Stewart Acuff oral history interview, 1995-08-29

CHRIS LUTZ: Acuff, August, 1995, Atlanta, Georgia. This is Chris Lutz interviewing Stewart Acuff, August, 1995, in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Acuff, where were you born?

STEWART ACUFF: I was born in, uh, Trezevant, Tennessee, because that was the closest hospital and my parents lived in Bradford, Tennessee, in in Carroll County, which is in West Tennessee, um, December 17, 1954.

LUTZ: Okay. Um, where did, where did you go to school?

ACUFF: Um, [Telephone ringing], I, um, went to kindergarten and began first grade in Millington, Tennessee, which is, uh, thirty, forty miles north of -- thirty miles north of Memphis, right on Highway 51, close to the Mississippi River. My dad was trying to go to seminary in New Orleans and to commute from 00:01:00Millington to New Orleans. He gave that up; and then he entered seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. So I went from first grade--First grade, second grade, and third grade, uh, in Louisville, Kentucky. And then we moved back to West Tennessee, Obion County, a little town named Obion, um, and I went there fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh grade. And then we moved -- somewhere after seventh grade, we moved across the river into the boothill of Missouri, a little town called Malden in, um, Dunklin County. And, uh, I went there s-, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade. And 00:02:00then we moved, during my junior year in high school, we moved up to the middle part of the state to a little town called Centralia. And I went to Centralia my junior year and senior year. The next year after I graduated, I went--began college in a little Baptist College outside of Kansas City called William Jewel College in Liberty, Missouri, um, about thirty miles from Kansas City. I went there for a year and a half. Second semester of my sophomore year, they had a program where they sent a small number of students every year to England, um, to a private study center over there. And I got to go there for the second semester of my sophomore year. And I came back, and, uh, transferred to the University of Missouri, where I graduated in 1977, the University of Missouri in Columbia.

LUTZ: Um, so, wh-, where is the first place that you ever settled down?

ACUFF: Atlanta.

LUTZ: Oh, right [laughter]. How long have you been here?

ACUFF: I came here in 1985. I've been here ten years--this month--August.

LUTZ: Well, congratulations. [laughter]

ACUFF: Just about this time, ten years ago, I moved to Atlanta.

LUTZ: Were you a typical preacher's kid?

ACUFF: Um-hm.

LUTZ: Yeah?

ACUFF: I think I was pretty typical. I was, um, -- um, I think preacher's kids -- We-- We are more -- Generally, we are more -- You learned different--You had 00:04:00different experiences than other kids. Um. You learn and you see more different people and new people than most small town kids, 'cause you move a lot. And, then, you are--So you learn to meet people, probably more than most kids, a little more--You are exposed to books more than most kids because, you know, your father makes his living, um, uh, in part, by reading and studying and preaching, so, uh, probably a a little more apt to develop a facility with the language [telephone ringing], and, then, my mother was a school teacher, so I was expected to work hard in school. Um, I-

LUTZ: Well, the classic preacher's kid is also a troublemaker.

ACUFF: Ah, yeah--[interruption on speakerphone]. I, you know, I was pretty religious when I was growing up and still am. Uh. Had my first recognizable personal experience, religious experience, when I was six. Um--and so I wasn't 00:06:00probably ornery like the, uh, the, uh, stereotype, so, uh, I didn't, you know, carouse and, uh, all that stuff like like people sometimes think of as preacher's kids, uh, doing. I raised some Cain in high school, um, but I wasn't--You wouldn't have called me 'wild.'

LUTZ: When did you first start working?

ACUFF: Uh, well, it depends on what you define as working.

LUTZ: Full time work.

ACUFF: When I was in the second grade, I started earning nickels by taking people's trash out to the Dempsey Dumpster in the apartment complex we lived in.

LUTZ: Hmmm

ACUFF: My first eight hour a day job was working for farmers, I think, when I 00:07:00was eleven. Um, uh, I drove a tractor for a hay crew when I was eleven. I helped lay irrigation pipe. Irrigation pipe is made of aluminum, so it's light. And I helped lay irrigation pipe in the summertime probably when I was thirteen, fourteen, maybe. Um, when I – was, uh -- I mowed yards, that that wasn't an eight hour a day job, but I mowed yards starting when I was ten or eleven. I 00:08:00picked peaches for one week, when I was probably fourteen or fifteen. And I cleaned out stables for a guy and helped him around his farm one spring. His name was Sodie Hampton, I'll never forget it. He was the first guy who gave me a lecture on not being exploited. He was a, uh, Sodie Hampton was his name. This was in Malden, Missouri, and he had a little--He was a kind of a small town entrepreneur, had a little insurance business, and had a little real estate business, and had a little farm, but he mainly lost money on the farm. And he had, he loved horses, and he had some horses. And one spring, I helped the 00:09:00carpenter fix up his barn and wire it, and then I cleaned the stables. They hadn't been cleaned out in years, and he said, uh, --I'll never forget it--I had just turned sixteen. It was the spring of my sixteenth year because I remember that because I was just old enough to drive his pickup truck. And, uh, he said, "Now, Stewart, you are too good a hand to ever work for less than a dollar and a half an hour, so never--From now on, never accept less than a dollar and a half an hour." And that would have been Spring of '70--Spring of 1970 or '71. And that spring I went to work at a Baptist Church Camp, and I worked at that church 00:10:00camp that summer and then the following two summers.

LUTZ: This is an unusual route for somebody in labor to take. When did you first get involved in the labor movement?

ACUFF: Well, I don't--I'm not—I guess I'll tell you about getting involved in the labor movement, I'm not sure how unusual it is a route. Um, uh, there have always been, um, a number of people in the labor movement, particularly those who came in through organizing, who were college educated, if that's what you mean by unusual.

LUTZ: Well, actually, I meant the connection to the Baptist. [laughter]

ACUFF: Oh, right, right, well the Baptist, yeah. Uh.

LUTZ: But maybe that's not unusual either. [laughter]

ACUFF: Right. It's not really. I could talk all afternoon about Baptist 00:11:00theology, but, the Baptist theology I grew up with--And my father was not a liberal by any stretch. He was a traditionalist within the Southern Baptist Church. But a traditionalist within the Southern Baptist Church is much different from the right wing bunch that have taken over now. Original Baptist theology and doctrine called for a concept called 'the priesthood of the believer and the democracy of the church.' And the 'priesthood of the believer' means that you have a direct relationship with God through Jesus and that, uh, how you live your life depends on divine inspiration and your study of the Bible. And it is much more liberating than the kind of stuff that the Charles 00:12:00Stanleys of the world put out. Um, and, you know, uh [telephone ringing]—the National Baptists and Progressive Baptists, essentially Black Baptists, have essentially the same theology, and that's a much more liberated church. In fact, that's [Electronic speaker interruption.]

[Interruption]

ACUFF: Okay [telephone ringing] Jesus. Go ahead.

LUTZ: May, [laughter] um um, maybe a better question for me to have asked is how did your Baptist upbringing and education, uh [inaudible].

