{"content":[{"text":"Mike Stout’s well-constructed and splendidly illustrated memoir is about a special place \n and time, but it also serves as a window on a social insurgency that can provide \n inspiration for future social progress. It is a story of skilled workers who proudly got their \n hands dirty - an industrial world of crane men, machinists, mechanics, millwrights, \n laborers and electricians that once dominated a region; who also combined working class \n culture as writers, poets musicians, cartoonists and even lawyers. Today, there are new \n skills and different jobs, but class domination and oppression endures. Greed without \n end, or solidarity forever? The choice remains and the consequences for a sick earth and \n an imperial world order could not be greater. \n ---Charles McCollester, former Chief Steward, UE Local 610, Switch and Signal \n Plant; former Professor of Labor History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania \n (IUP).","bbox":{"left":0.147098,"top":0.089071,"width":0.704831,"height":0.30858299999999994}},{"text":"This book should be read by activists in workplace situations all over the United States, \n not just as a stirring story but as a manual in response to the question, what is to be done? \n The Homestead struggle demonstrated that imaginative and aggressive use of contract \n language can result in substantial monetary compensation for workers who are displaced. \n The spirit of solidarity so abundantly displayed in Local 1397’s struggle is what the rank- \n and-file labor movement – as well as the broader Movement to change the larger society - \n - is all about. \n Staughton Lynd – Attorney, labor organizer, and author of over a dozen books \n including Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and \n Radical History","bbox":{"left":0.147098,"top":0.428806,"width":0.705085,"height":0.23880499999999993}},{"text":"“Shop-floor activists at U.S. Steel’s famous Homestead Works played a key role in the \n democracy movement that swept through their national union and almost topped its top \n leadership in the late 1970s. After that Steel Workers Fightback campaign, they turned \n USW Local 1397 into a model local union, just in time to mount spirited resistance to \n mill closings throughout western Pennsylvania. Mike Stout’s first-hand account of rank- \n and-file militancy and creativity in the face of de-industrialization and capital flight \n contains many relevant lessons for union members today. If every local union had the","bbox":{"left":0.153373,"top":0.716444,"width":0.69332,"height":0.177056}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}