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Okay, this is January 30th. I'm with Jeremy brecher. And this is Dan Karai January 30th, 2016. We're doing an interview at and for Friendship Heights, Washington, DC. Exploring Jeremy's sources of inspiration for doing his oral history, work and assessment of that work. So I don't we get started with that question. Now, we're you know what really inspired you to actually think about using oral history as a tool in your work. Well, I think there are there are a lot of things that are in the air at various points in my life. Some of which I knew about in summer, which I probably didn't even know about. I learned long after I've been doing it that my father who grew up in Minneapolis as a high school student, had gone across the line of over into st. Paul, and interviewed people from the newer, Jewish immigration in st. Paul, for a high school paper, which I had known nothing about, he was from this route. Unity, is that a Minneapolis, which was a much older German background community and so somewhere, you know, by osmosis maybe that I picked up something from that, the In there was a woman named Dorothy Lee, who was a professor of anthropology, who subcircuit came and was spending Summers next to me, who was a Greek immigrant herself. And by the time that I really got to know, her was refusing to read anything except autobiographies because she called herself an experienced. All existential experiential Anthropologist. And so the idea of trying to get our people's experience through what they said or what they wrote was definitely a fide and kind of held up as an important way of knowing for me from that and she was a huge influence in Mentor for me. So and that was in the 60s or even before that it was probably first. Got to know her when I was about 10. So we've been 56 around there too. That she came to helping Hill, which is ill my little Community, another story in its own. Right, but she and then, as I was behaving a teenager, so I into the early 60s. She was a huge influence, had gave me things to read guided my my reading and thinking quite a bit. These gave me a book called metamorphosis by German. Psychoanalysts Maverick. Psychoanalyst her distract tell which said sort of influence me in the same general direction because he was throwing on phenomenological approach, is experiential approach to. So, how do you get at Ants and how do you get some understanding of other people's experience, which I think it's also a neat, you know, any kid that is part of what their Drive is, but it got a little bit channels into things that eventually manifested themselves and in world history. I think I was vaguely aware. I read the boys have black reconstruction very early, and I believe he makes use of the Freedmen's Bureau slave narratives, which were essentially an oral history project. I was going to say for your radical roots of oral history. That it far precedes, the things we normally think of and the Freedmen's Bureau, just heard me this morning. That those interviews would be a perfect example and also of how from that time. Oral history was viewed as a tool of Of us of a social reform movement because I would certainly, you know, they wanted they wanted get the goods on slavery. While the slaves could still tell about it was, as I understand it, the core of the motivation for those and I was certainly aware and some vague way of the WPA. We're all history things in my family. I would certainly was exposed to people who would then I don't know if there's anyone who would actually been in the WPA oral history projects, but Certainly were people who knew all about them and talked about them and regarded as part of their cultural background from the from the 30s, partially growing out of autobiography interest, bill of dorky. Delete. I was very interested in autobiographies and personal documents. There was a Series of pamphlets on methodology of using personal documents that was done by. Someone with a name, like social science, research Council, but I don't know if it was the same organization or something else, but they actually did a series of sort of manuals or critical guides to using personal documents in the social sciences, which I acquired at some early age. I have no idea how I found out about them, but you do read them and and the other piece that is, Lost my train of thought will come back to me. Oh, and another piece that is for me. And I think for a lot of other people of my generation really was folk music and folklore with a strand that flew into this. If you had we're interested in folk music, you you had the folkways records with their massive, massive. Booklet of notes inside which were mostly essentially oral histories of the people and thus were the performers and their stories about the so on and about the background of them and their family and Community backgrounds. And evoke a man that was part of Idea of what the folklore. So that generation, some of them thought they were supposed to be doing so that really fed into it. That's another another piece of what I converted into this work and eventually actually we ended up doing ethnic music collected in Waterbury and Naugatuck Valley. After the brass workers project with a very strong. Basically, I would use Going like in the world, his story and get people's stories about the people and the culture of the community family, history, Etc, and embeds US songs in that, in that milieu of. So, it kind of went around back the other way eventually for me personally, so I think, but I need, that was kind of influence. I read the pamphlet by Alan Lomax called folks storm. Style, very early that, you know, was steering towards. What does it mean as a folklorist to capture the things that are that the social experience that the song comes out of? Etcetera, etcetera. So that and I think that was probably true again, sort of subliminally for a lot of other people. So that gets us to the point of which I actually started doing this three. I went to college dropped out. I was in The Institute for policy studies. For five years. I had gotten interested in labor history. On my own in college. Just I discovered the labor, his fish, very short, labor history shelf in the school library, read and read everything. And I was pretty satisfied with it, and wanted to know much more and then find it out there. And so I eventually discontinued pursuing it on my own. And I was also young radical at the sixties and that will lead to details of other side goes active in SDS. And by the end of the 60s we were Sort of situation where the radical student movement and the movements associated with it were at loggerheads with the generational Spirit. It was a split about Ray a racial questions and above all about nationalism and nationalism and the war. And we were at loggerheads with Established white, working class and Trade union movement. And at the same time, we were kind of in a dead-end from the power point of view. We had pretty much won the population to be against the Vietnam War and had all kinds of direct action and mass action going on against the end. It seemed to not change anything. We can see what I would against a completely immovable Force. Oh my Response strike was really politically, motivated by those two concerns could. Could you connect with radical traditions in the working-class and stories from working-class history? That would both be a vehicle for the means to assist the self transformation of the working class. And also a way to create some kind of comment. Dialogue, and Sid sense of. Common economy experience in common objectives between the radical movement of the day, which was student and youth, based and more mainstream working class. And There's one other element that just occurred to me. And it'll come back. So those were the kind of conscious political motivations for strike. However, I wrote strikes it basically. I researched that sitting in the stacks of the Yale library and reading the old German Labour journals, and whatever else, whatever resources I could find without doing. See Is primary research because it just carry covered two, huge hits, two vastly higher, count, canvas, too. Do that. And when I was done, although I'd like to book an ISO liked your book. I realized that there was something fucked about the way it was done. I didn't talk to a single worker who had experienced the things that I was writing about. And so M. And also I realized that it for what it was. It did its job, but that you really couldn't there's an enormous amount that you couldn't get at from that level of from that distance. And so I became very interested in trying to find one Community where I can really say some routes in and where I could talk with the people. Really experienced the stuff. I was writing about and so bad idea was in my mind. Stroke was finished. I think it's 72 published in 72 anyway, and I didn't, you know, and and this is a this was an idea that was in my mind. It wasn't something. I was had an action plan to pursue mmm, but that year just when Strike just as before strike came out. I was helping develop a tiny homemade magazine project called Ruby Branch, which should get us. Other story. We can go into later another time or not, but Hovering around the fringes of it with the onion Kim Costello, who was at that time, a truck driver, and puzzled everyone because of worker intellectuals are not a common breed in the United States and he was a young worker intellectual and was he really intellectual or was he really a worker? Etc, etc, which I finally came to understand. We both needed a place to So we rented an apartment together in Somerville and over the course of a few months. We cooked. The idea of it was a highly publicized young workers Revolt at that point. The Lordstown was like a publicized flashpoint of it was worker resistance, young worker, resistance in Lordstown. What a plant but it was a widely recognized. What? This is. 72-73 sort the tail end of the Vietnam War era. And so we decided we would. Take a trip across the country in the summer and interview young workers into a book about it, which became common sense for hard times. And Tim and I became fast, friends and writing collaborators for 40 years, start again. And so anything. I talk about will have Tim weaving in and out of it, you know, we both had independent lives, but by there was a You're Rick Hansen reference point for each other. He said he's thinking, I was just say Kim did this and just take a quick pull this back a bit and ask you when you were at read, what inspired you to be interested in labor history. Why so I started the SDS chapter read and it was not a dirty. nothing a McFlurry co-leader, but that was certainly, some of the best DS politics and Even then was with our gear 63 and 65 the sense of that, the radical student movement. The anti-war movement were cut off from the working class was a strong sense of problem. And I know the piece that I left out actually, it's quite roomy. It goes to the core of, this is one of the critical pieces of the answer that question, which is very Really on. I actually got a bunch of really issues of the new Left review from England. This was probably several. I probably answered a classified ad in the nation magazine or