Miriam Frank is the writer of Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America.Published in 2014, the eBook is a physically powerful ancient investigation into the history of LGBTQ staff in the hard work movement, founded on more than a hundred interviews Miriam has conducted with unionized nurses, bus drivers, retail staff.Fix, etc. Through harassment office stories, exciting moves like the union fashion exhibition organized for Barney members and confusing descriptions of how queer and union life intersect, such as the union crusade at Whitman Walker’s AIDS Clinic, the message is clear: queers have not only been present, but are also a must-have for the hard work movement.
Miriam and I met in 2018 at the annual convention organized through LaborNotes, an organization assignment and a media site for the education of industry activist unionists.I was there with former colleagues at the Babeland sex toy store to communicate about our successful union crusade last year (#DildosUnited!).Miriam and I had been online for a while (I guess through some kind of homosexual union mafia?), we haven’t met at the user yet.When he looked at me skepticly in front of the sales table, I proposed, “Did I help organize the Babeland syndicate?”She yelled, “Oh, THANK you guys for doing this!” And he pressed me against her.
Two years later, on a cold, sunny February Sunday, I took train A to the most sensitive Manhattan near the Cloisters.Miriam took me by a wide and beautiful view of the Hudson River to the apartment that she and her wife., Desma Holcomb, have been owners in combination for more than 25 years.Property developers have tried to re-purchase them multiple times.”We’re just telling them to go to hell!” She says.
Miriam told me that her e-book was born from a “naughty little pamphlet” that she and Desma self-edited in 1990.The “Pamphlet” minimizes it: Pride at work: organizing for gay and lesbian rights in unions is an electronic brochure with old examples and practical recommendations for organizing within trade unions.Their classes seem to be very prophetic today, with a focus on the benefits of national partners to ensure that physical condition and suffering are cared for with the AIDS crisis at work.It was an arrangement as Desma describes it, designed to be a “practical organizational manual.”
The Pride at Work brochure was born out of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Labor Network, one of 3 gay industry union organizations founded in the city that was formed in the 1980s (the other two are in Boston and San Francisco). The teams would shape the founding organization AFL-CIO Pride at Work in 1994, which now has chapters in more than 20 cities that are run to highlight the struggles of LGBTQ workers. The other people Desma and Miriam got together to create the booklet shaped the first organization of other people interviewed for Miriam’s book.
Now, for the first time, the brochure is published online, either here at Autostraddle and LaborNotes.Take a look (click the canopy symbol to view the full 100-page PDF):
I sat down with Miriam and Desma (and their two cats!) For more than two hours, drinking seltz, dining clementines and talking about their lives, this naughty little pamphlet and the long-term organization of queer work.edited and condensed edition of our conversation.
Lena: First of all, I need to know your story! I’m curious to know how they met and were given here, and how the steering wheel came about.
Miriam: I picked her up from the subway on homosexual pride day, we lived in the same community.
Desma: On the pier.
M: – and everyone was waiting for the subway that contained things that said, “I’m going downtown to have a good time with my queer brothers and sisters, my aunts and my uncles.”I wasn’t married at the time, and just to say, “Are you going where I’m going?”And I said that to some people, and I said and she said, [in a skeptical voice] “Yes?”It turned out I was with a user: do you know Irene Soloway, the carpenter?She is a carpenter and was a female leader in the trades.So [I had the idea that maybe we’d get along or something, so I knew who you were when you told me your name.
D: And vice versa.
M: So she had to stop by downtown to break up with a user she was with… not because I sent her there!And then, you know, we lived on the same street.It was lucky.
D: And you invited me to …
Set M D: – fruit salad.
D: That’s how it started. And then to your union picnic.
M: Yes, the first date was a local 3882 union picnic at Rockefeller State Park in Westchester.I was a member of that union. He was gone, but I was still very unwavering and he was on his pickets.
D: And I was leader of a white-collar union on the National Council of Churches at the time.So we were in union stuff and weird stuff.[To Miriam] You were running in the archives! Because she was doing …
M: An investigation.
