 As people join, I'll introduce myself. I'm Al Bradbury, editor of Labor Notes and so excited to be providing the platform for this session. The session was debuted at the Labor Notes Conference last summer, a version of it, and was incredibly popular. I was running around doing conference things, but I could see, you know, passing through the hallway. The room was full of people, and there were people sitting in the hallway listening. There was a slideshow going on, and they couldn't even see the slideshow, or just listening to the narration anyway. And I thought this must be an astonishing workshop to have drawn so much interest and just, you know, a vital topic. So excited to be able to reprise and expand it and bring the session to a bigger audience. So glad to have everyone here. If you're joining this session tonight and you haven't heard of Labor Notes before, I'll drop the Labor Notes link in the chat. You know, love to have you part of our community now. Labor Notes has been putting the movement in the labor movement since 1979 by hosting events like this and publishing news and lots more. So lots of people here. I'm not gonna take up any more time. I'm gonna introduce Lee Howard, fantastic facilitator for tonight's session, and organizer. Lee, take it away. Thanks, Al. Hi, everyone. It's super exciting to see so many of you here. As Al said, my name is Lee Howard. I use she, her pronouns. There's a little bit about myself. I'm a social worker by training and didn't have a ton of interaction with the labor movement prior to 10, 12 years ago or so. At the time I was working at Callum Ward Health Center, which is the queer health center in New York City. My coworkers and I had decided we had enough and we needed to organize, and so we did. And we won our election and they're on their third contract. But that was really the time for me that it sort of sunk in, that organizing people coming together can make real change. And that totally changed the trajectory of my life. I am now an officer at 1199 SCIU, United Healthcare Workers East, which is a very large healthcare union. I'm coming to you from Brooklyn, New York. And 1199 is headquartered in New York, where we've got members up and down the East Coast. And so as Al said, we did this, a version of this panel back in June, last June in Chicago with the Labor Notes Conference and it was really fun and really successful. And people had wanted to reprise it. So here we are, it's like a little bit revamped. We've got bold and new faces and just super excited to be able to spend the evening with you all. So just a really quick overview of how the program is gonna go. We are, a panelists are gonna introduce themselves more fully when it's their time to go. We're gonna start with a presentation about queer labor history, including some comics. And then we're gonna hear from a founding member of Alphabet Workers Union. And then after that, we're gonna hear from members who work at Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago, who, if you were with us in Chicago, it leaked on the story and talked to us about how the organizing has been going. A few things just to keep in mind, this is being recorded, this whole presentation and portions of it are gonna be made available later. Labor Notes will post it and send it out in the next few days or so. Use the chat, people, I didn't get to say this yet, but you've already started doing it. I was gonna encourage people to use the chat to introduce yourselves. Tell us your name, tell us where you're from, tell us what local you're part of, if you are, tell us if you're organizing or just what brings you here. Anything you'd care to share, we'd love to know that. There is also a separate Q&A function if you've got specific questions for our panelists. We're gonna hold like verbal questions and interactions until the end and we have built-in time for that. But if you've got a burning question while someone is giving a presentation, pop it into the chat, I'm gonna be monitoring it, I'm sorry, pop it into the Q&A. I'm gonna be monitoring it. And if there's a little bit of time in between each presenter, I'll ask the question or invite you to do so. At the end, when we do Q&A, you can use the raise hand function and we'll take people off of mute to the extent that we have time. The other thing that we wanna let people know is that we have a link to a Google document that we're gonna share at the end and that we'll also send out to everyone who registered and it just has resources in it, stuff that we've talked about tonight and other things that might be of interest to people in this moment in time. