Labor Center Programs
Summer School for Union Women
Summer School for Union Women began when Evergreen faculty member Dan Leahy met with a group of union organizers and Evergreen students in order to watch the video “Women of Summer,” about a school for working women held at Bryn Mawr College in 1921. Many of the people watching this film were involved in organizing the Labor Center at Evergreen and decided to open it with a Summer School for Union Women.
The Summer School was guided by an Advisory Committee composed of union leaders, including Sue Moyer, Chrs Aldren, Della Curry, Gloria Delaney, Jeff Johnson, Bill Johnston, Gary Moore, Tunnell O’Brien, Lori Province, Michelle Radosevich, Shirley Rector, Kris Rohde, Patrician Rose, Holly Spears, Emily VanBronkhurst, and Sue Zukowski.
Leahy hired Sue Zukowski to be the School Coordinator and the first Summer School for Union Women opened with 50 women from different unions.
The School for Union Women went on to be one of the Labor Center’s long lasting and successful creations. Beginning in 1987, it ran almost annually up until 2009.
Camp Solidarity
Camp Solidarity began as part of the United Mine Workers strike against Pittston Coal Company in 1990. It was an outpost set among the mines where the miners housed people sympathetic to their cause and included political figures, reporters, photographers, and college students. Evergreen student and a Labor Center staff member, Peter Swinford, visited Camp Solidarity in January 1990. He wrote an eight page memo that detailed the history and purpose of the camp on his return to Evergreen.
This memo included a proposal that the Labor Center sponsor a Camp Solidarity Northwest called “Honoring the Tradition, Creating New Strategies.” The Camp’s mentor was United Mineworkers of America Vice President, Cecil Roberts. Labor Center staff, among them Swinford, Maryrose Linvingston, Helen Lee, Robert Olson, and Dan Leahy, worked on the four day camp, which ran from June 12 to 15 in 1990. The camp was held again in 1992 and 1994.
The Centralia Union Mural Project
Helen Lee, director of the Labor Center, was co-chair for the mural committee commemorating the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) member, Nathan Wesley Everest. Everest was involved in an altercation between the IWW members and the American Legion which resulted in the deaths of four of the Legion members. Everest, while in jail for his role in the deaths, was taken from the jail by an angry mob and hanged from the bridge over the Chehalis River. No one was ever charged for the crime. The Committee for the Centralia Union Mural Project included business people, students, IWW members, and labor unionists. They settled on the name for the mural: “The Resurrection of Wesley Everest.” The committee chose Mike Alewitz, a well-known labor muralist, to create the mural. For Lee's role in the project, Alewitz put in a small design in the mural of a small volcano wearing a pair of glasses and emitting a plume of smoke, which Alewitz called Mount Helen Lee.