Today in Labor History June 27, 1905: The Industrial Workers of the World (AKA IWW or the Wobblies) was founded at Brand's Hall, in Chicago, Illinois. The IWW was a radical syndicalist labor union, that advocated industrial unionism, with all workers in a particular industry organized in the same union, as opposed by the trade unions typical today. Founding members included Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, Eugene V. Debs, Lucy Parsons, and Mother Jones. The IWW was and is a revolutionary union that sought not only better working conditions in the here and now, but the complete abolition of capitalism. The preamble to their constitution states: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. It also states: Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
They advocate the General Strike and sabotage as two of many means to these ends. However, sabotage to the Wobblies does not necessarily mean bombs and destruction. According to Big Bill Haywood, sabotage is any action that gums up the works, slowing down profits for the bosses. Thus, working to rule and sit-down strikes are forms of sabotage. The IWW is the first union known to have utilized the sit-down strike. They were one of the first and only unions of the early 20th century to organize all workers, regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, language or type of work (e.g., they organized both skilled and unskilled workers). They also were subjected to extreme persecution by the state and by vigilantes working for the corporations. Hundreds were imprisoned or deported. Dozens were assassinated or executed, including Joe Hill, Frank Little, Wessley Everest and Carlo Tresca. And scores were slaughtered in massacres, like in McKees Rock railway strike, PA (1909); Lawrence Textile Strike, MA (1912); San Diego Free Speech Fight, CA (1912); Grabow, LA Lumber Strike (1912); New Orleans, LA banana strike (1913); Patterson, NJ textile strike (1913); Mesabi Range Strike, MN (1916); Everett, WA massacre (1916); Centralia, WA Armistice Day riot (1919) and the Columbine, CO massacre (1921). There was also the Hopland, CA riot (1913), in which the police killed each other, accidentally, and framed Wobblies for it.
There are lots of great books about the IWW artwork and music. The Little Red Songbook. The IWW, Its First 50 Years, by Fred Thompson. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, by Joyce Kornbluth. But there are also tons of fictional accounts of the Wobblies, too. Lots of references in Dos Passos’, USA Trilogy. Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, was influenced by his experience working as a Pinkerton infiltrator of the Wobblies. The recent novel, The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter, has a wonderful portrayal of Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, during the Spokane free speech fight. And tons of classic folk and protest music composed by Wobbly Bards, like Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, Haywire Mac and T-Bone Slim.
Today in Labor History June 21, 1982: John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981. A Few years later (1990), Reagan was found not guilty by reason of dementia, when he said “I don’t recall,” 88 times during the Iran-Contra hearings, a rate of more than 10 per hour. (In 1994, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s). Hinkley said he tried to assassinate Reagan to impress actress Jody Foster, who had played Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute in the film Taxi Driver. In that film, Robert DeNiro’s character, Travis Bickle, tries to assassinate the president. And from all this came one of the more amusing band names from the classic era of Hardcore Punk, JFA, or Jody Foster’s Army.
Today in Labor History June 1, 1981: Two Filipino longshore labor organizers, Domingo & Viernes, were assassinated in Seattle, Washington on orders of U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In 1986, as a result of ongoing protests, President Ronald Reagan told Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly.” That evening, Marcos and his wife Imelda fled to Hawaii aboard a U.S. air force plane, after 20 years of rule, with an entourage of 90 people (mostly servants), with 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry of unknown value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems, $200,000 in gold bullion, $1 million in Philippine pesos and deposit slips for $124 million in banks in the Cayman Islands. Plus, countless crates of shoes. The Marcos hold the Guinness record for the largest ever theft from a government. Today, their son, Bong Bong Marcos, rules over the Philippines, with Sara Duterte as his vice-president, daughter of the brutal previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who has been linked to the death-squad murders of over 1,400 alleged drug dealers and street children.
