Labor Leaders

"The very first Buck Dinner cause was unemployment, both in its financial support and the efforts of the participants. Times being what they were, employment, hunger and workers organizing were high in the hearts of activists during the 1930s. As the labor movement developed Maurice Sugar and younger lawyers such as Ernest Goodman and George Crockett developed the emerging specialties of labor law, workers compensation and civil liberties. These skills were sorely needed. In the 1930s and extending into the 1950s, the Dies Committee (which became the House Un-American Activities Committee) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation intensified their harassment of civil libertarians. These pioneering legal minds also pursued defending African-Americans from unjust, racist charges, and eventually became strong legal supporters of the Civil Rights and peace movements during the 1950s and 1960s. The Buck Dinner distinguished itself by also being a financial supporter of these causes. But back in the late 1930s, the rise of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were also on the minds of many in the Buck Dinner community. When those countries supported Franco rebels in Spain, several of our own Detroit progressives volunteered to fight on the loyalist side. When 11 Detroiters were arrested and charged with conspiracy to recruit Americans for a foreign army in 1940, the NLG through Sugar and Goodman led the legal team that freed them."

"In the 1920s, the flourishing automobile industry brought prosperity to Detroit, Michigan. With the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, car sales collapsed, and production plummeted. The depression forced General Motors and other car companies to lay off many of their workers in Detroit. On March 7, 1932, a march of unemployed autoworkers was met with violence when four workers were shot to death by the local police and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. The Ford Hunger March, as the demonstration became known, contributed to the creation of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) labor union. Four years later, the UAW staged a strike that began in December 1936. Some 100,000 autoworkers simply sat down on the job and occupied 17 General Motors plants. “Sit Down,” written by attorney Maurice Sugar, became an anthem of the strikers. After f44 days, the strike ended in a victory for UAW, thanks in part to a labor-friendly governor, Frank Murphy, who used the National Guard as a peacekeeping force that assisted negotiations. The UAW gained union recognition from General Motors and a promise the company would not fire or otherwise punish the strikers. Workers also received a wage increase of five cents an hour. Maurice Sugar went on to serve as general counsel of the UAW from 1937 to 1946."

"When the boss won’t talk go and take a walk—sit down, sit down When the boss see that he’ll want a little chat—sit down, sit down"

"Sit down, just keep your seat Sit down and rest your feet Sit down, you got ’em beat Sit down, sit down!"

"When they tie the hands of the union man—sit down, sit down When they give ’em a pact they’ll take them back—sit down, sit down"

"When they smile and say, “No raise in pay!”—sit down, sit down When you want the boss to come across—sit down, sit down"

"When your feet are numb just twiddle your thumb—sit down, sit down When you want ’em to know they’d better go slow—sit down, sit down"

"To overcome racial inequality, we must confront our history."

"All I want is to be treated with respect and have my professionalism be honored. People who are out to get you either to destroy you, on the one extreme, or simply to humiliate and insult you or disrespect you."

"I know that I'm constitutionally incapable of being talked down to."

"Barriers are constantly and arbitrarily erected with systems and institutional power telling people what is and is not possible."

"I didn’t take the job with the intention of breaking any glass ceilings. I’m not an activist, I’m just Michele."

"Some of us got to know about the Socialist Literary Society on the East Side of New York, East Broadway. It was chiefly a young men's club, but some of the young ladies wanted to join...I remember the hot debates that went on at the Socialist Literary Society whether to admit women, and finally the women won out. They voted to admit women, so...We joined the Socialist Literary Society, and there, really, we obtained what we could in the way of education, especially with English literature. The club was very fortunate in obtaining the services of Dr. Henry Newman, no relation of mine, but who was a professor of literature at City College of New York. I think he still is with the Brooklyn Ethical Cultural Society. He was a magnificent teacher. I don't think there are many who can surpass his interest in the students and in the people who came to his classes. And I, personally, shall never forget his kindness and attention. I remember he was teaching us English literature, giving us an idea of what George Eliot and Thackeray and Dickens were about. And he would ask questions to find out whether we really got his point... He was terribly interested in my reading, and I still remember his kindness and attention, because he was a great help to me. Lord knows what I might have read if it weren't for him."

