| From West by Northwest.org eBooks A Chapter of Sticking to the Union: The Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila By Sandy Polishuk Jun 13, 2004
Oral historian Sandy Polishuk found a unique subject when she began her project with the little old lady who seemed to be involved with so many significant events in Northwest labor history. Author Elinor Langer remarks, "Sandy Polishuk's Sticking to the Union is the best kind of oral history, bringing to life a person and a era quickly passing of out reach. A grassroots tour through twentieth-century ...history, it is supported by extensive research amplifying and at times challenging Julia Ruuttila's own reflections. The interplay between the voices of the older subject and the younger author is one of the most satisfying features of the book." Ms. Polishuk provides her framework in italics as introductions to chapters and bridges between memory and other fact. Julia's voice is presented in plain text. Chapter 11 In 1948, Julia was on her own - her son Mike was grown and gone and she was'nt married- and her prospects for a new job didn't seem good after her very public political firing. Fortunately, she still had her typewriter, her writing skills, and friends in the labor movement. The ILWU was involved in a bitter strike over control of their hiring halls. The employers association was refusing to negotiate because ILWU president Harry Bridges would not sign a non-Communist affidavit. It turned out to be good timing for Julia. She was drawn into their struggle and the union and stayed on for nearly 40 years.[i] The ILWU was born in 1937 when the Pacific Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association, under the leadership of Harry Bridges, voted to affiliate with the CIO. From the beginning the ILWU was committed to internal democracy and took active stands for peace and justice. Because its constitution prohibited discrimination based on political beliefs, Communists held key positions. There was no chance of getting work, as my firing and hearing was in the newspapers on the front page. The 1948 Longshore strike broke out and they had a big soup kitchen. Some of the ILWU officials called me up and told me to come down there and work on the publicity committee. They said I could eat in the soup kitchen and the cooks from the Marine Cooks and Stewards (it was a joint maritime strike; the other maritime unions were involved in it also, the offshore unions) would make me up food to take home. My end of the publicity was to get pictures into other labor papers, like the different maritime union papers, Voice of the Federation, and the International Woodworker, the Woodworkers' paper. We had a longshoreman who had worked as a photographer and I used to go on the picket line with him. He'd take these pictures and I'd write up the captions to go with them. When the strike was over, the Longshoremen came and told me I had better come to work for them, for their paper, the Dispatcher, and to be secretary to Matt Meehan, who was the international representative in that area. I went to work for the Longshoremen and continued to work for them until I was almost eighty. When I got fired from Public Welfare I made up my mind I was never going to work eight hours again as long as I lived because there were other more important things to do. When I went to work for Matt Meehan, I worked half time. I thought, I'll just work and see if it interests me. 'Course, sometimes I think I put in more than eight hours a day on the Dispatcher, but at least it's work that interests me. The best thing that ever happened to me was my getting fired. A great many of the old-time longshoremen came out of the IWW. Matt Meehan did, too. He had belonged to the Seamen's Division of the IWW. And for that matter, so did Harry Bridges. There wasn't much the conservatives in the local could do about Matt because he was appointed by Bridges. And when I was his secretary there was no way they could get at me. Anyway he was so smart and so good on the floor and he had a lot of support among the rank and file. The phonies were not nearly as smart and they couldn't maneuver as well. He was one of the smartest people I've ever met and he had only gone through the eighth grade. As Meehan's secretary, Julia could be open about her political beliefs and activities. And she respected her boss. Matt Meehan was one of the original organizers of the ILWU and its first secretary-treasurer. It was Matt who suggested the Longshoremen adopt the motto "An injury to one is an injury to all.” In 1948, when he hired Julia, he had just become a full-time ILWU union representative.[ii] Though they were in the ILWU, Hawaiian longshoremen were paid 32 cents an hour less than their counterparts on the West Coast. In 1949, they went out on strike for parity. During the strike, a ship loaded with Hawaiian pineapple was turned away from Seattle and Tacoma when longshoremen there called it "hot cargo" and refused to unload it. The ship then came to the Columbia River port town of The Dalles, where there was no ILWU local, but Local 8 got wind of it and put up a picket to prevent unloading. The ensuing ruckus became known as The Dalles Pineapple Beef.[iii] Frank Pozzi, the Portland ILWU's lawyer, referred to the Pineapple Beef as an alleged riot that wasn't supposed to happen. He said the Longshore pickets had been lectured in Portland before they left: no trouble, no violence. But they couldn't control themselves.