User:Tjohnson56/sandbox

Rose Pesotta (1896-1965) was an anarchist, feminist labor organizer and vice president within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

Early Life
Pesotta was born Rachelle Peisoty on November 20, 1896 to grain merchants Isaack and Masya Peisoty in the Ukrainian town of Derazhnia. She was the second of eight children, six girls and two boys. Pesotta was well educated during her childhood and, influenced by the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), would eventually adopt anarchist views. Pesotta attended Rosalia Davidoff’s Private School for Girls from 1909 until 1912 when she had to leave the school because her father fell ill. She continued her education at home, however, reading extensively in her father’s library. It was here that she discovered the work of Mikhail Bakunin, a prominent anarchist revolutionary whose work would significantly influence her anarchist philosophy. The following year, Pesotta heard from her younger sister that their parents had plans to arrange a marriage for her with a neighbor boy. Deeply distressed upon learning this, she wrote her older sister, Esther, who had emigrated to the United States just a few years before, asking for help. Four weeks later, her sister responded, sending her a steamship ticket from Antwerp to New York City. At the age of 17, Pesotta emigrated to New York City, arriving November 24, 1913. Her name was changed from Rachelle Peisoty to Rose Pesotta in immigration proceedings. She taught herself English, her fifth language, by reading local newspapers and Russian novels in translation. Shortly after arriving in New York, Pesotta found a job as a seamstress for Bloom and Millman.

Early Days at the ILGWU
Pesotta joined the Waistmakers Local 25 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, a union representing the mostly Jewish and Latina female garment workers, shortly after getting her job at Bloom and Millman in 1914. At the time she joined, the ILGWU had over 90,000 members, making it the largest labor union with a majority female membership. Pesotta quickly became an active member of the union, marching in picket lines despite demonstrations routinely being broken up by police with many protesters being arrested. She also continued her passion for learning through the ILGWU’s education department. The 1917 Russian Revolution drummed up a revolutionary fervor in Pesotta and she soon joined the Anarchist movement. By the time that she joined the anarchists, the US government was already cracking down on radical movements and was, therefore, beginning to lose power and membership. It was amongst the anarchists that Pesotta met Theodore Kushnarev, a Russian sailor who had come to America in late 1918. The two fell in love and became engaged but Kushnarev was rounded up by the US government and forcibly deported, along with 248 other Russian radicals, aboard the Buford. Pesotta and Kushnarev kept in contact for many years, exchanging love letters until Kushnarev found another women in Russia. Pesotta was, of course, heartbroken but continued in her revolutionary activity, undeterred. Working hard to educate her fellow workers, Pesotta was elected to the all male executive board of ILGWU Local 25 in 1920.

Sacco and Vanzetti
In the fall of 1922, Rose Pesotta became involved in the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists accused of the murder of two men during the robbery of a Massachusetts shoe factory. Many sympathizers believed the case to be a frame-up, including Pesotta who had researched the case for Local 25’s executive board. She saw the events as a direct attack against anarchists, radicals, and immigrants in general. She visited Sacco and Vanzetti in prison often and attended court proceedings when she could. She was deeply involved with the defense committee for the two men, traveling around the country, speaking on their behalves, and organizing rallies to protest their unjust treatment. As the scheduled execution date drew nearer, Pesotta worked even more feverishly, doing anything she could to help the two anarchists. But despite her sleepless nights, demonstrations, and radio broadcasts, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed at midnight on August 22nd, 1927. The case remained with Pesotta for the rest of her life. This was proof, in her eyes, of the inherent injustice of society and served to intensify her already fervent anarchist attitudes.

Early Labor Organizing
From 1924 to 1926, Pesotta attended the Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York where she learned how to effectively organize and lead labor action. She worked closely with the leadership of the ILGWU to help organize rallies, strikes, and union actions in New York for several years after finishing her time at Brookwood. Along with Anna Sosnovsky, Fanny Breslaw and Clara Rothberg Larsen, she published Der Yunyon Arbeter ("The Union Worker") between 1923 and 1927. In September of 1933, she was sent by the ILGWU to Los Angeles in order to organize dressmakers. She was met with initial difficulty when trying to organize the mostly Latina dressmakers because of the staunch anti-union attitude of many employers in Los Angeles. She set to work organizing labor action by publishing both English and Spanish language newspapers, visiting homes of workers, and speaking on a daily Spanish language radio broadcast. She also hired and worked closely with Bill Busick, Norman Thomas’s campaign manager. With Busick’s help, Pesotta distributed a weekly publication called The Organizer about her unionization campaign. She managed to organize the Mexican immigrant garment workers, culminating in the Los Angeles Garment Workers Strike of 1933. Garment workers from around the city went on strike to demand union recognition, a 35 hour work week, adherence to a minimum wage, and a number of other reforms. The strike began on October 12th and lasted until the 6th of November when it was settled by an impartial arbitrator. The Los Angeles Central Labor Council supported the strike. The strikers were able to attain a 35 hour work week and minimum wage. They also organized into Dressmakers Union Local 96. One of her biggest accomplishments in Los Angeles, California was the leading role she would play in the garment industry wide strike of 1933, as strikes were a rarity in this notoriously "open shop" city.

Vice Presidency
Shortly after her success with the 1933 Garment Workers’ Strike, she was nominated for the position of Vice President of the ILGWU’s General Executive Board. She was the only woman out of 24 candidates for the position. There had been only two women vice presidents in the past: Fannia Cohn and Molly Friedman. Both of the previous vice presidents had been the only women on the board. Pesotta was reluctant to accept the nomination because she felt that becoming a part of the ILGWU’s bureaucracy would fly in the face of her anarchist beliefs. She was elected in a landslide victory and would serve as the vice president of the ILGWU’s General Executive Board for the next 10 years.

