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Maine Governor LePage Orders Removal of Labor Mural from Dept. of Labor, Sparking Outcry
AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine's labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor.
Worker advocates described the move as a "mean-spirited" provocation amid the administration's high-tension standoff with unions.
Acting labor chief Laura Boyett emailed staff Tuesday about the mural's pending removal, as well as another administration directive to rename several department conference rooms that carry the names of pro-labor icons such as Cesar Chavez.
According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed "one-sided decor" not in keeping with the department's pro-business goals.
"The message from state agencies needs to be balanced," said Demeritt, adding that the mural had sparked complaints from "some business owners" who complained it was hostile to business.
Demeritt declined to name the businesses.
The mural was erected in 2008 following a jury selection by the Maine Arts Commission and a $60,000 federal grant. Judy Taylor, the artist from Seal Cove, said Tuesday that her piece was never meant to be political, simply a depiction of Maine's labor history.
The 11-panel piece depicts several moments, including the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston, "Rosie the Riveter" at Bath Iron Works, and the paper mill workers' strike of 1986 in Jay.
According to Taylor, the idea for the panels came from Charley Scontras, a labor historian at the University of Maine.
Taylor said the administration's decision to remove the mural was "terrible." She said her 2007 selection by the Maine Arts Commission was the "commission of a lifetime."
Taylor said she'd never heard that her mural painted an unflattering picture of business.
"There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor," she said. "It was a pure depiction of the facts."
She said people had always reacted positively to the mural, even businesspeople who came to her studio.
"At one point, maybe their grandmother or their grandfather had worked in the mills, so they had a very moving, emotional reaction to the mural," she said. "It touched them in a way because there was this ancestral legacy there."
Demeritt said the administration's decision wasn't designed to antagonize organized labor. In recent weeks, labor groups have been gathering at the State House to protest LePage's budget, which proposes cuts in retirement benefits for unionized state workers and teachers. In addition, LePage has said the state "is going after right-to-work," legislation that labor groups say is designed to destroy unions through a bleeding of finances.
Labor advocates had a strong reaction to the mural's pending removal.
Mike Tipping, a spokesman for the Maine People's Alliance, a progressive organization, said LePage had been "elected to create jobs, not to be the state's interior decorator."
"The LePage administration is going after Maine workers on a bunch of different fronts," Tipping said. "I guess 'Rosie the Riveter' is just another casualty."
Matt Schlobohm of the Maine chapter of the AFL-CIO said it was understandable for the administration to have different priorities. However, he said, a depiction of history should "rise above" political ideology.
"To remove a mural that is a historical depiction just seems arbitrary and mean-spirited," Schlobohm said.
Demeritt said the administration didn't see a problem with the directive.
"It's a very small thing," he said. "I just want to emphasize that we were merely looking to achieve a little aesthetic balance. It's very minor."
Demeritt said he didn't know when the mural would be removed. In her e-mail to the Labor Department, Boyett said there would be a contest to rename the committee rooms.
Demeritt said the rooms could be named "after mountains, counties or something."
One of the current committee rooms is named after Frances Perkins, the U.S. labor secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perkins became involved in labor reforms following the 1911 Triangle Waistshirt Factory fire that resulted in the deaths of 146 garment workers in New York City.
Friday marks the 100th anniversary of that fire.
Perkins' parents were from Maine. The Frances Perkins Center is in Newcastle.
85 Comments so far
Show AllWill they be renaming the government office the Department of Worker Exploitation? As long as these bozos want to rewrite history, let's throw a little "fairness" back at 'em and call this exactly what they would like to turn it into.
And how many union members voted for LaPage? Or didn't even bother to vote? Politics is part of business, if you don't pay attention you'll get screwed. If you don't vote others will vote for you.
This is not the first time that Republicans have removed art that they felt might be embarrassing. When General Powell gave his "the invasion of Iraq is OK speech" at the UN the replica of Picasso's painting "Guernica" was removed from the chamber lest it might show on TV during his speech.
I believe they actually put up a curtain, but point taken. And didn't Ashcroft cover up a nude statue? These folks get away with cover-ups all the time!
