Hot Labor Summer
Summer is my patriotic season. The swelling love of my country takes hold every year around Memorial Day and doesn’t let up until after Labor Day. Every year I hang my red, white, and blue wreath on the door, and I have collected enough American flag t-shirts to change it up all season. And I feel a little thrill when I drive through town and see the bunting and flags hanging along Main. It’s been happening to me since the Obama administration.
I don’t love America for what it was or for where it currently seems to be heading; I love it for everything it’s capable of being. This is a complicated love for sure, one that regularly lets me down. I’ll spare you my list of specific complaints. (Don’t get me started on the billionaires!) But these past few weeks especially, America has been a real bitch.
Now here I am getting ready for the birthday party, putting on my American flag t-shirt. As in any difficult relationship, I have to find hope and a reason to keep trying. But in addition to being an American woman, I am also working class. My dad was in the Bricklayers Local 5 when I was a kid, and my mom was a nurse. And it turns out, nothing makes me want to celebrate America like a labor strike.
In July 1881—definitely a hot labor summer of yore—a group of black ladies who worked for a pittance as washerwomen in Atlanta came together to form a trade organization called the Washing Society. They went door-to-door, spread the word through black churches, and even involved the handful of white laundresses working in the city. The laundresses gathered support until they were unified and strong enough to make sure no one in the city was wearing clean clothes. Washing clothes in those days was far more time-consuming than it is today, and it was the first thing people hired out when they had extra money. The women who did all this washing accounted for half of the city’s domestic workforce, and they weren’t paid well or respected. Ahead of a big cotton exposition, when a lot of people were expected to be in the city, the washerwomen went on strike for a uniform wage and greater autonomy. The weeks-long fight that ensued not only resulted in higher pay for the laundresses but also empowered domestic workers in other industries. Hotel workers in Atlanta also went on strike that summer for higher wages. And the people who had the least amount of power in that place and time pushed back and demonstrated their value.
Fight Like Hell by Kim Kelly, where I first read about the washerwomen’s strike, is full of stories like this about people pushing back against exploitation. Thirty-three years after the washerwomen’s strike, another major labor movement in Atlanta wasn’t as successful. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill had a history of stoking racial tension to thwart worker solidarity. When white workers complained about working conditions or low pay, Fulton Bag hired black people for lower wages, playing up the sense of competition. When the white workers complained about the terrible conditions of the company housing, Fulton Bag made black families evict the white ones. And when the United Textile Workers union came to help the workers organize, Fulton Bag fired pro-union workers, evicted their families, and conducted a smear campaign against the union organizers. The strike eventually fizzled out, in part, Kelly suggests, because of the union’s own divisive racist rhetoric. This story and many others in the book illustrate how the labor movement is strongest when the working class rejects divisive, us-versus-them mindsets and works together. And Fight Like Hell makes it clear that no labor fight is ever really lost because they plant the seeds of future rebellions.
Kelly started writing the book during the pandemic, while the people holding up the world were underpaid, under-appreciated essential workers. Labor was having a moment, and hopefully, it still is. We’ve seen recent efforts to unionize in our largest corporations, and right now, hotel workers in California are on strike, screenwriters are still holding strong, and the Teamsters are pushing for better conditions for UPS drivers. The labor movement is gaining strength, even as it takes hits. It is a scrappy, relentless movement that feels more American than opportunity or capitalism.
And the more I think about it, the more I feel like the labor movement is our best hope. America was built with labor. When we see the rich people in the news, doing whatever stupid thing they’re doing, we’re the ones they exploited to get there. Yes, there’s power in money, but there’s also power in numbers. This is what I’ll be thinking about when I watch the fireworks tonight. And this is why I’ll for sure be wearing my American flag t-shirt.
Wow, big picture sharing, I will try to limit my comments to less than 1150 pages! As corporations build inestimable wealth, and billionaires continue compounding their wealth, and promote their slanted opinions in media, dangerous singularities are forming over the face of the planet, where these often socially, ecologically, and spiritually irresponsible forces dictate the distribution of resources pillaged from Mother Earth and its other inhabitants. Unions,, at least theoretically, have the power to redistribute resources more fairly among the workers. I have been a union member for over 47 years, and without their support, I would not be replying to your letter today. I am less than enthusiastic about the apparent direction our country is threatening to head towards, shepherded by a corrupt US Supreme Court, and supported by the Trumplican party. I hate to think that only one political party has a clue about America's real needs and how to meet them, these truths were once considered common knowledge, and should be obvious to all educated Americans. I see an uncertain path ahead, regardless of which political party dominates in the near future. There are certain American truths that are self evident, that all men, and women, are created equal, etc. For now, my union membership tells the world how I feel about the potential for benevolence from our corporations, and many billionaires. Thanks, Melinda.