Today in Labor History September 11, 1916: The trial of labor activist Warren Billings began in San Francisco on trumped up charges stemming from the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade bombing on July 22. As a result of the bombing, 10 people died and 40 were injured. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. Billings and his codefendant Tom Mooney were wrongly convicted. They served 23 years in prison and were released in 1939. Governor Edmund G. Brown pardoned them in 1961.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #bombing #prison #anarchism #TomMooney #WarrenBillings #SanFrancisco

Today in Labor History September 11, 1973: The CIA helped overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile. This ended nearly 150 years of democratic rule. Also killed in the coup were folk singer Victor Jara, and American IWW journalist Frank Teruggi. Jara courageously continued singing Venceremos (We Shall Win) while he lay on the ground, hands broken by his torturers, as they slaughtered hundreds in the national stadium. 16 years of military terror followed under Pinochet’s rule. Chilean-American author Isabel Allende is a cousin of the assassinated former president, Salvador Allende. She wrote her debut novel, “House of the Spirits,” while in exile in Venezuela, after fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nybX2_mYqg

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #SalvadorAllende #pinochet #chile #dictatorship #cia #FolkMusic #VictorJara

Today in Labor History September 10, 1962: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Civil Rights Leader, James Meredith, could be admitted to the University of Mississippi. White rioters burned cars, pelted federal agents and soldiers with rocks, bricks and shot at them. 31,000 soldiers were sent to quell the violence, the largest ever use of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Two people died. Meredith was harassed throughout his time at the university. He went on to organize the March against Fear from Memphis to Jackson. He also was active in the Voting Rights movement. He went on to become an adviser to the right-wing, segregationist Senator Jesse Helms.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #CivilRights #racism #JimCrow #segregation #JamesMeredith #OleMiss #Riot #SCOTUS

Today in Labor History September 10, 1963: 20 black children were integrated into Birmingham schools in spite of opposition by the city. Martin Luther King, James Bevel & Fred Shuttlesworth led the campaign of nonviolent direct action to integrate Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Over a thousand were arrested during the campaign. Bull Connors ordered the use of high-pressure hoses and attack dogs on juvenile protesters. Racists bombed the Gaston Motel, in a failed attempt to assassinate King.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #CivilRights #nonviolence #CivilDisobedience #MartinLutherKing #alabama #bombing #racsim #JimCrow

Today in Labor History September 10, 1898: Anarchist Luigi Lucheni assassinated Empress Elisabeth of Austria with a sanded-down file. The authorities promptly caught Lucheni. He claimed he had come to Geneva to kill any sovereign as an example for others (Propaganda by the Deed). He said he used the file because he couldn’t afford a stiletto. During his trial, he discovered that capital punishment had been banned in Geneva. Furious, he demanded that his trial be moved to a less civilized canton so he could be martyred. On October 19, 1910, he was found hanged in his cell. The authorities cut off his head and stuck it into formaldehyde and transferred to Vienna, where it was put on display in the Narrenterm pathology museum. They displayed it there until 2000.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #assassination #atentat #LuigiLucheni #austria

Today in Labor History September 10, 1897: A sheriff and deputies killed 19 striking miners and wounded 40 others in Lattimer mine, near Hazelton, Pennsylvania during a peaceful mining protest. Many of those killed were originally brought in as strikebreakers, but then later organized and joined the strike. The miners were mostly Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak and German. The massacre was a turning point for the UMW. Working and safety conditions were terrible. 32,000 miners had died from 1870-1897, just in the northeastern coalfields of Pennsylvania. Wages had dropped 17% since the mid-1890s.

The strike began in mid-August, when teenage mule drivers walked off the job to protest the consolidation of stables, which had forced them to walk much further just to get to work. After a scuffle between drivers and supervisors, two thousand men walked out, as well. Soon, all the mines in the region had joined the strike. Most of the men who weren’t already members of the UMW quickly joined the union. Up to 10,000 miners were now on strike. The mine owners’ private police, known as the Coal & Iron Police (miners called them Cossacks, for their brutality), was too small to quash the strike, so they called on the sheriff to intervene. He mustered a posse of 100 Irish and English immigrants, who confronted the miners as they marched toward Latimer, on Sep 10. Along the way, they joked about how many miners they were going to kill.

