Celebrating culture of labor history

San Francisco--The San Francisco LaborFest was established in 1994 to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film and arts festival. It takes place every July, beginning on July 5, the anniversary of the 1934 "Bloody Thursday" police shooting of two workers, Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise, supporting the longshore and maritime workers' strike. Their murders sparked the San Francisco General Strike, which shut down the entire city and led to hundreds of thousands of workers joining the trade union movement.

This year's themes were commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the New Deal and the 40th anniversary of 1968 and the movements that developed worldwide. Both were seminal events for people in the U.S. and around the world.

LaborFest is organized by unionists and unorganized workers, cultural workers and supporters of labor education and history. There are now LaborFests in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, every December. Laborfests have also taken place in Buenos Aires, Argentina and El Alto, Bolivia. In April of this year, the first LaborFest in Capetown, South Africa took place. In May, there were LaborFests in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. The need to build local, national and international solidarity is critical, if labor is going to face the challenges it faces on all fronts.

I've had the pleasure of attending many LaborFest events over the years, and the privilege of volunteering to help organize and staff events. The highlight each year is the Labor History Boat Tour, a dinner cruise around the San Francisco Bay. We get a close up look at the construction of the new Bay Bridge and sail right under the largest cargo cranes in the world at Oakland Port, and defunct and current maritime worksites.

This year local musicians Marcus Duskin and Carol Denney played and sang labor solidarity songs. International Longshore and postal workers/historians Leo Robinson, Carl Bryant, Fernando Gapasin, Jack Heyman and others conducted a panel on Black Workers, Hanging Nooses and The State of the Labor Movement. This year kicked off the First Annual Labor Book Fair and Poetry Reading.

The closing party featured live rock music and dancing with the strike-seasoned schoolteachers' band Angry Tired Teachers. We saw movies about Sacco and Vanzetti, Eugene Debs, workers' struggles in the UK, Turkey, Oaxaca, Mexico, South Africa, France, Spain, Australia, Ireland and rural and urban people in the U.S. The musical group Folk This! performed a tribute concert to Utah Phillips, the late singer, songwriter, storyteller, anarchist, railroad tramp, and defender of the homeless and workers everywhere.

Historian Robert Leighninger, author of "Building Louisiana," told us about the pattern of bombing of New Orleans levees in 1927 and 1967, and possibly in 2005. Brad Ott traveled from New Orleans to tell us about the struggle to reopen Charity Hospital, the famed public health hospital, which is being kept closed despite being declared fit to operate by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Army Corps of Engineers. (For more info and to help, go to www.replacethecare.org.) Get involved or just check it out! www.laborfest.net.

--Janice R.

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