[caption id="attachment_67118" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Gerry Adams speaking at Harbour Lights. "]
A united Ireland and union solidarity merged together as a common theme on Wednesday evening of last week as union leaders and members from coast to coast converged on New York for the first annual Irish Echo Irish Labor 50 Awards.
The event, with the Brooklyn Bridge and skylines of Manhattan and Brooklyn as backdrops, was staged at Harbour Lights in South Street Seaport.
But the speeches from award winners and keynote speakers Terry O’Sullivan and Gerry Adams were more reflective of stormy economic and political seas than the calm water of any harbor.
Adams, who was in New York to attend the labor event, and also to participate in the annual Clinton Global Initiative gathering, pledged, to loud applause, his party Sinn Féin to the cause of a united Ireland and also a united front between the union movement in Ireland and the United States.
While Adams was loudly received, there was absolute silence in the packed room as he read a poem written three decades ago by hunger striker Bobby Sands.
Laborers’ International Union of North American president, Terry O’Sullivan, in a fiery address, told his listeners that the history of the American labor movement was filled with great men and women of proud Irish descent.
