Literary Magazine

WORKERS’ WRITES: STORIES AND SONGS TO BENEFIT ILWU LOCAL 5

Support the union workers of Powell’s Books! This benefit event will feature readings from the latest issue of The Ne’er-Do-Well. You’ll hear true tales from the circus, the Outback Steakhouse, and a Minnesota dairy farm from contributors Gigi Little, Sheila Ashdown, and Megan Zabel. Readings will be followed by labor-inspired music from Michael Ford and Over Creston, two contributors to ILWU Local 5′s first CD compilation, The Little Red Album, Vol. 1, which features new music by Powell’s employees, with lyrics taken from the IWW’s Little Red Songbook.

The Ne’er-Do-Well: Working-Class Stories and The Little Red Album, Vol. 1 will be available for purchase at the event, or you can find ‘em right here in our shop. Sales will benefit Local 5′s strike fund.

Friday, March 18, 2011
7:00pm
Waypost Cafe
3120 N Williams Ave, Portland, Oregon

I recently made a list of all the jobs I’ve ever worked, and came to a grand tally of twenty-six. (And I’m only thirty-one years old.) I’ve run the gamut, from food service to professional garden-weeding to university-level teaching and more. And though this leaves with me a somewhat spotty résumé, I’ve also amassed quite a number of stories. None of which—until now, with my essay “Flair”—has made it onto the page. Not that my characters are unemployed; it’s just that their work has been given the same treatment as their bowel movements: you can presume that both exist, even if neither is dramatized.

Work can be drudgery, and most writers—most writers I know, anyway—view the minutes spent at work as metaphorical maggots, gobbling away at the soft flesh of their free time.

Why, then, would any of us want to write about it?

Here’s one good reason: it’s there, and since most of us have to spend 40+ hours a week doing it, we might as well get some good anecdotes out of the deal. Your job might seem as boring as a rock, but lift up that rock and the soil beneath is probably teeming with the stuff of stories: characters, tension, desire, obstacles, and more. Stuff that is, on the very face of it, most definitely worth writing about.

Here’s another good reason: we’re there, the human beings who work the cash registers or program the websites or whatever it is we do to earn our paychecks, and it’s only natural to want to see ourselves represented in stories. If work is rendered invisible in literature, so too are the workers. The fact that it exists as part of our lives and our identities means that it’s worthy of being represented on paper in all of its banality and glory and absurdity.

And as a bonus, profits from the sale of this issue will be donated to the ILWU Local 5, which is is the branch of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union that I belong to as an employee at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. Ten years ago, booksellers at Powell’s formed a union and fought hard for higher wages, affordable healthcare, and better working conditions. I’ve only worked for Powell’s for three years, but I’m sure grateful to be reaping the hard-won benefits.

–Sheila

Finally! THE NE’ER-DO-WELL has conquered its crippling social phobias and is ready to meet you!

Join us this Friday, August 27th, at the Rock Out to Walk Out, a night of stories and music and beer to benefit ILWU Local 5 – that’s the branch of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union whose members are workers at Powell’s Books and Aramark. With the next round of contract negotiations coming up in 2011, the goal of the benefit is to raise money for the Local’s strike fund, which ensures that workers aren’t left destitute should a strike occur.

This night also celebrates the release of two fantastic projects:

THE NE’ER-DO-WELL presents a special issue of working-class stories that cast a fresh light on the absurdity, banality, and redemption of contemporary wage-slavery, and includes brand-new stories and essays from favorite local authors, including Willy Vlautin (Lean on Pete), Kevin Sampsell (A Common Pornography), Suzanne Burns (Misfits and Other Heroes), Gigi Little (Portland Noir), Chris A. Bolton (Smash!), and others.

L5Artworks presents the first volume of THE LITTLE RED ALBUM, a CD compilation of classic union protest-songs that have been given a modern makeover (which, since this is Portland, means they’re all wearing moustaches).

The CD and lit mag will both be on sale at the event — and all proceeds will go straight to the strike fund!

Here’s the deets:

What: ILWU Local 5’s Rock Out to Walk Out

Where: The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel (SW 10th and Stark, downtown Portland, Oregon)

When: Friday, August 27, 2010, 5pm-2am

Entertainment: Happy hour from 5 to 7pm, with music from the Bop Out to Walk Out jazz quartet and readings from THE NE’ER-DO-WELL (Kevin Sampsell, Sheila Ashdown, and Suzanne Burns). From 7pm to 2am, live music from General Strike, Nate Ashley and the Landlines, ¡Ay, Claudia!, Michael Ford, The Middle Ages, Shaky Hands, and DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid.

Admission: Sliding scale, $5-to-$5 billion

Travel back with me to 1995… I’m a sophomore in high school. Likes include: hanging out with friends, eating soft pretzels and Hawaiian punch, and listening to the Violent Femmes while writing angry screeds in my journal. Dislikes include: the fact that I’m, like, related to my parents and four sisters. And church.

Now come with me to St. Rita’s annual youth group retreat, held at a camp in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. I’m here because the only way my parents would let me attend public school — as opposed to Catholic school — was if I agreed to regularly attend Youth Group. So I did. I actually kind of liked Youth Group. It wasn’t overly religious most of the time, and it leveled the social playing field; it was so unabashedly dorky that the usual rules of coolness simply did not apply. So me and my funny, goofball friends could express our innate coolness without worrying that some jock was going to pop out from around a corner and pants one of us.

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THE NE’ER-DO-WELL is proud to present a second showcase of literary rocket science. Come revel in the work of contributors Lacey Jane Henson, Stephen D. Kelly, Eve Rosenbaum, Kara Weiss, Dan Moreau, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Maggie Morgan, and Jonathan David Hanh Vu Hill (cover art).

Issue #2 features hot pants, butterscotch turds, truck stops, rainbows, roller blades, an unquenchable fire, a nagging sense of failure, guilt by association, secret love, and a smidge of redemption. (Visit our shop to purchase.)

(click image to enlarge)

EL NINO WALKED INTO A POSTER
This two-color, limited-edition poster features the full text of Ryan Davidson’s “El Niño Walks Into a Bar” and a custom illustration by artist Keith Rosson. Signed, numbered, the whole shebang. Perfect for covering up a medium-sized hole in any wall in your home or business. (11”x17”) (Visit our shop to purchase.)

Here’s what Ryan Davidson, author of “El Niño Walks Into a Bar,” has to say about it:

I am amazed that this poster is a thing that exists. I often complain that visual artists and musicians are lucky because their work has an immediacy. A song or a painting can just grab you as you are passing by, but we writers kind of get effed because our work is always hidden away inside a book, and somebody has to sit down, open it, get comfortable, and then actively engage the words on the page before he can get anything out of it.

With this poster it’s like I get to cheat the rules. My writing is all up in people’s faces!