Working Class History

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

I dig this site and their FB On This Date synopsis, thus-

On this day, 24 September 1883, in a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, Frederick Douglass criticised trade unions that refused to organise Black workers. He complained that the average Black worker "is rejected by trade unions, of every trade, and refused work". And he cautioned: "It is a great mistake for any class of laborers to isolate itself and thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between those on whom the burden and hardships of labor fall. The fortunate ones of the earth, who are abundant in land and money and know nothing of the anxious care and pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may be indifferent to the appeal for justice at this point, but the laboring classes can not afford to be indifferent. What labor everywhere wants, what it ought to have and will some day demand and receive, is an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. As the laborer becomes more intelligent he will develop what capital already possesses – that is the power to organize and combine for its own protection. Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other."
However, most unions in US would ignore him and maintain whites-only memberships, with some notable exceptions like the Industrial Workers of the World. This weakened them and enabled employers to play off different groups of workers against each other in various disputes. Even after unions were eventually desegregated, nearly a century later many unions even with significant levels of Black membership maintained predominately white leaderships, and ignored the concerns of Black workers. This state of affairs was challenged and eventually largely overturned by self-organised Black workers. 
One example of this was the case of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 September 2003, noted writer and intellectual Edward Said died. The founder of postcolonial theory, he wrote extensively on the Middle East and Palestine, and specifically on Western views of “the Orient”. 
This is an interesting analysis of his most famous book, Orientalism: https://libcom.org/library/orientalism-orientalism-reverse-sadik-jalal-al-’azm

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

6 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

I dig this site and their FB On This Date synopsis, thus-

On this day, 24 September 1883, in a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, Frederick Douglass criticised trade unions that refused to organise Black workers. He complained that the average Black worker "is rejected by trade unions, of every trade, and refused work". And he cautioned: "It is a great mistake for any class of laborers to isolate itself and thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between those on whom the burden and hardships of labor fall. The fortunate ones of the earth, who are abundant in land and money and know nothing of the anxious care and pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may be indifferent to the appeal for justice at this point, but the laboring classes can not afford to be indifferent. What labor everywhere wants, what it ought to have and will some day demand and receive, is an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. As the laborer becomes more intelligent he will develop what capital already possesses – that is the power to organize and combine for its own protection. Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other."
However, most unions in US would ignore him and maintain whites-only memberships, with some notable exceptions like the Industrial Workers of the World. This weakened them and enabled employers to play off different groups of workers against each other in various disputes. Even after unions were eventually desegregated, nearly a century later many unions even with significant levels of Black membership maintained predominately white leaderships, and ignored the concerns of Black workers. This state of affairs was challenged and eventually largely overturned by self-organised Black workers. 
One example of this was the case of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/

 

 

"So you move into the 1940s. Now you have this year, the whole World War II is breaking out. That’s when I arrived on the scene in 1943. I’m in Detroit, I’m four years old, and, and I’ve only been in the city a couple of months. Suddenly, boom, the city explodes. You see a massive race riot. At that time, it was considered one of the largest race riots in the city, in the country’s history. My mother was all out in the middle of it. In fact, she was out in the street when she saw a Black man running out of pawn shop with an arm full of clothes, and they called out for him to halt.

He didn’t stop, he kept running and they mowed him down. They literally cut his body in half with bullets. So my mother upon seeing that she said, “I think I’ve seen enough.” She came back in the house and did not go back out anymore."

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

7 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

I dig this site and their FB On This Date synopsis, thus-

On this day, 24 September 1883, in a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, Frederick Douglass criticised trade unions that refused to organise Black workers. He complained that the average Black worker "is rejected by trade unions, of every trade, and refused work". And he cautioned: "It is a great mistake for any class of laborers to isolate itself and thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between those on whom the burden and hardships of labor fall. The fortunate ones of the earth, who are abundant in land and money and know nothing of the anxious care and pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may be indifferent to the appeal for justice at this point, but the laboring classes can not afford to be indifferent. What labor everywhere wants, what it ought to have and will some day demand and receive, is an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. As the laborer becomes more intelligent he will develop what capital already possesses – that is the power to organize and combine for its own protection. Experience demonstrates that there may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other."
However, most unions in US would ignore him and maintain whites-only memberships, with some notable exceptions like the Industrial Workers of the World. This weakened them and enabled employers to play off different groups of workers against each other in various disputes. Even after unions were eventually desegregated, nearly a century later many unions even with significant levels of Black membership maintained predominately white leaderships, and ignored the concerns of Black workers. This state of affairs was challenged and eventually largely overturned by self-organised Black workers. 
One example of this was the case of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/

