You will hear arguments that labor unions are obsolete. Twenty-eight states have passed anti-union legislation.
Take one minute and watch the video below. Let Nancy inspire you! More than sixty-five million people in America work day in and day out as family caregivers, nannies, housekeepers and home healthcare workers—that's more than the populations of California and Texas combined. Yet, they are mostly invisible except to the families they serve. They work with many of our most vulnerable people, the elderly, the disabled, the very young. No surprise, our economy does not value this and they have few legal protections. Many tolerate low, or no pay and abusive employers. D’Rosa Davis is a member of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which lobbies for workers rights and fair compensation. She told Caring Acros Generations, “I earn $9 an hour....I work 70 hours one week, and then around 45 the next week...Like any mom I wish I didn’t haven’t to work so much — but when at $9 an hour what choice do I have? Earning so little means I can’t do much with my kids — and that breaks my heart." Traditional labor union bargaining over wages and hours doesn't work between families and caregivers, inspiring young activists like Ai-jen Poo to be creative. (I told you about her here....) Ai-Jen Poo (left) works to bring together a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the community to work together to improve the lives of workers and change the way we as a culture perceive labor. She told me, "As inequality continues to rise & technology transforms jobs, we must reaffirm the value & centrality of work, and build a movement that allows workers to be a part of shaping the future of work." Again, not surprising, it's mostly women's work she's talking about. Ninety percent of home health aides and 95% of domestic workers are women. Women are 47% of our country's workforce, and nearly half of them contribute an equal share to the family budget or are the primary breadwinners in the family. Ninety percent of working women do not belong to unions. Another group of hard working, women who often live in poverty are restaurant servers. According to Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC) 70% of the people waiting tables are women, and they suffer “the worst sexual harassment of any industry in the United States.” Aisha Thurman, told ROC, male customers “think, you know, my body is for them to enjoy, to look at, touch, say what they want. They think if they throw me a couple dollars in the form of a tip, it’s OK.” Immigrants who fear deportation if they complain of abuse and women of color have it the worst. A recent report by the Institute of Policy Research, found that while black women vote at high rates, are increasingly earning college degrees and succeeding in owning their own businesses, they still earn less than white men and women. • Black women who worked full-time and year-round had median annual earnings that were 65% percent what white men earn. • Nearly a quarter of the nation’s black women,live in poverty, more than twice the percentage of white women. Then there's the hotel/motel industry... A study of phone calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline showed 124 reports came in concerning "slave" workers in the hospitality industry in the last nine years. (Non-sex related) Another 510 calls reported workplace abuse and labor violations. Calls to a hotline most likely represent the tip of an iceberg. At left, Sonia Guevara, employed at a downtown Seattle hotel, voiced support for Initiative 124 which assured hotel workers new rights related to assault and sexual harassment, injuries, workloads, medical care and changes in hotel ownership. Though some labor activist methods may be new, one part that doesn't changes is the importance of inspiring workers to believe they deserve better and to have the courage to take risks to better their situation. Some other women in the new labor movement you might like to check out are Saru Jayaraman who founded ROC to aid restaurant workers, Nadia Marin Molina who has a labor rights resume a page long, and Sarita Gupta at Jobs With Justice. These women are not afraid to take on company bosses. They are also working creatively to build broad support across communities for workers rights and greater justice in the lives of poor women and children. Plenty to think about and celebrate as we enjoy the last long weekend of summer. During my research into the American WWII Nurses captured POW by the Japanese, I learned they were the "first large group" of American women sent into combat. When I wrote PURE GRIT I didn't know about the Hello Girls, a group of American women, telephone operators, who volunteered for the U.S. Army Signal Corps in World War I. The terms "large group" and "combat" can be debated, but what's clear is that here is another group of brave women that have only recently begun to take their rightful place in history. Grace Banker (right) was one of 223 women telephone operators who shipped out to England and France with American troops to aid communication between commanders and soldiers on the battlefield. Grace was the chief operator of a small group sent to the front during the Muese-Argonne Offensive, the deadliest campaign in U.S. military history, killing 26,000 Americans in the final terrible onslaught that ended the war. The seven women operators worked near Verdun, France, connecting calls while German planes flew overhead and shrapnel