[iv] When I worked for Matt there were lots of funny incidents always happening. During the 1949 Longshore strike in the Hawaiian Islands, a barge of scab pineapples was sent across the Pacific and sneaked up the Columbia River in the fog to The Dalles. It was gonna be loaded on trucks and sent down to California to some factory where they made fruit cocktail. Matt sent a bunch of longshoremen up to The Dalles to picket. He went up and established a headquarters in a hotel at The Dalles. He warned the Longshore pickets that went up there that there was something very funny going on in town, because there were reporters and writers there from all over the United States. He said he was sure that the employers were going to foment some kind of trouble and he urged them to be cool and cautious. This scab truck charged through the picket lines and almost killed a couple of longshoremen, they jumped out of the way just in time. Somebody said–and that was one of the provocateurs, as we called them–somebody yelled, "Let's get them fellows!” and they charged down. A couple of hundred men charged down after this scab truck and turned it over and took the driver out–I think there were two men in the front seat–took them out and started to beat them up. One of them was about to be killed and would have been if it hadn't been for Toby Christiansen, business agent at Local 8. He knocked the guy out that had this truck driver down. He told me all about it. He said this guy said, "Toby, you're hitting the wrong man, this is me.” That incident gave rise to what they called The Dalles Pineapple Beef, because the Longshoremen were sued by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company for a huge sum of money, I forget how much, an enormous sum of money. Matt called me up and he said to get hold of Francis Murnane and for us to write up a leaflet about what The Dalles Pineapple Beef was really all about and what the 1949 Longshore strike in Hawaii was. We were to take it down and run it off on the mimeograph machine in the Local 8 office, and we were to get someone with a car–Murnane never did have a car because he always gave all his money away–and we were to take it up to The Dalles so Matt could have the pickets up there distribute that leaflet to everybody. So at the crack of dawn I went down to the Longshore hall and there was a White Finn (that's a right‑wing Finn; there were the Red Finns and the White Finns) who was the secretary of the local at that time named Mackie. He wouldn't let me go back in the room where the mimeograph machine was. Now Mackie was an ex‑boxer and he was a very powerful guy, but I was so angry and I was determined to get this leaflet run off so it could be picked up and get it to The Dalles. I said, "Get out of my way, Mackie,” and without thinking how idiotic it was, I rammed him in the stomach and he slipped on something and fell back into this big wastepaper basket. He had quite a rump on him and he stuck in there and he couldn't get out of it. I rushed back in the room where the mimeograph machine was and while I was starting to run off this stencil I heard these longshoremen who'd come in to pay their dues laughing their heads off. They said, "How'd you get in that contraption, Mackie?” He was cursing like anything. Then I heard him say, "That little so-and-so knocked me down,” and then how they laughed! Well, I never stopped to think, I just rammed him in the stomach without thinking. If you stopped and thought too much you never did it, you could always figure out reasons why you shouldn't. Here's something else funny. Pretty soon here comes Murnane. He had had a couple of hours sleep, I hadn't had any, and he'd also had some tea–he was a tea drinker, being an Irishman–and he had located someone to drive us to The Dalles. So we loaded the leaflets in this guy's car and started for The Dalles. We got partway up there and this guy says, "Open the glove compartment and see what I've got in there.” He had a stash full of pistols. Murnane made him drive up a side road and bury this stuff under a log in some little wooded area. We couldn't have that with us in The Dalles. This guy meant well, but that was the worst thing he could have done. We met Matt at the hotel and he had lined up all these pickets to go out and distribute the leaflets. I was up there another time for something in connection with The Dalles Pineapple Beef, and Matt said the National Guard was all over the docks and he told me to go down there and try to find out what's going on, because, after all, I had a press card. When I got down there they had all their bayonets on their guns and they wouldn't let me go through onto the dock area; they didn't pay any attention to my press card. I saw this Oregonian reporter in there and I yelled to him to come over and identify me as a reporter so I could get in and he wouldn't do it. I got the best of him later–a year or so later–I was at some sort of Longshore meeting here in Portland, and this same reporter was trying to get into that and I said, "You can't get in.” He said, "How did you get in?” I said, "On my press card, but your press card isn't any good here.” And he couldn't get in. Anyway, the Oregonian or Journal photographer, I forget which–they were still all down there waiting for something more to happen–took a picture of me standing, it was really hysterical. You know that's one clipping I wish I'd kept. I believe it was on the front page and it showed all these