.  The Minneapolis strikes, along with San Francisco and the Toledo Auto-Lite strikes, laid the basis for the formation of the CIO.  That’s where our industrial unions come from.

 

What motivated Farrell Dobbs, and Marvel Scholl, who led the women’s auxiliary, was not a buck-an-hour more, or that they would have a period of relative peace with the boss.  They weren't interested in quality circles.  What motivated them was the idea of building an organization that could change society from the top to the bottom.  And that is what they did. 

 

They were ordinary workers like you and I.  They were no smarter or talented then us.  What characterized them was their tremendous confidence in the ability of working people to change the world.  They never doubted that.  And so they were able to make historic changes. There are going to be fights in this country and we are going to have the opportunity to do the same thing...

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the visual elements of TEAMSTER POWER

 

 

Albert Parsons:  Leader of the Chicago labor movement and the fight for the eight-hour day; framed up for the Haymarket explosion of May 4, 1886, and executed November 11, 1887.

 

Lucy Parsons: Wife of Albert Parsons; leader of the working class movement; lifelong revolutionary activist.

 

Haymarket Martyrs: Eight frame-up victims executed or imprisoned in the fight for the eight-hour day and working-class rights.

 

Farrell Dobbs, Marvel Scholl, Dunne Brothers: Leaders of the Minneapolis General Strike and Teamster organizing that changed the Teamsters from a small craft union into a modern industrial union.

 

Henry Ness: Teamster martyr, murdered by the police in the Minneapolis strikes.

 

Louis Peck: An independent-minded leader of Local 705.

 

Hands on the Trucks:  Are the traced hands of UPS strikers

 

Crowd:  Are the traced children of Teamsters 

 

Jackrocks:  Three cornered nail sculptures that puncture tires.

 

Quote: By Albert Spies, one of the Haymarket Martyrs.

 

Blockheads:  Mr. Block, an old figure of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW,) was a worker who

just doesn’t get it.

 

Monster of Capitalism:  Hopefully, a soon to be extinct species. 

Happy Labor Day

Since May Day is the international working class holiday,

Labor Day is like half a holiday. But keep in mind:

"Half a loaf...is better 

than no loafing at all!"

 -T-Bone Slim

Happy Labor Day

Artists and Workers of the World, Unite

You Have Nothing to Lose But Bad Taste

by Mike Alewitz

7' x 10' / 1993 

Performance painting at labor culture conference

Redlands, California

The Chicano Moratorium & Ruben Salazar

August 29, 1970

The Chicano Moratorium 

& Ruben Salazar

Detail, The Spirit Lives by Jerry Butler & Mike Alewitz

In the historic struggle to end US intervention in Vietnam, the Chicano movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of Latino workers throughout the country in militant opposition to the war.

During the August 29, 1970 Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles, cops killed two protestors and murdered Ruben Salazar, a well-known journalist, while he was dining after the demonstration.  

We will never forget.

The Spirit Lives

by Jerry Butler & Mike Alewitz

7' x 40'  2010

For an explanation of the imagery of this banner, click on the link below: 

Click here for a video about The Spirit Lives

 

Sacco & Vanzetti

August 23, 1927

Ferdinando Nicola Sacco

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Sacco  & Vanzetti

by Keith Christensen

Detail, Pathfinder Mural (Destroyed)

"If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men.  I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure.  Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.  Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. 

Our words - our lives - our pains - nothing!  The taking of our lives - lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler - all!  That last moment belong to us - that agony is our triumph."

             -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti

http://saccoandvanzetti.org/index.php

Keith Christensen Website

LEON TROTSKY - August 21, 1940

Murdered by Stalin - August 21, 1940

LEON TROTSKY

Leader of the October Revolution

Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet

Founder and Leader of the Red Army

Journalist, Theoretician, Orator

Critic, Diplomat, Political Prisoner

Leader of the Anti-Stalinist Left Opposition

Founder of the Fourth International

Red Lightning

by Mike Alewitz

7' x 10'  2008

About this Banner:

The Russian Revolution inspired an enormous burst of creative activity.  Though brief, this chapter of the revolution's history had a profound effect on the course of both culture and politics.  Trotsky played a central role in advancing the development of new and challenging art.

