Preface to the book Making Our Mark, edited by Karl Beveridge and Jude Johnson, to be published May 1999 by Between the Lines.
The course for union stewards had gone well and we wound it up with a performance of union songs led by George Hewison and his band, Rank'n File. One of the class participants, a technician in an oil refinery, came to me with tears in his eyes at the end of the show. "Don't get me wrong, D'Arcy," he said. "The discussions and role plays and everything were great. But the last hour was worth more than the whole rest of the course put together." He pulled two twenties from his pocket when the hat was passed, recognizing that those participants who only had strike pay couldn't contribute much. And he sat with the musicians, the phone operators, the courier drivers, the journalists and the electricians, to celebrate the spirit of the movement that had brought us together.
Hearts starve as well as bodies,
Give us bread, but give us roses.
When workers develop collective strength, many outsiders assume that the driving force is wages -- bread. Yet through the past two decades, the living standards of Canadian workers have been driven down by the corporate neo-liberal tide sweeping across the globe. To the degree that the labour movement has survived and thrived, it has been on issues of equity, dignity, fairness, the broader social vision -- the roses. Without that vision, it is harder to imagine an alternative to the mean-spirited climate around us.
"Bread and Roses," the song of the women textile workers in Massachusetts in 1912, flows from another era when the spirit of justice thrived despite a climate of cutbacks. Canadians today walk on bridges other workers have built; we use public health and education services other workers have fought for and we draw on the images and songs other workers, including cultural workers, have created for us.
This book celebrates construction work in the terrain of the imagination, work that builds conceptual frameworks that others may mock and doubt and finishes surfaces with loving precision while still unsure who will appreciate the sweat and the craft involved.
This creative building has been led by union-positive artists and arts-positive unionists. Both groups have been minorities within their own communities, but the synergy has generated dozens of projects in which professional artists have worked with union locals to produce new visual and performance arts of all sorts. Their stamina and brilliance shows in every page of this book. This coalition has showcased the work in North America's largest and most long-lived labour arts festival, Mayworks. And it has established in Hamilton a place to preserve and celebrate the creative spirit of workers, the Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (OWAHC). At the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), policies and awards and events that pay tribute to labour arts are now a regular part of union business and built into every convention. We haven't turned around the dominant culture but we have carried out some remarkably successful raids to defend the dignity and creativity of workers and their organizations. As a labour educator in four unions (USWA, CWC, CEP and SEIU), I have been privileged to participate in some of these daring and playful initiatives.
All this progress has been in the teeth of rising corporate power. The image of working people and their organizations is smeared daily in the mass media; the social service safety net is being shredded before our eyes. Right-wing politicians dominate the public platforms with their gospel of individualism and their smashing of collective capacity. But the labour movement and its allies in the arts community have sustained the spirit of resistance. We know that caring is of value, that anger is loaded with information and energy, that entitlements have to be defended and extended in each generation. In this, we draw inspiration from other places, especially Latin America, where unionists and their allies in the arts have been tortured and killed for defending the values that are woven through this book. The music of Silvio Rodriguez and Mercedes Sosa, the weavings of Chilean mothers and Guatemalan children, rise above the pain and fatigue of social struggle. They remind us of the human capacity to dream whatever the setbacks. The labour arts work in this book shows that through sustained and careful and creative effort, we have brought some of our visions to fruition. This book asserts the right to dream and documents the accomplishment of keeping workers and their organizations visible and vibrant in difficult times.
Let us savour the boldness and vision recorded here, and renew our efforts to move cultural work into the centre of labour's agenda; that agenda is to move working people into the centre of the society they have built.
D'Arcy Martin,
Education Coordinator,
Service Employees International Union, Canada
Hearts starve as well as bodies,
Give us bread, but give us roses.
When workers develop collective strength, many outsiders assume that the driving force is wages -- bread. Yet through the past two decades, the living standards of Canadian workers have been driven down by the corporate neo-liberal tide sweeping across the globe. To the degree that the labour movement has survived and thrived, it has been on issues of equity, dignity, fairness, the broader social vision -- the roses. Without that vision, it is harder to imagine an alternative to the mean-spirited climate around us.
"Bread and Roses," the song of the women textile workers in Massachusetts in 1912, flows from another era when the spirit of justice thrived despite a climate of cutbacks. Canadians today walk on bridges other workers have built; we use public health and education services other workers have fought for and we draw on the images and songs other workers, including cultural workers, have created for us.
This book celebrates construction work in the terrain of the imagination, work that builds conceptual frameworks that others may mock and doubt and finishes surfaces with loving precision while still unsure who will appreciate the sweat and the craft involved.
This creative building has been led by union-positive artists and arts-positive unionists. Both groups have been minorities within their own communities, but the synergy has generated dozens of projects in which professional artists have worked with union locals to produce new visual and performance arts of all sorts. Their stamina and brilliance shows in every page of this book. This coalition has showcased the work in North America's largest and most long-lived labour arts festival, Mayworks. And it has established in Hamilton a place to preserve and celebrate the creative spirit of workers, the Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (OWAHC). At the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), policies and awards and events that pay tribute to labour arts are now a regular part of union business and built into every convention. We haven't turned around the dominant culture but we have carried out some remarkably successful raids to defend the dignity and creativity of workers and their organizations. As a labour educator in four unions (USWA, CWC, CEP and SEIU), I have been privileged to participate in some of these daring and playful initiatives.
All this progress has been in the teeth of rising corporate power. The image of working people and their organizations is smeared daily in the mass media; the social service safety net is being shredded before our eyes. Right-wing politicians dominate the public platforms with their gospel of individualism and their smashing of collective capacity. But the labour movement and its allies in the arts community have sustained the spirit of resistance. We know that caring is of value, that anger is loaded with information and energy, that entitlements have to be defended and extended in each generation. In this, we draw inspiration from other places, especially Latin America, where unionists and their allies in the arts have been tortured and killed for defending the values that are woven through this book. The music of Silvio Rodriguez and Mercedes Sosa, the weavings of Chilean mothers and Guatemalan children, rise above the pain and fatigue of social struggle. They remind us of the human capacity to dream whatever the setbacks. The labour arts work in this book shows that through sustained and careful and creative effort, we have brought some of our visions to fruition. This book asserts the right to dream and documents the accomplishment of keeping workers and their organizations visible and vibrant in difficult times.
Let us savour the boldness and vision recorded here, and renew our efforts to move cultural work into the centre of labour's agenda; that agenda is to move working people into the centre of the society they have built.
D'Arcy Martin,
Education Coordinator,
Service Employees International Union, Canada