Working Class History

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 21 March 1991, the abolition of the poll tax in the UK was announced, following a mass non-payment campaign and widespread rioting. The hated tax, introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, charged the working class the same as the rich as there was a charge for every individual in a household. Despite the defeat of the working class movement in Britain in the 1980s, people up and down the country self-organised an unprecedented campaign which resulted in over 17 million people refusing to pay, with thousands of people clogging the country's court system. It was later replaced by the council tax, which charged rates based on house value. 
Pictured: a scene from the largest poll tax riot in London
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We only post highlights on here, for all our anniversaries follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrkclasshistory

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Rep to you because this thread continues to be awesome. Neg rep to the wielder of the bat for improper swing technique.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19093]

On this day, March 25, 1911 (110 years ago exactly), the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred.  The Triangle Shirtwaist factory occupied the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building (now known as the Brown Building and owned by NYU) at 23-29 Washington Place in Greenwich Village.  The factory, under the ownership of Mac Blanck and Isaac Harris produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists".  The factory normally employed 500 workers, usually young Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, who worked 52 hours a week (9 hours M-F and 7 hours on Saturday) for roughtly $7-$12 a week.  During the workday, the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked, a common practice to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to prevent theft.

The following writeup is from Wikipedia, which lays out what happened.

At approximately 4:40 p.m. on Saturday, March 25, 1911, as the workday was ending, a fire flared up in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the 8th floor. The first fire alarm was sent at 4:45 p.m. by a passerby on Washington Place who saw smoke coming from the 8th floor. Both owners of the factory were in attendance and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon. 

The Fire Marshal concluded that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin, which held two months' worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire. Beneath the table in the wooden bin were hundreds of pounds of scraps left over from the several thousand shirtwaists that had been cut at that table. The scraps piled up from the last time the bin was emptied, coupled with the hanging fabrics that surrounded it; the steel trim was the only thing that was not highly flammable. Although smoking was banned in the factory, cutters were known to sneak cigarettes, exhaling the smoke through their lapels to avoid detection. 

A bookkeeper on the 8th floor was able to warn employees on the 10th floor via telephone, but there was no audible alarm and no way to contact staff on the 9th floor. According to survivor Yetta Lubitz, the first warning of the fire on the 9th floor arrived at the same time as the fire itself. Although the floor had a number of exits, including two freight elevators, a fire escape, and stairways down to Greene Street and Washington Place, flames prevented workers from descending the Greene Street stairway, and the door to the Washington Place stairway was locked to prevent theft by the workers; the locked doors allowed managers to check the women's purses. The foreman who held the stairway door key had already escaped by another route. Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street stairway to the roof. Other survivors were able to jam themselves into the elevators while they continued to operate.

Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions. Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape – which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase – a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure that may have been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling about 20 victims nearly 100 feet (30 m) to their deaths on the concrete pavement below. The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them.

The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as their ladders were only long enough to reach as high as the 7th floor. The fallen bodies and falling victims also made it difficult for the fire department to approach the building.

Elevator operators Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillaro saved many lives by traveling three times up to the 9th floor for passengers, but Mortillaro was eventually forced to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat. Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped into the empty shaft, trying to slide down the cables or to land on top of the car. The weight and impacts of these bodies warped the elevator car and made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt. William Gunn Shepard, a reporter at the tragedy, would say that "I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture – the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk".

A large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, witnessing 62 people jumping or falling to their deaths from the burning building. 

146 people died as a result of the fire, 123 women and 23 men.  The oldest victim was 43 (I am 43 now, so I just cannot imagine the horror) and the youngest was 14.  This was the single worst workplace disaster in NYC until September 11, 2001.

As a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded on October 14, 1911.  The Committee on Public Safety was formed in NYC to help push reforms, and the New York State Legislature formed the Factory Investigating Commission whose job it was to investigate workplaces for safety to prevent additional disasters.  Their investigations led to 38 new labor laws which allowed New York to become one of the most progressive states in the area of labor reform.

There is an American Experience film on the disaster (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/) as well as a good podcast from Stuff you Missed in History (https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history-cl-21124503/episode/fire-at-the-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-30208427/).

 

In 2011, New Yorkers gathered on the Centennial.  

