Jeremy Brecher

Jeremy Brecher is an historian, documentary filmmaker, activist, and the author of more than fifteen books on labor and social movements. His work has centered on understanding and nurturing the process he characterizes as “common preservation,” in which individuals and groups shift from futile and/or self-destructive efforts at self-preservation to strategies of collective action to promote their mutual well being.

Early life

Jeremy Brecher was born in Washington, D.C. and in the 1950s moved to the Yelping Hill community in West Cornwall, CT where he has resided since. His mother, Ruth Brecher, was a Quaker and his father, Edward M. Brecher, was a secular Jew and was a staff member in the Federal Communications Commission and other New Deal agencies.

Brecher attended Reed College from 1963 to 1965 and was a student and visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. from 1965-1970. During this period, he also served on the staff of Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier on the Friends Committee on National Legislation. He received a Ph.D. from the Union Graduate School in 1975.

Labor

During his time at Reed College, Brecher studied American Labor. During the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote and co-authored several books on working-class movements, including Strike!. This work told the story of revolts by ordinary working people in America and has been repeatedly updated. The 40th anniversary edition published in 2014 included a new final chapter recounting the working class "mini-revolts" of the 21st century, including "The Battle of Seattle;" the "out of the shadows" 2006 United States immigration reform protests ; the "Wisconsin Uprising;" Occupy Wall Street. The American Library Association's Bookist described the revised edition as "Brecher's riveting primer on modern American labor history" which provides a "thoroughly researched, alternative history rarely mentioned in textbooks or popular media" which is "to be read alongside the books of Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky."[1]

In 1969, Brecher and other collaborators, including Paul Mattick Jr., Stanley Aronowitz, and Peter Rachleff, began sporadically publishing a magazine and pamphlet series called Root & Branch,drawing on the tradition of workers councils and adapting them to contemporary America.[2][3] Through Root and Branch, Brecher met Tim Costello, a truck driver and union activist in 1973; they began a forty-year collaboration. After spending a summer travelling across the US interviewing young workers, they wrote a book entitled, Common Sense for Hard Times,[4] which combined the insights gleaned from more than 100 interviews with young workers with interpretation of the historical forces that shaped their lives.[5] Together with Tim Costello in 1992, Brecher edited a collection called Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community.[6] The authors described the growing role of community-labor alliances in strikes and other labor struggles; the emergency of community coalitions challenging deindustrialization and promoting alternative forms of economic development; new electoral coalitions; and labor-community issue campaigns ranging from economic conversion from military to peacetime production to the campaign to block the confirmation of conservative Robert Bork to the Supreme Court following the recommendation of President Ronald Reagan.[7] Moreover, the book included programmatic alternatives ranging from employee ownership to statewide economic development strategies to military conversion. Dana Frank, from The Nation, called Building Bridges "massively inspiring," a "splendid collection of essays" and "one of the best practical how-to organizing manuals around.[8]

Brecher and Costello co-founded Global Labor Strategies in 2005 with Brendan Smith. Brecher, Costello, and Brendan Smith joined retired AFL-CIO leader Joe Uehlein[9] to form the Labor Network for Sustainability in 2009. This work was cut off by Costello’s death in 2009.[10]

History from Below

In collaboration with community organizer Jan Stackhouse and video documentarian Jerry Lombardi, Brecher initiated the Brass Workers History Project in western Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley in 1979. This project involved participation of more than 200 workers and community members who provided documents, participated in interviews, served on an advisory committee, and reviewed the project’s products.[11]

In 1982, Brecher and his collaborators published Brass Valley: The Story of Working People's Lives and Struggles In An American Industrial Region.[12] This book utilized interviews, photos, and memorabilia to provide a "family album" for the brass worker community and a scholarship-based interpretation of its history. In 1984, the Brass Workers History Project produced the 90-minute Connecticut Public Television documentary entitled Brass Valley for which Brecher served as writer and historian.[13]

In 1986, Brecher published History From Below: How to Uncover And Tell The Story Of Your Community, Association, Or Union,[14] a guide to doing participatory history based on the experience of the Brass Workers history Project and other work. Studs Terkel described History From Below as "an exciting primer, enabling 'ordinary people,' non-academics, to recover their own personal and community's pasts." He added, "Jeremy Brecher's work is astonishing and refreshing; and, God knows, necessary. In this work lies the way to help cure our national amnesia."[15]

