Illegal harassment doesn't stop essential workers from organizing for their rights. So business owners attack them with an unlawful militia, provoking a general strike.
The Shingle Creek community continues its campaign for workers' rights despite illegal harassment. So panicking wealthy Fat Cats step up their bullying. Cops kill Fred, an influential community ally. Jail Creekers illegally. And Remove Creekers' lawsuits from court dockets.
Creekers use their press contacts to break through news blackouts and get favorable worldwide coverage. Fat Cats then ban Creekers' meetings from the school. So they meet in a church. And start building a huge meeting hall. The city tries to shut down the new meeting hall. Creekers keep meeting.
There is an explosion of fury about the six Creekers killed in Vietnam, Fred's murder, industrial accidents killing workers, railroad workers' paychecks forced below minimum wage. The Creekers demand an increased minimum wage indexed to inflation.
When the big daily paper locks journalists out, Creekers find money to hire them and start their own daily newspaper. Paul and his close friend Karen help railroad workers organize a strike. When the railroad hires scabs, Creekers find a legal way to remove unsafe tracks and recruit scabs for community-owned businesses. They have hundreds of people working for them.
Creekers manage to win and collect several large judgments in defamation lawsuits. That's when they get anonymous warnings the Fat Cats are training an armed militia to be used against them.
The strike begins spreading. No rail traffic moves in Minneapolis. Airline cabin attendants and mechanics, nurses, office clerks, truck mechanics-all join the strike. Working class allies from other communities set up a Peoples' Union to coordinate strike activity. They plan a march on City Hall from the four corners of the city.
Paid thugs attack marchers. Creeker women, trained in self-defense, disable and tie up the thugs, haul them off and leave them in the countryside to walk home. Next day Creekers try to march again, but are attacked by teargas-dropping helicopters. The day after, they do march, and 153,000 people surround City Hall.
But when Creekers get back home, the illegal militia attacks. Two Creekers are killed. The Creekers manage to capture the militia's rifles and force their jeeps to retreat. But the next day, the militia arrests five working class leaders, including Karen.
The strike spreads to other cities. Creekers and their allies walk out of negotiating sessions. Fat Cat bosses are petrified. The state legislature intervenes. Creekers win more than 200 demands, backed up by new state laws.
Through all of this, Paul has been working on his personal problem that made him unable to declare his love for Karen. At the Creekers victory celebration, Paul is finally able to make a love commitment to Karen with all his heart and soul.
Midwest Book Review says Getting Back Our Stolen Bootstraps is "...a far wider-ranging, bigger-picture story of growth than the usual coming-of-age saga... unusually rooted in a sense of time, place, and community interactions and reactions."
"Taking Away the Tracks," a short story excerpted from Chapter 8, was reprinted in Blue Collar Review, Fall 2022.
"I Have to Go Away," a song from Chapter 15, was reprinted in Which Side Are You On? Labor Day 2023 Poetry Anthology, Moonstone Arts Center.