The mural depicts historic reality and so has that famous liberal bias.
Maybe they could commission a mural depicting picketing workers being gunned down by company goons. No I guess that wouldn't send the "Right" message either.
Interesting how thin-skinned businessmen tend to be when faced with opposing views. Such sensitivity is nowhere evident when it's someone else's fate to find their livelihood is finished, or their community is destroyed. I can hear the coarse laughter in the board room: "Hah! The pussies! Must suck to be them..."
Exactly -- truth is a huge threat to them -- like a pebble shattering a mirror --
Keep on tossin' them pebbles !!
Will they be destroying the mural, or just removing it? Not that either action would be appropriate, mind you, but a teabagger with, well, balls would have it destroyed.
if its a fresco the paint impregnates the plaster, and cannot be removed. But this looks more like a series of panels. Wherever it goes- it i sure to attract a large audience.
In Nazi Germany, art came under the absolute control of the Nazi Party. Goebbels had an exhibit of "Degenerate Art" (i.e., non-Nazi) in a rundown gallery out in the slums. The lines were blocks long to see it. Nobody was coming to the Nazi art in the fancy galleries.
I guess you could say, art has no business in politics.
Why? Goya would be perplexed by your statement. Ben Shawn, Picasso, Orozco, Rivera, Sequieros, Frasconi to mention a few would also not agree with you. But of course you do have a right to your perspective only explain why you take the position that you do. The position of many artists is the one articulated by James Baldwin who posits the role of the artist as the agitator rather than the cheerleader of the status quo.
Well, as John Ashcroft so ably demonstrated when he was Attorney General, the only thing on Justice that needs blindfolding is her boobies.
"Just the Facts"????
Why be so skiddish about it? We need a little Howard Zinn here... What's wrong with a favorable portrayal of working people, and, for that matter, an unfavorable portrayal of business(es). Just read a bit about the labor history of this (and probably any other) country! Either the muralist knows none of the history or she is a typical "liberal" who doesn't want to offend anyone... Jeez, get up stand up for your rights!
My thoughts exactly. I couldn't really see the murals very clearly, but the Labor Dept. should celebrate organized labor, not apologize to anyone who might be offended by the idea.
He should be sued for destruction of state property --
Not only are GOP vicious -- they're nuts!!
They're at the bottom of the barrel now -- !!
Exactly!
In the midst of all this carping about the budget, he tries to take down something we have already paid for!
As an artist, I was there with my sign that said "Artists are Workers, too!" and
"Take down LePage instead!".
I'm just waiting for him to Big-Deal one of my mobiles in a nearby school that has swimmers cut from chrome, and demand I paint swimsuits on them!
"Not in keeping with the departments pro business goals."
These people have co-opted and corrupted everything they've touched and this is just the latest example. So a State Department of Labor is supposed to be pro business? The astonishing thing is that these people keep getting elected.
Yeah! I thought the "Labor Department" was supposed to be "Pro-LABOR"!
Keeping people historyless - as this removal of history-alluding murals and room-names does - is a short-term strategy for domination that fouls up society to hurt anyone more than anyone gains. The dominators should realize this, or be thrown out.
Beware: Dictators abroad in USA's states. Call in the cruise-missiles!
Tell me this is not like Germany in the 30's? And my friends wonder why I have joined the Communist Party of America.
"...the mural had sparked complaints from 'some business owners' who complained it was hostile to business." -- Ummmm, why? Why would any business owner view it as hostile? Unless... are these business owners against what is depicted in the mural? Do these business owners believe in the degradations to which the workers were subjected? If so, should anyone honestly care about their opinions?
There was actually only ONE letter of complaint, and that looked faked!
This is outrageous. Shame on you, "governor".
unfortunately a lot of dumb rednecks in Maine and the rest of this failing nation
Well, fellow Maniacs...how you gonna Vote next time? Idiots! Dolts! Same as in Wisconsin. You ain't got the sense God gave goats! You vote in these right-wing Tea-Party Wackos into office, then stand there mumbling and drooling when they do shit like this and far, far worse. Hey there Public workers - yeah those of you that Voted in these insane shits! There's a lot of you in my State of Maine - just like in Wisconsin. They are going to strip you of your Pension - got that through your thick skull yet??? They're gonna Steal Your Money!!! They're gonna strip you of your Constitutional Right to Collectively Bargain. Their gonna Throw your Mamas out on the Street. They're gonna Steal the Future of your Children. C'mon - for crying out loud - Recall these Cretins and vote into office people that have a Clue !
