Anti-Unionism is alive and...cheesy.

Oy. Some more classic anti-union propaganda from Target, via Gawker.

Watch it here.

Ouch, Target, you had me lulled into a comfy state of tampon-buying consumer satisfaction. 

Patronizing? Misleading? Shameless? Cheesy? False interpretations of labor history? Oh no they didn't! (Apparently, thanks to Lewis Hine and unions in the 1930's, we don't need unions anymore.) It's capitalism laid bare!

The Workers: MASS MoCA, I love you.

Dear MASS MoCA,

I have been trying to write this blog entry for two months, struggling to find the right words to say it. It's simple, really: I love you. We are like, totally soul mates. It's ok, I know you have lots of other visitor-soulmates; in fact, I think an open relationship is the best kind of relationship a museum and its visitors can have.

I've known it for a long time. But just when I thought you were practically perfect, this BLOWS MY MIND. And my little heart. A new exhibition: The Workers, May 29, 2011-March 25, 2012.

Ok, from MASS MoCA:

We all know what Rosie the Riveter looked like, and what she stood for. [Oh boy, do we!]

Ford-era production line labor -- and the rise of powerful unions -- left us indelible portraits of work in mid 20th century America. [Don't make me swoon!]...

But what does work look like today in a global economy marked by outsourcing, rapid migration, disruptive economies, and a state of labor that seems fractured, precarious, and almost invisible? With video, sculpture, photography, and performance art from 25 artists, this exhibition examines the way labor is represented today (and how some contemporary workers choose to represent themselves. [Emphasis mine.]

The timing, and the place, could not be more fitting: Once the site of a bustling factory itself -- whose closure in the face of intense international competition left nearly a third of it's community out of work -- MASS MoCA is perhaps uniquely positioned to present this timely show... [Yes! YES!]

And as if all that wasn't enough:

In conjunction with The Workers MASS MoCA curator Susan Cross has invited Bureau for Open Culture -- a nomadic contemporary arts program directed by curator and art historian James Voorhies -- to inhabit one of the museum's buildings for the first four months of the exhibition. Set within a previously unused industrial building on the grounds of MASS MoCA, Bureau for Open Culture presents I Am Searching for Field Character, an exhibition series of public conversations, performances, installations, and workshops with a slew of visiting artists, writers, designers, and thinkers, a well as a beer garden which operates every Thursday and Friday night between May 26 and September 30.

Let me get this straight: CONTEMPORARY ART AND LABOR, HISTORIC INDUSTRIAL SPACES, NOMADIC ARTS PROGRAMS, SUPER-RELEVANCE, AND A...BEER GARDEN??? And then there's the BOC project publication: Bureau for Open Culture: On Symptoms of Cultural Industry. [Preview: WHY is it we are so moved by decaying environments? What propels the creative and cultural, the spontaneous and unpredictable in response to the dilapidation, vacancy, poverty and hardship of crumbling capital? Oh. My.]

I could not possibly make up anything dreamier. Ok, so I'll try not to get too excited before I've experienced it all.

No, I think I'll just got with it.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Parks-in-progress! Labor history! Community comment!

Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study Newsletter #1

http://www.facebook.com/chavezstudy

Right now! The National Park Service is conducting a series of public meetings on a special resource study to consider designating an NPS site or affiliated area in recognition of Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement. Circle-chairs and a flip chart! I think I've just identified my NPS dream job: Public Meeting flip-charter, extraordinaire.

A recent public meeting on the Chavez Special Resource study.

This would be (I think) the first NPS area dedicated primarily to an exploration of the history of organized labor/labor organizing. The national park system doesn't need to (and shouldn't) try to represent every major theme and prominent moment in our national heritage. But the combination of a unique and broadly relevant story, and a significant number of meaningful historic locations that could be included in a park or trail, gives this proposal real promise.

[I suppose I would think so.]

The really exciting part of this process is the Park Service's commitment to holding a well-organized series of public comment meetings, not as an afterthought or gesture, but (it seems), as an actual, integral part of the planning process. There are big, basic questions -- where would it be? how would it be organized? where does local community need and interest lie? These public meetings should really be able to shape the answers.

See newsletter #1 for a schedule of meetings (sorry, AZ and CA only) and more info.

And, a little debate on the subject: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/05/should-cesar-chavez-site-be-added-national-park-system8070

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: March 25, 1911-2011

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers in New York City were killed in a workplace fire. Infamously, management had locked the factory's exit doors. A wave of safety reform legislation and memorialization followed. For a moment, the dangerous realities that faced some of the nation's most marginalized industrial workers -- young, female, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe -- gripped the nation's attention.

Recently brought to my attention: the New York Times has assembled extraordinary coverage of the many facets of the fire: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/?ref=nyregion

Some particular highlights of museum-think interest:
Triangle Fire: Clinging to Scraps of Memories
Triangle Fire: A Frontier in Photojournalism (interactive)
Garment Work in New York 100 Years After the Triangle Fire (video)
In a Tragedy, a Mission to Remember
Remembering the Triangle Fire, 100 Years Later

And, last but not least, from President Obama's resolution marking today's 100th anniversary:
Despite the enormous progress made since the Triangle factory fire, we are still fighting to provide adequate working conditions for all women and men on the job, ensure no person within our borders is exploited for their labor, and uphold collective bargaining as a tool to give workers a seat at the tables of power...As we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, let us resolve to renew the urgency that tragedy inspired and recommit to our shared responsibility to provide a safe environment for all American workers.

