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HOW BLACK WORKERS CHALLENGED THE MAFIA  
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Keith Kelleher
November 19, 2024
The Forge
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_ A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black
laundry workers, the Mafia, and the FBI in 1980s Detroit. _

, PointImages

 

Melrose Linen was a hellhole in 1980. A large commercial laundry
surrounded by cemeteries in the industrial wastelands of the northeast
side of Detroit, serving the city’s elite hotels, restaurants, and
factories; turning out truckloads of clean tablecloths, napkins,
sheets, towels, uniforms, and all manner of linen daily. 120 Black
workers, mostly women, unloaded, cleaned and pressed the laundry,
toiled in barbaric conditions, earning the minimum wage of $3.10 per
hour. The owners of the company, Tony and Jack Tocco, did very well.
But the workers did not
[[link removed]]:
Josephine Mason was a laundry worker who was regularly exposed to the
extreme heat in the plant. Anne Grice was a towel and napkin cleaning
machine operator. Marlene Hearn was a clerk. Here is how they
described the conditions:

_Josephine Mason: “Sweat rolls down your face in there. You get
tired. It gets so hot some people get burned by the steam. I went out
on maternity leave. They hired me back, but without my seniority. You
see what I’m sayin’? You get lint in your hair, mouth, nose,
everything. We ain’t got no Blue Cross or nothin’. You work down
here all them years and what you got for it?”_

_Anne Grice: “In there it’s like slavery all over again… We’re
right, why should we be afraid?”_

_Marlene Hearn: “We’re human, we’re not animals.”_

While the workers walked, car pooled, or rode the ghost buses of the
Detroit Transit Authority through their neighborhoods before dawn to
get to work, Jack and Tony, and their sons, drove their luxury cars to
work from their exclusive Grosse Pointe suburban enclave, just over
the eastern border of Detroit. The day-to-day running of the plant was
left to Tony and his younger son and nephew, William and Vito, and
according to the workers, they were a big part of the problem.

While the workers toiled in the furnace-like heat of the laundry on
steaming summer days that made Death Valley seem like a temperate
paradise, Tony and his son, relatives, and the other supervisors
luxuriated in air-conditioned offices at the front of the facility,
eating their meals and sipping their cool drinks in comfort while
workers were lucky to get a bathroom break or time to rest and gobble
down their bag lunches and drink from thermoses in brain sucking heat
and humidity.

That’s why, in July of 1980, the workers of Melrose Linen chose to
stand up and organize a union.

The ULU Organizing Team

I was one of the four organizers: two Black organizers, two white
organizers, one woman. We stumbled across the Melrose Linen workers in
mid-July of 1980 while workers were gathered around a coffee truck in
the parking lot. As contacts were made at the truck, it was clear
workers were very excited and wanted to organize.

There were rumors that laundries were mob run and one or two workers
had mentioned that the owners or their ancestors had been mobsters.
Why would we be intimidated by some rumored “Godfather shit,” as
one of our organizers called it, and run away from these workers who
wanted to organize their union? What could they do to these fired up
workers that we hadn’t seen before from the biggest low wage
corporations we had been organizing? We were about to find out.

We all worked with United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 222 in Detroit, a
small independent union founded two years before by the national
community organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now) to organize workers like these low wage workers:
majority Black and Brown and overwhelmingly female that were employed
the fast-growing service economy of the late 20th century: laundries,
fast food, healthcare, hospitality, low-wage sweatshops, you name it.
Industries that traditional unions would not, could not, or did not
organize either because of racism, sexism, or the lack of skill or
will.

Some of members of the citywide Fastfood worker organizing committee,
some of whom organized the only unionized fast food restaurant in the
US at the time.

No sooner had we gotten back to the office after the shift change,
than workers were calling us, wanting to know when we were going to
help them organize!

We could sense the excitement and energy and took a risk in calling an
organizing committee (OC) meeting for the upcoming Friday at offices
we shared with Detroit ACORN in the basement of the old YWCA building
in downtown Detroit. From our contact work, phone calls, and house
visits with workers, we guessed that Melrose had about 120 workers
toiling in their laundry. 

The Organizing Committee

Marlene, Josephine, and Anne were leaders in the drive, who we met in
the Melrose parking lot at the coffee truck or who we house-visited.
They and their coworkers had done their jobs well –– calling other
workers, buttonholing them on breaks, and getting them to commit to
come to the OC meeting. 