National Guardsmen with their bayonets and their rifles all lined up. The photographer was a good one. It must have struck him as very funny because I was even smaller then than I am now, because I was very thin, and there I am against all those armed men. They threw the pineapple in the river. And that is not all that went in the river. They threw the cameras of the photographers in because they were sympathetic to the Pineapple people, the employers. But later they were sorry they did it and they bought cameras for them, to replace them. Probably Matt told them to. One of them turned out to be a great friend of ours in the Portland newspaper strike and he used to laugh about it. You know how those things drag on. I was living in Astoria and married to Oscar by the time it came to trial in federal court in Portland. I flew from Astoria to Portland to cover that trial for the Dispatcher. They lost the court case but they never had to pay the fine, because they had me come to Portland and do some research in Moody's Industrial on all the companies that were involved with the pineapple company that had shipped that over. They had slowdowns at all those companies. So finally the pineapple company called it off. They wanted the slowdowns ended and the union didn't have to pay. When they use the power properly, it's very strong and powerful. On June 8, 1956, the Supreme Court refused to hear the ILWU's appeal of the judgment against Local 8 awarding the Hawaiian Pineapple Company $278,000. A month later, on July 6, 1956, during Longshore Hawaii negotiations, the parties announced they had reached a settlement for $100,000. If there was a slowdown it was not reported in the newspaper accounts.[v] The United States had tried to legally oust ILWU president Harry Bridges for years (there were also conservative elements in Local 8, the Portland local, who opposed him). The first warrant for Bridges' arrest and deportation to his native Australia, on the grounds that he was a Communist, was served March 5, 1938. Bridges won dismissal on December 30, 1939. He was rearrested in February 1941 after the Alien Registration Act (commonly called the Smith Act) was enacted in June 1940, but again won dismissal, this time by the Supreme Court, on June 18, 1945. Three months later he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen, only to be indicted in May 1949 for perjury for denying he was a Communist at his citizenship proceedings. He was found guilty, along with the two men who testified on his behalf, in April 1950. Two months later the Korean War began. The officers of the San Francisco ILWU local introduced a resolution at a union meeting endorsing President Truman's decision to send troops to Korea and pledging that shipping would not be disrupted for the duration of the war. Bridges, who was out on bail, introduced an amendment stating that the union should support the United Nations' order for a cease-fire and negotiations. The local did not adopt Bridges' amendment, but the public outcry over his stand resulted in his bail being revoked. In August 1950, he spent nearly three weeks in jail before bail was reinstated. The Supreme Court reversed his perjury conviction on June 15, 1953, and in June 1955 Bridges won the civil suit to rescind his naturalization and kept his U.S. citizenship.[vi] Another funny thing was the time that Bridges was in jail during the Korean War which he opposed. There was a Coastwise Caucus meeting in North Bend in the Longshore hall. I went down there to cover the meeting. The right-wing elements on the waterfront thought this was a good time to get rid of Bridges. The Portland local was an anti-Bridges local. The leader of the right wing was this Finn, Mackie. He was down there and they had determined that they were going to pass a motion at the caucus to get rid of Bridges. They had notified the reporters and people and they were all outside trying to get in to see what's going on, but, of course, they didn't let them in because it was a closed meeting. Some of them had gotten a ladder and had scrambled up so they could peek through a transom. A friend of mine that belonged to the local that they had at Rainier, he said to me, "You'll have to go out on the street too, with the other reporters, you can't be in here.” He thought I was the reporter for the People's World. Just then Matt came in. "What's this commotion all about?” he said to this guy. He said, "Well, she can't be in here.” Matt said, "Oh yes, she can. She's my secretary. Now you shut up, you so-and-so.” That guy was very embarrassed. Oh, it was a very heated meeting, because a resolution was introduced against Harry Bridges. What kept that motion from passing was a speech that Matt made. It was one of the best speeches I ever heard in support of Bridges. He talked about the Centralia case, about the stuff that labor had gone through in its efforts to organize and that Bridges had followed because he started out in life as an IWW on the ships. It was a very moving speech in the kind of language that longshoremen understand. A lot of other people made speeches too and the motion was shouted down, absolutely shouted down. It was delightful. They ended up by sending a telegram of greeting and support to Bridges. Everyone in that hall except three people signed it. The reporters were just simply flabbergasted and furious. Their trip was for nothing and I was trying to explain it to one of them. I said, "You know, their motto is 