something of that. Sort of, if it wasn't that it was something like that and wrote away from them and they have a big influence, my really politics to know what reviewer that time was quite different from the hypothetical. Intellectual publication that became it was. Yeah. He is what's relevant here is it had a special issue on workers control and which I devoured and I said, basically, okay. This is participatory democracy in the workplace and why the heck isn't our movement. Our participatory democracy. Ain't for pounding, the idea of participatory democracy in the workplace and reaching out to working people, on the basis of that idea. And that has been a central theme of my thinking and writing ever since and it was motivated both by. Same values that motivated participatory democracy for, in general, you want to know why should somebody else be telling people what to do? Why can't I get together? Figure out themselves? What to do and why shouldn't I? And then and at the same time, if we're going to build a political movement? Anti-war anti-racist for democracy. That obviously has to in have at its core working, people who organize working people. And yet that's not happening. And how can we move that forward? Well, raising the question of workers power. In the workplace seems like a no-brainer. As to me. It seemed like a no-brainer, as a piece of it, a core piece of doing that. This is the thought that I Skip before. So we go. And I think that that was wasn't has always been to this day in somewhat varying degrees but definitely still to stay a core part of my politics. And my way of thinking also bizarrely isolating. It's not something that I've ever seen a lot of thought about it. A lot of movement around in this country in my time. Well, though, when obviously, A big part of Detroit was rehabilitating some of the traditions of workers, self-management workers control, American labor history. So that was something that I don't know if that got to your question about them, how it relates to the political. Thank God. There's no dialogue. And SDs that I remember about Workers control or anything like that. I eventually through Transport Group was from a tradition, wasn't workers Council tradition. And its appeal to me with with mostly around that quid a discussion about workers control it. How did you was it through the publication of strike that you were able to connect? So Grant. So I was at the institute for policy studies. Okay, and Gabriel kolko was there. I had read his books room earlier and admired him his early and he's written, many, many, many books, but his first one or two. I had read prior to that and here's a fairly awesome figure. And he actually had known Council communist. I believe in Akron. I don't know how he grew up in Akron, and I don't know how many but they had. He said they had a little group there. In any case when I knew him, he had, he said to me because I would go talk to him and ask him questions. I was part of your privilege as a student at IPS and he said to me there's a he There's a guy in Cambridge. His name is flow-matic. He'll tell you, you're full of shit. He's very important. The and the more elliptical Kolkata was and making a reference to something like that from where you knew that he would say. In my opinion. This is the most important thing in the world. So I began following up and he also said, Anna. There was a guy named Anton panting Anton Panic cock. He was an astronomer. He used to say in the bed somewhere in all the universe, in all the galaxies of the universe. There's a place where counsel communism is relevant. Well, I do. This also was called a code saying, this is really important. Do you know if you're, if you're not, if you're not a jerk, if you're really serious, you'll follow up on this without, you know, if you didn't pick up that that was what he was saying. Just were Merrily on your way. That would be okay with him. Her. So so I immediately went to Yale library and found everything by Anton panic. I can read it and then I met some buddy around new left circles, Hulu the Maddox and said, just get in touch with them. And cocoa may also help put me in touch. So corresponding wish Bowl manage jr. And went up and spent visited with them and and that's how I got connected. And then eventually we decided to try to start what became root and Branch Stanley. Aronowitz was involved in an early stage. Another friends mostly friends have poor Juniors. Some of whom we came later historians and everyday routine Branch for three or four years. I think we could like, Paul Paul and I ended up not getting along at all. That's another story which is never a need to go into who can do. It could be but But if you want to insight into the difficulties, I recommend a New Yorker, famous New Yorker article, called learning to drive like half a pallet. Hmm. I will say no more sure. I mean, I'm willing to say more but not now it's not no that's fine. Not important to this story. But in the course of this, I met him, but Stella, that's really the right. Yeah, and so and I just want to ask you one quick follow-up to make this. This may be directly relevant. But were there any through this, the materials you're reading about Labor history, as well as through your participation Council, this group root and branch in Council tied to the Council of Communists in the readings related to that. Were there any ways in which the work that you had kind of been inspired by undoing? These are your connection with Dorothy Lake? How did those two? Yes. Is come together. Yeah, so let me start by saying, I never considered myself a council communist. I never really considered myself a Marxist. Sure. And these people almost all the others were very, very Orthodox. Marxists. They were great place to learn. Marxism a nice. We had a course in the capital with full Junior and qual senior on call for Unity consultant. It was a great intellectual experience, but these people intellectually were they He scorned the kind of thing that involved, the more experienced whole kind of approach to things. So, there was a complete loggerheads there and I was dead, definitely under different wavelengths as far as that's this. This question and I basically just went along and did my thing. It's, I generally, you know, try to work with people that I don't completely agree with. Just by I'll do my thing and you do yours and we'll get along. And so I just thought it was outside the purview of my involvement with hooting Branch at all. So, I wasn't a party line in father. I didn't I wasn't into the party line. I just like the ultra democracy by paying itself. Did they have any? I mean, did they have any ideas as to? So if they believed in the co-worker controlled councils as a kind of source for governance? Did they have a strategy in terms of how to organize those councils and o matic? Senior once said to me, I am a catastrophist. I believe that when you can't get enough to eat and you can't find any place to eat your house. You will become a revolutionary and okay, you will join with others and get rid of capitalism. He put the current ultra-left. And, you know, maximalist shame in that regard. I say, right? So that the answer was what you do is you you critique trade unions and other Reformation for organizations that will get in the way of people fighting the in doing what is inevitable form of making proletarian Revolution. So there's the existing organisms, get organizations that are adapted to working class. Life under capitalism are the enemy and they have to be. And what you do is you do a critique. So when people are ready to make the revolution, don't know what's wrong with them and come home and do the right thing ancient, the, a is a great essay by now. It's a mattock on, spontaneity, and organization, which what I just said, would more or less vehicle or something. Uh-huh, not new is about much more complicated sophisticated than that, but Bars. Bizarrely Darwin darwinian concept of Institutions adapting to, you must adapt to these distinct society and therefore are necessarily reactionary. Once revolutionary situation arises, Sue's going to find some substructures of his thought, buried away and strike. If you look carefully, okay, okay, in a milder form in a sort of doing adaptation thing. But it's not. It's much less. I'm looking for it's less mechanist. A space heater. Monistic is still to deterministic, but not so much. And is he was his idea? How did he expect that? The person working in the steel plant was going to actually come across as ideas and engage with them and really well you never take him in our did, he never? He never told he never told anybody to read anything except Capital he would have. Hi. All kids come in and he would give talks to them and he would say, don't worry. Yeah. Re Capital read the three bags of capital. That's what you need to know. Nothing. Nothing. Yeah, and he where he just had kind of an information, Shopper meeting room or how did where did they, what would the spatial Dynamics? Well, he had come as an immigrant from Germany. He was involved with the poet immediate post. World War One. Revolution, Proto revolutionary workers movements. Okay, and on the ultra left side, so the left of anti-bolshevik left and then in participated in were battles and 23 and then came to the United States that he would more or less X. I mean he was He was running away from tightening up political situation. Let's put it that way. Although Paul said he was also an adventure. He was coming to America and that was a anyway, he got to Chicago and join the iww, he boarded with a, he had a communist roommate, took a knee injury. Another German immigrant after a while. He said, oh, You want to be with those people down the street? So he joined the iww, then he had a faction fighting the iww about the unemployed, because they didn't have a real place for the unemployed in the iww. And so, he started something called tired. I don't remember what it's called some party and he was actually a fairly significant leader in the unemployed movement in Chicago. In my 30s, I think after that he was a machinist. That's how he made his living. And I think that he was Thereafter. It was very isolated and trying to make had aspirations as a writer that were very unfulfilled. He was a pretty bitter guy. You all along, I think from fairly early on and certainly when I knew him he would fit your description, your image of a bitter old radical. pretty, pretty isolated, except that he was rediscovered in the 60s by I was going to say people like me, but most of them were in like me, most of them were more, you know, the Marxist intellectual side. What, what, what was the feeling so would it be safe to say? It wasn't so much what he was teaching you, but actually maybe just the process of actually learning through him and his experiences that kind of tied to Dorothy Lee that are. Um, really what I got from him with more on Purely a delightful sight. Yeah. The market May, I really learned Marxism from him and his son. Yeah, I don't think that they were major influences on me. If anything in a negative way. Hey, yeah. Yeah, this is not, this is not me, but I'm going to make a foray into this and learn what is important to me to less it. Yeah, and it was great for that from