landed close by. On October 30, 1919, two weeks before the war ended, a number of buildings housing American headquarters went up in flames. The women were ordered to leave the switchboard, but they refused, continuing to connect calls as the fire raged nearer and nearer. They refused to leave their posts until threatened with disciplinary action by their superior officer. When the fire was doused an hour later, the women returned to the switchboard, found some of the lines still working and picked up where they had left off. The seven women later received Distinguished Service Medals for their courage and dedication to duty. When U.S. troops arrived to join the war in Europe, they found the telephone service in France badly damaged by years of combat. Signal Corps crews quickly stretched a far-flung web of lines across Allied territory to hook up communication between units in battle, supply depots and military headquarters. General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces was frustrated with French telephone operators who didn't speak English and tended to spend time on social niceties before connecting calls. He sent an urgent appeal to American newspapers for women who could speak French, operate the complicated switchboards, and free up men for combat. Seven-thousand women applied. Only 450-were chosen for military training, and half of those deployed to Europe. Most were already trained operators employed by U.S. telephone companies, and dexterous enough to connect five calls in the time a man did one. During the Muese-Argonne Offensive, they connected over 150,000 calls a day. Identity papers for Blanche B. Grande-Maitre (above) show her to be five-foot-two and 110 pounds. The contracts the Hello Girls signed differed little from army enlistment papers, and they "signed up for the duration." hey were treated just like soldiers and subject to the same “discomforts and dangers” including unheated barracks, bombings and mortar fire, according to the Oct. 4, 1918 edition of the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. “According to their superior officers, both in the Signal Corps and on the General Staff, they have shown remarkable spirit and utter absence of nerves.” General Pershing praised the women's work, saying they had more patience and perseverance for the job than men, and other officers believed they played a crucial role in helping win the war. But like the nurses in Pure Grit, when the hostilities ceased and they returned home, because they were women, they were not given their due. The Hello Girls did not qualify as veterans, receiving no benefits, and only a handful were recognized with medals. It took an act of congress, and sixty years before the Hello Girls received their Honorable army discharges, veteran status and victory medals. Fifty of the women remained alive to enjoy the moment. First day of summer, I dragged out my bicycle, my wonderful husband pumped up the flat tires, and I vowed to start riding it more and driving the car less. To inspire myself, I'm writing the story of Gino Bartali, one of the greatest cyclists of all time and a genuine hero. “Good is something you do, not something you talk about. Some medals are pinned to your soul, not to your jacket.” So said this two-time winner of the Tour de France. Above, Gino Bartali in 1936. In between his cycling victories, Bartali helped save some 800 Jews from the Nazis. Gino Bartali grew from humble beginnings in rural Tuscany, his father a day laborer, his mother a lace maker. At age 11 he rode a bicycle to school in Florence from his village Ponte a Ema. Wheeling through the Tuscany hills, Gino developed a love for cycling, and a heart for tackling mountains. He won his first race at the age of 17, and at 24, rode to victory in the 1938 Tour de France, gaining international acclaim. Back in Italy, Benito Mussolini wanted to claim Bartali's victory as proof Italians were part of the master race, but in a risky move, Gino refused to go along with the fascist dictator. When World War II sidetracked Gino's cycling career, he found an even more valuable way to use his bike. In 1943, Germany occupied Italy and the Nazis started shipping Italian Jews to concentration camps. Bartali agreed to aid the Italian Resistance as a courier. Under the guise of long training rides and wearing an Italian racing jersey, Bartali risked his life transporting photographs and counterfeit documents in the hollow frame and handlebars of his bicycle. The photos and documents provided Italian Jews with false identity cards to protect them from the Nazis. People caught helping Jews evade capture were often executed immediately. Bartali saved a friend Giacomo Goldenberg and his family by providing food and hiding them in an apartment he owned in Florence. Without his help, the family would most probably have died in the Holocaust. At left, the Goldenberg family--Elvira and Giacomo with their son Giorgio and their daughter Tea. In July 1944, Bartali was arrested and interrogated at Villa Triste in Florence, where local Fascist officials questioned and tortured prisoners. Fortunately, one of the interrogators had known Bartali before the war and convinced the others he should be let go. When the war was over, Gino went back to racing, racking up a third career victory in the Giro d'Italia in 1946, shown above. Then he shocked the cycling world by returning to win the Tour de France again, ten years after his first victory. No other cyclist has achieved that feat.
