“Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be of much help to others.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist living in France)

We live in challenging times for the labor movement. The corporate right-wing agenda to destroy unions in this country is more apparent than ever with the wave of legislation to convert states to “right to work” and the current Supreme Court case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. On the other side of the spectrum, labor advocates and their allies are fighting back. We have witnessed significant impactful victories with the “Fight for 15 Campaign” and the passage of $15 minimum wage and wage theft enforcement policies in many cities and states. Moreover, after years of avoiding confrontation, the U.S. labor movement is reasserting itself. From the ports of Los Angeles to the car plants of Detroit, unions are demanding payback for sacrifices they say helped revive the economy, and the level of workers going on strike or engaging in labor stoppage increased last year.

With the continuing attacks and threats against the labor movement, and the recent upsurge in workers mobilizing and taking to the streets, we are facing a major challenge from within. It is the struggle for sustainability and a more healthy labor activism to continue the good fight. A common thread frequently runs throughout our work. It’s a kind of martyr’s code that measures a person’s commitment to justice by the willingness to sacrifice personal time, health and relationships. Many of us who work in the labor movement often work on organizing campaigns with short timelines, with little resources, and moving on all pistons at a grueling 24-7 pace. This extreme pace can consume the important things in life that contribute to a person’s personal well-being. During most of my over thirty years working for immigrant and workers’ rights, I lost touch with myself and my work-life balance on many occasions. Work took control of my life. Everything that contributed to my well-being became secondary to the work. I caught myself believing that my physical and mental exhaustion were indicative of my commitment to the work for justice, and that sacrificing my health for the sake of helping others was a badge of honor. The result was a series of periodic episodes of burnout where I lost both the physical and mental capacity to continue the work. This stage led to an empty feeling where what I was working towards began to lose complete meaning. My most recent burnout three years ago culminated in my hospitalization. I realized that I needed to change my lifestyle as an activist for the sake of my health and well-being. During a period of intense self-reflection and meditation, I reached deep into my spiritual faith and connected with the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi to guide me. The outcome of this period of burnout and deep reflection was my book, Living Peace: Connecting Your Spirituality with Your Work for Justice.

In Living Peace, I argue that the work of activism is a form of spirituality in and of itself. As labor activists, we have the foundation of spirituality within us from which we can approach the work together and rebuild the labor movement from within. Each of us is an instrumental creative part of the universal being of labor activism and worker justice, and there is no one single role that rises above the others. The spiritual framework that we need to strengthen the labor movement as we move forward will rely on 1) our interconnectedness with each other, and 2) our embrace of a labor activism through compassion and humility.

The interconnectedness between all of us in the labor movement should become an indispensable part of our work. This is so especially where we find ourselves dispersed in so many different strategies and campaigns, and often disconnected from each other. St. Francis of Assisi, the peace activist of the Middle Ages from whom I derive my spirituality, would spend long hours with each of his brothers that formed the first band of followers of his teachings. He lived and practiced daily the heart-to-heart connections with them. Similarly, in the labor movement, we are all interwoven – ourselves, our lives, the workers we represent and what we are striving to accomplish. Francis had the capacity to go deep into someone’s heart and share the joy and sadness of that person. As labor activists, we too have the potential to connect through our hearts and let that connection be the driving force that enables us to struggle together, to strategize together, and to win together. In reaching such a potential of human relationship, we will create the spiritual binding force from which we can move forward with a collective strategy. This is true solidarity in action within the labor movement – our interconnectedness with one other. It is labor solidarity reaching a radical level.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master, poet, scholar, and human rights activist, in his Fourth Mindfulness Training, Loving Speech and Deep Listening, states that we must be “determined not to spread news that [we] do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord.” He goes on to state that we must “make daily efforts, in [our] speaking and listening, to nourish [our] capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in [our] consciousness.”

We must learn to engage in active listening with our heart, which will then enable us to speak through compassion or mindful speech, and not anger, frustration or fear. Active listening without passing judgment, is a gift that we can give to each other to enhance our work in the labor movement. When we are really heard, and the other understands our meaning and emotions, we feel valued and respected, a condition necessary for strengthening our movement. There is a no more precious gift, to give or receive, than to listen to the words of another. This process of active listening and loving speech will enable us to be mindful of and respect the dignity within each one of us. There is really no meaning in a task or activity unless there is a deep inter-connection with our spirituality and with one another in our struggle for worker justice.