that point of, right? And it was done through dude just intensive reading of well. No, I moved to Cambridge and I was up. So I was up there. I moved to Summer. Bill, and we did the magazine. I was living up there for most of the time, you get the magazine couple of years. And so we would have meetings of the magazine dinner at once in a while. I'd have dinner with, with Paul Senior and his wife, Elsa who had a huge influence me on me in a completely other way, which revolves around Jean Piaget. But let's that's another thing we should lead to the side, but he has a huge influence on me. Good work. I'm doing now. It's right. Basically about how I've used to keep pha-4 trying to understand social change social movements and my original introduction to Piaget was through the Maddox and especially through illicit. So let's leave that one on the side. I'm glad too happy to talk about it because it's what I'm writing about right now, but don't take is too far afield from from this. I think that the real connection here. Is that Tim and I hooked up. Yeah and Tim we went into this, this Trip across the country and we had no idea. We really didn't know anything about we're all history. You know, we didn't know there was an oral history. I mean, I probably had heard about the Columbia oral history office and the idea of people are using the talent doing everything on the telephone now. So lets, you know going there. No documents for historians anymore, some version of that rap. I probably had heard as an elite thing. But it wasn't really in the air that yet. When was sorta nice work in the she Chicago do up again? All I can say is yeah. Yeah. I was probably aware of it into in some way when I doing them or was his article on The Writers Workshop, that was in radical America, and I don't know when that was, but that That'd probably definitely had an influence on the Grass Valley work when we get there. But the thing about him was that he had, he said, he always interviewed the people. He worked with and got their stories and tried to understand their way of thinking, and a background of it, which was part. He was on his own. He's an autodidact, but not, he was also a first class in a life. Boy, didn't have the quirks of Youth normally associate with an autodidact and he would, he was no not a crank and he was from time. I met him, basically, trying to reinvent working class Consciousness and the working class movement, and he was into the and he had a very, very similar if you want to This, that we have very similar reviews and much more similar to each other than anyone else. We always been a faction of to. Basically not, we both have worked with a lot of other people over the decades, but are our fundamental Vision was very, very similar on the stuff and he had. So he was already involved in trying to wean even say rethink the left, but we can wet it. Working class. Self-organization. And so like me the matter, Council communist tradition was something that was a reference point at the people learn from. But the relevant Point here is that he had done, that kind of interviewing informally of doing the people who worked with and that was really our takeoff, 20 common sense for hard times and that trip for what we did and we would go in and we set up, you know, formal interview coming, they were They weren't very formal. We didn't record, we must have known the people did record these things. But we show up, we probably heard Parts. I just didn't have any experience with that. We didn't know anyone who was doing that. But also we wanted to talk about sabotage in various forms of on-the-job resistance. That was really our excuse me. That was what we were trying to get at and so So it's him with an expert at on his job. And so, that was really think that people would want to record that. So so we would just sit down with people and take notes and then write it up as much as possible immediately afterward, and somebody who's had it on one of our early nerd, but we were making this up. As we went along, we had no guidance about how to do any of this, somebody who said it down whatever early Interviews said so are right up. They said they're going to take you smuggled a tape recorder in there. So that was reassuring. Although somebody else said, the problem with this book is every every writer sound, every worker sounds exactly the same talks and exactly the same way. So between those two sides, we probably made a pretty accurate capturing of the content of what people said, but the Nuance of expression we probably worried very poor at, instead of all it was it sounded like us. Hmm. So that but I think we did what we set out to do which was to get clipped own stories, and put them in a book in a framework, to informed it with historical perspective, some working class experience. What we what we knew of it. So, that was that. But that also, so, that's really the start of doing oral history and was your vision that by collecting the stories putting out the book, that that would then generate dialogue and who is the perceived audience right book, good good questions, because it really is those aspects of it over very germane to my later. The Grass Valley work and the participatory approach to in. history, so we definitely saw it as a book for young workers. And we said that and when we say but which was kind of a razzle-dazzle thing, you know, I mean, it's other people want to look over there. Look over the shoulder, that's dialogue. And, you know, listen in, that's okay, too. With some academic ones to, you know, learn something about current working class from this that that's a secondary purpose to put the main purpose is where we are. Of this young worker Community, strong word, but, you know, young working class world and we're going to, and we're our exploration of. It is to amplify a dialogue within that's going on, within that, that Community. Hmm, and I think it's pretty explicitly in there and intervention, something like that. So that, you know, I had known nothing about for are I knew of John Dewey but everyone was influenced by John Dewey was just that he had. He was like Stalin after 1956. It was a permeated, the atmosphere even though no one really talked about him. But time. I came along, huh, but every he insisted on that for some color political in the culture and the politics of America said, So are you doing you know, whatever words you want to use reflexive or learning-by-doing? Etc. Etc. Wallet permeated everything. As well. It should when you were doing these interviews. It my identity, but it's Warden. Similarly. Uh-huh. That, that way of thinking was definitely my way of thinking. So and and, and you, but you weren't familiar with his work at that. I had not, I had actually, I met miles of emails, came and talked SDS a National Conference in Sometime in between 63 and 68 a mode where you probably 64k but not, you know, not in the way that I had any real and your time, we knew that there was a high on during vaguely what it did, but didn't really understand what's role had been and I saw him again. And again, either. Poor People's campaign. As I was living in Washington and still at the beginning is 6 in 6970 and so they came in with a Mule Train and set up in the somewhere on the mall and etcetera. And I hung out there as much as I could. Okay, so, but just, was he living there? He came just for the was there for the first. At least the first few we come, he didn't last that long, right? But so, he was there. I think he was like, I don't know if he was like Leaping in the encampment, but I think he was on the scene. I think it was part of the leadership team. That's a researchable question. I wasn't around. I don't know what I wasn't. I was hanging out. I wasn't, you know, organizationally involved. So when you sat down, presumably I guess you would you just in their homes or in some sort of. Usually I was in people that the work that Tim and I guess yeah, it was usually in people's homes. We had a we just worked our Network, you know, we would go to a city where we knew somebody who was politically active in a working-class kind of context. So Union people, or Krypto peripheral and S and they would do a very beautiful, very nice about saying, what will say up with this guy who's working in steel mill and I say up with this, guy's working a lot of plant and like that. Do you remember what your pitch was to? Convince people to sit down, and tell you there's two as well? Because we were going through intermediaries. It wasn't usually I mean, it's something who just meet somebody in and do it, but I think we just said we were doing and we were going around talking to Young workers about their lives and experiences. And we're going to write a book about it. I think I wasted extended the pitch and then when and then the agenda talking about sabotage and some of the yeah, well we were talking about on the job resistance. Yeah, and there's non-motor, you know, so just the difference between a story of Of. Let's say we were talking outside without using the broad wobbly Inception of it. Not not actually necessarily machine breaking but in which sort of all those things of stealing time ceiling work time. Was really maintenance main objective. The main thing was that people were doing. And any any specifically sabotage that was being done was, you know, a means to just getting all more freedom on the job. Hmm. And that was the spirit in which we approached it. And basically, people were everybody everybody, we talked to talk about it. Maybe they sometimes would feed us. Why are you concentrating on this? There's other important things going on because pollution we got War. We cut like why is this informal resistance on the job so important but but people we have no problems getting people to talk about it. Hmm. It's partially dark surprised, but I think it was the time because he was like, what the hell? This is, of course, we're doing this. And when I let him try it, let them fire us will get, you know, I'm going to I don't like going working here. Anyway, and then you said Tim had a lot of experience interview before that informal and formal. Yeah, and that was what we build on. So we just, you know, he had done this very similar kinds of things and similar questions and he would ask, you know, he asked his gang of fuel oil drivers which was the job he had. When we, when I knew him in New, in Boston, and if they give you an incredibly long hours, but the job had to get done, but they had very elaborated techniques for Whatever you want to call it, soldiering were informal job control. Everybody knew how much time you could take to do job X and nobody would do it in the shorter time and that left a couple of hours to go. Have a cup of coffee and hang out with your buddies or in Tim's case. He set up a desk in the back of his truck and he would just go and hide out for a couple hours and study. And then he would go back and making its delivery and and but this you can only do this. If you've got an informal Network that protects people and make sure that nobody does had nine our job in six hours and then the company discovers that this is what's going on. So that was basically the that was kind of the core of it. Other things might go out beyond that if there are other objectives