ACUFF: Well, um, yeah yeah, I, um, -- Where do you start? Um. I went to work as an organizer when I graduated from college in an organization called "ACORN [Association of Community Organizing for Reform Now]." And I did community organizing for five years. And I got into the labor movement as an organizer from there. I started in, uh, in the labor movement directly and as an organizer on the Bever-- Services Employees Union campaign to organize the largest chain of nursing homes in the country called Beverly Enterprises. People on both sides of my family went north after World War II to work. On my mother's side of the family, they went to, to, uh, Lansing and Flint, Michigan, 00:14:00and worked in the auto plants. On my daddy's side of the family, they went to St. Louis, and my my daddy's daddy became a steelworker and went to work with the American Can Company in St. Louis. And my grandmother went to work--She was a a clerk at the big Woolworths on Grand Avenue in St. Louis. She was a member of the Retail Clerks Union. My aunts and uncles went to work for Brown Shoe Company, which was unionized as well. I think the Bible and the Judeo-Christian 00:15:00tradition and Judeo-Christian theology is filled with the message of love and compassion but also the message of of struggle against oppression. That is the message of, in the Old Testament, in my view, Isaiah and Jeremiah, expressed by the angry prophets. Um. In the New Testament, that is the gospel. I mean, that is--You know, I think nothing is more central to the gospel than, um, you 00:16:00know 'that which you have done to the least of these, you have done also to me,' and the Sermon on the Mount. If you think you ought to try to live that way, in this world, you've got to wonder about, you know, if you just kind of go through the motions, or are you really trying to live that way, or should you try to express that in a more systematic complete way. And I told you I could ramble.

LUTZ: Actually, you reminded me of my own background which is Catholic, but--[laughter]

ACUFF: Yeah, okay--Catholic Worker movements, a great example of what I am trying to express. [Loud traffic-like noise in background.] And -- so - I 00:17:00think it's those traditions, that theology, that made me not want to accept the way things were and to try to do something about it, and and and some some Christians are uncomfortable -- I don't want to sound pious here at all, but some people who come out of that tradition or that faith are uncomfortable with the anger expressed in the kind of work that I often did or have done or am doing now. And and and, um, you know, it was Christ who kicked over the tables of the moneychangers in the temples and, you know, just actually had a fit and physically threw them out of the temple. So, um, and it was Jeremiah and Isaiah 00:18:00who actually, uh, raged against injustice and oppression. And so, you know, I think actually there is a direct line, um, from that tradition and that theology to organizing and to the labor movement. And that line has been followed by hundreds or thousands of activists and leaders. The labor movement is full, full of leaders who are very religious. Uh, both Tom Donahue and John Sweeney who are running against one another now are both very religious Irish Catholics, um, and who come directly out of that kind of tradition. Uh, certainly, Cesar 00:19:00Chavez's whole life was around that. And, um, Dr. King, um, and the whole Southern Civil Rights Movement and—So, um, and in a slightly different twist, you know, um, so was Clarence Jordan and the whole Koinonia ex, um, experiment, which, you know, eventually led to Habitat for Humanity. Um, so, yeah, I mean--I think it's a natural flow.

LUTZ: Let me ask you about something else that was an influence—[laughter] whether we liked it or not--[Electronic buzzing in background].

ACUFF: Okay.

LUTZ: In your later high school years, college, and probably as you were 00:20:00starting ACORN, there was a huge amount of social upheaval going on in the country. Were you affected by any part of that particularly?

ACUFF: I was, um, very affected by the civil rights movement, very affected by the civil rights movement—um, profoundly affected by the civil rights movement.

LUTZ: What aspect of it?

ACUFF: All of it. I was never active in it because I was too young, and I lived in small towns, so I wasn't active in the civil rights movement. But, but it was a--Race is an inescapable part—was, and I think still is--an inescapable part of small town Southern life. Surrounded constantly by the question of 00:21:00race. And for those chains to be broken in as dramatic a fashion as they were broken, um, the change was something that was so pervasive, it, uh, couldn't help but affect you very much. So, I think probably the s- if I had a s- name a thing that most affected me, it was -- the first thing that probably most affected me was coming to grips with the humanity of African-American people 00:22:00because once you confront that, and come to grips with it, then you have to, that has to change your mind.

LUTZ: And how did that happen? [Telephone ringing.]

ACUFF: It's not how it happened, it's why it doesn't happen to more people.

LUTZ [laughter]

ACUFF: I mean, you know, it's almost like --[Interruption by speakerphone] Yeah, Jane?

LUTZ: What about the other movements that were going on at that time--Women, Viet Nam, [laughter]

ACUFF: The women's movement

LUTZ: The students. [laughter]

ACUFF: The women's movement does not--I wasn't aware of the women's movement until my senior year in high school. Coming to grips with the civil rights 00:23:00movement happened when I was twelve or thirteen. Um. Actually, I would commend, um, uh, two books. Um, one is To Kill a Mockingbird, and the other is Black Like Me. Um, very, I think, important books for like--white teenagers. Then, um, 00:24:00the other movement, [pause] I think, [pause] you know, Viet Nam just forced doubt on a whole lot of people--forced doubt on a whole lot of young people. One of the, I think one of the things that Viet Nam did was made you wonder how much you could trust and made you think that it was important for you to know and understand and learn that some people might be doing things on your behalf that weren't right. And, um, and, uh, I think Viet Nam had that kind of an effect on people. Uh, I think the student movement, to its credit, encouraged 00:25:00students to think that they had some responsibility for their world and to the rest of the world, and so the student movement sort of made you think there was a reason to read and think and get your stuff out and figure out a way to do something about things.

LUTZ: What brought you into ACORN?

ACUFF: I think what brought me into ACORN was, um,--I think, you know, what brought me into ACORN was, uh, was, uh--It's hard to talk about this because 00:26:00it's so hard -- to misunderstand it--I think what brought me into ACORN was, you wanted to try to do something about what you thought was wrong, and that seemed an opportunity in a way that made sense--organizing people to do something about their lives themselves, individually and collectively, made a lot of sense. I would argue today that that is what liberation is. And, um, that that is as important as anything, you know, if somebody wants to do something about what's 00:27:00wrong in the world. Uh, I think also, to be honest with you, ACORN and other community organizations at the time gave you a way to do something about what pissed you off. All the things that made you mad. [Tape skips.] When I went to work for ACORN, I didn't necessarily intend to do it for a long time. You go to work as an organizer, but you don't become an organizer. If you stay with it long enough, you become an organizer. That's how you define yourself. That's what you do that matters to you, and so when that happens, you stay and do organizing kind of work. So I had pretty much defined myself as an organizer [Tape is skipping.]

LUTZ: You did that at SEIU, too?

ACUFF: Um. [pause] Um, Beverly Enterprises had become the largest chain of nursing homes in the country. SEIU had contracts in a number of Beverly Homes in the north, the midwest, and the east and west coast. And they started trying to bust the union. This was in '80 or '81. And SEIU and the United Food and Commercial Workers got together--This is early in Sweeney's presidency of the SEIU--and decided to do a national organizing campaign, partly to protect the contract that they already had and to get the company off the backs of those 00:29:00workers in those local unions--partly because the nursing home workers needed to be organized as much as anybody in the world. And I got hired to, um, to do the Beverly campaign in Texas. And I moved to Houston in the fall of, um, 1982; and, uh, we spent the first year doing research, leafletting, building contacts. Um, started organizing in '83, and over the next two years organized, I think, twelve nursing homes, lost one election. At that time, I did some travel for the International, and, um, um, 1985, in January, I did--There are lot of 00:30:00stories here. This, this is kind of a funny story, I think. I'd been with the International for three years. It was New Year's Day of, uh, '85, 3:00 o'clock in the after- Is it off?

