We rolled into Monday concerned the world had gone a bit wobbly, with American bombs screaming down on Iranian nuclear facilities and news that we’re all about to fry in a giant atmospheric slow cooker that forecasters are calling a “heat dome.” June is turning out peachy. A war, 95-degree temperatures and a 32-month strike.
Then we heard that Kim Kelly was scheduled to speak at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library. Hey, that sounded cool. We loved Kim’s book “Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor.” She’s just published an edition for young readers — “Fight to Win! Heroes of American Labor.”
A group of us decided to drive to Mt. Lebanon. We’ve become quite interested in labor history the past few months. We parked in a lot not far from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette manager’s home. We remember picketing there early in the strike when we still had that giant inflatable rat we called “Scabby.” We often had trouble getting Scabby to stand upright. He was old and full of leaks. On that day in Mt. Lebanon, the cops weren’t too happy about his floppy presence.
We chuckled at the memory. Strikes have their absurd moments. Then we walked into the library and saw Kim at the door of a downstairs conference room. She wore a black T-shirt that read “Black Lung Kills.” With her reporting, Kim has focused a lot of attention on this horrific, disabling disease that brutalizes coal communities. We were reminded at this point that the stakes are high for all working people in this country. Some of us are fighting for contracts that expand or, in some cases, simply preserve workplace rights. Others are fighting for protections in workplaces that can destroy them. Our struggles are all connected in this wobbly world. We carried this thought as we took our seats in the second row of a room crowded with 80 others.
Kim began by talking about her origins in journalism. She started off as a music writer focusing on heavy metal and landed a job a Vice Media. Her colleagues there joked about the “22 rule,” meaning workers were hired at age 22, they worked 22 hours a day and earned 22 grand a year. Try living in Brooklyn under those conditions. One day a co-worker approached Kim and said, “Hey, we’re thinking about joining a union. What do you think about that?”
“I was like, ‘Oh, thank God,’” Kim said. She jumped in head first. The union drive proved successful.
“And that experience was so transformative,” Kim said. “I’ve had a bunch of crappy jobs and some cool jobs, but that was the first time I ever got to sit across from someone who signed my paycheck and say, ‘No, that’s not good enough.’”
That experience sparked an interest in writing about labor. Kim knew very little about the topic. She didn’t know labor history, didn’t know about Studs Terkel or any of the famous labor leaders from years past. “Well, screw it,” she said. “I’m going to do it anyway.”
“If you can write pretty well, and you can read books, and you can talk to people, and you’re not a total total jerk, you can kind of figure it out,” she added. “Being a journalist is a working-class profession. It is a skill. It is something you learn and you figure out. You don’t have to go to school for that.”
Kim’s reporting often focuses on professions and communities we don’t traditionally associate with union organizing. She’s written about organizing battles waged by sex workers, workers with disabilities and incarcerated workers.
“I was always so curious about, OK, we have these great men, we have these big, strong unions, we have these big strikes, but other stuff probably happened, too. It turns out it really did. A lot of it was complicated and messy,” she recounted. “A lot of the people that were doing those interesting things were complicated and messy.
“For whatever reason, a lot of them don’t have statues. Some of them might have been a little too much of a female, or too queer, or too much of a commie, or too black, or too brown, or too something.”
Kim’s work challenges assumptions about the identity of America’s organized working people.
“If you want a cross-section of the working class, if you want to know the person, the avatar of the American working class, the person who is most likely to be in a union in this country is a Black woman who works in health care in the service industry.”
At one point, Kim picked up a copy of her newest book and read a segment about a worker named Nagi Daifallah. Daifallah was an immigrant from Yemen who emerged as a leader among Arab strikers during a massive 1973 walkout by the United Farm Workers in Lamont, California.
Late one night three sheriff’s deputies began hassling Daifallah as he spoke with a few fellow farm laborers. One deputy smashed his metal flashlight into Daifallah’s head, severing Daifallah’s spinal cord from the base of his skull.
“The other two deputies then dragged Nagi’s limp body across the pavement by his feet, bumping his head along the ground and leaving a smear of blood on the concrete,” Kim read.
Daiffallah did not survive his injuries, but the union fight continued. In fact, Daifallah’s killing galvanized the strikers.
In 1975, two years after his death, California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which finally granted farm workers collective bargaining rights, according to an October 2024 article in American Community Media.
“When farm workers gathered to vote in those first legal union elections, there were many Yemenis from the Joaquin Valley among them,” Kim read. “They cast their votes in honor of Nagi Daifallah.”
She then closed the book.
“It shows so many different aspects of what the American labor movement looks like,” Kim said. “It’s multiracial, it’s multilingual, [and] it’s multigenerational. It dealt with the very real and deadly impact of state violence on workers who were standing up for themselves against these recalcitrant employers.
“It shows that even if something terrible happens, you have to keep living, you have to keep working, you have to keep fighting, and hopefully eventually, you’ll win.”
“Legislation isn’t always the answer, but it can be convenient when it goes in your favor, or when a judge’s order goes in your favor, or when really anything goes in your favor,” Kim said. “One thing that I learned from writing a 400-page book about American labor is that it’s pretty dicey.
Last October, on the site of a former United Farm Workers branch office, a diverse group of residents gathered to celebrate Poplar City Council’s approval to rename a park in honor of Daifallah. They unveiled a mural inspired by the slain activist at the park, according to the American Community Media article. Those actions to honor his memory, though, are facing challenges.
Kim lauded the perseverance of unions in her talk.
“We’ve been through a lot together, the working class, but the only way we’ve survived is by staying together and by refusing to do the boss’s work for him, by refusing to give in to artificial divisions,” she said.
Shortly before Kim began her talk, she introduced our colleague, John Santa, who stood and spoke a few words about our strike against the Post-Gazette. Earlier, we had given Kim one of the PUP T-shirts. Our strike T-shirts are badass.
John discussed his reason’s for striking.
“I have a 6-year-old son. His name is Jack. Anyone who’s been on our picket line is very familiar with Jack. He’s at a lot of our events. I think it’s really important with books like Kim wrote that we teach our kids that we have to stand up for what’s right. We all know what’s going on in the world right now,” John said.
“It’s more important than ever to stand up for our rights as union workers and for workers across the spectrum, doing all kinds of work.”
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.