'an injury to one is an injury to all,' and for once, they used it.” Matt's parents were Irish immigrants and he had quite a brogue, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service thought that he was a foreign-born Irishman. Matt and Bridges fell out once over something and Immigration and Naturalization kept track of all the stuff like that, so they thought, here's their opportunity to get Matt to testify against Bridges. So they went to his house one evening, rang the doorbell, the Immigration. They said they had some very private business to discuss with him and they approached him on the subject of Bridges. Then he said, "No.” He wouldn't cooperate. He disagreed with Bridges, but he wouldn't cooperate because Bridges was a first-class union man and a member of his union and so he wouldn't help them. So they said, "Well, promise us that you won't tell Bridges that we talked to you.” He said, "I give you my solemn word, I won't tell Harry until I can get to the telephone in the kitchen.” I'll never forget Matt saying that. What they had disagreed about was over World War II. Bridges took an extremely patriotic stand and felt that there shouldn't be any labor disputes while the war was going on, but Matt felt that there were some labor disputes that couldn't be put on ice. I think Matt was right, but they had a valid disagreement. One of the few times that I disagreed with Bridges. We disagreed about the draft during Vietnam. And also over the Ray Becker case. I've never understood why he did everything possible to keep that from being brought before the longshore union. He was annoyed at everyone that was involved in it. I've often tried to figure that out and the only thing that I can think of is that Bridges was still in great danger of being deported. I think he thought it detracted attention away from the efforts to defend him, or maybe he thought that it was prejudicial to his case. Ray Becker didn't represent a major up-to-date struggle on the labor front, which Bridges' case did. [Ray Becker was released a year and a half after the attempts to deport Bridges began.] Sometimes there's a conflict between the needs of the whole and what an individual needs. I didn't used to have enough intellectual muscle to grasp that, but I can grasp it now; though I'm sure I would never have changed my position on any of these matters. But I can see now how some people I was very annoyed with at the time, why they took a different position. Congress adopted the Smith Act in 1940, making it a crime to teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow of the U.S. government or to organize or be a member of any group or society devoted to such advocacy. The first to be tried under the act were members of the Socialist Workers Party in Minnesota in 1943. A trial in New York of the top leadership of the Communist Party followed in 1949. After their conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1951, other Communist leaders were also arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Julia got involved when the trial touched the ILWU. When the top hierarchy in the Communist Party was on trial in New York, one of the voluntary attorneys was the Longshore attorney from San Francisco [Richard Gladstein]. The judge sentenced all of those attorneys to jail for contempt of court on some trumped-up charge.[vii] You couldn't very well call up people and say, "What do you think of the Smith Act trial?” because people were so petrified over the Smith Act trials they couldn't think straight, so I started calling up ministers and asking them what they thought about the conviction of attorneys defending the damned. One minister, who said he thought that every person, irregardless of who they were, had a right to be defended in court, volunteered to write a statement. It was very good. In fact, it was excellent. I got three other of the top-line ministers to sign it. The minister of the First Unitarian Church wouldn't sign it, Dr. [Richard M.] Steiner. Well, my mother was quite active in that church, so I was stunned, absolutely stunned. In fact, we got into quite an argument and he hung up on me. The head of the Congregational Church and First Christian and Presbyterian Church did sign it. But Dr. Steiner wouldn't. I got to thinking what I could do next, so I started calling up other people and I called up the man, I can't think of his name, but he was the board chairman at the First National Bank. I read this statement to him and he endorsed it. He was the leading layperson at the Unitarian church and a heavy contributor, so then I got my mother to get Dr. Steiner on the phone 'cause I didn't think he'd speak to me. Then she gave me the phone and I said, "Maybe you'd be interested to know what so-and-so said.” He hung up on me again. I wrote some stories for the People's World and for the Federated Press and I sent a copy of the letter with the signatures. I sent a copy of it to the ILWU attorney who had been thrown in the clink. During the many years Julia was associated with the ILWU, she was loyal but not uncritical. She was particularly troubled by racial discrimination within Local 8. There are three classifications of workers on the waterfront: Class A longshoremen are fully registered and are the only workers eligible to be members of the union. Class B longshoremen are partially registered and are called to work after all the class A men have been placed. Their position is somewhat analogous to an