"Stupid is as Stupid does" - Forrest Gump
Yeah, but they'll save us from the "baby killers" and the "feggits" and the "lezbeens," to say nothing of those insufficiently white, so I guess it's all okay.
Will this ever sink in? I've been watching this for over 40 years.
A majority of the American people have no idea how to think for themselves. They simply just reverberate ( or I should say, regurgitate ) what Mainstream Media spoon feeds them.
When you have people like Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, and Palin preaching their hateful and deceitful messages day in and day out, the people take these lies to the polls.
Americans are too complacent, too pampered to really think for themselves
Wake up people ! You reap what you sow...
Let us please remember that LePage only "won" with less than 37% of the vote!
In fact, SO MANY Mainers did NOT want him, that they ended up having ton hedge their bets and split the vote on the Left.
This disastrous election was a PERFECT EXAMPLE of why we need IRV or "Ranked Voting" in Maine and everywhere in the US!
This would NOT have happened if the Voter had been given the all-important "Second Choice" vote!
Somehow this reminds me of the Taliban blowing up the statues of Buddha in the cliff side.
You claim that it was a "black op" is just nutty, and is one more case of a comfortable USAn robbing a oppressed people agency in retaliating against their oppression.
The Taliban destroyed the Buddha statues in an act of retaliation against western countries for denying them food aid for their starving population, even as the rich westerners fussed so much about preserving the statues.
They had provided numerous warnings that they would destroy the statues, and very publicly moved the artillery to the statues in the days leading up to their destruction. I you don't believe me (you must be too young to remember the news of these events) Just research news articles of those days.
While it was still a work in progress at Rockefeller Center in NY, Nelson Rockefeller had a mural by Diego Rivera painted over because Rivera refused to remove a figure in the mural that resembled VI Lenin.
Today, it doesn't take the presence of communists to evoke rightist censorship. The mere depiction of workers united is sufficient to merit destruction.
The tragic destruction of the Rivera masterwork by Rockefeller is what this situation reminds me of also.
This is fascism, pure plain and straightforward. The mural is symbolic of our liberty and we need to defend it.
In my state, there are lots of hoops to jump prior to the removal of public art. What are the regs in Maine? Can the organization that commissioned the mural or the artist get an injunction to delay any action by the gov?
We have murals in the post office too, depicting rural life, havesting crops etc. Most of it was done by the WPA during the depression era. It is part of the history.
WPA - just one more libruul handout to the lazy. Let's take all those stupid painting from all the public buildings and start a nice big bonfire.
It's just another part of their plan to destroy everything Democratic/Liberal/leftwing, etc. They'll be re-writing history as well. We need to stop them now.
They are alread re-writing history and sanitizing it as well. One of the Bush brothers has the contract for texas school books. They actually took Al Gore out of the history books. Better start an oral tradition, And stand up where ever you are It is easy for me, I'm old and just say, I'm too old to lie about this and if asked will tell it like it is. The last thing corrupted individuals want to hear is the truth.
Half-human Tea Party hacks are attempting to send all American history that doesn't fit their ideology down the memory hole. Future efforts to resurrect this history will be met with the inevitable hypocritical accusations of "revisionist history."
What idiots - it's the Department of Labor not the Department of Freakin' IBM...
Not that there isn't precedent, of course. We call our national Department of Predatory Imperialism the "Department of Defense." The Department of Dumbing-Down is called the "Department of Education." And we regularly appoint outrageous criminals who look good in suits to head, as "Attorneys General," the "Department of Justice" . . .
