More from Dick Meister
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From: Dick Meister
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San Francisco labor leader Walter Johnson was a key supporter of gay rights.
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The United Auto Workers is in danger of losing its standing as one of the country's most important institutions.
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So-called student athletes should be paid for their work in bringing billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities.
A Decent Living For All?
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From: Dick Meister
The minimum wage is increasing in eight states.
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The need to combat sexual harassment on the job is drawing lots of attention.
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Public employees, many of them African-Americans, are being hit particularly hard by today's high levels of unemployment.
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The AFL-CIO has a very promising plan to heal our very sick economy.
Related Pieces
Piece Description
Labor martyr Joe Hill was executed in November of 1915, but as the folk ballad says, he "ain't never died." This is a commentary on Hill, long a great inspiration to union activists, civil libertarians and others who are devoted to the causes of working people, minorities, political dissidents and others oppressed by powerful government and economic interests.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
It?s November 19th, 1915. We?re in a courtyard at the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, Joe hill. He stands before them straight and stiff and proud.
?Fire!? he shouts defiantly.
The firing squad didn?t miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, ?ain?t never died.? He lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols.
Joe Hill?s story is that of a labor martyr framed for murder by viciously anti-labor employer and government forces ? a man who never faltered in fighting for the rights of the oppressed ? who never faltered in his attempts to bring them together for the collective action they had to take to overcome their powerful oppressors.
Joe Hill?s story is that of a man and an organization destroyed by government opposition yet immensely succ...
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Timing and Cues
INTRO: Commentator Dick Meister remembers a famous American who never died.
OUTRO: Dick Meister is a veteran labor journalist.
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Sydney Lewis
Posted on November 06, 2006 at 05:01 AM | Permalink
Review of The Man Who Didn't Die
Dick Meister opens his compelling history nugget with the 1915 execution of Joe Hill, condemned organizer for Industrial Workers of the World, and moves back in time to explain what the fiery labor leader meant to the workers movement, and to the government which set out to squash him. Meister always packs lots of interesting information into his commentaries. His straight ahead delivery has improved by leaps and bounds in the past year or so. Not glamorous production, but solid, air-able, and damn valuable. Plus there?s a tasty nugget about postal workers invoking the Espionage Act to seize a packet of Hill's ashes. Which sounds like something that could happen this very day. With the minimum wage sitting stagnant year after year, and the 8-hour work day becoming a distant memory, and about 8,000 other things, this commentary led this reviewer to a moment of reflection on how painfully retro America has become. Dick Meister is a liberal, no doubt about it, and I'm his fan.