 

People like Coleman Young, for example, he’s coming in after serving in World War II. He comes back, he gets the job at a Ford Motor Company. He’s attacked by Harry Bennett, this goon squad that’s working for Henry Ford, to kind of destroy the union at that time. Well, Coleman and picked up a pipe and went upside his head. So that was the end of his career at Ford Motor Company. They pushed him into a whole nother thing in terms of the TULC, the Trade Union Labor Council. Again, we’re talking about the Black worker not able to exercise any kind of power and assert themselves within the larger movement began to create their own offshoots and their kind of derivative forms of the union. TULC is one.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 September 1968, the Seattle city council brought in a gun-control law at the behest of Republican mayor, James Braman to prevent self-defence patrols by the Black Panthers. Authorities around the US were panicked by the sight of African-Americans defending themselves from violence by white racists and police. In particular they were alarmed in Seattle when armed Panthers appeared at Rainier Beach high school to defend Black students who had been attacked and threatened by whites. The city passed an emergency measure to prohibit the display of a "dangerous weapon" to "intimidate others". It was just one of many laws introduced around this time, often by Republicans, and often with the support of the National Rifle Association, to disarm Black people. 
Learn more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers
 

 

[Upgrayedd 5806]

 

[Continental Op 3934]

Me, sitting on my couch drunk off my tits on a Friday night watching hockey and about to enjoy a weekend paid for with the blood of organized labor a long time ago:  UnIoNs RuIn EvErYtHiNg!

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 27 September 1936 in Leeds, following a week of tension during which the British Union of Fascists was forbidden by the city's Watch Committee to march through the largely Jewish Leylands quarter, Oswald Mosley paraded over 1,000 uniformed Blackshirts in Calverley Street, and marched them to Holbeck. Press reports suggest very few of them were Leeds natives. Nevertheless, the Leylands was targeted during the previous night with swastikas and slogans daubed on windows and doors. Opposition to the event had been organised and publicised some days previously, with the Communist Party taking the lead. The anti-fascists chose not to confront them on the streets but at the site of the rally, on Holbeck Moor. The newspapers reported a crowd of 30,000 on the moor, against around a thousand blackshirts. As Mosley spoke, the Red Flag was sung repeatedly to drown him out and he was unable to finish his speech as stones rained down on him and his fascist crowd, with Mosley sustaining a gash under one eye. “It wasn’t a battle, it was a rout. A complete bloody rout,” said one participant. As the fascists scuttled away, the Blackshirts were ambushed by anti-fascists, resulting in 40 fascists receiving injuries. 
Learn more about the struggle against Mosley in the 1960s in our podcast episodes 35-37. Find them on every major podcast app or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 September 1846, troops from the 1st Royal Dragoons opened fire on starving food rioters in Dungarvan, Ireland. A contemporary report described how “The distress” was “truly appalling in the streets; for, without entering the houses, the miserable spectacle of haggard looks, crouching attitudes, sunken eyes and colourless lips and cheeks, unmistakably bespeaks the sufferings of the people.” Meanwhile, an abundance of food was being exported for profit. 
On 28 September, several thousand people attempted to break into the quay-side grain stores. When the ringleaders were arrested, a section of the crowd demanded release of the prisoners and then marched to the centre of town, where they looted several bakeries. The British 1st Royal Dragoons were deployed to the scene and the riot act was read. When the crowd refused to disperse, Captain Sibthorp gave orders to fire. Two rioters were seriously wounded, and one of them, Michael Fleming, subsequently died of his injuries. In the coming days, four companies from the Lancashire Regiment were sent to enforce order in Dungarvan, but despite their presence, on 1 October dock workers refused to load grain for export as they feared reprisals. 
The Great Famine lasted until the 1850s. It killed around a million people and forced an even greater number to emigrate. 
 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 29 September 1909, the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union began the first of what became known as the free speech fights, in Missoula, Montana. Members would publicly speak on the streets of the town in open defiance of a law banning public speaking. When one speaker was arrested another took their place, including well known organisers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who was pregnant at the time, and Frank Little. As a result, the local jail was filled with no end to the stream of workers coming in to speak. By 8 October the council declared the IWW could speak wherever they liked and dropped all charges against members who had been arrested for speaking. This campaign would be the first of many similar free speech fights throughout the United States. 
Learn more about the IWW and the free speech fights in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/05/23/wch-e6-the-industrial-workers-of-the-world-in-the-us-1905-1918/
Pictured: Flynn speaking during an IWW strike in Paterson

