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Okay, welcome today. We're here. We do not have powered Mike. I think both Jeremy. And I are pretty loud. I'm not going to do much talking other than the introduction. I just want to quickly. Welcome you to our very first inaugural guest speaker for the Humanities truck speaker series. This is the first that we expect to have one of of these. Every semester that's going to focus on. Community engaged, research scholarship, bringing in people, from ran the country in the world who do this kind of work. Today. I have this this this talk is co-sponsored by the humanities lab. Thank you for the director of the humanities lab for helping support this as well as the the humanities truck. We're if you're on the you guys, there's a whole empty row here. Here. Feel free to move on up. There's no I mean you can sit on the floor if you want, but there are seats if you want them and it won't be disruptive to move up here. So we are very honored to have Jeremy brecher. Come and do our first of these talks. He is really been renowned as one of the he the most influential people. In the field of democratizing, history, of doing history, with people of creating a participatory process for doing history. He was a leading figure in the field of what was known as the People's history movement in early 80s. There were many reviews of his work that really called his work to be kind of, the best is work. Has been done quite a bit of work, but the work that really Put him on the map of this, doing this kind of History where, where you really develop historical thinking historical interpretation historical products in community with Community for communities. He did a project with the brass workers in the Mills and Naugatuck Valley and Connecticut, and that led to a book called, Grass Valley, and also a documentary on that same topic. But what makes his work particularly unique is that he never stopped doing it. He's been working in that Community for 50 years. Now, he's done everything from Museum, exhibitions. He's also been very interested in the creation of /. To the I guess you might call a participatory music of Folk Music folk festivals drawing on different communities to be able to Really bring out in a festival atmosphere. The particular musics that have originated from those communities and also it's brought his work is our. He's been very interested from the very GetGo and connecting kind of politics that are about creating creating a better world that are connecting, kind of the radical politics of students and with working people's That's kind of what got him started. He founded a group called The in the Reeds chapter recalls chapter the students for a Democratic Society SDS in the 1960s and has been doing this work ever since. But right now he's currently working on thinking about how he was just for earlier, this week, invited by representative acacio Cortes to participate in this core working group, that shaping the green New Deal. Deal with a key piece being, how do we get? And what's the relationship between Labour and the green New Deal being a piece. That with that said I'm going to turn over the floor to Jeremy. Thanks for coming. It's really nice to be with you all. And the first thing I want to say, is, if my voice drops and you can't hear me in the back. There's a very long narrow space. So, definitely wave or throw something at me. If you can't hear, I'm getting a little hard of hearing myself. So I'm very sensitive to this as a Handicap that and in this room even people who aren't handicapped being hard of hearing are likely to have a little difficulty as we go. So I want to ask a few questions just to get started. How many of you have been interviewed in some way or other school newspaper? Okay. So a lot you head of experience of being on that side how many of you have done an interview? Okay, so really a high proportion.

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Okay, so we're getting appreciated acquire, but we're teaching the already learn it. How many of you are thinking of yourselves as being, from the DC area? One way, or another? So a fairly small proportion and but how many of you have a place whether it's here or on the other side of the world that you identify with the you think as you of as your place that you You're connected with or came from or so. Let's see. Yeah. So again quite a large High proportion and how many of you are actually have been or are part of a community history project. So I think it's more than yeah. Okay. Yeah. I thought it was more than that. The last couple of days I've had the

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privilege of being with groups that have been studying a number of aspects of Washington related history in connection with the history truck. And is there anyone here with not been involved in the Reno city project? I know we've got a red, someone would Roots there but no one from the project. Okay. How about Shepherds Park? No, okay. How about a you women's Founders project? Okay, and how about Mount Vernon Square? I know we've got a few quite a few good. Can't okay, CeCe. So that's been. So we've got a lot of experience in this room already. You like

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there's one more project on the ccnv shelter, oats the ccnv shelter. Okay. Okay, so good. Got it. And, by the way, I spent an incredible afternoon with Mitch Schneider 11-day in the 1980s, just going and talking with him and getting some feel for their operation at that time. So I have a little feel for that for that experience. So I got started

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in doing community history. Participatory history, when I was a tiny kid and I've lived in a little Community. It was just a couple dozen families and but it had a collection made a collection, a history like scrapbook and every three or four years, they make a new volume and they'd have toes and they have letters that people had ridden and Fourth of July Events and just the daily life of the community was documented in that way. As a kid growing up. I would love to pour over these old photos and see the people that I knew as the 70 year olds at 15 or 20, making fools of themselves fools of themselves. Swimming all and things of that kind and that was kind of my The Germ of the idea of why should his three be something that's done exclusively by historians. Why shouldn't it also be done by people who are out of the community that that history is about? I get a chance to actually try doing it until the The project that Dan was describing Mike you're okay little guy put and the so around 1980. I was getting to know a the

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people who worked in an area in Western Connecticut that had been the center of the American brass industry for 150 years and the Industry was on the skids. That was sort of one of the leading edges of deindustrialization of what came to be called the Rust Belt. And so I met some other people who were involved with that community and we said, let's do a history of the problem people of the brass industry and what was known as The Brass Valley. Lee. Well, it's still there and the and then we came up why not. Well I should say I have written a book before called strike. There was a labor history book and the covered 150 years of American labor history and I didn't talk to any workers or anyone who had been involved with that experience. As I was doing it. It was completely written in. Lofty of a library from books and documents and

