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Joanna W. Wuest Princeton University Society of Fellows |
About the Image:
In 1978, California state senator John Briggs introduced Proposition 6 in an attempt to bar gays and lesbians from working in public schools. In its coverage of the successful campaign against the infamous Briggs Initiative, writers for the journal Radical America detailed the story of queer advocates fighting back a revanchist conservative movement, noting especially the lesser-known class dynamics of that struggle. The cover of this issue depicts an image from the Workers Conference to Defeat the Briggs Initiative. This meeting spurred gay and lesbian workers across a multitude of national and international unions to organize internal caucuses, which then pushed their union leaderships to oppose Prop 6. Rank and file union members and their allies were ultimately successful in garnering the support of the American Federation of Teachers in California as well as the UAW, the United Steelworkers, the Teamsters, and the Culinary Workers and Postal Employees.
In 1978, California state senator John Briggs introduced Proposition 6 in an attempt to bar gays and lesbians from working in public schools. In its coverage of the successful campaign against the infamous Briggs Initiative, writers for the journal Radical America detailed the story of queer advocates fighting back a revanchist conservative movement, noting especially the lesser-known class dynamics of that struggle. The cover of this issue depicts an image from the Workers Conference to Defeat the Briggs Initiative. This meeting spurred gay and lesbian workers across a multitude of national and international unions to organize internal caucuses, which then pushed their union leaderships to oppose Prop 6. Rank and file union members and their allies were ultimately successful in garnering the support of the American Federation of Teachers in California as well as the UAW, the United Steelworkers, the Teamsters, and the Culinary Workers and Postal Employees.