Standing Together: Labor Day event celebrates legacy of Bread and Roses Strike

Standing Together: Labor Day event celebrates legacy of Bread and Roses Strike

Merrimack Valley Related Photos · MARY SCHWALM/Staff photo Union members and supporters march along Broadway from the Malden Mills to Campagnone Common in Lawrence during the 100th anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike. 9/3/12 · MARY SCHWALM/Staff photo Union members and supporters march along Broadway from the Malden Mills to Campagnone Common in Lawrence during the 100th anniversary of the Bread and Roses Strike. MARY SCHWALM/Staff photo · MARY SCHWALM/Staff photos Union members and supporters march from the Malden Mills to Campagnone Common in Lawrence during the 100th anniversary of the Bread and Roses Strike. MARY SCHWALM/Staff photos · MacKenzie Trainor, left, and Ariana Michitson, dancers from the Center for Performing Arts of Acting and Dancing in Methuen, wait their turn to take the stage. · MARY SCHWALM/Staff photo Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua joins in the unveiling of the 1912 Strikers' Monument at Campagnone Common in Lawrence. · Actors with the Bread and Puppet Circus practice their horse puppet maneuvers before a show at the 28th annual Bread and Roses Festival on Campagnone Common in Lawrence. September 4, 2012 Standing Together: Labor Day event celebrates legacy of Bread and Roses Strike By Douglas Moser dmoser@eagletribune.com LAWRENCE — What made the Bread and Roses Strike different was its solidarity across various ethnic and linguistic lines. In a city still characterized by a population made largely of immigrants and their children, Labor Day event organizers and union members yesterday linked Lawrence’s history of immigration to the significance of the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike in a festival on Campagnone Common that included a march and the unveiling of a monument to that strike. “It was a big day in labor history,” said Paul Georges, president of the Merrimack Valley Central Labor Council, one of the festival organizers. “It started a revolution in the labor movement and spread throughout New England and the rest of the world. People got a clearer understanding of standing together and how that’s in their best interest.” The Bread and Roses Strike started in January 1912 after the Massachusetts Legislature reduced the work week from 56 hours to 54. Business and industry subsequently reduced pay, leading to a massive strike in Lawrence that lasted about nine weeks and included clashes with city police and Massachusetts National Guard units. Along with pay, they walked out over child labor and worker safety issues. Labor leaders said that strike and its legacy is still relevant today, and pointed to growing income disparity in the United States and working class and middle class wages that have been stagnant for more than a decade. “Many of the things they were against, the injustice, is still here today,” said Frank McLaughlin, president of the Lawrence Teachers’ Union. The city unveiled a monument to the Bread and Roses Strike, two large bronze plaques depicting the strikers and a 30,000-pound piece of basalt granite quarried in Dracut. The plaque unveiled yesterday shows a man carrying an American flag in front of lines of striking men and women, with City Hall’s cupola and the mills’ smokestacks in the background. Gloucester sculptor Daniel Altshuler crafted the plaque and was on hand for the unveiling. He said he visited Lawrence and studied up on the history of the strike and of the city with books and videos when working on the concept of the plaque. “This is Labor Day, and these men, women and children put their livelihoods on the line for us,” Altshuler said. The monument, which will be completed in about a month when the bronze plaques are attached to the granite, was paid for with private donations and was installed on the north common next to Common Street across from City Hall and the Superior Court building. Yesterday’s Bread and Roses Festival started at 11 a.m. with a march from outside the Polartec building on Stafford Street, down Broadway and across Haverhill Street to the common. Hundreds of people participated, most of whom were union members marching in honor of the 1912 strike, in support of local workers and for the cause of labor unions generally. “My family took part in that (strike). They immigrated to Lawrence from Lithuania and Ireland,” said Claire Padbaiskas, a fourth-grade teacher at Lawrence Public Schools. “Workers built the United States and they’re still building the United States. We need to stand with them.” John Feliz, with Building Wreckers local 1421, said he and many of his fellow members were there to support other unions and political candidates he said would support workers rights. His union and several others joined the march. “We’re supporting all the unions in the area,” he said. “We’re here to support the people that look out for the workers.” Many of the marchers carried signs and wore T-shirts and pins supporting Elizabeth Warren for Senate and Barack Obama for President. Ethan Snow, of the union Unite Here — which represents employees at Polartec and marched as well — said he is third-generation union member. Organized labor needs to adjust as the job environment evolves from a time when a person spent a whole career in one job to one where people regularly have multiple careers over a working lifetime. “As the job landscape changes, young people can benefit from contact with unions,” he said. “It used to be you could go into one of these mills and keep your job for a lifetime. Now people need two or three jobs and come out of college with a massive debt burden.” The festival included music all afternoon, lines of food vendors and numerous booths with political and union themes. --- Follow Douglas Moser on Twitter @EagleEyeMoser. To comment on stories and see what others are saying, log on to eagletribune.com.