Taking a stand takes courage

How much would you do for someone you've never met? How far would you go to say "no more?" For Mary Manning, it started with two grapefruits. Manning was a cashier at a Dublin supermarket in July 1984 when a customer approached her register with the produce. According to media reports, Manning said she was sorry but she couldn't ring up the grapefruit as her union had just sent round a letter instructing their members not to handle anything from South Africa, as a protest of its apartheid regime. She was promptly suspended. Ten other employees, all ages 17 to 24, walked out in solidarity. Manning thought they'd be out for a day while management cleared it up. Instead, they made history. And none of it was easy. The Irish women — and one man — walked the picket line at the store six days a week, up to 10 hours a day, in shifts. They never really disrupted any business to the popular store, or stopped deliveries, they said in interviews; most days you couldn't even tell they were there, there was so much foot traffic. But they were there. They were standing up for what was right, and that was the point. They faced abuse from their co-workers and racist remarks from others in the community. Priests in the community encouraged people to cross the picket line, and nuns confronted them to tell them they were wrong about apartheid. Their bosses told them to go back to work. Even their union eventually did. But they couldn't turn away from the wrong they knew was happening to the people in South Africa, even if it wasn't affecting them a world away in white Ireland. Though little news was coming out of the country due to media bans, they'd come to know an elderly man who'd been visiting them nearly every day on the picket line. Nimrod Sejake was living in exile in Ireland after being imprisoned in South Africa in the 1950s for his anti-apartheid activism. His cellmate was Nelson Mandela. Blacks had no rights, they were forced to carry passbooks at all times, they couldn't own property, they couldn't marry outside their race, he told them. It was Sejake who told the strikers that apartheid was like "a pint of Guinness, with the whites sitting on top of the Blacks. The ruling class was white and the white race controlled everything the Black person did. Listening to this we started to really believe that what we were doing was the right thing to do," Munroe said. His encouragement kept them going. Their principles cost them dearly: one of the strikers, Vonnie Munroe, was newly separated with a 3-year-old. She lost her home and ended up living in a one-bedroom apartment. Their strike pay was less than a third of what they'd made. "I had to focus on why I was doing it. And I was doing it because of the horrendous life children my daughter's age were having in South Africa and adults like myself purely because of the color of their skin," Munroe said in interviews. Their persistence caught the eye of others. They soon received a call from someone else: Bishop Desmond Tutu asked the strikers to meet him as he traveled to collect his Nobel Peace Prize for working against apartheid. Tutu would later invite the group to South Africa but armed guards immediately deported them and would not let them enter. The strike lasted two years and nine months. It ended in 1987 when Ireland became the first Western nation to enact a complete ban of South African imports. Soon after his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela visited Dublin and met many of the workers. Knowing that people like the Irish workers would care so much for the freedom of those living under apartheid helped keep him going in prison, he said. Many of the strikers, including Manning, were invited to attend Mandela's funeral in South Africa in 2013. "When it came down to it, we were on the right side of history," she said. "For me, it's something you know in your heart you know you did the right thing." "It was only three years of our lives, but for these people it was their whole lives, from birth to death," Munroe said. "Why is it other people aren't helping these people?" I've been rolling this over in my mind all week as I listened to the stories coming in from around a country seemingly coming apart at the seams, and the lessons we can learn from it. How a handful of people across the sea, who had every reason to believe they were alone in their convictions, brought about the first backbone among nations to say no to a brutal regime. How standing alone in your courage might be the encouragement someone else needs to see. Americans have long shown this sort of courage on our own soil for our fellow man, from the push women's suffrage to the Civil Rights march Selma, peacefully demanding their leaders hear their dissent. It is time to remember again the power We, The People, wield when we speak with one voice. Today, more than 2,500 "No Kings" rallies and marches will be held nationwide, including ones locally in North Ridgeville and Medina. Now is the time to remember to learn from the Irish workers' example. Raise your voice. Change your country. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.