Stanley Rosebud Rosen suckled at the teat of extremist politics from an early age.

"My grandfather was a gentle anarchist," said Rosen, who retired to Santa Fe 15 years ago after a 30-plus-year career as a labor educator. "My father was a radical socialist. He taught me, by the virtue of his presence, two things: One, you could do things to change the world for the better. And two, you had to. It was part of what you were supposed to do as a socially conscious human being."

Rosen was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, on March 2, 1934, and was raised outside New Brunswick, N.J., at the Ferrer Colony, a community founded by supporters of noted anarchist Francisco Ferrer.

"People were engaged in the world and engaged in politics," Rosen said. "That was the environment I grew up in."

Growing up, Rosen said, he was taught that "if you weren't in it, you were out of it," and that expressing one's opinion was the easy part of politics.

For things to change, "You have to be an effective, sensational, tactical organizer," Rosen said. "Everyone has their artistic medium. Being a good organizer and enjoying the organizing process is my artistic medium. It's enjoyable, satisfying, creative — and in the long run, it has results."

When Rosen graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in history in 1956, he knew he didn't want to share his talents with the corporate world. So he accepted a job in the labor education department at Rutgers, helping to develop training programs for union leaders.

"That was my first job," Rosen said. "To teach people collective bargaining and union history. I carried a lot of boxes, but I began a learning experience and was exposed to labor educators who became my mentors."

Subsequently, Rosen earned a master's degree in economics, also from Rutgers, and was recruited to be the education director for the Textile Workers Union of America, a leading organization in the post-World War II drive to organize industrial workers in the American South.

"I traveled a lot and put a lot of hardship on my family," said Rosen, who was a married father of three at the time.

Rosen said one of his most memorable moments from that part of his life occurred during a push to unionize a textile factory in Dalton, Ga.

The workers successfully unionized and threw a parade the next day. Rosen said one of the workers turned to him and said, "For most of my life, I've felt like a horse with a collar around my neck. But today I feel like a free man."

After four years at TWUA, Rosen was recruited by the University of Illinois, where he worked as a labor educator for the next three decades, training the labor leaders of the Midwest and South and eventually becoming a professor of labor and industrial relations.

Along the way, he did stints on numerous picket lines in solidarity with striking workers and once stood shoulder to shoulder with famed labor organizer César Chávez in a United Farmer Workers picket line in the suburbs south of Chicago.

He also stood in a picket line outside the Congress Hotel in Chicago with workers who began a strike in 2003. Now in its eighth year, that strike has become the longest-running strike in U.S. history, according to a June 15 story on CBS's chicago.com website.

Rosen said he was encouraged by the unity expressed recently by embattled union members in Wisconsin who demonstrated on a massive scale to protest legislation that threatened their right to collective bargaining.

"You had firefighters, police officers, building trades, nurses, every type of union person standing up for the concept of unionization and the concept of solidarity," he said.

Rosen said the problem with "right-wing and anti-labor people in America today is that they have no sense of what the world is like for working people. What's happened in recent years in there is a new school called HR [human resources], and HR's approach is that workers don't need unions, that management can meet all their needs. Some needs can be met by more enlightened management in the short term. But the whole idea that management can respond to the needs of the workers without their participation is questionable in my mind. When the union comes in, workers move into a position of equality with the employer. They are no longer supplicants."

Over the years, Rosen said, the number of laborers has been reduced by technology and globalization. Factories moved from the Northeast to the South to Puerto Rico and South America, and eventually to Asia, to escape unions, he said.

In the last 15 years, he added, workers' disposable income has been diminished by politics, the economy and take-backs — in which management takes away rights previously negotiated by unions.

"Right now, with all this political insanity going," Rosen said, "it's a very difficult period for labor."

But, he said, unions have continued to evolve and are organizing new types of workers, including professionals such as teachers, social workers and public employees. "People have come to recognize that being a professional doesn't guarantee good treatment," he said.

Since retiring to Santa Fe in 1995, Rosen has continued to be involved in politics. In 2010, he assisted the Santa Fe League of Women Voters in conducting a transparency audit for Santa Fe County.

Rosen and other labor activists will lead a sing-along of labor songs during a Labor Day celebration Monday at the Democratic Headquarters.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.



IF YOU GO

What: Labor Day celebration
When: Noon to 3 p.m., Sept. 5
Where: Democratic Headquarters, 1420 Cerrillos Road
Cost: free