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Mike Alewitz (Meyer Alewitz, b.1951) is an American labor activist and mural painter.

Alewitz' work is mainly agitprop. His murals focus on pro-labor, anti-war, and anti-capitalist causes. Alewitz has painted murals across the United States and in Nicaragua, Cuba, Palestine, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Mexico, and Ukraine. In the U.S. Alewitz frequently works with unions and has painted murals for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions among many others. Alewitz was an anti-war activist and student at Kent State University at the time of the Kent State Massacre, and a personal friend of Sandy Scheuer, one of the victims.

Education
Alewitz enrolled in Kent State University as an undergraduate in 1968. At Kent Alewitz joined the Socialist Workers Party and became a leader of the Student Mobilization Committee against the war in Vietnam. In 1970 four anti-war student protesters were killed at Kent by state troopers. Alewitz witnessed the shooting and was a friend of Sandy Scheuer, one of the students killed. After the shootings Alewitz spoke at student demonstrations and rallies across the United States. He was barred from Kent State and transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. Alewitz did not complete his undergraduate degree at this time but later earned a BA at the Massachusetts College of Art.

In 1983 Alewitz completed a Masters of Fine Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art.

Career
After the Kent State Massacre of 1970 Alewitz continued to organize against the war in Vietnam and for the rights of workers and immigrants. While in Austin, Texas Alewitz ran for public office at local and statewide levels on a Socialist Workers Party ticket, but was never elected. Alewitz has lived across the United States and after leaving college worked on railroads and as a sign painter, scenic painter, and machinist. Since completing an MFA in 1983 Alewitz has also worked as a college professor, teaching mural painting and other art courses briefly at Rutgers University and for a longer time at Central Connecticut State University. At Rutgers Alewitz also taught a course on Labor Education and began the Labor Art and Mural Project, an organization which sponsors political and social activist murals.

Alewitz has been a political activist and organizer throughout his adult life, but is most well known as a mural painter. His murals are an extension of his activist work and the political purpose of his art is "to agitate, to politicize and to organize workers." In content Alewitz' works are in a graphic and colorful 'social realist' style and typically depict crusaders for the rights of oppressed and the working class such as Malcolm X and Mother Jones, the contemporary and historical struggles of workers, and symbols of the labor movement like the sabo-tabby.

Alewitz first public mural, Two Sandinos, was painted in Leon, Nicaragua in 1981 in support of the Sandinistas.

Censorship
Alewitz' murals frequently cause controversy and many have been censored or destroyed. The Pathfinder Mural commissioned by the Socialist Worker's Party in 1988 for the Pathfinder Press building featured portraits of Lenin and Fidel Castro, among many other influential communist and revolutionary figures, and was vilified as a "six story shrine to communism" by Patrick Buchanan. The Socialist Worker's Party itself took issue with the mural over disagreements on the inclusion, omission, and portrayal of some of the figures. Alewitz refused to change the mural and wrote an article criticizing the Party for repression of artistic freedom. Following the article Alewitz was expelled from the SWP and the mural was retouched to remove symbols specific to Alewitz, including the figures of two Kent State shooting victims. The mural was ultimately destroyed in 1996 in the process of building repairs.

In 2000, Alewitz began a mural project with Baltimore Clayworks collectively titled "The Dreams of Harriet Tubman." The project was planned to include five murals representing Tubman's

life and vision, but the central piece was never painted at full scale. The design for the mural showed Tubman holding a lantern in one hand and a rifle in the other. Alewitz refused to remove the rifle from the design as Tubman historically did carry a gun in her struggle against slavery, and the backing committee did not sign off on the mural, feeling that the specter of gun violence in Baltimore was too strong. Another mural in the series was defaced with racist graffiti while in progress, but was completed.

In May of 1986 Alewitz painted a mural for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local P-9 during their ten-month strike against Hormel. The strike ended in June, and by November of the same year the UFCW had destroyed the mural despite protests from the Local P-9.