A groundbreaking ceremony took place yesterday in downtown Grand Rapids at the site of a memorial commemorating the city’s 1911 furniture strike. The monument, titled “the Spirit of Solidarity,” will be built near the Pearl Street entrance to Ah-Nab-Awen Park and will be nine-feet tall. It is the product of fifteen years of planning and fundraising and will be dedicated on August 11, 2006 to commemorate the end of the strike.
At a speech at the groundbreaking, former United Auto Workers President Owe Bieber was quoted in the Grand Rapids Press stating that “We as working people have endured the greatest loss of our right to a fair days pay for a fair days work” and described how working people have made little progress in the years since the 1911 furniture strike.
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