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whatever I could get for old records. And when I was done, I said there's something screwed up about this way of working. And I've decided I'm now just working on the 50th anniversary edition of the book. I still like the book, but I also feel like this was not the only only way and necessarily the best way to do history. This essentially about ordinary folks. So, we dreamed up the idea and it's now it's Hub. So I yeah, that's being revived as shown by the the projects that I was mentioning and the work that various people here are doing. But at that time, it was quite an original unusual thing to even think about The idea that history would involve not only professional historians, but would also involved the members of the communities that they were studying and writing about. So we decided we would do that. And the only problem is we had no clue how to do it. We said well, we'll organize history Community committees in local unions and Your centers and we will have an advisory panel and that was about as far as we got in, think Advanced thinking of how we would do this. We had only one model to go on. There were some people in Lowell, Massachusetts which had been the center of the shoe industry in the united in the United States and They were also organizing a community based history project about the shoe industry, and we went up to see talk to them and see the event, they organized. And one of them community members who had been the secretary of the Union Local and was now the secretary of the retirees local said, To them. You have to

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provide food because people who are retired scheuer very for living on very low incomes and the prospect of a meal, is a really attractive thing to them. And then the second thing is, she started saying to the people, who came, when are you coming? But some people came through the the retirees office. Are you coming to the reunions? We had the people who were organizing this had not thought of it as a reunions. They thought of it as a history day where people would come and give their testimony and so on. But she was the one that looked at this and said, well the way to make sense of this for people is this is a reunions. This is a chance to get together with your old friends and acquaintances. And people, you worked with, for all these decades, in the shoe Mills shoe factories. And to Joy join with them and to tell your stories to each other and to these nice young kids that are coming here to do this project. So that was those are the two great gems of wisdom that we had to guide us. And it gave us a whole way of thinking about what we were doing that. We hadn't had first of all that we had to provide something back. We couldn't just say, oh we're wonderful people who are here to help you tell your stories for people for whom that was. Why should they Other stories and the other was finding a ways that we could make what we were doing meaningful in terms of community that we were that we were hoping hoping to be working with. So I could obviously talk endlessly about the breast workers history project. But let me just give a few sort of guidelines that we came away with. For thinking about doing this kind of roof. First of all, to me the beginning and end of wisdom about doing these kinds of community projects is respect and you see many people if they come out of an academic background, for example,

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who unfortunately have not been brainwashed into thinking, in that they're in some way more knowledgeable or support superior to the people that they're going out to to interview and talk with and the people any anybody can pick that up immediately and you're going to end that will immediately be a barrier to any kind of work of this kind the key, the all Altruistic where the alternative as I think about it is that the people you're going to interview the people you're going to be talking with are the real experts on the subjects that you're trying to find out about. If you're trying to find out about in our case, how the workers in the brass plants, organize themselves to have both more control on it. To have Union so that they could negotiate over getting a living wage. The people who really knew that story were, the people who had worked in that in the plants and they were no one else was really an expert on that least of all those of us who are going in to try to record and report on this story. Similarly, the cultures And various kinds of institutions of the Immigrant groups in the community. We didn't know anything about. And we really couldn't read a book or talk to an expert who really understood eat very much about 10 or 15 different ethnic groups that forms the core of Life of these communities. So they were the experts that was the core. anything that relates to that

00:17:49.400 - 00:23:31.800

is How much is learning. They're the experts and the assumptions in views. You have that you go in with may not be the right framework for understanding. We were doing a labor history project. That was our definition of what we were up to and number of people that were our informants. Who are working with us on the project from from that Community took us aside and said as one of them put it, you know, you're never gonna understand this community. If you just approach it from the point of view of a labor story. That's part of the story. But Waterbury, that's the main city of this area in the old days. It was all sectioned off. That's a local phrase that people use there and people didn't mingle through good. Mingle was another word they used for with sections off and, and people mingle or didn't mingle across the lines of the Lithuanian or polish or African American or French Canadian communities. And if you want to understand what was going on, you have to That it turned out because I was completely true even for doing a labor project. We learned that, for example, the early strikes and unions were actually organized my ethnic group. So there's a general strike in this community in 1920 and they had completely different sections for about seven or eight or nine different. People peoples, ethnic groups that spoke different languages. So they had to meet Things in different languages. And then they had a council that represented all of all of them rather than having. For example, a different player Organization for people who worked in each Factory, which is what you would think, would be the natural thing for a union. Well, we never would have understood that if people hadn't taken us aside and said, okay, here's something you need to understand about this community and then we gradually Realize that, yes, that was really completely, right. Another part of it is it's very easy to have Syria types about types of people. So over here and an old Italian woman is going to be like such and such. And that's something that all of us. I think have to constantly fight against his. We live at with fiery thoughts or natural thing to have about all kinds of people the most Most abrupt experience I ever had with this was you all usually when I do an interview, very often. I'll start out by saying well tell me a little about your family and then I was kind of pause and they can pick that up and respond to it. However, they want to it's a very open-ended question. Like they my family came from Italy or they can say, you know, my family were very mean to me when I was a kid or whatever they want to say. So, I did it for the 150th time and the woman I was interviewing said, well, I don't know anything about my family, because I'm an orphan. And so, and I had no idea what to say, next. It was nonplussed in a way that I just didn't didn't have any idea. And fortunately, she immediately came to my salvation and said, well, of course, there's the family that I was raised in. I could You about damn? Would you like that? And of course I said, yes, that would be great. But the struggle against one's own stereotypes is a constant part of this work. So after we did, the brass workers history project, we did a book and a movie, which were very much designed for the local communities and The Wider Community Statewide, which was filled with people who Red left, the Naugatuck Valley, because there were no, there were no jobs, but still had a strong identification with this place as the place they had come from and also for other communities and work groups, other places who had very parallel experiences, even though the the nitty-gritty details were different. So we made the book in the documentary. Show the documentary and Community meetings up and down the valley. I should say that two other quick things about doing it. We had in the interviews. One of the things we did is we just assume the people. We were interviewing, as I said before, we're experts and we warn just collecting facts from them, or even just, well, I remember this such and such happened in such and such happened, but we tried to Draw out their interpretations of the meaning of the experiences that they had. So

