Our rank-and-file caucuses in auto, assembly, and steel were the heart of our work.   All of our organizers were skillful and sincere.  They were well-liked on the shop floor.  In some of the shops we achieved notable success as stewards and union officers over the years.  Typically each caucus would have a newsletter that detailed complaints from the different departments.  Often the most active members of a caucus were African American workers and Vietnam veterans.

Union leaders at the national and local levels were wary of rank and file initiative.  They enjoyed considerable perks.  Sometimes they were corrupt.  We regularly blasted them as “sell outs”.  We should have sought more common ground with honest leaders in the unions.   It would take years before the radical organizers and conscientious unionists could build up the needed unity.

Little by little we learned the techniques of journalism.  I picked up two Justowriters at an auction in Racine.  These machines read from a paper tape to calculate word spacing for flush right and flush left margins.  We hawked The Milwaukee Worker at the factory gates for twenty-five cents a copy.   Especially in the winter, it was hard to round up the sales crews.  The Worker covered city-wide and broader political conflicts.  The shop newsletters focused on very specific departmental grievances and contract issues.

One of the best newsletters was Fighting Times put out by the caucus at the American Motors plant in Kenosha.  The newsletter gained so much popularity that management financed a libel suit on behalf of six supervisors against the editors.  The suit asked for four million in damages.  One of those editors was my brother, John, who eventually became the President of the local.  The articles detailed racist and sexist remarks by the supervisors and other abuses.

As the evidence for and against wound down, two of the plaintiffs dropped their claims because testimony had destroyed their credibility.  Then the judge ruled the caucus leaders to be guilty based on law and evidence.   He cited one small part of one article which the editors had not verified.  Only the amount of damages was left for the jury to decide.  The Kenosha jurors, all of whom knew at least one Chrysler worker, emerged quickly from deliberations.  They set the damages at zero dollars!

I attended a few of the trial sessions.  At one point, Johnny had to grab me by the arm and pull me aside. He saw that I was trying to start a scene by insulting one of the prosecuting attorneys.

By the time this case went to trial, I was already living in Chicago.  We held a fundraiser here.  It was a comedy sketch called Council Wars by Aaron Freeman.  He did a hilarious spoof of the Vrdolyak 29 aldermen who conspired to block any proposal by new mayor, Harold Washington.  My helper in this effort was Lauren Baker, who eventually became my brother’s wife.

Firings of organizers were another threat.  We were determined and brought in labor lawyers.  In one case, at Crucible Steel, we sparked a wildcat strike to get one of our guys re-instated.  A predominantly African American workforce milled at the gates and stayed out fighting for re-hiring of Gil Arroyo, a Mexican American.  After shutting down two shifts, the workers filtered back in and hot metal began to flow again.  Gil took a job at Pressed Steel Tank and eventually became a city bus driver.