This photo was donated by Sammy Feldblum, a participant in the UC UAW Labor Summer Program who contributed to the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Collection. As Feldblum described, the significance of the image was in capturing the challenges of trust-building and communication. As he wrote:
“I chose this photo not because I am the one with the megaphone, but instead because it gestures toward one of the great difficulties of union democracy: the ability to convey evolving information between rank-and-file and leadership, to effectively channel the union’s collective will. Our strike spanned nine campuses, and included some 48,000 workers: collective action comprised both organizing our particular corners of campus and coordination across campuses and the state. This picture, by UCLA anthropologist Nicole Smith, shows an end-of-day consultation within our picket line, in which we considered strategy and mood. By strike’s end, a congress of leaders from each department gathered to facilitate information sharing from the picket line to the bargaining table and back; before that, though, difficulties in communication were felt at times as a lack of attentiveness to rank-and-file priorities.”
“Union democracy is a dynamic thing: the strength of this strike depended on the widespread mobilization of membership cultivated by actions in the preceding years, and the strike in turn proffered new experiences, activations, and insights to inform the struggles ahead. Perhaps my holding the microphone is then in fact illustrative: far from a seasoned unionist before the strike, I, like so many others, found myself newly thrust into vexed situations with material stakes and unclear outcomes, and nothing to do about it but think hard with my comrades about how to proceed as the tides roiled all around us.”
Photos from this picket line, as well as many others, are part of the UAW Fair UC Now 2022 Campaign Collection, part of the Wayne State Reuther Library.