Steve Thornton (source: Steve Thornton)
“The only failure if there is one is stopping after the first try. Now, you don’t have to do the same thing if you don’t want to, but if ‘Cap The Rent’ is a real thing that would really help then the movement has the responsibility to complete the task. Even if you can’t, your responsibility is to do that because somebody else will pick it up when you can’t.”
– Steve Thornton on Advocacy Efforts in Hartford, CT
You can access Steve’s interview here.
Background
Steve was born in New York but moved with his family to Hartford, CT at a young age. His family then moved to Windsor and had a mostly suburban upbringing in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Steve witnessed the struggles happening at the time around the Vietnam war and women’s rights and became interested in the movements that followed these events. His passion for advocacy and activism began to develop, and in high school he and a group of friends organized against racism and the Vietnam War because he felt that these issues were extremely important to call attention to. Though he faced some push-back from teachers, Steve soon realized that this wasn’t ‘just a phase’ but a calling, and he would go on to become an organizer later on in life. One of the main things that drew us to wanting to interview Steve was his work on the Shoeleather History Project – an expansive collection of pieces that detail the stories and history around organizers and advocacy efforts Steve has been a part of or has had some proximity to. It’s the people’s history, and we’re extremely humbled to have been able to interview him! You can find out more by visiting https://shoeleatherhistoryproject.com/
Involvement in Organizing and Activism
Steve is a former organizer with Connecticut’s largest healthcare workers union, District 1199/SEIU, and the Greater Hartford Labor Council. He was a member of the national steering committee of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), which District 1199 founded in 2003. Steve has spent the majority of his adult life as an activist and organizer. Steve began as a housing rights activist in Hartford, Connecticut, where he has lived since 1973, gathering renters displaced by corporate redevelopment and homeless men into a direct action group. From 1987 to 1993, he was a significant figure in the formation and growth of People For Change, a third-party that successfully elected City Council members on a pro-union, LGBT-friendly, populist platform.
Issues
Some of the issues Steve discussed in his interview were centered around pursuing a calling to advocacy at a young age, and the resistance he met as well as ways to recuperate when you’ve been organizing and may have faced failure. Steve provides a host of knowledge and passion around collecting and preserving history and telling the stories of people that can get lost within history. He highlights in his interview that sometimes we may see history as things that have happened many years ago, but we are living through historical moments right now that also deserve to be captured. There have always been issues in housing where people need to come together to organize, but an important nugget from Steve’s interview is that we must learn to rest and not quit. We may feel that we experience failures, but the true failure is giving up on the movement.
Other Organizations and Movements
Steve formerly worked with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (now UNITE HERE), organizing and leading strikes in small manufacturing and the textile industry, mainly with people of color. His union involvement began as an elected steward while working as a day care teacher, and he later ran for and was elected Executive Vice President of AFSCME Local 1716. Later, he was hired as an organizer with the 4Cs, a community college faculty and professional union, where he established a statewide lobbying push that raised money for working people, daycare for families, and huge student rallies. He is a member of the International Workers of the World (IWW) and the National Writers Union (NWU/UAW).
Steve has continued to work for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice with organizations such as the Clamshell Alliance, the Anti-Racism Coalition of Connecticut, Irish Northern Aid, and the War Resisters League.
Please see below for some images Steve sent to us to share for this project!
