4.29.1992 - Rodney King Rebellion

AN INJURY TO ONE 

IS AN INJURY TO ALL

by Mike Alewitz

1991/  Approx. 16' x 16'

Communications Workers of America Local 9000 Building

Los Angeles, California

Dedicated to the victims of police violence

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            The following are excerpts from a speech given by Mike Alewitz at the dedication ceremonies for the mural at the Communications Workers of America Local 9000 Building in Los Angeles, August 26, 1993. The mural was dedicated to the victims of police violence, in the aftermath of the Rodney King Rebellion, which began on April 29, 1992.

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            ...The immediate cause of the Los Angeles rebellion was the brutal beating of Rodney King.  What we saw on television was not new to the labor movement.  We have seen these same police during the P-9 strike.  We saw them during the Pittston miners strike.  We saw them right here in Los Angeles during the Justice for Janitors strike.  We have seen these swaggering cops before, in South Africa, Birmingham, Selma, and in El Salvador.  They are all trained to protect private property and defend inequality.

            The underlying cause of the rebellion in Los Angeles was racism, unemployment and poverty.  Those conditions will continue to exist until we build a society that respects labor.  It will continue until there is recognition of the particular contributions of African-American labor, slave and black wageworker, to the building of our society.

            Until that happens, nothing is going to be done to rebuild Los Angeles.  They have not done anything about Newark, and that's been over twenty years.  It will only begin to happen when labor has some power.  Then we can use our power to create jobs.  We could use our power to reduce the workweek.  We could use our power to organize all workers into unions.

             To do this we must rebuild our own movement.  Until there is a union movement strong enough to lead sit-downs and strikes, workers will be driven to unorganized destruction.  Until a labor party exists to challenge the Democrats and Republicans we will be voiceless in Washington D.C., in Sacramento and in Los Angeles.  People will feel that they must burn down their own city to get a simple act of justice.

            To rebuild our movement we must relearn our traditions, like what a picket line is for, or how to stop production.  We must also relearn our cultural traditions.  The cultural and spiritual concerns of workers are a union issue.  That is what the Labor Art and Mural Project is about, the real tradition of a singing and painting movement.
 
            This mural came from the contributions of many, to say that we are in solidarity with the victims of racism, unemployment and police violence.  I am dedicating this work to those victims.  I do this with the confidence that the justified rage, which fueled this explosion, will find expression in a reborn, militant labor movement that will organize the unorganized to rebuild this city and the entire country.   

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AB

 

ABOUT THE MURAL:

...Alewitz returned a year later, after the Rebellion of May, 1991 (during which the Southern California Library wall remained unscathed, although in the heart of one of the most riot-torn areas) to paint another mural. While many decried the violence and futility of the rebellion, Alewitz saw the willingness of people to respond to injustice, despite the failures of their leaders, as essentially positive. How different might the outcome of the struggle have been if the labor movement had taken the lead in mobilizing the population against the beating of fellow worker Rodney King. It had the potential to forge a powerful alliance between labor and the African- American and Latino communities not only in Los Angeles, but throughout the country.

 

Alewitz decided to organize the mural project to raise that issue within the movement. He arranged for the initial support from the Industrial Union Council. He then approached the actors’ union, AFTRA, and its first vice-president, the film, television and theater actor John Connolly. Together the pair organized support within AFTRA, and procured the endorsement of a number of Hollywood luminaries, including Charles Dutton, Debbie Allen, and Edward Asner.  The Los Angeles Federation of Labor agreed to host the project, while the Labor Heritage Foundation acted as the fiscal sponsor.

 

Throughout the project, Alewitz and his allies worked to promote the idea of independent political action, at a time when building a labor party was actively being discussed in the labor movement.

 

Created for the Communications Workers of American building in Los Angeles (and dedicated, most unusually for any AFL-CIO building, “to the victims of police violence”) this mural instantly recalls the famed IWW banner for the Paterson Strike benefit in 1913, with the “advancing proletariat” stepping from a mill-town background into the scene, toward the viewer. This time it was a Third World worker with a background (and foreground) far more hideous, including Ku Klux Klansmen, cops slugging downed African Americans’ with clubs, fire in the hills alongside the famed “Hollywood” sign, and, a weasly judge (like the one who set the beaters of Rodney King off virtually scot-free), further revealed as a maggot crawls from under his robe.

