Working-Class New York
Freeman, Joshua B.
BOOKS When workers ruled (more or less) cratic polity unique in the country in its...
...He traces position is filled...
...sor, Arturo Rivera y Damas, speaks of What is remarkable is the convergence Most people know, at least in outline, him as a loner who often appeared exof underlying historical forces with a the high drama and appalling bloodshed hausted...
...Loyola College in Maryland invites applications and nominations for the position of Dean city's dense residential patterns and com- COLLEGE of the College of Arts and Sciences...
...11 buried their Bibles for fear of the army, Romero said that he had learned to read Bruce Nelson is professor of history at Dart- the Gospels anew from the Salvadoran mouth College...
...That is because pressed...
...It is a conversion story all provide the foundation stone of a social- Maria Lopez Vigil the more salient for being told in the irdemocratic polity...
...send materials to elizabeth.moseleytiDatkeamey.com...
...Much their families constituted a "clear majorif not all of this went sharply against ity" of New York's population of nearly oshua Freeman's Working- the grain of where the rest of the nation 8 million...
...he or she reports to the vice presgence of a new political economy, along ident for academic affairs and serves on the president's management team...
...Here we find Romero, a generous white population, and the acceleration civil war, is, as the title says, mosaic-like...
...quarter-century after World War II seems The College of Arts and Sciences is composed of 20 academic departments with 171 full-time faculty...
...But factory districts and the construction of than a quarter were Jewish...
...But political structure...
...Additional information about the institution and the position is available on the College's website at the backlash among building tradesmen www.loyola.edu/cas_dean...
...population), rent control, low transit bined...
...and promoting efforts to New Yorkers...
...and Bangkok, Thailand...
...The dean's salary is highly competitive and commensurate with qualifications and generate, is masterly, as is his treatment of experience...
...Consciously or not, they were COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES opting for a version of the American Dream that was sharply at odds with the I_MOIA...
...It includes chang- psychology...
...The previous dean has become the chief academic ofmunal ethos...
...There is a Ph.D...
...Unlike their more classically proletarian counterparts on Detroit's auto assembly lines, they were not concerned about property taxes and were thus far more willing to levy charges for social provision on the city and its real-property owners...
...Freeman's chapter both teaching and scholarship...
...Those in the manufac- the forefront...
...As Mosaic components of today's workforce, and relates, the timorous Romero reached out developing a compelling program of and became a man of the people, soon generous social provision in these lean- the most outspoken leader for justice in er, meaner times-will be "no easy the country...
...to them as well as to the Jews who were turing sector fought the erosion of factory Many readers of this magazine may concentrated in the ranks of avowedly jobs, while those in building trade unions recall that in the early 1950s nearly half of social-democratic unions like the Interwelcomed the destruction of "obsolete" all New Yorkers were Catholic and more national Ladies Garment Workers...
...Romero's eventual succesroots in working-class communities...
...service providers against the consumers Applicants must have academic leadership experience, preferably at an institution of high quality that values of municipal services...
...For more information, our consultants can also be contacted by phone at (151) sector power brokers like Felix Rohatyn 437-3006, or by fax at (520) 395-1510...
...Jean Dowdall, A.T...
...would ebb and flow over the next half Robert Royal, in his chapter on the century...
...As they receded in the late martyrs of El Salvador in The Catholic fifties and early sixties the political space Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossin which to develop a progressive agen- Patrick Jordan road), stresses the continuity of Romero's da expanded accordingly...
...A priest Romero greatly admired, Rutilio Freeman is hopeful that, even in the Grande, S.J., was murdered by death new "global economy," New York's squads, the rightist Roberto D'Aubuison workers can make that sensibility pow- began a public "Be a Patriot...
...ing racial and ethnic demographics and Melbourne, Australia...
...Pushed city's image as a bastion of high finance by a politically active working class and and high culture...
...In short, working-class New ficer at Fordham University...
...it suggests disso- of Romero's story...
...and Donald Trump...
...Freeeasily affordable and widely used, and man estimates that in 1947 workers and Bruce Nelson a commitment to racial equality...
...and he attaches great weight to the fact that most of New York's workers were renters, not homeowners...
...At a time when people walk...
...This compendium nance and even deeply rooted fragmen- provides that, but, more pointedly, it tells tation within the ranks of a working class the story of a conversion, the conversion that Freeman has identified as suffi- Oscar Romero of a bishop who becomes a genuine witciently unified in its core sensibilities to Memories in Mosaic ness of Christ...