Today in Labor History May 31, 1905: The Spanish anarchist Alexander Farras threw a bomb into a procession headed by French President Loubet and the King Alphonso XIII of Spain. The leaders were not hurt, though several people were wounded. Farras was never caught. Four other anarchists were arrested, tried and acquitted. Then, the following year, again on May 31, anarchist Mateo Morral made another attempt on King Alphonso XIII. He hid a bomb in a bunch of flowers and threw it at the King during his royal wedding. Because he worked in Modern School’s publishing house and was a friend of Francisco Ferrer (the founder of the first Modern Schools), Ferrer was later arrested and imprisoned as an accomplice. You can read my complete history of Ferrer and the Modern School movement here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/
Sina Yousefi, a lawyer, announced the assassination attempt of a lawyer by publishing pictures on social media and wrote:
Afshin Ghasemi, who is a prominent human rights lawyer and a member of the Central Bar Association, was attacked today at around five in the evening by armed and unknown people.
He had previously been threatened by unknown agents related to the case party for taking charge of a case in which there were accusations of #rape against women.
It is said that the assailants were three people armed with firearms and cold weapons, who rode in a "Persia" car (without license plate) in an almost busy area and assaulted this lawyer.
At the same time as the international day of lawyers at risk (2024) is dedicated to Iranian lawyers, the government of Iran does not take any security and legal measures to prevent the murder and assassination of lawyers, but puts their lives under threat with propaganda measures against lawyers. #Hamava #woman life of freedom #HumanRights#Terrorism#IRI #Politics
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سوقصد به جان افشین قاسمی، وکیل دادگستری
سینا یوسفی، وکیل دادگستری با انتشار تصاویری در شبکه اجتماعی از سوءقصد به جان یک وکیل خبر داد و نوشت:
افشین قاسمی وکیل دادگستری و عضو کانون وکلای مرکز امروز در حدود ساعت پنج عصر مورد سوقصد افراد مسلح و ناشناس قرار گرفت.
ایشان قبلاً بخاطر بر عهده گرفتن پروندهای که در آن اتهامات #تجاوز به زنان وجود داشت، مورد تهدید از سوی عوامل ناشناس و مرتبط با طرف پرونده قرار گرفته بود.
گفته میشود ضاربین سه نفر فرد مسلح به سلاح گرم و سرد بودند که سوار بر خودروی پرشیا (بدون پلاک) در یک منطقه تقریبا پر رفت و آمد اقدام به ضرب و جرح این وکیل دادگستری نمودهاند.
همزمان با اختصاص روز جهانی وکلای در معرض خطر (۲۰۲۴) به وکلای ایران، حکومت ایران هیچ اقدام تامینی و قانونی در راستای جلوگیری از قتل و سوقصد به وکلا انجام نمیدهد بلکه با اقدامات تبلیغی علیه وکلا، جان آنها را در معرض تهدید قرار میدهد. #همآوا #زنزندگیآزادی
Today in LGBTQ History May 22, 1930: Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and San Francisco’s first openly gay city Supervisor, was born. Former supervisor Dan White assassinated him and Mayor George Moscone. White only got a couple years in jail using the infamous Twinkie defense leading to the White Night Riots in San Francisco.
Today in Labor History May 21, 1894: The French authorities executed anarchist Emile Henry by guillotine. His final words were, “Courage, comrades! Long live Anarchy!” Henry grew up in a family of radicals. His father had been a supporter of the Paris Commune. As a result, his family was exiled to Spain, where Henry was born. However, his father contracted mercury poisoning from his factory job there and died when Henry was ten. After this, the family moved back to France. Henry’s older brother, also an anarchist, helped him make connections with other French revolutionaries. In 1892, Henry set a time bomb at the offices of the Carmaux Mining Company, which killed five cops. In February, 1894, he set off a bomb at the Café Terminus, killing one person and wounding twenty. The authorities arrested him for this crime and sentenced him to death by guillotine.
Today in Labor History May 11, 1878: Emil Heinrich Maximilian Hoedel, a 21-year-old anarchist, shot Emperor Guillaume I of Prussia in order to publicize the plight of the workers. The monarch survived. Hoedel was beheaded two months later. As he prepared to die, he shouted, "Vive la commune."
Today in Writing History May 7, 1861: Indian poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore was born. Also known as the Bard of Bengal, Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also an anti-imperialist and supported Indian nationalism. In 1916, Indian expatriates tried to assassinate him in San Francisco.
