anyway, making a zine about the upcoming UAW 4811 strike to get out the vote, about the history of employers, police, and vigilante mobs to quell labor organizing, and how we should absolutely be ready to roll when our employer replays that pattern. an injury to one, is, as they say, an injury to all.
Just published a review essay and reflection of Harvard Business School's recent conference "Oral History of Business in the Global South" in the April Interfaces.
Today in Labor History April 2, 1903: Mexican police fired on more than 10,000 protestors, killing 15 and wounding many more. People had been protesting the reelection of General Bernardo Reyes as governor of Nuevo Leon, who was aligned with Mexico's brutal dictator, Porfirio Diaz.
Today in Labor History April 2, 1863: Bread riots occurred in Richmond, Virginia, as a result of a drought the previous year, combined with a blockade by the Union Army and overall Civil War-related shortages. Food riots occurred throughout the South around this time, led primarily by women. During the Richmond riot, women broke into storehouses and shops, stealing food, clothing and jewelry before the militia was able to restore order.
Today in Labor History April 2, 1840: Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist was born. He was also a liberal activist, playing a significant role in the political liberalization of France, and in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer falsely convicted and imprisoned on trumped up, antisemitic charges of espionage. He was also a significant influence on mid-20th century journalist-authors, like Thom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion. Wolfe said that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of Steinbeck, Dickens, and Zola.
Zola wrote dozens of novels, but his most famous, Germinal, about a violently repressed coalminers’ strike, is one of the greatest books ever written about working class rebellion. It had a huge influence on future radicals, especially anarchists. Some anarchists named their children Germinal. Rudolf Rocker had a Yiddish-language anarchist journal in London called Germinal, in the 1910s. There were also anarchist papers called Germinal in Mexico and Brazil in the 1910s.
Today in Labor History April 1, 1976: Surrealist artist, Max Ernst, died. In addition to his artwork, he was an anti-Fascist, who was literally chased out of France by the Gestapo. He opposed Stalin’s Moscow trials. And much of his art had anti-Fascist and anti-Stalinist themes. He produced his painting “Fireside Angel” (or “Angel of the Hearth and Home”) after the Spanish Republicans were defeated by the Fascists. Ernst said, “Now this was naturally an ironic title for a sort of ungainly beast that tramples down and destroys everything in its path. It was the impression I had at the time of what was likely to happen in the world, and I was right.”
Today in Labor History April 1, 1929: Textile workers struck at the Loray Mill, in Gastonia, N.C. Textile mills started moving from New England, to the South, in the 1890s, to avoid the unions. This escalated after the 1909 Shirtwaist strike (which preceded the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire), the IWW-led Lawrence (1912) and (1913) Patterson strikes, which were led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca. The Gastonia strike was violent and bloody. Dozens of strikers were imprisoned. A pregnant white woman, Ella Mae Wiggins, wrote and performed songs during the strike. She also lived with and organized African American workers, one of the worst crimes a poor white woman could commit in the South. The strike ended soon after goons murdered her. Woody Guthrie called Wiggins the pioneer of the protest ballad and one of the great folk song writers.
Wiley Cash wrote a wonderful novel about Ella Mae Wiggins and the Gastonia strike, “The Last Ballad.” Jess Walter wrote a really great novel about the Spokane free speech fight, featuring Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, called “The Cold Millions.” Other novels about the Gastonia strike include Sherwood Anderson’s, “Beyond Desire,” and Mary Heaton Vorse’s, “Strike!”
Today in Labor History April 1, 1920: T-Bone Slim's “The Popular Wobbly” was published in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) "One Big Union Monthly." T-Bone Slim (Matti Valentin Huhta) was a Finnish-American poet, songwriter, journalist, hobo and IWW labor activist. He was a regular columnist for the Industrial Worker, Industrial Solidarity, and Industrialisti. Some of his most well-known labor songs include: The Popular Wobbly, Mysteries Of A Hobo's Life, and The Lumberjack's Prayer. His songs were sung during the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s and Noam Chomsky was a big fan. https://youtu.be/Rn_Wfydg61c
Today in Labor History April 1, 1649: Diggers occupied St. George's Hill, in Surrey, England, seizing land to hold in common and to grow food. Other Digger communities followed in Little Heath, Wellingborough, Buckinghamshire and other regions. The Diggers are sometimes seen as forerunners of modern anarchism. In 1966, members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe formed a Diggers group, handing out free food to hippies in Golden Gate Park. The original Diggers influenced the anti-roads and squatting movements in England and elsewhere. They inspired the Leon Rosselsen song, “The World Turned Upside Down,” seen in the Youtube video, above, performed by Billy Bragg. https://youtu.be/LK2ldle1kAk
“There was a time in the history of France when the poor found themselves oppressed to such an extent that forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and hundreds of heads tumbled into the basket. That time may have arrived with us.”
A cooper said this to a crowd of 10,000 workers in St. Louis, Missouri in July, 1877. He was referring to the Paris Commune, which happened just six years prior. Like the Parisian workers, the Saint Louis strikers openly called for the use of arms, not only to defend themselves against the violence of the militias and police who were sent to crush their strike, but for outright revolutionary aims.
The Great Upheaval was the first major worker uprising in the United States. It began in the fourth year of the Long Depression which, in many ways, was worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It lasted twenty-three years and included four separate financial panics. In 1873, over 5,000 business failed. Over one million Americans lost their jobs. In the following two years, another 13,000 businesses failed. Railroad workers’ wages dropped 40-50%. And one thousand infants were dying each week in New York City.
By 1877, workers had suffered four years of wage cuts and layoffs. In July, the B&O Railroad slashed wages by 10%, their second wage cut in eight months. On July 16, 1877, the trainmen of Martinsburg, West Virginia, refused to work. They occupied the rail yards and drove out the police. Local townspeople backed the strikers and came to their defense. The militia tried to run the trains, but the strikers derailed them and guarded the switches with guns. They halted all freight movement, but continued moving mail and passengers, to successfully maintain public support.
Today in Labor History March 31, 1990: 200,000 people protested against the new Poll Tax in London. The new tax shifted the burden from the somewhat progressive tax based on property values, to an entirely regressive tax.
@MikeDunnAuthor I evaded the whole lot by accident due to a Council strike, LB Greenwich didn't process my form showing I'd moved out of Reading!
Was fine until I got nicked for minor drug possession in London in 1994 - Metpol had 0 record of me existing, and sent Thames Valley Police to my family home at 06:00 to do a citizenship check (as I am brown), which was awkward with my parents (as they knew I had got in trouble and that wouldn't normally have happened as I was over 18 by then)