In most organizing drives, we were lucky if we could get 10% to the
first OC. In this case, that would mean 12 of the approximately 120
workers.  But at the first Melrose OC, over 60 workers –– or more
than 50% of the workforce: almost unheard of! Coming off shift by the
carload, they jammed into the basement offices we shared with Detroit
ACORN. And many that had to work the nightshift and couldn’t attend
committed their support to other workers.

When it came time to say “why we need a union,” everyone spoke up
–– there were a lot of issues
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_Marlene Hearn: “Dirty linen… we sort the linen from the hotels
and restaurants downtown into bins for the laundry…  sheets,
towels, handcloths, and more…  you would be amazed at what we find
in there, … we handlin’ all that with the unsanitary conditions…
rats runnin’ around, roaches, maggots, all in there… it’s
disgustin’!”_

_Opal Smith: “…and the supervisors, they talk to you any old
way… ’Hey baby this and hey baby that,’ and they try to put they
hands on you like they own you… they was harassin’ this one young
girl and talkin’ dirty, sayin’ what they wanted to do to her, she
started a cryin’… I told them to leave that young girl alone, but
they just laugh… the girl say she need the money but she just up and
quit… and Toccos sons, Billy and Vito are the worst…”_

_Jim Howell: “Two years ago there was some talk about starting a
union here. But everyone didn’t want it. They was afraid of losin’
their jobs. Now it seems like nobody cares.”_

Workers discussed the issues and why they wanted a union and then
discussed how they could sign up over 70%, or 80 plus workers on union
authorization cards and as members. We collected union authorization
cards and signed up those who wanted to be members as members of
ULU222, collecting the $5 joining fee and $5 per month. Everyone
signed a card so we had just over a majority of the 120 workers signed
up already: again, also almost unheard of. Workers took cards and
agreed to sign up co-workers for the union over the weekend.

Everyone was so excited that we had just over 60 and were sure they
could sign up at least another 20 to blow through our goal of 70%, or
84 workers.

They also discussed their options: They could collect cards, file them
at the Labor Board and wait months for a union election. Or, if they
were strong enough, pull a recognition strike, stop the cleaning
process of linen from all across Detroit, and force voluntary
recognition by the employer. They voted to do a recognition action at
the company on Monday morning as workers came into the laundry and
demanded that the Toccos recognize our union. If they said no, but our
turnout and card strength showed we were strong enough, we would
escalate to a  recognition strike and refuse to go back into the
building until the Toccos agreed to recognize our union. The vote was
unanimous to move ahead.

Problems at The Debrief

But there were some troubling questions that came up at the meeting
and the organizer debrief afterwards. The drivers, who would be key to
shutting down the company, were all white men. They used to have a
union but decertified the Teamsters several years back and now they
were paid all in cash under the table –– $500 per week. $500 per
week in 1980 would be worth just under $2000 per week in 2024 or over
$100,000 per year, tax free. How and why could the company afford to
pay the white drivers that much but pay all the production workers
only minimum wage? Besides the blatant racism of having very well-paid
all-white drivers in a supermajority Black city with a supermajority
Black labor force, why had they gotten rid of the Teamsters and why
were they paid in cash?

Then there were the mob rumors. Some of the younger workers said that
they’d heard that the Toccos were big time mobsters. But the older
workers said no, that the boss himself, Tony Tocco, had told them that
his father or grandfather had some relationship to the mob but that he
and his brother Jack, the real big boss, were actually legitimate
business people and had degrees in business from some college and were
operating legitimate businesses like Melrose.

 

Anthony “Tony” Tocco (left) ran Melrose Linen day-to-day in 1980
with his relatives in supervisory positions.

The Godfather movies had just come out and popular culture had
everyone paranoically seeing the Mafia behind everything. There was
even a Detroit street gang called the “Coney Oney’s,” a play on
the Corleone crime family from the Godfather books and movies. No one
was sure that the Toccos were mob, we chalked it up to rumor and left
it at that. 

Besides, we had over half the unit signed up and were on our way to
blowing through our 70% goal, these folks were ready to go through
brick walls to win their union. We had a great group of leaders and
workers, over half the shop! They had just voted to organize a strike,
so why should we stand in their way?

Although ULU was barely two years old and represented only a few
hundred workers in four locals (Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, New
York), we were aggressively organizing in fast food, hotels,
healthcare, and food service industries and were well-versed in the
sophisticated union busting tactics of these low wage employers. We
had won and lost our fair share of organizing drives against major
corporations.

