Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
Asher
Harer
1)
Farewell Asher Harer! - Statement by OWC Continuations Committee
2)
Acceptance Speech at February 2000 Open World Conference by Asher Harer,
Retired Member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)
3) Asher Harer:
Lifelong Unionist and Socialist
4) Asher
Harer -- Lifelong Activist for Union Causes (reprinted from Feb. 24,
2004, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle)
5) Asher Harer on
NAFTA and the Labor Party
*********************
1) Farewell Asher Harer!
Asher Harer, a devoted unionist and fighter for social justice, died on February 16 in San Francisco at the age of 91.
Asher and Ruth, his wife of more than 50 years, were regular supporters of the campaigns of the Open World Conference Continuations Committee. On February 11, 2000, at the Open World Conference in San Francisco, Walter Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council, presented Asher with a plaque in appreciation of his "lifelong commitment to working people across the globe."
In presenting this "Hands Across the Globe" award, Brother Johnson said the following to the 585 trade union delegates from 56 countries gathered at the conference:
"I have the honor of presenting a lifetime achievement award to a trade unionist who has given his entire adult life to the trade union movement and to worker internationalism. It's someone I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with for about 25 years, and that is Asher Harer.
"Asher is a retired member of the ILWU. He is one of those persons, whenever we had picket lines, wherever there was a problem where everybody had to fight a battle, he was always there -- together with his wife, Ruth. And he made sure that his voice joined the voices of those crying for freedom for workers fighting for everything that could go on.
"I would like to present to you, Asher, a well-deserved plaque on behalf of the Organizing Committee of the Open World Conference, the San Francisco Labor Council and the California Labor Federation. Thank you a million times for everything you've done, for always being there and for all your love and concern for people all over the world."
In receiving this award, Asher thanked his entire family, particularly Ruth, without whose constant support and collaboration, he said, he could not have done any of this work. "We were together on picket lines, demonstrations and so forth," he said. "We are a union family."
Asher went on to recite from his favorite Shelley poem. [See acceptance speech below.]
And he concluded his remarks with the following statement: "Of course, today it is not 'thrones and sceptres' that must be defeated. Now it is international capitalism that we are up against. And we are going to win, we're going to win!"
Yes, Asher, we are going to win -- because there were people like you who showed us how to fight and what course we must take if we are to win.
Farewell, Asher! We will miss you sorely, but your fighting spirit, your great confidence in the ability of ordinary working people to change the course of history in the interest of the working class majority, lives on and will continue to inspire all who are fighting for trade union rights and social justice not only in this country, but across the globe.
-- The OWC Continuations Committee
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2) Acceptance Speech by Asher Harer, Retired Member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)
[Note: The following speech was presented on Feb. 11, 2000, at the Open World Conference in San Francisco. Asher had just been presented with a lifetime achievement award by Walter Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council, on behalf of the Organizing Committee of the OWC, the San Francisco Labor Council and the California Labor Federation.]
Thanks. Being 87 years old and kind of worn out, I wrote out my remarks with the help of my wife.
I accept this great honor, not only for myself but also in remembrance of hundreds of coworkers, fighters in the battles for human rights, trade unionists , feminists, anti-racists and so on, who were there. This was started in the 1930s, and many of them are now gone. I miss them -- but they are with us today!
I participated in five major strikes -- two in the culinary industry (hotel and restaurant unions) and three under the banner of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union -- served on strike committees and edited various union bulletins.
Such union and strike is almost impossible for a person with a family unless there is support and cooperation. We know it is very tough to be part of a striker's family. We were together on picket lines, demonstrations and so forth. We are a union family -- and tonight there is great joy for me that my wife, Ruth, and our three children, our two grandsons, are all here.
Now after the recent magnificent victory in Seattle, all of us have great confidence that labor is on the march again.
In conclusion, here are a few lines from Shelley, the romantic poet who was also a defender of human rights, and who wrote:
"Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith,
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death,
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their thrones and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity."
Of course, today it is not "thrones and sceptres" that must be defeated. Now it is international capitalism that we are up against. And we are going to win, we're going to win!