...Alcala, Spain...
...program in clinical more of us have lived it...
...and the rise of aggressive increase diversity...
...Newcastle upon Tyne, England...
...it was, says the author, a at least a million of these workers berecaptures the sustained clear case of "New York exceptional- longed to trade unions, including some 1 historical moment, from ism...
...nomic and political influence of private- Communication and submission of materials by email as MS Word attachments is encouraged...
...Translated by Kathy Ogle repressible voices of those who witThe culture wars of the McCarthy era EPICA, $79.95.424 pp...
...There is a problem here, of course...
...Reporting to the dean are 20 department with a growing ambivalence about the chairs, the director of the College Honors Program, the director of the Center for the Humanities, and an assorole of government in generating jobs and ciate dean...
...BOOKS When workers ruled (more or less) cratic polity unique in the country in its explanatory factors that decenter the ambition and achievements...
...It would emphasize their conservatism...
...But, says Freeman, 'looking back ly selective Jesuit institution, steeped in the liberal arts tradition and recognized as a leading independent, comfrom a later era of postliberalism, social prehensive university in the mid-Atlantic region...
...power in a remarkable time and person...
...the emer- The dean is the principal executive officer of the College of Arts and Sciences...
...The result, Freeman develop...
...organized workers in the city today as Commonweal 27 October 20, 2000 and political issues often pitted Catholics against Jews and, more broadly, arrayed an "openly religious, conservative Amer- A MAN IN DARK TIMES icanism" against a "left-liberal, secular, pluralist Americanism...
...Kill a Priest" erful again...
...Unions were divided on issues of ethnic and racial identities have come to tion of the city's workers would apply major importance...
...The author recognizes that even during the heyday of New York exceptional"I find I work best under pressure...
...Such impulses dozens of people who knew him, recol- Carmen Alvarez recalls, "It seemed to were real, but even in the best of times lections that are evocative in detail, vivid me that he had his head in the clouds, they competed with narrower and more in language, and while not given to the away from reality, up in the trees like parochial sensibilities that also had deep miraculous, do give evidence of God's avocados...
...His Sunday homilies, broadcast Commonweal 2 8 October 20, 2000...
...First, New York was, Working-Class a powerful trade union movement, suc- according to a 1947 estimate, "the greatNew York cessive mayoral administrations con- est manufacturing town on earth...
...The dean will lead the strategic planning process for the College of Arts and Sciences and play public-sector unions that have often pitted an active role in shaping the plan for Loyola College as a whole...
...As darity at the grassroots...
...His lip trembles at the mention istence of a unified working-class con- Mosaic tells the story of the Salvadoran of Medellin, the revolutionary meeting sciousness and impulse toward soli- martyr through the reminiscences of of Latin American bishops in 1968...
...and other, mainly white, workers in the Nominations and applications are invited...
...persistent racial polarization...
...The College utterly breathtaking...
...supporting faculty excellence and professional growth...
...ordinary citizens...
...a clear vision of the purpose and in community control of education, and goals of liberal education at a Jesuit, Catholic institution and a commitment to Jesuit, Catholic ideals...
...InLife and Labor Since structed a regime characterized by pub- deed, it had nearly a million manufacWorld War 11 lic and co-op housing (not just for the turing jobs-more than Boston, PhiladelJoshua B. Freeman poor but for broad sectors of the city's phia, Detroit, and Los Angeles comThe NF a? Press, $35,409 pp...
...role in building some of these unions shaping the city's social, economic, and How did such a regime emerge and and shaping their political agendas...
...the steady erosion of manufacturing San Salvador murdered at Memories in Mosaic tells a very different jobs, the rapid growth of the city's non- the altar during El Salvador's story...
...others took refuge in the far reaches DEAN of Queens...
...academic credentials and qualifications sufficient to earn the respect of the acadon the Ocean Hill-Brownsville experiment emic community and appointment to an academic department at a senior rank...
...Confidentiality will be maintained until finalists have been named, and references will not be conthe increasing centrality of public-sector tacted until candidates have been notified...
...Located on 65 acres in a beautiful residential section of Baltimore, meanness, and labor retreat, what New Loyola enrolls over 3,100 students in its undergraduate programs and 3,000 students in its graduate programs...
