A working celebration in Lawrence

Sep. 7—LAWRENCE — Trolley riders passed the Great Stone Dam on Labor Day as a rain-swollen Merrimack River spilled sheets of water over the granite wall built by immigrants.

Irish laborers, whose Gaelic-inflected speech confounded native ears 175 years ago, lived in shanties near their masonry work, said narrator Scott Lane, clutching an overhead rail on the Bread & Roses Heritage Festival caravan.

The historic trolley tours also included two afternoon trips led in largely Latino Lawrence by a Spanish-speaking guide.

Also, for the first time, the festival program was published in both English and Spanish.

The booklets broadened appreciation for Lawrence's watershed textile strike in 1912, immigrant fortitude and a Valley culture shaped by regional, racial and ethnic traditions.

The festival also presented its annual Hall of Fame Award to a champion of bilingual education, Isabel Melendez.

Heavy rain shifted Monday's events and activities from their usual tents and stages on the Campagnone Common to floors inside the Lawrence Heritage State Park visitor's center and Imagina Essex space.

The change brought people physically closer — and a surprise.

"We were thrilled with the turnout, and I'm kind of in shock," said the festival's president, Elizabeth Pellerito, as the curtain closed on the event.

The visitor center's three floors, once a boarding house for factory workers, and Imagina drew an estimated 1,400 visitors — including many families.

They learned about Lawrence labor history, and today's worker and social justice challenges.

On the center's second floor, at 1 p.m., in a "Know Your Rights" presentation, Greater Lawrence Family Health Center nurse Lucy Thanos talked about patient rights, one of which — at a hospital or clinic or care center — is the right to a translator.

Genithia Hogges, a festival organizer and music teacher at Lawrence's Arlington Elementary School, said translation services (often via video conferencing) are available but not always posted or communicated to the patient.

"If I am a mother and I come in with my 12-year-old to translate," said Hogges. "Or, if I just come in for treatment, and they don't say, 'Would you like a translator?' I sort of assume, well, my child is here, and so I'm just going to have them do it."

Thanos said patients must, in many cases, furnish their own translators — often their children — when they see specialists for complex diagnoses and advanced care.

The stakes are high for understanding technical medical terms, Hogges said.

Upstairs, the conference room was transformed into aisles of information tables crowded with advocates and visitors.

Dr. Miguel Cabrera, a retired internist at the family health center and Lawrence General Hospital, sought signatures for Amnesty International petitions to free Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora and newspaper finance director Flora Silva for their reporting and publishing information about corruption.

The petition also advocates for the release of Samari Gomez Diaz, a defender of women human rights, and to drop charges against prosecutor Virginia Laparra.

A separate petition seeks the release of lawyer Burzurgmehr Yorov, imprisoned since 2015 in Tajikstan for representing a member of an opposition party.

Cabrera, an energetic and enthusiastic person, attributed his commitment to helping those in need to his Catholic education.

Nearby, among the two dozen or so tables in the room was one publicizing the Lawrence Community Fridge, 163 E. Haverhill St., a free food resource open 24/7.

Another table, for the Merrimack Valley Project, advocated for good jobs, immigrant rights and safe and affordable housing as well as support for Question 1 in Nov. 8 statewide balloting.

The amendment to the state constitution, presented by the state legislature, would levy an additional 4% state tax on income over $1 million and direct the money for education and transportation improvements.

Joshua Alba, a Lawrence School Committee member and local activist, spoke on behalf of the Fair Share Amendment in the Lawrence History Live! presentation, a festival mainstay.

Alba said in an interview that the average working Massachusetts resident pays about 10% of their income in combined state taxes while the wealthiest people in the state pay only about 6%.

"A billion dollars, billion with a b, will come to public education, colleges and transportation infrastructure — so our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our railways," Alba said.

Elected leaders sympathetic to labor causes circulated among the crowd and included Lawrence Mayor Brian DePena, state Sen. Barry Finegold, state Sen. Eric Lesser, a candidate for lieutenant governor, and state Rep. Frank Moran.

"Labor Day means the world to us especially in a community like Lawrence where the labor movement started," Moran said.

Also helping at Bread & Roses was longtime event organizer and retired visitor center supervisor Jim Beauchesne.

Beauchesne, who retired in July 2021, got his introduction to labor issues through work earlier in his career as a paralegal for a law firm that represented workers exposed to asbestos.

Beauchesne said labor and Labor Day are as important as they have ever been at a time when income inequality continues, though positive signs have arisen lately with Amazon, Apple and Starbucks workers organizing into unions.

"But we have a long way to go to get to where the fruits of our free market economy are shared equitably," he said, "with too many people going paycheck to paycheck and inadequate benefits and no security."

Bread & Roses does its part to tell the story of labor and give working people a voice, he said.