While not intended to be interpreted literally, some of the imagery in this banner is based on the following:

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The swirling forms are referenced from Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, 1920.  (Like most art it has precursors, such as Pieter Brueghel’s Tower of Babel, and ultimately going back to antiquity).

Tatlin’s monument was designed to be a tower of iron, glass and steel which would span the Neva River - at 1,300 feet high, it was to be a third taller than the Eiffel Tower. The design was meant to represent the dialectic of the revolution and be a symbol of modernity. The twin helix would contain devices to transport visitors up the structure.

The sculpture would contain four large suspended buildings.  A cube was at the base - designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings – it would rotate on its axis once a year. Above that was a pyramid  - housing executive centers and completing a rotation once a month. Then came a cylinder that would rotate once a day - this would house a propaganda center, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker.  At the top was a sphere – for radio equipment and a projector that would be able to project messages onto clouds.

The buildings were to be made entirely of glass, so the workers could always see what the leaders were doing.  While never built, workers in street demonstrations carried models of this great visionary work.

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Red lightning was a symbol of the revolution, at times used to symbolize how the revolution was based on the earlier experience of the Paris Commune.

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Trotsky was involved in the development and the use of rail transportation in a number of ways.  As organizer of the Red Army, he developed its use as a key weapon to organize defense of the revolution against the White (counter-revolutionary) Armies. 

Agitprop (agitation-propaganda) trains were used to build campaigns for literacy, distribute posters, show films in cinema cars and in many other ways help to promote culture and spread revolutionary ideas to the vast new Soviet Union.

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P-9 Strike & Mural

THE P-9 MURAL

Destroyed by UFCW bureaucrats

October 12, 1986 

P-9 Mural 

by Denny Mealy, Mike Alewitz and volunteers

On August 17, 1985, 1500 members of Local P-9, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, struck the Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota.  The strike began as an economic struggle by workers to defend their standard of living and fight against giving further concessions to a profit-rich company.  It ended as a bitter conflict that galvanized workers' support from around the country and around the world.

In the course of their struggle, the P-9ers took on the local authorities, the courts and the press, all of whom acted on behalf of the company.  The National Guard was called in against them.  But the union mobilized its members, often nightly, in a display of democracy not seen in the labor movement for many years.  Unionists and activists poured into Austin to participate in the pickets, demonstrations and rallies.  It became a fight of rank and file unionists throughout the nation.

The lives of many of the strikers became transformed.  As they entered into the field of political activity, these "typical workers" became class-struggle militants, willing to face the jails and bullets of the employers in their fight for social justice.  They learned to look beyond their own narrow economic interests, and instead viewed their struggle as part of an international movement of workers against all their employers.

In the midst of the fray, Denny Mealy, a p-9 leader and artist, and I led the workers in painting a wonderful mural which came to symbolize the strike.  We dedicated the mural to then imprisoned Nelson Mandela, at a time when he was still being vilified as a terrorist by the U.S. government.

Eventually the union was attacked by its own national officials.  In their rush to wipe out the memory of the historic struggle, they sandblasted the mural off the wall.  Workers were arrested defending the art.  When no one in the town would do their dirty work, the bureaucrats were forced to do it themselves - revealing their true feelings towards the ranks.  First they blasted the faces off the workers, then the slogans off the banners.

Although the strike was defeated, many of the P-9 strikers and their supporters, changed forever by their experiences, have gone on to organize throughout the labor movement

            - Mike Alewitz

 

Dedication to Nelson Mandela

Nightly union meeting

I originally came to paint rally banners on behalf of my Sign Painters union local.

Ottumwa strikers with a banner i painted for them.

P-9 artist  and union activist Denny Mealy

Denny Mealy and Alex 

Work in progress

Nightly gathering at the mural site

Union defense guards protect the mural.  Later, workers were arrested when they blocked the destruction of their art.