A more recent remembering of the disaster in 2018.

Cornell has put together a fantastic site.

http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/

And some more information, including full list of victims.

https://unitehere.org/triangle/#:~:text=March 25%2C 2020%2C is the,to raise standards for workers.

And there will be an online event.  

http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/

Edited March 25, 2021 by PenelopeWitherspoon

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19093]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 4 April 1935 the bodies of German anti-Nazi activists Dora Fabian and Mathilde Wurm (pictured) were found in their flat in London. They had been poisoned. The flat had previously been burgled twice, and they had received threatening letters. However while many historians believe they were likely murdered, the inquest declared a double suicide was the most likely outcome. The British government and media, who at that point were either mostly appeasers or supporters of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, were eager to cover up the case and move on.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 4 April 1968, civil rights activist, socialist and advocate of nonviolence Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated while in Memphis supporting a strike of Black sanitation workers. 
His ideas had become increasing radical in later years, and in addition to opposing racism he had begun opposing US imperialism in Vietnam and elsewhere, as well as capitalism itself. King had also begun organising a Poor People's Campaign, to unite working class and poor people, Black and white. 
Though he is widely lauded by establishment figures now, at the time he was hated by the rich and powerful as well as most white Americans. Fuelled by negative media coverage, only 22% of Americans approved of “Freedom Rides” for the desegregation of public transport, and 63% disapproved of King. The FBI's domestic intelligence chief called him "the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security", and later sent King an anonymous letter attempting to blackmail him into suicide. 
His murder left many disillusioned with pacifism, and riots broke out across the US in the biggest explosion of social unrest since the civil war.
We have made available in our online store this book by the King family's lawyer, who won their civil case which implicated US security services in his death: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/an-act-of-state-the-execution-of-martin-luther-king-william-f-pepper
Pictured: MLK leading a protest against the Vietnam war, front row, 3rd from right.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 15 April 1989, the Hillsborough disaster took place during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest when a crush occurred after police directed fans into overcrowded areas, resulting in 96 dead and over 700 injured. 
Though it was caused by police negligence and a ground which did not adequately meet health and safety standards, the police and the Conservative government, with help from the mainstream media, concocted an entirely false story blaming working class Liverpool fans for the disaster. The right-wing tabloid Sun newspaper falsely claimed that Liverpool fans robbed the dead, urinated on police and attacked officers who were trying to save lives.
After years of campaigning by the families of the victims, eventually in 2012 the truth finally came to light, with the Hillsborough Independent Panel determining that the primary cause of the disaster was a "lack of police control". They also revealed that police had doctored 164 witness statements, that Conservative MP Irvine Patnick had passed lies from the police to the press. The police also went to extreme lengths in their attempts shift responsibility to the victims, even testing the blood of dead children for alcohol to try to blame them for their own deaths.
New inquests held in 2016 also found that the crush was caused by police, exacerbated by stadium defects. They determined that the senior police officer responsible breached his duty of care and that this amounted to gross negligence. They determined that the 96 victims were unlawfully killed.
To this day, many people in Liverpool still boycott The Sun.
Pictured: fans on upper tiers of the stadium help others escape the crush

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 17 April 1958, Belgium opened the world fair, which included a ‘human zoo' displaying Black men, women, and children in their 'native conditions' found in the Congo, then a Belgian colony. 
The people used were abused and taunted by white spectators, who threw money and bananas over the bamboo fence to try to provoke a reaction. The Congolese people in the exhibit, as well as Congolese workers in the fair, were housed in an isolated building, in cramped accommodation with restrictions on receiving visitors or being able to leave, until the fair ended in October. 
It was to be the last 'human zoo' to take place anywhere in the world, although earlier in the century others were staged in places like the US, UK, Germany and Norway. 
Learn more about the crimes of Belgian colonialism in the Congo in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/lord-leverhulme-s-ghosts-colonial-exploitation-in-the-congo-jules-marchal

[cactusflinthead 27594]

More like working class present but it probably belongs here.

That holy shit video of the young man hitting cabbage (ok, Brussel sprouts are a fucking cabbage) like a goddamn sword master belongs here too.

Low skilled my ass. 

