Lessons for Greens from the 1919 Great Steel Strike
The following essay was first published in The Green Point’s inaugural December 2019 edition. It is republished below for easier sharing.
Recently I attended a 100th year commemoration of the 1919 Steel Strike in Pittsburgh along with several other Greens. The keynote was Ryan C. Brown, who spoke about things he learned while researching and writing the book Pittsburgh and the Great Steel Strike of 1919. Especially in the light of the results of the 2019 elections in Pittsburgh, I believe the steel strike provides important lessons for Greens and other leftist activists today.
As workers began to talk and organize around the poor working conditions in the Pittsburgh area, activists nationwide began to realize that the fight here against US Steel was going to be a significant “make-or-break” event in the struggle for democracy against capitalism and oppression. Soon, high-profile activists such as Eugene Debs, Socialist Party presidential candidate and organizer, as well as William Z. Foster, radical labor organizer and later Communist Party presidential candidate, came to Pittsburgh to help organize workers and spread socialist values. Foster’s plan involved unionizing and winning more support along the edges of the city first, then slowly working inward to the city’s core where the organizing effort would be directly against party bosses and therefore the most difficult.There was good success in this idea as many boroughs outside of Pittsburgh began to organize and hold membership meetings, rallies, and even parades.
Unfortunately, the movement to organize hit some road blocks. Some blocks came from US Steel itself,and local and state elected officials supportive of the industry. Police forces were mobilized to break up public meetings about unionization and strikes, sometimes by using violence. Laws were passed to make it more difficult to hold membership meetings and recruit among immigrants, partly by making it illegal to use any language other than English. Accusations that unions supported “Bolsheviks” and “anarchists” took advantage of a “Red Scare” after the recent Russian revolution to turn the public against union workers and give excuses for police action against them.
Unfortunately, the labor movement hurt itself by not resisting as a unified movement; laws exploited latent racism and xenophobia against black and Eastern European workers by making it more difficult to associate with or organize with them, and so often the different communities organized separately and sometimes even worked against one another. There wasn’t a wide-spread understanding of cross-race class solidarity, and even among the leftists that were thinking this, effort was split between various unions and the Socialist Party and multiple Communist Party organizations — again, showing it wasn’t a united effort. As a result, the 1919 strike broke in favor of US Steel, and it would be another decade until the Great Depression brought about new organizing opportunities for the movement.
A few lessons stand out in my mind:
● Similar to the conditions around 1919, Pittsburgh’s core is dominated by a single political party and business elite that may be difficult to win against directly until the movement is larger. However, many townships and boroughs just outside the Pittsburgh boundaries offer opportunities to organize and win with much lower ballot access and vote total requirements. Greens might consider adopting something like Foster’s plan to organize in the suburbs first, then move inward to the city . We started on such a plan this year with organizing around Edgewood and Swissvale by supporting Tara Yaney’s campaign and allies in the area, we should continue that work and look for other suburbs to gain in-roads by 2021.
● It is important to organize a coalition across community groups: ethnic, racial, gender, class. We will remain too disorganized and politically ineffective if we do not work together. Greens must be the home for ecologically-minded, independent, working class politics , which means we all need to organize outside of our comfort zone a bit in 2020 to recruit beyond the typical upper-middle-class progressive neighborhoods many Pittsburgh activists focus on.
● Greens should brace ourselves for a very divisive 2020 campaign season. As history has shown, political enemies of the US establishment on the left have for 100 years been demonized as Russians and “Bolsheviks”, and there’s no reason to think 2020 would be an exception given the prominence of “Russiagate” and other related attempts at red-baiting in the media.
While the temptation will be great, I believe Greens will need to rise above the fray and avoid politics that targets individuals rather than the system as a whole. With anti-left propaganda likely to be at highs, we’re going to need to strengthen efforts for political education and community outreach on the real issues. And it might not hurt to take extra time to study the movements that came before us and strategize. With some planning and a strong message that puts people’s human rights and needs first, Green victories over the next few years can still be made even in trying times.
But victory won’t happen without real commitment. I encourage all Greens to make New Years’ pledges to support the Green Party and Green movement in 2020 — by paying yearly membership dues and volunteering just a couple hours per month, you’re letting all of our Green friends and allies know that we’re in it for the long-haul and will continue building a stronger movement here in Pittsburgh.
Note to Readers: The Green Party of Allegheny County needs your support to continue our pursuit of people and planet over profits. Please consider making a donation. We also encourage you to get involved in Green politics.