NPR: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

From All Things Considered: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

Great story about the 1921 "battle of Blair Mountain," in West Virginia, and current controversy over adding it to the National Register of Historic Places. Preserve the space of a landmark event in US labor and mining history, or open the site to mountaintop removal mining? This story is an unusually direct glimpse into the tensions that often arise between preservation, economic realities, and memory in dealing with local labor heritage and industrial history.

A sign commemorating the battle of Blair Mountain in Logan County, W.Va. NPR.

Key points:

King believes this is hallowed ground, like Gettysburg or the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., places where America's history was forever changed. But he's had a hard time making that case to the folks in Logan County — a place where every fourth person is out of work.

There are only about 16,000 miners in West Virginia today. Mountaintop removal doesn't require as much manpower as underground mining. These are coveted jobs; they pay well. So for the most part, miners are more interested in seeing the economy grow than preserving what they see as just another mountain.

"This is a political fight, this is a social fight, this is a fight about our history, our heritage, our culture," Simmons says. "It's a fight about what kind of society West Virginia is going to be going forward and what has been in its past."

Sounds to me like labor heritage interpretation at its best, and most relevant.

UPDATE (ish): The plot thickens?  http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/lawsuits/0312.aspx

American Experience: Triangle Fire

Highly recommended! American Experience: Triangle Fire. PBS is currently streaming the entire hour-long documentrary online:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/player/

The film focuses not only on the fire itself, but on the extraordinary struggle to unionize female garment workers in the year that led up to the tragedy. One point made in the film stuck out, so much so that I wrote it down. In going out on strike to fight for improved working conditions and wages, thousands of these women "walked away from the only thing between their families and starvation" -- their dangerous, low-paid jobs.

That's what I call interpretation! A simply, evocatively made point that applies not only to this particular series of events, but that gets at the essence of Progressive Era labor struggles. Whether in New York, Lawrence, Paterson, etc., a powerful mixture of community, conviction, and desperation drove workers in this country's burgeoning industrial centers to take enormous personal risks for a chance at something better.

Salon: What Wisconsin's governor is really threatening

Today, in the ongoing and infuriating saga of Gov. Scott Walker and his assault on public employees/collective bargaining rights...an enlightening article on the history of the labor movement and the National Guard: What Wisconsin's Governor is Really Threatening

"This would be the first time in nearly 80 years that the National Guard would be used to break a strike by Wisconsin workers, and the first time in over 40 years that the National Guard would be used against public workers anywhere in the country. The last time was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination."

NYT: Art and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Today in the New York Times: In Art, Recalling a Century Old-Tragedy

As the March 25 centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist approaches, artist and film maker Anthony Giacchino is using art to visualize and commemorate the 146 victims of the 1911 factory fire in an unconventional, directly engaged way:

"I just kept thinking about the number 146,” he said. “I would put names in front of the buildings, but it still did not give me a sense of it. Why not send letters? They’d probably come back. Then I’d be able to see what 146 looks like.”

Helped by Scott Frawley, a student at Fordham University, he compiled a list of addresses and wrote them on envelopes; for six unknown victims, he simply wrote “Unidentified Fire Victim.” Inside each was a short message — in case the address still existed and the current occupant opened the envelope — asking people to reflect on the tragedy, as well as a poem written by Morris Rosenfeld days after the fire.

Mr. Giacchino warned his letter carrier to expect a deluge of returned letters. So far, 130 have come back.

Art - Memory - Place

We're coming into an era of serious labor history centennials. 2011 is the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and the Grey Art Gallery at good old NYU just opened a really thoughtful looking exhibit dealing with the event through a somewhat unconventional mix of perspectives and media.

Art - Memory - Place: Commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Great website.)

Part I deals with the history of the fire itself, its human impact, and the immediate social aftermath. Part II takes us into mid-20th century reforms in workplace safety as an act of memorialization. (I am excited about the apparent abundance of 1930s mural art here.) Parts III and IV deal with the fire's 50th anniversary, and its enduring legacies in labor activism, memory, and large-scale tragedy today.

Historic photos! Artifacts! Artwork! Activism! Documenting! Interpreting! Memorializing!

Making a resolution to see this before it closes March 26, the day after the tragedy's 100th anniversary.

Detail of mural by Ernest Fiene, History of the Needlecraft Industry (1938-1940)

LABOR ARTS

How am I just learning about this website now? From the Rober Wagner Labor Archives at NYU (my own alma mater! Again, how did I not know about this...), and several other partners, LABOR ARTS is:

"a virtual museum; we gather, identify and display images of the cultural artifacts of working people and their organizations. Our mission is to present powerful images that help us understand the past and present lives of working people. AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has urged all international unions to cooperate in locating for display on Labor Arts 'the treasure trove of cultural objects that have moved workers into action from the very inception of our movement.'"

So far -- and have only scratched the surface of this resource -- loving the Scenes of American Labor exhibit:

Taos Diner, Jack R. Smith, 2005



Indians Fishing Cielilo Falls - Columbia River, Millard Sheets, 1950

It's a way cool site with an incredible variety of media. Check it out!