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3) Asher Harer: Lifelong Unionist and Socialist
Asher Harer, a lifelong unionist and socialist, died February 16 at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco with his family at his bedside. He was 91 years old.
Asher was born in Calexico, Calif., on August 14, 1912. He went to work in the San Francisco food industry in 1937. After joining the waiters' union, he helped to organize small restaurants. During the 1941 hotel workers' strike, he helped edit the union strike bulletin.
Asher then began work on the waterfront, where he became a member of ILWU Local 10. He participated in the longshore strike of 1946 and served on the ILWU Strike Committee during the 1948 strike. While organizing the picket lines against the scabs, Asher's neck was broken. After suffering a back injury on the docks, Asher transferred to Local 34, ILWU Ship Clerks union. In 1971, he participated in his last waterfront strike, and took an early retirement in 1974.
Over the years, Asher was active in many other labor struggles, as well as civil rights and antiwar movements. He organized support for the United Farm Workers, was active in the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and was executive secretary of the Bay Area Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the early 1960s. In 1964, he coordinated the mayoral campaign of Sam Jordan, a Black community activist in the Bayview/Hunters Point district, who ran on the independent Freedom Now ticket.
Asher was also a leading figure in opposition to the war in Vietnam, helping to organize the huge antiwar rallies and marches in San Francisco and serving as a central organizer of the 1967 Prop P campaign, a local ballot initiative to allow the people of San Francisco to cast a vote on the U.S. war in Vietnam. He participated in the pro-choice movement and the defense of clinics, helping women to enter Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics that were being attacked throughout the Bay Area.
After retiring in 1974, Asher became active in the ILWU pensioners' organization and in the Gray Panthers. Throughout his life, Asher, along with his wife, Ruth, could be found on just about every picket line for workers' rights and social justice in the Bay Area.
On October 10, 2002, in his last public appearance on behalf of workers in struggle, Asher addressed a solidarity rally with the ILWU workers, who were facing a union-busting Taft-Hartley injunction imposed by the Bush administration. An article in The Dispatcher, the ILWU monthly newspaper, reports: "Asher Harer, an ILWU Local 34 retiree and veteran of the 1948 strike, addressed the rally from his wheelchair. Though frail in body, Asher's spirit was as strong as ever."
The Dispatcher went on to quote Asher's recitation at the rally of one of his favorite poems, Shelley's Rosalind and Helen, published in 1819:
"Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith,
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death;
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity."
On the occasion of Asher's 90th birthday in August 2002, the San Francisco Labor Council issued a "certificate of honor in public appreciation of Asher Harer's special leadership role in San Francisco's labor and social justice movements for over six decades." The certificate commended Asher, in particular, for serving as "a mentor and example for all young people striving for a more just and humane world."
Likewise, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a Certificate of Honor "in appreciative public recognition of distinction and merit to outstanding service on behalf of working men and women in the ILWU, as well as the community at large." The Board of Supervisors went on to "salute Asher's lasting devotion and example to the causes of union, labor, civil rights and peace."
Asher loved poetry, music and life; he was a great cook, spoke fluent Spanish and was warm and generous with his friends, coworkers and family. Asher is survived by his wife, Ruth, of more than 50 years, his three children, Michael Harer, Corie Tripoli and Katharine Harer, and his two grandchildren, Matthew Tripoli and Leo Maxam.
The family requests that all donations in Asher's memory should be sent to the UFCW Grocery Workers State Council Strike Fund at PO Box 5158, Buena Park, CA 90620.
A memorial meeting for Asher Harer will be held Saturday, March 6th at 2 p.m. at the hall of ILWU Local 34, 4 Berry Street (behind Pac Bell Park) in San Francisco.
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4) Asher Harer -- Lifelong activist for union causes
(reprinted from Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle)
Asher Harer, who had an impoverished childhood and was drawn to the power of organized labor while a young working man in San Francisco during the Depression, died on Feb. 16 at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. He was 91.
Mr. Harer, a lifelong union activist, was a living bridge to the Bay Area's militant labor history of the 1930s. He arrived from his native Calexico (Imperial County) just after the watershed San Francisco General Strike of 1934 but subsequently took part in most of the major union causes.