 

[GopherRock 1765]

 

[SaucyJack 3487]

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

You fuck with the cheese. We fuck with you.

 

On this day, 2 October 1766, the Great Cheese Riot of Nottingham, England began. Angry at the excessive price of cheese, a mob formed who seized it and began wheeling or carrying the cheeses away. The mayor attempted to restore order but was knocked down by a cheese. 
Two or three of the crowd were arrested, so then the crowd attacked the building housing them until they were released. The army arrived the next day, but rioting and expropriations continued and were only put down the day after that. 
 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

I'll clarify and say on this date-ish.

On this day, 30 September 1973, the Chilean army death squad known as the Caravan of Death flew by helicopter from the south to the north of Chile, and began murdering dozens of people in custody. In total they murdered around 100 people, then dumped them in unmarked graves. One of the generals in the squad, Joaquin Lagos, explained why they did not return bodies to their relatives: "I was ashamed to see them. They were torn into pieces. So I wanted to put them together, at least leave them in a human form. Yes, their eyes were gouged out with knives, their jaws broken, their legs broken ... At the end they gave them the coup de grace. They were merciless… The prisoners were killed so that they would die slowly. In other words, sometimes they were shot by parts. First, the legs, then the sexual organs, then the heart. In that order the machine guns were fired". Officers in the unit were also dismissed, imprisoned or tortured if they were seen as being too lenient. Dictator Augusto Pinochet, who set up the unit, was later charged in connection with the killings, one of the few human abuses he was actually charged of those he committed in the 17 years of his dictatorship, which was backed by the US and UK. However he died before his trial concluded.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 2 October 1968, the Tlatelolco massacre took place in Mexico City when police murdered hundreds of students demonstrating peacefully, just prior to the start of the Olympic Games in the city. At the time, many workers and poor farmers were fighting for better conditions, and the government responded with violent repression during what is known as the "dirty war". Many people were angry at the huge cost of staging the Olympics, as well as police repression. So on 2 October around 10,000 school and university students gathered in protest at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City, chanting: "We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!" A little after 6 PM, 5000 troops surrounded the square and began firing into the crowd and nearby buildings. Throughout the night, soldiers and police officers went on a rampage, rounding people up, and beating and killing protesters, bystanders and local residents. Authorities and the media claimed that troops were defending themselves from sniper fire, but it was much later revealed that the snipers who began shooting were members of the Presidential Guard. The CIA had been in close contact with Mexican authorities as it was concerned about protests against the Olympic Games, and the US military provided them with equipment, weapons and ammunition. Six days before the massacre, Mexican federal security told the CIA that "the situation will be under complete control very shortly". 
More info and background in this short people’s history of Mexico: https://libcom.org/history/1867-2000-a-people-s-history-of-mexico

