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BLACK MILITANTS IN UNIONS
AFL-CIO
Region 14
608 South
Dearborn Street, Room 1025
Chicago,
Illinois 60605
August 8,
1968
Mr. William
Kircher, Director
Department of
Organization
American
Federation of Labor and
Congress of
industrial Organization
815 Sixteenth
St., N.W.
Washington,
D.C.
Dear Brother
Kircher:
For
some time in the Chicago area, I have been watching the Negro,
both in the organized and unorganized plants, creating a problem
which, I think, will have to be faced up to, particularly in
organizational campaigns.
Both
in the Zenith campaign and the Donnelley Chicago situation,
where large numbers of Negroes are employed, they have a
tendency to band together and are lead [sic] by the black power
advocates; they seem to think that an organization should be set
up for black people, only serviced and lead by black
representatives of their own choosing.
There
currently is a dangerous situation developing within the
Amalgamated Transit Union, Division 241, AFL-CIO in the city of
Chicago where, as I understand it, efforts are being made by the
black membership to disaffiliate from the International Union.
They have already conducted a four-day wildcat strike in Chicago
on this issue -- mainly not sufficient representation within the
officers and executive board in the Local Union. They are again
threatening a shutdown right around convention time. This is a
rather serious situation as President and Business Agent James
Hill has been appointed to fill the vacated Secretary-Treasurship
of his International Union, the big problem being that there are
only 4 Negroes on the 26-man Board of the Division and the Local
has a procedure whereby pensioned off employees vote on the
election of officers. Since most of the pensioners are caucasian,
this allows the present power structure to pretty well designate
who goes on the Executive Board.
In the Donnelley situation, we have what is know as unity
Committee, whose main purpose is to set up grievance machinery
for the black employees. We are slowly but surely infiltrating
this situation, hoping that we can control it.
In the Zenith situation, there is a hard core of militant
blacks who are being advised on the outside by the advocates of
black power, and I do not think if the I.B.E.W. is successful in
getting a re-run election here, they have to guarantee adequate
representation on the Executive Board of the Local Union, should
the I.B.E.W. win the bargaining rights.
This
is becoming a rather serious situation in Chicago, and I am
wondering if any of the other Directors are encountering this
type of problem.
One
of the main gripes seems to be that many of the international
unions are not giving the black membership adequate
representation in accordance with the number of members that
they have.
I
will be happy to discuss this with you over the telephone.
With good
wishes,
Sincerely and
fraternally,
Daniel J.
Healy, Regional Director* * *
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 27
December 2011
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