He remained a voice for social equity almost until the end of his life, condemning injustice from his wheelchair in 2002 at a longshore workers' protest against the Bush administration's labor policies.
"Many of us looked to the 1930s when labor stood up and said, 'We're here to be counted,' " said Alan Benjamin, who heads an international labor solidarity project for the San Francisco Central Labor Council. "That militant fighting spirit is something we believe we have to rediscover, rekindle and preserve."
Mr. Harer inherited his fighting spirit from his mother, who raised six kids on her income as a night telephone operator. She won a hero's award for staying at the switchboard during a major earthquake and was quick enough to beat pre-teen Asher in a foot race.
Young Asher and his brothers and sisters had to scrounge to help support their mom, said his wife, Ruth Harer.
"He knew nothing but poverty," she said.
He moved to the Bay Area to attend college but instead worked at restaurant jobs in San Francisco. His baptism in labor activism took place during the mid-1930s as the city's culinary unions worked to form a joint organization.
"He was fired many times for organizing unions," Mrs. Harer said.
In the 1940s, he went to work on the docks. It was a time when ships were loaded and unloaded by hand.
Physically strong, outgoing and well-liked, Mr. Harer was a match for the grueling and often dangerous conditions -- both on the job and on strike.
In 1948, he broke his neck in a tangle with a strikebreaker. "In those days, they had no health plans," Mrs. Harer said. "He didn't know he had a broken neck. He just knew it hurt."
He later hurt his back on the docks and transferred to the longshore clerks union, Local 34. In 1971, he took part in his last waterfront strike. He retired three years later.
Mr. Harer was also known for his role in other labor struggles and in the civil rights and anti-war movements. He was active in the Congress for Racial Equality and was executive secretary of the Bay Area Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the early 1960s.
Legendary for his learning and fellowship, he liked songs from the Cuban revolution and the Spanish Civil War, could quote Shelley and Shakespeare and loved to cook for big groups.
In addition to his widow, he is survived by his three children, Michael Harer of Pacifica and Corie Tripoli and Katherine Harer, both of San Francisco.
The family suggests donations to the UFCW Grocery Workers State Council Strike Fund, at P.O. Box 5158, Buena Park, CA 90620.
A memorial meeting for Mr. Harer will be held on Saturday, March 6, at the Local 34 hall, 4 Berry St. in San Francisco.
E-mail Rick DelVecchio at rdelvecchio@sfchronicle.com
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5) Asher Harer on NAFTA and the Labor Party
On Nov. 19, 1993, Asher Harer gave an educational report on NAFTA to the ILWU Local 10 membership. This was just six weeks before NAFTA was to go into effect.
Asher's report explained in great detail why the U.S. labor movement must join hands with our Canadian sister and brother trade unionists in opposing NAFTA. His talk expressed the militant and internationalist tradition of the ILWU, as well as his fervent quest to continue to educate the ILWU membership in that rich tradition. Even though Asher had retired from the union 19 years before he gave this talk, he was deeply concerned about passing on this fighting tradition to the new members.
He told the ILWU Local 10 members:
"I joined the ILWU in 1942 and retired in 1974. It was about the best thing I ever did in my life, joining this union, and I am proud to be a member of it still, and you all should be proud to be members of the ILWU."
He went on to explain how NAFTA is part of global capitalism's strategy to remove all barriers to the unbridled exploitation of labor in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Asher stated in his report to Local 10:
"NAFTA seeks the elimination of objectionable tariffs and barriers to trade and investment. It puts workers in all three countries in direct competition with each other, depressing wages and conditions to benefit global inter-continental corporations. The transnational corporations want no interference in what they consider their right to make a profit. They have no country. They are not responsible for our country or any other country. They will move wherever they can make the most money. And at whose expense? Always at the expense of the workers."