Today in Labor History April 20, 1948: United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins while he was eating dinner. It permanently impaired his right arm. He survived and ultimately died in a plane crash in 1970 under suspicious circumstances. Reuther also survived an attempted kidnapping in April, 1938, while his brother Victor was shot and nearly killed by police in 1949. The UAW headquarters was also bombed in 1949. Both Walter and Victor were again nearly killed in a small private plane near Dulles Airport. Despite this history of attempts on his life, virtually no media addressed the possibility that his actual death may have been an assassination.
Today In Labor History April 4, 1968: James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Hotel, Memphis, Tennessee. King was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers’ strike that had started in February, 1968, for better working conditions and higher pay. The strike began 2 weeks after 2 workers were crushed to death when their truck malfunctioned, intensifying the already high level of frustration and anger over working conditions and safety. King led a protest march on March 28 . Over 20,000 kids cut class to join the demonstration. Some members of the march began smashing downtown windows and looting. The cops intervened with mace, tear gas, clubs and live gunfire, killing 16-year-old Larry Paine, who had his hands in the air when he was shot. On April 3, one day before his assassination, King gave his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
Today in Labor History March 23, 1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador gave a speech appealing to the men of the Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing Salvadoran civilians. The next day, they assassinated him, too.
Today in Labor History March 16, 1978: The far-left terrorist group Red Brigades (BR) kidnapped Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. They murdered him 55 days later. There are lots of hypotheses about their motivations, many of which are considered fringe. One hypothesis claims they did it to stop Moro’s mediation between the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats in order to halt the CP’s rise to power so as to increase the BR’s influence within the Left. Other hypotheses include the idea that BR had been infiltrated and manipulated by the CIA or by Gladio, a clandestine paramilitary associated with NATO.
Today in Labor History March 15, 1921: 23-year-old Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian, assassinated Talaat Pasha, former Grand Vizir of the Ottoman Empire and chief architect of the Armenian genocide. Tehlirian had previously assassinated Harutian Mgrditichian, who worked for the Ottoman secret police and helped compile the list of Armenian intellectuals who were deported on 24 April 1915 at the beginning of the genocide. After the deportation, they sent over one million women and children on a death march to the Syrian desert. During the march, they starved and raped the Armenians. Overall, they killed one million people, or 90% of the Armenian population. After a two-day trial, a German court acquitted Tehlirian.
I recently had a student with this last name. When I asked her about it, she proudly proclaimed that Soghomon Tehlirian was her great grandfather.
Today in Labor History March 13, 1881: Nikolai Rysakov, a member of Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), a revolutionary socialist organization, tried to assassinate Czar Alexander II of Russia. His bomb failed to penetrate the czar’s bullet-proof carriage. However, another Naradnaya Volya member, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, managed to throw his bomb at the Czar’s feet, blowing off his legs and ripping open his stomach. He later died from his wounds. A third member of the organization was ready with yet another bomb, just in case the first two failed.
Today in Labor History February 25, 1908: The Washington Post proposed that all anarchists should be executed (whether or not they had been convicted of any crime). This came two days after anarchist Giuseppe Alia shot a Catholic priest, Father Heinrichs, in Denver.
Today in Labor History February 15, 1933: Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami. He failed, mostly because he was too short to see over the crowd. However, Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak, who was shot in the attack, later died, in part from his wounds and in part from medical malpractice. Zangara confessed to the crime in jail, stating “I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.” He was executed in Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair in March, 1933. Philip K. Dick’s novel, “The Man in the High Castle,” is based in part on the premise that Zangara succeeded in killing FDR.
Today in Labor History February 5, 1994: A jury convicted Byron De La Beckwork of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers, only 31 years after the fact. Edgars fought to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end segregation of public facilities, and expand voting rights for African Americans He was the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. He was also a decorated US Army veteran who served in World War II.
Today in Labor History February 1, 1908: Republicans and members of the Carbonaria killed King Carlos I of Portugal and his heir apparent in the Lisbon Regicide. As a result of the assassinations and the anti-monarchy protests that followed, the constitutional monarchy ended several months later.