DROP HAMMER
is based on what really happened, primarily in one factory in Western New
York. Most of the characters
are based on real people and real situations.
The pounding of the drop hammer is really a metaphor for the
continual battering attack upon the leaders of the labor movement,
primarily during and following the McCarthy period.
I am 95 years old now and I say
what is so whether some people like it or not.
FBI agents were visiting the leaders of our local unions in this
area, trying to persuade them, threaten them, blackmail them into working
against our union which they considered to be too militant, too radical,
trying to get our local union leaders to turn against our union and to
switch their organizations to another union which was set up with the
assistance of the government itself.
FBI agents colluded with employers
to offer inducements to get our local union leaders to switch over to
another union or to become part of management.
This was being done on a national scale as part of a program
carried out by the FBI to purge militants out of leadership of the labor
movement.
Of course, FBI agents used the
usual accusations of communism and other labels to try to persuade leaders
of our national labor movement to carry out this purge.
These national labor leaders at that time surrendered and did carry
out that purge.
Then when the Clinton
Administration, after promising all kinds of support for labor before
their presidential election, actually moved the Democratic Party to the
right, and ignored its promises to the labor movement, joining Republicans
to give special tax breaks to corporations to send their jobs overseas,
the labor movement no longer had the militant leftist leaders to lead the
fight against that. The
result was what Ross Perot predicted, the sucking sound of American jobs
being moved overseas, resulting in the great loss of labor's strength.
I don't think it's too far
fetched to say that FBI, which played a major role in weakening the
labor movement by working to produce the purge of labor militants,
must take its share of responsibility for what has developed into the
collapse of our economy today.
If the militants who had been
purged were still there in the leadership of the labor movement they
would have led strong resistance to what developed in the collapse of
our economy.
DROP HAMMER is a play
that deals with the kind of dissension that FBI created in the labor
movement, acting in collusion with management to greatly diminish the
strength of organized labor in our country.
In the play I try to tell how individuals whom I know very well
were affected by that situation inside their union.
Now Obama has been elected
President with strong support from organized labor.
I've been told that one of the reasons Obama took Ohio and
Pennsylvania is because unions outside those two states sent about
15,000 of their union members into Ohio and Pennsylvania to talk face
to face with union members there, persuading them to vote for Obama.
I look forward to what's
going to happen since Obama has been elected President.
I hope he does remember what labor did for him and that he does
not do what Bill Clinton did -- failed to carry out after the election
what he promised before the election.
You will see in DROP HAMMER the kind of situation that
was created within an individual labor union in this area where FBI
colluded with management to take the militancy out of organized labor.
I hope you enjoy the play.
I believe it has strong relevance to what is happening in our
country today.
Emanuel "Manny" Fried
