Maudelle Shirek
Retired Local 535 Member
Vice Mayor of Berkeley

The Courage to Struggle; the Will to Win

May 2001

Anyone who fears that being a senior citizen makes you less effective can look to Berkeley’s vice mayor, Local 535 retiree Maudelle Shirek. When Shirek was 71 years old she was forced to retire as director of the West Berkeley Senior Center. “The city manager claimed she was too old to run a senior center,” recalls Mike Berkowitz, who was president of the Local 535 Berkeley City Workers Chapter at the time. The real reason for her forced retirement was political reprisals. The conservative party had just won the city council election, and they were purging the city of their progressive opponents. Shirek, an active member of the progressive political organization, Berkeley Citizens Action, was on the top of their list.

Local 535 held a massive demonstration to protest her firing and shut down the city manager’s office. The city manager responded by firing Berkowitz as well. That was it for the two Local 535 members. The gauntlet had been thrown down. “We decided that if they said she was too old to run a senior center, then how about if she ran the whole city,” Berkowitz stated.

Shirek ran for city council in the next election. She won that election and has won every election since. She is now the vice mayor. At 89 years of age, she is the oldest elected official in California. She has earned the title “Berkeley’s Lion In Winter.”

The Dragon interviewed Shirek at the New Light South Berkeley Senior Center, where she works as a volunteer. The center is one of the two that she founded. The center feeds approximately 120 people a day, including delivering 80 meals.

Although known for being reserved, Shirek was a little agitated the morning of our interview. She was furious at President Bush for his tax cut plan, which she sees as an attack on social services. “If I was a young person I would be out in the streets over what is happening in Congress right now. Bush talks about a surplus, but we don’t have health care for people, or housing, enough money for school. And now he says we can’t have clean air or clean water. What else is money to be spent on?” she asks.

Shirek has seen a lot of changes in her life, and she was an active participant in those changes. As the granddaughter of a slave, she grew up in the rural south at a time of complete segregation. She was lucky; her father was one of the few African-American school teachers, and he taught her to read and about political activism.
Shirek moved to Berkeley during World War II to get a job in the defense industry. At the time, Berkeley was nearly as segregated as the south. California had no African-American legislators or elected officials. She joined the coalition that broke that political barrier by electing Byron Rumford to the California Assembly. She then worked with the muckraking author Jessica Mitford and realtor Arlene Slaughter to break the restrictive real estate covenants that prevented African Americans from owning homes in Berkeley. In order to increase the economic empowerment of minorities, she took a job at the Berkeley Cooperative Credit Union, and while working there she organized the Credit Union employees into Office and Professional Employees Union Local 29.

One of her greatest political accomplishments occurred at a meeting when a young African-American social worker who had just been accepted into a PhD program was considering running for Berkeley City Council. The doctoral student was afraid that accepting the nomination meant compromising his radical politics. His name was about to be removed from nomination, when Shirek spoke out at the meeting. She convinced him to run on his convictions and pushed his nomination through. That was the end of Ron Dellums’ academic career. He was elected to the council and later to the United States House of Representatives, where he served for almost 30 years. Dellums became known as the conscience of the Congress, fighting to end the Vietnam War, apartheid, and poverty.

Shirek founded the South Berkeley Senior Center and became its first director. Working for the city, she joined Local 535 and served on its executive board. There she began working with Mike Berkowitz, who would later become her political partner. Together they started battling the city over its poor labor policies, including discrimination against minorities. She remembers filing countless grievances against the city. “The city wasn’t very good at hiring black people, and the ones they hired weren’t treated too good,” she recalls. “The union really helped to integrate the work force in the city."

One of the first things that Shirek accomplished after her election to the city council was to force the city to settle all its outstanding labor grievances and to replace the union-busting law firm the city had hired with in-house negotiators. She also formed a city labor commission, one of the only municipal labor commissions in the state. The city commission worked closely with the Alameda County Central Labor Council to stop run-away shops and institute pro-labor reforms.
Shirek’s elected status only increased her activism and pro-labor stance. According to Berkowitz, almost anytime working people hit the streets, Shirek joins their lines, from hospital workers to steel workers, from civil rights to public health care. She was arrested in one of the first anti-apartheid demonstrations, and when the AIDS ward at Highland Hospital was threatened with closure, she chained herself to the doors.

One of her recent campaign flyers featured her raising a clenched fist while being taken away by the police, with the following slogan: “The courage to struggle; the will to win.” Currently she is active in the fight to save Berkeley community radio station KPFA from being taken over by a national board that includes union-busting lawyers.
Her goals for the city are more affordable housing and public health services. She is also working on expanding programs for youth, seniors, and homeless people.

Shirek had this advice for 535 members: “Organize, organize, organize.”

On June 23 there will be a celebration of Shirek’s 90th birthday at the North Berkeley Senior Center, from 2:00-5:00 p.m., featuring Congresswoman Barbara Lee. All 535 members are welcome to attend. For more information, contact Mike Berkowitz at (510) 549-1861.