Labor Day weekend in Cincinnati means fireworks and politics.
Not just the Western & Southern/WEBN fireworks show at Riverfest, but the annual AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic, which attracts sizable crowds and makes its own big noise.
Three U.S. presidents have spoken at the annual gathering sponsored by the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council.
For 40 years, the largest Labor Day picnic in America drew a mostly partisan Democrat crowd of card-carrying union workers and their families to Coney Island, where politicians handed out fliers, shook hands and listened to voters.
“It’s a great day for solidarity with fellow union members, and to meet some of the politicians and tell them what you think,” Dan Radford, then-executive-treasurer of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO
Labor Council, told the Cincinnati Post in 2002, when nearly 20,000 people attended the picnic each year.
With Coney Island's closure in 2023, the event moved to Great American Ball Park, then Stricker’s Grove, a 100-year-old, family-owned amusement park in rural Crosby Township.
Solidarity Day led to the first Labor Day picnic
Cincinnati’s Labor Day picnic was born from the surge of labor union activism in the early 1980s.
The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the U.S., organized a Solidarity Day march on Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19, 1981, after President Ronald Reagan fired 12,000 air traffic controllers on strike. More than 250,000 steel workers, mechanics, teachers and supermarket clerks (40,000 from Ohio alone) converged on the capitol to show solidarity among workers.
For Solidarity Day in 1983, the AFL-CIO held more than 150 rallies across the nation. At the Cincinnati rally, 10,000 people marched around the Cincinnati Zoo grounds carrying placards with the theme, “Across America, we will be heard.” WLWT anchor and former mayor Jerry Springer served as master of ceremonies.
Riding that momentum, the AFL-CIO held the first Labor Day picnic at Coney Island in 1984. The second year, Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste came to meet the crowd, establishing the picnic as a campaign stop.
Clinton visit put Labor Day picnic on the map
Bill Clinton and Al Gore attended the picnic during their 1992 presidential campaign against President George H.W. Bush.
“In a speech touched with the flavor of a church revival and the music of a rock ‘n’ roll concert, Clinton blamed the Bush administration for a host of problems,” Enquirer reporter John Eckberg wrote.
Clinton then worked the crowd in an Ohio baseball cap and sweat-stained shirt. His wife, Hillary Clinton, also gave a brief speech to a one-minute ovation.
“They turned this family fun day into a Democratic rally,” complained Peggy Bareswilt, a lifelong Republican.
If Clinton put the Labor Day picnic on the map, the picnic may have helped Clinton get to the White House.
The Enquirer quoted a teenager who had spent hours calling registered Democrats to urge them to come to the picnic for Clinton’s speech: “Nobody knew who Clinton and Gore were, but they all knew Coney Island.”
Obama pushed for health care reform in picnic speech
President Barack Obama was the only president to attend the picnic while in office. He visited in 2009 to push health care reform, the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. His speech was moved to the PNC Pavilion at Riverbend Music Center because of rain.
“If the White House was looking for a friendly venue … it could not have picked a better place on this Labor Day than Riverbend and Coney Island,” wrote Enquirer reporter Howard Wilkinson.
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the 2011 picnic, urging voters to repeal Senate Bill 5, which limited collective bargaining rights of public employees in Ohio. It was repealed in that November’s election.
Clinton returned to the picnic in 2016 in support of Hillary Clinton’s run for president, but he didn’t talk much about labor issues.
Something noticed by Bob Curington of Batavia, a member of an electrical and electronic workers union. “Normally, unions urge you to vote Democrat, but it’s moving toward voting for the cause,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Clinton, Obama among speakers at Cincinnati’s Labor Day picnics