LUTZ: Oh, no, keep going.

ACUFF 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, um, on New Year's Day, the phone rang. And my wife and I were unpacking the car from Christmas holiday, and it was my boss. His name was Jerry Shea. He is now Executive Assistant to Tom Donahue. At the time, he was health care director for SEIU, wonderful man, best boss I ever had. 00:31:00I said, "Jerry, Damn, Man--It's New Year's Day. What the hell are you doing calling me?" He said, "Well, we are trying to get a few things done." I said, uh, "Okay." He said, uh, and he used to call me and ask me to do like a week here or two weeks here to help somebody finish up an organizing campaign. [inaudible]. He said, "Have you ever been to San Francisco?" I said, "No." He said, "Would you like to go?" I said, "Yeah, I'd like to go." He said, "Well, um, we need you to go out there." I am thinking a week, two weeks in San Francisco. The last week or two of an organizing campaign are very hard, very intense, but still it was an opportunity to go to San Francisco, so that's what I thought it was. I said, "For how long--a couple of weeks?" He said, "We are thinking more like a couple of months." I said, "Well, I need to ask my wife about it." I think this was a Wednesday. And he said, "Well, hurry up because 00:32:00we need you out there on Friday." [laughter] And I went, and I spent four months as the Interim Organizing Director for our Local 250, which was the [tape skips]. But we organized--When I was in Texas, we organized all over east Texas--rural east Texas. My first union election that was all mine was in a little place called Halston, Texas—uh, wonderful committee. We organized--I wasn't personally responsible for all of it, but I was coordinator. We organized two homes in Beaumont; two homes in Liberty, Texas; one in Bryan; one 00:33:00in Hearne; Nacogdoches. Um, Nacogdoches, I got the most creative death threat I've ever gotten. Um. The, uh, Klan -- The Klan was real active. They didn't identify themselves, but I always assumed it was the Klan--called me up and threatened 'to cut me from asshole to appetite'--called me one Friday night, and they called me the next morning, the next Saturday morning. They woke me up, in fact. We won that election. I believe it was 38 to 1. One person voted against the union. It was very threatening because it was predominately black women, 00:34:00and it--You know, the union in a small Southern town introduces a new force in the body politic of society, you know the whole Southern fabric of the small Southern town, so it can be very threatening. [Loud outside sounds-traffic.]

LUTZ: Where did you go after San Francisco?

ACUFF: Yeah, I came back to Houston, and we had a large --SEIU had a large, independent nursing home in Beaumont that wasn't affiliated with Beverly, that went on strike that June, and they asked me to go work on that strike. And I spent the summer working on that strike. Um, That was a wonderful and hellacious experience all at the same time, a wonderful group of women--95% women--160 people worked there. I think we took 155 out and kept 150 out, but 00:35:00they scabbed us. It was a nursing home so it was 24 hour picket lines, so I didn't sleep much that summer. I would spend the night on the picket line because a man needed to be on the picket line in case somebody just had to fight--you know, in case like a husband or -- there had to be a man there, to do that.

LUTZ: That was you, huh? Leadership carries a few perks [laughter].

ACUFF: Right, right. So, you know, you would work all day, and you'd be on the picket line all night. And I would go like four days sleeping two to five hours a day. Then I would get a lot of sleep on the third or fourth day. I did that 00:36:00most of the summer. I left to get married in July--end of July -- and took a week off. And when I got back, one of the strikers was in the hospital, she had been beaten up by, um, the uh boyfriend or the husband of one of the scabs, so I went to see her. It, it, uh, every time I tell this story, it makes me cry today. I walked into the hospital room, and she opened her arms, and said, "Oh, Stewart." I went over and hugged her, and she was beaten badly enough to be in the hospital. She had been in for several days. She said, "I know if you'd been here, this wouldn't have happened." And [laughter] and, it, uh, -- it, uh 00:37:00makes me feel bad to this day.

LUTZ: It's pretty gut wrenching. On the other hand, it would've been you in the hospital. [laughter] It would have happened--just to a different person. So.

ACUFF: Ah--But, anyway, Beaumont, Texas. Was a, is a, um, it's an interesting town. It's very hot and very humid and, uh, you know, they have mosquitoes in Beaumont that are as big as, uh, Japanese cars, uh, and we used [laughter] we used to use "Deep Woods Off" at nighttime on the picket line, and you would literally have to spray yourself five times a night because it was so hot that 00:38:00even just sitting out on the picket line at night with the sun down you would sweat the "Off" off; you would spray yourself again, you would sweat it off. And you would have to spray yourself five times a night. It's a wonder we didn't poison ourselves with "Deep Woods Off."

LUTZ: [Laughing] [Inaudible]

ACUFF: Right, right. [laughter] And, uh, so, uh, in the, towards the end of the summer, they had affiliated the Georgia State Employees Association, uh, which was an independent association of state employees from Georgia, in May. And, um, they needed somebody to make it into a union. And towards the end of the summer, they asked me if I would interview as their candidate, as the International's candidate, for Executive Director. Part of the deal was that 00:39:00the International would supply them with an Executive Director as part of their affiliation of the union. And I came to Georgia in July, and we held the interview in the old American Hotel, a great hotel--I can't even recall this--[tape skips]--Left--Worked all night on Saturday night on the picket line--We had a staff meeting Sunday morning at ten. I went to bed at six when the sun came up, and I slept until nine, and I got up and I went to the staff meeting. The staff meeting ended--This was in Beaumont--It ended at noon, and I went over and had dinner with one of my best friends, guy named Bill Sand, who worked for the AFL-CIO, still does. I had dinner at his house, and I got in my 00:40:00car about two o'clock, drove to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and spent the night and then drove into Atlanta Monday morning for my first day as the new Executive Director of the Georgia State Employees Union.

LUTZ: When you, ah, well, what happened when you got here? How did it go?

ACUFF: Oh, God.

LUTZ: Did they welcome you?

ACUFF: Yeah, there was a real, smart, visionary woman who was holding the organization together named Holly Steinbecker, who was a retired secretary from Gracewood Hospital in Augusta, and she was real tough, real tough. And, um, 00:41:00there was an issue of overtime compensation, um, that was hot for state employees right then, and that was our first campaign--to get people paid for the overtime that they worked. That ended up being a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court, um, and the the first round, sort of out of the box, was traveling the state putting together that campaign and organizing them around that campaign, or around that issue. Then I started organizing a mental retardation facility by myself while trying to run this other thing, in north Atlanta—um, what was it called? Georgia Retardation Center. It's now got a different time, but at the time, it was Georgia Retardation Center. And in October, we had our founding convention in Milledgeville at the Terrace Inn. The 00:42:00Secretary-Treasurer Dick Courdes of the International came down, Vice President Bill Stodghill of the International came down and spoke and presented us with our, our, uh, charter. About two hundred people drifted in and out in the course of the day. And, um, and then we started organizing for the legislative session which began in January and for November and December, we drafted legislation and organized the grass roots lobbying effort for the legislative 00:43:00sessions. And that was when I got to know--first got to know Culver Kidd, and our first issues were collective bargaining--and, I think, a bill on sick leave, and Tyrone Brooks carried those first two bills for us. We made a splash. We had a good lobby day--a couple of hundred people that first year--got some attention--brought some state employees up around the state. I don't know if you want--I mean, I can talk for the rest of the week about the history of Georgia State Employees.