Brecher continued to create community-based historical and cultural products in the Naugatuck Valley. From 1988-1996, the Waterbury Ethic Music Project collected and recorded hundreds of songs and tunes in more than 20 ethnic groups and produced 13 public radio programs in the Brass City Music series, the public television documentary, Brass City Music,[16] as well as six Brass Valley Music Festivals.[17] He served as project historian for the exhibit Brass Roots[18] at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT. In 2010, Brecher won the Wilbur Cross Award for "Exemplary Public Programming" for the Coming Home, Building Community in a Changing World exhibit at the Mattatuck Museum.[19][20]

Brecher served as historian for the Naugatuck Valley Project,[21] a community coalition formed in 1986 to confront plant closings and deindustrialization. He recorded approximately one hundred audiotape interviews with NVP leaders, staff and participants. his Connecticut Public Television documentary, Rust Valley,[22] told the story of the Naugatuck Valley's efforts to address these issues. His 2010 book, Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley, presents the development of the Naugatuck Valley in the decades following the publication of Brass Valley and describes community-based efforts to respond to its deindustrialization.[23] Professor Robert Forrant of the University of Massachusetts Lowell wrote in the ILR Review, Brecher employs his knowledge of labor history and a great capacity for listening to his interviewees to tell the story of the Naugatuck Valley Project's success in keeping open nearly a dozen industrial plants and eventually starting new employee-owned businesses.[24]

Cornwall in Pictures: A Visual reminiscence, 1868-1941,[25] was published in 2001 in collaboration with a local community working group in Brecher's hometown of Cornwall, CT. The New York Times gave a positive review upon the publication of this book [26] as did the Waterbury Republican American[27] In 2003, this book received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History.[28] According to historian James R. Green, the "exciting use of oral history" as a "record of how people told their stories and made their own historical interpretations" was "epitomized in the work of Jeremy Brecher and his colleagues."[29]

Connecticut Public History

From 1989 to 2001 Brecher served as Humanities Scholar-in-Residence at Connecticut Public Television and Radio.[30] From 1991-1995, Brecher was producer, writer, and host of Connecticut Public Radio’s, Remembering Connecticut,[31] which broadcast more than 80 radio programs on a wide variety of Connecticut topics.

Brecher developed and supervised the CPTV series The Connecticut Experience which included more than twenty documentaries on Connecticut topics. Brecher was producer, writer and host of Connecticut Public Radio's, Remembering Connecticut[32] which broadcast more than 80 radio programs on a variety of topics. The Oral History Review called Remembering Connecticut, "One of the most ambitious, and certainly the longest-running, radio history series in the United States…Historically grounded to a degree rare in programming of this sort…Accessible, engaging, and far ranging." [33]

Documentaries

Globalization

Brecher collaborated on three books on the subject of "Globalization." He collaborated on three books on the subject: Global Village or Global Pillage?, Globalization from Below and Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order.

Global Village or Global Pillage?, written with Tim Costello, focused on economic globalization. David Montgomery, President of the American Historical Association, wrote in The Nation of Global Village or Global Pillage?: Penetrating analysis…crisp and simple language…as penetrating as it is succinct….an effective antidote to the mood of resignation before the omnipotence of transnational business institutions which pervades the political discourse of our times…timely and important.[38]"

Brecher also wrote and produced the documentary, Global Village or Global Pillage? which received the Gold Special Jury Award at The Houston International Film Festival, and Best Documentary Award at the FirstGlance 5 Philadelphia Film and Video Festival, and a 2001 Emmy Award Nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Target Audience Program. It was shown at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in 1999. The United Steel Workers union distributed a copy to every Steelworkers union local in the United States.

In 1998, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) hired Brecher to work for him on globalization issues. Together with Sanders staff member Brendan Smith, they developed the Global Sustainable Development Resolution[39] which provided a comprehensive program for transforming the global economy based on the programs of a wide range of public interest organizations and policy analysts. Brecher resigned from Rep. Sanders staff when Sanders voted to support a resolution authorizing air strikes against Serbia.[40]

Brendan Smith continued to organize around the bill; Sherrod Brown, Cynthia McKinney, and Dennis Kusinich served as original co-sponsors. Tom Barry, of the Interhemispheric Resource Center,called it "A fantastic effort to pull together a cohesive approach to global economy reform. Silas Trim Bissell[41] of the Campaign for Labor Rights called it "A Magna Carta for the new millennium."