...Although Freeman laments the demise of this polity and the fragmentation of the relatively cohesive and politically decisive working-class presence upon which it was based, Working-Class New York is no sentimental gloss on "the world we have lost...
...Kearney Executive Search, 333 John Carlyle Street, Alexandria VA 22314...
...Many left for the suburbs of the metropolitan area...
...young prelate who is, nonetheless, a of the struggle for black equality com- For Romero, posterity might well come stickler for regulations, ill at ease with bined to sharpen the fault lines that di- to consider it the equivalent of what The others and disliked by many, overvided New Yorkers (and the nation...
...Little Flowers of Saint Francis came to be for worked, and sometimes clearly deWhat is remarkable, then, is not the ex- the poor man from Assisi...
...the position is available July I, 2001, and is being held by York was always in flux, and it was no an interim appointee during the current academic year...
...nessed it...
...He acknowledges, moreover, that while there are as many Loyola College in Maryland is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer...
...Among on the few occasions when Freeman fohigh-rise corporate headquarters in their whites, Protestants made up only 16 per- cuses directly on Catholics, he tends to place...
...Review of candidates begins on November 10 and will continue until the late sixties and early seventies...
...Candidate materials, including a letter describing interest in and qualunionism in the ranks of organized labor, ifications for the position and the names and phone numbers of five references, should be sent to the College's while accenting the preponderant eco- search consultant, Dr...
...Loyola College is a dynamic, highutopia...
...It also offers master's programs in psychology, education, pastoral counseling, speech pathology, enmiliar to most readers, because many gineering, and modern studies...
...administering the College...
...ted to the proposition that government But this all changed dramatically in existed mainly to serve the needs- 1977 after Romero was appointed archabove all, to enhance the security-of bishop of San Salvador by Pope Paul VI...
...offers undergraduate degree programs in the traditional liberal arts and sciences, engineering, speech pathology, The rest of the story will be more fa- and education...
...But doing it-building a vi- campaign, and National Guardsmen able political coalition out of the ethni- mowed down parishioners and desecally diverse and racially polarized crated a church at Aguilares...
...played a pervasive role in rest of the United States...
...Freeman, a professor of histo- beyond their influence, Freeman argues argues, was the rise of "a social-demo- ry at Queens College, identifies several for the preeminence of a plebeian cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism, symbolized by Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers' famed "Boys of Summer...
...York workers accomplished during the Loyola College operates with a budget of approximately $112 million and holds an endowment of $150 million...
...This was other) New Yorkers were leaving the city be reasonable to assume, then, that the especially true, he argues, during the late in droves-half a million whites in the city's white working class was dispro- forties and early fifties, when cultural 1940s,1.2 million more in the 1950s...
...Moreover, by the early 1950s, Class New York brilliantly was headed...
...Thus racial discrimination there were during the heyday of urban portionately Catholic, and that many of persisted, and shaped job and housing social democracy, class sensibilities have Freeman's generalizations about the cosmarkets, in spite of antidiscrimination eroded over the years and, in their place, mopolitanism and progressive orientalaws...
...Inocencio Alas, another friend, labor leadership and substantial seg- describes him as "a pastor to his paperments of labor's rank and file commit- work...
...However, at spiritual path, nods to his closeness to precisely this time-during the halcy- his portrait of Oscar Romero Opus Dei, and underscores the support on days of "Big Labor" in New York- (1917-80), the archbishop of he received from Pope John Paul II...
...ism the story was not all about workingclass solidarity and social-democratic Commonweal 2 6 October 20, 2000 achievement...
...program in pastoral counseling and a Psy.D...
...Comlate 1960s, when "working-class New pean norms" than with politics in the munists and socialists had played a vital Yorkers...
...Meanwhile, working-class (and cent of the city's population...
...people...
...And there were millions more fares, tuition-free higher education, a workers in the city-in wholesale and reputable municipal hospital system, retail trade, in administrative and servibrant cultural institutions that were vice occupations, in transportation...
...The dean's responsibilities include providing vision and leadership in fulfilling the College's Jesuit, Catholic providing for the health and welfare of mission...
...Indeed, in this regard, the city had of the most aggressive and innovative the end of World War II through the "more in common with postwar Euro- labor organizations in the nation...
...and a demonthe citywide teacher strikes it helped to strated commitment to diversity...
...Loyola has study abroad programs in Leuven, Belgium...
Vol. 127 • October 2000 • No. 18
