"Real Class Warfare: The Great 1934 Longshore Strike in Portland."

Tuesday, October 11
7:30 pm
Rialto Poolroom and Bar
529 SW 4th Ave, Portland
Free and open to the public
Must be 21 or over.

On May 9, 1934, thousands of longshoremen along the West Coast walked off the job, beginning an eighty-two-day standoff between the International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA) and waterfront employers. In Portland, the strike split the city between sympathetic citizens who supported the workers, offering food, shelter, and transportation, and the"silk stocking mob" of leading businessmen determined to break the strike—including Henry Corbett, Amedee Smith, and Henry Cabell—who formed the Citizens Emergency Committee and hired vigilantes to break the strike. Governor Julius Meier asked President Roosevelt for federal troops to put down an "insurrection" or even "civil war." Down the Columbia River today at the port of Longview, the militant union that emerged from that strike, the ILWU, is engaged in a major labor struggle with a Portland employer of "scabs."

Michael Munk, political scientist and local expert on radicalism in Oregon, sets the stage for one of the most important strikes in 20th-century Oregon and examines how the determination of thousands of men and their supporters in 1934 influenced the shape and strength of unions in the years to follow.