Description: Our Community at Winchester is based on an exhibit produced by the Greater New Haven Labor History Association in 2013 about workers and the community they created at the Winchester Repeating Arms plant in New Haven, CT, throughout the 20th century.
Brief description: Joan Cavanagh (author) is the former director of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association. She is an archivist, historical researcher, writer and longtime peace and justice activist who has lived in New Haven, CT, since 1977.
Review Quotes:
"The plight of the Winchester gun factory and the community of workers whose lives centered around it has been one of New Haven's great untold stories-until now. In Our Community at Winchester, the Greater New Haven Labor History Association has brought that story to life with all its nuances, contradictions, struggles, and humanity. The book falls within the true tradition of telling history from below; it will guide our understanding of our city's heritage and its continuing challenges for generations to come."
PAUL BASS is the editor of the New Haven Independent and co-author of Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Yale, & The Redemption of a Killer.
"Based on eight years of gathering oral history interviews, documents, and images by Winchester retirees and members of the neighboring community, Our Community at Winchester represents a high point in the involvement of workers and community members in uncovering and telling their own history. The interviews bring to life the intimate experiences and feelings of those who made up the Winchester workforce. The book combines scholarly background and deep community connection. It shows that 'history from below' has indeed come of age."
JEREMY BRECHER is author of fifteen books on labor and social movements and of History from Below: How to Uncover and Tell the Story of Your Community, Association, or Union. He served as Humanities Scholar in Residence at Connecticut Public Radio and Television and is a co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. www.jeremybrecher.org
"This is an important book that retrieves a lost history of workplace struggle in the Elm City. Cavanagh is to be commended for an accessible, deeply researched study. In today's polarized and increasingly unequal America, we need to hear the voices of the past that demanded a living wage and a sense of dignity."
TROY RONDINONE is professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the author of Nightmare Factories: the Asylum in the American Imagination.
"Joan Cavanagh's book stands apart from the typical industrial/corporate history that glorifies the millionaire owners, glosses over controversy, and ignores the workforce. Winchester's rank-and-filers live and breathe between these pages. They define what we mean when we sing "Solidarity Forever."
STEVE THORNTON is the author of A Shoeleather History of the Wobblies (IWW) in Connecticut and Wicked Hartford.