people had but that was the main stretch to work and get as much. Times, you can't have it. He's a total master of that. Hmm, and race up to it. As father was a railroad worker. And that was part of the tradition of the need recruits. Father, as they said, playing the banjo. They, that father died. He had gotten laid off from his regular pc Wii Fit, conductor and forget, but so they worked together. And kind of pick and shovel shots and summer. And so he was not, he was taught how to do this. So anyway, had. So that was really an expansion, we build on that and just follow it just through on that. And by that time I'd have to go back and get the chronology precisely, but I think at that time I was aware of a friend of Excuse the policy is going to have to study David Montgomery at the University of Pittsburgh and they were working on David had done, a series of papers that hadn't been published that they were just being circulated among his grad students about soldiering and job resistance and taylorism and all of the nitty-gritty of workplace, struggle at that level in the specially. Late 19th and early 20th centuries. So we We had historical background for this and got more of it when we came back and we were writing the book. So we took these struggles of people were telling us about and put them in a historical context, in common sense for her times, and I was kind of the fun of it and was part of the essential understanding was that this form of everyday resistance. Is it him? Trying to put all the things together was really kind of the foundation for what a larger working class. Struggle could be built. Yes, exactly. And you'll find that Motif and strike. We're talking about cell unit of mass strike, being the day-to-day job struggle, and the struggle over conditions of work informal, not necessary. Usually, not through the union. Although often. Interpenetrated with the union. And so that was very much, very much wetter was and because I think we tended to not just him and me that are are why your peer group tended to view the Trade? Union movement us more or less a uniform reactionary monolithic which was probably not too far from the truth. Even if we was Overdrawn didn't have enough to have enough room for exceptions. But so we saw the creation of independent working-class movement. That was that was independent. Although not totally opposed to the existing Trade union movement, as really as the, whereas the course forward for working-class self-organization, and you can see You can see that in strike and you can also see, why is that workers Council mentality was attractive even though we didn't take it up Hook Line & Sinker. The that is core was they, you know, the old labor movement is a barrier to the creation of the new labor movement and which would be based on workers councils. Not on unions or political parties and that That was, you know, it was formative of the of our Paradigm. Even though it wasn't, even though we didn't accept it in its pure extreme form. It was it provided some patterns for thinking about what its transformation working-class form of life and movement would be And just to get back to an earlier question. The US also where I talk about Madoff and his being he saying it was a catastrophe has done very much on that. You work with best move, would emerge from the conditions, created by capitalism, not by any kind of intermediate organizing or that kind of thing. Panic Hawk was a different story and they there's Panic that actually lays out two debates between them, which I didn't know really know about it the time because I am I didn't approach it as a scholar at their movement, but but he had very much. The idea of the self transformation of working-class through struggle organ organization Etc. Also very Condemnatory of existing organizations, but he thought something like the iww might be a transition to pay for workers Council kind of approach. So rear was and and he definitely focused on where you would think of as a an abstract version of a Mi who are nor do we endure for every in self transformation of working of the working class, kind of thing. So but it's pretty abstract. It wasn't wasn't that useful. And when I asked Matic about it, he would basically say forget it. You know, that the And in fact, when we first forgotten sir, we've got when we went Tim and I decided to go out and do these interviews, Ace interviews. We might talk to him about it. I did and he said that it's no use for asking workers what they think about things that tell you one thing today. Tomorrow that tell you something else. So in answer your question of how to greet his working with him related. This General Trend ascends, although he was very supportive to me personally. And you know, even though I was not the full version of what he might have like they found me favorable and amusing young person. So that probably brings us through breast work with his. Yeah. So yeah. Lets the book is after you and Tim produced The Book. Yeah, what what are your thoughts? And it's at that moment and assessing kind of looking back and assessing that that project where there were there. Any kinds of you talked about the dissatisfaction after producing strike? Yeah. Did you feel like oh, this is a what was your assessment of that? Well, actually, I think that the first of all the book came out in the economic crisis point, like I mean it came out, it was ready to be published in time. It would have been the equivalent of 2008. It was the peak of 73. 74, 75 crisis and our publisher was shut down. When the book was in. Something called mechanical switch was the final stage of production. You don't have it anymore. But this Beyond page proofs literally ready to have the twins put on the press and it was years before we got it out like two or three years. So the Magic Moment has was missed. So in terms of any impact, it might have had. For the audience that it was aiming for, it was greatly reduced by that and we eventually essentially self-published it. Emily got picked up by South and when South Side was, I think I'm the first step then Brussels. So if it had come out, you know, at the time that it was ready to go and might have really different impact because young workers were hot hard times were hot, you know. As your was, any good made very, very limited impact. I've run into people within the last decade. I ran into her at home. So, you know, I would come back from Vietnam and I was kind of a lost soul and I was around these let you know, the left, which way that had been very when a nice and Balls provides and over the working class kid, and it was nothing, you know, I hated society and the way things were but thank you. These people were not showing me the way your something that was meaningful to me. And I know somehow I got my hands on a copy of that book and it was like, Manna From Heaven. There was just a blur sumeet sense of everything. I was experiencing and seeing. And I Imagine that there were a few more people from. That was true. That was exactly the intent that we had Woody Guthrie. Hawing about, let me be known as a man who tells you something you almost already knew. That was definitely our intent and I think we were trying to invent how to do that. And I think we made a, you know, a noble effort of doing it. I don't think that we completely solved. Well. The Cubs are doing that. So on, didn't like the book at all. He wrote. He said he loves strike with this. We raised so many questions that we didn't answer, but that might be the virtue of the book. You know, I think that for me, for me personally because of my own development. It was a step away away from a Strike is still, I would say I left a book in the sense. It has a lot of the underlying Paradigm of both social what social democracy and and communism have in common. It's still there in the mid some of the mental structure and knowing what the course of development. Social Development is going to be from from capitalism to socialism. Some form, even if it's a very, very cleaned up version of socialism competence for hard times as much more dialogic, much more assuming that it's not that much gap between the audience and the writers is not that we know the truth, and we're bringing Enlightenment to the masses. It's where we hung out with a messes and we're taking what we've learned there. Some things we learned in some other places like sitting in the library and made our best synthesis and now we're putting that out for people to do the next round that what what, what can they make of this? So that was very much the store and I think you'll find that pretty explicitly articulated in the book or torian hortonian important approach, even though you didn't need to know, It's his full wrap on that, but it was a parallel. I think a pretty parallel approach and, and Lind critique some wins critique. He just wanted it to be a little bit. Have a clear message. Is that? So what he said, I've got it. It's probably in my file somewhere, but I've got he said he was a big huge fan of strike. He thought it was the best approach to To the transition to the transition. And this book raised all kinds of questions, but didn't really try to answer them. I think you would. So it was a very, very much less of a conventional political book. Yeah. It really it ends with guidelines. It doesn't end with a program that ends with guidelines like, you know, talk to people like that. What they think at them and it's not quite that big, but right. But it's when it does happen. It gives examples of historical examples of Ruth Crews. Some quotes from about people hanging out in the libraries and unemployed people hang out in the libraries in the 30s and the discussions in the jungle camps. And, you know, it should be tried to evoke the spirit of that, that dimension of working-class past experience and try to To try to relate in the immediate struggles to broader broader issue the conditions of people working people, you know, very, very in a way, pretty General guidelines, but things that would be an overall approach rather than you know, to go get together form the workers Council in your in your factory storm, this storm, the city hall. Right? Right, right. Well, it's funny because that's that might be You know, I sent starting Linda article and perhaps that's yeah, and I'm sure he's thinking has evolved over time as well, too. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can see now. Why you were so responsive and why he might have been person person, a little bit? Yeah. Well, it's yeah and not to say, although you gave him an incredible place of honor. Oh, yeah, you know, and I still, I think he's that's well weird. I mean, I just don't I don't. Okay. So we've got the two year delay. Things have changed over that time and now you're in like about ninety five or six yards. 