00:23:33.800 - 00:24:53.300

the way in, which the guy in the Lithuanian Community said, well our role in this community was transformed by. I said, what's the biggest change you've ever experienced here expecting something about the closing of the factories or something like that? He said, Vatican 2 The coming of the reforming the Catholic church. It's a highly Catholic City. And I said, why was that so important? He said, if you were listening, Wayne Ian, you became equal to the Irish. The Irish priest couldn't kick you around anymore because you were ill feeling any instead of Irish again. Something I wouldn't have thought even to think about asking. So They're the people we were talking to were also interpreters in collaboration with us and we'll get to that. And we created a community advisory panel, which reviewed the materials the book, and the materials for the movie as you went forward and gave their input and comments criticisms and work collaborative Partners in those in those processes. So,

00:24:57.900 - 00:26:10.800

one of the main questions that people ask about the stuff is What's the point, why? Why do this, what's the reasons for it? And, you know, a little less, you know, hostile manner, doesn't have an impact. What are the is there are their effects to it? Or is it just a sort of nice Gilbert experience that allows people to be in a style? Have a little nostalgic, Revival of there? Of their earlier lives. And so I tried to think through some of the things that I think of, as impact. Interestingly, the first two or three years when we did it and soon after it. I had, I thought the impacts were really pretty limited. But as I continue to work in that area in that neighborhood gal region, I've gradually come to see more and more impacts when we did the Ethnic music project. We had a series of festivals with the musicians

00:26:11.400 - 00:27:30.300

and largely organized by the community. Music activists, cultural, ethnic cultural activists. The people who organized your picnics and organize the Lithuanian day or the Black History Day, or the exhibit in the Lithuanian Club, Social Club about the history of the community. They were kind of the background. What we did with the bring them together and have them be the background of this ethnic music festival and research project. And they We're brought the musicians that their Community recognizes their musicians. We did not unlike most Folk Festival type things. We did not bring in Headliners from out of town who would draw a big crowd. We brought the musicians who were the people that played at the dance has, where the church choir or the other musical elements of their communities, and then we had a series of festivals for Everyone for the city. And

00:27:32.500 - 00:28:16.400

at the beginning of one of them, there was a guy from the city. We're setting up the bleachers and the park. And he came over to me, and he said, what, what's this all about? So I explained what we were doing and he said, oh, you know, that's very interesting. And I should just, I should say there had just been Been a horrible racial confrontations in in Bronxville in in Brownsville in New York City. It was National headlines. People killed and so on. And so when I swing the project he said, oh, that's the

00:28:16.400 - 00:28:56.800

kind of thing you want to do, if you want to prevent something like what happened in Brownsville you have, okay? Okay, we're going the right, run the right track here and many people. Made it on how they got the decibels. And the other part we did a long series of radio programs and a TV show. And various other things about the ethnic music and many people commented on this, as a means to make people in a, in a city and a community. That had very, very high level of racial tension, and interesting tension, and just a hard hard Community. This was a beer.

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Kle for people to say, well, there's a value to being with people who were different. Another piece had to do with the as today. This was also a time of a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment it rises and Falls. So often in conjunction with economic cycles, and this is early 80s, period was definitely a Time nationally of anti-immigrant. Sediment and we did a lot in our project with previous generations of immigrants and the various kinds of discrimination. They had faced. And many of the people in the town at the time. We were working there with the descendants of those people. And had heard stories about sign saying no Irish need apply or similar kinds of things. And so we use that history as a way of Of fomenting a community dialogue and a degree of Consciousness about well anti-immigrant sentiments. This is this something we really can't. Can we see this from another point of view with the ethnic music project? Again a time of war and international conflict and a lot of America first type thinking then as today and we use this as a music festival in the We were doing, as a way of talking about how lucky we were to be linked to communities all over the world and this connected us with people and in Africa. And people in Latin America, many different countries in Europe and Canada. That was a way of making we had a, we had lemons and we made lemonade out of it, in those kinds of, in terms of giving a Different possible, kind of interpretation of what it meant to be in a multi-ethnic community. And when we first started working there, there was a Oma widespread. It's a narrative about why the brass industry was closing and had why the breast plants had closed, which was the workers were too demanding, they demanded. They wouldn't give concessions to the companies and therefore they

