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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
HONORING THE LIFE OF PAUL BOOTH, AUTHOR, VISIONARY LABOR LEADER, STRATEGIST AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVIST. IN MEMORIAM.
WHEREAS, Paul Booth, an influential Illinois labor leader and primary architect of the first big march against the war in Vietnam, died Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 74; and
WHEREAS, in the early 1970s, as assistant director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, Mr. Booth helped negotiate the first contracts for Illinois state workers, guaranteeing government workers a right to union representation; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Booth joined the labor movement in 1966 as research director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America. He became organizing director and was affiliated for more than four decades with AFSCME, one of the country's biggest labor unions, where he devised the nation's very first living-wage campaign; and
WHEREAS, before joining the union, Mr. Booth was a national leader of Students for a Democratic Society and in 1965 helped SDS organize the first major march on Washington, D.C., to oppose the Vietnam War, drawing about 15,000 students. He popularized the slogan "Build, Not Burn" to promote civilian public service work as an alternative to the military draft; and
WHEREAS, a published author, Mr. Booth was a strategist who often wrote about the democratic process as he did in his last writing, in the Prospect, where he argued for the strategic importance of independent voters; and
WHEREAS, Paul Robert Booth was born on June 7, 1943, in Washington. His father, Philip Booth, worked for the Labor Department and drafted Social Security legislation and programs for migrant workers. His mother was the former Mary Markowitz; and
WHEREAS, Mr. Booth leaves a profound mark on the world of organizing and activism in which he spent his working life.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the President and the Cook County Board of Commissioners, on behalf of the residen...
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