"The things we liked most of course were the things that more or less selected or symbolized our own feelings of conditions and life in general. For example, I recall that we liked Thomas Hood's "The Sound of the ship" Now, nothing could come closer to the way we felt than that particular poem. We also read and managed an interest in that other one, "The Bridge of Sighs" also by Thomas Hood. Later, we found "The Masque of Anarchy" by Shelley, and of course in addition to that there were the Jewish poets, like Rosenfeld and Edelshtat. They were magnificent in their writing, in their poetry depicting the life of the people in the shop. There was one writer who I got to know later very well, who wrote a thing just called "Sketches," of conditions and of people in the different shops and naturally in the needle industry in New York. He was magnificent, and we loved everything he wrote. For that, we found time. Now, whether all of us found time, I don't know, but I do know that quite a number of us tried to find an interest outside the job."

"I also recall that on Sunday morning when we didn't have to go to the shop, we went to lectures. A man called Hugh Pentacost lectured at a place on Sixth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, named Merit Hall. It's no longer there. We would come at eleven o'clock, and Mr. Pentacost would lecture on current events. He was an excellent speaker. He was, as I remember, a philosophical anarchist, and we really didn't discuss his philosophy at all. We would take up current events. We were very much interested in that, and we would go there just as religious people would go to synagogue. We would go there every Sunday except on Sundays that we had to work in the shops."

"As to the necessity of a minimum wage there is no longer any doubt in the minds of intelligent people be they socialists, social workers or merely fair minded people."

"A working woman is a human being, with a heart, with desires, with aspirations, with ideas and ideals, and when we think of food and shelter we merely think of the actual necessities to cover her body and to feed her. But what about the other things? Have we thought of providing her with books, with money for amusements, and when I speak of amusements I do not speak of the five cent picture shows, I speak of amusements that a girl should go to — a good drama or refined vaudeville — few think about that. Have you thought about a girl providing herself with a good room that had plenty of air, proper ventilation, in a somewhat decent neighborhood. Do you think of all these things when we speak of a minimum wage? Do you want a girl to have a nice comfortable room?"

"When we discuss the lives of girls let us be a little more liberal; let us not think of a piece of bread; let us not think of a sandwich... let us think of the working woman as a human being who has her desires to which she is entitled"

"As a worker in the factories for years and as an organizer of working women for five or six years, as one who has come in contact with the working women in the factories during strikes, in organizations and out of organizations, I favor a minimum wage for working women and minors."

"Should we not consider a yearly minimum wage on the average?"

"The trouble has been that society has neglected its members."

"We know it takes years and years to drill into a girl the absolute necessity for organization, the value of organization, and I am not pessimistic. I know that working girls are awakening to the necessity for organization, but how about those trades where no attempt has as yet been made to organize them? In the meantime the girls are absolutely starved."

"As the union's official representative, Moreno organized the strikers into a united, disciplined force that employers could no longer ignore."

"Public political leadership among Spanish-speaking women was not limited to an aspiring middle class or an elite gentry. Organized by Luisa Moreno, El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española (the Spanish-speaking Peoples Congress) represented the hopes and dreams of many working-class Latinos. By the late 1930s, Moreno was cognizant of both the strength of local institutions and the distance between immigrants and citizens as she endeavored to bring together community networks under the umbrella of a national civil rights congress. El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española was the first national civil rights assembly for Latinos in the United States…El Congreso brought together two dynamic women-Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright-whose life-long friendship was forged in the fire of community organizing."

"While Luisa Moreno took the lead in organizing the 1939 national meeting of El Congreso, Josefina Fierro de Bright proved instrumental in buoying the day-to-day operations of the fragile southern California chapters…Moreno and Fierro de Bright believed in the dignity of the common person and the importance of grass-roots networks, reciprocity, and self-help...The two women also shared an awareness of the positionality of women in U.S. Latino communities. El Congreso created a woman's committee and a woman's platform, a platform that expressly recognized the "double discrimination" facing Mexican women."

"Fear that slowly brews into terror as the Smith Act blankets the land, covering under its legal cloak, persecutions unheard of in America."

"the golden carrot that dangles, from the hands of reaction, covers a vicious rattlesnake; for no scab, stoolpigeon or renegade has ever been known to serve the interests of the people."

"The words of the great American socialist, Debs, comes to my mind: “THE COURT OF FINAL RESORT IS THE PEOPLE, AND THAT COURT WILL BE HEARD FROM IN DUE TIME . . .”"

"the new Bridges case is a warning signal for all West Coast labor – that it symbolizes a desperate effort to tear down union conditions built in 15 years of struggle."

"Luisa Moreno spent her storied career advocating for Latino workers' rights, organizing thousands of Louisiana sugarcane workers, Texas pecan shellers, Colorado sugarbeet workers, and a multiethnic union of thirteen thousand cigar makers in Florida."

