Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley (review)

Jeremy Brecher has spent much of the past 35 years documenting the rise and fall of the brass industry in the Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut. The Brass Workers History Project was initiated in the late 1970s, resulting in a popular history book and documentary film. It was an inspiring early example of community-university collaboration in the field of oral history. Now, in Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley, Brecher tells the story of the Naugatuck Valley’s energetic response to deindustrialization. In so doing, he shifts our attention from the profound loss experienced by displaced workers to local efforts to build democratic alternatives to the economic status quo. It is a movement history of the Naugatuck Valley Project (nvp), a coalition of community activists, churches and unions. The resulting storyline is both inspiring and deeply depressing.

Brecher, a longtime participant-observer in the nvp, wrote the book for both an academic and public audience. It was initially timed to coincide with the organization’s 25th anniversary. It is therefore a commemorative act that draws some critical lessons from the surge of economic activism in the 1980s and 1990s. There is much to celebrate here. Unlike other places experiencing deindustrialization, the Naugatuck Valley was the site of large-scale and sustained community mobilization. The political possibilities of “banding together” to buy out failing companies or starting up new cooperatives are evident in the interviews the author conducts with movement activists. As he states, they “sought ways to establish greater democratic control over the economic forces, institutions, and decisions that were devastating their communities, livelihoods, and ways of life.” (xiii) These interviews reveal political awakenings.

The nvp’s early success at Seymour Manufacturing, re-opened under an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, was widely heralded at the time. Its demise seven years later however raises troubling questions about the viability of the economic alternatives being presented. The nvp’s other buyout campaigns failed, as did a cooperative start-up. In fact, only the Brookside Housing Coop still exists today. As Brecher states, “[t]here was no resurrection in the Naugatuck Valley.” (203)

Banded Together left me with more questions than answers. If deindustrialization “liquidated not only factories and jobs; it liquidated a legacy of community building” (11), why then did we see large-scale and sustained community mobilization in the Naugatuck Valley? Why here and not elsewhere? Conversely, we hear that valley residents also voted out a liberal Democratic Party Congressman in favour of a conservative Republican. How do we reconcile these seemingly divergent politics? We are told of the “broad loss of confidence in Keynesian economic policies identified with liberals and the Democratic Party.” (12) Is this why labour and community activists turned to local forms of solidarity? Did this decision serve the Valley well? Sadly, Brecher largely fails to engage with the wider scholarship on deindustrialization. There is a larger story here; see for example Jeffrey Manuel’s fascinating 2009 thesis on the decline of “industrial liberalism” in Minnesota’s Iron Range.

That said, my main criticism of the book is that Brecher offers us only an inward-looking history of the nvp. We hear mainly from a handful of inspiring insiders such as organizer Ken Galdston, trained at Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. How did other residents view the nvp? The author’s source base, and his location as participant-observer, lead him to dismiss outside criticism. The failure at Century Brass, for example, is blamed on the narrow-mindedness of union leaders. But why did most union members vote against the nvp? Were there substantive fears over pension rights? How did they perceive the nvp? No dissenting or external voices are heard. These silences limit the author’s ability to bring a more critical eye to the work of the nvp. Basic assumptions are never questioned.

One of these assumptions is the value and effectiveness of nvp’s economic prescription. Are employee or community-led cooperatives viable alternatives? Brecher notes that there...