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 3 October 1973, the trial began of famous actor Ricky Tomlinson, then a plasterer, with five other building workers for their role in a national builders' strike the previous year. Refusing to testify against other workers they were convicted of "conspiracy to intimidate" under a 19th-century law which had not been used in 98 years. Tomlinson was jailed for two years, most of it spent in solitary confinement due to his refusal to wear prison uniforms on the grounds of it branding him a criminal. He became a socialist inside after being given a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. 
More info here: httsp://libcom.org/library/ricky-tomlinson-imprisoned-building-union-organiser

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 3 October 1935, Ethiopia, arguably the only African nation which had never been colonised, was invaded by fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini. The Italians committed countless atrocities, including the use of: poisonous gas, aerial bombardment, and concentration camps. While Italy and Ethiopia were both members of the League of Nations, the league did nothing about the Italian violation of its principles. But at the grassroots, Black people around the world were outraged, and many Black men and women volunteered to go fight in defense of Ethiopia.
Pictured: Ethiopian fighters

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 4 October 1936, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists planned to march through a predominantly Jewish section of East London, instead the Battle of Cable Street occured. The fascists were met by over 100,000 local residents and workers who – insistent that 'They shall not pass!' – fought both the blackshirts and the police protecting them, forcing the march to be abandoned. 
Learn more about Cable Street, and the fight against Mosley in the 1940s in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 9 October 2014 the Greek 'riot dog' Λουκάνικος (Loukanikos: "sausage") died peacefully in his sleep. Loukanikos was the most famous of the Athens stray dogs who joined demonstrations and riots against the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and later against austerity measures. Inhaling police tear gas and other chemicals during the many riots in which he participated, led to a deterioration of his health, he was adopted and retired out of the city in 2012. He died at the approximate age of 10. 
He was a good boy. 
We have produced some posters and merch commemorating his life to help fund our work, available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/animals

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 9 October 1912, the mostly female workforce at the Phoenix Mill in Little Falls, New York, walked out on wildcat strike to force their employer to follow a new state law limiting working hours to 54 per week, down from 60. 2,000 other workers from the Phoenix and Gilberts Mills joined them on strike, and the workers joined the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union. The IWW sent in organisers including Matilda Rabinowitz, Big Bill Haywood and others, and fellow IWW member Helen Keller also supported the strike. The police chief declared:  “We have a strike on our hands and a foreign element to deal with. We have in the past kept them in subjugation and mean to hold them where they belong.” And he sent police to attack the workers and raid the strike headquarters, but the strikers held firm and by January they won shorter hours with no loss of pay. 
Learn more about women in the IWW in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/12/02/e16-women-in-the-early-iww/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

Hahaha!!! It's K-K-K-Ken! C-C-C-Coming to k-k-k-kill me! *boink!*

On this day, 10 October 1937, British aristocratic fascist leader Oswald Mosley was knocked unconscious and hospitalised in Liverpool by a stone thrown by anti-fascists who attacked a Nazi meeting at which he had attempted to address the crowd. The Glasgow Herald newspaper reported: "Sir Oswald Mosley was hit on the head by a stone and knocked semi-conscience immediately he stood on the top of a loud-speaker van to address an open-air meeting at Queens Drive, Liverpool, yesterday. As the van was being driven to a piece of waste land, hundreds of missiles were thrown, Sir Oswald, had not had time to utter a word when a large stone hit him on the temple and he fell on his face. Mounted police who were standing by in a neighbouring yard, immediately rushed out and charged the crowd back. A Fascist bodyguard stood by to guard Sir Oswald in spite of showers of bricks from large sections of the crowd." 
Learn more about the fight against Mosley and his fascists in the 1940s in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/
Pictured: Mosley in hospital afterwards