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to Jerry and Annabelle to get us started. Okay, I guess I could start. I'm Jerry Scalpettullo, a retired member of the Gold Disser 65, USCW 1557 in Nashville, Tennessee, president of the Massachusetts Pride at Work chapter, AFLCIO and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. So Annabelle. I'm Annabelle, she, her, based in New York and I draw comics about labor and queer history intersections, among other things. And yeah, look forward to talking to you all. Oh, should we start? Yeah, all you. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna share a screen. Okay, I'm gonna go to slide view. We'll just let you see these two face slides. That's Annabelle. That's her work. We also wanna dedicate the slide show to the late Leslie Feinberg and a great transgender leader and organizer and writer, Adelaide Allen Barabay, working class, gay labor historian. We'll be putting sources somewhere later on. Quick one. All right, can you hear me okay? Okay. Our story begins with the 1934 San Francisco general strike. 25 year old Harry Hay about to join the Communist Party is delivering provisions to striking longshoremen on the waterfront. A National Guardsman's bullet whizzes past his head. Unbeknownst to him, hundreds of gay men and their coworkers who were members of the Marine Cooks and Stewart Union were also striking the luxury liners at the same time as part of the mass of general strikes. A former wobbly years later, Hay would organize the Mattachine Society, the first major civil rights organization for homosexuals. I'm using descriptive words according to the timeframe in the U.S. in which help lay the foundation for the LGBTQIA plus liberation movement, okay. Unbaited, CIO Marine Cooks and Stewards. If you let them red bait, they'll race bait. If you let them race bait, they'll queen bait. These are connected. That's why we have to stick together. 1930 divided. During the Great Depression, the wealthy enjoyed luxury cruises while below the water line in crowded glory holes. Crews worked 16-hour days with no minimum wage or right to strike. And just as Jerry said, we're using here queens and queers as appropriate to their time, blaming one another instead of the ship owners. Next slide. 1934, Cooks and Stewards refused to be divided. We integrated and won improved wages and benefits so everyone experienced integration as a win. Our union took the dignity in each of us and built that up. Equality was in the air we breathed. Solidarity is an act of faith. By 1945, 15,000 strong, majority red, black and queer, they could shut down West Coast shipping. Verse and imaginative unions were blacklisted, expelled, their history rewritten as un-American activity. It's up to us to make sure they're not erased from memory. And on these peers and waterfronts, we dream about militant unions visibly queer, dedicated to racial equality, economic justice, and solidarity across many lines. We proved it can be done. It's not just a dream. We can do it again differently this time. Mickey Blair, thanks. Among the mightiest of these new unions of the time was 110,000 members strong, including tobacco workers union CIO, whose executive board in the early 1940s is pictured here, sitting in the first row on the right, far right, is their leader Miranda Smith, the highest elected black woman in labor at that time and possibly of all women in labor at that time. What I know about Miranda Smith comes from the late Ed and Bima Cray, who like her were active in the union and were members of the Communist Party. While they were alive Ed and B, they confided to me that Miranda was in their words like me. Jerry, a same gender-loving person. Annabelle? So again, just to recap, Miranda Smith was the Southern Regional Director of Food and Tobacco Workers, CIO. And the left side is a photograph of her at the union's education department. And the right side is an initial sketch for a comic that I'm hoping to draw about her. Next slide. And then we wanted to talk a little bit in the wake of the sort of red scare about the lavender scare. So in 1953, EO10453 effectively banned queer federal employment, as many as 5,000 to tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs. This is a little comic from a work in progress about my granduncle, Max, who I'm not sure if was fired as part of the red scare or the lavender scare, but was max among them. Investigations lasted until the 1990s and the State Department actually only apologized in 2017. Back to Jerry. At about the same time of the marine cooks and stewards in the Food and Tobacco Workers were being legally dismantled by the state. But many resisted. One of these was 17 year old Howard Wallace, who would become the most prominent builder of the LGBTQ labor movement. He was a steadfast opponent of McCarthyism when in high school in the early 1950s when he became active in the Denver NAACP. At the age of 19, he managed a