75 75 76 in there. and, and so, I'm very I have the idea of wanting to find our place. When working class Town, basically, or some kind of location where I can dig in get to know people and have people involved. I mean, first of all, do labor history. Anyway, that's drawn on the experience of workers and I in a vague way without its being clearly formulated with participate with input with In are in some kind of collaboration with the people that are being studied. So to speak. Better now would like that language, but right about that, but the people whose story is being told, being part of telling the story was definitely part of what my thinking was. And by now, I of course knew is sort of like you're discovering that people sleeping in the street in downtown, Cleveland knew that History of why people were sleeping in the street and then down to Cleveland. I knew that the people that I would want to have helped, you know, who I would want to interview, would know, a tremendous amount of have a tremendous amount of insight into the history that we were developing. So, it was in a way a no-brainer to assume that they in some way would be involved. Not just as objects of study, but as Cohen Figures. I didn't have that language fully developed and but it certainly the idea it wouldn't have occurred to me not to do it that way by then. And so I got a call one could get so right in this early stage. Yeah, obviously you're thinking through the process. But you you know, presumably thought this was You know, just judging from your history and that this is more than just as a study to better understand the conditions that this was about some form of kind of radical mobilization or some process plates, that would roll and in creating moving towards. Yeah, maybe not exactly what you knew. But so the, it it is. Well, it's all grounded in not hangover having a very favorable view of organizing Society based on a very small number of people who are saying everyone else around it. All one way or another. Comes out of the idea that the people were subjected to those conditions, need to find some way to get together and make things happen in a way. That's more more fair and favorable to themselves. So, some very broad Notions have class. Class struggle and class. Self-organization. Participatory democracy in the workplace. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, it could be in that, I try to always try to find more specific, more concrete ways. That that's been manifested, the people have done that and then what can you learn from that? What can they learn from that? And what how can that be developed to a further extent? The overall it's organic. So that's the it will always comes out of that. I think just about everything I do for whatever reason. I mean I could I could attempt to justify it. But probably the explanation is everything. I've lies and everything in my background and experience and and also the world's I look at so, but that's obviously shaped by the categories that I look at it in also, so but so yes, the answer is yes. And it's definitely all. Some contribution to working people, being able to get that understandings that are necessary to get more Cooperative control over their conditions of life. It became less and less. Let's say after strike a, it became less Guided by a Left Paradigm of, you know, the masses are going to be organized and then storing the barricades and create socialism. You know, that that which is still pretty good if you read the original Edition and strike, that's that Paradigm is still there. There's a chapter at the end called mass strike two new society, which attempts to spell out, which is the most Council communist influence, part of the book that attempts to spell out what a transfer. As stolen said, the transition to the transition. Would be like, and I think I became more agnostic about that old historical paradigm. But but the, but the flannan became more. So became more doing in the sense of Here's, here's problems that working. People are facing addressing them requires getting together in some way of addressing them collectively and formulating objectives about how to do it. What needs to be done and how ads? And so let's look at the experience that's got to grow out of people's experience. So, let's look at people's experience, what they done with that experience before and drool and provide put that out on the way that says, and here's the solution, but put it out in a way that says The Experience, here's some lessons that maybe we should draw from it. What's next? Phase is a problem-solving that we need to look at. Maybe if I see some hypotheses that are reasonable for doing that might be helpful for doing that. I don't try to hide them usually but they're presented as you know, this is these are things. We might explore addressing that the current phase in the problem we face. So everything is in comes out of some some None of that Paradigm. And so definitely. And if you look at the introduction and the conclusion of Grass Valley, it is more or less expressed in those terms and certainly in terms of audience. It's explicitly that we are. Gathering experience. And Analyzing and concentrating, the compiling, the experience of working people because this is something that will be useful to working people in this community and other communities. Like it. It's pretty explicit. So is that, is that yeah, that that's actually fantasy. And this is, this is obviously, you know, And this is the way you were perceiving it at that time. Well, you can do no. No, I can't. I mean if you look at the introductions and if you look at the those as well, I think it's pretty explicit. Both both for common sense were hard times and for Grass Valley. It's been pretty explicit and we have actually after we at the end of doing it. It was reviewed. Before public, the book was reviewed before publication. Maybe by Roy wasn't like I forget. Anyway, somebody said you ought to be more explicit about this aspect and I think said somebody say you are look at Michael precious work, which I didn't know Maya scene heard it mentioned. So I went out and got the stuff about the shared Authority. Mmm. And I think we quote that and so we added, they said, you need to write something about the methodology. So he added a PostScript or with about how this book was made. Yeah. I can't remember. Yeah, and I think we reference Michael, who's with the Michael Schiff and shared Authority concept, and so on, which I didn't, I did not know that when we heard that whole rap and that term for it, when we started out well, and I think honestly, I'm gonna have to think this through some bud. Honestly, this the process that you're referring to, I think it's slightly different than, as I understand it, at least, is his current understanding of what a shared Authority is. I mean, he essentially argues that it's just kind of Opry or e or shared Authority, which it is. Yeah. I mean that regard, I understand, but You're also talking about kind of a building that kind of fear. We're doing a shared me if ya, which he critiques and I think practice the practice of sharing the authority. That's right. Yeah. Well, we've definitely into that and I but in case the concept that that was something right? They even that that was an idea that I didn't know that that were that as a concept or was out there that just it was just the natural way for me to write. I think his look at article with what your It must have just come out like, and you, you would probably do most of your work already before, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. No, it was, it was after we wrote them after the book was actually, you know, I don't know who was formerly being. I don't think that there was peer review of it, but somehow somebody send it to somebody sort of some somebody like Roy rosenzweig. You might not have been, right? And they wrote an enthusiastic thing but said you need an additional, you need something easy, and on the methodology, and that's where that method of that section that Interesting, so but I don't think it conflicts with the idea. I mean it is probably clearer, but it's definitely in line with the ideas. We started with if you want ever, you know, if you're if it's ever Useful, we had to Stew. Well, let me continue the story and development in the mention, this in the course of it. So what happened is, I started so the the the origin myth for the grass. Withers history project is one day. I got a call from Peter, Mark Hughes, son of Herbert marcuse. Who I didn't know at all, but who turned out to live in Waterbury and he was having a party. And Rob berlitz who I had known forever SDS and even before it was an SDS stalwart and I could give you more bio, but it's not a necessary for. This was a friend of his hand was coming up. You having a party with Rob? And Peter said, he was always looking for good people in Connecticut. And Rob said, he should get in touch with me. So, he invited me and Jill and I went Phyllis went to a party at his house in Waterbury where there were a bunch of old left of various kinds were very the older Waterbury radicals. Many of them were there. So there was a Catholic Worker guy and who is old Irish Catholic? What? Rubbery. And there was an old Italian guy who had been organized her for my meals, smelter in the 30s, and actually remembered as a young immigrant kid, the general strikes, a totality of 1919 and 1920 and his wife was children, Scottish immigrants and sort of left wing background and on half dozen others. Experience in the local labor movement and left from the 30s and 40s. And so I was, you know, back in the corner, interviewing the Italian guy for like an hour naught w, we were at a party, but I just listening and asking questions. and, All this added occurred to me. Maybe this town is the place to do this, but I like fantasy of doing a study with, with participation by workers who had experienced the history that I wanted to tell about. That's really, that's really the origin of brass workers history. From my point of view and I started doing research and I discovered about these two general strikes. So there was a The story here and other pieces of a story. I began cleaning and then through things happen, I heard about and I'm trying to I have tried been trying to reconstruct where I first heard about it, but I haven't. But there were two young filmmakers who were doing interviews. Making making videos sort of community videos about unemployment in the lower part of the architect Valley and this was a time when the brass industry with hedge. It was hitting the skids had. It was very very hard hit but not totally gone. But everyone was kind of expecting it to be going in. There was very large unemployment in towns where the Brass Mills were already and they were making Plants were already starting to close but mostly it was cutbacks at that point anyway, so they were making videos and showing them in the local library, or community centers, and stuff like that. And there's guy named Hank Murray, who was his father, had been a CIA, a CIO official and he had become, he going to yell and then become a seaman. And then go on to work in a photo Factory in Connecticut, and then that kind of his Union. You know, allowed him to come out of the shops and become a UAW organizer and rip and he he don't have. Can I haven't yet? Reconstructed all the details of how we put this together, but he put me through him. I got in touch with a Chance Stackhouse and Jerry Lombardi who were the people who were doing the Video and I went down. I think I may just have seen the newspaper or some place. One of their this is before the internet. So one of their announcement of one of their showing