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

On this day, 27 September 1936 in Leeds, following a week of tension during which the British Union of Fascists was forbidden by the city's Watch Committee to march through the largely Jewish Leylands quarter, Oswald Mosley paraded over 1,000 uniformed Blackshirts in Calverley Street, and marched them to Holbeck. Press reports suggest very few of them were Leeds natives. Nevertheless, the Leylands was targeted during the previous night with swastikas and slogans daubed on windows and doors. Opposition to the event had been organised and publicised some days previously, with the Communist Party taking the lead. The anti-fascists chose not to confront them on the streets but at the site of the rally, on Holbeck Moor. The newspapers reported a crowd of 30,000 on the moor, against around a thousand blackshirts. As Mosley spoke, the Red Flag was sung repeatedly to drown him out and he was unable to finish his speech as stones rained down on him and his fascist crowd, with Mosley sustaining a gash under one eye. “It wasn’t a battle, it was a rout. A complete bloody rout,” said one participant. As the fascists scuttled away, the Blackshirts were ambushed by anti-fascists, resulting in 40 fascists receiving injuries. 
Learn more about the struggle against Mosley in the 1960s in our podcast episodes 35-37. Find them on every major podcast app or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/
 

I’m guessing this is the guy portrayed in this last season of “Peaky Blinders”. Very interesting, thanks for posting!

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 13 October 1970, legendary Black communist Angela Davis was arrested by the FBI in New York City, aged 26. She had fled California after a warrant for her arrest was issued in August in connection with an attempted jailbreak. Notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had listed Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List, and with her arrest President Richard Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist." In a sensational trial, Davis was subsequently acquitted of all charges. 
This is a great collection of Davis's writings about her imprisonment, trial, and the criminal justice system: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/if-they-come-in-the-morning-angela-davis

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 15 October 1966, in Oakland, California, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton met and set up the Black Panther Party for Self Defence. The Party would exist, despite heavy repression, until 1982 and ran a variety of programmes from free breakfasts for school children and community health clinics to armed citizen patrols and monitoring of the police. Another little-mentioned fact about the group is that in the 1970s it had a majority female membership.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 16 October 1859, a group of abolitionists raided a federal armoury in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, with the intention of using the weapons to arm enslaved people. The small group, led by John Brown, including numerous African-Americans, at least one of whom was formerly enslaved. Legendary abolitionist Harriet Tubman had helped Brown recruit people to join the raid. After 36 hours, a unit of US marines arrived under the command of Col Robert E Lee, who killed several of the raiders. Most of the survivors, including Brown, were arrested, put on trial by a judge and jury who were all slaveholders, and executed. One of the Black rebels, John Anthony Copeland wrote to his family from his cell: “We shall meet in Heaven, where we shall not be parted by the demands of the cruel and unjust monster Slavery … But think not that I am complaining, for I feel reconciled to meet my fate… let me tell you that it is not the mere act of having to meet death, which I should regret … but that such an unjust institution should exist as the one which demands my life.” Brown became a committed abolitionist at the age of twelve after he witnessed a man brutally beating a young enslaved boy with an iron shovel. Brown later wrote that the experience transformed him into “a most determined abolitionist… leading him to declare, or swear, eternal war with slavery.” 100 years later, West Virginia commemorated the raid with a re-enactment, which ignored the Black abolitionists and depicted Brown as the villain while crowds cheered when he was captured. 
*
You can read about this and hundreds of other stories in our forthcoming book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, out next month. Preorder your copy on our Kickstarter:

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 October 1983, the United States invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada. The stated justification of the invasion was to “protect” US citizens. However, the real reason was very different. In the wake of their defeat in Vietnam, the US was keen to demonstrate its military and political might, and as a senior US official told New York Times journalist Bernard Gwertzman, “What good are manoeuvres and shows of force, if you never use it?” Scores of people were killed in the invasion, with hundreds wounded, as the US government toppled the left-wing government which had been established after independence from Britain. 18 civilians were killed when US aircraft missiles hit a psychiatric hospital. The new, pro-US government which was subsequently set up, established October 25 as a national holiday called “Thanksgiving Day” to commemorate the invasion. Political scientist Stephen Shalom subsequently pointed out the hypocrisy of the invasion. While no US citizens were at risk in Grenada, in some other countries in the region, some US citizens really were in danger. For example the four US nuns who were murdered by death squads in El Salvador. Historian Howard Zinn pointed out: “there was no US intervention there, no Marine landings, no protective bombing raids. Instead Washington backed the death squad regime with military and economic aid, military training, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic support." 
 