apprentice. Casuals, or "white cards,” have no official standing. Technically a "white card” is issued to any man asking for one on a day when there are no available A or B men when more workers are needed. During World War II there was plenty of work on the waterfront and many casuals were hired, including blacks, but when it came time to register the blacks, the vast majority of Local 8 members objected. Still, there was a minority of Portland longshoremen determined to integrate the local who tried to recruit volunteers and worked with the NAACP and the Urban League to that end. The Urban League had recruited two men in November 1961. In December, after the league negotiated with the union, the men got their "white cards” allowing them to work as casuals. The league publicized the victory in its newsletter and urged other men to show up at the hiring hall.[viii] But when it came time for advancement into B status the door was still closed. I remember going in the office of Local 8 one day in 1943 to pick up some pictures. The Dispatchers had just been delivered to the Longshore hall, so, as I came up to the dues window, papers were all lying on the counter. This dreadful walking boss [longshore gang foreman] said to the secretary, "Don't give her any news whatever. She's a so-and-so and such-and-such,” and he slapped me in the face as hard as he could with this folded-up paper. It really hurt. He said, "Look what you so-and-so's have done now. You nigger lovers,” and a few other epithets.[ix] I found out afterwards the paper had a picture of Paul Robeson on the front page. He had been made an honorary member of Local 10 in San Francisco, which has always had blacks, and they've got, I think, sixty percent black membership today.[x] I had learned, when I got so badly beaten up in the Woodworkers' strike in '35, that it's pretty stupid to fight with someone that's two or three times your size, but I lost my temper completely and I decided to hit him where it would hurt the most. I drew up my foot. I was going to kick him in the balls. That's when the secretary of the local came out from behind the dues window and took me by the arm and pulled me into his office. He said, "Now you see what I have to put up with all the time.” Once I asked Matt Meehan why there were no blacks in the Portland local when there were so many in San Francisco and some in Seattle and all the other ports. He said during the '34 strike that the shipowners imported blacks to San Francisco to scab on the docks and when they found out the score they went over to the strikers. And after it was over they were taken into the union. But they didn't have to do that in Portland, there were so many scabby whites willing to scab. [xi]In the ILWU, if someone traveled from one port to another, take for instance if someone had relatives that were ill or in the hospital or some reason they wanted to go there and work, the port that took that man in they also had the right to travel someone back. So the first time that Portland wanted to travel someone to San Francisco, Bridges said, okay, and then he traveled a black up to Portland to work. He did it on purpose. But the longshoremen in Local 8 threw that black man into the Willamette River. He went back to San Francisco. He couldn't stay here. Things got so bad that Lou Goldblatt, secretary-treasurer of the international union, came to Portland. He was Jewish and he was really a great guy, one of the best people the union had. That was a time [1964] when work was booming on the waterfront and they were going to take in four hundred new B men, and Harry Bridges had said that every one of the four hundred should be black to make up for the years of discrimination. Lou Goldblatt came to Portland and he said, "Things can't go on like this,” and he said, "There's got to be a compromise. You've got to take in forty blacks.”[xii] Francis Murnane was the hero of the waterfront. He was able to get up before a meeting and make everything sound like something that you'd want to do even in that right-wing local. He is the one that told them, "We can't get away with what we've been doing for years anymore. We've absolutely got to take in blacks,” and there were enough decent people in the local so the compromise was accepted. When they finally did take those forty B men in, it was still difficult for the blacks because there was a ruling on the waterfront if you were in a fight–you know it's so dangerous working on the waterfront–that the people in the fight would both be fired; but it worked out, in those early days, the only ones that got fired were the blacks. So some of the real racists down there would provoke fights and they got rid of a great many of them. In February 1964, 46 of 299 new B men registered in Portland were black. The Coast Labor Relations Committee (CLRC) approved the addition of more B men to the Portland list, but, in 1967, the minutes reported that "Local 8 is still resisting the addition of 100 new Class B longshoremen in Portland as agreed to by this Committee.” This was because there would have to be blacks among the new B men.[xiii] The CLRC retaliated by refusing to advance B men to A. Local 8 responded by dispatching B men as if they were A, a practice declared in violation of the coast agreement. In May of 1968, the coast committee ordered Portland to cease and desist such dispatching and to select at least 50 blacks for the new B list. The Portland employers agreed to follow the coast directives, but the local continued to resist.