TruthToTell May 16: LABOR'S UNTOLD STORIES: History Belies Successes
From: Andy Driscoll
Series: TruthToTell
Length: 57:47
Many of us know and understand the strugglesworking people fought when corporations and managers abused their workers, the 100-year effort to improve wages and working conditions, to organize craftsmen and laborers, the police-supported thugs hired to prevent them from it. We know how labor unions that emerged from all that conflict gave us the 8-hour day, the 40-hour week, paid vacations, toilets at the work site, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, holidays off – all of it union-made. But other stories lie underneath all of those successes, stories that provided hope, but have failed to fulfill their promise. Monday night (May 16), the next in a long line of presentations on Labor’s Untold Stories organized by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, a panel of speakers on discrimination in and against union workers and workers of color and the birth and work of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Labor pioneers in the Twin Cities pushed for similar laws in Minnesota, including the late Katie McWatt of the old North Central Voters League, A. Philip Randolph, the St. Paul Urban League and one of its activists, Monsignor John J. Gilligan of St. Mark’s Parish. Thus do the issues of race, class and labor merge once again into a classic untold story – because we do not openly discuss those discomfiting matters in this state or this nation. We want to believe it never happens, that race and class don’t matter, especially when we have human rights commissions and civil rights commissions and fair employment practices commissions and employment discrimination rulings and settlements and all the rest. Still, the pathology of racism and classicism plague our society and our labor unions. TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with Twin Cities and national labor activists, scholars and writers to discover some of Labor’s Untold Stories. MAHMOUD EL-KATI – Professor Emeritus of History, Macalester College, Essayist, Speaker, Honoree of Macalester’s Mahmoud El-Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies and Author, Haiti: The Hidden Truth (2010) ANDREW E. KERSTEN – Professor of History, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay; Author, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-1946 (Illinois, 2000) and Clarence Darrow – an American Iconoclast TOM BEER – Retired Business Agent and Political Director, AFSCME Council #6 (Minnesota); Labor Union Director, Paul Wellstone 2002 re-election campaign; co-author of biographical article on Very Rev. Msgr. John Gilligan (to be published soon)
Also in the TruthToTell series
TruthToTell, July 25: BUDGET SECRECY: Opening Windows on Government
(57:35)
From: Andy Driscoll
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with open government advocates (are there any real secrecy defenders out there?) and examine the trend toward increasing ...
TruthToTell June 13: ALL THAT WE SHARE: A Look at The Commons
(57:54)
From: Andy Driscoll
Perhaps Jay Walljasper’s recent book title is more definitive than some convoluted dissertation. It is, simply, All That We Share. And that is what the Commons are all ...
TruthToTell, June 6: BUDGET STANDOFF: Blinking? or Blindfolded?
(51:48)
From: Andy Driscoll
The budget impasse in Minnesota brought a state government shutdown at Fiscal Year's end – June 30. State workers were furloughed July 1, in the absence of a budget ...
TruthToTell, Monday, May 30-9AM: VALUES FIRST? A Heartland Forum on Governance
(59:59)
From: Andy Driscoll
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL was there May 18 at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis with Cameraman CRAIG STELLMACHER to record the Heartland Democracy proceedings to present a ...
TruthToTell May 9: SEX OFFENDERS:What Should Really Happen to Them?
(59:15)
From: Andy Driscoll
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI explore the raging ethical dilemma and Constitutional questions around post-incarceration civil commitment of sex offenders – and ...
TruthToTell May 2: POLYMET MINING CASE-PART II: Legal and Environmental Fallout
(58:34)
From: Andy Driscoll
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk again with those who argue against this project, citing the EPA’s rejection of the company’s environmental impact statement ...
TruthToTell Apr 25: POLYMET MINING CASE-Part 1: Copper-Nickel Mining Will Kill Northern Waters
(58:59)
From: Andy Driscoll
What is more important? Jobs? Or the long-term integrity of our air and water? TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with those who are feeling slightly less ...
TruthToTell April 11: WHITE PRIVILEGE REDUX: Our Advantage Persists
(01:00:52)
From: Andy Driscoll
What does it mean to be white in America? To understand what it means to be born into whiteness and the privilege automatically conferred on us because of an accident of ...
TruthToTell-April 4: ROGER MOE & STEVE SVIGGUM: Time for a New Redistricting Plan?
(58:51)
From: Andy Driscoll
TTT'S ANDY DRISCOLL and CO-HOST MICHELLE ALIMORADI query these legislative luminaries about their reasons for this historic move: Former SPEAKER OF THE MINNESOTA HOUSE OF ...
TruthToTell JAN24: SPECIAL EDUCATION: It's Mandated, but the Money is Missing
(01:58:30)
From: Andy Driscoll
Special Education is, for many people, that mysterious part of our public school system where the kids are “different” from the rest of the student body. TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL ...
Related Pieces
Piece Description
Many of us know and understand the strugglesworking people fought when corporations and managers abused their workers, the 100-year effort to improve wages and working conditions, to organize craftsmen and laborers, the police-supported thugs hired to prevent them from it. We know how labor unions that emerged from all that conflict gave us the 8-hour day, the 40-hour week, paid vacations, toilets at the work site, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, holidays off – all of it union-made. But other stories lie underneath all of those successes, stories that provided hope, but have failed to fulfill their promise. Monday night (May 16), the next in a long line of presentations on Labor’s Untold Stories organized by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, a panel of speakers on discrimination in and against union workers and workers of color and the birth and work of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Labor pioneers in the Twin Cities pushed for similar laws in Minnesota, including the late Katie McWatt of the old North Central Voters League, A. Philip Randolph, the St. Paul Urban League and one of its activists, Monsignor John J. Gilligan of St. Mark’s Parish. Thus do the issues of race, class and labor merge once again into a classic untold story – because we do not openly discuss those discomfiting matters in this state or this nation. We want to believe it never happens, that race and class don’t matter, especially when we have human rights commissions and civil rights commissions and fair employment practices commissions and employment discrimination rulings and settlements and all the rest. Still, the pathology of racism and classicism plague our society and our labor unions. TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with Twin Cities and national labor activists, scholars and writers to discover some of Labor’s Untold Stories. MAHMOUD EL-KATI – Professor Emeritus of History, Macalester College, Essayist, Speaker, Honoree of Macalester’s Mahmoud El-Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies and Author, Haiti: The Hidden Truth (2010) ANDREW E. KERSTEN – Professor of History, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay; Author, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-1946 (Illinois, 2000) and Clarence Darrow – an American Iconoclast TOM BEER – Retired Business Agent and Political Director, AFSCME Council #6 (Minnesota); Labor Union Director, Paul Wellstone 2002 re-election campaign; co-author of biographical article on Very Rev. Msgr. John Gilligan (to be published soon)