 

[pyrohornIII 4809]

On 4/19/2021 at 1:14 AM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

On this day, 17 April 1958, Belgium opened the world fair, which included a ‘human zoo' displaying Black men, women, and children in their 'native conditions' found in the Congo, then a Belgian colony. 
The people used were abused and taunted by white spectators, who threw money and bananas over the bamboo fence to try to provoke a reaction. The Congolese people in the exhibit, as well as Congolese workers in the fair, were housed in an isolated building, in cramped accommodation with restrictions on receiving visitors or being able to leave, until the fair ended in October. 
It was to be the last 'human zoo' to take place anywhere in the world, although earlier in the century others were staged in places like the US, UK, Germany and Norway. 
Learn more about the crimes of Belgian colonialism in the Congo in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/lord-leverhulme-s-ghosts-colonial-exploitation-in-the-congo-jules-marchal

Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO does a pretty good job of exposing the Belgian exploitation of the Congo.  Highly recommend this doc, but I am having to take it in small doses.  

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

23 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

More like working class present but it probably belongs here.

That holy shit video of the young man hitting cabbage (ok, Brussel sprouts are a fucking cabbage) like a goddamn sword master belongs here too.

Low skilled my ass. 

 

The gradual scapegoating of the least powerful slowly moves from "Welfare Queens" decades after Bill Clinton signed Welfare Reform to "low-skilled workers". 

It's not those who got what they wanted decades ago on promises of A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats who are most responsible for The Way Things Are. It's the least powerful's fault.

Oh. And the media. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 24 April 1954, British colonial authorities in Nairobi, Kenya, began Operation Anvil, to ethnically cleanse Kikuyu people from the city. With the background of the Mau Mau insurgency, which was largely made up of members of the Kikuyu community, the British believed they could destroy the movement for "land and freedom" which they thought was led from Nairobi. 
So over a two-week period, troops shut down the city, block by block and abducted every member of the Kikuyu and related Embu and Maru tribes. They were interrogated, then divided into groups depending on how supportive they allegedly were of the Mau Mau movement. Those believed to be more militant were sent for interrogation, torture and detention, while those without Mau Mau affiliation were deported to overcrowded "reserves". 
By the time it was over, apart from a small number of workers with long-term contracts with European employers, nearly the whole Kikuyu population of the city was gone, with 20,000 sent for "screening" and 30,000 to reserves. At most, those abducted could only take one bag of possessions, with the rest looted by British troops. 
Rather than quell the insurgency, the brutal repression caused opposition to colonial rule to increase.
This is a short video history of the events:

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 April 1945, Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, was executed by anti-fascist partisans in the village of Giulino de Mezzegra, northern Italy.
After his reign of terror was deposed in 1943, Mussolini was broken from captivity by Nazi troops, and put in charge of a puppet government in northern Italy, which was occupied by Germany.
As more of Italy was liberated by partisan and Allied forces, he tried to escape to Switzerland disguised in a German uniform. But he was spotted by a resistance member who called out “We’ve got Big-Head!”
Mussolini was executed near Lake Como alongside a number of other senior fascists and his mistress. Their bodies were then taken to Milan and dumped in Piazzale Loreto in the early hours of the following morning, where they were soon hung up from the frame of a petrol station. 
The previous year, the Milan Gestapo had publicly executed 15 Italian partisans in that square and hung their bodies there for several days. Subsequently, Mussolini was reported to have said “for the blood of Piazzale Loreto, we shall pay dearly.”
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Many popular anti-fascist pages have been deleted from Facebook/Instagram recently. To ensure you can keep in touch with us, sign up to our email list at https://workingclasshistory.com/sign-up/

