Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s unilateral decision to remove an 11-panel mural depicting the state’s working families raises “grave concerns,”  wrote Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquarella in a letter to LePage. The mural, which LePage removed from the Department of Labor over the weekend, includes a depiction of 1902 Mount Holyoke graduate and former U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. (Kudos  the Maine Democratic Party for posting the mural on its website.) As Pasquarella told LePage:

I was particularly surprised to read that you were influenced by an anonymous fax comparing the 11-panel mural to North Korean political propaganda, because the act of removing images commemorating Maine’s history itself conjures thoughts of rewriting history prevalent in totalitarian regimes.

Once again, Republicans are trying to erase the history of America’s working people. In Maine, Republican Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history from the Department of Labor. The 11-panel piece  in part depicts a 1986 paper mill strike and “Rosie the Riveter” at Bath Iron Works. Judy Taylor, an artist based on Mount Desert, won a 2007 competition to create the mural to depict the “History of Labor in the State of Maine.”

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this profile of a union member who gives back to his community in a big way.

Eric Howard, a painter from Hialea, Fla., knows what it’s like to dream of a better life. Growing up in inner city Miami in a working-class family, Howard worked odd jobs after school and learned from his family how to make do. He painted his first house as a teenager—but it wasn’t until his first painting class at Miami’s local Job Corps program that he decided to make his living as a union painter.