{"id":32677,"date":"2019-05-31T03:51:24","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T10:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32677"},"modified":"2019-05-30T22:44:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T05:44:20","slug":"artistic-telling-of-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/05\/31\/artistic-telling-of-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Artistic telling of strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike<\/em> by the Graphic History Collective and artist David Lester is not education for education\u2019s sake, but rather a \u201cuseful organizing tool,\u201d according to the preface. \u201cThis comic book revisits \u2018the workers\u2019 revolt\u2019 in Winnipeg to highlight a number of important lessons that activists can lean on and learn from today as they fight for radical social change,\u201d notes the collective.<\/p>\n

Lester, a Vancouver-based illustrator, musician, and graphic designer and novelist, will give the talk Getting Graphic with Labour History on June 7, 7 p.m., at the B.C. Government and Service Employees\u2019 Union Lower Mainland Area office. He will also give a presentation as part of the World Peace Forum Society event 100 Years After the Winnipeg General Strike, in which Jewish community member Gary Cristall (activist and grandson of a 1919 solidarity strike activist) and others will participate on June 8, 2:30 p.m., at SFU Harbour Centre, Room 7000. In addition, he and members of the collective are participating in a few panels at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (congress2019.ca<\/a>), taking place at the University of British Columbia June 1-7, and are then heading to Cumberland, B.C., for a June 23 event during the Miners Memorial Weekend.<\/p>\n

In the Acknowledgements section of 1919<\/em>, the Graphic History Collective describes itself as \u201ca not-for-profit arts collective. For us, solidarity is not just a winning strategy in class struggle. It is our artistic methodology. In taking seriously the idea that we can accomplish more by working together, we prioritize collaboration…. As GHC members, we volunteer and share our artistic vision and share our artistic, writing and administrative skills.\u201d The collective recognizes the many people who \u201ccontributed knowledge, labour and funding to this project. Most importantly, we recognize that this comic book would not have been completed without David Lester\u2019s incredible talent and artistic labour.\u201d Other GHC members who contributed are Sean Carleton, Robin Folvik, Kara Sievewright and Julia Smith; Prof. James Naylor of Brandon University\u2019s history department wrote the book\u2019s introduction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1919, 35,000 workers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, staged a six-week general strike between 15 May and 26 June,\u201d the narrative begins. Lester\u2019s two-page depiction of the strikers gathering at Portage and Main gives an idea of the vastness of the protest and the small area within which it took place. It is easy to see how people would have had nowhere to run and the panic that would have ensued when the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and the \u201cspecial constables,\u201d violently broke up the strike on \u201cBloody Saturday,\u201d June 21, 1919. The police were among those who had voted to strike but were given dispensation to work by the strike committee; however, the city dismissed the whole force on June 9. The mayor, the Citizens\u2019 Committee of One Thousand (formed of business leaders and others) and the federal government opposed the strike and worked together to end it by various means, using fear of immigrants (aka racism) and eventually violence to do so.<\/p>\n

1919<\/em> gives a history of the pivotal event from the perspective of the strike leaders, workers and their supporters. The textual narrative drops away, for the most part, in the telling of what happened on Bloody Saturday and the impact of Lester\u2019s images builds as the day progresses, from 9:30 a.m. to 11, to 2:20 and so on. Just before 3:35 p.m., two strikers are shot, one dies on the spot, the other from gangrene. The violence continues. At 4 p.m., the special constables take control. By 6 p.m., Canadian Army Service Corps trucks \u2013 equipped with machine guns \u2013 are patroling Main Street. By the end of the day, in addition to the two strikers killed, many are wounded and 94 people are arrested. The book then describes some of what happened in the trials that followed, and the strike\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Lester shares some of his artistic process and inspiration in the essay \u201cThe Art of Labour History,\u201d especially the Bloody Saturday pages, and this is followed by a photo essay called \u201cThe Character of Class Struggle in Winnipeg.\u201d The notes are useful in providing context for some of the images, and the bibliography shows the depth of research. Short bios of the contributors and a list of the Manitoba unions that supported the publication conclude the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt bears witness to the injustices of the world and, in reflecting on the pain and struggles of the past, offers hope in working together for a better present and future,\u201d writes Lester. \u201cArt can aid the momentum of progressive social change, and that is what keeps me going\u2026. I am trying to capture and convey the inspiration and spirit of solidarity in class conflict. That is the art of labour history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike by the Graphic History Collective and artist David Lester is not education for education\u2019s sake, but rather a \u201cuseful organizing tool,\u201d according to the preface. \u201cThis comic book revisits \u2018the workers\u2019 revolt\u2019 in Winnipeg to highlight a number of important lessons that activists can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[9032,9033,7611,4242,5491,4048],"class_list":["post-32677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-david-lester","tag-general-strike","tag-graphic-novel","tag-history","tag-social-justice","tag-winnipeg"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}