that I just went down and met them and so we had kind of the idea of collaborating on something because we're doing somewhat similar things. And it struck me that doing video would be a great way to put some of this back into the community, which they Do I? And then somehow and again, I've lost the train. Although we can write that connection over can probably be reconstructed. If there's a reason to there was And this. So we're in 70, probably 7670 thereabouts and maybe it's Adam. We're in the Carter Administration. Which started in about the 77 rights? Are you 77? And this is in the lead up to the re-election campaign. We were told they're bringing money to the labor movement around around New England. I think was what we were told in saddlebags, and they're looking for, any way to get just, to give money to labor. And there was a guy. who has making the rounds for the National Endowment for the Humanities going from state to state and doing presentations through the state labor Council. So he says, what it was in Connecticut to get is to say that the National Endowment for the Humanities wanted to fund labor projects. And somehow I got invited to this. That I think Janet Jerry got invited to it. Also. And so he gave this presentation and I thought that's kind of, this is kind of weird, and I was much too radical and alienated to think of actually doing something with this, but But somehow, we found out that they couldn't directly fund unions to do these projects because they couldn't really us and scholarly respectable to have people studying themselves. So it is weird situation, really wanted to do labor projects, but they were they needed somebody to labor projects. Who were Regarded as you know, we're labor would look favorably on it. But we are the people who are doing. It had some kind of scholarly or academic or other cover for what they were doing. And if you and so if you look at the string of projects that you're have identified in that period, many, many of them are the result of this odd political reality. That one of the reason that these strange people like me, God. NIH funding was because of this sort of thing from the other side's point of view with a catch-22. So they're giving the more radical guy that might be because he didn't believe me. And and that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you'll find, I think you'll find a similar pattern to the half dozen other projects like this. You're right. You could add like when a scorned and other sure, you know, already that people like that forever. Be. Yeah. Now did you? How did you back to this other issue with talking about last night? But how did you pitch yourself as a scholar? So while I done strike and I kind of suppress my lack of academic background that I didn't have. And I'm forgetting the chronology here. Maybe I already had my mail order PhD. Okay. I think I did actually see it was. Yeah, I did. That was early. Seventies. Yeah, common sense for hard times with my dissertation of equivalent. As I said project Evans. Pde project demonstrating Excellence. So yes, I had a PhD from the union graduate school and somewhere after I got it, Union graduate school actually got accredited. And so some were by, then. I was had a PhD from an accredited graduate program and Union. Okay ugs. It's still It's a university Without Walls that has backed by a Consortium is now in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It said about space at Antioch. Okay, but it's independent or as he always have its back is has a Consortium backing. All right. I just need to ask you a couple of probing questions on this but if you so, so this first book was actually a dissertation did to strike quickly. Strike was nine. Not just, I mean, the second, And book. No Aunt. Well, I'm and kind of common sense for hard times was. After I wrote it. It was accepted as a dissertation. I see. But I wasn't conceived. And did that get funding at all? Or did you guys just do that off of that kind of stuff? Oh, yeah. Well, we got strike was quite a successful book and we were offered an advanced. It's like five thousand dollars or something like that is enough to buy a truck and you know, Paper, our food on the trip. So that was the fun. That was the financing for it. That's certainly more than any advanced contract release for. Yeah, that kind of book at nowadays. Yank. Yeah. Definitely. I don't even bother asking for him anymore. So, So that was that was the our pseudo credential and then strike. And you know, had written a couple of books and they were unsure of that. There were people who like to try to can like my work who I wasn't. I think when I read your cure, your CV, I noticed the PHD and that's kind of where I when I talked about it last so it wasn't completely off. But the way years, the story about all this, what I didn't have When we have a, if we could, if we do another one asking for the real serious. Yeah, I think great set these stories, but it'll be, it's distracting from this, not necessary for this. But and just what? I just want to ask one second piece of this to see and you can maybe it's a quick answer. No, but was there anything that you were exposed to in the process of attaining that degree? And did you do any like having professors or interaction out there? Zur, no, no, no, no. No, so it's just all on your own all the other stuff. The interior policy studies wanted to do. A PhD helps Found the Union graduate school. Okay, which was supposed to be a university that walls that was affiliated with a number of Institutions and would be an alternative provide alternative route to PhD and When they're soon as they set it up, they contacted me and said you want to have one and I'll tell you the rest of the story and other times you want to do, you want to do this and it was supposed to have, you know. Mentors have seminars and a variety of things in their attitude was eat honey. That shit. Forget it, right. Well, you'd already did. Yeah, who they knew? You will know. They they knew him very well. Yeah, they want to. Yeah, I think I got the first one. Hmm, but I'll tell you that. That's a that's a it's a story in its own writing in. If you take 10 minutes to really tell the real story. It's a funny story. It's not about oral history. Okay, so we've got another really I guess 40 minutes her last but so we're getting ready to grab ya, brass workers project. Yeah, and you so we're able to get this funding. So the core of the story, this core of what happened is. We Hank Murray who I described before said you go to. We said, we want to do some kind of Project how much would it be focused and he said, you know do it on the brass workers to Brass industry is going down. It's not going to be here anymore. It has an incredibly Rich labor history. What you should do is the history of the brass and the brass workers of the North Valley and that made perfect sense and fitted with the direction I was going. And we realized that there was a I realized that there was any Confluence between the themes of the new labor history as they were being developed by Herbert government and David Montgomery and the idea of Workable workers, self-organization. And, and the idea of and the idea of a community-based. History project. How these things fit together very well. And then when I'm now we had the video component, so that producing materials that would be useful to local working-class community and people like them elsewhere, doing that. Being able to do that. As video product. Not just a book with also fit in very well. And if you re interested the the concepts most of the concepts for this were laid out pretty explicitly in The Proposal. And the age. Hmm and so that can be dug up somewhere. If you need it at somewhere in the files, how these at spend it explicitly tied, the themes, the new labor history to the idea of participatory process. Historical process designed to go back to a to a popular audience to a local working-class solid audience. With all that was all like an integrated concept. Some of it's in the direction of the inclusion of the book, too. So, and the one thing that I did as we were putting these pieces together with to asked, Kim to come and walk around water gray with me. And, you know, tell me if this was really a good place to do it. Yeah. You know, was a fairly typical of working-class industrial cities or was in an oddball in some way. So he came and we walked around and drove her around and at the end of it. He said, well, there's one way in which this is quite exceptional. And usual place, most cities like this have in addition to their Industrial. Your character, there are state capitol worth a report or they have something else that is. Unusual or special or different? This is the quintessential abstract working class, City with no, no variation. No deviations from the norm. This is the absolute General, general form of the working class City. So so I figure we're doing, okay. And I think that's probably still pretty true about Waterbury. So so that so we did the proposal and we got funded and we opened an office and then we basically have. Oh, so we where do we look for models and idea of some some idea of what to do there. There had been various City histories, Yankees City. And so on done by sociologist, from Middletown and so on. And so and I have, you know, I looked at those and God and they many as like, Middletown has all kinds of oral history in it. That would be part of this sort in the lineage. If you approach, someone wanted to look at it. It's basically interview-based. Although they use whatever statistical data they could get but and it has a history, you know, his sort of people's history of Middletown with a migration patterns and stuff like that time largely from interviews. Hmm. So by the messages that will be vaguely knew about the history Workshop. In England, although not very much. But Jim green and Susan River be and I'm blocking, you think Mighty plan, Marty glad. We're just starting to Massachusetts history, workshop. And so I went, I went to the Lowell, I missed the first real first event that they did. I forget what it was and said, maybe was forgetting, did one in linen. Want to Lowell. But I think it's the second one was lean, and I went through it. That's right. Yeah, and that was really all of the background that we had for doing this. No, we hate about a lot of things. We talked, we did the best we could to talk the game. Like, we knew what we were doing. But actually we had no clue. So, but we got the money, and for a Jan, it just a cooker winter. When you went to this Workshop in Lynn, when you Came back. What was your thought about? Did you think? Oh, that was really interesting. Or they're always looks great, and we learned a lot. But first of all, if validated the basic premise of workers can tell, most of the story of work of working class and labor history, you know that the presentations by the people and the discussions of people who have worked in the shoe industry were totally Totally adequate as his Super Bowl, you know, you somebody from was a young scholar, might be able to add a little bit to it, but they were perfectly capable of laying out, the main lines of whatever you would want to discuss, and they argued with each other over points of