SCABMUGGERS

SCABMUGGERS

Yvonne Martinez

The Freight

Thirty labor leaders from countries and industries across the globe came together for sixteen weeks in 1994 for the prestigious, annual Harvard Trade Union Program to learn the history of the labor movement and to form global partnerships among themselves.  What should have been a microcosm of union solidarity soon became a reflection of the movement’s own shadow history of sexism, racism, and homophobia.  One of the six women of the group, Yvonne Martinez, recounts in a novel published in 2025 the verbal and physical harassment by a group of male attendees as well as the courageous and eventually victorious opposition by three of the women.  Yvonne Martinez now brings the pages of her celebrated novel to The Freight’s stage in a rousing, inspiring, and educating world premiere play based on true events and real people, SCABMUGGERS, in what she describes to the opening night audience as “my heartbreak love letter to the union movement.”

The eleven-member cast of mixed gender, race, nationality, and sexual orientation open the evening standing shoulder-to-shoulder singing in rolling, mounting  harmonies James Oppenheimer’s 1911 “Bread and Roses” — lines that to this day have become powerful anthems for worker’s and women’s rights movements, “We go marching, marching in the beauty of the day.”  But hardly does the Harvard Program Director, Elise (Rachel Clausen), welcome the group than a loud-mouthed, full-of-smug, Aussie named Jack (Ryan Lee) begins eyeing with lust a couple of the women in the group while making explicit slurs both sexist and racist in nature.  Joining in is an equally deplorable American, Kirk (Oscar “Woody” Harper), with similar machismo dripping from his smug grin and winking eyes.  One of their targets, Ana (Emily Schuck) — a shy secretary chosen by her municipal labor group to represent them — soon finds herself being stalked by another male, Aaron (a silent but staring with foul intent Kennzeil Love) who somehow finds a pair of her panties and approaches her swinging them in the air with a look of full lechery.  

These same misogynists also find a too-easy target in a member of the Japanese contingent, represented by a shy, mostly silent, but clearly dignified Kenji (Jin Poon).  In one of the scenes most atrocious and most difficult to watch, they get Kenji drunk and coax/force him to dance as if he were a geisha.  

An Afro-Mexican public-sector labor organizer, Simone, and an out-lesbian boasting proudly her butch look, Liz, decide quickly that enough is enough and step in to fight against the brass and crude sexism and racism that male members of their program’s group are openly exhibiting with full abound.  Lucca Troutman (Simone) and Noga Wind (Liz) are the true stand-outs of this cast along increasingly with Emily Schuck whose Ana’s initial reluctance to engage in an open confrontation gives way to her own full courage and bold leadership.  As newspaper guild labor leader, Anthony (Adam Kuveniemann) represents one of the few men of the 1994 group who stood up for the harassed women, but even he eventually shows a disgusting macho side of himself.

The strategies of the three women to expose and bring to justice these atrocities, the resistance and backlashes they receive, and the eventual outcome of their efforts unfold in what seems dozens of often quick scenes over the two hours (plus intermission) of the evening.  The play’s energy ebbs and flows; transitions can sometimes be awkward and slow; and some scenes simply do not seem needed and can be distracting.  But being a world premiere that the director, Tanika Baptiste, admits in opening remarks saw is script was still being edited right up until opening, some needed, future revisions are to be expected in order to tighten the important storyline of an actual history that needs to be told.

The information we as audience learn is not just of this 1994 Harvard program but also of the history of the union movement overall.  Snippets of the group’s lectures that are scattered throughout Martinez’s script become an ongoing education for us as audience about the atrocities that have rained down on striking coal, steel, garbage collector, and many other types of workers throughout the past century.  Events like the 1914 Ludlow Massacre when women and children were burned alive in Colorado during a coal miner strike or like the 1937 Memorial Day massacre in Chicago when retreating steel workers and their families were shot in the back by National Guard begin to paint a picture of the needless sacrifices that not only male strikers but also their supporting wives and accompanying children have suffered.  In fact, the play’s title, SCABMUGGERS, refers to early 20th-century, often multi-ethnic women who protected picket lines from strikebreakers with their bodies and their hidden scissors.  

Along with a pre-curtain, video montage of striking scenes and the violence often occurring in them (Morgan Embry, projection designer) — scenes that date from more than a hundred years ago up until today — these lectures become nearly as important and as impactful as the storyline of the 1994 incidents at Harvard.  The inclusion of well-sung music from the labor movement at various points of the evening (Lucca Troutman, music director), including in a final curtain call reprise of “Bread and Roses,” also gives the script welcomed energy and gravitas. 

Through the lens of a Harvard executive leadership program, Yvonne Martinez reveals the labor movement’s shadow side — a history of sexist, racist, and homophobic behaviors even among those who fought the long, arduous, and too-often dangerous battles for workers’ rights.  As we have seen even in this past year with the shocking revelations about César Chávez, the labor movement is not immune to the same atrocities as the male bosses that these labor heroes so bravely stood up to — sometimes with the cost of their and/or their families’ lives. 

Even though as a new play it still needs some tightening and adjusting, The Freight’s SCABMUGGERS by Yvonne Martinez leaves lasting impressions through some powerful performances and a script that both moves and educates its audience.

Rating: 3.5 E

SCABMUGGERS continues July 14 and 21, 2026, in a two-hour (one intermission) world premiere production at The Freight, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704.  Tickets are available at https://thefreight.org/.

Photo Credits: Sara Leyva