Hello, my name is Peter Kasin, a Park Ranger at San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park, coming to you today from my home office, sheltered in during this pandermic, and this
is the first in what will be a series of 2 to 3 minute long videos going over books about
dock labor. It's called "the Human Stories of Dock Labor," and that will be the focus.
Well, why dock labor? First of all, the clothes that you're wearing and many items in your
home probably came over by ship, so these dock laborers the world over have been working
to keep the world's economy going. The books that we'll be going over, many of these, are
in our park's library or will coming soon to our park's library, and although the library
is closed as is the park as a whole during this pandemic, you can view the collection's
catalog, called "the keys catalog," and that web address is listed here (http://bywatersolutions.com).
So, these laborers, these stories, the history of their struggles they tell of courage in the
face of great odds, of fear and longing for a better life and basic human dignity. You'll
meet people who fought not only for better wages and working conditions, but for human
dignity and basic human rights. We'll see instances of racial strife but also of interracial
cooperation in labor struggles, even in the thick of the Jim Crow era. We'll see how historians
are bringing to light names who might otherwise be lost to history and memory. We'll see heroic
figures, but we'll also see some unsavory figures; mobsters who controlled some of our
nation's waterfronts through corrupt labor practices, intimidation, and violence. And
we'll see about people who stood up to the mob, and attempted to institute reforms. So,
join us in this discovery, and feel free to make comments and to ask questions in the
comments section, and think about how this may relate today, and voice your own opinion
about the labor movement. So, on the next video we'll go in with our first book, "Shape
Up and Hiring Hall", by Charles Larrowe. We'll talk about the hiring practices of longshoremen.
So, until then, everybody be healthy and stay safe, and thanks for watching.