 

Most subtly, the keys of a computer keyboard have been rearranged so they spell out ORGANIZE, EDUCATE, AGITATE (after the old IWW clock that spells out “Time to Organize,” this time with a Delete button hovering above CAPITS). Overhead, the angels include Mother Jones, Malcolm X and Emilio Zapata, holding up the banner slogan “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All.”

 

Paul Buhle

Insurgent Images

 

BEN LINDER PRESENTE - April 28, 1987

MONUMENT TO BEN LINDER

Assassinated by US-backed Contras, BEN LINDER PRESENTE

by Mike Alewitz/ 1989

NICA School/  Esteli, Nicaragua

Approx. 10’ x 15’

 

Dedicated to the Internationalistas who gave their lives in Nicaragua.

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Ben was working as a water-purification engineer, but he would also ride around on a unicycle and clown for the children, and I decided to paint him that way.  The quote is from the speech by Daniel Ortega at his funeral:

“He is the smile of the children who saw him in his clown costume, illuminating the future that we are making together in the new Nicaragua.

 

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He Came Carrying Dreams 

"For whom do the bells toll?" wrote Hemingway in the midst of the fire that was incinerating the people of Spain, and later, over the ashes cast by fascism; but the song and hope of the people of Garcia Lorca rose up over the ashes and fascism. 

Today we are gathered before Benjamin Linder, citizen of the United States who, filled with love and happiness, gave his life for the "campesinos" of Nicaragua. He knew of the risks of work in Nicaragua, of the danger of going into the mountains, into the communities to contribute with his knowledge, with his dedication and with his example, to better the living conditions of the country people.

He did not come on a flight carrying arms, nor with millions of dollars; he came on a flight carrying the dreams which were born of his conviction that the ethical values of the American people are above the illegal policy of the United States Government.

 He demonstrated that the American people are noble, and that the people of the United States are the enemy of the assassins of Nicaraguan children, women, young people and "campesinos". He demonstrated that the people of Lincoln are the enemy of slavery, the enemy of terrorism and firm defenders of peace between peoples.

He lived and died for the American people and for the Nicaraguan people.

From La Camaleona, where the mercenaries killed him, fulfilling the CIA's plans, to El Cua, Rio San Juan Oregon and Washington, the song filled with love, full of peace and filled with Benjamin Linder's hopes is multiplied by his sacrifice

And what is more powerful than war? And what is more powerful than the hundred million dollars and more powerful than the threat of an invasion?

The people's strength and love, and the example and sacrifice of men like Benjamin are more powerful. He is the smile of the children who saw him in his clown costume, illuminating the future that we are making together in the new Nicaragua.

What salary did he earn? Nothing more than the satisfaction of serving and sharing with those who were as he was

Because he did not live on a CIA wage, they killed him with "two Nicaraguan "campesinos" while they were working out in the country. 

Then, for whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Pierre Grujean, the 33 year-old French doctor murdered in Rancho Grande. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Ambrosio Mogorron, the 34 year-old Spanish nurse murdered in San Juan de Bocay. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Albert Pflaum, the doctor from the Federal Republic of Germany murdered in Zompopera. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Maurice Demierre, the 29 year-old Swiss agronomist murdered in Somotillo. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Paul Dessers, the 39 year-old Belgain civil engineer murdered in Guapotal. 

For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Joel Fieux, the 28 year-old French radio technician murdered in Zompopera. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Bemhard Erik Kobers, the 30 year-old drinking water specialist from the Federal Republic of Germany murdered in Zompopera. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Ivan Claude Levyraz, the 32 year-oldSwiss construction engineer murdered in Zompopera. For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Benjamin Linder, the 27 year-old American engineer murdered in La Camaleona, Nicaragua. 

For whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For more than a dozen Cuban teachers, technicians and voluntary workers killed over the course of these years. 

For whom do the bell toll here? For the 40 thousand victims that six years of United States aggression have produced among the Nicaraguan population. 

May the blood of the innocents move the conscience of the rulers of the United States, so the bells do not continue to toll, so the aggression ceases, so the military maneuvers cease, so they accept a dialogue with Nicaragua, so they allow the Latin Americans to dialogue through the Contadora Group and its Support Group, so they let us talk over the Central American governments' peace initiatives, including the constructive peace proposal presented by the President of Costa Rica.

"No to war! Yes to peace!"  Benjamin Linder's blood cries out so that the bells do not continue to toll in Nicaragua.