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Good companies, couldn't compete with place in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. And so they went the company's pulled out and it was a blame, the worker explanation was almost ubiquitous when we when we came in and one of the things we did was to try to make available to people other explanations of what happened, some of which were very 'Well, brass became largely replaced, by Plastics. And nothing to do with wage rates. The company's local brass companies had been purchased by national copper companies and then they have been purchased by International oil companies. So we had these old plants that were actually owned by Arco, and

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Other so high. Oh, and other Global oils companies who they were just a flick of Ink on a, on a balance sheet. And they would just say, oh, we're going to close this. In fact, after buying all these companies had a couple of years later. They say, well, we're going to get out of them out of the copper business, and so they just sold them all. So we told them that story and we actually had Community people say, okay. What was what? What was this plan originally than that? Was, that was the pipe Mill and and what had and it was owned by such and such a local God enterpreneur and then they would go through each company that had bought it. And he'll I dented up being owned by Atlantic Richfield and and told a completely different narrative about how this community have lost control of its own economy and been acquired by people who have no interest in it whatsoever to may, I the original owners, the magnates may not have been the most democratic and, and friendly to ordinary working folks, people, but they had a huge stake in the Life of this community and they didn't want to see it die and but it's accompanies the came in and bought. It had no interest in were perfectly happy, just destroying to local economy. So that story interestingly, over the years became very prevalent. And I remember going to community meetings, where I would say, tell me the history of this sub community and his plan. And someone would begin telling me the story and Through all of the history of it of Acquisitions and eventual clothing and then saying. But if you really want to know about this story, go get this book called breasts, probably. So let me just wrap up and there's lots more things we could touch on. And I'm very happy to respond to questions and comments and kick stuff around. But since we are We are in an academic institution. Why don't I start at close by saying a couple of words about the theory of knowledge that underlies. A lot of this work for me. One part of it has to do with Insider knowledge and Outsider knowledge and the Anthropologist refer to this as emic and etic. But I can never remember which is which does anyone though and take is inside. Okay, great. Yes outside and take us outside the knowledge from the, out of the outsider has of a group and Emmett is what the Insiders have knowledge that they have of the group, but the core point and I should say my description of what my role was. I was definitely in this community started as an outsider and I'm proud to say By the time we were done, I felt like I was a pet Outsider but the community knowledge is the way I think of it is really an extension of what we were doing with that kind of project and the projects that I mentioned before that people here are involved with there's really that in internal knowledge of the community. Is largely very often takes the form of Storytelling and this kind of work is in large part and extension of a process, that's actually a normal part of the life and experience of any, any Community, where people tell each other stories older people tell people, tell a younger people's stories about what happened before. Someone who Add an event comes in. Tell us other people who weren't at the event. What was going on here, and then discussion that grows from that that's just a normal part of everyday life of human beings. But so, that's the inside part and that's what's usually left out of history as it's normally written. So most historians if they were coming by Look at the Brass Valley, would we're coming to look at about Washington. They would have the mayor's or the city councillors. Were the government officials

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who were going shots. That would be their way of thinking about it. And what this does is to say there's another whole other piece that needs to be included and this is and it's not going to be that you want to find a life, too. Print if you find good documents about it, that's precious but don't can't have it be most of it. You won't find in conventional historical sources, but there's another piece that is makes a contribution. And that is the outsider's view. Robert Burns Scottish poet said, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be? In the gift to see ourselves as others. See us. And seeing just the internal view is not full

00:38:37.900 - 00:39:23.400

knowledge of the story of a group of a movement of a community, how the people are now that someone from the outside sees them, is also makes a contribution to that. And the way I think about this is that it's very much, a question of a dialogue between insiders and Outsiders. Also, Outsiders Maybe, Skills and knowledge of a different kind. So for example, in one of these groups, the had one of the students have been doing research on the Civil War and the Civil War origins of one of these communities. And that wasn't something that people in the community were likely to have

00:39:26.100 - 00:40:05.300

skills and capela. Techniques to go and do that research. So they brought something else into the community. It couldn't have replaced what the community knew, but it did bring another dimension through it. So dialogue and the court, all of this in my mind is mutual respect. And recognizing that other people know things, you don't know and you know things that they don't know and let's have a process of learning. From each other and the third element is critical

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reflection. We have its bait. And the idea that just because somebody, who claims to have authority is putting out a story, align, a narrative, a set of facts doesn't mean that you have to accept that. They know what they're saying, maybe right, maybe true and When you look into it, you may discover. Oh it says this is this is fine. But it may also be that they have an ax to grind that they have a blind spot that the things that they don't see and this overall process is designed to support and generate critical reflection on what we're told about history. And so just to sort of put this in a wider context. It's often said that knowledge is power. And I think that that is very germane to this kind of work, and this kind of work is about knowledge, this power, but it's about a different kind of knowledge. It's about knowledge. That is created through a social process in which there's not the empowered people who have the knowledge and then other people Whom they may or may not transmit. It who merely have their own experience which isn't really knowledge. It's about a process of creating a kind of knowledge that is rooted in people's experience, but not limited to people's experience that draws on a much wider range of sources. Also, and I think it's At its best. The basis that kind of knowledge is the basis for a different kind of power as a power. That's not based on Authority, that's given from above or just random individual

00:42:07.400 - 00:42:42.400

isolated perception and knowledge was leafing, the isolated individual responses to situations, but it's a kind of power that allows people. 24 Mutual understandings. Mutual definitions of what their situation is and therefore be able to act on in a cooperative and Collective way. So wide open for questions, we don't have a mic. So please speak