LUTZ: [Laughter.] I don't want you to talk for the rest of the week, but I want to hear some details, so go ahead!

ACUFF: In the course, right about then, I hired the first two organizers--a 00:44:00woman named Jean Davis who now is with the AFL-CIO, and a guy named Lou Sartor, who I had known from ACORN, who is now a schoolteacher.

LUTZ: S-a-r-t-o-r?

ACUFF: Yeah. And they moved to Milledgeville after the session, and we started organizing [cough] Central State Hospital. They both moved into rental trailers down there, and I spent my life returning phone calls here, hopscotching embryonic chapters around the state--which was really only Augusta and Rome and then the Retardation Center here, but we hadn't gotten much going in other places, although there were members scattered all over the state, who had been members of the association--and as much time as I could in Milledgeville. And 00:45:00we signed up, I think a thousand people between April and June and, um ---

LUTZ: What kind of people?

ACUFF: They were, they were hospital workers--Central State Hospital Workers--

LUTZ: Men, women, black--white--

ACUFF: They were black and white -- more black than white -- men and women-- more women than men, because that's what hospital workers are. But it was remarkable because we had no right to bargain, no process for recognition, no meet and confer, no dues checkoff. People were essentially signing up either for the right to struggle, the right to fight collectively, or for hope. And it was really a remarkable organizing effort. We met in the old courthouse in 00:46:00Milledgeville, in the main courtroom there, and we would have these wonderful meetings every week. I think it changed the town. I think, in the course of time, that union changed that whole area, but that summer changed the town pretty dramatically. We called a news conference in front of the hospital

ACUFF: Then, two weeks later, we put together a list of demands, and we attempted to march to the Superintendent's office and demand recognition and demand action on our grievances, on our demands. I'll never forget it as long as I live. I was staying in a hotel or a motel in town called the 'Eight Days Inn' 00:47:00-- or the "Eight Inn" -- the letters switched from the regular Day's Inn. And the phone rang at about eleven o'clock, and it was the president of the chapter, who was a semi-professional at the hospital. And the Superintendent of the hospital had just called him and said, 'Norris, I know about the march, and you'd better not march tomorrow because we are going to be ready, and they're not going to let people on the grounds, and people are going to be arrested.' And Miller said, 'Stewart--' I don't remember exactly what he said, and it was a private conversation anyway. And I can remember [tape skips] the Central State Police Force--They had their own police force. They were actually sworn police officers. And I called him, and he said, 'Yep.' He said they had called in every jurisdiction in the area, and they are waiting, and they are ready for trouble. 00:48:00And I called the woman, a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful woman who will never get her just due on this earth, named Gertrude Lee. She was a professional at the hospital. She is still a member of the union, although she is not as active as she used to be because she is a professional. I think now she is even--[Inaudible--tape is skipping] I said, "This is what they are going to do. I'm convinced that they mean business." [Tape skipping.] We met that morning. I think the paper said there were eighty of us. There was somewhere between 80 and 100 of us. One of them was a male nurse, who was a city councilman named George Freeman

LUTZ [laughter]

ACUFF He was close to retirement. He was a member of the city council. He was 00:49:00a wonderful man. And we began the march from about two blocks away. There was an abandoned state patrol office there on Swint Avenue. And we parked there and massed there and marched towards the hospital. And when we got close to the hospital, five police cars rolled down from the administration building. The administration building sits way back off the road. It's a long drive. And they rolled down the drive, and there was lots of press. And there are actually very good clippings of this in the Milledgeville and Macon papers. I don't have them anymore, but they still have clips. [sighs] And, um the cars had a number of police officers and an attorney. I think she was in a wheelchair, as a matter of fact. She had hurt her leg. And, um, the police stopped us, and she 00:50:00read a statement: 'Those, um--If you come on the grounds, you will be trespassing. Those who are employed here will be detained subject to termination. Those who are not employed here will be arrested for criminal trespassing.' We knelt in the middle of the road, prayed; and then we couldn't just turn around, right? Because then people's spirits would have been broken. But you couldn't--Everybody couldn't go because that was your leadership, and if everybody went, they would have broken the union right there. So I went by myself, and, um, I walked up to the police officer. He was an Inspector. I remember his title. And I said, "I am going to go give this list 00:51:00of grievances to Superintendent Kurtz." And I started to walk past him. And he said, "You are under arrest." And the people went apeshit. I mean, people just "Ahhhhhhh"--It was a very emotional, very powerful, very intense moment and very dramatic. And, um, that was the first time I was arrested. And they took me up to the police station in the hospital and fingerprinted me and booked me. And then they took me to the county jail and put me in a cell with a young man who was in, for, I think DUI and, uh, we sat in there and talked until my attorney 00:52:00got there, excuse me--[Pause] And, uh, and uh, They let me see him. They took me out of the cell and put me in an interview room, and he said, 'You know, we are trying to get ahold of the sheriff.' And then his partner came. Chris was black. [inaudible] He was. Chris was white. His partner came, who was black--I can't believe I'm blanking on his partner.

LUTZ: It'll come to you.

ACUFF: Right. And his partner said, "I'm going to go find the judge." So he went--And about that time, I heard all of this commotion. Well, the crowd had just come to the jail, so everybody who had been on the march was now in the 00:53:00lobby of the jail or outside the jail raising hell about getting me out. [both laugh] And, um, after a half hour or so, we, uh -- I wouldn't want this reported until they are dead, but the attorney came back, and he goes—Ah, They got me out of the cell again. And he goes, "I've got the order to release you. I went down to Judge Gumby. Judge Gumby said, 'Oh, hell yes, get that son of a bitch out of our jail. Culver Kidd will have my ass.'

LUTZ: [Laughing.]

ACUFF: I'll never forget that as long as I live. They found the sheriff at a 00:54:00barbecue joint. And I learned two very important lessons that day. We learned something about making lemonade out of lemons--something about what Alinsky used to call political jujitsu--something about turning their power into an advantage for us. I learned very dramatically in a way that I will, will never leave me about never risking the whole organization or the whole institution, never putting yourself in a position where they can beat you--never risking the whole thing, taking up to the edge and backing off--sort of duck their best punch, taking shots--but that whole notion of bending without breaking. Had we taken that whole crowd across there, they would have fired all our leadership, and 00:55:00that union would have died aborning. Um. And then we began the long, hard process of organizing in this hostile environment with no immediate [cough] chance of [cough] no immediate chance of, um, relief. No immediate prospect of relief, I guess I want to say. [cough] And learning how--about minority unions, and I don't mean black unions, I mean unions where you don't have a majority of the workforce -- And how to operate in that environment. Um.

LUTZ: Isn't it a very common thing in Georgia?

