July 13, 1995

Soldier Field was the last show. We had tickets and go to the gate to get in but the gatekeeper said the seat numbers on the tickets didn't exist so he walkie-talkied someone, then went to talk to someone in person, then came back and told us to follow him ... which we did ... onto the field ... center ... about 20 rows from the stage. An hour earlier while we were selling Snapple -- which is how we bankrolled much of the road trips -- one of the roadies who was severely parched thanked us for a few freebies by giving us half of a fat J that he said one of the band members had smoked before putting it out. We smoked it. In retrospect we should have framed it. Good times.

 

Great story.

 

We were supposed to have a big blowout party on Belle Isle this weekend commemorating the 25th anniversary of the strike but coronavirus put a stop to that
Instead, strikers are having a Zoom meeting tonight and hopefully, the celebration will be held next year

 

This was our first paper
Hopefully we’ll be able to get together next year

 

Jake, kudos to you and the others who dug in against Gannett. You did make a difference, even though the newspaper business has gone way downhill since then. Management, technology and the economy are the reason, not workers.

We may have even crossed paths. At some point in 1995 ... in August or September? ... there was a weekend rally in support of the various unions that went on strike. I and a few of my co-workers at a chain of suburban weekly newspapers in Chicago took up a collection and brought it with us to a rally, somewhere near Tiger Stadium.

Don't remember much about the rally except a big crowd, union hall and (afterward) stopping at a Big Boy in Ann Arbor on our way home.

Oh, and I still have a Sunday Journal that I purchased that day.

 

Thanks
One time we were joined on the picket line by some pressmen from the New York Daily News, who had a strike of their own
One said to me: “Did you ever take any boxes and throw them on the river?
“We did.”

 

Late to the thread, but at first I thought the title was July 13, 1985 ... the date of Live Aid.

 

27th anniversary today
It was my day off but I went downtown and shook hands with the managers I wouldn’t be seeing for a while
Then I went to the Anchor Bar and waited for 6 pm, when the strike began
The thing I’ll never forget is the sky, which was a color I’ve never seen before or since
Streaks of orange mixed with blue and clouds
An eerie touch to a day that changed my life

 

Obv K-R/Gannett folk were calling the shots, but what was the mood among the salaried types knowing what was about to happen?

 

They were caught in the middle
We had better health care than they did
A lot of times they would stop and talk to us on the picket line
Bad situation for everybody

 

Not sure how much of a difference it made, but I’m still glad our suburban Chicago chain of weekly newspapers took up a collection and brought it over to Detroit a month or so later.

It was a teachable moment for me, as a young journalist, about both unions and the coming changes in the newspaper business.

 

Somewhere about that time, there were two big heat waves in the Midwest. I happened to visit right in between them where the temperature was a very civilized upper-80s.