Activity

MANN: I can give you a good example of rank-and-file action not connected with elections. We had a man killed in the open hearth three years ago. He had seven days to go to retirement. Two or three months before that I'd filed a grievance, requesting that certain safety features be adopted. The gri…

Running late at night through small rural towns I often have the feeling that I am the only one awake in the whole world. Things appear different from high in the cab of a truck. The trees along the road make a tunnel through which your headlights illuminate a semi-circle of green. The limbs across…

I made friends with the people around me the way you normally do. Most of them were Chicanos from my side of town. We soon had a ride group going. We were on swing shift and one night we'd go to the black community where part of our work group lived and have ribs and the next night we'd go up and h…

It was that vision and the experiences in that strike that I experienced and which my wife saw, the vision in actual life of people determining their own destinies that sustains one and makes one stand fast for a long, long time. You don't have to so often go through all those doubts about, "Are th…

In a small way it was a holiday. The normal criteria for what was acceptable conduct disappeared. No one knew what to do and there were no leaders. No one called it. Pretty soon the strikers began forming into committees on the street corners. Certain shopkeepers were told to shut down and drug sto…