ACUFF: Well, in the context that I use it in, no, no. You know, in the context 00:56:00of a contract, there's no reason for people not to be in the union, other than they just don't believe in it

LUTZ: To pay the dues--

ACUFF: Or they don't want to pay dues. Right, right. But in this context where because of the lulls and because of political environment, you know, the reason not to belong to the union is because you could be fired for it or you could--You are actually risking your career to belong to it, it means a different thing. So we began the long process of figuring out how to make politics work for the union, how to use politics, and how to find every lever of power possible to move our agenda and to represent our membership.

LUTZ: What were some of the things you did?

ACUFF: Well, we essentially had four areas that -- four levers: Political action; legislative action; legal action; and direct action.

LUTZ: Okay.

ACUFF: And so direct action was demonstrations: office takeovers, which we did almost regularly over the years from [sigh] '86 to '91. We'd bring fifty or a hundred people from whatever department or whatever work site to some bureaucrat's office in Atlanta, and we'd march in and demand a meeting and say, 'We ain't leaving until we get a meeting.' [tape skips] That did a number of things for us. It put pressure on the bureaucrats to change their practices. It intimidated the bureaucrats. And when nothing bad happened to people, it 00:58:00emboldened the members, the activists. And it empowered the activists. I hate it that they've started to use that word 'empowerment' [inaudible] --But we said, 'You know, you can do something about your situation. You can fight back. You can struggle. This is a vehicle for doing that.' And I really think direct action was very important for the early history of the Georgia State Employees Union, non-violent direct action, civil disobedience. I was arrested two more times in those years: one for picketing the Superintendent, the home of the superintendent of the hospital in Augusta and once for criminal trespass during an office takeover [tape skips.]

LUTZ: [inaudible]

ACUFF: For me, personally?

LUTZ: What about politically?

ACUFF: What about it?

LUTZ: The four areas.

ACUFF: We found out that in rural Georgia, it is very unorganized, right? And that you could have, with organization, even if the number of members were small, good organization and a few resources, you could have a disproportionate effect on politics. So we -- That first year we were involved in a few elections. That was '86--a handful. In '88, we got heavily involved in a bunch of elections--Charles Walker, Tom Allgood, George Brown in Augusta. Culver Kidd 01:00:00in Milledgeville. Bobby Parham in Milledgeville. Um. [Tape continues to skip.] Phillip [inaudible] One of the most important summers in my life--

LUTZ: 1990--

ACUFF: We endorsed Andy Young for Governor; Joe Kennedy for Lieutenant Governor; Al Scott for Public Service Commissioner; Tim Ryles for Insurance Commissioner, and, you know, a list of people for the Senate and the House.

LUTZ: "We" is the Georgia State Employees Union--

ACUFF: The Georgia State Employees Union-. This is all in the primary. And we, 01:01:00uh, pretty much turned the organization over to that effort. We, um, -- That was my first real experience with Andy, because my first real exp- 'cause I had been working across the state. I maintained a home here in Atlanta, but I didn't have time to think about Atlanta politics, you know. I didn't know the Andy Young crowd except Jan Goren and people closest to him, and that summer I got to know Shirley Franklin. That relationship I developed with her that summer has paid great dividends for us in the Olympics stuff. She was one of 01:02:00the big deal people in the Olympics stuff. Actually, the day that Charlie Key negotiated the contract, the agreement for construction of the stadium, with Larry Gellerstedt of Beers Construction, they were negotiating right across the hall in there with Charlie and the other business members from the building company. But Shirley and I maintained telephone contact all day to make sure, to try to make sure that the contract got done -- or the agreement got done -- Anyway, that was years later. Shirley and I are friends now, and I'm able to get a lot of stuff done at the Olympic Committee, in, in part, because the relationship that started the summer that Andy ran for Governor. The Atlanta 01:03:00Constitution wrote, Benny [inaudible] wrote that Andy Young's field operation outside Atlanta was the State Employees' Union. And we worked very hard on his campaign. Andy didn't believe in yard signs, so we made up a yard sign that said, this 'Another working family for Young for Governor; Kennedy for Lieutenant Governor.' And at the bottom it said, 'Georgia State Employees Union, Local 1985." We put up those signs all over the state of Georgia. We had a rally one day in Hancock County, Sparta, Georgia. And I think Andy was speaking at it--It was a Saturday. I think Andy was speaking at the commencement--maybe for the college--Georgia College of Milledgeville. And the 01:04:00rally got active in Sparta. And we and the black county government, essentially, Sparta organized the rally--We had a big barbecue and had all this turnout. We had the whole staff down there, and we lined the highway from Milledgeville to Sparta with these yard signs, like every fifty feet--You know, like old "Burma Shave" signs? All the way. Um. I got to know Michael Langford on that trip. Michael Langford was field director for the Kennedy campaign. Michael Langford, uh, and I became close during that campaign. That later paid off when Bill Campbell ran for mayor, and Michael and I were deputy campaign managers in the Campbell for Mayor. Michael is now Director of the Department 01:05:00for Community Affairs for the mayor in the city government. He and I are still close friends. I got to know Michael that summer. I got to know Gene Duffey from the Young campaign. Duffey went on --when Clinton ran for President, Duffey was deputy campaign chairman for the Clinton-Gore campaign, still lives in Atlanta; and he and I are still friends. He's also very close to Reverend Jesse Jackson. Uh, we, uh, at one point, printed a hundred thousand--This is hard to believe--one hundred thousand cards about five by three that said, "Georgia's Working People Need Andy Young for Governor and Joe Kennedy for 01:06:00Lieutenant Governor and Al Scott for Public Service Commissioner, and Tim Ryles for Insurance Commissioner." And my staff of all the organizers for two weeks, we put those cards out all over Georgia--a hundred thousand of them. We divided up into three teams of two apiece and divided the state into three sections and covered the state. We would go into a town, not little towns, but medium-sized towns like Americus--anything the size of Americus, and every time we saw a collection of cars, we would spend a half a day in a town--a collection of cars--We'd put one of those cards on every car--like at shopping centers or if 01:07:00it was a Sunday, at churches, and [cough]--All over Georgia, and we got a hundred thousand of those cards out in two weeks. And then we would give them to our chapters, too. It's hard to get a hundred thousand pieces of paper out with six people. [both laugh]

LUTZ: What was the rest of the labor movement's involvement in this?

ACUFF: For the most part, some other unions endorsed the same ticket or a similar ticket. But, for the most part, the AFL-CIO did not endorse in the primary.

LUTZ: Okay, what, generally was the kind of response you were getting from people -- from endorsements, from labor people?

ACUFF: It was-- you mean?

LUTZ: From labor people.

ACUFF: From labor people. Ah--just real mixed. It's hard to generalize. We 01:08:00got significant labor support for Andy here in Atlanta. Um. It was just mixed.

LUTZ: [tape skips] The general response of the population to the labor movement. [laughter]

ACUFF: Right, right.

LUTZ: How do you evaluate, looking back, was it a good thing for the union to be in?

ACUFF: Absolutely. Was it good for the Georgia State Employees Union?

LUTZ: Yeah.

