On July 9th at 1p.m. and 3p.m., the Labor Archives and Research Center in partnership with Flyaway Productions, choreographer , Jo Kreiter, and composer Pamela Z, will premiere Sympathetic. The Labor Archives commissioned Flyaway Productions to create a unique performance honoring labor as part of their 25th anniversary celebration. Sympathetic explores the historic 1934 San Francisco General Strike, a pivotal event in the city’s history.
Known for their aerial dance performances incorporating buildings into their choreography, Flyaway will be dancing on the side of the historic Rincon Annex Post Office building.
Sympathetic is a performance based on the funeral march for Nick Bordoise and Howard Sperry, two longshore workers shot and killed by police on July 5, 1934 – a day that came to be known as Bloody Thursday. Their deaths sparked the historic 1934 San Francisco General Strike that shut the city down for four days and inspired a wave of labor organizing that built San Francisco’s reputation as a union town.
Sympathetic is a reminder that the waterfront was once a working port before it became the current tourist destination and home to trendy shops and upscale restaurants.
Rincon Annex Post Office features vivid WPA-era murals by the artist Anton Refregier that depict San Francisco’s history from a working people’s perspective, and include scenes honoring the strike. The intersection of Steuart and Mission Streets where Rincon Annex is located was the epicenter of the ’34 struggle – at the corner on Mission Street, police opened fire on a crowd of maritime strikers and their supporters, killing Bordoise and Sperry. Directly across from Rincon on Steuart Street is the former site of the longshore union headquarters and where Bordoise and Sperry were laid in state before the funeral march began on July 9th. In 2011, it is hard to imagine the National Guard patrolling the Embarcadero or the pitched battle that took place on Rincon Hill during that long, hot July in 1934.
The massive funeral procession for the slain workers was a peaceful and haunting display that left people astounded while garnering strong public support for the strikers. News reporters struggled to find words that would appropriately describe the profound spectacle – “Here they came as far as you could see in a silent, orderly line of march, a mass demonstration of protest which transcended anything of the like San Francisco has ever seen” (San Francisco Examiner). Famed arbitrator Sam Kagel described it as a “sympathetic strike” because the deaths and police violence during Bloody Thursday were seen by labor as an orchestrated attack against all unions and labor rights. Paul Eliel, head of the San Francisco Industrial Association recognized that the funeral march’s “dramatic qualities moved the entire community without regard to individual points of view … As the last marcher broke ranks, the certainty of a general strike, which up to this time had appeared to many to be the visionary dream of a small group of the most radical workers, became for the first time a practical and realizable objective.” The funeral march also inspired numerous works of art and poetry, including Mike Quin’s potent elegy–“Stop in your tracks, you passer-by. Uncover your doubting head. The workingmen are on their way, to bury their murdered dead.”
“Sympathic” will premier in conjunction with LaborFest 2011 on July 9, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. All of the performances are free. Between the performances, the Labor Archives and Research Center will host a walking tour of local labor landmarks. Dance will be performed on the side of the Historic Rincon Annex Post Office building Corner of Steuart and Mission Streets in San Francisco.