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 3 May 1917, Spanish civil war fighter Maria Perez Cruz was born in Teruel, Spain. Working as a cleaner and selling vegetables, Maria became an anarchist, and with the start of the civil war and revolution joined the Iron Column militia as a nurse. 
Nicknamed "La Jabalina", she took part in the fight against the nationalist forces of general Francisco Franco until being shot in battle, leading to her being hospitalised for four months. After her recovery she worked in an arms factory then a steelworks. 
Shortly after Franco's victory La Jabalina, who was now pregnant, was arrested and interrogated about her Iron Column comrades, after which her head was shaved and she was paraded through the streets. She was then charged with a litany of crimes, most of which were committed while she was in hospital, and some of which were completely bogus, like the supposed murder of a Bolivian consul in Valencia who did not exist. La Jabalina was beaten and tortured repeatedly during three years of imprisonment but never admitted anything. Despite this, and despite the fact that people like the director of the hospital where she had been testifying in her defence, she was convicted and executed.
It is believed she gave birth in prison, but the fate of her baby is unknown. Most likely it was given up for adoption to catholic or fascist parents.
Today a public square is named after her, and she has been the subject of two books and a play. Learn more about the civil war in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/

 

[Sawbonz 27437]

On 10/9/2020 at 6:22 PM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

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

 

[Bateshorn 9905]

On 4/24/2021 at 9:00 AM, pyrohornIII said:

Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO does a pretty good job of exposing the Belgian exploitation of the Congo.  Highly recommend this doc, but I am having to take it in small doses.  

 

I Highly, Highly, Highly, HIGHLY recommend the books King Leopold’s Ghost, followed by Dancing in the Glory of Monsters.  

Although, I will warn you, when Hochschild finally tallies the butcher’s bill in the Congo, it’s some of the hardest reading I’ve ever done.  

[Willfully Horn 7916]

On 4/28/2021 at 8:10 PM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Many popular anti-fascist pages have been deleted from Facebook/Instagram recently

WTF? Yet another reason I am glad I visit neither. 
 

 

Thanks for your postings, btw.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

 

 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

2 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

I Highly, Highly, Highly, HIGHLY recommend the books King Leopold’s Ghost, followed by Dancing in the Glory of Monsters.  

Although, I will warn you, when Hochschild finally tallies the butcher’s bill in the Congo, it’s some of the hardest reading I’ve ever done.  

I didn't know how fucked up it was in the Congo until a few years ago. 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

https://apnews.com/article/how-companies-rip-off-poor-employees-6c5364b4f9c69d9bc1b0093519935a5a?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab&utm_content=algorithm

"When a recession hits, U.S. companies are more likely to stiff their lowest-wage workers, research shows. Some businesses pay less than the minimum wage, make employees work off the clock, or refuse to pay overtime rates. In the most egregious cases, bosses don’t pay their employees at all."

...

"“Some companies are doing a cost-benefit analysis and realize it’s cheaper to violate the law, even if you get caught,” said Jenn Round, a labor standards enforcement fellow at the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization at Rutgers University."

Edited May 5, 2021 by Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 19 May 1933, Germany's Nazi government abolished collective bargaining – the principal of workers together negotiating with employers over pay and conditions. Instead, conditions were to be regulated by labour "trustees", appointed by Hitler. The following year the system was refined to designate owners of individual enterprises as local "fuehrers", with complete control of workplaces and ability to "make decisions for employees and labourers in all matters concerning the enterprise". The year after that, the Nazis introduced compulsory labour service for 18-25-year-olds, militarily conscripting young workers into employment. Workers were banned from changing jobs without permission, and maximum working hours were increased from 60 to 72 hours per week while workplace illnesses rocketed. It was just one of many ways the Nazi regime benefited big business, and helped keep workers' wages low, with the US government stating that "It was by such bait that the great German industrialists were induced to support the Nazi cause". 
Some working class young people rejected Nazism and instead formed gangs called Edelweiss Pirates. Learn about them in our podcast episode 4: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/04/04/wch4-anti-nazi-youth-movements-in-world-war-ii/
Find it on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pictured: young labour conscripts