If we were able to fight and win against those global, multinational
service industries, why wouldn’t we be able to win in commercial
laundries?

So, we were on our way and feeling good.

The G Men Arrive

We met with two special agents at our office on a hot Saturday
morning, two days before our planned recognition action on the Toccos
on Monday morning. They said they were from the FBI’s “Detroit
Organized Crime Strike Force” and had some information about the
Toccos that they wanted to share with us. After discussing it amongst
ourselves and the national ULU staff and our national pro bono
attorney, we had decided to meet with them since we didn’t have
anything to hide, and getting a little intel on the Toccos couldn't
hurt.

These special agents fit my preconception of FBI agents –– both
Irish Catholics from the Midwest, who had attended school at Catholic
colleges and universities: Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s
favorite recruiting grounds. One looked like an interior lineman for
Notre Dame, which it turned out he had been, the other looked like a
world-weary G-man who should have retired already.

They told us a lot: that Tony Tocco was the brother of Giacomo
“Black Jack” Tocco, who was the reputed reigning Mafia don in
Detroit and had been for the past several years after some of the old
timers had gone to prison, the grave, or retired to warmer climes.
Jack and Tony’s father had been William “Black Bill” Tocco, and
was one of the reputed leaders and founders of the Detroit Mob, which
they called “La Cosa Nostra” or “The Partnership.” Black Bill
and his cohorts allegedly performed many of the murders for the mob
and shot, stabbed, tortured, and stole their way to the top of the mob
hierarchy in Detroit.

They said that Melrose was one of a number of legitimate businesses
that the Detroit mob owned and that it was rumored that they not only
cleaned laundry there but also cleaned money from loan sharking, drug
trafficking, gambling, labor racketeering, and more. They said that
Jack in particular was a pretty rough customer and none were against
using their muscle whenever they wanted or needed.

We gave the FBI nothing in return, but that didn’t stop them from
asking: they wanted us to “wear a wire” and get Jack, Tony, or the
whole family on tape, threatening us so they could put them away for
good. We respectfully declined the offer to wear a wire and escorted
the agents out, but promised to “keep in touch” as the drive
proceeded. They gave us their cards and beeper numbers just in case
and warned us to be careful, the Toccos play for keeps.

We had a good laugh afterward about their requests, but we still
didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. We didn’t know Tocco,
but we knew the FBI and their track record with unions, the anti-war
movement, and other progressive organizations was pretty terrible.
Here were the Toccos, breaking every labor and employment law on the
books, and the FBI was only concerned with getting us to wear a wire,
oblivious to the blatant injustices daily visited on 120 Black and
mostly women workers on the job at Toccos’ laundry.

It was dark and raining the following Monday morning, July 28th, 1980,
as we assembled for our Recognition action on the boss outside the
employee entrance off the parking lot of Melrose Linen.  It was a
beautiful faceoff: we had close to 80 of the estimated 120 workers
outside the laundry, arrayed in an informal gauntlet. Most had come
dressed in their work clothes: blue jeans, shirts, hair wrapped in doo
rags or hair scarves; carrying their food bags and water bottles,
wrapped in jackets, or holding picket signs over their heads to block
the rain. No one could go in or out without going through our lines.
Despite the pouring rain, only a handful of laundry workers went into
the laundry, the rest remained outside with the organizing committee
attendees and other supporters or stayed home in solidarity. We waited
for Tony Tocco to arrive.

The only outsider was a reporter from the _Detroit Free Press,_ a
college friend of our head organizer, busily scribbling down notes as
he talked with the workers. Eventually, Tony Tocco, and his
supervisors, walked through the gauntlet, mostly silent, except for
Tony who yelled at us on his way through:

“You know, this is not the right way to go about this. I don’t
want to see anyone lose his job. But how do you expect me to do
anything for you? You can’t take a man and put him up against a wall
with a gun and say, “Let’s talk.” I’m gonna operate my
business. No one has had the courtesy to talk to me about all this…
No one came to me like a man… If you people do not report to me
immediately, you’ll be replaced by other people.” 

Who put a gun to his head? We thought. Why did he say that?

Over the next few hours, Tony and his lawyer with family entourage
came out again to alternately cajole and threaten everyone to get back
to work.

It didn’t work. Josephine Mason ridiculed the Toccos: “We aren’t
going to melt,” she yelled. 

