Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

by Kim Kelly

DRUM’s pressure campaigns led anxious employers to boost outreach to recent Arab immigrants, assuming that a looming fear of deportation would keep the workers “docile” and unlikely to cause trouble for the bosses. But instead of serving as a meek and obedient counter to the more militant Black workers intent on spreading their revolutionary message on the factory floor, Arab workers quickly found common ground with Black workers as exploited minorities in a majority-white setting. The Black workers, especially those who were active in revolutionary circles and Black nationalism, were familiar with Islam and sympathized with the anti-Zionist, anti-colonial struggle of Palestinian coworkers. Like their Black coworkers, Arab immigrants were paid the least and worked the hardest. They, too, were denied opportunities to advance off the assembly line due to the bosses’ racism and favoritism, and many first-generation Arab workers faced the barriers of language and religious accommodation at work. “Chrysler hopes to make conditions worse for all of us by first attacking the conditions of the Arab workers,” read a flyer circulated by the radical caucus SPARK at the Dodge Main plant. “They count on turning us against each other so they can do this…. Chrysler figures that no one else will try to help an Arab worker when Chrysler attacks him.”