After exposing the various facets of this corporate strategy and demonstrating how workers in Mexico already have been affected adversely by the pass-through sweatshop industries (or maquiladoras), Asher continued:
"So then how should labor fight back? ... The first thing is education on NAFTA. ... The ILWU has been doing that in The Dispatcher and collaborating with Mexican and Canadian unions to fight NAFTA. Some other unions in this country also are beginning to do this. We must have more of this: international solidarity."
Asher continued, showing how the ILWU always took an independent stand in relation to the rest of the labor movement. In fact, the ILWU was always out in front, pointing the way forward for the rest of the labor movement. Asher stated:
"Here's where the top AFL top leadership is weak. It is protectionist. It talks solely about jobs. It doesn't talk about what's really happening, and that is that countries and the workers therein are losing their national rights to make decisions; decisions will be made by undemocratic organizations which are set above the ordinary legislative process of the various countries. ... Our role is to fight to raise Mexican wages and to cancel Mexico's foreign debt -- as we fight to defeat and overturn NAFTA."
Asher also was a fighter for independent labor political action. He told the ILWU Local 10 meeting:
"Most of all, we in the labor movement in this country should begin to fight back! It's time that we start building a Labor Party in this country -- a party that represents us. The so-called partnership with the Democratic Party in my opinion is absolutely pointless."
Asher's advocacy of a Labor Party in his union went back 50 years. When he ran for the Executive Board of ILWU Local 10 in 1947, Asher issued a campaign brochure in which he advocated a five-point program for the union. Point 5 reads as follows:
"Build an Independent Labor Party based on trade unions to fight the anti-labor drive exampled by the Taft-Hartley Law. Such a party if supported by the AFL and CIO could start with 15 million members and their families! A mighty force! Only such a party would truly represent the interests of the workers, poor farmers, and national minorities of the United States."
In his presentation to the ILWU 10 membership, Asher pointed to Labor Party Advocates (LPA) at the time, and urged Local 10 to endorse the Labor Party, which it did. The ILWU, in fact, was a founding union at the convention in June 1996 that launched the Labor Party. Then ILWU international president Brian McWilliams was one of the convention's keynote speakers.
Asher wrote:
"American labor, unfortunately, has been in the clutches of the Democratic Party for these many years, and it has to get out of there."
In the spring of 2002, on the eve of the Labor Party's Second Constitutional Convention, The Organizer newspaper issued a statement titled, "More Than Ever, Working People Need a Labor Party." Asher was among the 125 unionists and activists in the Labor Party who endorsed this appeal, which stated, in part:
"Many people today tell us it is illusory to build a Labor Party based on the unions -- as a party of the working class. Haven't we heard, they tell us, that the notion of a 'class party' is outdated? Haven't we heard that this new period of 'civil society' necessitates a new strategy of forging cross-class coalitions. Haven't we yet realized that the interests of all sectors of society (workers, multinational corporations, churches, governments, NGOs, unions, youth, etc.) can be welded together for the 'common good' through vehicles such as the UN's 'Global Compact,' the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, and/or the inclusion of 'Social Charters' within the WTO, World Bank and IMF.
"To these voices, we must issue a resounding response: today's society is only different with respect to the gravity of the assaults on our class. But as before, there exists two fundamental social classes -- the working class and the ruling class -- whose interests are diametrically opposed. 'Civil society' has not supplanted 'class society.' ...
"Only a Labor Party, fighting to advance the interests of working people in the streets, factories, and legislative halls of this country, can offer a way out from the barbarous course being unleashed on the American working class by the twin parties of the bosses. ... Let us join together to build the Labor Party! The time is now!"
As working people face an election this year between Bush and Kerry -- two corporate politicians, both faithful representatives of the two parties of the bosses -- doesn't Asher's message ring as true today as when he first put forward his campaign plank in 1944?
And as working people face the prospect next year of NAFTA's extension to the rest of the Americas through the FTAA, doesn't Asher's call to build cross-border labor solidarity to defeat this corporate agenda represent a call to mobilize energetically to defeat the FTAA?
For our part, we in the Editorial Board of The Organizer newspaper stand firmly in the working-class and internationalist tradition embodied by Asher Harer. We urge working people to join us in the fight to defeat the FTAA and to build a genuine and fighting Labor Party in this country.