Globalization from Below, written with Tim Costello and Brendan Smith in the aftermath of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, recounted the emergence of transnational social movements embodying what they called "globalization from below."

In 2005, Tim Costello asked Brecher and Brendan Smith to collaborate in creating an organization called Global Labor Strategies (GLS) "to contribute to building global labor solidarity through research, analysis, strategic thinking, and network building around labor and employment issues." In 2006, GLS discovered a debate unfolding in China about a Labor Contract Law whose key provisions were being opposed by the American and European Chambers of Commerce. GLS organized an international protest against this corporate opposition in the aftermath of which international union federations pressured their employers to reverse course; human rights organizations mobilized support for Chinese worker's rights; U.S. members of Congress introduced legislation decrying the corporate intervention and apparent administration complicity; and China's official labor organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), took a strong stand against corporate pressure.[42]

Climate Protection

Brecher first learned of the threat of global warming in the early 1970s from the writings of social ecologist Murray Bookchin.[43] Citing Barry Commoner,[44] Brecher and Costello warned that environmental degradation could destroy the capability of the environment to support reasonably civilized human society. In 1988, Brecher wrote a widely reprinted op ed for the Chicago Tribune called "The Opening Shot of the Second Ecological Revolution" which responded to global warming and other results of global environmental connectedness that will have to "impose its agenda on governments and businesses",…" will have to say that preserving the conditions for human life is simply more important than increasing national power or private wealth,"…."it will have to act globally -- with international petition drives, worldwide demonstrations and boycotts, and direct action campaigns against polluting countries and corporations."[45]

In Global Village or Global Pillage, Brecher and Costello warned that "Global Warming, desertification, pollution, and resource exhaustion will make the earth uninhabitable long before eery Chinese has a private car and every American a private boat or plane. They maintained that the solution lies in "converting the system of production and consumption to an ecologically sound basis. The technology to do this exists or can be developed from solar energy to public transportation and from reusable products to resource-minimizing production processes."[46] The role of organized labor in climate conditions was a central focus of Global Labor Strategies, which issued Brecher's discussion paper in 2007.[47]

In 2009, Brecher, Costello, and Brendan Smith joined retired AFL-CIO leader, Joe Uehlein and formed the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), which aimed to build the "strong, broad movement that is needed to advance strategies for a transition from a world with an economy, society, and climate in crisis to one that has a sustainable future."[48] Becky Glass joined LNS and together they published scores of reports, articles and commentaries by Brecher, including "If Not Now, When? A Labor Movement Plan to Address Climate Change" (with Ron Blackwell and Joe Uehlein)[49] as well as Jobs Beyond Coal: A Manual For Communities, Workers, and Environmentalists.[50] David Bonior, Chair of American Rights at Work and Former Congressman (D-MI), said, "The Labor Network for Sustainability is helping build a vision for the labor movement that sees beyond the bargaining table. They understand that the live and livelihoods of workers depend on addressing the climate crisis and that now is our best -- and possibly last --chance to build a more just and sustainable society."[51]

Brecher's 2015 book, Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival,[52] presented a brief history of the failure of climate protection efforts "from above" and "from below" and also proposed a "global nonviolent constitutional insurgency" as a "plausible strategy" for climate protection. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, described it as "An exceptionally valuable contribution to thought, feeling, and action on this greatest challenge that has ever confronted humanity as a whole. All in all, he most stimulating response to climate change that I have encountered. I think it is one of those books that could make a difference!"

Common Preservation

In the early 1970s, Brecher began to study general systems theory, cybernetics, and genetic structuralism, also known as nonlinear system or complexity theory seeking to understand complex interactive processes and systems. This work was influenced by Norbert Weiner, Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Jean Piaget. Over the course of forty years, Brecher integrated the results of his own historical research and experience into a manuscript called Common Preservation.[53]

The first volume derived from this study was published in 2012 as Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action.[54] In this book, Brecher argues that "Today, self-preservation depends on common preservation -- cooperation in service of our mutual well-being. For any of us to survive, we must preserve the conditions of each other's existence."[55] Brecher described this book as "The Story of a lifelong search for the means of common preservation."[56]

Save the Humans explored the possibility of a "human preservation movement", specifically targeted against the threats to human survival. In 2012, Michael Pertschuk, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote that "In forty years, I have never learned more useful knowledge about advocacy than from this book. It is absolutely unique in its integration of engaging personal narratives of the author's direct involvement in every significant social justice movement of the past four decades with his analytic history of previous movements."[57]

Activism

Over the course of fifty years, Jeremy Brecher has participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace in Vietnam, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes and many others.

