Still Fighting at 250
A procession into a main session at Labor Notes in Chicago included worker history tapestries by Tabitha Arnold. The 2028 Labor Notes Conference will take place March 24-26 at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place and Convention Center in downtown Chicago. Photo: Jenny Brown
As America turns 250, it’s easy to despair about where we're going. The Labor Notes Conference was a powerful antidote.
These 4,000-plus fighters have not given up. They're still fighting.
And this country is filled with courageous working people like them, who believe that a better world is possible
“I didn’t hear no bell,” says Rocky Balboa, as he miraculously gets up yet again in the midst of a brutal street fight at the end of “Rocky V.” The best union activists have that underdog determination. It’s sewn into the fabric of this country.
UNDERDOG TRADITION
On this 250th anniversary, let’s celebrate our underdog tradition: the revolutionaries who overthrew a king and established the first modern democracy, dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal. It’s a great principle—even if the new country was a long way from living up to it in practice. Bringing that principle closer to reality has taken generation after generation of fighting underdogs:
The abolitionists who crusaded to end slavery, and the courageous slaves who escaped to join the Union army.
The Wobblies in the early 20th century, union organizers who defied bans on street meetings, filling the jails with fellow workers as they fought to make freedom of speech a reality.
The brave union fighters of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, who stood strong against police and vigilante violence to organize millions of workers into unions in the 1930s and 1940s.
The civil rights activists who refused to be moved by firehoses or police batons in their pursuit of equality for African Americans. “We aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around. We aren't going to let any injunction turn us around,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., in his final speech, supporting striking Memphis sanitation workers. “We are going on.”
And the people who were at the Labor Notes Conference this year, from federal workers defending their right to a union to the regular Minnesotans risking their lives in defense of their immigrant neighbors.
The labor movement is essential to winning a more just America. We aren’t going to let Elon Musk or Donald Trump turn us around. We are going on. We didn’t hear no bell.