interpretation and so on. So it completely validated that, that premise it validated the premise that there would be interest. It also. Taught me. And That learning what the right approach to. Engaging participation. Were something that we would have to learn that we were just kind of, you know, hand out a flyer and people were going to say, oh, how wonderful. Is there any history of the workers in the grass industry? You was to go to the meeting that's announced in this flyer is required. Much more of a process of figuring out how you were going to do it, how to make it be meaningful to people how to get rid of the barriers that prevented people from participating. What happened in Lynn. Preacher with linen, the shoe industry was the one that I went to was that they connected with the woman, who was the secretary, I was that administrative person for the retirees unit of the old shoe Workers Union. Who knew everyone who was still alive, who worked in the industry was a wonderful person understood exactly what they were. On you do, and would pitch it to where people would come in for whatever kinds of events. They were running. Or I think they got, I don't know if they got Health Care, they got some kind of benefits that Kane still came through. This retirees organization from the union. And so she was seen month by month. She was seeing only large swath, Lurie Kyrie's and over time. She began she changed into. Are you coming too? Whatever the Riesling calling it and she started calling it. Are you coming to the reunions? And this is what defined it in a way that people suddenly said oh, this is what we want to. This is, of course. I have to come to the reunions and I'll get to see my old it. Redefined what was going on in there that? Are you coming to the history, Workshop? Coming to the reunions and I think she or somebody also, you know, needed to hear that. For this group of people like having food was really an important thing to getting it to come. If they, you know, they were going to get a free meal and see their friends. They would have a really strong motive to come. And what I learned from that was not so much, the specifics of reunions or food or whatever, but do you have to think Strategically / humanely about what it is that's going to draw people in and get over the wall. The reasons that they might not want to do it. So and and our approach would be involved a lot as especially on the participation side. So Jan was a community organizer. And Jerry was basically a filmmaker Jan had done organizing in the valley. Forget for exactly what in what, what we're going to say tional context, but a lefty. They were a couple when I met them, although they broke up in the course of the but not violently that they separated in the course of the project but not in a way. That was, that was not a major disruption to the project. And he was the camera guy. She was the sound sound guy for their team, but she also had some administrative skills had done some fundraising and you had a budget of project and he's walking down. You absolutely nothing about. So that was this is definitely a necessary. This part of why his work is we had somebody who knows something about that stuff. And so, we rented an office. I took an apartment upstairs from the office. And we said, we open the office and looked at each other and said, what do we do now? And over the course of several weeks. We really didn't know what what to do or we went around. When there were senior. We went to some of the senior centers and talk to people. There was a union retirees Council, we went and talked to them, but we really didn't know how What to do. And so at a certain point, I just said, well, we can't just keep spinning our Wheels like this. We need to just go out and start doing interviews and do or do. What do you do interviews, you know, we'll get to the video later and we'll identify the people that we want, but we need to go out and start getting the story. And so, we just basically work the network that we had asked people, who should we go see by that's just time. I do a fair number of people and I knew Outlines of the historical story of Labor movement there, and of the industry. And so, just started doing interviews. And I'm had immediately opened up everything and move to the extremely exciting, and revealing and just great. And so, that was really my role. My, my initial approach to things was just was a lot, a lot near viewing and we And more going around to senior centers. We had built up our Network and got more and more people and found. Excellent, you know, woman who ran one of the senior centers new, everybody is the labor. They senior centers and started by the UAW. And so she would have say to people, we have this since nice young people who are here, you know, doing these interviews and would you be interviewed and did. The intermediary role in that way. Eventually we God. You know, we said okay, we're getting a subset of people and their people are not reaching Jan was very good and we me it's a time but she was very persistent about saying what we've got to get more. Women got to get more blacks. We got to get more people from different ethnic groups. And you know, we we we have to make more effort in the place where it's more difficult for us to get people. So, we ended up Very good. Variety of people. And we were originally, Planning to have a lot of to have people participating with us and doing interviews and all the activity in the project. We rapidly learned that that was not going to happen easily. And so we owe. One of the things is that in the original proposal. We had a slot for an organizer because Hank Murray had said, this is what you need to have an organizer. That's really what you need to make this project go and that got cut out in the the budget. Very common story. I'm and so, that was part of why we didn't, we didn't have an Outreach operation. The in fact we did it ourselves, even though that wasn't what I was good at. So that was that's meant that our original plan. Presentation, participation plan really didn't have the, it wasn't staff didn't have a way to go gradually. We created a Advisory committee and that was largely chance work for pulling people in his. As we as we got to know, people seemed appropriate for when we asked them, would they be on it? And what really, the core thing was that we when we interview people, it was not it's like what you're doing and you asked me to the deepest, most probing philosophical questions about when what it means, not just collecting. the stories of the events and what happened, then we would definitely ask people to what they thought it meant putting things in put in historical context and we got a lot of things. The biggest thing that we got was and we got imperious ways from various people, but one guy put this is said, you know, you're never going to understand this community. If you approach it exclusively from a labor angle, just these Community. This place was based. On this facility. And if you don't approach it in part as a group of ethnic communities rather than as a working class or in, you know, in a hitter's it was a working class but really understand it. You have to understand it was a collection of ethnic communities and various people said that to us in various ways. Sometimes that intellectual, you know, that like you would say, theoretically informed Formed in the language but in the critique of our of our Paradigm that we were coming in with so many other things like that, but that what's up critics that was like an exam. That was a outstanding example. Other people would say, well you got to understand the old days period thing. This place was all section. Too often people didn't mingle to good mingle and sections off. To operative words and they were very common people, wouldn't repeat those words. So eventually we began listening to how our people structuring their understanding of the place in its history and try to learn from that incorporated and horse was easy, since they were telling us, we have to tape recorder on. So the oral history was a very natural way for exploiting there. What they knew it's you know, from your work and you and I think in your piece that you wrote In the book that rosenzweig and yeah that collection presenting the past right? You think in that are maybe it's another one of your pieces argued that You can't kind of that that there are all these schisms in the communities in that part of what you're doing is creating conversation across the schisms, but that you can't assume that you're going to achieve some form of unity purse. I think you different word. Yeah, but but that you're going to get consensus, right? Yeah, that can't be assumed. Not a reasonable. Objective. All right. Yeah. Yeah, it might be a reason why. Aspiration, but it can't be an objective because you'll to try to reach it you'll for shorten their cut off the the things. Yeah, it was definitely well. First of all, and maybe that race is a set of questions that you mentioned that you want to talk about. So first of all, the labor movement of this area had had had severe conflicts of a variety of Kinds over the years, but especially because between so-called left-wing factions and right-wing factions within my melon smelter. And then within different unions that picked up the pieces after the breakup of mine male and These were very intense. Emotional conflicts. I never thought that left wing. And right wing was an appropriate way of telling her that I'm not going to try to talk now about what was involved in that. There's some of that in the book and some in another essay. I did called Labor and the left a Long View From Below. That's in some book, where I talked about doing this work, in the context of the left-right, so-called fights in the In the local labor movement and then there were other more current battles between different factions in the unions and so on and so forth. But also why your community context was one where the local newspaper was an extreme right-wing newspaper and we kept going to really really low profile. They were amazed when the book and movie came out that we that this was happening in their community and they didn't know about it. And we were very very cautious politically because the extreme anti-communist somet nationalist views were widespread and have been in a minute man Center. There was a Ku Klux Klan, not in Waterbury, but in Seymour down, not seen her one of the shovel. Them in the Lower Valley. And so we were extremely cautious and assumed that we would depending buddy found out about our crazy project that they would, you know, in the government's paying for this, it would be a total setup for some kind of extreme red-baiting response so that we can we were kept, we celebrate with a very, very low profile. A few years later when an ethnic music Project which was feel good project for almost everyone that it was a very different story. And we started by putting out getting a story in a local paper and what kinds of things that much more visible but not with the brass workers project. Hmm. So how do we get on to the left right? Questions? Well, or tell me where you want to go? I guess they get in terms of your so you're what? What you need? What's the literal, you want to focus