Joseph Sabino Mistick: On Labor Day, recalling march for social justice - TribLIVE

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On Labor Day, I think of the valley where I grew up. It was best seen from the middle of the Westinghouse Bridge. As far as the eye could see and the ear could hear, furnaces flared and trains slogged on and machinery clanked and whistles and bells sounded around the clock.

Off one side of the bridge, you saw the Edgar Thomson Works and Carrie Furnace and the Homestead steel plant just across the Monongahela River. If you followed Turtle Creek off the other side, it took you past the Westinghouse Electric plant all the way to the Airbrake factory in Wilmerding.

At night, if the air was cool enough to let the smoke rise, you could see it all from 190 feet above the valley. Tiny white lights sparkled forever, obscured for a moment only when the ladle was dumped at the ET, turning the sky orange with another “Braddock sunrise.”

When we were little, that view of the valley was our Grand Canyon, and we could stare at it forever. When we were teenagers, we drag-raced across the bridge, then had nightmares of crashing and teetering on the edge, staring at the factories far below. The valley was a source of awe and fear for us, but it was the center of our world and the source of our future.

My grandfathers, dad, uncles and cousins worked swing shifts down in that valley, sometimes 12 hours at a clip, never passing up overtime. Thanks to the union, it was a fair enough wage with good enough benefits in a safe enough place. Without the union, we would have had nothing.

None of that had come easily. Our fathers’ fathers had fought the Coal and Iron Police, who were paid by the robber barons and deputized by the governor of Pennsylvania to crack heads during strikes.

In those early days and even later, unfair treatment by the bosses could spark a “wildcat strike,” and workers would stop production on a dime and hit the picket line. They knew in their bones that unemployment and poverty were better than injustice and indignity.

They marched and protested for social justice. It took decades, but they refused to give up on America and all its promises. That’s the thing about marching for a cause, then and now. People do it because they still believe that the system can work as promised, but it needs a push.

Labor Day always reminds me of my dad, who died two years ago at 93. A lifelong union member and officer, he never missed a chance to march. When he was in his 70s, we made it to Italy together. As we walked through Trento one afternoon, protesters headed our way, arms linked, chanting loudly.

Dad asked the nearest Italian what it was about, and the man said, “Some sort of injustice, I am sure, Signore. It is the season for protests in Italy.”

That was enough for the old union man. He stepped off the curb and into the crowd, marching off with the protestors, smiling broadly, putting it on the line one more time. And that’s what I like to remember on Labor Day.

Joseph Sabino Mistick is a Pittsburgh lawyer. Reach him at misticklaw@gmail.com.

Categories: Joseph Sabino Mistick Columns | Opinion