In the early 1960s, Brecher helped publish Root & Branch[58] and Commonwork Pamphlets",[59] which published his writings opposing reinstituion of the military draft. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was active in the Campaign on Contingent Work,[60] the North American Federation for Fair Employment and the Naugatuck Valley Project. He was arrested for occupying the office of Rep. Nancy Johnson in a protest against the mining of Nicaragua harbors.

In the 2000s, he helped to organize the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, the Iraq Moratorium, War Crimes Watch, and Global Labor Strategies. With Jill Cutler and Brendan Smith, he edited the collection, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond[61] Booklist described this writing as an "excellent anthology" that includes "interviews, FBI documents, legal briefs, and statements by soldiers turned resisters, all offering a chilling look at ow war was begun and is currently operating." In the 2010s, he helped form Labor Network for Sustainability and the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs. He helped support and wrote extensively about Occupy Wall Street. Brecher was arrested in the first KXL pipeline protests at the White House in 2011.

Published works

References

  1. ↑ Booklist, August 14, 2014. adult-PM_-brecher_Jeremy-2.pdf. Accessed April 13, 2015
  2. ↑ "Root & Branch". A Liberatarian Socialist Journal. 1973. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  3. ↑ Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers' Movements. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. 1975.
  4. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (1977). Common Sense for Hard Times. Boston: South End Press.
  5. ↑ Zerin, Annie. Organizing from the Bottom Up, http://socialistworker.org, December 17, 2009. Accessed April 10, 2015.
  6. ↑ Costello, Timothy (1990). Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community. New York: New York Monthly Review Press.
  7. ↑ Nocera, Joe (October 21, 2011). "The Ugliness Started With Bork". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  8. ↑ Frank, Dana (February 17, 1992). "Book Review". The Nation. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  9. ↑ http://www.labor4sustainability.org/about/staff/ Accessed April 11, 2015
  10. ↑ Greenhouse, Steven (December 26, 2009). "Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ Schensul, Jean; et al. (1999). Using Ethnographic Data. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. p. 131.
  12. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy; et al. (1982). Brass Valley: The Story of Working People's Lives and Struggles In An American Industrial Region (First ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  13. ↑ Prude, Jonathan (December 1987). "Brass Valley". The Journal of American History 74 (3): 1119–1121. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  14. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (1996). History From Below: How To Uncover And Tell The Story Of Your Community, Association, Or Union (Revised ed.). West Cornwall, CT: Commonwork/Advocate Press.
  15. ↑ Terkel, Studs (1986). Preface, History From Below: How To Uncover And Tell The Story Of Your Community, Association, Or Union. New Haven, CT: Commonwork.
  16. ↑ World Cat. "Brass City Music". OCLC. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  17. ↑ Glasser, Ruth (1999). Community and Academic History Projects: A Creative Interplay. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. pp. 150–158.
  18. ↑ McNally, Owen (February 28, 1993). "Mattatuck Melds Old and New, Industry and Art". The Hartford Courant.
  19. ↑ "News Release: Coming Home: Building Community in a Changing World" (PDF). Mattatuck Museum. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  20. ↑ "Historian to Speak at Wilbur Cross Awards". The Day. April 4, 2000. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  21. ↑ "Naugatuck Valley Project". Naugatuck Valley Project. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  22. ↑ World Cat. "Rust Valley". OCLC. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  23. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2010). Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley (First ed.). Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press.
  24. ↑ Forrant, Robert (June 2012). "Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley". ILR Review.
  25. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2001). Cornwall in Pictures: A Visual Reminiscence, 1868-1941. Cornwall, CT: The Cornwall Historical Society.
  26. ↑ Bisbort, Alan (23 Dec 2001). "Preserving Times, a Chapter at a Time". The New York Times.
  27. ↑ Courey-Toensing, Gale (20 Oct 2001). "A photographic journey through Cornwall's past" (pgs. 1, 5a). The Waterbury Republican American.
  28. ↑ "American Association for State and Local History". American Association for State and Local History. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  29. ↑ Green, James R. (2000). Taking History to Heart (First ed.). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 64.
