The Alaska Cannery Workers Association and the Ebbs and Flows of Struggle

Abstract

The recent scholarship of civil rights historians and ethnic studies scholars have troubled the notion that appeals to a “common oppression” as “people of color” can unify multiracial coalitions. Rather, they have built their analysis around the concept of “differential racialization.” While distinct racial experiences should not be conflated, we also know that that communities of color do not live in isolation. With this later point in mind, this article examines an understudied history of black and Filipino labor solidarity in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, my analysis centers the Alaska Cannery Worker Association (ACWA), a group of Filipino and other non-white white cannery workers in Alaska that formed in the summer of 1973. While they were a product of a long history of Filipino labor radicalism on the West Coast, they drew upon the resources and strategies of militant black workers in Seattle's building trades. To illustrate the fluid exchange of resources, people, and ideas between these labo...