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 19 May 1925, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of a supporter of Marcus Garvey and local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he would become one of the most influential advocates of equal rights as well as one of the harshest critics of white supremacy in the United States before his assassination in 1965.
In particular his advocacy of self defence for Black people shocked the establishment:
"Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see that I'm advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I've only said that Black people who are the victims of organised violence perpetrated upon us, we should defend ourselves… So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defence and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary. The press call us racist and people who are 'violent in reverse.'… They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practising 'violence in reverse.'"
Originally a member of the Nation of Islam, El-Shabazz later left the group and founded the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity. He increasingly came to reject capitalism as inherently linked to racism, declaring in 1964: "You can't have capitalism without racism."
Just three days before his murder he delivered a speech stating: 
"We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterised this era… it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 21 May 1979, the White Night riots occurred in San Francisco when LGBT+ people reacted angrily to the killer of Harvey Milk not being convicted of murder. Milk was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the US, who was shot and killed along with the mayor George Moscone, by former police officer Dan White, using his service revolver. 
Numerous serving San Francisco police officers wore t-shirts declaring "Free Dan White", and contributed to his defence fund, which reportedly raised up to $100,000.  Despite later admitting that the murders were premeditated, in court White used his now-infamous "Twinkie defence", which was that eating junk food showed he was in a poor mental state. So rather than being convicted of murder, he was only convicted voluntary manslaughter. 
Upon hearing the verdict, a crowd of 500 mostly LGBT+ people began marching down Castro Street calling others to join them and heading to City Hall. By the time they arrived, the crowd had grown to include thousands of people, and they attacked the building, smashing windows. Police waded into the crowd, beating people with batons, and the crowd then began burning police cars. As one man set light to a vehicle, he told a reporter: "Make sure you put in the paper that I ate too many Twinkies." 
In retaliation for their humiliating defeat, police attacked a gay bar later that night, screaming homophobic abuse, shattering windows and beating drinkers and passers-by, injuring many. By the end of the night's events, 61 police officers and over 100 members of the public had been hospitalised. Dan White ended up serving only five years in prison, but he killed himself shortly after his release.
For more LGBT+ history, check out our podcast series: https://workingclasshistory.com/tag/lgbtq/
Photo by Daniel Nicoletta

[JimmyJames 12271]

Take it from someone whom knows. Labor laws are ridiculous weak in this country. The entire system is designed to keep labor subjected to owners. The one percent utilizes divisive social issues like guns, abortion and immigration to get the masses to vote against their own self interests.  It needs to change.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 26 May 1824, the first recorded factory strike in US history took place when 102 women and girls working at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket picketed their factory. 
Two days prior, the mill owners in the town had decided to increase working hours by one hour a day for everyone with no additional pay, and cut the pay of power-loom weavers by 25%. The weavers affected were all women and girls aged 15 to 30, whom were previously being paid "extravagant wages for young women," according to the employers. 
What the owners did not expect, something which had not happened before in the infant textile industry, or indeed any factory in the country: the women organised themselves and went on strike. They were joined by other workers and members of the local community, who blockaded the mills, protested and hurled rocks at the mansions of the owners. One prominent local politician, George F. Jenkes wrote in his journal during the dispute: “I have just returned from one of the moste gloomy assemblage of people I have ever witnessed, from the street from the Pawtucket Bank across the bridge to Josiah Mill’s shop is literally filled with Men Women and Children — making a mob of very daring aspect, insulting the managers of cotton mills in every shape — pulling and hauling — screaming and shouting thro the streets.” 
On the final day of the week-long strike, one of the mills was set ablaze. The day after the fire, the mill owners moved to negotiate with the workers, and they reached a compromise. 
In the wake of the dispute, other groups of workers began organising themselves, and other strikes would break out across the New England textile industry in the coming years. 
Learn more about this dispute in our podcast episode 32: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/08/12/e28-the-pawtucket-mill-strike/
Find it on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pictured: painting of the strike by Christine Ashley

[lmao 178]

Tom Perez joins anti-union law firm:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/obama-labor-secretary-tom-perez-anti-union-law-firm-venable

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

21 hours ago, lmao said:

Tom Perez joins anti-union law firm:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/obama-labor-secretary-tom-perez-anti-union-law-firm-venable

 

Example Infinity of the Overton Window we have lived our virtual whole lives in and how laughable the GQP's drama queen scenes are over the Democratic Party veering too hard left. Oh noes!!!

 

To be clear, the Democratic Party in the Reagan Revolution Overton Window- on the whole- has been to the right of the GOP (now GQP) in the New Deal Overton Window. 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 25 May 1978, police in Aotearoa/New Zealand attacked a land occupation by Māori people at Bastion Point, near Auckland, which was demanding the return of the stolen land. The Ōrākei Māori Action Committee had been occupying the land for 506 days before police moved in to evict them, arresting 222 people and demolishing buildings. However, protests continued, and in 1988 the government agreed to return the land to the Ngāti Whātua people.

