Jeremy Brecher

Common Preservation in Action

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Brass Workers History Project

My earlier work on labor history left me with a desire to find or invent some way to do it that included those who had lived the experiences I was studying.[1] In collaboration with community organizer Jan Stackhouse and video documentarian Jerry Lombardi, in 1979 I initiated the Brass Workers History Project in western Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Connecticut Humanities Council, the project involved participation of more than 200 workers and community members who provided documents, participated in interviews, served on an advisory committee, and reviewed the project’s products.[2]

 

In 1982 we published Brass Valley: The Story Of Working People’s Lives And Struggles In An American Industrial Region.[3] It utilized interviews, photos, and memorabilia to provide a “family album” for the brass worker community and a scholarship-based interpretation of its history. In 1984 the Brass Workers History Project produced the 90-minute Connecticut Public Television documentary Brass Valley for which I served as writer and historian.

[1] Jeremy Brecher, “The Brass Workers History Project,” in Jean J. Schensul et al, Using Ethnographic Data (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999) p. 131.

[2] Jean J. Schensul, pp. 130-149.

[3] The Brass Workers History Project, Brass Valley: The Story Of Working People’s Lives And Struggles In An American Industrial Region (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982).

 

ABOUT JEREMY BRECHER

11You and I may not know each other, but I suspect there are some problems that we share -- problems like climate change, war, and injustice. For half a century I have been participating in and writing about social movements that address those problems. The purpose of this website is to share what I've learned. I hope it provides something of use to you in addressing our common problems.

For the record, I am the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. I have written and/or produced more than twenty video documentaries. I have participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace in Vietnam, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes, climate protection, and many others.

PROJECTS

Common Preservation

  Human Survival Movement

Climate Protection

  Climate and Labor

  Climate Insurgency

  Against Doom

  Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs

Labor History

  Strike!

  Common Sense for Hard Times

STRIKE! Commentaries on Solidarity and Survival

  • Social Self-Defense vs. MAGA: A Strategic Assessment
  • Mass Action for Social Self-Defense
  • Social Self-Defense Has Begun
  • Strategic Guidelines for Social Self-Defense
  • A Strategy for Social Self-Defense
  • What Really Happened in the First Trump Resistance?
  • The Four Expectable Axes of MAGA Action

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