00:42:42.400 - 00:43:27.300

up. I go ahead. Sure. So the I've always been you know, concerned about. I mean, I grew up in the woods and Soviet environment is any I've always been from the time. I I I was a little kid conscious of and also I grew up in the early days of the environmental movement. I remember when all the vehicles to cars in the trucks didn't have Pollution Control devices, and horrible

00:43:28.500 - 00:44:03.100

pollution would pour out of the tailpipes. and so it's always been a part of my experience in way of looking at things to be concerned about environmental things the Knowledge about climate change and global warming. Really goes back a long way. It was pretty much ignored, but

00:44:03.800 - 00:44:41.200

I was reading things 25 years ago, actually now 30 years ago, that laid out the whole impact and what it was going to be and everything that we're experiencing today was knowable. It's just people didn't want to know it. And so that really concerned and worried me and I always and Thing I wrote I put a little bit of you know, just like this is something we got to be aware of and think about but I had no clue whatever what to do about it. It's then as the climate movement began developing.

00:44:42.200 - 00:44:51.400

I was why I'm pretty much wanted to participate in it and I was in the first sit down the White House

00:44:51.800 - 00:45:38.300

for For civil disobedience and the white house around, Mackay XL Pipeline and just sort of just as well as a person of Citizen activists. So that's really my background on it. But then I, there was someone, I knew who had been a union official who was actually retired in order. Order to play rock and roll, which was one of his passions and to try to get organized labor to take a strong stand on climate change, which was his other passion. And so he asked me to work with him. And so,

00:45:38.300 - 00:45:44.300

for most of of of the last for about a decade, I've worked with a group called the labor Network for

00:45:44.300 - 00:46:27.700

sustainability, which has been we're have working organizing Within. Unions and the labor movement, more broadly, especially to challenge. The idea of that particular climate is just going to destroy everyone's job, which is the fear, very natural. And in some cases, valid fear and climate protection. In fact, will create many more jobs than it destroys, but Different set of jobs and there are going to be people who would be hurt by it. And every job is important if it's your

00:46:27.700 - 00:46:59.800

child, so a big part of our work is to have put forward strategies for how do you see that climate protection policies are not going to destroy the lives of thousands and thousands of people. And then how do you create a, how do you create a political context where that'll be part of climate plans and how do you persuade? People there might be might be victimized by this that there's enough commitment to protecting things. They're not victimized

00:47:01.400 - 00:47:30.500

to to allow them to be supporting climate prediction policy. So that's the backstory of it. And of course green your veal via the idea and even the language has been around a long time. I wrote stuff. If ten years ago on the global green, new deal, but all of a sudden, it has emerged for reasons that we could talk about.

00:47:30.500 - 00:48:19.600

But we'll try to do that now, but it's become a huge part of the national Consciousness and discussion, which is like something that it's a dream, you know, something I would have dreamed of not only 25 years ago, but a year ago and throw it well, someday this. To happen. Rohit, has and labor Network for sustainability was approached by sunrise. To help build alliance with unions actually before the green New Deal. The first sit-in occupation than murder conjunction with AOC and all that, just be

00:48:20.400 - 00:48:32.700

just a month or two before that. And I wrote a number of things that were in support of climate jobs guarantee. And then, once the green, you'd be able broke out, I

00:48:32.700 - 00:49:07.500

wrote 12, Reasons that unions should demand a green, New Deal and I've been writing like crazy. Tell you the truth. I just said the thing on the green, new deal as a strategy for, creating more equal American economy. So, that's the obvious just, as Dan mentioned, I, there was some meeting With fascinating group of people for 80

00:49:07.500 - 00:50:07.900

people about half of them were came out of the community movements, and organizations and half were what you might describe as policy wonks. There were people with massive, extra expertise in energy, policy, Transportation policy, etc. Etc. Academics, people in government and think tanks, and so on. Your to very it was a very big question. What it was going to be like to bring these groups together and ended up being terrific. It was great. Policy people in the community. People regard each other with great respect tree behave, everyone behaved. Well, the things that you would expect of the policy people that they might be really arrogant and why we bother important. These people quite the opposite. It was

00:50:12.000 - 00:50:26.900

We re not, we have part of the story, but this is going to have to be done on the ground by people like these people and conversely. The community people did not say why do we have all

00:50:26.900 - 00:50:38.900

these people from the elite trying to tell us what to do? They were very open to the hear somebody who has some knowledge that we can make use of.

00:50:39.400 - 00:51:52.100

So it was a ended up. It started with a lot of tensions, but very rapidly. As soon as people started talking about the nitty-gritty concerns. They were very much able to have a good time at work. So yeah, so my background is in literature and film. I'm not a historian. And when you were talking about storytelling, I was remembering experiences that I've had in small communities, Villages places where I've lived, where often the storytelling about the past ends up being somewhat. Fatalistic, like this happened and then this happened and then this happened and it does create a sense of Heritage and a sense of understanding, but doesn't say to create aims for the future, like, therefore, we have to, but you have had a real experience as an activist as well. So, I was wondering how you negotiate that like the telling the story, which feels like it's the past versus water for what we now do, right? And it's a, it's a, it's a very good question. And And many of these communities have a strong sense of defeat that they tried to do stuff and they were beaten down. So that which makes where you're saying even

00:51:52.100 - 00:52:00.200

more even more relevant. The and I don't have a cut-and-dried answer to it. I

00:52:00.200 - 00:52:11.100

think that the let me just end. Let me add the also the the faction factions and sores from internal.