Bartali was known as a fierce competitor up until he retired at age 40, after being injured in a road accident. He was somewhat of a loudmouth on the cycling circuit, but modest about the fact he's credited with helping save the lives of hundreds of people. The story did not come out before he passed away in 2000. Biographer, Ali McConnon told CNN, "He was very modest about it. He held a profound sense that so many had suffered in a much greater capacity than he had. He didn't want to be in the spotlight or diminish the contributions of others." Bartali rarely spoke of his actions in the war. When asked by another reporter to recount his greatest victory, Gino said, “I won the challenge of life, winning the love of the people.” Now, there's a man who's inspiring in a good number of ways! You may remember me writing about Audrey Faye Hendricks several years ago. She was nine-years-old, when arrested and sent to jail during a civil rights march in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. I'm excited to tell you about a new book about Audrey, a picture book for primary grade children about an incredibly brave third grader. The Youngest Marcher, by Cynthia Levinson tells the story of the Birmingham Children's March through the eyes of one little girl. Audrey's family was friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, and she was inspired by his talk about justice. Dr. King considered Birmingham the most violently racist city in the country, and he spoke in churches there urging blacks to march in protest of segregation, even though they'd be arrested. "Fill the jails!" said Dr. King.
The plan seemed risky to adults, who feared they'd lose their jobs, be assaulted or possibly killed. Few stepped up. When Civil Rights Leader Reverend James Bevel, suggested school children should march and go to jail, Audrey was one of the first to volunteer. Some four-thousand young people marched, and kept marching until Birmingham's jails were filled to capacity. Audrey spent seven days in custody, the youngest known child arrested. The Children's March was powerful, helping gain momentum for civil rights across America. Two and a half months later, Birmingham rescinded its segregation laws, and a year later Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Cynthia Levinson's earlier book We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March tells Audrey's story in more detail, as well as the stories of three other young marchers. In my 2014 post, here's what Cynthia had to say about the courage of those young civil rights activists: When I tell school children today about the brave youngsters in Birmingham, they want to know if I would march, too. Would I sing and pray? Would I face dogs, hoses, and jail? The reason that I know, unfortunately, that I would not is that I did not. In May 1963, I was an eighteen-year-old high school senior in Columbus, Ohio. In fairness, not a single white person joined the black children during their protests in Birmingham so it’s not completely surprising that I didn’t fly down there. (Some white clergymen and the folk singer Joan Baez did, however. Nevertheless, to the extent that I paid attention to the news, I was bewildered by what was happening down there. Worse, I hardly paid attention at all. In fact, although I knew about the dogs and the hoses, I didn’t know that it was children who took responsibility for desegregating their city until decades later. Furthermore, although later I did participate in a few protests about political issues I cared about, I chose tame ones where no one was going to get hurt. Because we know how events in the past have turned out, history in hindsight looks inevitable. Young people today could believe that the children of Birmingham weren’t in any real danger. Beforehand, however, Dr. King was so worried that someone might get hurt or killed that he opposed their actions. Sharing my own embarrassing past with them, I think, makes the threats more real. These were truly dangerous times. Courage, I hope they learn, does not entail ignoring the dangers but, rather, paying attention to them—and then making a decision about whether or not to proceed. Courage, I’ve learned, is not casual. Courage requires a cause. And, courage draws strength from cooperation. Thank you, Cynthia! So well said. Learn more about Cynthia and her books here... I also want you to meet the very talented illustrator of The Youngest Marcher, Vanessa Brantley Newton. (at left) She says "The beauty of the book is that little children will walk away with- 'I can do something, no matter how small I am, there is something I can do.' That's empowering." Vanessa demonstrates how she illustrated the book in a live video interview here.... It's