Bread and Roses (a)cross the Pacific

and Roses (a)cross the Pacific and Roses As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts grey Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, For the people hear us singing: Bread and and Roses! As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men, For they are women's children and we mother them again. Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes. Hearts starve as well as bodies; Give us bread but give us roses. As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread. Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew, Yes, it is bread we fight for, But we fight for roses too! As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days. The rising of the women means the rising of the race, No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes, But a sharing of life's glories: and roses! and roses! Introduction During the 1980s, whilst working on cultural projects with South Australian unions, I first became aware of the use of and Roses iconography to signify the struggle for justice and quality of life and the struggle for equality of women and immigrant workers. The James Oppenheim(1) song `Bread and Roses' was familiar to me, but I first encountered the imagery through the and Roses Cultural Project and Gallery of District 1199 of the Health Employees Union in New York. During 1989 I visited the project and met its inspiring director Moe Foner. On that trip I also visited Canada and met Carole Conde and Karl Beveridge, two Toronto based Canadian artists with a long history of working with unions. In their house was a beautiful and Roses rug made by Carole, and it is an image often used in their work. There have been many subsequent exchange visits between Canadian and Australian activists leading to comparisons of the respective states of women's representation and of cultural work in both countries. These visits gave rise to discussions in Adelaide about how we attempt to signify women's struggles for equality and justice within the labour movement, given that its history is so strongly masculine. The richness and resonance of the and Roses symbol has impressed several of us, and yet can such a symbol be transplanted (or appropriated) in Australia when few people here are aware of the historical events it symbolises and that it is not part of `our' industrial history anyway? The conversations below have grown out of these discussions, across the Pacific, and are part of on-going projects to interrogate and rejuvenate the signification and representation of women in the labour movement. The first conversation occurred in Toronto in 1999. Carole Conde is a Toronto based artist, feminist and labour activist; Maureen Hynes is coordinator of the School of Labour at George Brown College, and also a feminist, unionist and poet, and Catherine McLeod is the former director of communications for the Canadian Autoworkers Union and also a feminist, cultural policy activist and author. They gathered over a couple of glasses of wine and responded to some questions we had suggested. Maureen Hynes edited the transcript. The second conversation occurred in Adelaide in February 2000. Having read the transcript of their Canadian sisters' conversation, Michelle Hogan and Jude Elton then talked over the same terrain with Kathie Muir, who edited the Australian transcript. Other Australians consulted included visual and labour arts historian Sandy Kirby, artist Megan Evans and artist and unionist Anne Learmonth. We all enjoyed the experience of having parallel conversations with our sisters on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean. …

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