EagleTribune.com, North Andover, MA

October 23, 2012

Bronze relief memorializing 1912 strike affixed to boulder

By Yadira Betances ybetances@eagletribune.com 
The Eagle-Tribune

---- — LAWRENCE — What began as a sketch depicting workers rushing out of the mills holding American flags, is now a permanent bronze memorial to the historic mill strike of 1912.

Yesterday, Steve LeMasurier and his nephew, Jason LeMasurier of LeMasurier Granite Quarry of Chelmsford installed the bronze with the bas relief created by sculptor Daniel Altschuler of Gloucester onto a boulder in Campagnone Common across from City Hall.

“It certainly has historical significance for us,” said Steve LeMasurier, whose ancestors have been in the area for generations. “It’s always good to see people recognize what has happened in the past.”

The installation concluded two years of planning by members of the 1912 Strikers’ Monument Committee and co-chaired by David Meehan, retired Lawrence High School art teacher and historian Jonas Stundzia. Their goal was to have a memorial commemorating the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912.

“Just like the Fisherman’s Memorial in Gloucester and the Sculpture by the Sea at Hampton Beach, N.H., we want this to be a cradle of labor history in Lawrence,” Meehan said.

The strike of 1912 is often referred to as the Bread and Roses strike and involved tens of thousands of workers lasting nine weeks. It was precipitated when their hours were cut from 56 to 54 per week resulting in a 32 cent wage cut.

In March, a 30,000-pound basalt boulder, a volcanic rock, donated by Brox Quarry in Dracut, was hoisted into place at Campagnone Common on which LeMasuriers permanently affixed the bronze relief. The plaque weighs 120 pounds and is 40-inches by 28-inches down.

The stone stands across from City Hall where Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World urged strikers to accept the wage proposals made by owners of the American Woolen Company to end the strike.

The project is costing $150,000 and the monument committee still needs to raise $20,000 for landscaping and to install a plaque explaining the history of the strike. Contributions so far have run the gamut from $25 to $10,000.

How to contribute:

To make donations to the 1912 Striker’s Monument Committee send checks to Lawrence Community Works/Strikers’ Monument, Lawrence Community Works, in care of Lisa Torrisi, 168 Newbury St., Lawrence, Mass. 01841.

EagleTribune.com, North Andover, MA

September 4, 2012

Standing Together: Labor Day event celebrates legacy of Bread and Roses Strike

By Douglas Moser
dmoser@eagletribune.com

---- — LAWRENCE — What made the Bread and Roses Strike different was its solidarity across various ethnic and linguistic lines.

In a city still characterized by a population made largely of immigrants and their children, Labor Day event organizers and union members yesterday linked Lawrence’s history of immigration to the significance of the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike in a festival on Campagnone Common that included a march and the unveiling of a monument to that strike.

“It was a big day in labor history,” said Paul Georges, president of the Merrimack Valley Central Labor Council, one of the festival organizers. “It started a revolution in the labor movement and spread throughout New England and the rest of the world. People got a clearer understanding of standing together and how that’s in their best interest.”

The Bread and Roses Strike started in January 1912 after the Massachusetts Legislature reduced the work week from 56 hours to 54. Business and industry subsequently reduced pay, leading to a massive strike in Lawrence that lasted about nine weeks and included clashes with city police and Massachusetts National Guard units. Along with pay, they walked out over child labor and worker safety issues.

Labor leaders said that strike and its legacy is still relevant today, and pointed to growing income disparity in the United States and working class and middle class wages that have been stagnant for more than a decade.

“Many of the things they were against, the injustice, is still here today,” said Frank McLaughlin, president of the Lawrence Teachers’ Union.

TO VIEW THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.eagletribune.com/local/x85615202/Standing-Togeth-er

View full article here:

http://bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2012/08/30/folk-singer-and-activist-ka...

Spring is here, and summer is not far behind and with it two wonderful educational opportunities for women members, activists and leaders, the WILD (Women’s Institute for Leadership Development) Summer Institute and the week-long UALE Northeast Summer School for Union Women. 