"They fail to see that the attacks against some of us will later be extended to them and their unions. They have forgotten the story of Germany, the story of Spain, the story of France. They have forgotten that united we stand — that all the bona fide union in other civilized countries were crushed, and the labor leaders of the right and left shook hands in concentration camps!"

"Strange things are happening in this land. These threatened exiles of long time resident are conveniently cloaked with certain legalities. But it’s a rather thin coat, made out of some plastic fabric — the brand is the Smith Act of 1940. This was an omnibus bill, that if allowed to stand will eventually completely abolish the Bill of Rights and make drastic constitutional changes — changes, not amendments."

"From New York to Florida, from Florida to Texas and California, in several states in many cities and towns I became a part of the struggle to strengthen old AFL locals, to build and extend CIO locals — for better working conditions, for more pay, for improvements in the deplorable conditions of women workers, Negro workers, Mexican workers. Many times we tried and failed partially; but most of the time we were successful. Sometimes the struggle was mean. We fought in the midst of KKK terror. We were jailed for daring to strike. We fought desperately for the right to organize!"

"Foreign intrigue plays too big a part in the affairs of Latin America. In most cases the people do not have a chance."

"Strange things are happening in this land, and only when the truth is widely known, can we put a stop to them."

"How poor is the memory of those right wing leaders that are blind to reason — who refuse to see that the interests of labor and the people are one"

"I resigned in March 1947, thinking erroneously that I had the right to become a housewife and enjoy the privilege of being a grandmother. But that was a passing fantasy, for out of the blue sky, one early morning I received a summons to appear before Jack Tenney’s very un-American Committee. regardless of the Tenney Committee’s threats on my then pending citizenship, I refused to answer their $64 question on constitutional grounds. My answer was that the Constitution of the United States was more important to me than citizenship."

"It’s not enough to protect what we have, we’re not just going to recover what we have lost. This is about taking risks to define the future…on our terms."

"Employers have the ability to voluntarily recognize them off the spot, but that doesn't always happen as we know. And then there's a contract negotiation process that goes on"

"People are tired of toxic environments. They're tired of being treated poorly and not having a say in how their workplace is being shaped or changed."

"As many women in our movement do – we find ourselves outside the spotlight, doing the hard work behind the scenes, focusing on making big plans come together to benefit the whole"

"Every worker deserves to have protections on the job and it is the goal of the labor movement to ensure that happens."

"The ability to speak up for each other on the job and at the ballot box is a crucial component in determining the rights and enacting the policies that affect the lives of millions of women and their families."

"We need to join together and speak out for good wages, great benefits, fair scheduling and equal pay for equal work"

"Woman suffrage will only accomplish the results we expect of it and hope of it if women develop into an intelligent electorate, and I would like to impress upon you the need of becoming familiar with industrial conditions so that when we get the power we can change them; and it seems to me that it is up to the women of leisure who are working in some way in the suffrage movement not to cry out or protest against the working woman's indifference to suffrage but to recognize her distinct contribution as an organized worker and to be ready to stand by her in her heavily handicapped struggle to better her conditions. Some of the leaders of the New York State have done this magnificently, but there are thousands who have not and who stand aloof and indifferent to the great struggle."

"I want to say to you suffragists, especially to some of you who are saying that the working women are not taking part in this great suffrage movement, and that they are not coming to the fore as they should, how can they? Working nine, ten hours a day and then on their return home attending to their home duties, where is the time for them to take active part in even a suffrage movement? Many times they have to stay in the factory and work through the evening, they cannot make engagements without the reservation that they can break them if work calls. And when these women join their union, attend their meetings and pay their dues they are doing more for social betterment than any other group that we know of. They are getting their suffrage training."

"the suffragists have a great opportunity to lay before a group of over worked women the power of their vote; in this way an intelligent electorate would be developed who knows before it has it, what it can do with the vote, and who will use it effectively. It is as we suffragists make ourselves intelligent upon the problems which we will have to solve that the vote will be of any use to us or to the community or nation."

"Just go through any of the public buildings at midnight and you will see old and middle-aged women on their knees scrubbing away the dirt that men of business have brought in during the day. That gives you a picture of how well men carry the burdens of women."

"We have in recent years experienced a tremendous awakening who have risen up and struck against conditions."

"You men as a body who make the laws, and men of money who support the makers of the law are responsible for this system of ours that forces 30,000 girls out into the streets."