Pesotta also contributed occasional articles to the anarchist newspaper Road to Freedom (the successor to Emma Goldman's Mother Earth), where she found herself on more than one occasion debating other anarchists on the merits of working within traditional union structures, and was heavily criticized for such activities by Marcus Graham.

After finding success in Los Angeles, she was sent to Puerto Rico for her first assignment as the vice president of the ILGWU. Her goal was to organize the workers of the relatively new Puerto Rican garment industry. She traveled around the island, making connections, visiting workers, and speaking publicly in favor of unionization. Her experience in Puerto Rico had a large effect on her and she would often speak about the conditions in which the workers lived later in her life. Upon returning home, she lobbied in Washington to improve conditions on the island after seeing the squalor in which many Puerto Ricans lived. While mostly unsuccessful in her attempts to improve the lives of Puerto Rican workers, she remained in contact with the union there and continued to advocate for workers’ rights on the island.

Pesotta’s next assignment came to her in December of 1934 from David Dubinsky, the president of the ILGWU. She was sent to Seattle, Washington where she was able to organize many of the dressmakers into an ILGWU local as well as establish an education department for workers. After a few months, the local had gained enough members for a small strike against several Seattle shops. During one of the strikes, a shop owner was hit in the head with a tomato. Pesotta was arrested as the assailant, learning in days in jail that the authorities were trying to have her deported as an “outside agitator.” They were unable to deport her, however, because she was a naturalized citizen. She would speak of this experience throughout her life, delighting in outsmarting her captors.

Later Organizing and Reelection
She helped organize in a number of cities for the next few years such as Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Flint, Michigan. In 1936 she was sent to Akron, Ohio in order to lend her assistance to striking rubber workers from the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The strike, which was being organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, was the first time that Pesotta worked outside of the garment industry. Just as she had in Los Angeles and other cities, she worked closely with workers rather than with union leaders, reflecting her anarchist ideology. She walked picket lines, sang union songs, and worked closely with the families of striking workers to help improve morale. While in Akron for the strike, she became reacquainted with her friend from the Sacco and Vanzetti defense committee, Powers Hapgood. Pesotta and Hapgood kindled a relationship that would last for a large portion of the next decade. As a settlement was being approached with the Goodyear company, she traveled around to groups of picketers to try to convince them that the deal was a good one and that it should be ratified. The strike was successful, the settlement was ratified, and workers’ contracts were vastly improved.

Because of her role in the successful Akron strike, Pesotta was sent to Detroit in order to help the United Automobile Workers of America organize strikes around the city. She played an important role in many of the negotiations as well as supporting the rank and file strikers with food and clothing. This was the beginning of a number of strikes and labor actions in which Pesotta participated in the late 1930’s. She organized unions and strikes in Montreal, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint, Boston, and a number of other cities. Pesotta played a key role, together with Léa Roback, in the unionization of Montreal's women's garment workers, in the ILGWU, in April 1937. She worked tirelessly despite threats to her well-being. She was beaten up by thugs in January of 1937, leaving her with permanent hearing damage. Later that year, she narrowly avoided being arrested by spending an entire day at a beauty salon, hiding her face underneath a hair dryer. Rose Pesotta attended the ILGWU’s national convention in 1937 where she was greeted by a standing ovation and reelected to the position of vice president of ILGWU’s General Executive Board. After her reelection, she was assigned to work with strikers in the Cleveland Knitting Mill Strike. Although she was only supposed to stay with the strikers for a few weeks, the strike proved considerably more violent than expected and she had to stay for several months. During a confrontation with company thugs, Pesotta was slashed with a razor and needed several stiches. Despite this, she refused to carry a gun for protection because of her anarchist belief in the sanctity of all human life. Exhausted by her many travels and taxing work, Pesotta vacationed in Europe, meeting up with European anarchists and touring Spain to see the effects of the Spanish Civil War. Upon returning, she was assigned to Boston and Los Angeles from 1938 to 1940, working closely with ILGWU leadership to organize new locals.

Resignation and Later Life
In 1944, Pesotta resigned from the executive board of the union in protest of the fact that, despite 85% of the union's membership were women, she was the sole female executive member. She had repeatedly complained to David Dubinsky, then president of the union, that she felt uncomfortable being the token women on the board but the union continued to not allow other women to rise to leadership positions, despite the fact that Dubinsky had voiced a similar protest years earlier about being the only Jew on the executive board. Rose Pesotta returned to New York City to her old job as a seamstress. During her time working as a seamstress, she also worked diligently on her first book, Bread Upon the Waters. The book offered perspective into the labor movement from the standpoint of a woman activist. It goes into tremendous detail of the day-to-day activities of a labor organizer, describing in depth her time with many labor movements such as in Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, and Detroit. Bread Upon the Waters was published in November of 1944. Even later in life, Pesotta remained active in the labor movement. Attending the Worker’s Education Association in Norway in 1946. She also acted as the Midwest regional director for the American Trade Union Council of the Histadrut in 1949. She began writing her second book, her memoirs, Days of Our Lives in 1950. It was published eight years later. She married her close friend from the Sacco and Vanzetti defense committee, Frank Lopez, at age 59. In the fall of 1965, Pesotta was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died later that year in Miami, Florida.

Works

 * Bread Upon the Waters (1944)
 * Days of Our Lives (1958)