[xiv] Finally in August an agreement was reached, but while it did proclaim that approximately one-half of the new B men beyond the present 247 would come from minority and underprivileged groups, it went on to state that only a minimum of eight were required to be Negroes.[xv] Earlier in 1968, some of the blacks had filed a complaint against Local 8 and the Pacific Maritime Association, the employers, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They alleged that the joint committee intentionally engaged in unlawful practices. In June 1968, the EEOC "found that reasonable cause existed to believe defendants . . . were in violation of Title VII,” the section making discrimination in employment illegal. In late October, when conciliation efforts to achieve voluntary compliance proved unsuccessful, 23 black longshoremen, along with two men denied white cards, filed suit in U.S. District Court. By this time the August agreement was in effect and at least ten black B men had been advanced to A status; however, nine of the plaintiffs in the suit were new A men who had been refused union membership. The suit also cited a point system for promotion instituted after the black B men were registered in 1964 that was used to discriminate against blacks.[xvi] In early December, representatives of all the parties met in Judge Gus Solomon's chambers to work out a settlement. The consent agreement provided that the approximately 65 men with complaints would have their status reviewed immediately and their places fixed, that 12 men would be advanced to A each month until the B list was exhausted, and that by August they would be proposed for membership.[xvii] When Julia's grandson Shane went to work on the waterfront, he found it very difficult to tolerate the way some white workers tried to pick fights with black workers. He said, "Anytime a black would run the winch, the white guys down in the hole would yell at him and say he was doing a bad job, even if he was a much better winch driver than a white guy that had been on previously.”[xviii] In 1984, Julia acknowledged, "There still is discrimination and racism on the Portland waterfront but nothing like it was.” And again, despite the continued racial tension on the waterfront, in 1991, Julia reflected, "Today I think it's better, quite a bit better. There are women on the waterfront now too. Things have greatly changed since I went to work first for Matt Meehan.” Endnotes: [i] Larrowe, Harry Bridges, pp. 293-99. [iii] After nearly five months, the union settled for an immediate 14-cent raise with another 7 cents in five months. NYT,
[iv] Frank Pozzi, interview, tape recording, Portland,
Oregon, 26 December 1990, JR. [viii] Urban League of Portland, “News Roundup,” p. 6. [xiii] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, meeting no. 3, 31
January 1967, ILWU:P. [xiv] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, 7 May 1968, ILWU:P. [xv] Minutes of Meeting of the CLRC, meeting no. 12, 15
August 1968, ILWU:P. - ELlNOR LANGER, author of A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement In America "This is a gem. Julia Ruuttlla gives an imaginative, vivid account of her hard times and struggles as a labor radical, feminist, anti-racist, and internationalist peace advocate in the Pacific Northwest. Sandy PolIshuk sets Julia's 'Iessons of life' into a clear historical context, and helps us see how her life is imagined as well as lived. Together, they show how an ordinary person can live an extraordinary life by fighting for a better world." -MICHAEL HONEY, Harry Bridges Chair of Labor Studies, University of Washington ALTHOUGH MARRIED FOUR TIMES, JULIA RUUTTILA CLAIMED THAT THE LOVE OF HER LlFE was not a man but a union. From her Industrial Workers of the World origins to the CIO, the International Woodworkers of America, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, she stuck to unions throughout her long and vibrant life. A well known labor activist and journalist in the Pacific Northwest, Ruuttila chose the picket sign and the typewriter as her chief weapons. She possessed a tireless passion for workers and their struggles, whether founding a committee to free the last Wobbly prisoner from the Centralia Tragedy, leading the Ladies' Auxiliary of the IWA during an eight-and-a-half month lockout, or coming before the House Un-American Activities Committee. At the same time, her everyday hardships were not unlike many other working class women of her era: abusive husbands, illegal abortions, poverty, and single motherhood. Ruuttila's remarkable story unfolds in her own words, with author Sandy Polishuk skillfully placing the narrative in its historical context and pointing out where other sources conflict with Ruuttila's account. Sticking to the Union provides a much needed woman's perspective on American labor history of the twentieth century.
Sandy Polishuk has been an activist since the 1960s in the peace, justice, and women's liberation movements. Polishuk recently viewed her 1974 police intelligence file that listed her occupation as "parent and revolutionary." She serves as vice president of her local teacher's union, the American Federation of Teachers at Portland State University, and as treasurer of the Oregon local of the National Writers Union. Her essays have appeared in both scholarly and literary journals. She teaches oral history at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon. |