D: Exactly an investigation into trade union records. So, essentially to be able to get a list of what were the old documents of each union, the maximum of which were in place at the headquarters of their union.So I said, “Oh, well! Come and look at the archives of our small local union on the National Council of Churches!So I moved him to meet all my friends on the pretext of sharing union files.She says, “Uh, is there a record in this office?”and I’d say, “Oh, no, no, we’ll be there soon.”
M: And then it was like I wasn’t going anywhere with the meetings at the time because I just didn’t know the right person.I had moved from California to New York and had a total number of friends I knew for attending.to NYU So I had a forged firmament of friends and only one thing was missing!
D (laughing): Oh my God!
M: What is our age difference?
D: Nine years.
M: Yes years.
D: So we did it! We had those little bachelor cushions separated by two blocks.We were very nervous about moving in together because, you know, you live with other people and you know you’re fighting on the phone, with your toothbrush and dishes.
M: And you in your stabilized rental apartment!
D: That’s right, it’s a jump. Then we started talking about having a baby, and all our friends who were parents said, “You must move in combination!You can’t raise a child in two separate apartments!So we made the decision to live in combination for a year.and see how it happened before I stepd with the baby.And …it went well!
M: And [the baby] is now 30 years unionized!
D: We were pregnant the same day [Pride at Work] came off the press! So the ebook was born and nine months later, the baby was born, let’s put it like this!
We needed cash to print it. And Debra Bernhardt, leading archivist in Robert F’s archives.Works.
M: We’d take him back to the post office!It’s very Mommy and Mommy.
D: We distributed it outdoors in our country, but we published notices about the lifestyles of this resource in LaborNotes and circulated it in other towns word of mouth, so the phone starts ringing and other people from all over the country leave.call and don’t just say, “Can I have your book?”However, ‘Can you give me some advice?’ We review to negotiate spouse benefits or review to negotiate a non-discrimination clause or –
M: “They’re going to kill me at the car factory!”
M: There was an environment in which other people began to talk about it in all kinds of degrees of civic law and practice.There were queer groups – we hadn’t used that word at all at the time – groups of “lesbians and gays” on religious teams and in all kinds of public organizations, not just in the labor movement.
The fact is that there were local unions that had non-discrimination clauses very, very early, the bus drivers of Ann Arbor and Local 3882 had it, and so was the 65th arrondissement was rare, there were still other sexist people.There were many, many homosexuals!
D: That’s where I went to the paintings from 87 to 88, they represented The Village Voice, they had the first benefits for spouses in history, the negotiator with the Museum of Modern Art who was looking for benefits for the spouse and had difficulty doing so.So I started doing this for my job.
L: What other recommendation did you give him?
D: Well, I think one of the principles we’ve developed as trade unionists in the gay industry is that it’s not just about identity policies, it’s about bringing other people in combination with unusual interests, for example, in the public sector of New York Union, they called it the Gays and Lesbians Committee, not the Gays and Lesbians Committee.They wanted to be open to the parents of other queer people in the union, and to the young people of other people who queer in the union, and to anyone who thought it was an intelligent concept in the union.
M: They had parties!
D: Miriam! I’m making a point here.
M: These parties are a point! OK, let’s go.
D: Then they were given the retirement committee for spouse benefits, because if you are a widow and have your spouse’s social security and you are going to marry someone else, PERDEZAS the social security of your ex-spouse.Old age is therefore a serious economic problem, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has also been concerned because it has a similar scenario where it receives safe benefits, but if you marry someone and have more income, you lose them and that affects your economy.autonomy within courtship and your independence.
I don’t forget that someone from Minnesota called me and said, “I want to negotiate my partner’s benefits.What are we going to do?” And we have advised negotiating the benefits of homosexuals and direct couples.You’ll do more than twice your coalition of Americans who care about this advantage.There are many valid reasons why heterosexuals, especially if they are divorced, may not wish to marry again.even if they’ve been in combination for 10 or 20 years and really want those fitness benefits.
It’s a winning technique and other people would.He’s like a union leader, he’s not an identity politician, thinking that way, so I think it was important.As in New York State, we would have had a liberal intern and then a conservative governor, and the conservative governor tried to repeal the benefits of the partners.And all those manual employees say, “My members have this and none of them are gay and let my benefits go by!”This prepares you for a broader coalition to protect you.