The second principle we must embrace is a model of compassion and humility. To be humbled, it is said, strengthens a generous spirit. Like the principles of non-violence, humility in social justice work is not submission or a state of passiveness; rather, it is a powerful force for change. Francis understood that the biggest threat to humility was the power of human pride and ego. For him, humility in its highest form (holy or spiritual humility) always puts pride and ego to shame. Francis saw humility as the only way to prevent our ego from poisoning our pride. In this way, humility is a form of “self-activism” where we, as labor activists, take proactive steps to ensure that we act for the act itself, and not to feed our selfish desires or be puffed up by the praises of others. Just as Francis preached a way of life through the principle of humility, we too must approach our work in the same way. What does this mean? It means that we must exercise humility through acts of compassion and selflessness as we carry out our tasks in our everyday work – in a campaign, in a picket line, a protest, giving a presentation or workshop, house visits, worker assemblies, visiting policy makers, etc. In whatever activity we engage in as part of our work as labor activists, we must always do it through the principle of humility that Francis teaches us. After all, true leadership is about knowing when to step back so that others can step forward.

Of course it takes courage to radically change direction towards a more sustainable and healthy movement for worker justice. But as labor activists, we owe nothing less to the millions of working families impacted by the economic injustices that we fight against every day. If we can truly support one another and open our hearts, we can connect and create a “radical solidarity.” Labor activists and their allies working for justice must embrace a “radical solidarity” that encompasses a deepening of self-care and community care to build a healthy movement for change. They need to be able to advocate for themselves when the symptoms of burnout and stress begin to overwhelm them. We must take the courageous step forward to dismantle the “martyr syndrome” that is so entrenched in the labor movement. There are many ways to make a more healthy labor activism a reality. For example, we can integrate healthy diets and exercise into our daily activist work. We can create spaces within our workplaces for reflection, check-ins and talking circles to address burnout. We can connect with our spiritual faith or mindfulness practice to guide us towards a balance of self-care and healthy activism. There is no “one shoe size fits all” approach. The important thing is that we decide to move forward in this direction.

The major threats and challenges that the labor movement faces today create opportunities for us to strengthen ourselves. Let us embrace a new approach to moving forward together. Let us create a spiritual framework of humility, compassion and respect that will provide for a more cohesive collective strategy, healthy and sustainable activism, and a stronger movement as we continue the good fight for worker justice. Finally, a passage from Living Peace taught to me by St. Francis captures the essence of how to move forward together next year in the good fight: “When surrounded by a thousand dangers, let us not lose heart, except to make room for one another in our hearts.”

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For more information on Victor Narro’s book, Living Peace: Connecting Your Spirituality with Your Work for Justice, go here. To order a copy of Living Peace or its Spanish translation, Paz en Acción, go here. He can also be found on Twitter at @narrovictor.

“Morgue work takes a certain personality.”

When I made the decision to become a refrigeration technician I figured that was a way to get off the elevator and into a better paying and less alienating occupation. Our City Hospital AFSCME union local represented the workers in the physical plant at the hospital who did all the routine maintenance work. The maintenance chief told me that he would give me a look if I completed a tech course. I enrolled in the Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) program at the Northeast Institute of Industrial Technology, which was located on Phillips Street on Beacon Hill. I was carrying two study commitments: pursuing a Spanish degree at U-Mass Boston on Columbia Point in Dorchester and splitting time with an evening vocational school.

Northeast was founded in 1942. It was a poor second to the much more prominent Wentworth Institute which granted engineering degrees and had prestigious vocational programs some of which are used today by the unionized building trades. Northeast at its height had 400 students in a two year day program and an evening certificate program. In the nineties enrollment declined to about 100 as real estate values increased. The property was sold for a fortune in 1998 when the school closed.

I was in the evening HVAC program with about 20 other students most of whom were from the working class Boston suburbs of Revere, Medford, Braintree and Quincy. There were two of us from Boston. I lived in Jamaica Plain at the time and the other Hub student was an African American named Tom Mack from Dorchester. Most of the other students in class were already working in the trade but needed to up their game. I immensely enjoyed the “theoretical” training on heat and pressure, but I was not too swift when it came to “sweating” joints with solder. That was a big problem because lots of the service calls involving malfunctioning reefers or AC units involve leaky pipes and joints.