The massacre provoked a near uprising. The sheriff called for the deployment of the National Guard, which sent 2,500 troops to quell the unrest. 10 days later, a group of Slavic women, armed with fire pokers and rolling pins, led 150 men and boys to shut down the McAdoo coal works, but were stopped by the National Guards. The sheriff, and 73 deputized vigilantes, were put on trial. However, despite evidence clearly showing that most of the miners had been shot in the back, and none had been armed, they were all acquitted.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #coal #mining #union #strike #latimer #massacre #police #PoliceBrutality #PoliceMurder #immigration

Today in Labor History September 9, 1981: The Sandinista government banned all strikes. We’re a workers’ paradise, motherfucker. We don’t need strikes! Yippie!

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #Nicaragua #Sandinista #socialism #union #strike

Today in Labor History September 9, 1971: The Attica prison riot began near Buffalo, New York. Nine prison guards were held hostage, dying along with 31 of their captors when 1,500 state police and other law-enforcement officers stormed the complex shooting indiscriminately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXgP0lkqPNk

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #prison #riot #murder #attica #racism #blm #BlackLivesMatter #BlackMastadon

Today in Labor History September 9, 1968: In a press conference about the brutality of the Chicago police during the Democratic Convention, Mayor Daley admitted what we’ve known all along: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOOrgQeRF34

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #police #PoliceBrutality #chicago

Today in Labor History September 9, 1919: Boston police walked off the job during the strike wave that was spreading across the country. The police had affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, prompting the police commissioner to suspend 19 of them for their organizing efforts, and prompting other cops to go on strike. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired and he called in the state police to crush the strike. However, over half of them showed solidarity and refused to work. Coolidge then mustered the state militia and created an entirely new police force made up of unemployed World War I veterans, and Harvard students. The poorly trained “cops” killed 9 people during the strike. But all the blame was placed on the strikers. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called their strike a crime against civilization. AFL President Samuel Gompers urged the cops, whom he represented, to return to work. The press attacked the striking cops as Bolsheviks. The NY Times wrote: “A policeman has no more right to belong to a union than a soldier or a sailor. He must be ready to obey orders, the orders of his superiors, not those of any outside body. One of his duties is the maintenance of order in the case of strike violence. In such a case, if he is faithful to his union, he may have to be unfaithful to the public, which pays him to protect it.” And ever since, the cops and their “unions” (professional association might be a more appropriate term) have overwhelmingly followed the NYT advice, rarely striking themselves (~25 in the U.S. over the past 100 years) and eagerly attacking other working class people who are on strike.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #union #strike #police #cops #bolshevik #ww1 #NYTimes

Today in Labor History September 9, 1828: Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright was born. He is most famous for novels like Anna Karina, and War and Peace. He chose the name for the latter after reading French anarchist Proudhon’s publication called War and Peace. Tolstoy also wrote many short stories, an autobiography and many works of nonfiction. After witnessing a public execution in 1857, he wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." In the 1870s, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which led him to become a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and which he wrote about in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). He also wrote about nonviolent resistance in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wittgenstein. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel prizes in both literature and peace.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #pacifism #peace #tolstoy #gandhi #MartinLutherKing #NobelPrize #literature #fiction #books #author #writer #russia @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 9, 1739: Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in Britain's mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution, erupted near Charleston, South Carolina. A literate Congolese former soldier named Jemmy led the revolt of 60 enslaved people. They killed over 20 white colonists, on their march to Spanish Florida, where freedom had been promised to those fleeing slavery in the British colonies. Over 30 rebels died in battle. Over 20 more were executed in the aftermath.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #slavery #rebellion #uprising #colonialism #freedom

“In the tradition of Upton Sinclair and Jack London, Michael Dunn gives us a gritty portrait of working-class life and activism during one of the most violent eras in U.S. labor history. Anywhere but Schuylkill is a social novel built out of passion and the textures of historical research. It is both a tale of 1870s labor unrest and a tale for the inequalities and injustices of the twenty-first century.”

