Reception and Book Signing with Tim Wheeler Oct. 7, People’s Center
Tim Wheeler is former editor of People’s World and will be hosting a reception and book signing Saturday, October 7, 2017 at 2 p.m. at the New Haven Peoples Center, 37 Howe St.
Tim will read from his newly published autobiography “News From Rain Shadow Country” (part 1) and sign books. This book includes his growing up years on the Olympic Peninsula and some of the great labor battles and other struggles that he covered for People’s World. (see below)
The reception is sponsored by the Connecticut People’s World Committee. Reply to: 203-624-4254 or e-mail: [email protected]
Tim Wheeler estimates he has written 10,000 news reports, exposes, op-eds, and commentaries in his half century as a journalist for the Worker, Daily World and People’s World. “News From Rain Shadow Country” is a selection of that writing covering his childhood and youth growing up on a dairy farm near Sequim, Washington in the 1950s and his retirement on the family farm in recent years.
The Cold War blacklist targeted Wheeler’s father, forcing the family to take up farming. Yet these stories are filled with triumph over hatred and fear, the wide circle of neighbors the Wheeler’s befriended, the surprise visits to the farm of folksinger, Pete Seeger, and Barack Obama and others.
He writes of the trials and tribulations of fellow farmers, fishermen, loggers, millworkers, and retail workers, like the employees of WalMart. He devotes a chapter to the Quileutes, Makahs, and other tribes in their defense of sovereignty and treaty rights. He writes as a Marxist that working people must unite, stand against the corporate right wing to win jobs, equality, a livable environment and world peace. He embraces the motto: “People and Nature Before Profits.”