Category: Memories
Brief passages and clips drawn from oral histories and personal testimonies of workers, organizers, and leaders of the Los Angeles labor movement
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Daily Picket Debrief
Read more: Daily Picket DebriefThis 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 that it captured the challenges of trust-building and communication during the strike. As he wrote: “I chose this photo not […]
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Peter Olney remembers life as an organizer
Read more: Peter Olney remembers life as an organizer“So I started working for the union in, like, April of 1991, and I’ll never forget meeting with Jono [Shaffer] a couple weeks before I started. He said, “You know Peter, here at the Janitors, we expect you to mobilize probably five hundred workers every week to march.” I was like, “Say what?” You know, […]
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“To build a broad-based movement for social and economic justice”
Read more: “To build a broad-based movement for social and economic justice”In August 2000, the Democratic National Committee held their convention at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The convention came amidst grassroots insurgency and popular discontent with the Clinton-era model of neoliberal governance at home and abroad. In November 1999, labor unions, environmentalists, faith leaders, and students mobilized in Seattle at the World Trade […]
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“That stopped everything”: Rosa Beltran Reflects on Justice for Janitors
Read more: “That stopped everything”: Rosa Beltran Reflects on Justice for JanitorsRosa Beltran, veteran member of the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign, reflects on the power of rank-and-file union members “La huelga del 2000 fue una victoria— Yo estaba fuera de mi edificio piqueteando 24 horas seguidas, 24 horas deteniendo, durmiendo, pegado a los containers de basura porque como Uniones, si la Unión de los basureros […]
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“We call each other sister unions”
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Read more: “We call each other sister unions”Rocio Sáenz recalls the spirit of solidarity among unions in the early 1990s I come from Mexico City, and I had a union there. Even though, looking back at the unions in Mexico, they were often very corrupt, at the time I thought it was better than nothing. When I came to the U.S., I […]
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“They were willing to break with tradition”
Read more: “They were willing to break with tradition”Maria Elena Durazo recalls her first organizing job “On a trip to Mexico I met Cristina Vázquez and others from the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU or ILG, now Workers United-SEIU). And when we came back, Cristina referred me to the union for a job. I was already familiar with the work of the […]
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“We were the union they’d call”
Read more: “We were the union they’d call”Cristina Vázquez on the lessons of organizing immigrant workers in the 1970s In 1976, when I started working for the ILGWU, we had several thousand members, but for ten years they had hardly organized a shop. The union had not paid much attention to the situation in L.A. … but then the ILGWU decided to […]