General Strike called for 09/11/07

We lost two elders who were connected by the Milwaukee 14 nonviolent action in 1968. One I knew and one I did not. The death of the one I knew, Frank Blair, was the hardest to bear. I probably met and knew Frank in 1968 but it has been the last 8 years or so years that we became friends. In January 2003 we have a gathering of members of the Milwaukee 14 and early supporters. Frank was present. I called him Frank the Elder, since he was an elder to me in the true sense of the word, a person providing wisdom and insight based on experiences. He liked that name. Although I have seen him a half dozen or times over the years we have kept in contact by email, in private and public emails.

In 2007 I started a web page on the Milwaukee 14 today web site for Frank’s letter. You can find it here. For some reason the only email from Frank that appears is the one called It is Time to Strike. A General Strike as was Frank’s choice to stop “perpetual war to promote capitalism and the corporate mentality.”

When came close to a general strike during the major protest in Madison this year. I remember being in the largest crowd at the Capitol with words of general strike in Wisconsin floating around when the Democratic Senators, called the Wisconsin 14 and just returned spoke to the crowd and said vote don’t strike. I thought of Frank at that moment and his desire for a strike and how we shared a philosophy, like Dorothy Day, of non voting, at least until we had a true democracy and our votes counted.

Now I can tell you that Frank confessed to me that he had left the house in last congressional elections to vote for Senator Feingold. Feingold lost to corporate interest as we both expected to happen.

My elders are dying as I become older leaving my generation the new elders. Frank’s body was not too cooperative in recent years but his mind was full of wisdom and grace.

The other person, I did not know, that recently died was Kit Tierman in the Boston area. A friend writes: “Kippy was simply blown away by the commitment of the M-14, she began organizing on their behalf almost full time, within a couple of weeks she quit her job at the Dairy Council. As she often said, she couldn’t turn back and she didn’t.” She went on to found Rosie’s Place, the first women shelter in the country and organize and promote many other groups to serve the poor, marginalized and to be a “voice for the voiceless”. My friend writes: “Here she was a high school dropout and she probably has 18 honorary doctorates, including one from Harvard.” You can read more about this wonderful woman in her long obituary in the Boston Globe.

I lost two friends this week, one I knew and one I did not know. But Frank, Kip and I are connected by one nonviolent action. It makes one wonder if there were many such nonviolent actions of civil disobedience across the country or maybe just one General Strike.

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