 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 27 October 1970, the administration of president Richard Nixon passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, as part of their "war on drugs". A Nixon adviser, John Ehrlichman, later admitted "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Today we are publicly releasing our latest podcast episode, about the anti-war movement in the US at that time. Listen on every major podcast app or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/09/23/e43-46-the-movement-against-the-vietnam-war-in-the-us/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 October 1967, Black Panther Huey P. Newton was stopped by policeman John Frey who, realising he had stopped a leading Panther, called for back up. After backup arrived, shots were fired leaving all three wounded, officer Frey fatally. Newton was later handcuffed to his hospital bed and beaten by police and eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter, a charge later overturned in 1970 after a mass campaign in his support around the world. 
You can more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers

Pictured: Asian-Americans demonstrating in support of Newton.

[Gatorubet 30117]

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV. And you think you’re so clever and classless and free...

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 2 November 1970, actor and Vietnam GI resistance supporter Jane Fonda was arrested at Cleveland airport as she returned from an event put on by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Canada and charged with drug smuggling. The following day Fonda was also charged with supposedly kicking a police officer, when a more famous mugshot was taken as she raised her fist in defiance at the police. Both charges were bogus – the "drugs" were vitamin tablets – and they were both later dismissed. Although Fonda is clear that the intention was to discredit her due to her valuable support for the GI anti-war movement. In addition to being a patron of VVAW, Fonda was a leading organiser of and participant in the FTA (Fuck The Army) tour, and anti-war alternative to the USO shows to serving GIs. 
More info about this movement in our two-part podcast episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/06/e10-the-gi-resistance-in-vietnam-part-1/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 8 November 1939 at 9:20 PM, watch factory worker and folk musician Georg Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler by bombing the pub where Hitler stayed every year on the anniversary of the Nazi putsch of 1923. Unbeknownst to Elser, Hitler cancelled his stay and left just 13 minutes earlier, and instead the bomb killed six Nazis as well as a waitress. Despite torture, he refused to implicate anyone else in the attack, and he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp where he was murdered a few days before liberation. 
This is a short biography: https://libcom.org/history/elser-georg-1903-1945

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 13 November 1974 plutonium plant worker and union activist Karen Silkwood was mysteriously killed in a car crash while on her way to meet a New York Times reporter with a bundle of evidence on health and safety violations at her workplace. The bundle of evidence was never found, and although she was killed in a front-on collision, the rear of her car had been damaged and contained paint chips, leading her supporters to believe she was rammed off the road. She and her apartment were also contaminated heavily with plutonium, which the company claimed she did herself to smear the firm. Her family sued the company after her death and were awarded nearly $1.4 million.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 14 November 1917, the "Night of Terror" began at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, in which 33 imprisoned suffragists were brutally tortured and beaten by guards. The women, mostly members of the National Women's Party had been picketing the White House in support of voting rights for women. Guards were ordered to attack the women on the evening of this day, and they began to assault the prisoners after midnight.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 16 November 1989 six Jesuit scholars/priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were murdered by the US-backed military in El Salvador. The priests were considered "subversive". After the soldiers killed them, they tried to make the murders look like the work of left-wing guerrillas. 
This is Noam Chomsky’s short account of war of counterinsurgency against workers and peasants in the country: https://libcom.org/history/1970-1990-the-war-of-counter-insurgency-in-el-salvador

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 19 November 1915, Joe Hill, Swedish-American Industrial Workers of the World union member and songwriter was executed by firing squad for a murder he did not commit. During his life, Hill wrote many songs such as 'There is Power in a Union', 'Casey Jones - the Union Scab' and 'The Preacher and the Slave' (where the saying 'pie in the sky' comes from). In his final letter to IWW leader Bill Haywood he wrote: "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." 
Learn more in this extensive work on Hill's life: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/joe-hill-the-iww-the-making-of-a-revolutionary-workingclass-counterculture

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

Just shy of a 3 month Fuck You

On this day, 23 November 1909, more than 20,000 garment workers in New York, mostly Jewish women and girls, walked out on a general strike: the biggest stoppage of women workers in the US to date. Facing severe repression, they held out for 11 weeks and won big concessions. 
This is a short history of the dispute: https://libcom.org/history/uprising-20000-tony-michels

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 19 November 1984 one of the world's worst industrial disasters ever occurred when tanks in a PEMEX petroleum storage facility in San Juanico, Mexico, exploded, killing over 500 and burning over 5000 people. The plant's safety features were woefully inadequate, but fixing them would have cut into company profits.

