We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments First and foremost, I thank Keith and Shelley Thomas for opening their home and lives to me. Since this project began more than a decade ago, they have become family to me, my partner, and our daughter. I offer deepest thanks to all of the union activists in Wichita and the Puget Sound—Keith Thomas, Kelly Vandegrift, Gary Washington, Sean Mullin, Arlene Hoaglan, David “Bones” Smith, Don Grinde, Tom Finnegan, Stan Johnson, Tom Jackson, Rick Herrmann, William Sapiens, David Mascarenas, and David Clay—who spent time with and trusted me despite our ideological differences. I am moved by the extent to which Don Grinde shared his personal thoughts and rich union archives with me. David Clay has been a good sport about corresponding and talking by phone with me repeatedly over the years. I also appreciate all of the other people who consented to be heard in this book. I am incredibly grateful to Deepa Kumar, Peter Rachleff, and George Cheney for their work on labor, struggle, and democracy. They also were great readers of this manuscript. Their very thoughtful and helpful reviews were both rigorous and encouraging, helping to make it much stronger than it otherwise would have been. The standard-setting labor journalism of Socialistworker.org, especially that of Lee Sustar, was indispensible. I thank editor Laurie Matheson for giving this project a second look. Carol Burwash was an extremely humane and talented copy editor. (Thank you!) Jack Getman here in the School of Law at the University of Texas has been a great friend and inspiration. His many books, from ἀ e Betrayal of Local 14 to Restoring the Power of Unions, are necessary and inspiring reading. xvi . Acknowledgments My PhD student and teaching assistant Ashley Mack McCann lent me the benefits of her keen editorial eye and remarkable reference formatting skills. Ashley, I admire you as a scholar and a teacher. Thank you for your essential contributions to this project. I am also tremendously grateful for the unparalleled research assistance and support of Bryan McCann. This work has received material support from the University of Texas and the College of Communication at the University of Texas, in the forms of the John T. Jones Centennial Professorship Fellowship in summer 2005, the University of Texas College of Communication Fellowship in 2008, research assistance grants in 2001and 2010,a University of Texas Faculty Research Assignment in 2003–2004, and the Academic Excellence Fund grant from the College of Communication in 1999. The two semesters I spent as a Fellow of the University of Texas Humanities Institute in 2001and 2007 made for wonderful conversations about this work. I offer many thanks to Evan Carton, director of the Institute during those years, for advising me to let go of academic pretension and “just tell the story” (which he does beautifully in his own book on John Brown). I am grateful for the support and insight of my longtime friend Pat Robinson and my good friends and colleagues Karin Wilkins and Sonia Seeman. I thank my colleagues in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas for their support, especially Joshua Gunn, the most generous of all scholars and most loyal of all friends. I thank my friend and department chair, Barry Brummett, for standing over my shoulder until I hit the “send” button. As ever, I thank my beloved friend Rosa Eberly for her love and erudition, both of which have sustained me since the early days of this project. During the time I spent researching and writing this book, my daughter grew from a child of eight into a remarkable young woman, now in college. I’m proud of the book—but I’m prouder of her. Finally, I offer my most heartfelt gratitude and love to my spouse (and extraordinary scholar) Katie Feyh, who surprised me with an early return from a semester conducting research abroad, only to catch me unkempt in my pajamas, bleary-eyed, hair standing on end, with pages of interviews strewn about me as I typed. Thanks for loving the real me. We Are the Union ...