When I think now of some of the things that happened in those years to many of us comrades doing industrial work for the first time, it’s a wonder I didn’t quit or get myself killed. What a world I was getting into! I asked my coworkers for help on my first job, and they were very willing, so I learned a lot from peers, and from the mistakes I made because I was not used to being around machinery. One day when I was looking at the hole that my machine had just tapped on a housing, the drill press handle whipped around and hit me under the chin, chipping my tooth and cutting my lip. Pure inexperience and nervousness.
The people who were the most helpful to me had problems of their own. It turned out that Richard, the tall, dark-skinned man working right next to me on those housings for M-1 tanks, was a coke addict. One day he brought in some coke for me to try. It was the first time I had ever seen the white powder with my own eyes. Of course I turned him down. I had never been attracted to the drug scene, didn’t even like marijuana when I tried it. The Socialist Workers Party was very strict about drugs, to avoid frame-ups and other trouble. The rule was that if anyone in the party did drugs, they were kicked out. Poor Richard, all bleary-eyed and hyper on the night shift, did not stop offering me coke and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want it. I wondered if getting people into it was part of drug addiction. At the same job I met John, another black man, who was in the Panthers and had done seasonal farm work in the past. I liked talking to him about the state of the world. There we were in San Jose, not too far from where the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland. The conversations and interactions I had at work really nurtured my political commitment.
These were the days of affirmative action, which was how I and many others could even get these skilled jobs. In several workplaces I was the only or the first woman machinist. I felt least isolated at the Alameda Naval Air Station, where there were ten other women machinists. One of them was called Red Sonia because of her hair, but soon they were to learn who the real Red Sonja was! Although it was a Navy base, civilian workers were unionized. There was a huge machine shop and it was the only place I ever worked where I filed a grievance against the supervisor—a military man who said I did not do good work. I won and he got transferred. There I met my wonderful friend Lorraine, who was from Brooklyn. We recognized each other instantly as fellow New Yorkers, but I think she had the thicker accent. She was African-American and funny as hell in a deadpan way. I loved laughing my head off with her at the guys with their big stomachs and their cracks showing: “Their asses are too small to hold their pants up.” Lorraine and I helped each other when new jobs came along and we had to figure out the new setups.
The machine shop was more than a workplace. It was a social, psychological, and political arena where so much was acted out. Friends and enemies were made. I will never forget how some of the most “redneck” sexist guys stood up for basic democratic rights in an Alabama military aircraft repair facility I worked in. The idea to run for various political offices was part of our party’s work. We did not aim to win the races, but to explain socialist politics. Eugene Debs was one of our heroes—he was the only U.S. socialist who got a significant hearing, and he even ran for president as the Socialist Party candidate in 1920 after he was imprisoned for sedition, getting six percent of the vote. He is particularly remembered for what he said at his 1918 sentencing: “while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
When I was asked by my party to run for mayor of Birmingham, Alabama in 1983, I was working in the machine shop of Hayes International, a large military aircraft repair plant. Nooses were left on my toolbox and my supporters’ toolboxes. There were threats of beatings, and insults were flung around, but some respected coworkers openly defended me and my right to run. Women in other parts of the plant came up to me as the election drew near and said, “I am so glad I can vote for a woman.” Others who learned about my political concerns took the opportunity to discuss injustices in the plant and in society and the larger economic and political issues: better wages and working conditions for all, women’s rights, black civil rights, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, keeping the U.S. out of Central America, and advocating for a labor party in the interests of working people.
While I was the only woman machinist, other women in the plant defended me and brought up these ideas in conversations. “There was so much shit said about women in general,” my friend Mark told me, and it was hard to stand up to everything the men said. Throughout my time in industrial work whenever insults or heavier incidents came up, my party supported me—I was not alone. I learned to pick my battles in these discussions and keep in mind the longer view of what we were doing. Black workers defended us when we were called “N— lovers” and they were admired for their solidarity in defending their own people and us. We wanted to win hearts and minds to the ideas we were sharing, which were not so different from the concerns of many working people. We were not preaching. We were speaking to people about what they were experiencing and helping them make connections in politics.
A white-haired woman sheet metal worker started organizing lunchtime walks around the whole plant which was about seven hangars large. It was great exercise. First only a few people, mostly women, did these power walks, with Marian in the lead. By the time I joined there were more people, including men, and it was great. On my first walk I met Norma Mae, also a sheet-metal worker, who was a lesbian and an African American. We instantly recognized each other through gay-dar but also by dropping little hints like saying “my partner” or “my old girlfriend.” We would talk about some of the history of Birmingham, the South, and the civil rights movement. She had a cousin who grew up in Montgomery and told the story of what happened during the bus boycott.
“When the call came to the high schools to march, the kids just came pouring out onto the streets, not one by one but rivers of kids, all converging on the street. My cousin was there and the news spread like wildfire. It was a great feeling.” Norma Mae and I would talk about how this inspiring struggle affected everything else and how I thought it was key to the end of capitalism as we knew it. I don’t know if she ever agreed about the bigger connections I tried to make, but our talking made her want to tell more stories.
“You see that hill over there?” she said one day when we were outside the hangar having our lunch, as she pointed. “What do you think that is?” I couldn’t make out anything but trees from a distance.
“It’s a graveyard,” she shouted as if I were an idiot. She looked at me with her mouth pursed and pointed seriously, her eyes peering at me through her glasses. “This side—white, that side—black,” she said quietly.
“Still?” I asked. “Pretty much,” she said.
Meeting Norma and all the people I have met over the years has made me feel so fortunate. Above all what I enjoyed about being a machinist was interacting with the people on the job. Otherwise, I would never have met Lorraine or Norma Mae or some of the others, because we live in a segregated and classist society. I learned what they were thinking and worrying about. I had long intellectual and political discussions with my friend Van in the tool room at Hayes. One day, Fred, one of the machinists, walked into our conversation and asked, “What do you two talk about all the time anyway?”