As a child on long trips in the car to visit relatives, my father would play a game with us when we approached bridges. When one came in sight, he would ask if we had seen any trolls yet, and to keep an eye out for the first sighting. We had to keep our eyes peeled - because the trolls would roll up the road behind us, a terrifying prospect.Any squabbling amongst us pre-adolescents would cease, and against our juvenile wills, eyes would turn to the passing landscape. We began to see things, recall the story of three billy goats gruff, and horizons widened just a bit more...
Looking back, we were getting a lesson in considering observation and its impact as well as a subtle nudge on the nature of history, human memory; something that could only be done through engagement with story and our briefly guided imaginations - the stuff of art.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html
I have no wish to impugn anyone's intelligence, but many of the people responsible for LePage's election were duped into voting against their own interests.
Additionally, there was a classic splitting of the vote on the "Anybody but LePage" side. The two preeminent candidates opposing LePage (Mitchell and Cutler) should have had the interest of the people at heart; they could have discussed it between them, with one of them conceding the race so that Maine wouldn't be mired in this utterly untenable situation with only thirty-eight percent of the vote.
Censorship (saying, basically, "shut up and eff off") is disenfranchisement, and to alter state property in the name of a non-majority vote is uniquely insulting to the people of Maine.
How well I remember the older folks telling us when they worked 12 hours a day six days a week for less than $10.00 a week in Cotton Mills
How well I remember when boys were quitting school in the eigth grade to work
at the cotton mill for $15.00 a week. When the cotton mill workers organized
a union the owners moved to Alabama where the people were still working
for peanuts. Most of the workers here were of French Ancestry. Will somone
notify Lepage maybe they were his ancestors who were scraching a liviing
in the sweat shops of Maine?
The artists of Maine - the labor leaders of Maine - the people of Maine need to understand that what the Governor is suggesting is censorship. That mural belongs to the people of Maine who paid for it. He can not legally erase it! What are you in Maine allowing to happen? You must defend your art and the free speech of your artists. Where is you self-respect? You are talking like you will allow him to do this. I blame him but I also blame the people of the State of Maine for not fighting back. This is your speech right that is being attacked. You are a part of us in this nation. For you to allow this dictator to destroy your art is on all of your conscious. You should rally around the art and at least go to jail for once as a group before you allow him to take this unique heritage from you. You should organize to stand between the art and those who are paid to remove it. See, we just don't respect our own values of free speech. We don't have the guts to deserve freedom. We let them take just like that with a little mumbling and he shouldn't aught ta do it. NO! You shouldn't aught-ta-let him do it! Defend yourselves! Those who don't fight for their freedom lose it.
Yes, Maine should definitely be next in line for some serious labor opposition to the virulent capitalists: occupy the building in numbers! Occupy the streets!
I can visualize this business-friendly governor spending state money to paint huge thousand-dollar bills on the capital façade.
Or maybe a mural of workers on their knees.
The artists of Chicago are fighting for our right to make a living in public. The A.R.T.I.S.T. group in New York have fought for 15 years for that right. In Chicago by fighting for our right to sell art I have come to be fighting for everyone's right to audio-record police in public. We are using art to make change. http://c-drew.com/blog As the Executive Director of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center I know there are moral rights associated with art. Even in this nation, there are common law rights associated with public art. The people in Maine who care need to explore all their options and fight back. This is a grand opportunity for labor to defend artists' rights, to defend free speech and to motivate their ranks. To let this censorship happen without a fight is the height of irresponsibility. Or, or you can cry in your beer for the rest of your present Governor's existence.
Egypt inspired us because we desperately need some inspiration. Most of us sing about freedom not fight for it. Never have we lost any freedoms overseas. All the freedoms we've ever lost were lost by those too lazy to fight for them here at home. Conversely, the only way to win freedom in our land is to fight for it in our land, on our streets, in our public spaces - in front of our murals and for our valued beliefs. Hey - get up - stand up ... stand up for your rights....
Time for workers to line up in front of the mural when they come to remove it. draw a line in the sand so to speak. Time to push back. Send a loud message!
Right on, Wicks!
All right, just stop letting these eff-wads define the terms of the debate. Our existence and the history that goes with it is not inherently "hostile to business." These complaining business owners and those who feel compelled to speak on their behalf are hostile to labor. "They only call it class war when we fight back."