By Shirley D. Harris
Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz. By
Paul Buhle and Mike Alewitz. Monthly Review Press, 149pp, color, oversized.
$27.95 (paper)
The American labor movement has not had many artists that it
could call its own—and nearly all of them cartoonists by trade. The agitational
specialists of the old Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) back in the
1910s, Fred Wright of the UE News during the 1950s-70s, the widely syndicated
Mike Konopacki and Gary Huck in recent decades, all come to mind. Among fine
artists, the late Ralph Fasanella’s giant canvases seemed to stretch miles
across a room, filled with details about blue-collar life.
Then comes Mike Alewitz, whose labor murals can be found from
Fall River, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, Chicago to Mexico City and even the
Ukraine, where clean-up after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster demanded an army of
dangerous work. His murals offer a moving display of labor’s historic heroes and
heroines: Mother Jones, John L. Lewis, Cesar Chavez, Karen Silkwood, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and many forgotten figures like Peter J. McGuire, founder of
the carpenters’ union, or Joe Hill, the Wobbly balladeer.
Alewitz’s murals, actually done by teams of union men and
women under his direction, are inspirational. But they are also, very
frequently, funny and thought-provoking. Union-haters look like a variety of
unpleasant animals and monsters, sometimes caterpillars with teeth, sometimes
faceless liquor bottles or needles, sometimes bloated cows or pigs. Formal
education without real learning becomes an empty march through a diploma mill -
as so many students realize to their sorrow. The story of a community (this one
happens to be Lodi, New Jersey: a library wall) has the whole story - from
Indians to working people and their families to a terrible chemical accident
years ago, and a determined community recovery.
The colors fairly sparkle in this book and the figures seem
to come to life. Actor Martin Sheen says it best, in the Foreword: "The murals
tell the story of those who feed and clothe us," the men and women who "rarely
appear in art or media, except as caricatures or buffoons." The example that
Alewitz provides other artists, to look around seriously at ordinary folks, to
take some responsibility to make the world a better place, is no small thing.
Out just in time for Labor Day, Insurgent Images should make
a great gift for a youngster or a labor old-timer. But in another way, it’s the
muralist’s gift to every union member. Former printer, railroad clerk, sign- and
billboard-painter who now teaches at Central Connecticut State University,
Alewitz is one of a kind, and his book offers a priceless look into a labor
artist’s own soul.
This book is on sale at the Thomas Merton Center. Its
publisher, Monthly Review Press, is donating 40% of all sales from the Merton
Center consignment to Pittsburgh peace and justice struggles - to be divided by
the Thomas Merton Center and the Pittsburgh Social Forum.
These books make wonderful holiday gifts.