00:52:11.500 - 00:52:39.700

Clicks in the communities. Are also are a sort of similar problem where we can't do anything because of those people over there. So the Philippines and we did, we didn't take it as our mission to directly. We weren't there as organizers and activists. So I don't think anybody who interacted with us with it being

00:52:40.700 - 00:53:17.800

on the road. Who's and about who we were that that our motivation was certainly thinking that people in communities, like that should have more respected, more power, but it's sir. I think that the first thing we the first answer I would give is those places where people were able to sit together accomplish something

00:53:17.800 - 00:53:49.900

ring, win some battles. We were certainly try to hold those up as possible. Even if they what they achieved was a perfect. The idea that we can't do anything. And we're totally hopeless and helpless in this situation. Well, if you look at the history, there's a lot that's been forgotten and left behind that shows that that's only one side of the story. So

00:53:51.000 - 00:54:06.700

we also certainly always Included in the discussion. What's the meaning of this for the future? Are there things that we

00:54:08.800 - 00:54:20.500

can do or could do that would draw on these experiences to give us

00:54:20.500 - 00:54:38.500

more power. More respect more ability to cooperate for our common needs in the future. So With that question is always poets. We didn't really think it was our responsibility or it wasn't our role to give the answer to it. But that was definitely

00:54:49.600 - 00:56:02.100

The answer to it, but that was definitely part of it. And I think that other thing was a, just a more broad educational function of how to how do people were going to eyes. How do people get more power over their conditions, how to people? Learn to cooperate with people that they were in conflict with. And so lessons, at that level were things that we brought out it and it happened. One of the stories. I didn't tell this, quite an interesting example of this, is the one of the Tans and one of the brass factories. They would we work in most one day. They realized that the planet About to be put on watching block, be sold off which in that context meant someone was buying clothes and most inevitably. And so,

00:56:03.300 - 00:58:16.500

the workers connected with a organization that did worker buyouts, and they actually decided to buy the company and they created a worker own Co-op that own the company and ran it. Eventually because the whole industry was hitting the skids for other reasons, so they ran it for seven years which with enough to get the main reason for buying. It was the pensions were everyone's going to lose their pensions and that was enough to get everyone who had been working in the company enough additional seniority, to get their pensions fun. My father quite a company. So that was the, that was a case where what looked like a completely situation. Like, you're describing a situation that's just two feet, and inevitable, Inevitable, Defeat and powerlessness certainly wasn't perfect. A lot better than it. Could've been put on a permanent basis, but it decrease A situation where these people were able to make significant gains has also organized themselves in a quite amazing way and have been democratically on companies with lots of problems. I wrote another important factor. Third of it was about his company and its problems and then wasn't opium, but it was at the same time, an example of people pointing something out of this experience, finding it a way to get them. Yeah, we just had a quick question about some of the principles. You mentioned, for kind of how to conduct research with appropriate can use an appropriate way. Like, how would you put respect in a practice or how do you challenge your advisees? How would you do that? When working directly with individuals? Yeah. So

00:58:17.100 - 01:04:43.700

one way to challenge, your biases kissing other people challenge them. So I have people who worked with me on the team, who would say. Rear. You know, you're just going on interviewing and people you're comfortable with and the people that you're who are more like you engender terms and race terms in kind of just the way my mind works, that kind of thing and you've got to get out of your comfort zone and go interview women, or people of color or immigrants, not end. So there were a number of people doing interviews, but in terms of the city iet's go and it's like, okay, I'm really even talked to people who were active readers in such and such a union when I did had somebody else fall by the wayside in the work, I was doing, so that's one, that's one way. And the dean sensitive to that open to that rather than defensive about it. Of course, you're going to be defensive. The first in your first response, but have a second response where you say, you know what, I did probably there, right? And secondly, whether they're right or wrong. I don't have to be so defensive about the situation so that that's one and the story I told about, you know, this you can understand this as a laborer project for just got to recognize that these were asked that communities. I know I was a labor historian. That's always for a long time than my Prime Focus of Interest. So in fact that somebody said to me, you know what, you're making your focus to the arrow would be another example of that party, I think. And then just asking questions of the of yourself. Who am I not talking with? We had a lot of this was an area that had huge amount of injury Union conflict. It was referred to as the left versus the right, which was among other things, a very inaccurate because they cross over to ask them questions. Personality questions or four kinds of other things. But that was the way it's talked about and are Keen was a people who have natural sympathies were with the left. The right was not a right Vigo. He, they were part of this for me is so confusing. Is that people fall, the right would be regarded as Progressive training. Nice green different in their views from the people who are pulling the left. So we had to move to a stance of, we're not here to settle debates that these people have been having for three or four years. It's our job to be a platform for different positions and different people can present their positions. And I, How are you that outfit in the teeth? Again for that approach because we had people who initially wanted to. So who were the good guys and bad guys? And so that would so I think that not only cutting Friday answer this and questioning one time, you know stereotypes. The presuppositions is that it's a human problem with occurs in all situations. Having your really need to be critical that critical thinking about the subject of moving beyond. Pre-established assumptions is part of why you're doing it. Blessing. If you get corrected, I think that that underlying attitudes. I'm going to think canonical. Yes. I'm thinking of your book. Hard time are common sense. Hard times. And I believe, I you once told me that starting Lind critique you for that book because you did not provide your own layer of interpretation. You just provided these things kind of polyphonic approach of these different perspectives. And, and how, how would I manage? Sure? There are at least those who are studying history. We're constantly told me you've got to have your interpretation, your evidence. But you have your interpretation. How does one, how do you share kind of that share, that interpretive Authority, so to speak? And to what extent do you think that you actually can highlight these different interpretive? Where's your interpretive piece? Come into that, right? Very very good question. Let me talk about me just mention almost all these books are on my website for free download. So anybody who wants to find Any of them. Just take a look at him and see him. They're all on. Jeremy brecher. Got to work. So, including common sense for hard times. So again, common refrain of mine. No cut-and-dried solution, but it's and I think that the first answer is it's got to be back and forth, process is repeated process, iterative, as they say and you always start out with some ideas and presuppositions on anything you do on the brass workers history project

