Editor’s Note: We’re delighted to share the first of a six-part series from the archives of photographer David Bacon. A former union organizer, Bacon has for thirty years, in his photographs and writing, captured the courage of people struggling for social and economic justice around the world. His images are now part of the Special Collections in Stanford University’s Green Library.
In early 2003, as people began to realize that the Bush Administration intended to invade Iraq, hundreds of thousands of protesters filled streets around the world. I joined them as an activist opposed to a war that seemed inevitable, and as a photographer documenting movements for peace and human rights.
These marches included people from many labor unions, including my own—the Newspaper Guild of Northern California (now the Pacific Media Workers Guild), CWA Local 39521. The involvement by workers led to the formation of U.S. Labor Against the War, which quickly grew to include labor organizations and activists from around the country. One of the first questions on our minds was how the war would impact Iraqi workers. We knew the country had one of the oldest and most radical labor movements in the Middle East, driven underground by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Six months after the U.S. launched its invasion on March 20, 2003, U.S. Labor Against the War asked me—and labor leader Clarence Thomas, of the International Longshore Workers Union—to go to Baghdad and get some answers.
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David Bacon
With the help of activists in several unions, I was able to visit Baghdad’s refinery and several factories. In each workplace, workers had reorganized unions that had been illegal under Saddam Hussein. The U.S. occupation authorities, however, denied these unions their legal right to exist.
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David Bacon
The women in this leather goods factory were deaf and mute. Since the days of Iraq’s radical government of the late 1950s, these women and others like them were given preference for jobs in factories like this.
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Copyright David Bacon, Courtesy Special Collections, Stanford Libraries
Union leader Falah Alwan argues with the plant manager at the plastic bottle factory where they are employed about the rights of its workers. Occupation czar Paul Bremer published lists of factories, most of which had been publicly owned, and invited private foreign investors to buy them at auction. While the union activists we talked with were glad Hussein was gone, they said the occupation had thrown most people into poverty.
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David Bacon
The plastic bottle factory was in very poor condition because sanctions against Iraq had kept it from purchasing parts for machinery.
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David Bacon
I encountered a demonstration by unemployed police officers who were prohibited by the occupation authorities from returning to their former jobs. Weapons were everywhere, carried by both the unemployed people and the police trying to contain their protest.
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David Bacon
In the streets, children sold CDs and whatever they could find. A nearby soccer field was abandoned by kids who had to work instead of playing. Homeless children even slept on the sidewalks.