By March 11, 2005
Last night, Bruce Raynor ’72, president of the UNITE-HERE union and Cornell University trustee, spoke following a screening of the new documentary Where Do You Stand?, which was shown to a nearly-filled 105 Ives. The film, produced and directed by Alexandra Lescaze, a former union organizer, chronicles the 25-year struggle of textile workers of Kannapolis, North Carolina to form a union. The film follows the organizing campaign of the mill workers, from its roots in the early 1970s, through approximately five union elections, to the ultimate closing of the mill in 2003. The union organizers persisted through strong employer opposition, illegal terminations, company propaganda and a divided workforce, and ultimately won their campaign on June 23, 1999. However the union victory is a brief one, as the film quickly turned bittersweet when the mill closed on June 30, 2003 due to the declining financial state of the company brought on by the increase in importation of inexpensive foreign textiles. According to Raynor, “The best thing about this film is that the filmmaker let the workers tell their own story.” The documentary includes many interviews with the mill workers who experienced the campaign from start to finish, and spoke to the workers’ persistence throughout much adversity. The film showed the emotional ups and downs of the workers as they put exceptional effort into the union campaign, entered optimistically into each secret-ballot election, ultimately lost, and then had to return to the same low-paying, fast-paced jobs. In response to the struggle faced by the Kannapolis workers and the limited legal protection afforded to workers, Patrick Young ’06, member of the Cornell Organization for Labor Action (COLA), responded that “after seeing that, it’s astonishing that anyone tries to start a union anymore.” Following the approximately hour-long screening of the film, Bruce Raynor offered the floor to questions from the audience. Questions ranged from specifics regarding certain illegal tactics of employers during the union campaigning, to Raynor’s hopes for the future of the labor movement. During the discussion, Raynor focused on the National Labor Relations Board’s failure to protect workers rights. Raynor put forth his opinions about how to remedy this problem. Among those mentioned were an “immediate way to redress unfair labor practices” and increased penalties for disobeying the National Labor Relations Act. Employers found guilty of unfair labor practices often only have to post a notice at the workplace outlining the unfair labor practice. During the discussion over employer hostility to unionization, Raynor touched upon UNITE-HERE’s current campaign to unionize the employees of uniform supplier Cintas. While Cintas has responded to union activity with employee termination and shift restructuring, Raynor is certain that “Cintas workers will win. It may take us three to four years, it won’t take us 25,” as it did for the mill workers. Raynor played an integral part in bringing the film to campus. He said that the film is important because it shows students the “ability, integrity and power of the working people,” the “problems workers have when they try to organize in our society,” and the threat that globalization poses to employment in America. Ed Yoo ’06 enjoyed the film and found it “telling of the future of the American workers and workplace.” He was especially impressed with Bruce Raynor and described him as “one of the most progressive labor leaders out there.” Prof. Kate Bronfenbrenner ’76, director of labor education research, was very pleased with the event, saying that the “turnout was wonderful” and the students did a great job of organizing the event. She felt that the message of the film was extremely important, “not just about worker’s organizing but corporate restructuring and the complete failure of American labor laws to protect the rights of workers.” The film recently won a CINE Golden Eagle award for excellence in film and video, and is being shown intermittently throughout the country. In his talk, Raynor added that his union is doing as much as it can to get the film shown in the Southern textile towns. Yesterday’s film screening coincided with Raynor’s longstanding interest in speaking to members of Cornell’s activist and labor communities during his annual visits to campus. In addition to the movie screening, he spoke to classes regarding his personal experiences in organizing and the current state of labor in America. This event was co-sponsored by Labor Education Research, the Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation & Archives, and COLA. Archived article by Katie PollackSun Contributor
By March 11, 2005
Intelligent, humorous and true, The Syringa Tree depicts a life of a family who negotiates their days with the strict socio-political order of the apartheid regime South Africa. The fourth play of the Kitchen Theater’s 14th Mainstage Season, Obie-Award winning The Syringa Tree is based on the memories of its author, South African writer Pamela Gien. Syringa chronicles the maturation, disillusionment and eventual resolution of its heroine, Lizzie. Filtered through the mind of a six-year old child, the narration gracefully moves from disclosures, dreams, danger and dance. The solo drama is neither didactic nor histrionic in its telling of apartheid. The writing displays a remarkable sincerity to the experience of a young white girl in a politically turbulent and socially uncertain community. Despite the political enormity of the play’s distant geographic and temporal locale, the sentiments are intricately uncomplicated — the tension frighteningly real, immediate and recognizable. Steve TenEyck’s scenic and lighting design takes the audience to both the mundane and the less than ordinary African dusks and dawns, which are used to measure time. The stage is bare, featuring a vacant African backdrop: a swing and a wooden platform. The brilliant lighting design renders the intangible anxieties of police inspections and the comfort of nightly tuck-ins to the optic field, capturing not only the African sun but also the human sensation as it steers the narration in its span of 40 years. The single cast member, Dee Pelletier achieves a powerfully engaging and remarkably honest performance, portraying twenty four characters — men and women, black and white, English and Afrikaans, ranging the age three to 82. Pelletier exhibits striking physical aptitude as she, without hint of exhaustion, takes the stage alone for one hundred and five minutes. Her remarkable concentration takes Gien’s writing to emotional heights as she seamlessly shifts from one character to the next. Without the prior knowledge of the performance’s nature, one is taken aback by the confusion of what easily could have been a garbeled jumble of voices. We quickly forget that there is a single body on stage. Each shift in character is persuasive and unobtrusive to the entirety of the performance. The Syringa Tree gracefully turns our heads to the nuances of life and personality. It is the quality of our voices, the idiosyncrasies in our gestures and the shadow we project that informs the rest of the world about who we are. Syringa is not a mere political diatribe against a reprehensible moment in our history. Despite the foreboding inaccessibility and the initial disorientation of one person acting a 24-character drama, dexterous acting, fantastical musical interjections and precise, evocative lighting keep a coherent rhythm that mobilizes the narration of The Syringa Tree. With skill, wit, humor and compassion Sara Lampert Hoover directs an ineradicable portrait of what could only be called humanity. Despite the oscillation from reality to fantasy and high theatricality of the performance, stripped to its bones, we find only a heart. The Syringa Tree will be performed Thursday through Saturday at 8p.m. and Sunday at 4p.m. until March 26 at the Kitchen Theatre. Archived article by Whine Del RosarioSun Staff Writer