And behold, equality in marriage is approaching, and each and every position in which the spouse’s benefits were reserved for homosexuals because they may simply not marry, it disappears!Because you can get married, so why do I get benefits for domestic spouses?? Therefore, the very concept that there may be more than one explanation as to why not be married yet to be in a compromised relationship is in danger due to an image reflected in this topic.
M: There was a total era in which suddenly the big three, the automakers [General Motors, Ford and Chrysler], sought to make a profit for partners because there were so many queer executives.And [leaders] did it, it is not necessary to bring directly to other people and the UAW simply said mm-mm [no].[Leaders] didn’t like UAW caucuses starting to say, we need to have benefits for partners.They had a hard time swallowing that. It was not a simple negotiation, however, we saw that the bourgeoisie did not need to make any profit to the couple, they were looking to get married.
D: Well, and the total question of why fitness insurance is based on having a task or being married to someone who has a task with smart benefits, this total design is like a disaster.Medicare for everyone, courting!
L: I need to read you a quote from your book, and I’m curious to know what you think or what you think of them now. You communicate how other queer people in paintings struggle to place their position in either movement, and he says, “The cultural scene of individual expression and sexual freedom was not so balanced with the industry union processes that promoted economic progress. through solidarity, and the spontaneous organizing taste of the queer world towards network paintings was not easily reflected in more formal tactics of paintings, national resolutions, collective bargaining cycles and traditional election campaigns, where do you see that today?
M: Well, that cultural difference is a kind of position where all the excitement is and where conversations can take place, because you know that other people have a deeply boring life until they don’t have it, and unions have glorious mechanisms through which it’s amazing.Things can take position I’ll tell you where the last position I saw take position was the last parade of pride, where we had the sacred bourgeois march of Stonewall with all the stars of Stonewall, some of whom are wonderful heroes of the ordinary class., however, they signed up to participate, you know …
D: A corporate float.
M: It’s true! A corporate float. Then the fact that the [Queer Liberation March] had a wild and crazy march on Sixth Avenue, instead of going down Fifth Avenue… There weren’t even contingents, there weren’t even.Array you know, flutes and drums. That’s fair, everybody right there!They came from all over the country and walked through the park.Everywhere in this parade, I saw someone I knew from work.You were with me, weren’t you?
D: Yes.
M: And we didn’t get lost?
D: No.
M: So all this to say that there will be contact issues, there will be moments, there will be rallies where we are all, is that the query you are making?
L: [Laughs] … not really!
D: Can I try? So when Miriam says that’s where all the emotion happens, the labor movement, when organized and moved, has a lot of power, but it can become a kind of regime and can become anything its own members don’t get so excited about.!
Meanwhile, the motion of employment has been around for a long time and there are many union members in a position that was first organized, you know, 10 years ago, many years ago.Unions, when they participate in a recruitment crusade, are very dynamic.But once you’ve won, the next generation takes care of a task that’s already unionized.What is the surviving seasoning of the organizational crusade that persists?Or don’t you delay? But with the LGBT motion, they are still very committed to the fight for rights, to repel attacks.
I mean, not always, do I? There’s a total kind of winning a wedding, and a lot of other people are quitting.So that’s a problem, so they like the motion of trade unions in the organized industry ten years ago: we have what we need, and I don’t have to fight that much.
The combative aspect of the LGBT motion has a lot of dynamism, and when you put that in the perspective of a union and you can bring some of that dynamism to the union of a new fight for social justice that I think creates an attractive chemistry that can be very positive.
L: When my colleagues and I were at LaborNotes, we talked about one of the things that allowed us to organize ourselves as an organization of other queer people was that we had established netpaintingss of care and some would ask for mutual help.I have a colleague who says, “Unions are meant to bring pots and pans!”How do you see these values of mutual help and care in queer and paint spaces?
M: There is a history of [helping others in queer spaces]. The brightest and most inward thing is, in fact, the way the queer network got here in combination and started taking care of ours in the AIDS crisis. Well, that didn’t stop, and that kind of attention is given in the songs, in the culture and in the parade. And also that the labor movement is a kind of ‘taking care of its own’, it is something very proud. It’s a network thing.