Daniel Ortega

President of the Republic of Nicaragua

April 30, 1987

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Anti-War Resolution - CCSU Faculty Senate

Anti-War Resolution of the Central Connecticut State University Faculty Senate 

Calling Upon the U.S. Government and President Obama to Bring Our War Dollars Home Now

Whereas, the economic collapse has exhausted the financial resources at the local, county, state and federal levels of the US; and

Whereas, the U.S. government since 2001 has spent well over 1 trillion dollars nationally on the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Connecticut nearly 28 billion dollars has gone to war spending; and

Whereas, more than 5,700 US troops have been killed, more than 40,000 wounded; and

Whereas, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded and the ongoing warfare poses great and unnecessary harm to the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world; and

Whereas, billions of tax payer’s money is spent to prop up repressive regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world; and

Whereas, education at all levels is in crisis due to the diversion of billions of dollars to wars and occupations. College tuition and student debt is increasing while university programs and courses are cut; and

Whereas, budget deficits, largely due to war spending, have been used as a pretext to force concessions from public sector unions from California to Wisconsin to Connecticut; and

Whereas, communities of color in Connecticut have been hardest hit and are heavily targeted for military recruitment,

Be it resolved that the Central Connecticut State University Faculty Senate calls upon the U.S. government and President Obama to end the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our war dollars home now.

Now be it further resolved, that the Central Connecticut State University Faculty Senate support informational events regarding the cost of the wars and occupations to our campus and community; and

Be it further resolved that the Central CT State University Faculty Senate support the right of public sector unions and all other unions to collectively bargain and defend the interests of their members; and

Be it further resolved, that the Central CT State University Faculty Senate urge students, staff and faculty to participate in peaceful protests to demand an end to the wars and occupations and bring our war dollars home; and to further demand money for education, not for war.

banner by Mike Alewitz

Mushroom Workers Strike - April 1, 1993

Mushroom Workers Strike - April 1, 1993

This Viva Zapata banner was carried by the Kaolin Workers Union in the 1995 Mushroom Day Parade. The annual mushroom day parade was usually a self-congratulatory event for the owners, while the workers stayed on the job. We were able to help crash the event by creating banners and signs, along with providing instruments for a marching band. It was quite a scene.

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The predominantly Latino mushroom workers in Kennett Square, the "mushroom capital" of Pennsylvania, desperately underpaid and subject to brutal working conditions, had struck the growers and organized themselves into the Kaolin (the leading company's name)Independent Workers Union. 

 

Alewitz had been impressed by this and similar attempts of immigrant workers to organize unions.  Like the thousands of mostly Mexican drywall workers in Southern California, these workers were counter-posing a strategy of self-organization to the union officialdom's more conservative methods.

 

These workers were educating North American labor in an important concept: Unions don't organize workers, workers organize unions. Hiring young organizers, regardless of how dedicated, and spending money, regardless of how much, cannot substitute for a worker-driven, political movement. Working with PHILOPOSH: the Philadelphia Area Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, and a residency sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Alewitz brought Agitprop to the streets of Kennett Square. 

 

Unable to find an adequate wall for a mural, Alewitz instead designed portable art for the Mushroom Day parade. The annual event was a self-celebratory growers event, and did not normally include the workers.

 

This year the workers demanded and won the right to march. Parade officials made a last attempt to exclude their contingent, at one point by demanding that all signs carried be in English.  Alewitz and other volunteers from New Jersey responded by devising picket signs whose images conveyed the message of struggle without the need of text.

 

Previously, Alewitz had been struck by the life-size puppets used in street festivals of Nicaragua and Mexico. In 1990 he helped lead a group of artists designing material for a pro-choice Demonstration in Washington. The troupe contained drummers, a giant puppet of martyred German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, a two headed monster of the two-party system, nine skeleton Supreme Court justices, and a giant red club labeled "Labor Power" on one side and "Women's Action" on the other. To see these assorted creatures on the march with the wind filling out their shapes (a scene carefully recorded on fun-filled videos) is like an adult puppet show, not particularly close to the theatrical classicism of the famous Bread and Puppet Theater but more free-flowing and spontaneous. 

 

Two years later, the pro-choice puppets became mushroom workers and the monster properly turned into their bosses.  Carrying a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and with a giant Alewitz portrait of Emiliano Zapata, adorned with union t-shirts and playing kazoos, the workers were the centerpiece of the parade.

- Paul Buhle, Insurgent Images