Muscle and mouth

Jack Shea, longtime Allegheny Labor Council president was a union organizer, negotiator and effective leader of a complex conglomeration of industrial, service, and building trades unions who knew how to balance the sometimes contentious interests of the labor movement with skill and compassion (“Jack Shea, ‘tough, focused and fearless’ Pittsburgharea labor leader, dies at 79,” Aug. 30).

To me his finest moment was in 2011 when a small group of young activists began a protest against the obscene inequality of wealth in this country that became the Occupy Wall Street movement. Jack dramatically addressed the labor council from his heart.

As I remember, he said, “Brothers and sisters, the week before the rise of the Occupy movement, the New York Labor Council mobilized 10,000 unionists to protest greed and inequality in a rally on Wall Street itself. Speakers gave fiery orations, but after a couple of hours everybody went home and hardly anybody noticed.”

Jack paused, looked the delegates in the eye and said: “The difference was that those kids stayed. There is a lesson here, brothers and sisters.” Young people camped out and made the greed of the 1% a national and international issue.

Putting his muscle where his mouth was, Jack became a staunch defender of the Pittsburgh Occupy encampment during a bitter winter near Mellon Bank Downtown. He told the young people in the encampment that as long as they respected police and city workers, he would support them, and he did. Pittsburgh’s Occupy encampment endured longer than any other in the country. CHARLES MCCOLLESTER

Mt. Washington