local library and winning degrees campaign for school committee in the racially segregated Denver school system. After high school, Wallace's father tore up his college tuition checks because of his son's radical abuse, forcing him to leave home, drop out of college and work as a rank-and-file teamster in where housemen. An ardent anti-racist Wallace in 1964 here with Tom Pino and Helen Valerio created the Denver committee against police brutality to oppose the violence and racist attacks on Denver's black and Latin communities by 1960s, yeah, during the Socialist Workers' Party. Here is a picture of Dr. King, by addressing on the right, Reverend Ralph Abernathy on the left. Kerry, you have to talk right into the mic when you go like that. Oh, okay, sorry. This better? That's okay. Yes, that's perfect, thank you. Okay, at this time, the FBI launched the COINTEL program to disrupt and destroy what it defined as dangerous and radical movements in the U.S., targeting the 1963 I Have a Dream speech and Dr. King. It also went after the march's brilliant field organizer, Byard Rustin, and openly came in. Racist Senator Strom Thurman demanded that Dr. King fire Rustin calling him a gay pervert. Dr. King refused and to emphasize the character of this refusal. The week after the march, Life Magazine featured a front page photo of Byard Rustin with the eminent A. Philip Randolph and Byard Rustin, the cover A. Philip Randolph was the inspiration for the march on Washington. However, same time, Wallace was soon targeted by the FBI when in 1965 he re-entered the Denver School Board. His campaign was sabotaged by the FBI's COINTEL program, which has sent a false letter to the Denver Post by a, quote, concerned citizen, unquote, outing Howard as a communist. During this period, he was struggling with the sexual orientation identity and was out to only a few people. Years later, Wallace would reveal to historian Miriam Frank that he experienced daily suicidal thoughts in this period because of his inner struggles with the sexual orientation identity. Nevertheless, Howard Wallace continued to organize against the Vietnam War, often with Chicago leader, Corky Gonzalez, whom he had befriended in the late 50s. By 1966, Corky Gonzalez had launched the Crusade for Justice, a powerful Chicago liberation movement in the Southwest in the League of Cesar Chavez. The three would become lifelong compañeros for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the Gay Rights Movement with groups like the Mattachine Society, the Downers of the Lightest, ECHO, the East Coast Homophile Organization, and many other local groups raised the revolutionary slogan, Gay is Good! By picketing White House in 1965 and 66, almost lost to history, was a sole African-American at this protest, Ernestine Eckstein, who was later profiled in the pages of the latter, the National Lesbian Magazine. Meanwhile, the pressure to stay in the closet became more difficult for Wallace, especially after the Stonewall Rise of 1969 and the advent of the Gay Liberation Movement a year later. Fiercely anti-war and anti-imperialist, the Gay Liberation Front named itself after Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh's National Liberation Front, who was then defending Vietnam against U.S. aggression. The sweeping impact of the Gay Liberation Movement was still not enough to bring Howard and many others like me out of the closet or to ignite a Gay Labor movement. Instead, Wallace devoted his organizing energy to the anti-Vietnam War F movement, as many of us did. Organizing dozens of unions, central labor councils, and elected offices to go on record against the war, all the while a rank and viable team spirit. This is a few of his relationships that he created at the time on a first name basis. In a few years, Wallace would use numerous labor contacts to support gay and lesbian workers in unions. In 1971, Howard was a national peace actions labor organizer for the Great Spring Anti-War Mobilization of that year. But when he saw thousands of lesbians and gay men marching in the anti-war event, he had organized, he decided it was time to come out. In 1974, a movement appeared that allowed Wallace's leadership as both an openly gay man and a rank and file teamster. He and San Francisco community leader, the late Harvey Milk, was approached by Allen Beard of Teamsters Local 888 to help the Teamster truck drivers in their strike against Coors Beard distributors in the Bay Area. Wallace and Harvey Milk were successful in getting Coors Beard dropped out of all 87 gay bars in San Francisco in 1974 and five. In 1975, in 1977, brother, Harvey Milk and Georgia Mosconi were assassinated by Dan White in San Francisco and next city supervisor. Oh, there's Harvey. Howard and fellow ex-SWP comrade Claude Nguyen had