Zohran Mamdani Would Have a Lot of Explaining to Do to Mother Jones
President Teddy Roosevelt ignored Mary Harris “Mother” Jones when she brought the March of the Mill Children to his doorstep in 1903. Today, Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to ignore the worker injustices brought to his doorstep in New York City.
By Joe Maniscalco
One-hundred-and-twenty-three summers have past since iconic workers’ rights activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New York City and Long Island.
The kids—some maimed by the factory machinery they were condemned to work—had a grand time stopping off in Coney Island to romp on the beach and marvel at Bostock’s Wild Animal Show before continuing on to Oyster Bay where they anticipated meeting then-President Teddy Roosevelt to talk about finally putting an end to child labor in the United States of America.
But President Roosevelt never would meet them. They didn’t have an appointment.
“I thought that President Roosevelt might see these mill children and compare them with his own little ones who were spending the summer on the seashore at Oyster Bay,” Mother Jones later wrote in her autobiography.
New York City home care workers fighting to end round-the-clock shifts and the institutionalized wage theft that’s baked into the system are seen here on Day 6 of their hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall earlier this month.
This summer, New York City home care attendants—many suffering chronic injuries after spending too many years working round-the-clock shifts at roughly half the pay—camped outside the gates of City Hall hoping for a meeting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to talk about finally ending the 24-hour workday in New York City.
But Mamdani never came out to meet them. They didn’t have an appointment either.
Many home care workers—the overwhelming majority of them older immigrant women of color—thought they finally had an ally in City Hall because Mamdani had specifically thanked New York City’s “abuelas” and “aunties” for helping him get elected in November.
Mother Jones on the steps of City Hall in 1915.
He also previously declared that the 24-hour workday in New York City’s home care industry “must come to an end.”
“Mayor Mamdani stood as I stand right now and said, ‘We must end 24 hour workdays,’” NOW-NYC President and No More 24 supporter Sonia Ossorio said in April. “Now, not a peep out of him. What is it about once they get power, they forget about their priorities and promises?”
New York City home care workers fighting for passage of Intro. 303—the “No More 24” bill—have held two separate hunger strikes so far this year, and are gearing up for another large demonstration outside the gates of City Hall on October 3 to press the fight.
Back in the summer of 1903, Presidential Secretary Benjamin Barnes had tried defending Roosevelt’s callousness by explaining how the State of New York passed an anti-child labor law when his boss was governor.
“If President Roosevelt was in such hearty sympathy with child slaves while he was Governor of New York,” Mother Jones later said in reply, “what has worked such a change that he will refuse to see three boys who represent thousands of other children who are wearing out their lives in the mills?”
The parallels between 1903’s March of the Mill Children and this summer’s No More 24 street actions couldn’t be any clearer. But there are things that just don’t line up, too.
Lai Yee Chan and fellow home care workers demand an end to the 24-hour workday from the steps of City Hall earlier this summer.
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, a co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, was a socialist. So is Mayor Zohran Mamdani—the only explicitly socialist, at least in name, that the City of New York has ever had.
The dynamics of power are supposed to be different with a socialist mayor in office. It’s intriguing to think what Mother Jones would have thought about a sitting socialist mayor failing to at least meet with older immigrant women fighting to end the 24-hour workday in his city.
In this case, however, Hizzoner appears to be more interested in what close ally and advisor Henry Garrido has to say about ending the 24-hour workday rather then what the actual rank and file abuelas and aunties forced to work them think.
Garrido is head of District Council 37, the largest public sector union in the city. He is vehemently, alomostly inexplicably, opposed to ending the 24-hour workday in New York City’s home care industry even though DC37 Local 389 represents a small fraction of New York City’s unionized home care workers.
Mother Jones, seen here marching with Colorado workers in 1913, is still speaking to workers today.
He’s alternatively argued that mandating split 12-hour shifts in New York City’s home care industry would jeopardize patient care and insisted that Local 389 members actually like working round-the-clock shifts at roughly half the pay.
In May, Garrido led an ugly demonstration outside the gates of City Hall denouncing the No More 24 bill that openly set unionized workers against each other in verbal clashes threatening to end in arrests.
“The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators,” Mother Jones observed before she passed in 1930. “The workers have now to fight not alone their exploiters but likewise their own leaders, who often betray them, who sell them out, who put their own advancement ahead of that of the working masses, who make of the rank and file political pawns.”
Mayor Mamdani still has yet to meet with with home care workers fighting to end round-the-clock shifts in New York City’s home care industry. He’s also still not met with New York City municipal retirees fighting for legislation protecting the traditional healthcare benefits they were promised from privatization.
New York City’s first-ever socialist mayor has met with a cadre of wealthy CEO’s he wants to serve on his new “Business Advisory Council,” however.
What exactly is up with that? What do you think—is Mother Jones spinning in her hallowed grave?