  30. ↑ "Jeremy Brecher". Connecticut Humanities Council. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  31. ↑ Rierden, Andi. The History of Everyday People, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/15/nyregion/connecticut-q-a-jeremy-brecher-the-history-of-everyday-people.html, April 15, 1990. Accessed April 10, 2015.
  32. ↑ O'Connor, Kyrie (October 22, 1998). "CPTV Tells Neglected Stories of Connecticut's Black Settlers". The Hartford Courant.
  33. ↑ Kuhn, Cliff (Spring–Autumn 1992). "Remembering Connecticut". The Oral History Review 20 (1/2): 92–94. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  34. ↑ Haas, Andie. "The Roots of Roe". IMDb. Connecticut Public Television. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  35. ↑ Haas, Andie. "Schools in Black & White Short Documentary". IMDb. Connecticut Public Television. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  36. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy. "Rust Valley". World Cat. Connecticut Public Television. Retrieved 28 May 2015.
  37. ↑ Boyle, Alix (August 13, 2000). "A Filmmaker Unearths Stories of the Struggle for Civil Rights". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  38. ↑ Montgomery, David (3 April 1995). "Professor of History". The Nation.
  39. ↑ Smith, Brendan, Brecher, Jeremy. "The Global Sustainable Development Resolution, April 1, 1999". Foreign Policy In Focus. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  40. ↑ "Aide to Rep. Bernie Sanders Resigns Over War". Antiwar.com. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  41. ↑ "Silas Trim Bissell, 60, Longtime Antiwar Fugitive". New York Times. June 25, 2002. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  42. ↑ Smith, Brendan; Costello, Tim;, Brecher, Jeremy (April 4, 2007). "Tug of War Over China's New Labor Law". Truthout. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  43. ↑ Bookchin, Murray (1971). Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Ramparts Press. p. 22.
  44. ↑ Commoner, Barry (1971). The Closing Circle (First ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 215.
  45. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (16 Aug 1988). "The Opening Shot of the Second Ecological Revolution". Chicago Tribune.
  46. ↑ Brecher, J., Costello, T. "Labor and Global Warming: A Global Labor Strategies Discussion Paper" (PDF). www.newunionism.net. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
  47. ↑ Brecher, J., Blackwell, R. and, Uehlein, J. "If Not Now, When? A Labor Movement Plan to Address Climate Change". http://www.labor4sustainability.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/NLF541893_REV1.pdf. New Labor Forum. External link in |website= (help);
  48. ↑ Brecher, J., Costello, T.,, Smith, B. "Labor Network for Sustainability". Labor Network for Sustainability. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
  49. ↑ Brecher, J., Blackwell, R.,, Uehlein, J. (2014). "If Not Now, When? A Labor Movement Plan to Address Climate Change" (PDF). New Labor Forum. Retrieved 23 June 2015.
  50. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy. "Jobs Beyond Coal: A Manual For Communities, Workers, and Environmentalists". Asia Pacific Green Jobs Network. Retrieved 23 June 2015.
  51. ↑ Bonior, David. "Chair of American Rights at Work". Labor Network For Sustainability. Retrieved 23 June 2015.
  52. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2015). Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival (First ed.). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Retrieved 23 June 2015.
  53. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2012). Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action (First ed.). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. p. 140.
  54. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2012). Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action (FIrst ed.). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
  55. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2012). Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action (FIrst ed.). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. p. 5.
  56. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (2012). Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action (FIrst ed.). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. p. 6.
  57. ↑ Ernst, Dan. "Michael Pertschuk and the Federal Trade Commission". Legal History Blog. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  58. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy (1973). "Liberaterian Socialist journal". Root & Branch. No. 6 (Spring). Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  59. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy. "History From below". WorldCat. OCLC. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  60. ↑ Costello, Sean. "Tim's Brother Sean Remembers Tim". Global Labor Strategies. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  61. ↑ Brecher, Jeremy, Cutler, Jill, Smith, Brendan (2005). In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (First ed.). New York: Metropolitan Books.

External links

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