left SWP together at the same time in 1974, launching Bay Area Gay Liberation, or a bagel, which became hugely popular and powerful. And for several years was the voice of the gay left in the Bay Area. Through bagel's labor committee, Howard Wallace reached out to dozens of unions in the Bay Area and summoned 19 leaders in a first of its kind meeting at which he requested and got labor's recognition of the needs of low-paid gay workers in bars, restaurants and retail establishments. In return, bagel would organize support for organized labor, political and labor agenda. This was the birth of the queer labor movement in my opinion. What began as a local struggle in San Francisco and Oakland against Cores would explode into a national campaign when Cores busted local 366 of the Brewery Workers Union in Colorado in 1977. Grievances included loss of all seniority rights, loss of the union chop and Cores discrimination against gay employees by use of a polygraph lie detector text, which you see a portion of on the right. Also, only 3% of the workers at Cores Brewery were Latino. This got Cork against Alice and she seems to show this into the movement big time. Okay, such attacks by Cores only strengthened the boycott and by 19, whoops, I'm sorry, I just skip a portion. Give me one second. Okay, Joseph Cores was irate that the big Cores boycott that was now happening and went to federal court charging Wallace and the boycott committee for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for picketing ball things. The judge, a Reagan appointee, threw the case out of court. Such attacks by Cores only strengthened the boycott and by 1985, Cores beer sales had fallen by 30% on the West coast. Desperate for market share, Cores started selling beer in Michigan and Massachusetts where boycott passions exploded when UMass Amherst student government kicked Cores out of the campus gay bar. This was our boycott committee in Boston. I don't know, 1977, I guess. Soon after that, I was summoned to a mass meeting at the New York City Gay Community Center to speak and assisted New York City Gay Labor Committee in organizing the Big Apples Cores boycott, which was launched that night. Kelly Attinger invited me. Three months later, the New York City Central Labor Council called a mass meeting at Fordham University and launched the quote official unquote AFL Cigayo New York Cores boycott. Byrd Rustin was there to bless the proceedings while New York City Gay Labor Committee members like Leslie Feinberg, Peter Kenney, and I looked on. By this time, LGBT activists, local citywide gay labor committees in San Francisco, New York and Boston, as well as gay labor caucuses in the AFT, SEIU, AFSCME and elsewhere were full national partners with the National AFL CIO fiction here is Howard Wallace on the left who was then a janitor at the age of 45. Then AFL CIO president, Lane Correctland and David Sikler, the head of the Boreal Work and St. Colorado. The Cude graph of Cores came in the summer of 1987 when the Boston Red Sox kicked Cores out of Fenway Park. Due to the efforts of openly gays, a Boston City Council, we said openly back in those days, openly gay Boston City Council and David Skyegris who represented the neighborhood where Boston Fenway Park was situated and lead shops to a child of local 26 and President Dominic Pizzata of local 26 represented unionized food concession workers at Fenway and they said, we are not gonna sell that beer. This entire victory was orchestrated by the late Marshall Yates on the left, you see him and World End of Workers World Party and Gary Doherman, then a secretary of the New England Communist Party who was Congress' chief aide in City Hall. Cores settled the boycott with the AFL CIO shortly thereafter and the boycott was over. But despite striking a blow against homophobic union buster Cores, we were then confronted by an equally dangerous foe, HIVAs. With no helpful drugs and a Reagan government that ignored us, 1987 was the peak year of one of the peak years, if not the actual peak year of HIV deaths in the US as over 50,000 gay, lesbian and men who have sex with men behaviorally died in a nightmare world with gay, these were people of all races and ethnicities. We were being demonized by the fundamentalist right in Anita Bryant and the moral maturity. Our response was to organize a massive march on Washington in October of 1987. Our LGBT labor movement by this time became a nationalized reality. As you can see, this flyer was a national level flyer for organizing gay labor in 1987. Our slogan was for life and for love, we're not going back. The National AFL CIO hosted a mass meeting for us at their headquarters where soon to be new president, John Sweeney of SEIU gave the keynote address. In two years, he would succeed Lane Kirkland