The Steve's Strike

To the Editors of The Crimson:

To those of our customers who loyally helped our strike, hoping as we hoped that we all could save what was special and good about Steve's, we would like to say thank you, but we have lost the store. The owner now will be able, as he hoped he would, to tell his workers just what to do. He turned out to have enough money to wait us out, apparently indefinitely. You can go back now, if you like, and have some Joey/Steve's ("Jeeve's"?) ice cream, if you stayed away to help the strike.

But if you have stayed away in part because you felt that the store changed fundamentally when Steve left, well, then we guess you'll have to continue to stay away, as we will have to.

The store used to be special. Just getting ice cream, you could feel there was something funny, and good, about the place: the workers, and the owner, were having fun. And there was something more, too: what was rarest about Steve's--precious, even, to the workers--was the sense, allowed to us, that the store was partly our own. We helped decide how Steve's would evolve, and we therefore became intensely attached to the place--proud of it, and willing to worry over the hundred little decisions that keep coming up as you try to sustain a little working community that is good.

But still, is an ice cream store worth such a fuss? Don't we know, people sometimes asked, that most people work in jobs where they take orders, and understand they are putting in time to make money for the owner? Yes, we know. But we have seen that work can be better than that, and now we don't intend to forget. We hope that, gradually, other people will come to share that vision; that one day we'll all expect jobs that let us work for shared goals, not just for money. Then the Steve's strike won't seem so odd.

And we are glad that so many of you clearly did understand. You were willing to forego our ice cream for a cause. Together, you and we tried to hold the new owner to the assurances which got him the store: that he would respect the peculiarly democratic form of the place. We're grateful to you, and we're proud that we struggled, picketing 14 chilly weeks, before conceding that the old Steve's was gone for good. It was worth fighting for.

We had a happy, satisfying time feeding you all, and working with one another. We're sorry to have to say goodbye. Sally Zimmerman   Gary Brooks   Tom Hayes   Andrea Giles   Tim Callahan   Jill Baroff   Chris Cirker   Dave Drolet   For Steve's Ice Cream Employees' Movement   [SIC'EM]