One of the landmark events in the history of the American Labor Movement, The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912, happened right here.
On the streets of Lawrence, striking workers — mostly women and immigrants — made history in the struggle for fair pay and workers’ rights with a 9-week strike that forced concessions from mill and factory owners.
It’s a history that has been largely ignored by text books. But the spirit of 1912 lives on annually with the Bread & Roses Festival in downtown Lawrence every Labor Day.
“It’s becoming cool again to celebrate Labor, but it wasn’t for a long time,” Elizabeth Pellerito, president of Bread and Roses Heritage Committee, said.
“It’s quite a big draw — it’s the only Labor-focused festival that happens east of the Mississippi. It’s one of the premier Labor Day celebrations.”
The 38th annual festival on Monday, Sept. 5, will remind participants the struggles from 1912 are still alive 110 years later.
The celebration offers up a variety of music and dance, poetry and drama, ethnic food, historical demonstrations, and walking and trolley tours, all on or starting from Lawrence’s Common, she said. The musical acts playing the festival — from folk singers to salsa — have “a social justice lens” as their common bond, Pellerito said.
“We want to bring this history to the people who live in Lawrence and the Merrimack Valley now. And we want to talk about both what happened then, but also the connections to how we are living today and some of the struggles we are going through today.
“We want to make the past relevant. We don’t have to work very hard because it is so relevant, because so many folks who are immigrants today, who have language barriers, who are working in low-wage jobs — this is what they are living right now,” Pellerito said.
Two factors of the Bread and Roses watershed are inescapable — strikers were immigrants from more than a dozen nationalities and that women workers made up the bulk of the strikers.
“Some don’t agree that this was a women’s strike, but if you look at the Labor Movement in 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912 — the era we’re talking about — the Labor Movement didn’t start necessarily with the women workers, but if you look at the garment industry in New York at that time, if you look at a few years before Shirtwaist, the march of the 20,000, those were largely women workers,” she said.
“You have folks like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn coming to town to do organizing.”
Immigrants, regardless of nationality, language, and culture, backed the strike and walked out together. The list of nationalities working and striking at the mills was long — English, Scotch, Irish, German, French, Flemish, French-Canadian, Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, Syrian, Russian and Armenian among them. Reporters at the time recounted hearing an organizer’s speech being translated into six different languages.
“The point about the immigrant history is also one that is really important and shapes a lot of the conversations we have…”
“The goal is for it to be people’s history — talking about history from the bottom up, talking about some of the current struggles also that are going on in the area, for workers,” Pellerito said.
New this year will be a series of free, 45-minute workshops on the Common exploring “know your rights at work, know your rights as parents, know your rights for students, young people, and then, know your medical rights,” she said.
The festival will host a number of forums, conversations and events including “Together We Rise: Community Conversations,” at noon, “Taxing Millionaires and the Fight for Fair Share,” at 1:15 p.m., and a Hall of Fame Award presentation at 3:15 p.m.
In addition, a number of other organizations involved in social justice causes will be on hand.
New This Year: Know Your Rights!
Just like the millworkers of 1912, in order to stand up and protect your rights,
you must first know your rights. Free workshops the Common will help.
Noon-12:45: Know Your Rights as a parent: Dr. Marianela Rivera — The education system and how to best help advocate for your kids.
1-1:45: Know Your Rights as a patient: (English-Spanish), Lucy Thanos, BSN, RN, Greater Lawrence Family Health Center — Your rights as a patient. Join an advocate from GLFHC to learn more about how you can protect yourself and your loved ones.
2-2:45: Know Your Rights for youth: local youth organizers — protect your rights at school and in the community.
3-3:45: Know Your Rights at work: Yessenia Prodero, immigrants rights organizer – Rights at work are guaranteed by the law.
IF YOU GO
38th Annual Bread and Roses Festival
Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 5, 11:30 a.m. — 5 p.m.
Campagnone Common 200 Common St., Lawrence
Live Music/Workshops/family-friendly
The Bread and Puppet Theater, 4 p.m.
Pony Rides, Magic, Live Chalk, Face Painting & Portraits
Essex Art Center — Make Your Own Diablo Cojuelo Mask
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