After an impromptu worker discussion and unanimous vote to strike,
Marlene summed it up: “The only reason we shouldn’t go in is that
we have to make him hurt. Let’s stay out!”

And stay out we did. No one went inside.

We Shut It Down – The Toccos call the Cops!

After voting to strike and setting up our picket lines on the sidewalk
entrances to Melrose’s parking lot and front door, no one could get
in or out of the facility. We had music, dancing, songs and chants,
and the noise and activity alone was off-putting to anyone who was
thinking of crossing our lines.

One of Toccos older supervisors and his buddies guarding the front
door tried mimicking the workers’ dancing and singing, insulting the
workers, and throwing the N-word out like it was nothing. This was met
with a string of expletives from our picket line back at him and his
crew.

The Toccos then started hardball: calling temp agencies to send out
replacement workers to take our folks’ jobs. But when the temps
arrived, we were able to turn around a lot of them, educate them on
the sidewalk, and convince them to go home and not to scab.

 

“Shut It Down!” The whole family came to this ULU picket line in
Detroit in 1980. Shown here, the son of one the organizers.

We were so effective that Tocco started calling the cops on US! It
must have been a bad day for these alleged mobsters.

The company’s coffee truck even tried to cross our picket line, but
we stopped it and told the young driver to leave, causing Tony Tocco
to again call the cops.

Our fears were starting to become realized when the sergeant of the
watch for that area of the city pulled us to the side after the coffee
truck incident and asked us this question:

“Do you know who THE MAN is?”

Yes, we answered, we were familiar with the expression, “The Man.”

Then he said, “Well you oughta’ know then, that TOCCO really is
THE MAN in this city. And if there’s any more funny business on this
picket line, I ain’t coming out again to stop anything from jumping
off! So, cut the Bullshit! You hear what I’m saying?”

Yes, we said. We understood.

We had always heard that Detroit cops were corrupt, but this was the
first time we experienced it on one of our picket lines and the
sergeant was confident enough to say it to our faces.

That was not a good sign, and another signal that Tocco and Melrose
Linen were a different kind of company.

I started thinking, maybe this Godfather shit is for real?!

Jack Tocco Arrives

Word must have worked its way up the food chain, because another
luxury car pulled up and workers screamed: “The Big Boss is here
–– that’s Jack Tocco.”

Jack exited his vehicle next to the laundry door grimacing, his
ruggedly handsome face portraying only disgust. One of his
supervisors, rumored to be his son, Billy, came out to greet him with
a hug, but he was met with a vicious slap across the face from Jack.
He was clearly not happy about their performance running the laundry
and wanted to make an example as he raked his open fist, anchored by a
heavy gold ring, across his son’s face and pushed his way passed him
into the block house of the laundry.

 

Jack’s mug shot from his arrest later in 1996 on federal
racketeering charges.

One of the organizers whispered in my ear: “This really is Godfather
shit! Jack’s not happy and is sending a message to the workers and
his supervisors that he’s going to shake things up!”

The sergeant’s warning and now Jack’s arrival, plus the meeting
with the FBI, was revealing to us that maybe Melrose really was a mob
operation.

Then the FBI called again. They told us that they had gotten word from
one of their informants on the inside that they had followed our head
organizer to a spot where he was picking up food and that they were
going to whack him there, but decided against it because there were
too many witnesses.

They also told us that the Toccos had put the word out on the street
that they needed “soldiers” –– lots of them –– to show up
tomorrow at the laundry, and he was paying top dollar. And lastly,
they told us that they knew where we all lived and that we better not
go back to our homes tonight because they might show up there, so we
should try to find some safe houses to hide out in for the duration of
the strike.

Our excitement over our first day’s success in pulling almost all of
the workers out on strike, shutting down the laundry operation, and
watching while the dirty laundry piled up was met with the nightmare
that our worst fears were coming true: the Toccos really were mob and
they were gearing up for a fight.

As we bedded down in our safe houses for the night, the Toccos started
executing their campaign.

Union busting, Mob Style

By the time we gathered at the Melrose parking lot the next day, we
were knee deep in the Toccos’ union busting campaign, but didn’t
know it yet. 

There was hysteria on the picket line as workers met up and related
how Toccos thugs had followed some of them home the night before:
slowly following our leaders in their muscle cars as they walked
through the neighborhood, Tony’s and Jack’s guys made a show for
all the neighborhood to see. 