The annual WILD Summer Institute will be held this year June 22-24 at Wheaton College, in Norton, MA.  The 37th Northeast Summer School will be held July 28-August 2 here on the UMass Amherst campus, and hosted by the entire statewide UMass Labor Extension Program.   These programs offer an opportunity for women to take courses in leadership development and a range of other skill and information areas, and to meet with women activists and leaders from locals around the Commonwealth or the region.  The theme of this year’s WILD Summer Institute is Bread and WILD Roses.  The UALE School’s theme is The Rising of the Women: Organizing for Bread and Roses Today.  Both programs commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Lawrence, MA Bread and Roses strike.

The WILD Summer Institute is a program for women who are newer to leadership or considering taking on greater leadership roles.  It is a week-end in various aspects of leadership and skill development for women involved in unions or community organizations with a focus on labor issues.

The Northeast Summer School is a five-day program for union women with a more in-depth program of leadership and skill development, as well as the opportunity to meet with and learn from union women from all over the Northeast.  Members come back from both of these schools with energy and enthusiasm for union activism, ready to bring what they’ve learned into their work within their locals. You can find additional information about these programs at the following web sites: http://umasslep.prometheuslabor.com/event/ne-regional-summer-school-union-women and WILD: www.wildlabor.org<http://www.wildlabor.org/>.

Essex Art Center 56 Island St.,Lawrence,MA

Strike!

Justin Kirchoff, Liz Nofziger & Linda Price Sneddon, Melissa Shook, Ean White

Exhibition dates:  June 15 – August 16, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, June 15 , 5-7 pm

The Essex Art Center is pleased to present Strike!.  Three artists and two artists in collaboration were invited to create new work on the occasion of the Centennial Anniversary of the Bread & Roses Strike.

The artists included in the exhibition are:  Justin Kirchoff, Liz Nofziger and Linda Price-Sneddon, Melissa Shook, and Ean White.  Each artist was invited to make new work for the exhibition.

Summaries from the artists’ statements:

Justin Kirchoff

Kodak #6 Cirkut panoramic photo images

The Kodak Cirkut #6 camera was produced in the early 1900's, and used exclusively by professionals. The struggle with this camera is that it is over 100 years old and film for the camera must be custom cut in the darkroom. One additional potential obstacle in using this camera is that it spins on a tripod via a clockwork mechanism that has potential to malfunction.  In spite of these obstacles, I am using the Cirkut camera in Lawrence to create panoramic images of: Firefighters, Cardinal Shoe Corporation employees, and Esperanza Academy students.  At the heart of the Bread & Roses Strike is the idea of equity, work, class and gender struggle. My initial inquiry will have these ideals, as well as the B&R strike close at hand, but I will search for the strongest threads and pull to see what is revealed.

Linda Price-Sneddon & Liz Nofziger

The Great Lawrence Textile Mill Strike of 1912 stands as a powerful symbol of community and collaboration between diverse immigrant populations that shared no common language.  A community united in common cause is the most potent catalyst for positive growth and change.  We are inspired by the historical lesson of the Bread and Roses Strike and will channel this spirit to make visual the social fabric of today’s Lawrence and celebrate the city’s agents for positive social change. 

We will utilize the social network originated from the Essex Art Center to identify the individuals, organizations and agencies that are engaged in the hard work of building a city geared for the future welfare, development and empowerment of Lawrence youth.  Our installation will be a physical embodiment of the social network revealed from our process of exploration and interaction leading up to the gallery exhibition. The physical presence of the installation will continue to evolve and grow from the interaction and contributions of gallery visitors and key network node participants during the course of the exhibition.  

Installation Structure:

We will create a colorful and interactive network structure that describes the city’s network of agents for positive change along with a prescribed system for contributions to this network by gallery visitors. Using a system of circular nodes and relationship lines formed from light, tape, twine and rope, a visual representation of individuals and organizations will emerge.  We are also interested in eliciting photographic images of positive experiences, efforts and initiatives from network individuals to become moving image nodes in the network structure. 