01:04:45.000 - 01:05:32.700

part of our original conception. Was that there have was something called the new labor history, which was an academic movement within labor history. To do a more rank-and-file oriented historical account. The less institutional women greatest real s. The story of the union says institutions and more workers and their activities and culture movement soap. So we were coming in with that. And so now that interpretive frame, I wouldn't I would say we continued

01:05:33.600 - 01:06:09.300

somewhere someone that continue to be guiding what we were trying to do by it became very rapidly. Filled in my tremendous. On the balance that people that we were dealing with had to create a much more complex. He had content for what was going on. So-so. One part of the answer is it's not an answer. It's an answer to a different question, really,

01:06:10.100 - 01:06:56.400

which is part of the interpretive part. Came from the from the people we were working with and that was critical. And then what we were contributing in terms of interpretation was in dialogue with that in this I think he's this question. Is that somewhat different for each project. So there are others where I've been more in the role of I'm going to go out. I'm going to take all of other people's ideas. Protesters. And I'm going to be the synthesizer of them and then, their projects were as much more. We'll go out and get different people's views and understandings and we'll just put them together. And people

01:06:56.400 - 01:07:56.100

can, you know, pick and choose what they like, readers or viewers can see what you can take different interpretations. And they, they are the ones to make you sit business. So it's different. It's different for different projects and different purposes. The in terms of the brass workers were I think that our approach was we would give we had the first of all because we got two grand and we were the editors and the filmmakers. There was a ultimate Authority and went with the fact that we had ultimate responsibility. So for example, somebody gave us a story that we believed as historians was false. We have documentation show that we didn't just tell that story as he for with every other story. So we had to make selections at decisions at that kind of level. On the other

01:07:56.100 - 01:10:37.500

hand. We would usually not either just leave it aside and not use something for that reason because we didn't agree that it was the truth. But and we also wouldn't say presented. Let's say this is. So all, that's why I watch and here's what really happened, what we try to do with what? Well, which we evolved exercising, our responsibility and Authority as the people were constructed in that kind of overriding narrative, but we would try to include things that disagreed with what we felt and then we would do. Either, we juxtapose them in some way or have a note that said, you know, for another approach to this, the towing service interview on the same subject. We would, we would provide some wider context and she'd say, is this was a This corresponds to the experience that some people take, for example, of course, they're why the plants closed. So we would say for people saying the reason the plants closed forces, the workers were too demanding and so on and we're and we wouldn't say they were full of crap and Company hitched in the people tell you that we love it. So what we would do is that first of all, we have other people who told about other aspects of our geographical Movement of plants whether it was the type of logical changes Plastics and aluminum replacing brass different National policies and different countries because a lot of the plants who out competed why countries that actually had National Economic policies that supported their developing these industries after World War Two. So we would tell that story and then you can see why somebody. In the who only source of knowledge. With the company saying, there was a company that they closed because the tingling two weeks, you know, the laborer is too expensive. Why somebody could experience that that as a reasonable way of interpreting what was happening and the same time, if they had known these other things that