(no, that's not Darth Vader)

(or Kiss Destroyer)

 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

"Negro Agitator"

On this day, 22 November 1919, the Bogalusa labour massacre took place in Louisiana. Sol Dacus, the head of a newly-formed union of Black loggers and sawmill workers in the area walked down Columbia Street, the main road through Bogulasa, the day after he had escaped a probable lynching by a white vigilante mob organised by business owners. He was accompanied by two white union carpenters, JP Bouchillon and Stanley O'Rourke, who were armed with shotguns to protect Dacus. The sight of white and Black workers walking together apparently enraged white racists in the town who called police. The court issued arrest warrants for the three workers, while the Great Southern Lumber Company assembled a posse of company gunmen and white vigilantes, who then confronted the union men, who had taken refuge in the headquarters of the local Central Trades and Labour Council, where there were up to four other unionists. Somehow a gunfight broke out, and within a few minutes Bouchillon and two other white union workers, Lem Williams and Thomas Gaines, were dead and O'Rourke had been fatally injured. Although Dacus himself managed to escape. While many white union members at the time embraced Jim Crow segregation laws and considered Black workers as rivals, loggers in Louisiana, like dockworkers in Philadelphia and miners in Alabama and West Virginia, were among those who fought for working class unity across all races against the employers, and faced often savage repression from bosses, police and white racists as a result.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 November 1960 three sisters – Patria Mercedes Mirabal Reyes, Minerva Mirabal Reyes and Antonia María Teresa Mirabal Reyes were assassinated for their opposition to the US-backed Dominican dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (content note: mention of sexual violence). They had started a group called the Agrupación Política 14 de Junio (14 June Movement), named after the date of a massacre Patria witnessed. Two of the sisters, Minerva and Maria Teresa, were imprisoned, raped and tortured on several occasions and their husbands arrested and tortured too. However, they persisted in their resistance and Trujillo decided to put an end to them once and for all. On May 18, 1960, Minerva and Maria Teresa, along with their husbands, were convicted and were sentenced to three years in prison for undermining the security of the Dominican state. In a strange gesture, on August 9, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were released by express provision of Trujillo. Their husbands, however, remained in prison. Purportedly a show of generosity, it was however part of a plan by which they would be assassinated by the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar secret police. On November 25 the sisters and Rufino de la Cruz, who was driving their jeep, were stopped by Trujillo's henchmen. They were separated and clubbed to death. The bodies were then gathered and put in the jeep, which was run off the mountain road in an attempt to make their deaths look like an accident. In honour of the women, the UN later designated 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

I ❤️ this thread. Thank you for taking the time to post.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On 11/27/2020 at 7:12 AM, Mrs Whiggins said:

I ❤️ this thread. Thank you for taking the time to post.

Glad you enjoy, very un-time consuming on my part and I don't hit 'em all and posts will occasionally be date-"ish" but know most on this forum have, like me, an interest in history and most posts  involve the specific nitty-gritty human aspects of history.

