TheFightBack

John Hanrahan and Pete Tucker appearing on The Zero Hour

When The Washington Post pressmen’s strike of 1975 isn’t being misremembered, it’s not being remembered at all. The event has been all but erased from history – there’s not even a Wikipedia entry for it. Yet the effects of the strike are still being felt today, including by Post reporters and workers who are currently fighting for a contract.

The forgotten pressmen’s strike was a precursor to Ronald Reagan busting the air traffic controllers’ union, which marked a turning point in labor history. “After all, if… one of the leading newspapers in the country takes a strong stand against its own unions and busts them in a very primitive fashion, then why not do it on the national level?” said former Post reporter John Hanrahan.

Hanrahan honored the picket line (unlike the famed investigative duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein), and was the only reporter who never returned after the strike.

Here more about the forgotten strike in this clip of Hanrahan and me on The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow.

On what would have been former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s 100^th birthday in June, the Post ran a story that continues the paper’s decades-long effort to rewrite the history of the 1975 pressmen’s strike. This article is in response to the Post story.

Katharine Graham addresses the Post newsroom during pressmen strike. Photo: Washington Post

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” Mark Twain advised. In 1975, a hard-nosed union did just that – and lost.

On the face of it, it appeared the 200 pressmen from Local 6 of the Newspaper and Graphic Communications Union had some advantages. They were, after all, the ones who turned those barrels of ink into the printed pages of The Washington Post. It was dirty, dangerous work but it gave the Post’s pressmen leverage: if they went out on strike there’d be no newspaper.

Much to the chagrin of Post management, the pressmen – who were located in the basement of the old Post building blocks from the White House – didn’t just use this leverage to improve their own lot, but also that of the newspaper’s other unions.

“The pressmen, particularly, were giving us a lot of problems,” Post publisher Katharine Graham wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirs. “What it came down to was that, after years of concessions to their union… of surrenderings in order to avoid a strike at all costs, we were no longer in control of our own pressroom.”

“They had a feeling of immense power down there,” said Lawrence Wallace, who led the Post’s negotiations with its labor unions. “Everything that is produced here in the newsroom, in advertising, funnels right down over that folder on that press.”

Wallace was brought to the Post as a get-tough-on-the-unions guy in 1973, two years after the newspaper went public, which would prove a turning point. 

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“People say slavery is done… [but] it’s still there – in the corner,” says Gulnahar Alam, a domestic worker who, like many others, suffered workplace abuses. To combat this exploitation, often hidden away in employers’ homes, Alam began organizing. “People feel very powerful and so much more confident when they see that they are not alone. They no longer feel ashamed.”

Alam’s story is one of 18 brought to life in Shifting the Universe: Spoken Histories of Work & Resistance by first-time author Candace Wolf.

Professionally, Wolf is a storyteller; she’s also a keen listener. And from 2010-2015 she carved out time to hear the stories of regular people – from different walks of life and parts of the globe – who, despite serious challenges, evolve into troublemakers of the best kind.

The book couldn’t come at a better time. Amidst today’s political chaos, as President Trump stumbles towards possible impeachment, Wolf’s book offers a longer view.

“The long memory is the most radical idea in America. That long memory has been taken away from us,” said the late folk singer Utah Phillips, who Wolf quotes. “We’re being leapfrogged from one crisis to the next. You can’t remember what happened last week because you’re locked into this week’s crisis.”

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commondreams.org

The media has boxed President Trump into a corner and his only way out may be through war.

Measured at this point in his term, 100 days in, Trump is the least liked president since modern polling began. Right from the start, his failing administration has been thrashed by the media, and for good reason. For Trump, who’s as thin-skinned and self-absorbed as they come, this is intolerable. He’s got to change the narrative.

It turns out that’s not hard to do: just bomb a country. Then suddenly the TV talking heads, who Trump watches all day, magically switch from thrashing to fawning.

For Trump, this adulation is a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart, and there’s little chance he’s not coming back for more.

Launching a bunch of bombs is “presidential,” according to cable news https://t.co/KSpaE6Fgza pic.twitter.com/xo2JhQie1U

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) April 7, 2017

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In hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, repeatedly claimed to be above the political fray.

“I can’t get involved in politics,” Gorsuch said again and again.

Yet as he ducked senators’ questions, a multi-million dollar campaign backing Gorsuch’s nomination was underway.

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