as president of the AFL CIO who was ousted as president in no small part because of his support for Reagan's war on Central America and his continued support of fascists in El Salvador and the countries in Nicaragua who were trying to bring down the south and east of government. Nashville's SEIU Local 205 and the Atlanta Central Labor Council were the two labor bodies in the south that endorsed the march. Annabelle. And here's a little two-page spread from a comic that I'm drawing currently with Oni and Jerry that includes the march. And we can move on to the next slide but just wanna say one thing that struck me looking at historical photos of this was how very intersectional the signs were particularly signs about US out of Central America and ending apartheid. So next slide. And then I'll talk through quickly this slide that I did last year I guess about early organizing in the AIDS HIV services sector that will sort of start to segue us to hearing from our union siblings at Howard Brown. So collectively fabulous. In 1981 Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking. Reagan fired and jailed Bill Taylor and other strike leaders while Reagan destroyed unions and refused to say the name of a new deadly virus. Bill Taylor out of jail and the closet found work at an AIDS clinic in Washington, DC. Facing the plague we bargained with death and with management. Workers at the village voice were the first to win partner healthcare benefits in 1982 shouting out district 65. Next slide. And in workplaces gay men's health crisis AIDS and HIV services New York. I want to survive to be directly involved in the decisions we need a union. Management hired union busters. Workers kept organizing and one one unions at HIV and AIDS clinics in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Washington DC. So just want to shout out here. I believe 1199 Northwest SCIU 721 in LA. Correct me in the chat if I'm getting these wrong. And 1199 Whitman Walker in Washington DC. We win when we make connections and many proud union members today and we who have lost loved ones and unions take heart. Our small actions matter. Our struggles may inspire movements yet to come. We are collectively fabulous. And thanks to Miriam, Frank and Desma who are here on the panel for the oral histories that are sort of the basis of this comic. Next slide and back to Jerry. Okay. A few more examples to show the impact of the emerging LGBTQ labor movement. The aforementioned gay Boston City Councilor, David Sconders gave major support to striking United Mine Workers in 1989 during the Piston Strike. When he got the Boston City Council to withdraw millions of dollars from a Boston bank that held investments with pits and coal. Second, over on the right and they vastly underreported campaign the LGBT community mobilized in the South in 1990-91 when it became known that Crackabarrow restaurant chain had a declared policy of refusing to employ gay workers. Cheryl Somerville, one of the workers sought help from Queer Nation and Lynn Cotherin from the King Center in Atlanta for help. What followed were many nonviolent citizens at Crackabarrow restaurant in a Southern mobilizing campaign that forced Crackabarrow to end its policy. There's Curtis Scott King who this is a very heavy lifting to get the AFL CIO to honor gay and lesbian workers in a 1987 resolution and Lynn Cotherin. And coming up the last two slides, Howard Wallace on the left became organized the fact that the AFL CIO would recognize the LGBTQIA plus community as an official constituency group of organized labor in 1997 along with CBTU Coalition of Labor Union Women and Others on the right is Nancy Wohlforth, the first co-president with Howard, the first out lesbian member of the AFL CIO Executive Board in 2005. And just to quickly shout out a few more, people may not know, but queer and trans workers have been on the front lines of organizing unions at Planned Parenthood preterm in Cleveland, Ohio and other abortion clinics. Yeah, Tishi, the very best. Next slide and just want to shout out there are so many queer comics artists who do amazing work around labor issues. So I'll drop their Instagram handles in the chat later too but next slide. Love this one about queer workerism against work and next slide. Thank you so much. Here's my contact info, I'll put it in the chat as well and would love to collaborate and draw solidarity stories together with any of you. So hit me up, Jerry. Some of the people that got us where we are today, most unknown to history because they were in the field, they were rank and file people. They struggled, they organized, they sent petitions. They got arrested, they died, putting the struggle together for us. That's our presentation. I'll put my contact information in the chat as well. Okay.