Real 'Norma Rae' dies of cancer after insurer delayed treatment
Facing South - Sept. 15, 2009
The Institute for Southern Studies "A New Voice for a Changing South"
The North Carolina union organizer who was the inspiration for the movie
"Norma Rae" died on Friday of brain cancer after a battle with her insurance
company, which delayed her treatment. She was 68.
Crystal Lee Sutton, formerly Crystal Lee Jordan, was fired from her job
folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant in her hometown of Roanoke
Rapids, N.C. for trying to organize a union in the early 1970s. Her last
action at the plant -- writing the word "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and
standing on her work table, leading her co-workers to turn off their
machines in solidarity -- was memorialized in the 1979 film by actress Sally
Field. The police physically removed Sutton from the plant for her action.
But her efforts ultimately succeeded, as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
won the right to represent the plant's employees on Aug. 28, 1974. Sutton
later became a paid organizer for the union, which through a series of
mergers became part of UNITE HERE before splitting off this year to form
Workers United, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International
Union.
Several years ago, Sutton was diagnosed with meningioma, a type of cancer of
the nervous system. While such cancers are typically slow-growing, Sutton's
was not -- and she went two months without potentially life-saving
medication because her insurance wouldn't cover it initially. Sutton told
the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News last year that the insurer's behavior was
an example of abuse of the working poor:
"How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they would
cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life or death," she
said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."
Though Sutton eventually received the medication, the cancer had already
taken hold. She passed away on Friday, Sept. 11 in a Burlington, N.C.
hospice.
"Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave struggles have left a
lasting impact on this country and without doubt, on me personally," Field
said in a statement released Friday. "Portraying Crystal Lee in 'Norma Rae,'
however loosely based, not only elevated me as an actress, but as a human
being."
Field won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and the Best Actress award at the Cannes
Film Festival for her portrayal of the character based on Sutton. The film
in turn was based on the 1975 book "Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance" by
New York Times reporter Henry P. "Hank" Leiferman.
Sutton was only 17 when she began working at the J.P. Stevens plant in
northeastern North Carolina, where conditions were poor and the pay was low.
A Massachusetts-based company that for many years was listed on the Fortune
500, J.P. Stevens is now part of the WestPoint Home conglomerate.
In 1973, Sutton, by then a mother of three, was earning only $2.65 an hour.
That same year, Eli Zivkovich, a former coal miner from West Virginia, came
to Roanoke Rapids to organize the plant and began working with Sutton, who
was fired after she copied a flyer posted by management warning that blacks
would run the union. It was that incident which led Sutton to stand up with
her "UNION" sign.
"It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be
remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor
people of the U.S. and the world," she said in a newspaper interview last
year. "That my family and children and children like mine will have a fair
share and equality."
For more on Sutton's life and work, visit the website of the Alamance
Community College's Crystal Sutton Collection.
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/opinion/15herbert.html?th&emc=th
A World of Hurt
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed: September 15, 2009
President Obama took a bit of a victory lap on Wall Street on Monday,
declaring that the economy had been brought back from the abyss and "the
storms of the past two years are beginning to break."
The president and his economic team (and the Federal Reserve) deserve credit
for moving quickly to prevent a full-blown collapse. A year ago, amid the
panic that accompanied the implosion of Lehman Brothers, there were serious
fears that the U.S. was headed toward another Great Depression.
Now, with the financial sector stabilized and economists predicting that the
Great Recession is nearing an end, the sighs of relief coming out of
Washington and Lower Manhattan are understandable. But this is no time to
lose sight of the wreckage all around us. This recession, a full-blown
economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that
is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.
Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment,
nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than
six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of
work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much
worse.)
Consider this: Some 9.4 million new jobs would have to be created to get us
back to the level of employment at the time that the recession began in
December 2007. But last month, we lost 216,000 jobs. If the recession
technically ends soon and we get to a point where some modest number of jobs
are created - say, 100,000 or 150,000 a month - the politicians and the
business commentators will celebrate like it's New Year's.
But think about how puny that level of job creation really is in an
environment that needs nearly 10 million jobs just to get us back to the
lean years of the George W. Bush administration.
We're hurtin' and there ain't much healin' on the horizon.
A national survey of jobless workers by a pair of professors at Rutgers
University shows just how traumatized the work force has become in this
downturn. Two-thirds of respondents said that they had become depressed.
More than half said it was the first time they had ever lost a job, and 80
percent said there was little or no chance that they would be able to get
their jobs back when the economy improves.
The 1,200 respondents were jobless at some point over the past year, and
most - 894 - are still unemployed. More than half said that they had been
forced to borrow money from friends or relatives, and a quarter have missed
their mortgage or rent payments.
The survey found that affluent, well-educated workers, who had traditionally
been able to withstand a downturn in reasonably good shape, were being hit
hard this time around.
The professors, Carl Van Horn and Cliff Zukin, described that phenomenon as
"a metric of the recession's seismic impact." Of the workers who found
themselves unemployed for the first time, more than one in four had been
earning $75,000 or more annually.
"This is not your ordinary dip in the business cycle," said Mr. Van Horn.
"Americans believe that this is the Katrina of recessions. Folks are on
their rooftops without a boat."
Stunned by the financial and psychological toll of the recession, and seeing
little in the way of hopeful signs on the employment landscape, many of the
surveyed workers showed signs of discouragement. Three-fifths said that they
had experienced feelings of helplessness.
Said one respondent: "I've always worked, so this is very depressing. At age
60, I never believed I would be unemployed unless I chose to be."
Said another: "I fear for my family and my future. We are about to be
evicted, and bills are piling. We have sold everything we possibly can to
maintain, and are going under with little hope of anything."
At some point the unemployment crisis in America will have to be confronted
head-on. Poverty rates are increasing. Tax revenues are plunging. State and
local governments are in a terrible fiscal bind. Unemployment benefits for
many are running out. Families are doubling up, and the number of homeless
children is rising.
It's eerie to me how little attention this crisis is receiving. The poor
seem to be completely out of the picture.
If we end up with yet another jobless recovery, there would seem to be
little hope for impoverished families in America's big cities, rural areas
and, increasingly, suburban neighborhoods as well.
The recession may be ending for some.
Tell that to the unemployed.
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