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• Post #4424113

• Post #4378043

  Today in Labor History August 4, 1974: The fascist terrorist organization, Ordine Nero, set off a bomb on the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22. Their goal was to destroy the liberal-democratic state because of its alleged tolerance of Communists, dark-skinned immigrants and Jews. #workingclass #LaborHistory #fascism #terrorism #italy #communism #antisemitism #racism #bomb

• Post #4378038

  Today in Labor History August 4, 1942: U.S. and Mexico began the Bracero Program to provide cheap Mexican labor to replace U.S. workers who were being sent to fight in World War II, and to replace the 500,000 Mexican workers who were deported during the Great Depression in order to mollify xenophobic demands for “white jobs.” The Bracero program also gave farm-owners an alternative to hiring Anglo farm workers who hadn’t been drafted, many of whom were affiliated with the radical IWW. The Bracer...

• Post #4378016

  Today in Labor History August 4, 1964: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21. They were activists with the Congress of Racial Equality promoting voting registration among African Americans. Seven Klu Klux Klan members, including Deputy Sheriff Price, were convicted. #workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #kkk #KuKluxKlan #CivilRights #core #mississippi #murder

• Post #4328901

• Post #4328900

  Today in Labor History July 31, 1968: Students protested the Olympics in Mexico City. They occupied schools and began a General Strike. Cops violently attacked them. It was part of a broader movement consisting of students, workers, and leftists, protesting state repression against unions and student activists. One of their slogans was: ¡No queremos olimpiadas, queremos revolución! ("We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!" On August 27, over 500,000 people marched...

• Post #4328899

  Today in History July 31, 1703: The authorities placed write Daniel Defoe in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. They did it because he published a politically satirical pamphlet. Instead of stones, people pelted him with flowers. Defoe’s most famous book, “Robinson Crusoe,” (1719) has been translated more than any other book in history, other than the Bible. He also wrote “Moll Flanders,” and “A Journal of a Plague Year.” In 1702, William III died. His successor, Queen Anne, immediately...

• Post #4328898

  Today in Labor History July 31, 1970: British sailors were given their very last officially sanctioned ration of rum. Black Tot Day took away from sailors one of the very few remaining benefits of the job. The lash has never been formally abolished. And sodomy was never officially permitted…. But it no doubt persists. #workingclass #LaborHistory #sailor #british #rum #sodomy #lash #workplacesafety #pogues #lgbtq

• Post #4328897

• Post #4328896

  Looking for a new favorite mineral? How ‘bout Cummingtonite? It’s fun and satisfying and helps relieve stress…. And it’s a pretty good-looking mineral, too For more funny names of chemicals see this link: https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm

• Post #4328895

  Today in Writing History August 1, 1819: Herman Melville was born. He was one of the greatest American writers of all time. The death of his merchant father in 1832 left his family destitute. So, he became a merchant seaman, having many of the same brutal and exploitative experiences other seamen had in those days. Rum, sodomy and the lash! Consequently, he jumped ship in the Marquesas and lived with the local indigenous people. His first two books, “Typee” and “Omoo,” were about these experienc...

• Post #4328894

  Today in Labor History August 1, 1842: The Lombard Street riot, a three-day race riot, occurred in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the last riot in a 13-year period of violent racist attacks in the city. In the early 19th century, large numbers of freed and fugitive slaves immigrated to Philadelphia. During that time, the city's black population grew over 50%. There were also growing numbers of Irish immigrants who were also subjected to racism and exclusion. Abd there was a great dea...

• Post #4328893

  Today in Labor History August 1, 1917: IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched in Butte, Montana. Little was a Cherokee miner and member of the IWW. He went to Butte during the Speculator Mine strike to help organize the miners. Little had previously helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He had participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights...

• Post #4328892

  Today in Labor History August 1, 1921: Sheriff Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were murdered by Baldwin-Felts private cops. They did it in retaliation for Hatfield’s support of the miners in the Matewan labor battle in 1920, when two Felts family thugs were killed by Hatfield and his deputies. Sheriff Hatfield had sided with the coal miners during their strike. The private cops executed Hatfield and Chambers on the Welch County courthouse steps in front of their wives. This led to the Battle of Bla...

• Post #4328891

  Today in Labor History August 1, 1938: Police opened fire on 200 unarmed trade unionists protesting the unloading of a ship in Hilo Harbor, on the Big Island of Hawaii, in what became known as "the Hilo Massacre." The protest was in support of striking waterfront workers. 50 workers were injured. Police also used tear gas and bayonets. The workers came from numerous ethnic backgrounds, including Japanese, Chinese, Native Hawaiian, Luso (Portuguese) and Filipino. They belonged t...

