Still Wanda-ful
Neither police, nor politicians, nor retirement can stop outspoken Wanda Weaver from helping working people.
ELK CITY, OKLAHOMA
It was 1975 and Wanda Weaver and the 2,900 AFSCME members in her union local at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation offices in Harrisburg, Pa., were on strike and demonstrating in front of the Statehouse.
Weaver recalls being known even then as an "independent woman — long before there were feminists." She knew there would be trouble when some 20 state troopers lined up in the street with their batons ready.
"I knew there was going to be trouble because, well, I knew me," says Weaver, laughing. "I knew that if there was a problem, I would be causing it."
A big, burly trooper came over and began dictating where, when and how the strikers could picket. "He told me in no uncertain terms that I was to sit down and shut up or I would be arrested," she remembers.
Instead of following orders, Weaver recalls "getting right in his face, telling him chapter and verse of the state law which governed protests, which he apparently had never read."
That upset the trooper. Yelling for backup, he handcuffed her. She sat down on the sidewalk. He grabbed her by the feet, two other troopers took her shoulders and another lifted her by her hair.
Carrying her down the Statehouse steps, they let her back smack hard on each stair. By the last step she was badly bruised and bleeding.
"I couldn't even stand up, it hurt so much," she recalls.
Getting beaten up by state police only happened once to Weaver, who nonetheless survived numerous threats and promises of personal injury for her tireless efforts to help "this young skinny guy" by the name of Jerry McEntee build AFSCME into a Pennsylvania powerhouse.
McEntee, of course, went on to become president of AFSCME International. Weaver helped him found AFSCME Local 2534 (Council 90).
In her 14 years as an AFSCME member in Pennsylvania, Weaver successfully lobbied for flex time and better pay, helped create the AFSCME and Pennsylvania AFL-CIO women’s committees and worked to help elect pro-union political candidates.
Now 77, Weaver, a big, jovial woman who calls everyone "sweetheart," has retired from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in 1987 as a clerk in the tax department and relocated to her home state of Oklahoma. She spends her days caring for a neighbor who is a single mother with medical problems and the woman’s 12-year-old son.
"And whenever the city council meets, I’m there, raising Cain," Weaver says.
Going against the grain, however, is old news to Weaver, who has stood for unpopular causes all her life. She can still remember the day many years ago when she traveled to downtown Harrisburg, Pa., to meet the man who had come to town to organize state workers into a union called AFSCME.
Finding an AFSCME sign in a rundown office building, she opened the door and began slowly climbing to the third-floor office.
"A woman poked her head down the stairs and asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to see whoever it was that was trying to bring in a union. She pointed over her shoulder ... and said 'you want to talk to him.'"
Perhaps not knowing what to make of Weaver, McEntee handed her a two-inch-thick stack of green union cards and asked her to get as many signed as possible.
"I said, 'OK, see you tomorrow,' and turned to go. I heard him break out laughing behind me. Apparently, he didn’t believe anyone could get several hundred union cards signed in just a day," Weaver says.
All 300 cards were signed that afternoon.
"The next day McEntee’s mouth fell open large enough to ride a horse into when I handed over those completed cards," Weaver recalls. From then on, Weaver became his "get-it-done person, the one he called when he needed 500 people to rally at the state capitol with only a day’s notice."
Now, Weaver butts heads with the local conservative establishment. "These old boys don’t know what to do with me," she says, her eyes dancing as she laughs. "They can’t control me and they can’t shut me up."
As she talks, she drives a visitor through the tiny, unpretentious blue-collar town of Elk City. She is proud to have helped bring a new factory to the town.
"But now I understand they will be importing labor from their former location. That wasn’t part of our agreement. Now, me and the plant manager have a problem," Weaver says, fire leaping from her eyes as she parks the car. She actually rubs her palms together in anticipation of the coming battle.
"I think in the end, he’ll see things my way," she says.
Who wouldn’t?
By Daniel Guido