P-9 Mural by Denny Mealy, Mie Alewitz and volunteers

Babs Duma of the African National Congress at the dedication ceremony.

Dedication of the mural to Nelson Mandela

P-9 Mural T-Shirt

UFCW Bureaucrats did This

 

BUREAU of ART & REVOLUTION

 

Bureau of ART & REVOLUTION

Slideshows, Videos, Workshops & Performances 

by 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.

 

A lively and provocative speaker, Alewitz 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, Local 829/ IATSE-AFL-CIO and the CCSU chapter of AAUP. 

For More Information: Alewitz@comcast.net

 

Current/Recent Talks:

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Global Agitprop: STREET ART OF THE REVOLUTION

 

Street Art of the Revolution reveals an amazing, yet hidden history of working class culture.

 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 gave birth to one of the most creative art forms in modern times – Agitprop (Agitation-Propaganda.)  Agitprop artists took their work into the streets - creating mass spectacles and pageants, painting trains and ships, revolutionizing filmmaking, poster art, theater – everything from reinventing teapots to designing buildings that would float in space.  These efforts were an ambitious attempt to create a new way of seeing – an art for the revolutionary future they envisioned.

 

Similar optimism found expression in a rich tradition of agitprop art in the US.  For example, the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies,) used humor, poetry, song, cartoons and theater that made a lasting contribution to American culture. In 1913, striking New Jersey silk workers marched from Paterson, New Jersey, to Madison Square Garden, where they strode onto the stage and performed the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant.  In 1937, Buffalo auto workers in sit-down strikes formed an orchestra to serenade assembled supporters from the rooftops of the occupied plant - when they won the strike they transformed the orchestra into a brass band and marched through the streets of the city in a victory parade.

 

Street Art of the Revolution provides insights for artists and activists today, as we attempt to create meaningful work in the midst of a deepening economic and social crisis, and the global rebellion against the US war machine.

 

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The Kent State Massacre: An Eyewitness Account

 

On May 4, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a peaceful anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The attack left four dead and nine wounded. Students had gathered in response to President Richard Nixon’s announcement that the US had invaded Cambodia – a major escalation of the war in Southeast Asia.

The massacre at Kent was followed two days later with the police barrage of bullets into a dormitory at Jackson State in Mississippi that left two students dead and an unknown number of others wounded.

 

The massacres at Kent and Jackson, along with deep hatred of the war, sparked a national student strike that was to become the largest political demonstration in U.S. history. Tens of thousands of students occupied their universities and used the facilities to reach out with their anti-war message. The strike played a crucial role in the movement that eventually forced an end to the war.

 

This slideshow provides a compelling visual record of these events and a perspective on how students and working people can end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mike Alewitz was the founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War.  He was an eyewitness to the massacre of May 4, 1970, and a leader of the national student strike that followed.

 

 

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 The Most Censored Artist in America on:

WHY BOSSES AND BUREAUCRATS FEAR ART

What happens when an artist paints outside the lines? If you decide to make art for working people, instead of wealthy buyers, you become marginalized and subject to harsh censorship.

 

Mike Alewitz is a case in point – he is the most censored artist in the US. Among his destroyed works: a mural about police violence at the MA College of Art; the P-9 Mural, painted with striking Hormel workers - sandblasted off the wall by union bureaucrats; murals in Nicaragua destroyed by US backed counterrevolutionary forces; a mural of Malcolm X in Belfast, painted over by Sinn Fein; and others.

 

He has had work removed from union halls and suppressed by labor organizations.  A mural design about Harriet Tubman was rejected in Baltimore and another vandalized by Nazis. Existing work is under constant threat of destruction.

 

Despite the high visibility of his projects, Alewitz is not covered in the art press, invited to visit academic or cultural institutions or asked to participate in exhibitions.  He is so censored, he is not included in censorship books!

 

This presentation exposes the myth of artistic freedom and explains why art that expresses working-class aspirations is threatening to bosses and bureaucrats. It reveals the truth about the gallery system that dehumanizes artists and ignores democratic art that cannot be bought and sold.

