| Monday, September 6, 2004 |
As the 13th annual Labor Day Parade pushed off from the Botto House on Sunday, marchers crossed paths with longtime residents; union organizers, who could recite the house's history; and borough newcomers, who knew something happened there but couldn't say what.
Once the residence of mill worker Pietro Botto and his wife, Maria, the house is now home to the American Labor Museum and a national landmark for its role in the 1913 Paterson silk strike. A photograph outside the house shows thousands of silk mill workers gathered for a rally as they called for an eight-hour day, safer working conditions and an end to child labor.
Gray skies and cool temperatures kept this year's parade small. About 10 floats rolled by with union members atop, at least one singing labor solidarity songs. Residents gathered at the ends of their driveways to watch while children grabbed for candy firefighters threw from their trucks.
Sharon Natusch, visiting from her new home in Toms River, grew up in Haledon hearing stories of the strike from her grandfather. Others at the parade remembered themselves what work was like before unions.
"I remember going to work when there was no pensions, no health (benefits), no unemployment insurance," said Stan Aslanian, 79, president emeritus of the New York-New Jersey Lithographers and Photoengravers Union. "Labor, with all its warts, has done a lot of good."
Some marchers carried anti-Bush and anti-war posters and banners left over from last Sunday's march in New York City. Members of Central New Jersey Coalition for Peace and Justice held signs that read "Bring the troops home now!" and "We the people say No to the Bush agenda."
"We think this is a disaster for working people," said Gavrielle Gemma, 55, of Keansburg. "So many things are being cut because of the war. The administration is cutting overtime (pay), raising Medicare premiums, threatening Social Security."
But some parade-watchers, both union members and those lacking basic benefits, struggled to describe Labor Day's significance.
Aida Ramos, 44, watched the parade from the sidewalk outside her house. She thinks it's small and needs more music. Blanca Rivera, a school bus driver who gets minimum wage but no health benefits, sat with her and agreed: Labor Day doesn't mean that much any more.
"This is Labor Day, but nobody works that day," laughed Ramos. "It doesn't make sense."
Long weekend, yes, but also a time to honor workers
| Monday, September 6, 2004 |
For some, it's three days off work and a time for barbecues - the unofficial end of summer.
But to a few hundred people marching in a Labor Day parade Sunday, this weekend is a time to consider the plight of the nation's workers and unions.
The 13th annual parade to celebrate immigrant workers, sponsored by the American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark, kicked off in Haledon as people lined the streets to watch and cheer. The procession wound through the borough and ended at the Great Falls Festival in Paterson.
Political speeches made before the parade and talk among those participating focused on the economy and what it is doing to manual laborers and their families. They spoke about the new federal law on overtime, the outsourcing of jobs overseas, and how the minimum wage is far too low to support families.
"I'm really worried that if things don't turn around soon, unions will be destroyed and workers that are already being exploited will be even more so," said Bob Mitchell, a printer's union member from Frankfort who has marched in this parade for several years. "We have to change things politically, that's the only way."
The Botto House is the natural spot for staging the parade. During the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike, more than 20,000 millworkers met there. Although the specific origin of Labor Day is not clear, many believe a local man played a large part in the holiday.
Peter McGuire is credited with being the first to suggest a day to honor workers during an 1882 meeting of the Central Labor Union of New York City. But some say Matthew Maguire, a Paterson machinist and alderman and a member of the Central Labor Union, organized the first Labor Day parade that year as a combination protest march and a celebration of working people. It took place in New York City, with more than 30,000 workers participating.
Several states subsequently observed the event, and in 1894 President Grover Cleveland signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday, to be observed the first Monday in September.
"I come to this parade every year," said Tony Caifano of Queens. "The Botto House is so important, it's a landmark for labor in this country. We need to draw attention to what's going on here - we need more jobs, more people need to experience the American dream."
But spectators were more interested in watching the participants than in the reason for the parade. Among those marching were members of several unions, the Passaic County Sheriff Department's marching band, firetrucks, Smokey the Bear, the replica Botto House float, antique cars, and sheriff's officers on horseback.
"I've come outside to watch this since I moved here three years ago," said Marisol Figueroa, who lives down the street from the Botto House with her son and daughter. "The kids just love it - they catch candy and just think the whole thing is great."
By the time the parade found its way to the Great Falls, spectators were starting to enjoy the food, rides, and vendors at the festival there. This year, organizers are expecting to draw more than the 30,000 people who attended the three-day event last Labor Day weekend.
"If we don't get rain, I think we'll bring in about 50,000 people," said James Dykes, chairman of Celebrate Paterson Inc., which organized the event. "We have great entertainment, more vendors and rides, and an international food court."
Once again, a high-wire motorcycle act over the falls will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. today, along with a two-person aerial act on 75-foot poles. Also on hand will be Bud Abbott and Lou Costello impersonators at 4:15 p.m. A fireworks show caps the event at 9 p.m. The festivities close down at 11 p.m.
Exhibit offers food for thought
| Tuesday, September 7, 2004 |
HALEDON - In supermarket aisles nationwide, showy mounds of ripe strawberries, crisp lettuce, and dried dates promise only a lip-smacking future. They say little of their backbreaking past.
Hands pollinated flowers that became the fruit. Backs hunched and knees crouched low to pluck the harvest from the fields.
The hands, the backs, the knees were people.
A new photography exhibit at the American Labor Museum at the Botto House tells the stories of those people, mostly Mexican migrant workers and day laborers in California who over the past decade have organized for employment contracts and better working conditions with the United Farm Workers union.
The exhibit, "Every Worker Is an Organizer," is the work of Berkeley, Calif., photographer David Bacon, who took many of the pictures in Watsonville, Calif., in 1997. The city has been a battleground of the United Farm Workers' drive to unionize the region's 25,000 strawberry pickers.
In one photograph, striking workers talk a replacement worker out of breaking the picket line. Bacon's captions give context to the story of the union's drive to get contracts for farm workers ensuring better wages and sanitary benefits such as Port-O-Johns in the fields.
Another photograph shows Roberto, a 14-year old boy from Oaxaca, Mexico, crouched in a strawberry field with a box of fruit on his shoulder. A baseball cap peeks out from beneath the hood of his sweatshirt, and his face shows the light fuzz of an early mustache. Because the work is so taxing, the average age of a strawberry picker is 20, a caption reads.
"Only a Mexican has the courage to do this work," reads one caption, quoting a date picker who labors in the treetops without a net or safety harnesses. Older lettuce and strawberry pickers often need operations to fuse vertebrae in their lower backs damaged from years spent bent over, another reads.
In honor of Labor Day on Monday, Teaneck resident and lay minister James White brought a Sunday school group from his church in West Harlem, St. Mary's Episcopal Church on West 126th Street. Members of the church regularly participate in demonstrations and housed protesters last week during the Republican National Convention. The church belongs to an advocacy coalition for farm workers in New York State and supports efforts of Metropolitan Opera workers for better pay and benefits, White said.
"We're a very working-class congregation," said White. "We call it Our Lady of the Picket Line.
"We really brought the kids here today to show how the poor were living a hundred years ago," said Sheryl Patterson, 41, a child-care worker from Manhattan.
Museum director Angelica Santomauro taught sisters Tara Patterson, 9, and Syida, 11, the meaning of the word "solidarity" - "It means you stick together," Santomauro said.
"Solidarity forever," the girls shouted from the house's second-floor balcony.
"Our mission is to teach the general public about contributions of working people," said Santomauro.
With this exhibit, that includes contributions to the dinner table.