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 28 May 2013 during the Turkish Occupy Gezi protests, the "woman in red", Ceyda Sungur, was pepper sprayed by police, which became the defining photo of the movement. 
The protests began against development of Gezi Park in Istanbul but transformed into a national movement against the increasing authoritarianism of the right-wing government of  Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 
A university worker, Sungur didn't want notoriety, saying "a lot of people who were at the park and they were also tear-gassed… There is not (a) difference between them and I." She was subsequently arrested for “provoking people to disobey laws”, although the following year the charges were dismissed. 
This is an excellent eyewitness blog published during the protests: https://libcom.org/blog/rootlesscosmopolitan

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 31 May 1921, one of the worst single incidents of racial violence in US history took place: the Tulsa racist massacre, which left 300 dead after a false allegation of a Black man attacking a white woman.
The Tulsa Tribune newspaper included a front-page article titled “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator” and a back-page editorial titled “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”
Local whites were inflamed, and they attacked the Black community of Greenwood, at the time the most prosperous African American community in the US, commonly known as the Black Wall Street. Mobs were backed up by private planes that reportedly dropped incendiary devices and fired on Black residents. Hundreds were killed and the entire thirty-five-block area was razed to the ground, leaving up to ten thousand people homeless. At the time of writing (early 2021) there are still a few survivors awaiting justice and reparations.
Pictured: aftermath of the massacre

[lmao 178]

On 5/30/2021 at 7:39 PM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Example Infinity of the Overton Window we have lived our virtual whole lives in and how laughable the GQP's drama queen scenes are over the Democratic Party veering too hard left. Oh noes!!!

 

To be clear, the Democratic Party in the Reagan Revolution Overton Window- on the whole- has been to the right of the GOP (now GQP) in the New Deal Overton Window. 

The Overton Window is hilariously to the right. BUT BiDeN iS a cOmMunIsT1!! Saying you want reasonable liberal policies like universal healthcare gets you painted as a commie by Pubs & in some cases a Green Party wackjob by Dems. 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 12 June 1963, Medgar Wiley Evers, a Black civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, was shot in the back and killed by Byron De La Beckwith as he pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting in the early morning. 
Beckwith, a white supremacist and member of the White Citizens' Council, was arrested, but when he was put on trial – twice – by all-white juries, they were all illegally screened and investigated by the state beforehand. The former governor of the state interrupted the second trial to shake his hand while Evers' widow, Myrlie, was testifying. So Beckwith walked free, and for years boasted about the murder at KKK rallies. He also unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination as a gubernatorial candidate. 
However, after years of campaigning by Myrlie, she succeeded in getting the case reopened, and in 1994 Beckwith was eventually convicted and put in prison where he died a few years later.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 9 June 1963, Black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested on trumped up charges and brutally beaten in jail. Hamer had become a voting rights activist, and was on her way home to Mississippi from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina when she was arrested with other activists. In detention, a Mississippi police officer ordered two other prisoners to beat Hamer with a blackjack. Hamer and her activist friends were beaten savagely, and although charges were dropped and she was released three days later it took her over a month to recover and she was left with eye and kidney damage. Previously in 1961, Hamer had been sterilised without her consent or knowledge by a white doctor, who was acting according to Mississippi authorities' plan to reduce the poor Black population of the state.
Learn more about Jim Crow segregation in the US in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/david-pilgrim

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 15 June 1990, the Battle of Century City took place, as police in Los Angeles attacked striking janitors and their supporters during a peaceful Service Employees International Union demonstration.
Janitors in the Century City office complex, most of whom were employed by cleaning contractor ISS, had gone out on strike on May 29 demanding improvements to pay and conditions. On the June 15 protest, LAPD officers brutally attacked the workers and their supporters, leaving several people seriously injured, including one pregnant woman who miscarried as a result.
Rather than deter the workers, the violence caused mass outrage. And ISS subsequently agreed to recognise the workers' union, provide for family health coverage and pay a living wage. The event also began to be commemorated with the creation of an annual June 15 Justice for Janitors Day.
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Learn about this and hundreds of other struggles in our book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book

[Hugo Stiglitz 23358]

 

[NWBuck 8548]

58 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

So, a minor miner? 