• Post #4328890

  Anything they didn't like used to be called communism. Still is. They've called Nancy Pelosi a communist. Gavin Newsom. Teachers. Union organizers. LGBTQ activists. But if they can call us all terrorists too, it makes it much easier to justify terrorizing communities, activists, and organizers, jailing them, deporting them, and/or killing them, as they're doing today. As they did under COINTELLPRO. During the McCarthy and Palmer Red Scares. And this isn't really...

• Post #4328889

• Post #4328888

• Post #4328887

  Just think, there are enough vacant homes in the U.S. that every homeless person could have multiple vacation homes, just like the billionaires do... except for the fact that those vacant homes are owned by those billionaires and deliberately kept vacant.

• Post #4288700

• Post #4284496

• Post #4281523

  Today in Labor History July 31, 1922: A General Strike against Fascism began in Italy, running from July 31 to August 2. Socialists led the strike, which the fascists defeated. Rudolph Rocker, an Anarcho-Syndicalist of the period, said: "… the democratic government armed the Fascist hordes and throttled this last attempt at the defense of freedom and right. But Italian democracy had dug its own grave. It thought it could use Mussolini as a tool against the workers, but thus it became its ow...

• Post #4167143

  Today in Labor History July 28, 1917: The Silent Parade took place in New York City, in protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans. Organizers set up the parade to protest the East Saint Louis race riots (May-July 1917), when whites murdered up to 200 African Americans, and caused 6,000 black residents to become homeless. While Woodrow Wilson was entering World War I to “make the world safe for democracy,” black Americans were asking when he’d do th...

• Post #4141573

  Today in Labor History July 27, 1918: Miner and union organizer Ginger Goodwin was shot by a hired private cop outside Cumberland, British Columbia sparking Canada's first General Strike. He was a labor activist and a member of the Socialist Party of Canada. Additionally, he was an antiwar activist who said that workers of one country should not be employed to kill workers of another country because of capitalist conflict. “War is simply part of the process of Capitalism,” he said. “Big fina...

• Post #4117224

  Today in Labor History July 26, 1944: The Red Army liberated Lviv, Ukraine, from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survived the Nazi occupation out of 160,000 who were living there before the Nazi invasion. The occupation is depicted in several books, including Robert Marshall’s “The Sewers of Lvov” (1991) and Krsytyna Chiger’s memoir “The Girl in the Green Sweater” (2007). Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s film “In Darkness,” which was nominated for an Oscar, is based on these two books. #workingclas...

• Post #4116448

  Today in Labor History July 26, 1990: President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. On April 5, 1977 U.S. disability rights activist stormed and occupied the offices of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. They demanded enactment of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which had passed Congress four years prior. The law...

• Post #4115976

  Today in Labor History July 26, 1894: President Grover Cleveland created a Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent walkout by the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs. After four months, the commission absolved the strikers and placed the blame entirely on Pullman and the railroads for the conflict. Roughly 250,000 workers participated in the strike. An estimated 70 workers died, mostly at the hands of cops and soldiers. To appease workers, the g...

• Post #4115487

  Today in Labor History July 26, 1937: Photojournalist and antifascist Gerda Taro was killed while covering the Spanish Civil War. She was 26. Thousands attended her funeral. Taro was a German Jew, who had to flee Germany after being imprisoned for her anti-Nazi activism. While living in exile, in France, she met another Jewish exile and photojournalist, Endre Ernő Friedmann. Together they published their work under the pseudonym Robert Capa. Scholar Hanno Hardt described their work as such: &quo...

• Post #4115341

  Today in Labor History July 26, 1877: Federal troops killed up to 30 workers at the "Battle of the Viaduct," Chicago, during the Great Upheaval (AKA Great Train Strike). This came after the Workingmen’s Party (affiliated with the First International), organized a rally of six thousand people. At this gathering, a former Confederate Army Officer from Waco, Texas, named Albert Parsons, gave a fiery speech. The events of the Great Upheaval radicalized Parsons and his wife Lucy. In the yea...

• Post #4091634

  Today in Labor History July 25, 2010: WikiLeaks published classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history. The leak included 91,000 Afghan War documents, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2009. Prior to the release, WikiLeaks made the logs available to “The Guardian,” “The New York Times” and “Der Spiegel.” The Times said the leak "offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war." The Guardian called it &quo...