This time Im setting this to public in case you want to repost it, Mark Mason :-) Here is an interview by local journalist Judith Scherr with Harry Brill, about the longtime protest in Berkeley (atop Solano Ave on Monday evenings) called Tax the Rich. BERKELEY -- Most Mondays since Sept. 12, 2011, you can find Harry Brill with 40 or so protesters near the top of Solano Avenue, chanting, singing and waving placards: Save Social Security, Raise the Minimum Wage; Its Time For A New, New Deal. On Sept. 15 the group known as Tax the Rich celebrated its third anniversary, adding birthday greetings and cake -- let them eat cake one sign said -- to the political messaging. While the weekly demonstrations are fun, provide fellowship and are enriched with live music, the purpose is serious for the mostly senior activists. Its not about ideology, Brill said over coffee a few days before the anniversary. Tax the Rich is about our outrage over inequality. While he credits artist Evelyn Glaubman with planning the first rally, it has been Brill and his wife Carol who organize the weekly demonstrations. Pressed to talk about himself, Brill said he was born in the Bronx. His father worked stitching furs together for coats. His mother was first a housewife and then worked in nursing homes to pay his fathers gambling debts. After high school, Brill tried furrier work. I was completely incompetent, he said, so he enrolled in Brooklyn College, where he took 13 years to graduate. During that time, Brill supported himself for a while at a burlap factory where the smells were intense. He tried selling frozen food to retailers, but lost sales because he empathized with people who couldnt afford the product. Driving a taxi was better. There was a real strong sense of community among cabdrivers, he said. You could walk into a cafeteria and join a group of drivers youd never met. That contrasted to Brills future in academia. Being a college professor is highly individualistic, he said. The Brills academic path -- Harry and Carol married in 1959 -- led to graduate studies in Berkeley in 1960. That was Brills political awakening. The 60s was an extraordinary period, he said. You start thinking the unthinkable — all the things you could do. Harry and Carol Brill helped found the campus chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. What drew me to CORE was outrage at the racism, Brill said. CORE activists would approach local businesses demanding they hire African Americans and threatening to picket those that refused. A picket line could throw a store out of business at the time, Brill said. We had a lot of leverage. Brill joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Free Speech Movement. He became a key organizer fighting the Yerba Buena redevelopment project in San Francisco that he described in a 1965 newspaper as a massive bulldozing program (that) will remove industries and homes from an 87-acre downtown area. Negro dwellers pushed out of Yerba Buena will be forced as always to crowd into the racial ghettos elsewhere in San Francisco. The couple moved to Boston, where Carol directed the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Harry joined the full-time faculty the University of Massachusetts. Poor working conditions for part-timers led him to organize part-time university faculty, who eventually won full health benefits and higher wages. He also helped museum security guards win a strike. My stomach was in teaching, but my heart was in organizing, Brill said. Meanwhile, the Brills had a daughter, Deborah Brill, now principal at Albany Middle School. And Carol Brill earned a doctorate at the Florence Heller School for Social Policy and Management. The couple retired in 2004. Unable to afford Berkeleys steep housing costs, they settled in El Cerrito. Brill didnt retire from organizing, however. When a new Honda dealership owner in Berkeley dissolved workers union membership in 2005, he stepped up to organize community support for striking workers. Brill said that after the 10-month strike was successful, one worker told him, Harry, it never occurred to me that strangers would come. Glaubman invited Brill three years ago to a Solano Avenue rally to protest the obscene growth in inequality in American society. He planned to go just that Monday. There were only 10 protesters, but passers-by showed so much enthusiasm that Brill decided, Hey, maybe I should stick with this. And he did.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 17:28:59 +0000
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