 

 

 

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Marx on the Walls: ART AND REVOLUTION TODAY

Since the rise of capitalism, artists have found themselves in a daily struggle to both create meaningful art and participate in the collective transformation of society. Artists can play a critical role in helping to illuminate and inspire movements for social and economic justice – which is why the ruling class attempts to separate and isolate them from other workers.

 

This presentation takes up many of the questions facing revolutionary-minded artists: How can we help make revolutionary change?  Can we influence specific events unfolding in the class struggle? Must radical artists make political art? How can artists function in revolutionary organizations?

 

Marx on the Walls provides examples of how artists can place powerful cultural weapons in the hands of working people. We will examine the often-bumpy relationships that have characterized the alliance of artists, unions and revolutionary organizations – as well as the differing fate of the arts in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Nicaragua and other revolutionary societies. 

 

Finally, the presentation will look at the particular conditions facing artists and workers in the current economic crisis, the state of the labor movement, and how we can act together in the fight to build a world based on human need instead of private profit.

 

 

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Workshop: HOW TO GIVE YOUR BOSS AN ART ATTACK

 

If you’re alive, you have an imagination; if you have an imagination, you can make art! 

Give Your Boss an Art Attack is a hands-on workshop(s) for how to make cartoons, perform street theater, construct puppets, paint banners and signs for picket lines or demonstrations, and otherwise use art to organize the poor and agonize the rich.

 

The workshop(s) will focus on creating art to empower workers and expose the bosses. We will begin by looking at examples of agitprop art from the IWW, the May-June 1968 revolt in France, the creation of the P-9 Mural during the Hormel meat packers strike and much more. We will then create sketches, conduct critiques, and create something.

 

The workday goes by so much quicker when everyone is circulating funny cartoons about the boss...

 

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Video:  BREAKING WALLS

 

  

Breaking Walls is an award-winning film by Video 48, an Israeli/Palestinian collective. The film tells the story of Arab construction workers who live and work on the Israeli side of the Green Line, their organization by the activists of the Workers Advice Center, and their encounter with CT muralist Mike Alewitz of the Labor Art & Mural Project. 

 

In Breaking Walls, we learn about the struggle of Palestinian workers inside Israel to regain their right to work at their trades. We also see the remarkable transformation of workers when they are given an opportunity to participate in art and culture.

 

This is an excellent video for workers, artists and activists organizing both inside and outside of unions – it provides an outstanding starting point to discuss the global economy and international solidarity. Breaking Walls reveals how we can tap into the great creative potential of our class – to organize political/cultural projects that help to educate and inspire.

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INSURGENT IMAGES: Labor History Through Art

 

Before the civil rights and Black Nationalist movements won important advances like Black studies departments, the history of African-Americans remained buried. Until the development of the modern women's movement, women's contributions to society were kept invisible.

 

Similarly, working people have been robbed of their history.

 

Every May 1st, people all over the world put down their tools to celebrate the international working class holiday of May Day. But in the United States, we continue to work, unaware that May Day was inspired by the militancy of North American labor – it is a commemoration of the execution of anarchist labor leaders in Chicago, martyred in the fight for the eight-hour day.

 

Insurgent Images uses art to tell the story of some of the great, militant traditions of the labor movement: the Knights of Labor, the free speech fights and strikes of the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World,) the Minneapolis Teamster rebellion, the San Francisco general strike, the sit-down strikes that led to the formation of industrial unions and so much more.

 

This presentation reveals a past that we need to rediscover, and the traditions we need to relearn, if we hope to defend ourselves against a ruthless and profit-mad ruling class.

This slideshow presents images that the art world, academia, the employers and the labor officialdom would prefer to keep hidden – art that illustrates a history of struggle the ruling class has tried to bury.

 

 

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Bureau of ART & REVOLUTION

Slideshows, Videos, Workshops & Performances by Mike Alewitz

alewitz@comcast.net