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Calling on the MD Board of Public Works to "Fund the Frontline"

Union Voice/Readers Write: Echo of "If We Must Die"

Today's Labor Quote

Today's Labor History

[link removed] LABOR CALENDAR

Union City Radio: 7:15am daily
WPFW-FM 89.3 FM; [link removed] click here to hear today's report

Coalition to Repeal Right to Work: Meet AFL-CIO Chief Economist Prof. Bill Spriggs: Fri, June 26, 7pm - 8pm
Via Zoom

DC Excluded Workers Rally: Mon, June 29, 9:00am - 10:30am
Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC

DC Labor Town Hall with Robert White
Mon, June 29, 3pm - 4pm
Zoom; [link removed] register here

Metro Washington Council and Community Services Agency staff are teleworking; reach them at the contact numbers and email addresses [link removed] here.

[link removed] Latest DC-area labor news, delivered daily: tell a friend and help build our Union City!

This week's [link removed] Your Rights At Work radio show (WPFW 89.3FM): ERIN HATTON, author of Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment; plus MLOV's MEGAN MACARAEG on the DC Excluded Workers Rally coming up Monday, June 29, the poem "Ready To Kill" by Carl Sandburg, performed by ELISE BRYANT, and "You About to Lose Your Job" (Original Remix).

Calling on the MD Board of Public Works to "Fund the Frontline"
The Hogan Administration is using the cover of the COVID-19 epidemic to make drastic cuts to state government, reports AFSCME Maryland. "They are using the crisis of the pandemic to achieve their right-wing goal of destroying state services. (Gov. Hogan) cares about his rich friends, not the residents of Maryland." However, Hogan's plans are so drastic he needs the approval of other parts of state government, including the Board of Public Works. "We have potential allies there (and) if we fight back, we can stop him," said AFSCME Maryland. Nearly 700 letters had been sent as of last night in the [link removed] "Fund The Frontline" campaign. "Fund the Front Lines! It's the Only Way We Beat COVID-19!"

Union Voice/Readers Write: Echo of "If We Must Die"
"The picture accompanying the A. Philip Randolph quote (6/25) is an echo of Claude McKay's poem," writes Steve Shapiro. [link removed] "If We Must Die" was published in the July 1919 issue of [link removed](magazine) The Liberator. McKay wrote the poem as a response to mob attacks by white Americans upon African-American communities during [link removed] Red Summer.

If we must die, let it be not like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

photo by Seymour Kattelson, courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Today's Labor Quote: Emma Goldman

"When we can't dream any longer we die."

The women's rights activist and radical was born in Lithuania on June 27, 1869. She came to the U.S. at age 17.

Today's Labor History

This week's [link removed] Labor History Today podcast: SCOTUS bans LGBTQ workplace discrimination; Queer history of the UAW.
[link removed]: Last week's show: Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion.

June 27
The Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the "Wobblies," is founded at a convention in Chicago. The Wobblie motto: "An injury to one is an injury to all." - 1905
Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act, creating the structure for collective bargaining in the United States - 1935

A 26-day strike of New York City hotels by 26,000 workers - the first such walkout in 50 years - ends with a five-year contract calling for big wage and benefit gains - 1985

A.E. Staley locks out 763 workers in Decatur, Ill. The lockout was to last two and one-half years - 1993

June 28
Birthday of machinist Matthew Maguire, who many believe first suggested Labor Day. Others believe it was Peter McGuire, a carpenter - 1850

President Grover Cleveland signs legislation declaring Labor Day an official U.S. holiday - 1894

The federal government sues the Teamsters to force reforms on the union, the nation's largest. The following March, the government and the union sign a consent decree requiring direct election of the union's president and creation of an Independent Review Board - 1988

June 29
What is to be a 7-day streetcar strike begins in Chicago after several workers are unfairly fired. Wrote the police chief at the time, describing the strikers' response to scabs: "One of my men said he was at the corner of Halsted and Madison Streets, and although he could see fifty stones in the air, he couldn't tell where they were coming from." The strike was settled to the workers' satisfaction - 1885

An Executive Order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the National Labor Relations Board. A predecessor organization, the National Labor Board, established by the Depression-era National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, was struck down by the Supreme Court - 1934

IWW strikes Weyerhauser and other Idaho lumber camps - 1936

Jesus Pallares, founder of the 8,000-member coal miners union, Liga Obrera de Habla Esanola, is deported as an "undesirable alien." The union operated in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado - 1936

- David Prosten

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Published by the Metropolitan Washington Council, an AFL-CIO "Union City" Central Labor Council whose 200 affiliated union locals represent 150,000 area union members.

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