01:10:37.500 - 01:24:22.600

we're going on. He might have had a very different. So I don't know if that's an attic with Che answer, but I think that's As in other well, and then we would do overall framing. So we that was historical but and analytical historical. So when we talked about the transformation of the work process, we would fill in the background of scientific management and Frederick Winslow Taylor with the person who essentially invented Time study and then we would have somebody in the community and the guy who introduced I study the biggest hope. Plant little interview with him about the whole process of introducing toxicity in with what they were doing and we had workers who had to work under. That system describing what it was like to work at the best system and how they resisted it. But it re-interviewed him. The guy who would put Time study in the early 30s and just scold manufacturing company and and did some of the backgrounds about some of the things about Why this is not necessarily such a nice thing for workers. And we showed it to him and said, what do you think? And he said, well, everything you said, this is not everything you said, here is true. If not, it's not a lie. When I bite. Our intention was to try to make your jobs better safer, less than Pleasant. And that's what that is from our point of what we're trying to do and we put that quote of his. So and so says what their motivation was here doing this, everyone knows their motivation to make more money by people work making people work harder and it's not like we had through, you know refute it refuse. Saying that, that was your intention, but completely this guy who was quite a decent thoughtful guy that probably was part of his motivation. So so maybe in some of the things they agree there, tried to strike a balance between Letting truth emerge have, multiple voices, and ours are voice. Being one of the voices that was able to bring in things that a lot of other that other voices weren't able to bring in. Other comments or questions. Did you have something? Yeah, I was just thinking about how different your approaches obviously than that of a social scientist. And so many of the students here. Perhaps have that experience of either, you know, we're trying to find out the needs of a community, right. Or here's a question are right and now we're going to take all these yes or no me answers and collate them and get data. And I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the differences in the approaches with Idea about, what is this knowledge for right? And what's the Practical use? Like so a social scientist would say, well look, we're getting all this data. This is very practical, right? What we're doing and we can do something with this data. Would you like to address, you know some of the questions like somebody who's more used to that approach would have about your approach and why it is offer something very special and perhaps different and more useful, right? Well, let me let me. First of all, say that. Historians are dependent on all kinds of other researchers and social scientists in the broad sense. So the work that I do, I use things from Economist old. I use things that were done by sociologists Will Define the, these are all thing and interest presenting them that material back into the community in Waterbury. The main city that I was working in on this. There was a Then not well known but later, well-known sociologist, who did studies of black communities. I think of his name in a minute risk surveys. And so I felt unbelievably lucky, when I discovered some of your was another locally known as its source. Study that this guy, but none of the black community of Waterbury, maybe 1924 or thereabouts, where he had gone to every household hundred pound way, for whatever. Whatever it was collected data, and collect the baby in other ways. And that was like a both for me to understand the community, and for the people in the community to have that access to that. Raven, you standing here background. So another example is that there is a big housing crisis after World War one in this city and the companies had actually invested in sociological studies housing issues, and they had incredible data that they had a conflict that kind of gathered. For example, they had a A gram of every ethnicity of every family in every community in the city. So we had a perfect ethnic map of the city. Just an unbelievable van from that. We were able to through all kinds of Meaningful, conclusions about what we're are and what they were doing and it fitted into the participatory cycle. People could look at those things and say, oh, yeah, my aunt moved from here to here. It says in such a time, whatever, whatever it was so there. So there's a, there's a direct positive. Phoebe D forward that in that kind of way that doesn't get to the question about what are the underlying differences? And I think No. Different types of knowledge have different kind of views and I would say that the knowledge. This knowledge is related to questions. First of all, questions of democracy and you can have the knowledge of where the housing, all the housing is, but who's going to, you know, who is going to be in a position to use that knowledge. And it's the purposes of knowledge is Just for example, after the Riots of 68, you have made a series life is in Washington, but basically there were serving renewal and there was the building Bank police station. I forget that there's a role of new building for 11. Housing block row. That was created between the North End, which works at that time, the predominantly black area, and the downtown. And it was this like a, imagine, our wind fortified line between them. The black community at that, Pam. I don't know if they get surveys before they did this, or what they obviously had to know when we're told the black population was but some Knowledge of its kind to be useful very in a way that's inimical to the people. Who are The objects of knowledge. And I think the core of this, the core difference is that people who are the objects of the knowledge and few, who were the subjects of discovering and creating and knowledge are in part to save people. So I think that's the big difference. It doesn't invalidate or conventional sociological knowledge, but it does. Raise the question about who's it for, who gets the structure? Whose story gets told and how it gets. So then so that the more sociological knowledge can get used for in a way that is politically Democratic inappropriate and humanistically appropriate and sensitive helps people find out who they are, where they came from. So on by its design in a form that is necessarily contribute to that purpose. But you can do it. I mean, there are plenty of social scientists who in fact contribute to the same processes as values that I said. Oh, yeah, and I think from what you're saying that historical narratives can also be used that way to even streams that is strictly about who what were the causes of the industrialization used so that this is really also stain it. That question of how that knowledge cuts across disciplines Beyond, just sociology. Yes, and and I also want to say that one of the other things, people would say back to me is yes, but this is this knowledge is objective. There's something the social science, knowledge is scientific and the answer that I have and that's unlike what your coral and the answer that I would give is different. types of knowledge, required different methodologies, but in order to be knowledge, any Methodology has to have controls, it has to have ways of saying what degree and kind of truth of what it's doing is and it's different, novels of Science. Fiction are great things and they are tremendously valuable parts of human life. By did a very important. See, they are different from Both his not only social science, but also history. And the reason is that history tells stories but it has criteria that have to be followed for whether those stories get historical. Definitions of Truth other. There are other definitions of Truth. Is they are invalidated by the historical definition of truth, but they do have to, but but historians have criteria, they have to use. Then it's bad history and someone else can. Hopefully we'll come along. Is that a good interpretation? You ignored he's for vaccinate and that's why I said a critical approach is one of the aspects of this work. But one of the important aspects. I see many folks. We hired have to confess that I've done over 4 hours a day interview. Eight hours. We've determined of interviewing with him and I could do hours and hours more, but I'm going to save you guys. All I know we're getting close to dinnertime. There are in fact, eight hours of oral history interviews. Done with Jeremy that we will post on the website. So we'll get that up. Certainly. I'm sure if you wanted to reach out, ask further questions. For me, he's extraordinarily generous. I've super will then come to spend the afternoon with us. Thank you all for coming out. Certainly. This has been very relevant for the Humanities truck. I think, idea of really engaging in that different in the kind of Humanity's kinds of different kinds of approaches that engage the humanities. We didn't really get to talk about that real panic. Motivations behind his interest in music, but that kind of gets to that as well as you. But any case I will say, thank you. Jeremy.