UE NEWS Features

A new show of his work makes clear that Ralph Fasanella, the UE organizer who took up painting, was interested in every aspect of working class life, not just union struggles. Although he is known for his large-scale paintings of strikes, union meetings, and urban working-class life, this show also includes paintings of people at home and at the beach, vacationing, eating hot dogs at the iconic Nathan’s in Brooklyn, and enjoying America’s favorite pastime.

Seventy-five years ago today, what was perhaps the most dramatic national convention in UE history opened in Cleveland.

In the months leading up to the convention, the corporate and government forces that sought to wipe out UE’s brand of militant, rank-and-file unionism were gathering steam. The UAW and the Steelworkers had been taking advantage of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, to raid UE shops. And within the union, a faction that wanted to abandon UE’s principles of aggressive struggle, rank-and-file control, political independence, international solidarity, and uniting all workers were preparing to try to wrest control of the union at the upcoming convention by accusing the union of being “communist-dominated.”

August 27 marks the 75th anniversary of the Peekskill Riots, two attacks by right wing mobs on concert-goers in Peekskill, in upstate New York. The audience was composed of union members, including UE members, and civil rights activists, and they had gathered to watch popular Black singer and actor Paul Robeson perform.

A new radio documentary produced by New England Public Media tells the story of how a UE local in a “deeply conservative rural county” in Massachusetts not only survived but grew during the red-baiting attacks on UE in the early 1950s. The 50-minute documentary “At Sword’s Point” first aired on May 4 and 5, but can be streamed from the NEPM website. Produced and narrated by public historian Tom Goldscheider, the documentary includes interviews with retired UE District Two President Judy Atkins and International Representative David Cohen.