Professor Larry Wittner is equally at home hoisting a protest sign or lecturing students in a college classroom, but he just loves picking a banjo while singing labor songs.

Wittner belongs to The Solidarity Singers, and they're way beyond garage band status, although they have performed at a garbage dump for a news conference seeking to expand the bottle bill.

The singers have played on union picket lines and at prisons, peace movement rallies and Labor Day events. They open each assembly of their union, United University Professions, with "Solidarity Forever" while several hundred of their sisters and brothers sing along.

The wiry Wittner has been engrossed in music and the labor movement since he took a ride to Louisiana and Mississippi for the voter registration drive in the summer of 1962 — a turbulent time in the civil rights movement.

Thousands of miles and many causes later, this University at Albany professor helped carve a new niche for activism in UUP when he served as first chair of the Solidarity Committee.

While helping struggling unions with money, picketing or letters of support, the unionists also raised about $5,000 through fundraisers to support the Congress of South African Trade Unions in the anti-apartheid struggle. Now a powerful labor movement, COSATU appreciated "the firm ground of international cooperation" and the "gesture of solidarity with the struggle of the South African masses." Former UUP President Bill Scheuerman was later an official observer in South Africa's first free elections.

"Looking back on my organizing of this South African labor support campaign, I think it was one of the best things I did in my life," Wittner said.

His credentials include one earned by most hardcore activists (think merit badge): a rap sheet. Wittner was arrested at a federal building in Albany during a sit-in as part of a Free South Africa protest; and again several years later for protesting the U.S. funding of the Contra war in Nicaragua.

An author of six books, Wittner is on the national board of Peace Action, this country's largest peace organization.

"There are all sorts of ways people can affect societies and governmental policies," he said. "I believe that good citizens should be involved in both social movements and electoral politics."

Responsibility reaches beyond voting: People can lobby, write letters and opinion pieces, get on the phone, get educated, and get active in their unions, he said.

Wittner has received major fellowships or grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the United States Institute of Peace.

He has spoken at the United Nations and at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and has given talks in Canada, China, South Africa and throughout Europe.

You can reach Liza Frenette at lfrenett@nysutmail.org.