#Layoffs at #Riot: 530 #gamedevs are losing their jobs, because "investments are not paying off" as the CEO puts it.
In other words: Workers are paying the price for reckless trend-chasing and mismanagement. This comes from a company which has made the news many times for its toxic work environment. Game devs endured it, now they get laid off and the C-suite stays on and gets millions in pay-outs.
This is the hallmark of an industry that mistreats its workers.
Today in Labor History January 21, 1999: Striking miners used stones and clubs to force their way through riot police in Bucharest Romania in the Mineriad of 1999. They were protesting against low wages and poor working conditions. The Mineriads were a series of protests by Jiu Valley miners in Bucharest during the 1990s.
Today in Labor History January 18, 1958: The Battle of Hayes Pond, the Battle of Maxton Field, or the Maxton Riot was an armed confrontation between members of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization and Lumbee Indians at a Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina. The KKK drove through town with a loudspeaker advertising the event and recruiting participants, infuriating the local indigenous community, which took up arms to disrupt the rally. They fired into the crowd, forcing the Klansmen to flee. The police arrested several Klansmen and charged them with inciting a riot, while some media sources praised the Lumbees and condemned the Klansmen.
Today in Labor History January 11, 532: One of the first documented sports hooligan riots escalated into a full-scale revolt against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople. The Nika Riot began as a quarrel between fans of two different chariot teams, the Blues and the Greens. Over the course of a week, participants burned down nearly half of the city. Up to 30,000 people died. They were particularly angry at Justinian’s corruption, and the high taxes he levied on them.
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New Documentary — Immortal Soul: A Riot Tribute & Concert Film - Decibel Magazine
For fans of NYC's Riot, this new series will give the band the chance to get the recognition and credit they deserve.
Today in Labor History December 19, 2001: The Argentine government declared a state of siege to stop the worst looting and rioting in a decade sparked by austerity measures and poverty.
Today in Labor History December 18, 1830: The "Swing Rioters" went on trial on this date. The rioters were agricultural laborers who fought for a minimum wage during the early decades of the 19th century. During this time, England shifted from self-sufficient, open fields to farms rented by tenant farmers. Technology, including the increasing use of threshers, and a surplus of labor, drove down wages. Farm workers in the "swing" counties of the south and east of England responded by destroying farm machinery. Hundreds were arrested, jailed and executed.
Today in Labor History December 11, 2005: The Cronulla race riots occurred in Sydney, Australia. The riots began in the suburb of Cronulla and spread to several other suburbs over the next few nights. They were triggered by an altercation between white lifeguards and a group of youths of Middle-Eastern appearance. The far-right Australia First Party and Patriotic Youth League were involved in the fighting. Chain-texting led to the rapid arrival of reinforcements. By midday Sunday, December 11, roughly 5,000 people had arrived at the beach. People attacked cops and ambulances. Two people were stabbed.
Today in Labor History December 10, 1907: The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clashed with animal rights protesters and cops. They had been protesting against a memorial for animals that had been vivisected that animal rights activists had erected. The Brown Dog affair raged for 7 years, from 1903 to 1910. Swedish feminists infiltrated the University of London lectures. There were pitched battles between medical students and the police. The authorities ordered the cops to protect a statue of a dog from irate medical students, known as “anti-doggers.” It led to a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. And, overall, it was a cause célèbre that divided the country.
Today in Labor History December 10, 1896: Alfred Jarry's play, Ubu Roi, premiered in Paris. At the end of the performance, a riot broke out. Many in the audience were confused and outraged by the obscenity and disrespect they felt in the performance. Others, like W. B. Yeats, thought it was revolutionary. Jarry’s work was a precursor to Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd. Ubu Roi is a parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth and parts of Hamlet and King Lear. However, having recently reread the play, I found an uncanny resemblance between Pere Ubu and Donald Trump.
Today in Labor History December 6, 1889: The trial of the Chicago Haymarket anarchists began amidst national and international outrage and protest. None of the men on trial had even been at Haymarket Square when the bomb was set off. They were on trial because of their anarchist political affiliations and their labor organizing for the 8-hour work-day. 4 were ultimately executed, including Alber Parsons, husband of future IWW founding member Lucy Parsons. One, Louis Ling, cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell. The Haymarket Affairs is considered the origin of International Workers Day, May 1st, celebrated in virtually every country in the world, except for the U.S., where the atrocity occurred. Historically, it was also considered the culmination of the Great Upheaval, which a series of strike waves and labor unrest that began in Martinsburg, West Virginia, 1877, and spread throughout the U.S., including the Saint Louis Commune, when communists took over and controlled the city for several days. Over 100 workers were killed across the U.S. in the weeks of strikes and protests. Communists and anarchists also organized strikes in Chicago, where police killed 20 men and boys. Albert and Lucy Parsons participated and were influenced by these events. I write about this historical period in my Great Upheaval Trilogy. The first book in this series, Anywhere But Schuylkill, came out in September, 2023, from Historium Press. Check it out here: https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/it/michael-dunn and https://michaeldunnauthor.com/
Today in Labor History December 4, 1970: The authorities jailed Cesar Chavez for 20 days during the Salinas Salad Bowl Strike. The strike was, in many ways, a turf war between the UFW and the teamsters, who had already signed a deal with the growers. It was the largest farm workers strike in U.S. history. It cost the lettuce growers $500,000 per day. The UFW also initiated a nationwide boycott of lettuce. On November 4, someone bombed their headquarters. Chavez’s arrest, on December 4, was his first of many arrests. Ethyl Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, visited him in jail. As she left, an anti-union mob attacked her. The Brown Berets collaborated with the police to prevent a full-scale riot from breaking out.
