2020 Ron Verzuh and the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association
Workers have always made and continue to make their own history in Oregon. The challenge is to remind ourselves of the importance of that history. A further challenge is to help us recall the often forgotten role that working people played in creating a just, egalitarian, and socially progressive community. Working Oregon – A Labor History Chronology is meant to serve as that reminder.
Did you know, for example, that the great proworker American writer John Reed was born in Portland in 1887? Did you know that Oregon’s Dr. Marie D. Equi was selected in 1916 to spread some of executed Wobbly troubadour Joe Hill’s ashes? Are you aware that the longest strike in the state’s history was the Portland newspaper strike that ran from 1959 to 1965?