-Russ Castronovo, author of Beautiful Democracy and Propaganda 1776.

Available on Sep 19, 2023, from all the usual online distributors, or direct from my publisher: http://wix.to/M9gMx11

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #HistoricalFiction #ficiton #novel #coal #mining #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 6, 1901: Anarchist steelworker Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley, in the name of workers, in Buffalo, New York. However, many leading anarchists had repudiated him prior to the assassination, accusing him of being a spy or provocateur because of his reclusive and erratic behavior. The authorities quickly arrested Czolgosz and executed him 7 weeks later.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #assassination #potus #execution #DeathPenalty

Today in Labor History September 6, 1869: The Avondale fire killed 110 miners, including several juveniles under the age of 10. It led to the first mine safety law in Pennsylvania. Avondale is near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna River flows nearby. The mine had only one entrance, in violation of safety recommendations at the time. In the wake of the fire, thousands of miners joined the new Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, one of the nation’s first large industrial unions (and precursor to the United Mineworkers). My book, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” opens with this fire. My main character, Mike Doyle, joins the bucket brigade trying to put out the flames shooting out of the mineshaft.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #mining #coal #avondale #disaster #WorkplaceDeaths #WorkerSafety #union #HistoricalFiction #novel #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 5, 1917: Federal agents attacked Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) halls and offices in 48 cities across the nation as part of the Palmer raids against the left.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #PalmerRaids #RedScare #police #PoliceBrutality

Today in Labor History September 5, 1964: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn died in Moscow. Flynn was an anarchist, labor militant and highly successful organizer with the IWW. before joining the American Communist Party. She was also a founding member of the ACLU. She is portrayed in Jess Walter’s historical novel, “The Cold Millions,” about the Spokane Free Speech Fight.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #anarchism #communism #union #strike #aclu #HistoricalFiction #fiction #novel #writer #author #JessWalter @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 5, 1936: Photographer Robert Capa captured the death of 24-year-old anarchist Federico "Taino" Borrell in the iconic photo The Falling Soldier. Borell was an antifascist fighter, killed during the Spanish Civil War.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #spanish #spain #CivilWar #fascism #antifascism #anarchism #republican #photography #RobertCapa

Today in Labor History September 5, 1906: Followers of the Flores Magón brothers left Douglas, Arizona and attacked the town of Agua Prieta, in the Mexican state of Sonora. The 1906 attack was part of the Magonistas’ first attempted revolution. It came in the wake of the bloody Cananea Strike, 30 miles to the southwest of Agua Prieta, where 23 workers had recently been killed. The anarchist Magonistas had been active in that strike which, along with their failed 1906 revolution, helped pave the way for the more famous Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Two more battles were fought in Agua Prieta in 1911 and 1912.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #mexico #Revolution #Magonistas #Cananea #strike #mining #anarchism #RicardoFloresMagon

Today in Labor History September 5, 1882: The first American Labor Day was observed, with 30,000 workers marching in New York City. The event was connected to a meeting of the radical Knights of Labor. Oregon became the first state to officially recognize the holiday. Over the years, more an more states recognized the holiday. However, by 1886, workers from around the world were celebrating May 1st as International Workers’ Day, in honor of the American anarchists who were wrongly convicted and executed for the Haymarket Affair. Fearing that the May 1st holiday would strengthen anarchist and communist movements, President Cleveland pushed for federal recognition of the September holiday. And in 1894, Congress passed a bill making it an official federal holiday.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #LaborDay #MayDay #haymarket #anarchism #socialism #communism #InternationalWorkersDay