Photo: George Waldman
Bob Ourlian is in row three with a white hat and beard. Allan Lengel is to the left of him in a black shirt.
July 13 marks the 22nd anniversary of the Detroit Newspaper strike's start. Six unions representing more than 2,000 workers from The Detroit News and the Free Press were on strike. I ended up on strike for 19 months until I left Detroit in March 1997 to take a job at the Washington Post.
During those 19 months, I worked a host of jobs at different times. I freelanced for The New York Times, Bloomberg and Newsweek; bartended at Honest John’s when it was near Belle Isle; was as a substitute teacher at Hazel Park High School and wrote press releases for the Michigan Employment Security Commission.
The strike left an indelible mark on many of us. It also impacted the papers.
Memories include amusing anecdotes. I thought I’d share three.
1. Banter and an F-bomb
At the very beginning, the dailies were hiring people to sell the Sunday paper on the streets. One Sunday, I was standing with fellow striker and reporter, Bob Ourlian, picket sign in hand, in front of a hawker in downtown Birmingham, urging people not to buy The News from him.
“We’re on strike, we’d appreciate if you didn’t buy the paper,” I would say. One man, about 30, replied: “Well I don’t care for unions.”
At the time I was working to refine my responses, but wasn’t quite there yet. “Well, I bet you drive a union made car,” I said. He conceded that he did.
Bob and I were both in shorts and T-shirts. He looked at us condescendingly and assumed we had jobs doing physical labor at the paper.
“You know you guys should use this opportunity to better yourselves," he said.
Messing with him, Bob asked in a sincere tone: “You mean, like go to college?”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be that,” the man said. “But something to better yourselves.”
He walked away. We smiled.
A few minutes later, he came walking by again and I made a snarky remark. He turned around and said something like: “I notice the people with educations didn't go on strike.”
I responded: “I noticed that educated people say intelligent things.” He simply said: “Fuck you.”
As an side note, my friend Bob is now national security editor for the Wall Street Journal in the Washington bureau.
2. Payback on a snowy day
Another time, during winter, a group of us were at the corner of Maple and Old Woodward in downtown Birmingham in front of a coffee shop, selling the Sunday Journal, our 75-cent weekly strike paper.
It was a cold morning. It was snowy. A woman, an acquaintance I knew through a mutual friend, pulled up in front of us in her minivan. It happened to be an illegal spot. She got out to go into the coffee shop. As she did, I blurted out: “Hi, would you like to buy a Detroit Sunday Journal?
She looked straight ahead, right past me as if she didn’t’ know me, and kept walking.
Two minutes, later karma arrived. A police car pulled up and quickly wrote her a parking ticket and drove off. The woman emerged from the coffee shop, spotted the ticket, looked at me with disbelief and blurted: “Why didn’t you come get me?”
I simply shrugged my shoulders.
3. 'The magic of the moment'
Another time, again in winter, there was group of strikers standing in front of The News on Lafayette Boulevard, holding their hands over a fire in a barrel, trying to stay warm. Most of them were janitors who were fellow members of the Newspaper Guild.
A homeless man, perhaps in his late 50s and missing some teeth, joined us and put his hands over the fire. After just a few minutes he asked: “Does anyone have a dollar?”
Some of strikers were taken aback. “What? We’re on strike,” a couple of them said.
I reached into my pocket and gave him a dollar.
About 10 minutes later, a construction worker pulled up and summoned me over and said: “Here’s $20, buy everyone on the picket line coffee and donuts.”
I thanked him and walked back to the barrel to tell everyone of the donation.
Everyone understood the magic of the moment.
