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.

Biography

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^[1] from 1963 to 1965 and was a student and visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies^[2] in Washington, D.C. from 1965-1970, studying under Arthur Waskow^[3] and Marcus Raskin.^[4] During this period, he also served on the staff of Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier^[5] and on the Friends Committee on National Legislation,^[6] writing material opposing the Vietnam War. He received a Ph.D. from the Union Graduate School^[7] 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!^[8]. 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."^[9]

In 1969, Brecher and other collaborators, including Paul Mattick Jr., Stanley Aronowitz, and Peter Rachleff, began sporatically publishing a magazine and pamphlet series called Root & Branch drawing on the tradition of workers councils and adapting them to contemporary America.^[10][11] 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,^[12] which combined the insights gleaned from more than 100 interviews with young workers with interpretation of the historical forces that shaped their lives.^[13] Together with Tim Costello in 1992, Brecher edited a collection called Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community.^[14] 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.^[15] 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.^[16]

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^[17] to form the Labor Network for Sustainability in 2009. This work was cut off by Costello’s death in 2009.^[18]

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.^[19]

In 1982, Brecher and his collaborators published Brass Valley: The Story of Working People's Lives and Struggles In An American Industrial Region.^[20] 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. Ron Grele,^[21] Director of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University,^[22] described its "genius": "I can think of no work, except perhaps Passing the Time in Ballymenonethat brings to bear so carefully and intimately the concerns andinterpretations of the historian on the locality as iti s perceived by its people; that is so sympathetic to that history and so grounded in the people's vision itself." it is "by far the most ambitious, and in many senses, the most successful such effort."

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.^[23]

In 1986, Brecher published History From Below: How to Uncover And Tell The Story Of Your Community, Association, Or Union,^[24] a guide to doing participatory history based on the experience of the Brass Workers history Project and other work. Studs Terkel describedHistory 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."^[25]

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,^[26] as well as six Brass Valley Music Festivals.^[27] He served as project historian for the exhibit Brass Roots^[28] 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.^[29][30]

Brecher served as historian for the Naugatuck Valley Project,^[31] 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,^[32] 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.^[33] 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.^[34]

Cornall in Pictures: A Visual reminiscence, 1868-1941,^[35] was published in 2001 in collaboration with a local community working group in Brecher's hometown of Cornwall, CT. In 2003, this book received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History.^[36] 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."^[37]

Connecticut Public History

From 1989 to 2001 Brecher served as Humanities Scholar-in-Residence at Connecticut Public Television and Radio.^[38] From 1991-1995, Brecher was producer, writer, and host of Connecticut Public Radio’s, Remembering Connecticut,^[39] 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,^[40] which broadcast more than 80 radio programs on a variety of topics.

Documentaries

• The Roots of Roe (1994)
• Schools in Black and White (1991)
• Rust Valley
• The Amistad Revolt (1995)
• Electronic Road Film
• Brass City Music (1988)
• Dance On The Wind (2006)
• Between Boston and New York (1992)
• As We Tell Our Stories (1994)
• Puerto Rican Passages (1995)
• African Americans in Connecticut: The Colonial Era To The Civil War (1999)
• African Americans in Connecticut: Civil War to Civil RightsWar (2001) ^[41]

Published Works

• Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm publishers, 2015). ISBN 9781612058207

• Strike! Revised: Expanded, and updated edition (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014) ISBN 9780846703648

• Save the Humans? Common Preservation in Action (Boulder, CO: Paradigm publishers, 2012) ISBN 9781612050966

• Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) ISBN 9780252036125

• In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Edited with Jill Cutler and Brendan Smith) (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005) ISBN 9780805079692

• We Are the Roots: The Organizational Culture of a Home Care Cooperative (with Ruth Glasser), (Davis CA: University of California Center for Cooperatives, 2002)

• Cornwall in Pictures: A Visual Reminiscence 1868-1941 (Cornwall, CT: Cornwall Historical Society, 2001) ISBN 9781931597005

• Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (with Tim Costello and Brendan Smith) (Cambridge. South End Press, 2000) ISBN 9780896086227

• Strike!: Revised and Updated Edition (Boston. South End Press (South End Press Classics Series, 1997)

• History from Below: How to Uncover and Tell the Story of Your Community, Association, or Union (Revised Edition) (West Cornwall, CT: Commonwork/Advocate Press, 1996)

• Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up (with Tim Costello) (Boston. South End Press, 1994)

• Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (ed, with John Brown Childs and Jill Cutler) (Boston. South End Press, 1993)

• Global Village vs. Global Pillage: A One-World Strategy for Labor (with Tim Costello) (Washington, D.C. International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund, 1991) ISBN 978-1-880103-02-9

• Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Alliance of Labor and Community (ed., with Tim Costello) (New York. Monthly Review Press, 1990)

• History from Below: How to Uncover and Tell the Story of Your Community, Association, or Union New Haven. (Commonwork 1986)

• Brass Valley: The Story of Working People’s Lives and Struggles in an American Industrial Region (ed., with Jerry Lombardi and Jan Stackhouse) (Philadelphia. Temple University Press, 1982) ISBN 9780877222729

• Common Sense for Hard Times (Second Edition) (Washington, D.C./New York. Institute for Policy Studies/Two Continents Publishing Group, 1976 Boston/New York. South End Press/Two Continents Publishing Group, 1977) ISBN 9780896081093

• Common Sense for Hard Times (Montreal. Black Rose Press, 1980)

• La lotta quotidiane in tempi difficili (Torino. Rosenberg & Sellier, 1979)

• Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers’ Movements (ed., with others) (Greenwich, Conn. Fawcett, 1975)

• Le Nouveau Mouvement Ouvrier Americain (ed., with others) (Paris. Spartacus, 1978)

• Strike! (San Francisco. Straight Arrow Books, 1972)

• Strike! (second edition) (Greenwich, Conn. Fawcett, 1974)

• Strike! (third edition) (Boston. South End Press, 1977)

• Streiks und Arbeiterrevolten (Frankfurt am Main. Fischer Verlag, 1975)

• Sciopero! (Milano. La Salamandra, 1976)

• Strike! (Japanese Edition) (Tokyo. Shobun-sha, 1980)

• Climate Insurgency: A Strategy For Survival (New York. Paradigm Publishers, 2015)

References

External links

• http://www.jeremybrecher.org
• http://www.labor4sustainability.org