ACUFF: Absolutely, without question. You know, it--[sounds of traffic]--It's always good to do the right thing. It's always--It always works out if you do the right thing. Always. Particularly if you back up doing the right thing [telephone rings] with some boldness and some strength. If you do--If you try 01:09:00to do something and slip something by and hide your hand or back away from it, or, you know, politically, people will retaliate. But if they know that if they retaliate, you are gonna fight back, you know, uh,--[Electronic interruption] yeah [tape skips]

LUTZ: You were saying it helps to do the right thing but to have muscles, too.

ACUFF: Well, at least to be willing to fight. I mean, we supported Andy Young because he was pro-labor. He had a pro-labor history. He was willing to introduce checkoff. He had done it for city workers. Because we thought he 01:10:00would be good for the state, because we respected his history, and because we thought it made sense for us to support an African-American running for governor. We thought that was important. That's a principle in and of itself. And Zell started the campaign off running against labor. He started off kind of attacking the State Employees. We supported Joe Kennedy. A lot of liberals did not support Kennedy. They supported Pierre Howard. But in those days, an interesting coalition ran the Georgia State Senate and made the Georgia State Senate a much more progressive place than the Georgia State House of 01:11:00Representatives. And nobody will talk about this, but the people who ran the Georgia State Senate was Tom Allgood of Augusta; Culver Kidd from Milledgeville; Joe Kennedy of Baxley; Hugh Gillis from south Georgia and Arthur Langford of Atlanta; Horace Tate of Atlanta; David Scott of Atlanta--the three black senators. So that coalition kind of ran the Georgia State Senate and ran it in a much more progressive manner. It wasn't a progressive institution, but they ran it much more people friendly than the House of Representatives and the Speaker. We never, at the State Employees Union, had any trouble getting our 01:12:00legislation passed in the Georgia State Senate because that group of men ran it. So when Tom Allgood and Joe Kennedy sat me down in Tom's office and asked me can the union support Joe Kennedy, it wasn't hard for me to say--I don't know why we wouldn't. And Culver was always willing to stick his neck out for us and help us. So, anyway--Even though we did -- Some people thought it was a contradictory position to support Andrew Young and a south Georgia--a rural South Georgia white man. For us, it was perfectly complementary and made all the sense in the world and had to do with making a politics based not on, not on 01:13:00image but on record and on the best interests of the people and their leadership, and loyalty. [traffic sounds] And, to me, loyalty means an awful lot. So, that's more than you wanted to know, I think.

LUTZ: Actually, it isn't. [laughter] How did you end up being president of the Atlanta Labor—Well, let me ask you first: What is the Atlanta Labor Council, exactly?

ACUFF: The Atlanta Labor Council is the AFL-CIO of Atlanta. It is sixty-five locals in fifteen counties of metro Atlanta.

LUTZ: How did you end up being president of the Labor Council?

ACUFF: How much should I tell you?

LUTZ: Well, it's obvious to everyone that it was a very dramatic change. [laughter]

ACUFF: [laughter] [Pause.] November of 1990--I guess it was '90. Was it '90? 01:14:00I guess it was--because I got elected, I think, in '91. Martha True retired as Secretary-Treasurer in October of '90. Martha True retired as Secretary-Treasurer--of Georgia State AFL-CIO. And Richard Ray, who was then president of the Atlanta Labor Council, ran for and got elected. The board put in place a woman named Mary Lou Romaine, who had been a president of the teachers' union. Good woman. There were some people, though, who did not think 01:15:00she was the right person for the job for a variety of reasons. Um, and a group of people, individually and collectively, came to me and asked me to run when the office came open in January. And I, I resisted and resisted and resisted. I couldn't see myself running for office. I viewed myself as an organizer. I thought if you want to go to all that trouble to do a campaign, you ought to have as an end something more important than being elected. I couldn't see myself leaving SEIU. I couldn't see myself leaving GSEU. GSEU was the most important thing I've ever done in my life, probably the most important thing 01:16:00I'll ever do [telephone ringing]. [Inaudible.] It's just hard for me to imagine leaving GSEU. It was hard to imagine campaigning for myself as much as I had campaigned for other people. It was hard to imagine campaigning for myself. [Interruption by speakerphone.] Yeah. [Recording off, then on.]

LUTZ: But you did decide to do it.

ACUFF: And

LUTZ So why did you decide?

ACUFF: Well, it wasn't a single thing. The thing that probably got me the closest to deciding was a woman who is the President -- and I love her dearly -- the President of IBEW, Local 2127, which is a manufacturing local, named Robbie Sparks, who called me one night and cussed me out. She said, 'You are too chicken to do it. We need you to do this. The labor movement needs you to do this.' And she talked to me like a. And she'd been asking me. And she just 01:17:00called me up one night and cussed me out and made me understand that there was some people who thought I had a responsibility. And then dec-that was probably December. A short time later, Friday before Christmas, I took a list of unions out to the ACTU office to meet with Mark Fleischman, and this was the Friday before Christmas, the Friday before Christmas holidays started. And Mark Fleischman and Bruce [inaudible] sat down with me until almost midnight, until about eleven o'clock that night counting voters. They kept getting interrupted. 01:18:00You know, they were trying to get off for the holidays. The phone kept ringing. We sat there past eleven o'clock, more than five hours, going over the lists. And at the end of the night [tape skips], ______ people had asked me--People from CWA, my union supported it, most of the black leadership--

LUTZ: Did any of the old guard support you?

ACUFF: Yeah. And I began making calls. I didn't take the Christmas holiday off. I began making calls on Monday.

LUTZ: [Laughter][inaudible.]

ACUFF: Right, right--And I worked through the holiday making calls, and by the time New Year's was over, it was a full-fledged campaign. The second Wednesday 01:19:00in January was nominations. And, um, by then, I had put together a campaign committee, and J.C. Reynolds nominated me that night. [Tape skips.] We campaigned as hard as we could that awful month. It was horrible because the election was the second Wednesday in February. The legislature was in session, and that's a double-time job, and then I was trying to campaign, and that's a double-time job. But it was driving me crazy. Um, uh, but we won. The campaign committee--I should list the people that I can remember. My wife helped a lot. We are separated now, going through a divorce, but, um, she was [inaudible].

LUTZ: What is your wife's--what was her last name?

ACUFF: Sue Ellen Foster, Casey Sharpe from the Service Employees Union, Grant Williams of local 1985; my local; Mark Fleischman of ACTU, Robbie Sparks, of IBEW K127, James Orange from Industrial Union Department; David Prather, CWA 3204, Ralph Mears of GCIU local 527; Gary Meyer of the Transit Workers Union, J. C. Reynolds of the Transit Workers Local 732.

LUTZ: They would have wanted credit if you did [laughter]

ACUFF: What?

LUTZ: They would have wanted credit if you did [laughter]

ACUFF: Right, right. That's pretty much--Mike Flynn of the Machinists 1690, 01:21:00which was Eastern Machinists. He was very important. Mike Flynn was very instrumental. He had a lot to do with my deciding to run because I tried to help the strike a lot. And they wanted somebody they could count on for some of their direct action. [Inaudible.] [Tape skips. Several inaudible sentences.]

LUTZ: Let me divide up this question. How did, going into it, how did you see your role as President? How did you see it being? Then, I want to ask: Did it turn out that way? So, how did you see your role as President?