Today in Labor History November 27, 1978: Former cop and supervisor Dan White assassinated San Francisco’s mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk. A jury later acquitted White on the Twinkie Defense, claiming that he had gone temporarily insane from junk food. This travesty of justice led to the White Night Riot, after decades of police harassment and physical abuse of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community. People attacked the windows of City Hall. When the cops tried to protect the building, people hurled rocks and bottles at them, forcing them to run inside. Where ever the cops showed up, people threw rocks at them. At least a dozen cop cars were torched. They busted windows in the financial district and in government buildings. Many people were injured. The riot caused hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of property damage to City Hall. And when the riot was finally subdued, the cops made a retaliatory raid on the Elephant Bar, in the Castro District. Cops in riot gear beat patrons. They arrested 24 people.
The double assassination of Moscone and Milk dramatically altered the political landscape of San Francisco. Under Moscone and Milk, the city was moving in a progressive, pro-neighborhood direction. With the new mayor, Diane Feinstein, city politics returned to the traditional, conservative, pro-Chamber of Commerce, law and order framework that preceded Moscone and Milk. And Feinstein parlayed her success as SF mayor into a long and sordid career in Congress, where she was a strong proponent of Capital Punishment, vitriolic opponent of the Green New Deal, supporter of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and generally supported U.S. imperialist policy abroad.
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Today In Metal History 🤘 November 8th, 2023🤘 RIOT, LED ZEPPELIN, MOTÖRHEAD, THIN LIZZY, IRON MAIDEN
TALENT WE LOST R.I.P. Guy Speranza (RIOT): 1956 - November 8th, 2003 (aged 47) We lost the powerful voice on Rock City (1977), Narita (1979) and the untouchable Fire Down Under (1981) 20 years ago today (November 8th, 2003). He was only 47. RIP RIOT’s Guy Speranza...
Today in Labor History November 4, 1839: The Newport Rising began. It was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. It began when approximately 4,000 Chartists, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport. When several were arrested, other Chartists, including coal miners, many armed with homemade weapons, marched on the Westgate Hotel (where they were held) to liberate them. Up to 24 were killed when soldiers were ordered to open fire on them. The Chartists were fighting for the adoption of the People’s Charter, which called for universal suffrage, the secret ballot, and the right of regular working people to serve in the House of Commons. Three leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death, but popular protests got their sentences commuted to Transportation for Life, probably to Australia or Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania). America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, supposedly participated in this rebellion. He was a known Chartist in those days, a physical force man who loved to battle cops and Tory thugs. Because of his history of street violence and vandalism, he had to flee Britain in the dark of the night, ultimately settling in Illinois, where he eventually set up the private detective agency that would go on to murder numerous union organizers, and set up hundreds more for long prison stints through the use of agents provocateur and perjured testimonies.
The riots were depicted in the following novels: “Sir Cosmo Digby,” by James Augustus St John (1843), “Rape of the Fair Country,” by Alexander Cordell (1959) and “Children of Rebecca,” by Vivien Annis Bailey (1995).
Big Brick Energy: Eine Multi-City-Studie zum George-Floyd-Aufstand 2020 #BLM
„Big Brick Energy geht einen Schritt über Anekdoten und heiße Aufnahmen hinaus. Ein Jahr lang untersuchten die Mitglieder von „Unity and Struggle“ den Aufstand, indem sie fünfzehn Genoss*innen in fünf Städten interviewten, die Berichterstattung aus denselben Städten zusammenstellten und offizielle Berichte von Lokalregierungen und Polizeidienststellen in siebzehn Städten im ganzen Land untersuchten. (Weitere Informationen zu unseren Methoden finden Sie in Anhang A.) Wir haben gemeinsame Dynamiken an verschiedenen Orten herausgearbeitet, Taktiken und Strategien identifiziert, die die Bewegung und die herrschende Klasse angewandt haben, untersucht, was funktioniert und was nicht, und wichtige Herausforderungen und Fragen aufgezeigt, auf die ein zukünftiger Aufstand wahrscheinlich stoßen wird.“ http://www.unityandstruggle.org/2022/07/big-brick-energy-a-multi-city-study-of-the-2020-george-floyd-uprising/
Präsentation: A Multi-City Study of the 2020 George Floyd Uprising #BLM
"Big Brick Energy goes a step beyond anecdotes and hot takes. For a year, Unity and Struggle members investigated the uprising by interviewing fifteen comrades* in five cities, compiling news coverage from the same cities, and examining official reports from local governments and police departments in seventeen cities across the country." (See Appendix A for more information on our methods.) We identified common dynamics in different places, identified tactics and strategies that the movement and the ruling class have used, examined what works and what doesn't, and highlighted important challenges and questions that a future uprising is likely to encounter." http://www.unityandstruggle.org/2022/07/big-brick-energy-a-multi-city-study-of-the-2020-george-floyd-uprising/