The visual form of the installation will be expanded by the interactions and engagement of invited network guests at dinners to be held at the Essex Art Center in celebration of the dynamic contributions of these individuals to the betterment of the Lawrence community. 

We will hold 3 simple suppers with 12-16 guests each that will take place in the exhibition space at the Essex Art Center. We will invite a cross-section of members of the community, including Esperanza Academy students, mill owners, elected officials, employees of Habitat ReStore, etc., to come together to share food and ideas. A physical and visually compelling trace of each dinner and conversation will be worked into the gallery installation. 

Melissa Shook

Melissa Shook has spent the past year locating and interviewing various people who have insights into the Bread and Roses Strike as a historical event, including how the issues represented by the strike are present in Lawrence today. She has unearthed a rich history of stories which she shares through edited video interviews, ranging from ten minutes in length to over an hour in the case of two seventy year olds talking about growing up in Lawrence - very comprehensive from the Irish and Polish sides of the fence.

Some of the topics of conversation are: influences that are still felt by someone whose parent or grandparent worked in the mills and how that could have influenced a person’s own life; stories passed down by a parent or grandparent who worked in the mills; contemporary banding together of different ethnic groups for a shared purpose; and the way in which wages effect those living in Lawrence now; contemporary experiences of those who are working with present day immigration issues (the existence of a present day safety net, or lack thereof, as it differs from what was available at the time of the strike).

Shook has also created 100 small drawings on paper of immigrant workers from the time of the Bread and Roses Strike, together with text from Bruce Watson’s book, Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants and the Struggle for the American Dream.

Shook writes: I’m seventy-three. When I began taking photographs of my infant daughter in the mid-60s, I would have never imagined that this obsession would be my way of finding a voice. Nor that I was photographing her because I had lost almost all memory of the years before my mother died when I was twelve. Certainly I never would have believed myself capable of all the documentary work I’ve done since then or that I would ever use the word “artist” to describe myself.  It was a privilege to make this work for the Essex Art Center and the 1912 Bread & Roses Centennial Celebration, to have been accompanied by Bruce Watson’s book, “Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants and the Struggle for the American Dream” and to have interviewed so many interesting people devoted to the city of Lawrence.

Ean White

RESIDUE will transform the Beland Gallery into an inside-out chordophone, like a guitar that one steps into. Lengths of music wire stretched floor to ceiling will use the entire room as the resonating cavity. The wires will be tuned to excite various resonances of the gallery, but won’t be plucked or bowed. More like a hammer dulcimer, the strings will be struck—not with a hammer, but with transducers which will “hit” the string with audio recordings.

The construction will be vaguely loom-like. Each vibrating string will cross at least one other string in a nod to textile fabrication. As each string will be “struck” with a discrete audio signal, the intersections of the strings will cause interference and create additional sounds not initially put into the strings themselves. Viewers may touch the strings, causing the spatial patterns of interfering sounds to literally move around in the soundscape.

Some examples of the sounds used will range from unprocessed loom sounds, to sounds from the Lawrence History Center's oral history archive, to sounds from other sound libraries such as the International Lung Sound Association's medical archive of children with lung diseases—referencing mill working conditions. Each of these sounds will be filtered first by the string, then by other, competing sounds from adjacent strings. The goal being to create a real-time acoustic cross-synthesis of all these sounds, resulting in a kind of sonic distillation. A sound that, at any given time, may not posses a remnant of the original sources, but could not exist without them. Different sounds will come and go, move from one wire to another and create a sense of pattern and purpose, but pattern that never exactly repeats.

Listening from inside the instrument will be an immersive experience. A fair of amount of the sound will be felt as well as heard, though the overall noise level will not be loud.  This sort of work demands long, contemplative reflection from an audience.

