The New Labor Radicalism and New York City's Garment Industry by Leigh David Benin

Author:Leigh David Benin [Benin, Leigh David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781317733607
Google: Gi2NDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-02-21T01:34:41+00:00

COMMUNIST IN NAME AND DEED

Progressive Labor students were able to use the Figure Flattery strike as ammunition in the civil war that raged in SDS. Figure Flattery workers may have felt less isolated as a result of the support they received from PL students, but the workers would have to continue to do most of the fighting to win the strike, and they did. Their display of strength and determination on Tuesday morning persuaded management to make a new offer that afternoon, namely, a four percent wage increase and reinstatement of every fired worker, except DeJesus. The striking workers again rejected the company’s attempt to rid itself of the thorn in its side. Apparently, both the management and the workers agreed that DeJesus was the central figure in the strike. During the course of the Figure Flattery struggle, “goons” beat him up in front of the factory six times, telephone callers threatened to kill him and his children, and the police ransacked his apartment (on South Third Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York) and confiscated his papers. The workers not only defended DeJesus’ right to return to work, but protected him from being arrested by the police. Moreover, his fellow workers came to understand that in supporting DeJesus, whom they primarily knew as a militant Puerto Rican worker who defended their rights, they were siding with a communist.72

When the strike began, DeJesus started meeting on a daily basis with PL leaders Milt Rosen, Wally Linder and Ed Lemansky, who gave him both tactical and political advice. They wanted DeJesus to win the strike, but to push the party line too. They urged DeJesus, against his better judgment, to reveal his communist politics. He had been selling PL’s newspaper, Challenge, in the factory (as many as “thirty to forty” a month were being sold by PLers and their supporters at Figure Flattery). Early in the strike, some of his fellow workers knew “on a personal level” that he was a communist, but in general most workers in the shop did not regard him as a communist.73

Nor did he believe that it was the right time to tell them that he was. In his view, he had not been in the shop long enough. His relationships were mainly personal, rather than political. For example, if a fellow worker missed a week of work due to an illness, DeJesus collected money in the shop to help him out. It was, in his eyes, a human thing to do, rather than a political act, but it helped him to get close to the other workers. In other words, his fellow workers trusted him because he would help them if they were in trouble, and not because he was pushing PL’s line.74

Nevertheless, PL wanted DeJesus to act as an open communist. In response, he argued that PL should change the masthead of Challenge to read “Revolutionary Communist Newspaper” (a change which PL soon made). He thought that the paper should say the c word, not him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.