D: Well, there’s a lot of roots in self-help teams to collect funeral money, collect hospital bills.
M: It’s also in industry trade union newspapers.These union newspapers are not just lists of places where meetings take place, there is something very strange going on there.
D: Or other people who are given up in low for ill health, there are other things that are very vital –
M: Humanity.
D:… and other solidarity, benevolent solidarity. Not just a battle.
But I think there’s a little difference, is that other people communicate about the selected family, don’t they?For homosexuals, and what happens with a union is that it’s like a certain family!It’s as if everyone who works there is a component of their union family, and the component of union ethics is whether I love them or not, Whether I love them or not, we have a common interest and a common organization.Which is different from the convenience zone you were communicating about.For example, I feel comfortable in a queer, Jewish and leftist organization.I don’t need to be with liberals or conservatives, I don’t need to be with other people of other religions, and the only position I feel smart in is in my gay, Jewish, leftist.And it’s so different from a union it is: here’s this mix of other people who have been hired through an employer and yet we’re a network at work.
L: I mean get out. In Out in the Union, the first total component is out.For me, I was raised with a lot of messages from “Out or Not!”It’s nobody’s business!” But in the book, a lot of those stories are about other people.who realize that their comrade is a, and now they have to begin.And I also think the message of liberation may be: “Don’t worry, homosexuals are general and like you!”instead of maybe, “gays are different, yet we have a non-unusual struggle.”So those are the two components: I’m curious if the focus is on getting out of the closet, so how can we do this without betting on a policy of respectability around whatever.
D: I’m interested in what you’re saying about how it ended up in a scenario where other people said they didn’t necessarily have to faint, because it’s a kind of …one thing we say in little Pink ebook is that you can’t stand in solidarity with a product of your imagination.If there’s no one out there, there’s no one to stand in solidarity with.
L: Well, you’d like to think there’s a way to get it just because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s assumed that there are genuine members who have a genuine interest.
M: Otherwise, it’s top to bottom.
D: Well, no, but it’s also like being afraid to face the reaction without being able to say that there are still members!SEIU 32 BJ very slow, is one of the last unions in the town to make a profit, and they had replaced the union in so many dimensions that they were simply afraid to introduce it there as well.As they did so, the whole room clapped. It was as if the corporation had passed.
But I think it’s attractive, at one point in the 1990s, when I came to union leaders and Bush was president and he was making a big fuss about the fact that you know the faith and that “I oppose homosexuals because people’s faith call it.”And, they hated Bush so much, those union leaders, they said, “If Bush objects, I’m in favor!”Like him! They didn’t think about queer members. It was a bit like I’d drawn a line, and I’m not on that side.
But I think there are now a lot of other people who think it’s the right thing to do to oppose discrimination against other queer people, and it becomes anything that considers an individual a little less, you know, and more so what’s your philosophical aspect, what kind of country and you need to live in?In which other people are persecuted or where other people are not persecuted.So there’s been this change, I think, where other people don’t.necessarily feel they need to know the right way forward.
What is the moment component of your appointment?Oh, the focus is on “I’m like you.”Because the fact is that if the only size you suffer from discrimination is being gay, then you’re usually like “your neighbors” or “your family” or whatever.All this as if you were not a user who needs to move the boat in general, you just need to tip this little thing.
M: You just fixed your boat.
L: Or just to share your boat with your wife!
D: That’s right, other people who say that being queer is revolutionary, that’s not true either.The fact is that being queer or being a woman is a matter of elegance, race and cross income.And so [a queer movement] has made it, a very different dynamic to a movement of elegance And racial minorities and immigrants, not 100%, are much more likely to be grouped into ordinary elegance and economically in society, and therefore their release is surely similar to the disorders of elegance that are so similar to everything you’re ” for what you’re going through , and this is true for giant bands of queer people, but not for everyone.
L: Let’s communicate about the problems that the industry’s union motion doesn’t need to touch and that have a significant effect on queer people.There is this incredible impetus right now in efforts to decriminalize sex work, repeal SESTA/FOSTA and even some politicians and leaders of industry union motions perceive and support some of those demands.How does the motion of employment look like it covers staff who may not be compatible with the “typical” style of employees and actually accept sexual staff?