amazing to watch her draw! She's fun to listen to, too. Vanessa is a prolific illustrator. Check out more of her work here... I am traveling this week, so I've invited Author Kathryn Atwood to tell you about her book Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. She shares the heartbreaking story of three women who, like Louis Zamperini, whose story is told in Unbroken, endured through hardship and torture to survive WWII. Thank you, Kathryn. My personal images and interest in WWII—as well as a previous book I'd written--all focused on the European conflict. My Army Air Corps dad and his three brothers had all flown in the European Theater and while I was in high school The Hiding Place [the story of Corrie ten Boom] had come to theaters. So the two basic images implanted in my mind regarding WWII—tall, dashing, Dutch-American flyboys and a middle-aged Dutch woman who defied the Nazis by hiding Jews—had, apart from Pearl Harbor, made me consider WWII as a primarily European conflict and had compartmentalized the war in my brain under the category of courage, not necessarily endurance. Reading the memoirs and biographies of the women featured in what would become Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater, I came to understand that endurance was precisely what the Pacific War had been for millions of people; not only for American troops fighting an enemy who refused to surrender, but for the civilians unfortunate enough to find themselves in Japanese-controlled territory. Three women featured in my book perhaps fit more precisely into the Unbroken category because they, like Louis Zamperini, endured intentional physical torture. Elizabeth Choy, Sybil Kathigasu, and Claire Phillips all suffered at the hands of the Kempetai, the Japanese military police, who, like the German Gestapo, were tasked with weeding out resistance activities. Elizabeth Choy found herself in their hands inadvertently after she had unknowingly passed radio parts to Allied prisoners in Singapore. The Japanese were convinced she was part of a larger plot so to obtain the desired confession, they tortured her nearly to death. Deeply religious, she refused to lie, even to save her life. Sybil Kathigasu, on the other hand, was an active member of the Malayan resistance: she provided medical care to local guerilla fighters. She was caught and taken into Kempeitai custody where one officer named Eko Yoshimura took a special interest in breaking her. He nearly destroyed Kathigasu's body but her will remained intact and she never divulged the information Yoshimura sought. Claire Phillips, an American member of the Manila resistance, charmed and chatted up Japanese officers in her nightclub, gleaning precious tidbits of intel, then used her earnings to sneak food to starving American POWs. Claire was caught, interrogated, tortured, and starved by the Kempeitai for nearly nine months without betraying anyone.
Conversion to Christianity saved Zamperini from his dark, downward spiral but not all American Pacific War POWs fared as well: they suffered far more PTS, alcoholism, premature death, suicide, and divorce in comparison with their counterparts released from German POW camps. I found a similar trend among the women whose stories I encountered while writing my book. Sybil Kathigasu died three years after the war from complications arising from her beatings. Claire Phillips died in 1960 from alcoholism-related meningitis. All war creates suffering in the moment and in the aftermath. The Pacific War seemed to be a conflict in which this was intensely true for reasons I’m still sorting out. But whatever the reason, the people who stood up to Japanese fascism deserve respect and remembrance just as much as those who defied the Nazis. Louie Zamperini once dismissed his war hero status, claiming that mere survival does not make one a hero. Millions of his fans--myself included--profoundly disagree. Surviving the Pacific War was more than enough to earn the designation. Thanks you, Kathryn. Learn more about Author Kathryn Atwood and her books here... |
I'm fascinated to discover little-known history, stories of people and events that provide a new perspective on why and how things happened, new voices that haven't been heard, insight into how the past brought us here today, and how it might guide us to a better future.
I also post here about my books and feature other authors and their books on compelling and important historical topics. Occasionally, I share what makes me happy, pictures of my garden, recipes I've made, events I've attended, people I've met. I'm always happy to hear from readers in the blog comments, by email or social media. Archives
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