Then, once home, the soldiers parked right outside the leaders’
house or apartment, sat there, and stared vacantly at them as they
went inside. Large, tough-looking white men with sunglasses and
cigarettes, leisure suits, and styled hair, with bulges under their
suits, who didn’t fit in the neighborhood and didn’t care. Flexing
just to send the message: “we know where you and your family live
and you better back off this union if you know what’s good for
you.” They stayed long enough that the message was sent. Other goons
worked the phones, called people, whispered threats and hung up, or
just hung up. Or they called people and told them they better get back
to work or they’ll be fired and never work again.

Some workers were unfazed, but most who had been victims of the
harassment and intimidation were upset. Some screamed in their
huddles: “I don’t want them to kill my babies! I’m willing to
fight, but they come to my house and scare me and my family, that’s
where I draw the line… don’t want to lose my babies!”

Then the muscle assembled. There must have been 30 or 40 of them: big
dudes, weight lifters, muscles rippling, prison tattoos all up and
down their arms, wearing shades or perching them on top of their
heads, gold chains and rings, lining up on either side of Tony and his
sons, sizing up our crowd. It was starting to feel like a movie only
this was for real.

Our folks were on the line: singing and chanting, checking out the
muscle as they lined up in the lot, with a noticeably smaller number
than we had the day before, though still a decent-sized turnout. We
tried to intercept the temp agency workers as they came in to replace
our folks. We tried to talk with them as they walked up or were
dropped off out front. But unlike the day before, where we could talk
to them and turn them around, this time the Toccos thugs were
determined to get them through the line. His henchmen, two and three
at a time, ran to greet the temps and told them that they were paying
over $6.00 an hour –– double what Tocco had been paying before the
strike. The thugs escorted them through our lines and pushed our folks
out of the way.

We were used to some of the toughest corporate union-busting campaigns
from huge corporations like McDonald’s and Burger King. But this was
a whole new model, straight from the descendants of the Detroit Mob.

The Third Day – Day of Decision

Monday had been our’s. Tuesday Toccos soldiers had made their day.
By the morning of the third day the strike was almost over. 

On Wednesday morning, the workers assembled on the sidewalk outside
the laundry and voted to go back to work if Tocco would agree to take
back workers and commit to no retaliation.  When that message was
sent, Tony Tocco agreed and said to our head organizer: “Someday,
we’ll have a cup a coffee and have a good laugh about all this.” 
That someday never happened.

Losing a strike is soul-crushing, but jobs were hard to come by in
Detroit in 1980: massive layoffs were occurring throughout the auto
industry, so even though some didn’t want to go back, many had no
other choices. The workers who wanted to, went back to work. Another
group of workers refused to go back. Some who wanted to fight to the
bitter end also left, never to return. They had had their fill of life
in the Melrose Inferno and, after making their stand and risking their
job and life, they wanted no more of it. They would work anywhere but
Melrose.

The FBI eventually stopped calling. Their chance to use the Melrose
workers’ strike as pawns in their drive to get us to wear a wire and
entrap the Toccos was not to be.

Me, I was totally dispirited. I had lost my first fast food election a
few months before the Melrose strike, and then getting so totally
defeated by the Toccos’ overwhelming campaign sent me into a
tailspin. I had wanted to fight to the end, go out in a blaze of glory
with the few workers who still wanted to stay out and continue to
strike Melrose. In the post-strike debriefs and discussions, I argued
that we should not have given up, that we could have kept people out
and forced the Toccos to deal. Thankfully, I had good, more
experienced organizers to argue out my issues and see what we were
really up against: total power. 

There was no way we could have won. The Toccos’ campaign had an
effect: workers were not showing up to the picket line, were being
followed home, harassed, intimidated, putting their jobs and maybe
lives at risk by defying the Toccos in the first place. 

Because of the Toccos’ total power in the situation, they had
intimidated many of our leaders and members and some organizers, not
with verbal threats or even real physical violence, instead they used
a more insidious violence: following people home, replacing workers
with temp workers, bringing muscle to the picket line –– sending a
message with raw power. They didn’t have to say anything, they were
showing what could happen and what violence they could do. 

They even had the press: we were only able to get one newspaper to
cover our strike, though the coverage was several days late. The
Toccos had a history of suing anyone who accused them of being
mobsters and that reputation or threats kept the press, always
reluctant to run positive stories about unions in the best of times,
off of covering our strike. 