I had nothing to compare the training with so I can’t vouch for its quality, but there were some entertaining instructors. One teacher named Tom Glavin took it upon himself to school us in all the ways to get rid of overly inquisitive and attentive customers who were shadowing our work. He told us to always carry an old screwdriver that you could use to “make” a 220 circuit produce a fireworks display of short-circuiting sparks. If that didn’t work to drive away the nosey customer he showed us how to drop a toolbox “accidentally” on the customer’s toes.

My lack of facility with tools and the basics would haunt me a few months later when my classmate Tom Mack and I set up our own little business, T&P Refrigeration. One of our first service calls was to a high-end pastry cafe called Just Desserts in Somerville. The principal cooler for all their foodstuff was not “pulling” down the proper temperature and there was a danger of spoilage. We identified a leaky line and recharged the system with refrigerant and collected our fee. Later that evening I got a dreaded “call back” that the cooler was not cooling. I went to Just Desserts and found a leak and repaired it, but the cooler wouldn’t work properly. I decided to spend the night sleeping next to that cooler and repairing and recharging whenever the temperature would inevitably start to rise. After that night sleeping with the fine pastries I decided that T&P (at least the P part) was not a viable business model and we closed shop.

“Sometimes bodies would arrive at the morgue and stay there waiting for next of kin to claim them”

Once I demonstrated in 1981 to the BCH maintenance shop that I was enrolled at Northeast they gave me a job as a maintenance helper. I was out of the elevators and into the power plant. I was assigned to work with an outside HVAC contractor named Phil Doyle who was a member of the Plumbers Union and who was permanently stationed at City to handle all their big cooling issues. He was a fabulous teacher and a fabulous human being, a white Irish-American who refused to leave his Mission Hill neighborhood as it became increasingly Black and Puerto Rican. Most of his brother plumbers had fled the city of Boston, but Phil was committed to his neighborhood and befriended his new neighbors. I became very close to him, and he treated me like a son. Daily he urged me to let him get me into the Plumber’s Union “Frosty” program, but I was committed to hanging in there at City.

In the beginning my workday consisted of following Phil around and doing the simple tasks that he would assign. We handled everything from the giant “chillers” that air-conditioned the whole hospital to a little icebox that was cooling blood vials in the Intensive Care Unit. One location in the hospital where cooling is of the utmost importance is the City Morgue, and that was part of our daily rounds. We would walk in on autopsies and the stench of human blood and guts. Phil handled the overall cooling of the autopsy room.

My assignment was to make sure that the bodies being stored on the slabs were kept cool. This meant that the “heat exchangers”, cooling coils, inside the compartments had to be constantly cleaned or they would be choked by dust and other waste and rendered non-functional. City of course was the final resting place for the poor, indigent and homeless when they passed. Sometimes bodies would arrive at the morgue and stay there waiting for next of kin to claim them. Attorneys were paid by the City of Boston to track down blood relatives, but if after 6 months no one was located the corpses were given public burials in potter’s fields. Many of the bodies on the slabs were in advanced stages of decay and rot.

My work was to get inside the giant chest of drawers and straddle the slabs and use forced air to blow the coils clean. That meant that I often had very close encounters with the deceased. There was one cadaver that Phil and I called “the man with the fur coat” A male body had been lying in the morgue for so long that a whitish green mold had covered his whole naked body. The ringlets of mold were so pronounced that it had the look of a giant white stole.

Morgue work takes a certain personality. There needs to be a combination of sensitivity because you deal with next of kin, but also a certain hardened callousness so that you can find humor in the grimmest of circumstances. Who would have thought that over thirty years later my dear friend and comrade Gene Bruskin would write a brilliant musical play about morgue workers rebelling called “Pray for the Dead: A Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny”?

As I roamed the corridors of BCH on my refrigeration rounds I would meet up with Steven Eurenius, a fine human being who became a lifelong friend. He was a bio-medical technician charged with fixing the cutting edge electronic equipment necessary to save patients and keep them alive. We had initially bonded on my elevator when he saw me doing a crossword puzzle and peered over my shoulder to give me the solution for “44 Across, Poet Lazarus”, 4 letters. “EMMA”, he said. We decided in the spring of 1982 that we would do a drive away together out to California for our vacation. An elderly Italian American man in Framingham, Massachusetts wanted his car driven to Scottsdale, AZ where he was retiring. We decided that was a good fit for us and would bring us within striking distance of California. In early August of 1982 we picked up the car, and my friend Steve and I, like so many before us headed West.

Next: OO# 19 – Christina and California – A Game Changer

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