Bread and Roses Heritage Festival returns live

By Terry D

ate tdate@eagletribune.com

LAWRENCE — The Lawrence History Live! forum will once again be in person, as will the Bread and Roses Heritage Festival’s song, poetry and dance.

The Labor Day event will include Carnaval dancers in phantasmagoric costumes cracking whips, and a trio of union members — two steelworkers and a Teamster — strumming and singing labor songs.

All told, more than two dozen acts and speakers will take to the stages and presenters’ tent, Monday, Sept. 6, on Lawrence’s historic Campagnone Common.

After going virtual a year ago due to the pandemic, the 2021 celebration returns to a live mode with precautions including spacing, mask recommendations and vaccinated performers.

The festival celebrates Lawrence’s great textile strike of 1912, and the Immigrant City’s cultural legacy.

The 2021 theme is “Overcoming in Union: Collective Action and Radical Joy.”

Festival organizer Genithia Hogges said progressive movements and music often work in tandem, galvanizing and inspiring collective action.

That was true for Lawrence’s textile workers in 1912. Their strike was referred to by some as “The Singing Strike,” for the role music played in unifying people of more than 45 nationalities.

In fact, on Jan. 20 early in the strike, John Ramey, a Lawrence musician, was killed by a state militia

See FESTIVAL, Page 8

Union members Mike Murphy, left, and Dan Brush met on a picket line and formed the group No Rats. They’ll perform Monday, Sept. 6, at the Bread and Roses Heritage Festival in Lawrence on the Campagnone Common.

Courtesy photo

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man’s bayonet.

Ramey and other members of a Lebanese band were bound for the Arlington Mill to a rally when they were forced back and he was pierced by the bayonet, said researcher Jonas Stundza, chairman of the Lawrence Historic Commission.

Bread and Roses entertainment on the Bernstein (Main) Stage starts at 12:15 p.m., with guitarists David Brush and Mike Murphy and drummer Chris Swanson of the band No Rats, a name coined by Brush’s daughter.

The group, whose founding members met on a strikers’ picket line in New Bedford, will play original songs, along with covers by Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie, as well as the union anthem “Bread and Roses” from the 1911 James Oppenheim poem.

Brush said he looks forward to singing for working people at a time when the gap between their earnings and the income of those at the top tier is so great.

Headlining musicians on the Bernstein Stage are Devon Diep, a New York City based singer songwriter, and Cliff Notez, a hip hop artist and filmmaker from Boston.

Later in the afternoon, as the bachata band Brandon Falls plays merengue from the Bernstein Stage, Stelvyn Mirabal and his family and friends will dial the energy up with their Dominican Republic dancing.

They are from the Asociacion Carnavalesca de Massachusetts.

“Oh, the crowd always has a good impression of us,” Mirabal said. “Most of the time I see the people laughing and jumping and calling the guys over to take pictures.”

On the Family Stage, students and teachers from two Lawrence instructional centers, KDuran Music and Izizwe Dance Studio, will sing and move with true intentions.

KDuran students will sing “Rise Up” and “Let it Be,” teacher Kelsy Duran said.

Amy Xotyeni Bisi and her husband of the Izizwe Dance Studio, along with another teacher and a local dancer, will perform works including a new one rooted in African modern dance.

The festival’s forums, to be held in the Lawrence History Live! (open) tent, will delve into labor, history, education and social justice, said forum organizer Elizabeth Pellerito of UMass Lowell’s labor education program.

Speakers will include nurses talking about the six-month strike (more than 700 nurses) over staffing and safety at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester; history professor Robert Forrant on union organizing tactics in Lawrence in 1912; and Marianela Rivera on Lawrence public schools receivership and local democracy.

Also, Pellerito will discuss whether the gig economy is good for workers, and Joshua Alba will moderate a community forum on essential workers during and beyond COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the Literary Lounge will host prose and poetry including poems by Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola.

The festival will induct poet Martin Espada into its Hall of Fame.

The Acoustic Corner has a lineup of singer/ songwriters, hip hop and folk punk musicians.

Bread and Puppet Theater, a festival mainstay, will perform at 4 p.m. The festival committee will honor troupe co-founder Elka Schumann with a commemoration in the speakers’ tent. She died Aug. 1 at the age of 85.

Family events will include walking and trolley ride tours. Also, there will be a Story Time with a bilingual reading of “That’s Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca’s struggle for justice,” portraits by Ed Bray, and science experiments by Mr. Bill: Science Explorer.

There will be no pony rides nor a petting zoo, two festival favorites that were cut to limit contact as the pandemic persists.

The decision to host a live festival was a hard one, Pellerito said. The goal is to make the festival safe and come together at a critical time in our country’s history, she said.

From the 2018 Bread and Roses Heritage Festival, a Lawrence History Live! forum addresses local housing. This year’s festival returns to an in-person format Monday, Sept. 6, on the Campagnone Common.

RYAN HUTTON/Staff photo

Musicians perform on the Campagnone Common in Lawrence during the 2019 Bread and Roses Heritage Festival.

AMANDA SABGA/File photo