TEAMSTER POWER! EL PODER DE LOS TEAMSTERS!
August 4, 1997
Teamsters Strike United Parcel Service
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.
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