Students are making history. All of us should join them
May 17, 2024
Statement from Ontario Federation of Labour President Laura Walton on the one month anniversary of the start of the university protests in solidarity with Palestine.
There is a global #GeneralStrike planned for my birthday, 17 May, so maybe y'all could use that as motivation if, you know, standing up for #Rafah and #Gaza aren't enough motivation? LOL
make sure y'all take a look at the thread i posted about #PuertoRico's #SummerOfProtest; the largest #GeneralStrike in the history of the island and the United States. lasted 12-15 days (depending on who is counting) and it ended with the then governor of Puerto Rico, the nepobaby Ricardo (Ricky) Rosselló giving in his resignation and fleeing the island.
“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.