ACUFF: In fact, it did turn out the way we envisioned it. [pause][tape skips] Our side, in principle, was fortunate in that we campaigned on what we wanted to 01:22:00do. We were honest. We said what we wanted to do. We wanted to build a militant labor movement. We wanted to use every tool at our disposal to win. We wanted to be willing to fight, and we wanted to know that whether we won or we lost, that an employer would not look forward to fighting us. So we had to be as good as we could be, so we had to be more effective [tape skips]. We had to -- We tried to show solidarity and to organize the labor movement in Atlanta [inaudible--tape skips], to be efficient in understanding our constituency [inaudible], all workers, not just union members-- encouraging organizing, political players, and solidarity.

LUTZ: I notice you don't mention labor-management cooperation, which many people have told me is the future of the labor movement.

ACUFF: Right.

LUTZ: Ah.

ACUFF: You know--I think I'm all for that when it is done in a context of shared power and mutual respect. But that ain't the Labor Council's point. If I were president of a local union, and I had an employer who was serious about that, then I would do that. I'm not against labor-management cooperation at all. Um.

LUTZ: Actually, I talked to people [Inaudible] with a super example of it yesterday over at Superior Printing.

ACUFF: Right, Superior Printing is a great example of labor-management cooperation.

LUTZ: [Inaudible.] [laughter]

ACUFF: It's a great example of labor-management cooperation.

LUTZ: But that's not what you do.

ACUFF: But that's--The Labor Council has no role in that. And--when that's possible, I think that makes a lot of sense.

LUTZ: Um-hm.

ACUFF: But it's got to be done in the context of shared power, real shared power, and real mutual respect. If it's not, then it's a form of exploitation, so places where it exists and where it is done properly, I'm all for it. But --

LUTZ: Tell me the other things--Tell me how you carried out your campaign promises?

ACUFF: Tell you what? [coughs]

LUTZ: How did you carry out those campaign promises then? What are some major things that have happened since '91?

ACUFF: Umm--[pause]--Our first project was to put together a march on National Health Care Action Day. We got involved with Jobs With Justice [inaudible] nationally because CWA was involved with it and SEIU--and we made Jobs With Justice a committee of the Labor Council here in Atlanta. They had called one day in June of '91 -- National Health Care Action Day. I took office in March. And we started organizing in March, that evening--And we marched from Woodruff Park--We gathered in Woodruff Park and held a rally, and we marched to Grady Hospital and held another rally. And that was sort of our first trip out of the box. We had two, three or four hundred people there. It was a good crowd. That was our way of saying, "Look, we are going to work with other people. We are going to take this notion of hitting the streets seriously." We began 01:26:00about the same time working on the Olympics [inaudible--interfering noise]--and that defined--The Olympics campaign defined a big chunk of our work. I'll never forget [inaudible] made a public statement. Then, we got a resolution passed by the city council that pretty much carried by Jim Maddox, C. T. Martin, Jabari Simama, which basically called on--just an automatic resolution basically calling on the Olympics to [inaudible] at fair wages and fair [inaudible]-- And we began, you know, contacting grass roots organizations, NPU's across the city, concerned black clergy, NPUs, SCLC, etc. and working directly with some 01:27:00activists at Summerhill, progressive organizers--[inaudible]. And in June of '91, Charlie Key and I met with A.D. Frazer at 6:30 in the morning. That was back when A.D. and Billy Payne had a contest to see who could work the hardest and the longest. And [inaudible]-- It was a very bad meeting. Um. And.

LUTZ: Bad meeting -- Hostile to unions?

ACUFF: Right, real hostile. Um. [tape skips] And we put together--There had already been put together a committee to work on the Olympics. And, uh, [tape 01:28:00skips] some city council—[tape skips] We were working on the Olympics, and -- in the spring of '92, we heard that the Olympics was coming -- The Olympic Flag was coming to Atlanta on September 18th of '92. And, uh, and um, there would be a big, major demonstration, and, um, we started working six months ahead of time. And we got overtime. Reverend Jackson [tape skips] would come lead it--Every Friday, at the old capitol Ramada, the stadium Ramada, Friday morning 01:29:00for breakfast, and a different local union would pick up the tab--the Sheetmetal Workers Union, the [inaudible] [tape skipping]--and after that meeting, we had our Jobs for Justice Committee activists meeting as well. And, believe it or not, because nobody could believe it, the biggest problem we had going into that demonstration was parking. We knew it was going to be a huge demonstration. We didn't know where to put all the cars and buses. We eventually had to rent some vacant lots for parking. Marsha Curtis and Al Landis, God bless them, figured out the parking for us. And, uh, a couple of funny stories about that march. We had a holding of our dignitaries and a sort of command post was this 01:30:00conference room across the hall that had windows that look out over the parking. We had Forsyth Street over here blocked off with a portable stage set up at one end. We were going to fill the street up. We had C--walkie-talkies, and we had -- And we were intending to disrupt their flag ceremony. The police didn't want us to do that. The flag ceremony was supposed to start at two, and their intention was for us to march and be done by two. Our intention was to push the envelope and to spill over past two because their flag ceremony was going to be 01:31:00in Underground Atlanta, and we had a permit to march up to Decatur Street right there at Underground. And--so our permit was from one to two, and we had no intention of following the permit. At ten after one--I knew Jesse wouldn't get here 'til probably 1:30--At ten after one, James Orange's radio, he said that Major [inaudible] said if we don't start marching in five minutes, he is going to pull the permit. And not only were we not going to start the rally 'til 1:30, but the- we weren't going to start marching until about fifteen or half- fifteen minutes half-hour after we had started the rally. So we were thirty minutes away from starting the march, minimum. I said, "James, there's five 01:32:00thousand people out there, more coming all the time. Tell Major [inaudible] I said to go fuck himself." What's he going to do? Pull the fucking permit! What's he going to do? Arrest us all? [laughter]

LUTZ: [laughter]

ACUFF: So, we get, we start down at 1:20 [phone ringing]--start down, uh, with the dignitaries--Jesse still wasn't there--Jesse comes walking up in the middle of the battle. We had a good rally. We are starting the march, and James says-- [speakerphone interruption]--James says, "Stewart, you know when we were talking on the walkie-talkie--"

ACUFF: The police estimated 4500 people. We called it 10,000. It was, you know, a lot of people--the front page of The New York Times the next day. Um. 01:33:00Very, very powerful. Two weeks before the march, I had seen Andy Young on the street--I'd seen him in a restaurant at lunch. And he had taken me off to the side and said, 'Stewart, if you're going to do this march, it needs to be real big. And if it's not going to be real big, don't hold it. It was. We'll do the best we can.' And leaving the march, Shirley Franklin said--She came by to say, 'Congratulations, you did what you needed to do.' So we knew, then, that--[inaudible].

LUTZ: Yeah.