[Willfully Horn 7916]

A thread.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

Whatever happens, don't let the pitchfork people hook up with the torch people.

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

 

[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 (content note: gendered violence). 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.

 

[pyrohornIII 4809]

I know this isn't tied to any type of anniversary, but I watched Radium Girls tonight.    Worth the watch for the working class angle.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 17 December 1933, sexual contact between men was re-criminalised in the USSR, after it had been decriminalised in 1922 in the wake of the 1917 revolution (content note for physical and sexual violence). Authorities claimed that homosexuality was the result of bourgeois Western and German fascist influence, and the official Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article which ended with the slogan: “Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear!” 
From the beginning of 1934, gay men began to be arrested in large numbers in major Russian cities and sent to the gulags. 
One prisoner, Valery Klimov, wrote about the treatment gay detainees received: "there were about 10 occasions when gays were murdered before my eyes. One was beaten to death in a prison in Sverdlovsk. There were 100 men in our cell; three or four raped him every day and then chucked him under the bunks. It was bestial, a nightmare. Once 10 of them raped him and then jumped on his head. I nearly went mad there; my hair turned grey. That's how people lose their sanity; many never recover even after they leave.” 
While lesbianism was never prohibited, and some masculine lesbians were valued in the military, many lesbians did still suffer persecution such as termination of studies or jobs, bullying, threats to remove custody of their children or being committed to psychiatric facilities. 
This is a short account of the human impact the 1933 law had: https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag
Pictured: political prisoners in a gulag, 1955

[JimmyJames 12271]

35 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

On this day, 17 December 1933, sexual contact between men was re-criminalised in the USSR, after it had been decriminalised in 1922 in the wake of the 1917 revolution (content note for physical and sexual violence). Authorities claimed that homosexuality was the result of bourgeois Western and German fascist influence, and the official Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article which ended with the slogan: “Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear!” 
From the beginning of 1934, gay men began to be arrested in large numbers in major Russian cities and sent to the gulags. 
One prisoner, Valery Klimov, wrote about the treatment gay detainees received: "there were about 10 occasions when gays were murdered before my eyes. One was beaten to death in a prison in Sverdlovsk. There were 100 men in our cell; three or four raped him every day and then chucked him under the bunks. It was bestial, a nightmare. Once 10 of them raped him and then jumped on his head. I nearly went mad there; my hair turned grey. That's how people lose their sanity; many never recover even after they leave.” 
While lesbianism was never prohibited, and some masculine lesbians were valued in the military, many lesbians did still suffer persecution such as termination of studies or jobs, bullying, threats to remove custody of their children or being committed to psychiatric facilities. 
This is a short account of the human impact the 1933 law had: https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag
Pictured: political prisoners in a gulag, 1955

I’d rather be Russian than democrat! - Trump supporters. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

On this day, 19 December 1925, Lepa Svetozara Radic was born in Bosanska Gradiska, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lepa became a communist and joined the anti-Nazi partisans aged 15 in 1941. She was captured in 1943 while organising a rescue of around 150 women and children attempting to escape the fascists. The Germans offered to spare her life if she gave up the names of her comrades, but she responded that she was not a traitor and her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. The executioner subsequently reported that the "bandit" had "shown unprecedented defiance". The Yugoslav partisans eventually successfully defeated the Nazis the fascist Ustashe regime.
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Facebook/Instagram have deleted a number of our posts about the history of opposition to nazism, and informed us that our page is at risk of being unpublished. Ensure you can stay in touch with us by joining our occasional email list: https://workingclasshistory.com/sign-up/

 

[Willfully Horn 7916]

That’s a powerful image.

Fuck fascists. And fuck FB and IG.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

Won't let me copy text now, so screen shot

 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13547]

[Pescado_Rojo 19331]

On 12/10/2023 at 8:49 PM, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

This picture reminds me of a school yard scuffle when I was in elementary school. I grew up in Port Arthur in the 70s and 80s when 90% of the town either worked in a refinery or a related business. During one particularly long strike year one kid in my elementary school who's dad was out on strike beat another kid's ass who's dad had crossed the picket line.