I have been thinking about history and, more specifically, progressive historicism as a process of distillation. Literally, as in cycles of evaporation and condensation. Unrest reaches a “boiling point” and is followed by subsequent factoring of its constituents into “solutions.” Progressivism asks—demands—that a solution be found, predicated on the belief that a solution is possible and on a canon of previous solutions upheld as historical quanta. Through this apparatus it is impossible to truly appreciate the circumstance which precipitated

any given boiling point. Each solution contains only a trace of the original conditions which brought it into being which, in turn, may have been comprised solely of previous distillations. Does the arrival at a solution then necessarily destroy the history which brought it into being? If not, what remains?

Artist Bios:

Justin Kirchoff (Berwick, ME) earned his MFA from MassArt.  His work has been included in group exhibitions at: The Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado; The Vermont Photography Workplace/ Photoplace Gallery; and Center for Maine Contemporary Art; among others.  He is the recipient of a LEF Foundation grant and was Addison Gallery of American Art’s Elson Artist in Residence.

Liz Nofziger (Boston, MA) earned her MFA from MassArt.  Her work was included in: the Decordova Museum Biennial in 2010; Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia; and in solo shows in Medillin, Colombia, Bonn, Germany, and Chicago, among many others.  She is the recipient of a LEF Foundation grant and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant in Sculpture/Installation.

Melissa Shook (Boston, MA) had worked included in exhibitions: Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York, New Paltz; among many other exhibitions across the United States and abroad.  Her writing and photographs have been published extensively.  She has work in the permanent collection of: Museum of Modern Art in New York; Fotografiska Museet, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, France; among others.

Linda Price Sneddon (Salem, MA) has had work included in solo exhibitions at: HallSpace, Boston; Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton; Kidspace @ Mass MoCA, North Adams; among many other solo and group exhibitions.  She is the recipient of numerous grants, including: Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant in Sculpture/Installation.

Ean White (Boston, MA) has shown his work extensively throughout the United States and in France.  He has received grant awards from New England Foundation for the Arts and Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Strike! is funded in part by grants generously award by the following foundations:  Rosman Family Fund, Lawrence Cultural Council/Massachusetts Cultural Council, Puffin Foundation.

 For additional information about this exhibition or to receive high resolution digital images for publication, please contact Cathy McLaurin cathyessexartcenter@yahoo.com  or  at 978-685-2343.

The Chester F. Sidell Gallery and Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery are located on the first floor of Essex Art Center at 56 Island Street, Lawrence, MA.

Gallery hours:  M-F  10-6

Beginning July 9 hours are M-Th  10-6

Call for additional evening hours 

Closed June 29 – July 8

www.essexartcenter.com

Essex Art Center

56 Island St.

Lawrence, MA  01840

978-685-2343

This Sunday marks the 100 year anniversary of the death of Anna LoPizzo. Anna was killed on January 29, 
1912, on the corner of Union and Garden Streets. Her death occurred when a shot was fired in a crowd of
 scuffling strikers and police. LoPizzo, a bystander, was struck in the chest by the bullet and died. 
Strikers claimed the shot came from police and police accused the strikers. To this day the incident is 
a mystery. To remember her, we invite you to join us this Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 10:00 AM at 
Lawrence History Center, 6 Essex Street, Lawrence, MA 01840. We will be walking a short distance to the 
site of her death - leaving flowers, lighting candles, saying a few words, and leaving behind a memorial 
sign with information on what happened at the site 100 years prior. For more info call the Lawrence 
History Center at 978-686-9230. 

The People's Music Network for Songs of Freedom and Struggle will be hosting their annual winter gathering in Lawrence as part of the Bread & Roses Centennial. For more information on the PMN visit www.peoplesmusic.org. The weekend-long gathering will commence with a kickoff concert on Friday evening January 27 (location TBA) Performers will include: Anne Feeney, Jon Fromer, Bev Grant, Tom Juravich, Si Kahn, Lawrence High School Girl's Ensemble, and Rebel Voices. The weekend will continue with workshops, round robins, and performances hosted by the PMN.

For more information on the event please visit www.breadandrosescentennial.org

Veronica Robles promo on The Bread & Roses Festival, the full program was aired on Telemundo, Boston!

