On Saturday, May 30 at 7:30 pm, the Old Labor Hall is delighted to host Harlan Baker in a performance of his one man show “Jimmy Higgins: A Life in the Labor Movement”.
The show celebrates the radical activist politics of the first half of the 20th century, the heyday of the Old Labor Hall.
Baker’s work weaves the fictional reporter and labor activist Jimmy Higgins (the name, Baker says, has long been a sort of “Everyman” moniker for the rank-and-file labor activist) through the major moments in radical and labor politics during the early 20th century.
Higgins tells of his encounters with Eugene Debs and others opposed to American involvement in the first World War, with the 1924 presidential campaign of the Progressive Party’s Robert LaFollette (who went on to win 17 percent of the popular vote, unprecedented for a third-party candidate), and with covering the 1930s union-organizing drives of tenant farmers and auto workers.Baker’s play deftly weds the personal and political, and history looks like what it is — the gathered threads of human lives.
Harlan Baker is an adjunct professor in the Theatre Department at the University of Southern Maine, an actor, a former member of the Maine legislature, a union activist, and democratic socialist.
Tickets available at the door or in advance at the online store: $15, $12 for students and seniors: http://oldlaborhall.org/union-cooperative-store-online/tickets-jimmy-higgins/
For more information email info@oldlaborhall.org, call (802) 479–5600 or (802) 331-0013, or check out the website: http://oldlaborhall.org/jimmy-higgins/
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