On this day, 30 November 1917, stenographer, cook and anarchist Louise Olivereau was sentenced to ten years' jail in the US for producing leaflets against the draft during World War I. In the judge's sentencing remarks he declared that Louise, who worked for the Industrial Workers of the World union, was a woman "above the average in intelligence" and he hoped she would change her ideas to conform to organised government! In prison she ran classes teaching other prisoners English, and after her release on parole in 1920 she resumed her political activities speaking at union meetings and women's clubs. More info about women in the IWW in our podcast episode 16: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/12/02/e16-women-in-the-early-iww/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 27 November 1898 office worker and anti-Nazi resistance fighter Maria Vetulani de Nisau was born in Poland. She married a communist and was forced to flee to the USSR, until her husband was arrested by the Soviets so she was forced to flee the USSR with her son. Under Nazi occupation she joined the resistance and hid Jewish people in her apartment. She fought in the armed Warsaw uprising in August 1944 and was wounded and hospitalised. She was later murdered by the Nazis alongside all the other patients and hospital staff.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 2 December 1980 (content note: sexual violence), three Catholic nuns and one lay worker from the US were kidnapped, raped and murdered by government backed and US-trained right-wing death squads during the El Salvadorian civil war. Those killed were Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel. The war raged on for around 20 years and involved brutal violence against workers’ and peasants’ organisations as well as left-wing religious groups. 
Read Noam Chomsky’s short account of the conflict here: https://libcom.org/history/1970-1990-the-war-of-counter-insurgency-in-el-salvador

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On 11/30/2020 at 5:09 PM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

but know most on this forum have, like me, an interest in history

That's the most cringe-worthy thing I've posted on this site. Hard to reconcile events in your lifetime with history. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 4 December 1969, Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered while asleep in his bed during a raid on his apartment by Chicago Police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton had been drugged earlier in the evening by an FBI informant, who also told agents the location of Hampton's bed, where he slept alongside his nine-month pregnant fiancée, Akua Njeri. Fellow Panther activist Mark Clark was also killed in the attack, and several others injured. Aged just 21, Hampton was an active, charismatic and effective organiser, who had been making significant inroads into making links with working class whites and building a "Rainbow Coalition" including Puerto Rican, Native American, Chicane, white and Chinese-American radicals. Hampton and Clark were amongst the most prominent victims of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which amongst other things was directed by FBI director J Edgar Hoover to "prevent the rise of a Black Messiah". 
*
Learn more about the Panthers in these books by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers
Pictured: police moving Hampton's body

 

[bad_teammate 13132]

This is a good FB site, thanks

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 6 December 1989, 14 women, most of whom were training in engineering fields, were murdered in a mass shooting at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. The 25 year old shooter specifically targeted women, claimed he was "fighting feminism," and killed himself after shooting 28 people. The names of those lost were: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. The day is commemorated annually across Canada as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

A slip will invalidate all of this

On this day, 11 December 1981, a death squad backed by the US administration of Ronald Reagan massacred around 1,000 people in El Mozote, El Salvador (content note: sexual violence). Prior to being killed, many of the victims - half of them children - were tortured and girls as young as 10 were raped by the US-trained soldiers. They were fighting against a left-wing insurgency, but the villagers of El Mozote had remained largely neutral. 
This is a short account of the incredibly violent counterinsurgency campaign by Noam Chomsky: https://libcom.org/history/1970-1990-the-war-of-counter-insurgency-in-el-salvador

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 15 December 1890, Sioux chief Sitting Bull was killed by Indian police in the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota. Indian agent James McLauchlan had sent 39 officers and four volunteers to arrest Sitting Bull, fearing the growth of the spiritual ghost dance movement, which foresaw an end to white expansionism. Sitting Bull refused to cooperate with police, so they used force on him which outraged the crowd which had gathered, one of whom shot a policeman. Police retaliated by shooting Sitting Bull in the chest and head, killing him. A battle then erupted leaving seven additional villagers dead, and eight police officers. 
Learn more about Indigenous genocide and resistance in the Americas in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 20 December 1973, Spanish fascist prime minister who was hand-picked as general Francisco Franco's successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated in Madrid. Basque separatists ETA had spent five months digging a tunnel under a road he went down to attend mass. They then detonated a bomb as he drove over, shooting his car 20 metres into the air and over a five-storey building, earning Blanco the nickname of "Spain's first astronaut". His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco's death.
Pictured: A reconstruction of the event for the film Ogro (1979)
Learn more about the rise of fascism in Spain in our introduction to the Spanish civil war in podcast episodes 39-40. Find them on every major podcast app, or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/