Detroit Newspaper Strike

There were a lot of arrests but we got some high-profile and excellent broadcast media coverage ... That action really had an impact on a lot of us; we became a lot more radicalized.

Then there was the whole group who received threatening letters or calls from management, panicked and went back in. I mentioned that when I testified at a congressional hearing this past week. None of the other craft unions got these calls, just the newsroom.

ATC: Did you expect the level of community support you've received, with people canceling their subscriptions and so forth?

DeSmet: Yes, I did expect that because I was born and raised here and I knew we had that sense about ourselves. I've said many times in speeches that Detroit is home to the international headquarters of the Big Three automakers but we 're a union town, not a company town.

My father was one of the sit-down strikers in 1937, at Jefferson Assembly, right after Flint. I came up in a home where union struggles, civil rights, the war in Vietnam were all concerns. I'm more shocked by those who don't take the union side, and I know there are even union members who just don't get it.

But I've encountered so many people who will do things just because they know we're on strike - somebody left a supply of cat food at my house, or someone pops for your breakfast at a diner. Someone I knew from the time I was a religion writer - I did a story on his group - called up recently and told me, "I just wanted to let you know how proud I am of you."

God bless every single one of the people of UAW Local 160, including my next door neighbor who's in poor health but keeps up with every issue of the Detroit Sunday Journal. It's very heartening to know there are such incredible people in your community.

ATC: Can you say something about the role of the Sunday Journal (the weekly paper published by the striking unions)? We've found that it's a way of reaching people in the plants on a weekly basis.

DeSmet: It's important on many levels. One is that it's given many people, both in production and newsroom, a workplace when they were on strike and feeling desperate. That' s important for morale.

It's also played the role of bringing some information to the community that wasn't getting out elsewhere. Maybe that's the biggest role, when we're locked out from the Communications media in town as well as by our employer.

In fact that's true of any kind of coverage of labor. It's come home to us as journalists what we've been doing to labor all these years; we see our own sins more clearly. It's great to see people who aren't strikers, who work at Solidarity House or Wayne State University, hawking the paper every week on street corners.

ATC: Was ACOSS (Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters) formed in order to take more direct control of strike activism?

DeSmet: We were worried on the first anniversary of the strike that things were getting stale, to a point where there wasn't life in the strike. I didn't see that as the fault of the rank and file; but I felt that if we didn't get more involved and proactive in our own strike it was going to be dead and done.

I had committed myself to not taking a job and living on my strike benefits, but I saw there were points of disconnect between the leadership and rank and file. So we started feeling out what we could do for the first anniversary, which didn't seem to be a high priority for the local leadership.

Ultimately we were able to work with the leadership on building a coalition to reactivate the strike. Out of ACOSS came the idea for the national June mobilization, and the coordination needed to get it done.

My disappointment with ACOSS is that it wasn't as action-oriented as I'd hoped. So some of us came up with the idea of a Shut Down Motown campaign as an action arm of the strike. What we decided to do, back in November 1 996, was a more regular schedule of actions that would cause disruptions to company, political and community leaders, the way our lives have been disrupted.

We're thoroughly disgusted with the way a lot of politicians, who get labor money, had talked to the scab papers during the election campaign.

We saw the 60th anniversary of the Flint sitdown as very key to our own struggle. So we launched our campaign with our own sitdown in front of the Riverfront printing plant on December 30 - I know that you, Dianne, were involved in that - and we went to ACOSS and phone-banked all the strikers.

There were a lot of arrests but we got some high-profile and excellent broadcast media coverage. And it brought our struggle to the forefront again for people who'd thought it was over. That's a constant struggle for us - it is, after all, a media strike and it's hard to get coverage.

That action really had an impact on a lot of us; we became a lot more radicalized. A lot of us have become disciples of Mike Zielinski (a Teamster organizer who's been in Detroit working on this strike), an action man with a mission, who will take us right to the edge of the envelope. When we introduced him at one of our meetings there was a standing ovation - that says it all.

ATC: Where does this struggle go next?

DeSmet: We've got a couple of ways we're going now. There' s the corporate campaign, targeting the Gannett and Knight-Ridder Board members. When a group of strikers were arrested in Boston last month on a trespassing charge (at a demonstration against the directors), they decided to fight it at trial - so they went back to Boston to try to deliver subpoenas to these directors.

We're gong to be in Philadelphia at the Knight-Ridder board meeting with at least 500 people, and we' 11 be at the Gannett meeting too. We're going to these guys ' homes and country clubs.

Then the other aspect is June 20-21, when we hope to pull off a major mobilization with the help of the local and national AFL-CIO and the Internationals of the striking locals. We've done mailings to all the Central Labor Councils, labor federations and Internationals in the country.

There's going to be a specific Teamster action. On May 16 there will be a "Drive for Justice" past the North Plant. We've got a committee set up for Friday and Saturday June 20-21, including actions that unionists coming into town can take part in, highlighting corporate greed and the ways people can go back home and fight Gannett and Knight-Ridder.

There are chartered buses coming from many cities, even a plane chartered from San Francisco. It's been suggested that there could be a flag for this event, to be on all the buses and cars coming in for the march.

ATC: So you're saying that there are different components of the planing, at the level of the official union structures and at the base?

DeSmet: I think ACOSS has been doing some planning of its own. I've urged them to understand the reality: The forces who are funding this action will be calling the shots. I can't fund a major march, so I feel that if I can work together with these people we can accomplish something.

Sure, I have trouble with some of the people who run the unions. Recently I was at a certain union hall where I saw a lot of Lincolns in the parking lot, which didn't have any "No Scab Papers" bumper stickers. Well, they do now....

But after all, the union movement is only as strong as its cooperation. With a spirit of internal fighting - whether it comes from the officials or the rank and file - we aren't going to get any where against the corporate giants, who are united.

ATC: How do you see your own future? What happens if and when you get called back to work?

DeSmet: I haven 't really planned it out, because I've learned I have to go day by day. I haven't been able to predict anything, from the first day of this strike.

I'm not sure whether my future will be in journalism. In a way this strike has ruined me for that - because I don't see corporate journalism as changeable. If there were a national Labor newspaper that would be very attractive to me, and organizing is also very appealing to me - but not the kind of life style that goes with it.

I thought about going back to school; I was at Stanford for a year on my fellowship and I learned how much I love writing fiction. Before the strike, I was working on a book project and I thought I was on my way. I've been unable to concentrate on that, but it's still a lively subject having to do with justice and women and religion.

But right now my whole head is into this struggle....

I always like to conclude by thanking people for their support. I don't know where we would be if we weren't in Detroit, with people who are fundamentally with us on the right track. It was so cool that I didn't have to fight Gannett and Knight-Ridder by myself, which is often how it felt when I was inside.

You understand that there' s a "common union" and "community," which of course is where "communion" comes from. That's better than what I had before. The best writers write with their own voice; and in this strike I've learned to speak with a voice I didn't know I had, the verbal rather than written voice.

Billy Bragg has a phrase about "socialism of the heart," and I feel I have a "unionism of the heart," which I've been able to speak about to workers all over the country who had been really beaten down.