M: We all have to earn a living. There are all kinds of queer staff, all kinds. And there are all kinds of sexual personnel. Engaging sexual staff and sexual paintings in verbal exchange is very difficult. And I’ll tell you something about myself: my sister was a sex painter. She died of cancer, but I knew what she was doing and I knew what she was going through and it was in our family. I am very touchy about this. And each and everyone from time to time had a very fair verbal exchange. And I said to him once: “And organize prostitutes?” (that’s the language we use) and she just cursed me or whatever, however, she gave it very – she became internal of herself and said, “You would have to go to a lot of prisons and you ‘I deserve to go to a lot of opportunities sales that are really horrible and you deserve to tell other people. It’s terrible that we don’t have a union and no one cares about us. She knew it was very deep and very hard and that maximum sex the staff did not have a very smart day , but she laughed too, I mean, God knows she laughed.
You started this challenge with [Babeland], so I think we were going to have this conversation.Most of all, I’m not telling anyone. Or I hear other people say things about sex staff and I don’t think you even know it.Amber [Hollibaugh, and activist] knows it! But a lot of us don’t know what’s going on.
D: I think that’s also similar to the broader challenge of unions dealing with staff who aren’t classic union members, right?For example, once the search service said, “Without a franchise, you’ll never organize McDonalds,” so even if they know they desperately want a union, you’re going to do it, it’s just impossible.What can we do? But speaking, when unions look at staff who want something, one of the calculations they do is that they may never get them in my union, and if they think that can’t happen, they take a step back.Staff are among the employees who think, “Who is your employer?How am I going to get a contract for that?”
It’s appealing because what I said earlier about how there’s some kind of “what are you looking like?”I think there’s been a genuine replacement in other people’s understanding of mass incarceration and that sex personnel are being analyzed in this context of, you know, who takes care of the police network, captures and throws them into jail, and there’s really a place.So it’s a kind of anything you’d never necessarily have other respectable people to whom that.It helps, but it doesn’t mean other people have a deep understanding.
L: What else do you need other people to know about the industry trade union movement?
M: The industry trade union movement has great pleasure in expanding the concept of what it means to be human.And you know, it starts with the consequences of the Triangle Fire, it starts with mass commercial production in the 1920s and 1930s when there were no unions in the factories, and the hard work movement has to do with our humanity.So, yes, it’s wages, hours and clocks and much more, but I mean it’s all about not being treated like a human being all the time.
One of my things, however, is that I am deeply attached to what in academia we call humanities, and to the things that other people do to enrich their lives through their own human efforts to express it, whether it’s their music., your art or your theater, or plays, in any way to explicit things.You know capital and painting is money, but there’s this whole component of humanity and what human beings can create.I’ve been lucky in my entire Career to worry about teaching music, art, poetry, literature, dance and history.And I haven’t taught math, which is a very smart thing!I talked to other young people about what it means to be human.
So how did I get to that? Well, it’s about being human.And one of the things about a union assembly is that the boss isn’t there, you’re there because you need it and you’re there with your colleagues and you start talking to each other and sharing food, etc.It’s amazing to be in an organization where you’re struggling to be more of a human being, and if what underlies it is a little more cash so you can paint on a bus or get your art materials, that’s also part of it.So there are mechanisms in the industry trade union movement, but it is – [the cat maul strong] exactly.
D: Get her off the table, Miriam!
M: It is a global of very, very long lives, the global of fixed paintings, the global of other people on the move.Sometimes there is no movement in a hard work movement.There’s a lot of conservatism, there’s a lot of rarity, there’s a lot of organized crimes!And you can’t think, if you start thinking about the overall paintings as a total, you have to place your position there, and your position is regularly in the position of the painting, in which you paint next to someone else and will it say yes or no to what you think of forming a union?As Woody Guthrie said, “you want to contact the store staff next to you.”
Trade union organization
LGBT workers
The archives
wow, wow, or it’s such a vital and desirable tale and a great joy and excitement to read.Fruit salad!
Thanks for that!
What a luxury!
REI is a cooperative owned by its members (not a company!) He presented his Force of Nature initiative in 2017 to make the outdoors a position where more people can feel not only welcome, but also lively and fully capable.