Eliza Dawn was a member of the Teamsters Local 32819L back when being a Teamster was a little less ordinary on the Dream. The Teamsters have had a foothold on the Dream for as long as it’s been around - we built this place, after all - but used to be that we weren’t quite as welcome around some parts of the station. It’s not like everybody’s a Teamster fan these days, but back then the corpos and mercs were a lot more trigger-happy. Now, Eliza Dawn saw the situation on the Dream, she saw how us union folk were being walked all over by mercs and corpos and other thugs, and she started talking to people. Started asking around, seeing what the deal was with all this.

She figured out that the biggest company on the Dream at the time was Starspan. Starspan was a shipping and construction giant, and they made a bit of a sport of picking on Teamsters. And there just weren’t enough Teamsters to push back against them, not yet. Eliza Dawn wasn’t too keen on any of that, and so she started organizing Starspan. She went around, talked to its employees, and it turns out they were none too happy with the corporation. But they all said the same thing to her when she asked: sure, they said, it ain’t perfect, but what’s a little guy like me meant to do against the big bosses? And Eliza Dawn had an answer for them. Join the Teamsters, she said. Get yourself organized. And so these people she was talking to started showing up to union meetings.

Now, Eliza Dawn had a hook for these meetings. She wasn’t no professional chef, but she could cook up a fine stew, and she used that to get people interested in the meetings: come for the stew, stay for the union. And so these people came for the stew, and then they realized that the union weren’t too bad neither. So, these people she started talking to in Starspan, they started talking to some of their friends, telling them to come to these union meetings. And the Starspan people started realizing, hey, maybe we should make us our own union.

Well, eventually all this union talk got up to the Starspan bosses, and they weren’t having any of it. So they sent some hired thugs Eliza Dawn’s way, told ‘em to make her stop organizing, permanently. The thugs got to Eliza Dawn’s house, and she let them in, and they were sitting in the main room talking about how they were gonna get rid of her, when she comes out of her kitchen with a pot of her stew. And she sits down with them, serves them some of that stew, and talks to them about the union. And by the end of the night, the thugs are Teamsters, and they ain’t interested in getting rid of Eliza Dawn no more.

She kept on organizing Starspan, and the movement just kept getting bigger and bigger. And eventually, the Starspan workers say that they wanna go on strike, until Starspan goes Teamster. They’ve built up a strike fund and everything, and now it’s the night before the strike. Some more Starspan thugs come banging on Eliza Dawn’s door, and they take her right to the boss’s office, velvet carpets and marble walls and everything, and the boss is sitting behind this huge desk. And he offers her half a million credits if she calls off the strike right then and there. And she reaches into her bag, and she pulls out a little carton of stew she’s kept with her, and she offers it to the Starspan boss, and she says how about we just talk. And the Starspan boss flicks his hand, and one of his thugs tosses the stew into the trash, and he says I don’t eat stew. And that’s when Eliza Dawn knew he was really wicked, right down to the bone. And she gets up and walks out of there, even when the boss ups his offer to a million credits.

And the next day, the strike happens, and it lasts for a long while, but between the Starspan employees and the Teamsters who helped them, there wasn’t a soul on the Dream who was willing to be a scab and cross that picket line. And eventually, Starspan has to cave, and their whole company gets assimilated into Local 32819L. And after that, so many people were Teamster that mercs and thugs couldn’t step on them anymore.

As for Eliza Dawn, she was offered a position as a union boss, but she turned it down, since she figured she could make more progress helping people on the ground. And so she lived out the rest of her days, helping Solaria pay off peoples’ O2 debts, opening up a kitchen to give out her stew, and making life on the Dream just a little bit better.

Eliza Dawn reminds us that some things are worth more than cash or prestige, and that the union’s power comes from each other and the community we build together. On the anniversary of the strike - October 22 - all the Teamsters get together and we throw a festival, we make stew, and we all volunteer to help out with O2 debts and soup kitchens. The Dream can be a rough place, but Dawn Day reminds us that at the end of the day, we’re all still people.