May Banner: Shelby Rodeffer

The fifth banner in a series of twelve released monthly throughout 2021 was designed by Shelby Rodeffer, and chainstitched by Jenna Blazevich.

A raffle for the banner will run from 5/23/21-5/30/21, and 100% of the money raised will be donated to Hood to the Holler.

From Shelby: “In the 1800s, laborers in America —mainly immigrants— commonly worked a minimum of 60 hours in a 6-day work week, with wages that averaged $1.50 per day in dangerous and grueling conditions. Employers blacklisted workers who joined unions and paid strikebreakers to threaten and harass laborers who intended to strike or protest. In instances such as the Haymarket Riots, many workers lost their lives fighting for fair pay and working conditions, and the 8-hour workday was finally cemented into law in the 1930s with the New Deal.

The Haymarket Riots tells a tale of white Immigrant men rising up, but of course there is more to the history of the US labor movement, and more credit owed to women and People of Color. The Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire killed 146 girls in New York City in 1911, and 30,000 women marched for Bread and Roses in 1912. In 1935, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters became the first African American union organization to be granted membership into the America Federation of Labor and won their fight against the Pullman company for increased wages and a monthly labor cap. Even today, we see the work still to be done for laborers' rights as unemployment benefits from Covid-19 are drying up, leaving workers to return to poverty wages at hourly jobs where their health will be at risk.

Proceeds from this banner raffle will go to Charles Booker's organization Hood to the Holler, an organization focused on removing barriers of race and class, and returning political power to the people, with emphasis on disenfranchised Southern communities.”