They also had the police in their pocket and the police sergeant made
clear that if anything more happened on the picket line, they were
going to let the Toccos’ soldiers do what they wanted. The machinery
of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that was supposed to
correct Unfair Labor Practices (ULP’s) by employers like the Toccos,
all rested on the premise of having a live body to testify against
them –– really many live bodies to testify against the Toccos: no
live bodies, no case, we lose. By their tactics of harassment and
intimidation, the Toccos were making clear that there would be no live
bodies. That is raw power and that is what defeated us.

Going Forward: The Mob, The FBI, The Union, and The Aftermath

In 1983, I opened up Chicago ULU Local 880 with my partner Madeline
who opened up Chicago ACORN. I used many of the valuable training and
lessons I learned in my early Detroit organizing losses and victories
to found and helped build local 880 into the largest union local in
Chicago, Illinois, and the Midwest.

The Toccos? They evaded the law for another 15 years or so, until in
1996 one of their family members, rumored to be one of their drivers,
went over to the FBI and spilled his guts. When I read the news
articles, I wondered if he was one of the soldiers in the parking lot
that morning 40 years before, who had now turned on Jack and Tony. The
FBI ended up indicting the Toccos.  Tony got off and didn’t spend
one day in jail, but Jack served two years in prison, and died
[[link removed]] in
2014, also a free man. Some of the press articles about Jack’s death
even said that he was somehow involved in the disappearance
and rumored
[[link removed]] murder
of Jimmy Hoffa, one of the most well-known labor leader rubouts in US
history.

A year or so after the Melrose strike, two FBI agents visited the
offices of the Claretians, a religious order of priests who had funded
our low wage organizing with small grants. They met with Father Tom
Joyce, the director of their Social Action Fund. They questioned Fr.
Joyce and then dropped what they thought was their hammer: “Did he
know that ULU was using Claretian money to organize fast food workers
in Detroit?” Insinuating that such funding and organizing was
illegal and thinking that they could intimidate Fr. Joyce and the
Claretians from future funding. Fr. Joyce replied: “I didn’t know
that, but I certainly hope so –– they need a Union!”

He then informed the agents that the Claretian Social Action Fund
could support low wage worker organizing and was within the law doing
so and ushered the flustered agents to the door.  Fr. Joyce later
told us that he thought Ray Kroc, the CEO of McDonald’s, had pulled
strings and gotten Reagan’s FBI to make some visits in order to
intimidate some of the funders of our organizing. 

Several months after the Melrose defeat, while organizing unemployed
workers in Detroit with ULU, I ran into one of the workers from
Melrose at an unemployment office on the east side of Detroit. He was
one of the few men who worked there and was applying for unemployment
himself. He recognized me from the picket line and we got to talking.
I winced as he recalled the Melrose strike with me and braced myself
as I thought he’d badmouth the union. Instead, he said in a positive
tone of voice: 

“That was something wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it really was,” I agreed.

After a few moments of thought he followed up with, “We really
showed them, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” I agreed, “we sure did.”

What I saw as a negative and wanted to forget, he remembered fondly as
a just and righteous fight where the workers stood up to the Toccos,
the most powerful mob family in Detroit, and for a minute shut them
down –– at least for the first day.

Over the years I wondered who was worse: The Tocco mob with their
soldiers ready to crush workers’ organizing or J. Edgar Hoover’s
FBI and their mob of special agents eager to destroy social movements,
use us as pawns to take down the Toccos, and then later trying to
crush our organizing by visiting and attempting to intimidate our
funders? It’s not an easy one to answer: total mob evil vs. total
government evil.

I finally concluded that they were both equally evil. It was the
workers who were the real heroes. It was the workers who risked
everything to take on both the mob and the FBI in their fight for
social and economic justice and dignity and respect on the job.

_[xxxxxx MODERATOR: ALSO OF INTEREST --_

_How American Dockworkers Fought Apartheid in South Africa
[[link removed]]
Peter Cole
Jacobin
Forty years ago today, San Francisco dockworkers struck a blow against
apartheid by refusing to unload cargo from South Africa. That kind of
international worker solidarity is badly needed today to end Israeli
genocide and apartheid.
November 24, 2024]_

_KEITH KELLEHER was the founder of ULU Local 880 (1983-5), then SEIU
Local 880 (1985-2008) and then president (2008-2017) of SEIU
Healthcare Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas (HCIIMK). Once the
smallest local union, it is now the largest local union in Chicago,
Cook_

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organizing through the sharing of ideas, methods, history, and
inspiration, and by building connection and community among organizers
and between sectors of the progressive movement._

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