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The Ordinary People of New York By Msgr. George G. Higgins The Yard Stick May 22, 2000  Two days after New York's Cardinal John O'Connor died I received a book which would have warmed his heart. The book is titled "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Pictorial History of Working People in New York City," edited by two highly experienced labor archivists, Debra E. Bernhardt and Rachel Bernstein (New York University Press). One of the best books of its kind I've ever read, it grippingly tells the story of the ordinary men and women -- many of them first-generation immigrants -- who with cement and steel, needle and thread, blood, sweat and dreams built New York City in the 20th century.  The book tells this story with scores of photographs, some produced here for the first time and many taken by the workers themselves. The photos are coupled with pertinent excepts from unpublished oral histories, and from published articles and books about rank-and-file workers and their union leaders.  This excellent book is long overdue. Joshua Freeman, one of the scholars quoted by the editors, tells us why: "Over and over, authors have celebrated New York as the cultural, artistic and financial capital of the 20th century, as the capital of the world. Yet almost never do they acknowledge the extent that it was the sensibility, energy, skill and sophistication of the working class that helped establish the city as the symbol of modernity, opportunity and creativity."  At a time when the Dow Jones Average and the Nasdaq have become New York's dominant symbols in the popular mind, and when prosperity is at an all-time high, though workers and their unions are having a hard go of it, it is refreshing to be reminded that ordinary people, living ordinary lives, built the city from scratch and keep it functioning today.  Chapter 3 of the book, tracing the origins and development of the organized labor movement in New York, appropriately is titled "Creating a Culture of Solidarity." As I read this chapter, I kept thinking of Pope John Paul II's repeated emphasis on worker solidarity in his social encyclicals and in many of his speeches. The pope returned to this subject May 1, the Jubilee Day for Workers, and again May 2 during an audience with 200 labor and business leaders, including John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.  Two days later the pope took up the same theme for a third time in a message to Rome's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. "The value of solidarity is in crisis," he said. He pointed out that the divide between scientific progress and spiritual values is leading to the formation of "an individualistic and competitive society, a frequent source of injustices and violence, of marginalization and discrimination, of conflicts and war."  These words of the pope about the current economic situation worldwide can serve as a reminder of how grateful we ought to be to New York's ordinary workers, who struggled against daunting odds to develop a culture of worker solidarity in the United States. That struggle continues, especially in the service industries, which employ a large percentage of the new immigrants coming to the United States from Latin America, Asia and other parts of the world.  Cardinal O'Connor's successor will find this book indispensable reading as he grapples with New York's social and economic problems. I promise that this is the last time that I will presume to offer unsolicited advice to the new archbishop of the city which turned out to be the cradle of the American labor movement.     Papal Social Encyclicals   Other Catholic Social Teachings General Articles of Interest  Catholic Worker Connection Msgr. George Higgins  Home Page E-Mail: Fr. Sinclair Oubre