-See link below

http://oraleconveronica.com/2011/09/15/no-se-pierda-orale-con-veronica-este-sabado-especial-de-bread-roses-festival-en-lawrence/

Get this years t-shirt (in tan) for $15! Or get last years t-shirt (in green) ...for $10! You can get them at the Lawrence Heritage State park or in the Info. tent on the day of the festival (9/5/2011). You can also email info@breadandrosesheritage.org for further information.

     The 2011 Bread and Roses Heritage Festival will take place from noon to 6 p.m. on Sept. 5, featuring music, dance, poetry, drama, ethnic food, historical demonstrations, children’s entertainment, and walking and trolley tours. All events are free and will either happen on or start from Campagnone Common. Held every Labor Day, the festival honors the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912, when more than 20,000 workers, mostly new immigrants, walked out of the city’s mills to protest reductions in working hours and pay. The strike lasted nine weeks before the national attention it drew pressured mill owners to come to the bargaining table and meet employee demands. For more information on the festival, visit www.breadandrosesheritage.org. - Karen Sackowitz

This year’s logo was donated by illustrator Dušan Petricic!

Dušan Petricic is the award-winning illustrator of more than twenty books. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Toronto Star. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Dušan Petricic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He started drawing at age four and, encouraged by his parents, he never stopped. He found inspiration in everything, and drawing became a way to communicate with the people around him. Two books that were very important to his childhood were an old encyclopedia with lots of pictures and The Boys from Pavel’s Street by Ferenc Molnár. Early on, he was moved by the drawings found within the encyclopedia. As he grew older, he adored many artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, and Picasso. Dusan has been illustrating children’s books for many years.

He has received numerous honors and awards for his work, in North America and internationally. The Longitude Prize (FSG) was selected as a Robert F. Siebert Honor Book for a Distinguished Informative Book for Children in the US. Dušan Petricic won the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award from the Canadian Library Association Luckily for Dusan, his profession is his favorite hobby and he is happy when at work. To young artists he would give this advice: “Think, think, think, think, draw!”

27th ANNUAL BREAD & ROSES FESTIVAL (Labor Day!!) – RAIN or SHINE!!!

We are pleased to announce the 27th ANNUAL BREAD & ROSES FESTIVAL to be held on Labor Day, Monday, September 5, 2011 (12noon to 6:00 pm) on the Campagnone Common, located at 200 Common Street in Downtown Lawrence.

Featured performers include:

1) Bread and Puppet, a political puppet theater company;

2) Zili Misik, an All-female Band that combines Haitian, Afro-cuban, Brazilian and American styles;

3)Ten Tumbao, a funky and soulful Afro-Latin-Caribbean band that mixes spicy rhythms with vocal harmonies, captivating melodies, and a touch of jazz;

4) Angkor Dance Troupe, nationally recognized as one of the most accomplished and experienced of the U.S.-based Cambodian traditional arts ensembles,

and many more.

The Festival celebrates Lawrence's labor history and ethnic diversity, and particularly the historic events of the “Bread and Roses” textile strike of 1912. It is a celebration on multiple stages with a variety of music, dance, poetry, and drama. A History and Labor Section features Lawrence History Live—our tent for lively conversations on labor and the city in past and present. Numerous information tables present a full range of cultural and social justice organizations. Trolley tours and walking tours around the city highlight the historical sites. Great ethnic food!

All events on or starting from the Campagnone Common in Downtown Lawrence.

Bread and Roses is the only festival in the region which celebrates the true spirit of Labor Day. The Bread and Roses Festival is also the only broadly multicultural and inclusive festival in Lawrence.

The event is FREE and open to the public. It is a true family event that also includes entertainment for children such as pony rides, jugglers, and drumming.

Come join us in our Labor Day celebration and learn more about Lawrence’s history, its people and struggles.

For more information, please call (978) 794-1655

Contact: Bread and Roses Heritage Committee, Inc.

P.O. Box 1137

Lawrence, MA

01840 978-794-1655