Another assignment that I had in those days was to build support for the strike at Iowa Beef in Sioux City, Nebraska. Jobs that had formerly supported thousands in our Chicago stock yards were now located in the Great Plaines. Out there, union rights were being put to the test. I traveled there, studied the demands, and interviewed the strikers. I produced a broad sheet for distribution in cities like Milwaukee where we were doing organizing in meat packing. For all the good intentions, this effort proved to be an example that we didn’t have the ability to make a difference in a labor struggle of major national significance.
Even in the local work, we were beginning to feel effects of attrition. Organizers like me, who had spent the better part of the decade, were getting burnt out. There was not enough money or staff to sustain a national newspaper. Our national leadership was stretched thin. By this point I had been laid off from Ford Motor Company and was drawing unemployment. I was bitter about my own poverty, often voicing the complaint, “No money, no honey.”
Our group initiated some discussions about merging with another group, the Communist Party Marxist Leninist (CPML). They were like a twin organization to ours. Differences were relatively minor. They also were in a state of demoralization and dissolution. Such were the times on the left. Our dreams of another ‘60s style upsurge never materialized. Instead the country was being steered toward a conservative agenda.
As a gesture of friendship between our group and the CPML, I was assigned to work as the labor editor on their newspaper, The Call. They had a tighter organization than we did. They had a functioning office, weekly paper, and a membership of sincere organizers who were almost indistinguishable from my own comrades. Our group, especially since parting ways with Avakian, seemed a little less doctrinaire. The CPML could claim a little more “legitimacy” because they were more recognized internationally by the Maoist trend. Every month we delivered huge canvass bags of newspapers to the post office for shipment to libraries in China.
The editors and political leaders were cordial and proficient. But I always felt like a step child. I remember a being irked when one of the editors of The Call commented condescendingly that some of my phrases were cute Midwestern sayings. I had said something about hiding a lantern under a bushel basket.
I knew that there were CPML disagreements behind the scenes but I didn’t concern myself with them. The assignment would only last for about 6 months as both organizations splintered apart and disappeared from the scene. The Call had to move from a spacious loft on Printers Row to tight quarters above a drug store in Pilsen. It was here that I got a letter from Mary Mullins telling me that she was getting married. As leaders and staffers stopped coming by the office of The Call, I tried to guess who the informants were by noting who was still showing up.
Some of my articles were well received, especially a pull-out broadsheet that I did to support the bid for a national holiday for Martin Luther King’s birthday. More immediately useful were a couple of freelance articles that I did for Joy Darrow at the Chicago Defender. One was about conditions in the coke ovens at Republic Steel. The other cast a negative light on a candidate running against Jim Balanoff’s successful bid to win the District Director job of the Chicago-Gary steel workers union.
From this work, I got ideas that I might be able to support myself as a freelance journalist. I made up some business cards. But my connections were weak and my confidence was shot. Once I made a cold call. The receptionist asked, “And Mr. Drew, who are you with?” I responded, “I’m with my goddamned brother-in-law in the kitchen.”