To further imagine my legacy – to get to the lasting testament, I look and marvel at the dramatic changes in the life of my wife, Gloria.  In the past few years, she has become a better organizer and agitator than I ever was.  She is a lunch room attendant for the Chicago Public Schools.  She started going to steward’s training classes in her union, Unite HERE Local 1.  One day, a friend of my son Ricky came over.  Martin Stainthorp had graduated a year ahead at Whitney Young High School.  He was trying to get a handle on his new job – Local 1 staff representative for the CPS lunch ladies.

What’s more he is an organizer who understands that you have to build up a network of leaders from each kitchen.  And he found a gem.  Gloria speaks the language of the cooks, porters, and servers.  She speaks with such passion that when she gave a speech in Spanish at a contract ratification meeting, everyone let out a lusty cheer for her – including the African American members who hadn’t understood a single word – other than Gloria’s invocation of Martin Luther King.

In her many years working in hotels and factories, she had never been given an ounce of respect.  It was a bitter career.  But now she has been trained by the union.  She takes on tasks among the rank and file on a daily basis. Her self-confidence is growing.  She regularly pulls out the most members to rallies and meetings.  When the School Board laid off 400 kitchen help, she plotted with the ladies to resist speed-up with grievances and job actions.  She loves to recount each small victory at winning over another member to get involved.  “We are the union,” she says to those who complain about paying dues.  She shames them by asking why they can’t appreciate the pay, benefits, and job protection.

I really can’t claim credit for her transformation.  I give her encouragement.  I give her ideas.  But that deep connection with people is pure Tlacolula.  Like her very talented mother, she always has the right word, image, gesture, and tone to inspire.  One time a member complained about having to take a bus to the union meeting.  Gloria shot back, “How hard was it when you crossed the border?  Think back.  This is easy.”

She’s also great at mixing in some Biblical imagery.  In new organizing drives at charter schools, she compares the union to Noah’s Ark, “People didn’t listen to Noah when he said a flood was coming.  We’ve got to get on board.”  Her name for Rahm Emanuel is “Goliath”.

The communal culture from her home town in so deeply engrained in her that she is drawn irresistibly to participate in church and union events.  For years she attended the First Baptist Church Latino Americana.  She is a regular at three or four Protestant churches.  Her favorite now is the Lincoln Methodist where Pastora Emma Lozano and Pastor Slim Coleman preach the struggle of the undocumented wrapped on Old Testament imagery.  I had met Slim 35 years earlier when I went to the SDS headquarters on West Madison to ask for advice about organizing in Waukegan.