on Morgan? And I think we're doomed to continue this later. But I guess what, one big question I have is from the very start, you know, you're brought into this community thinking that this industry is about to you know, literally just disappear and that you're documenting it. But knowing these other Specs of your earlier projects. What did you end? It seems kind of like from the social the idea of kind of radicalism that. It's kind of a doomed effort from the Star. Like, how did you perceive this as as having a radical potential? So that's a good question and the answer is a little while you the answer evolved over time, so I think going in we didn't really have a full consciousness of that as a doomed industry. And although we were told that by some people but it was and you know, we didn't really take that, we didn't fully understand that then so it really was. But I think that The year was, whatever, bad, whatever. Is that story is. There's a story about the history of working people efforts that self-organization. What was, what people Chi through it with the limitations of it were and more but more broadly, which I think it's the real virtue of brass value. The book is, how were the questions of class work. in class struggle embedded, in the broader experience of work, Family, Life, ethnic community, and the full constellation of Institutions and experiences that make up working class life and how and trying to actually understand how The things that lefties are interested in terms of class struggle are related to those broader, Fuller know and that was a horse's critique of strike. Steve spolsky. My other people did a review of it. Very friendly comradely review, but you know, this is an there was a reduction is a reductionist quality if you just focus on questions of struggle and Class conflict and so Grass Valley with an attempt to include that. But to set it much more intimately in the context of the rest of working-class lips. And I think it was very successful from that point of view and that would be a way of sort of D hero, wising the concepts of class struggle and making them not making this be part of what people do with their trying to make a life, which is always been a central theme back to strike of my work, but this sudden a much more Concrete way. So, so, I think that that was the people resist their work because they're faced with certain kind emissions. And they can only deal with it by Co-op some form of cooperation and saying for the problems in the community and political system etcetera, etcetera, that was kind of what it was trying. That was his core message. And so So I hate the decline of the industry initially was not part of how we how we saw that as you know, when we did this over a couple of years in the industry was literally hitting the fan as we were doing it. So obviously we came we became more and more. I'm aware of it. And also as we started working the later, telling the later, Stuart part of the still researching the later, part of the story. And especially Jan, kept pushing on how we have to deal with this. And so we ended up telling eat the story of each of the major. We were like three major companies that have big three in Waterbury, and we we ended up telling the story of how we eat the decline of each one. So we had it up with a narrative of the decline and We in the course of that Chan. Well said, what we have to deal with International capitalism and I think get off at, you know, we're trying to tell who a local story. We're trying to do something that no one has really done in terms of this level of depth and intimacy of understanding the local community said, well, yeah, but you can't understand what's going on. Once you look at the broader picture and as we went on, again, the people we were interviewing were. Definitely would say, well, the companies are moving their plants all over the world. And that's why nobody has a job in Waterbury anymore. So we eventually began penetrating my brain that she was right. And so we definitely ended up putting it in the context of first of all concentration and centralization of capital. We didn't use those words, but the way in which the local breast We're taking over first by. They went through a concentration process and became the big three for many different, many different, small plants, and then brass companies were acquired by national copper company. So anaconda and Kennecott became the owner of two or three, two of the big three. And then they in turn were required by International, by the Seven, Sisters by International oil companies. So, Atlantic Richfield, Old and I forgot one Excel gives you 4X on but one of the other big so high. Oh, I think acquired one of them and Lana Crisfield acquired, another two of the big three in the third was going down with them. Worth acquiring have been scoble. The Scoville had sold it off to two local interpreters who were milking it and shutting it down. So the decisions about these local plants were being made by people were sitting in a boardroom somewhere for whom they were specks on a balance sheet and that whole picture of because there was a strong Community identification with these industries. Separate from a class question. These were there, they had built a brass industry and this was their thing, very strong identity, fat Dimension to this and sort of activities. Different companies that weren't even brass. Companies were making their community be public, so that their economic interest was a team that people were very beyond, the working class were very responsive to and it was very different from the usual picture, widely propagated and believe even a by a lot of workers was that the greedy demands of the working class in the unions were what were responsible for the decline of the internet. Industry. So basically we told a different story along the lines of what I just described and to a fascinating is although that was Not immediately, you know, we would say it and we didn't really fully work it out until we were making the products and it would be do a lot of push back in the argument but over the succeeding few years, it actually became very diffused and widely, you know became a an alternate theory for a lot of people of what had happened. Why did the value of been so devastated? And when the Naugatuck Valley Project? Again, Ken Goldstein who's the originating organizer of Naugatuck Valley Project went around doing in the initial round of talks to community groups by getting them to who he put up new sheet on the wall. And he'd ask about the companies that were threatened with closing. And then he would say, okay. What what, who owns this? Who owned it before, what was it? He would trace the genealogy and of course, everyone knew, well, that's the clock shop, and that was started by someone. So, and originally employed, all the Italians who were new greenhorns, and someone he would do, the industrial genealogy exactly. Along the way that I was describing it and they were the fact that these were controlled by distant corporations that had no concern for the people of Waterbury whatsoever. And, you know, and basically, so we need Nice ourselves to reach this that and get some control back over our economy. So, unbeknownst to me and until I started tracking the in VP this, this way of looking, this alternate Paradigm had actually permeated. It wasn't the dominant Paradigm to Paradigm, but had become pretty diffuse as an alternative Paradigm of what had happened in the community. And then when they began using that for organizing, it became quite Central for the people who are doing it. So that was not due to our thoughtful, brilliant insight into where things should go with. Not it was not strategic in our part. It was just are attempting to tell the story in a way that it was fitted with the experience of people there but presented we explain the flame, the frame, we represented the frame that it was degree to the workers that was responsible for it. We primarily tried to Water, tolling alternative story that also fitted were fitted better with people's experience and Beyond the parallels. In terms of the the the story, where there any other kind of Connections in terms of actual people's participation or be skinny and beeping. Yeah. Well, I was told the people who work that we did a lot in Seymour, we were involved in Seymour a lot. I've driven the project. I was taken through the sub, Rosa through the plant, and did a fantastic set of interviews. We were people who worked there, a lot of big and they told they have the whole Montgomery analysis of shop floor, self-organization and controlled work consists Road struggles, over the workplace and the details of Work with operated. They had, they had the whole thing and spend an uproarious that half day with three of the old-timers getting this and he was the son of one of them was a academic track and had been studying labor history yet. I would never wear the medal. John. Anyway, John your chick. He became that the executive director of the State teachers union and Connecticut eventually, but at the end of the session with him, I asked where, you know, what are you thinking? These trick his head? And he said, well, all the stuff. I've been studying in school. I just, I just heard that a group of workers. Telling this entire story. I thought this is something you had to be an academic take, you know, to research. And I did serve my father and his cronies laying at all. I have. Hmm, so I was told that the project had a significant impact in Seymour in that part of the part of what made people interested in trying to save the plant was That it sort of revalued, this this. That's not as a part of the part of the community like that. There wasn't just like, okay, we're going to lose her. They had it creates some more Collective Collective awareness that there was something that they shared that was worth saving. I can't, I mean, I spent a lot of time with the see more people, like I can't objectively validate that, but I was told that by people who are involved with it. And certainly that, that Community, we had a big, we did a fence there like that. So and Okay, then I don't know if you know, but I think what I think what you want to get for when you want to get what we'll do is we'll save for the next interview. Kind of talking more filling out some of the stories of the brass worker project and we could talk about getting the transition to nvp and then kind of your assessments looking back on on, you know, whether you what you think, where the strengths and limitations of doing this kind of. Kind of research methodology as a form of radical practice, right? Yeah, I think that would. But that's way too much to do and there's 30 seconds. You can remind me of what and we have now on recorder. So now I can remind myself next time. We got good. Yeah, come. And what I'll do is is certainly get you a copy of this and what I'm going to try and do is see if I might actually think I have the fit to see if we might even be able to get this transcribe. So but I appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's fun. I enjoy. It's nice to think about it. It's a funny to be on the other side of the microphone, but but not bad.

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