“Celebration for Economic Justice” in Pittsburgh Draws Educators, Writers, Artists, Musicians and Activists for Labor Rights

The Thomas Merton Center — Pittsburgh’s well-known peace and justice activist institution — was the sponsor of an impressive evening program on October 21, 1999 called “A Celebration of Economic Justice,” which drew between 100 and 200 trade unionists, students, and community activists.

The event featured local authors Michael Yates and Paul Le Blanc. Yates, a Professor of Economics at the Johnstown campus of the University of Pittsburgh, is a long-time labor educator and is closely associated with the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review, whose press had recently published his outstanding popular study Why Unions Matter. Long active in socialist, labor, and peace and justice activities, Le Blanc is presently a Professor of History at Carlow College whose A Short History of the U.S. Working Class has just been published by Humanity Books (for which he edits the “Revolutionary Studies” series).

The main speaker was Bill Fletcher, Jr., who — as Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO — oversees the labor federation’s Departments of Education, Civil and Human Rights, Field Mobilization, Safety and Health, the Working Women’s Department, the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, and its National Labor College. An additional speaker was West Coast labor educator Fernando Gapasin, who discussed rank-and-file union organizing and links between economic and racial justice.

Chairing the event with great warmth, charm and humor was Rosemary Trump, an international Vice-President of the Service Employees International Union, and President of SEIU’s huge Pittsburgh affiliate, Local 585.

Also speaking was well-known labor muralist Mike Alewitz, whose impressive work was displayed at the event, along with that of United Electrical workers (UE) cartoonist Gary Huck and local labor artist Bill Yund. In addition to art, the event was enriched with music. Singer and song-writer Anne Feeney (well-known in national labor circles and recently President of the local Musicians Union) was joined by the dynamic progressive singing group Cross Current (whose organizer is longtime socialist activist Ginny Hildebrand), and labor musician Mike Stout with his instrumental back-up group The Human Union.

The printed program for the event included substantial ads with greetings from: the United Steelworkers of America; the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America; the Pittsburgh Metro Area Postal Workers Union; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5; SEIU Local 585; Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85; Health Care Workers District 1199-P of SEIU; and the Metro Pittsburgh Labor Party. Ads were also placed by the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill and by the publishers of Le Blanc’s and Yates’s works, Humanity Books and Monthly Review Press.

Also contained in the program were the three verses of IWW poet Ralph Chaplin’s famous labor anthem “Solidarity Forever” (sung by all who were present at the end of the program), excerpts from Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes, and this poem from the famous socialist-feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman which expressed the spirit of the evening:

To Labor

Shall you complain who feed the world?
Who clothe the world?
Who house the world?
Shall you complain who are the world.
Of what the world may do?
As from this hour
You use your power,
The world must follow you!

The world’s life hangs on your right hand!
Your strong right hand,
Your skilled right hand,
You hold the whole world in your hand,
See to it what you do!
Or dark or light, Or wrong or right,
The world is made by you!

Then rise as you never rose before!
Nor hoped before!
Nor dared before!
And show as was never shown before,
The power that lies in you!
Stand as one!
See justice done!
Believe, and Dare, and Do!