ACUFF: Um. Uh. We met again with A.D. Frazer in November. It was a much better 01:34:00meeting this time, better reception, although we didn't get anywhere. And in December, I think December 22nd, we took over their offices. I didn't go. I was meeting with Tom Donahue of the national AFL-CIO and Maynard Jackson, but we sent eighty-five building trades guys and fifteen people from the Summerhill Community and took over their offices. And Charlie Key, Grant Williams, and James Orange[?] led it. And it was a very effective demonstration. Shirley Franklin--It was three days before Christmas. You know that down time between Christmas and New Year's, not much is going on. Shirley Franklin and one of the 01:35:00attorneys, guy named Boyd Sellers, and Boyd said, 'Well, Stewart, in twenty-five years of doing this, civil rights organizations and around the labor movement, I've never seen an organization physically take over the space of somebody else. He goes ' I know you weren't there, and it got out of hand, and there wasn't much you could do.' I said, "Mr. Sellers, it went exactly the way we meant. "

LUTZ: [laughter]

ACUFF: It was exactly what we meant to do." And I said, "The message for y'all is that there is nothing we won't do short of destroying property and hurting people, to make sure this work is done the right way." He said, "Including 01:36:00breaking the law?" [Inaudible.] [Both laugh] We don't give a shit about that. [Laughing.] It was a very heartening meeting because we knew that we had gotten to them in a very visceral way after that.

LUTZ: Mmhmm

ACUFF: Then we began. We continued discussions. We weren't able to get anything done. And they had the groundbreaking scheduled for July 10th over here at the stadium, and we decided t-to if we didn't have an agreement by the July 10th that they weren't going to hold the groundbreaking. So we began planning another demonstration, [tape skips], the most militant one of all. And, um, our 01:37:00friends in, in uh, the community set up a tent city around the site. And I spent the week in the tent city. I spent the nights there. I'd come into the office in the morning, go to the gym, work out, shower, sleep in the tent city. We knew we were going to have nine thousand people on the site. And every newscast, it seemed like, that week, I was on, talking about Tent City and talking about the Olympics and talking about groundbreaking. And, um, Thursday night we had a strategy meeting at the, uh, Tent City. We had our activists and our leaders out there talking about what we were going to do on Saturday, and we made a plan to [inaudible] in a major way, the groundbreaking ceremony. And, 01:38:00uh, [inaudible] at the corner of Capitol and Georgia Avenue, about eleven o'clock, Shirley contacted me--maybe ten thirty. She and I had a real heart to heart. And I just said, "Shirley, you know, this is war. This is it. This is the deal. If we don't have an agreement on the construction of the stadium, then we have to do what we have prepared to do on Saturday. There's not going to be any fix on this one. And everybody is going to have to take a side." Uh, and, uh, James Orange was out there--We had--We got him about--oh, about--I 01:39:00don't know--11:30; and we called Andy about 12:30. And [inaudible] to talk to Andy. I didn't do much talking. [Buzzing--speakerphone.] You gone? [tape skips] --He said I'll be at the office at five in the morning, and I'll talk to Billy then. And Charlie and the folks from Beers--his business manager--sat down in that conference room over there Friday morning, and they started negotiating. [cough] And at two o'clock, discussions broke down. It just so happened that there was a MAOGA meeting at three o'clock that afternoon. Now, MAOGA is the governmental oversight committee, and Maynard Jackson chaired it. And the next day was the groundbreaking, so we had to have something done that 01:40:00day. And I got in my car, and I drove over to the INFORUM where the MAOGA was meeting, and I had not had any sleep in over--not any good sleep in a week. I was ready--I was already in full battle frame of mind. I was ready to go, and I walked into the MAOGA meeting--Michael Lomax later said 'looking more pissed off than any single human being I've ever seen.' And Maynard Jackson stopped the meeting, and he said, "I think Stewart needs to tell you something. Come in, Stewart." He just stopped the meeting. I went over, and I said, "Discussions have broken down. They have moved from good faith discussions to bad faith. It 01:41:00looks like we are not going to get an agreement today, and that we will [inaudible]." And Billy Payne and A. D. Frazer were sitting in the room, and Maynard turned around--I will never, never forget; and I will never run out of gratitude for it. He turned around to Billy Payne, and he said, "I cannot stress to you strongly enough that an agreement has to be reached with the unions this afternoon. It is vital to the future of the city. It is vital to the future of the Olympics that you have to sign an agreement with the unions this afternoon." And the place was full of reporters. He didn't whisper. He didn't walk over. He didn't sotto voce. He said it out loud. And Michael Lomax and, uh, and, uh 01:42:00[inaudible] [tape skips] both said that they agreed. And by 6:30, they had signed an agreement, and we did an impromptu press release and news conferences. I ate Mexican food that night with my wife over at the El Mexicano Restaurant on Moreland Avenue, and Ed Kula from WGST joined us and did a long interview with me about it. And the next morning, we had six hundred people show up, still showing up for the demonstration. I mean, if we hadn't called it off, think of how many would have showed up.

LUTZ: [laughter] Did it turn into a party instead?

ACUFF: Andy Young and A.D. Frazer showed up, and both of them spoke, and I introduced A.D. as my new best friend.

LUTZ: [Laughing.]

ACUFF: And it was a hell of a party. We had a great time. It was a wonderful day. And that agreement is a very significant agreement to this day. It did 01:43:00not mention the word "unions." It set union wage scales on all the jobs over there; it carved out ten percent of the jobs for people from the community who were not members of unions. It set a minimum wage for their work of seven and a half dollars per hour, specifying that those who qualified would go into the union apprenticeship program. The same agreements were later rolled over to be used on the jail, construction of the city jail, and one of the federal centers. Charlie Key and Larry Gellerstedt did an excellent job of negotiating. It's a simple two-page document, but it will have a lasting and profound effect on the work and construction within the city of Atlanta. It reversed the decline of the construction within the city-- that had been going down in terms of the 01:44:00market share; it reversed the decline

LUTZ: I know time is running close, but I have to ask one question--

ACUFF: Sure.

LUTZ: --that's related to the Olympics, that my husband told me: 'Don't come home if you don't ask.'

ACUFF: All right.

LUTZ: Which was, he said: If the unions in Atlanta want to take advantage of the Olympics coming up to organize the hotel workers--you can make that into a larger question.

ACUFF: I don't know. You can't do--It's very difficult to do that scale of organizing without international agreements with [inaudible] because you don't have that much talent, organizing talent--you don't have enough resources. You can do it, but it requires--I can't tell you on tape what it requires. It requires a lot of money, a long-term vision, and a lot of staff, uh, to do it. 01:45:00We are more likely to do it if John Sweeney is elected President of the national AFL-CIO.

LUTZ: Um, tell me about the Sweeney election coming up.

[Interruption in recording.]

LUTZ: The election.

ACUFF: Um--

LUTZ: Let me narrow it down. Why is it important to you that he win?

ACUFF: [Pause.] Because Sweeney believes in direct action. Because Sweeney believes in fighting. Sweeney -- Because Sweeney believes in organizing. He's spent a higher percentage of his budget on organizing than any other [inaudible] President. He believes in diversity. He has heart. He's tough. He's got 01:46:00vision, compassion. He'll change the labor movement.

LUTZ: What are the odds of him winning? All considered?

ACUFF: Very good, actually. I think he's got sixty percent of the votes.

LUTZ: Um, I know that you've got to wrap it up--

ACUFF: Right--

LUTZ: So let me just ask quickly--Where do you see the--What do you see coming up next?

ACUFF: Well, we'll stay on Gingrich. I'll spend more and more time--of my time--for the next two months on the Sweeney campaign. And, um, and then next year, we'll begin in Atlanta, helping Sweeney change the labor movement.

LUTZ: Okay. That's a good place to stop, now.