Today in Labor History July 10, 1894: The Pullman Rail Car strike was put down by 14,000 federal and state troops. Over the course of the strike, soldiers killed 70 American Railway Union (ARU) members. Eugene Debs and many others were imprisoned during the strike for violating injunctions. Debs founded the ARU in 1893. The strike began, in May, as a wildcat strike, when George Pullman laid off employees and slashed wages, while maintaining the same high rents for his company housing in the town of Pullman, as well as the excessive rates he charged for gas and water. During the strike, Debs called for a massive boycott against all trains that carried Pullman cars. While many adjacent unions opposed the boycott, including the conservative American Federation of Labor, the boycott nonetheless affected virtually all train transport west of Detroit. Debs also called for a General Strike, which Samuel Gompers and the AFL blocked. At its height, over 200,000 railway workers walked off the job, halting dozens of lines, and workers set fire to buildings, boxcars and coal cars, and derailed locomotives. Clarence Darrow successfully defended Debs in court against conspiracy charges, arguing that it was the railways who met in secret and conspired against their opponents. However, they lost in their Supreme Court trial for violating a federal injunction.
By the 1950s, the town of Pullman had been incorporated into the city of Chicago. Debs became a socialist after the strike, running for president of the U.S. five times on the Socialist Party ticket, twice from prison. In 1905, he cofounded the radical IWW, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood and Irish revolutionary James Connolly. In 1894, President Cleveland designated Labor Day a federal holiday, in order to detract from the more radical May 1st, which honored the Haymarket martyrs and the struggle for the 8-hour day. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the Pullman strike ended, with the enthusiastic support of Gompers and the AFL.
It's easy to avoid Facebook, never been and never will be on it. Twitter is done and dusted. Google replaced by DuckDuckGo, bar GoogleTranslate. Instagram acc dormant. LinkedIn just a profile, no posts.
Today in Labor History June 26, 1894: The American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene Debs, called a nationwide boycott in solidarity with their striking members at Pullman, Illinois. The Pullman Railroad Strike began as a wildcat strike in Chicago, when 4,000 railway workers walked off the job. It quickly escalated into the largest industrial strike the U.S. had ever seen, with 260,000 workers participating. Most of the workers lived in the company town of Pullman, just south of Chicago. When George Pullman slashed wages and jobs, he didn’t lower rents. Consequently, the workers called a strike. In addition to fighting for increased wages and union representation, they also wanted democracy in the autocratic company town. When the strike started, the Pullman workers were not yet organized in a union. However, Eugene Debs, who created the ARU in 1893, came in to organize the men and they quickly signed up. He called a boycott which halted much of the rail transport west of the Mississippi. Worker sabotage caused $80 million in damages. The government sent in federal troops to suppress the strike, killing at least 30 strikers. They also arrested Debs for conspiracy to block U.S. mail. Clarence Darrow defended him. However, he still got six months in prison. Debs would go on to cofound the IWW, in 1905, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, and others.
Israeli Jaffa have changed it's brand to Orri, this one has the original name and Israel on it, but there are other without Israel's name on it.
I saw this at our local Moroccan store that I usually visit and asked him why he was selling Israeli products, first he claimed they were Spanish, and when I showed the sticker, he simply said, so what. He was pretty mad when I returned the items I was planning to purchase.
Today when I passed his store, I saw that they had removed all the stickers. It really makes me sad.
“Divestment at the University of Edinburgh: Breaking from Balfour’s colonial legacy: As a university steeped in the legacy of Balfour, we have an urgent duty to end complicity in Israel's settler colonial project. Divestment from companies complicit in occupation, apartheid, and genocide is the first step toward historical redress.”
by University of Edinburgh Students and Staff Divestment Movement in Mondoweiss @mondoweiss
“This Monday 17th June 2024, the University of Edinburgh Court rules on a historical decision on whether or not to begin an active and immediate process of divestment from ‘controversial weapons’ complicit in Palestinian dispossession and Israeli settler colonialism, which the University has been entangled with for well over a century. The ruling of the court could mean immediate divestment from companies like Amazon and Alphabet as their ‘AI solutions’ might be plausibly in use in the mass targeting of civilians in Gaza. This would set a grand precedent and would serve as a concrete step to reducing our institutional complicity in violence against Palestinians.”
Today in Labor History June 15, 1990: Los Angeles cops attacked 500 janitors who were peacefully demonstrating in the Battle of Century City. The event generated public outrage that resulted in recognition of the workers’ union and spurred the creation of an annual June 15 Justice for Janitors Day. Justice For Janitors includes over 200,000 janitors in cities across the U.S. and Canada. The movement is part of the SEIU. Ken Loach’s wonderful film “Bread and Roses” (2000), was based on the Justice For Janitors struggle. Loach turned down the Turin Film Festival award in 2012 because they had fired their custodial staff for opposing a wage cut. He also was part of the group of artists and writers who called on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honour calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not co-sponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."
The Palestine soda from the Swedish company is gaining popularity in places where Coke and Pepsi are boycotted.
The company is buiilt by 2 bothers and I think they just using the name Palestine to market their product and increase the visibility of the the name Palestine in Sweden where media and the government trying to use the silent treatment towards the anti genocide activists.
Today in Labor History May 11, 1894: The Pullman Railroad Strike began in Chicago, Illinois, when 4,000 workers walked off the job. It began as a wildcat strike and quickly escalated into the largest industrial strike to date in the U.S. Nearly 260,000 railroad workers participated. The strike and boycott halted nearly all rail traffic west of Detroit. The strike began during a severe depression. George Pullman lowered wages and began laying off workers, without reducing rent in his company town of Pullman, Illinois, where most of the workers lived. Eugene Debs rose to prominence as a labor leader during this strike. The American Federation of Labor refused solidarity because they thought Debs was stealing their members, as the American Railway Union was not an AFofL member. The government sent in federal troops to suppress the strike. 30 workers were killed in Chicago, alone. Over 40 more were killed in other parts of the country. Property damage exceeded $80 million. Debs would go on to run for president four times, as a socialist, running some of his campaigns from prison. He was also a founding member of the radical IWW, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, and Easter Rising martyr, James Connolly.
The last 48 hours, Russia has crossed the border to Ukraine at three different locations north of Kharkiv, and new Ukrainian land is now contested.
At its widest point, the advance is 7 kilometers.
30 settlements have been bombed by Russia, and Ukraine has evacuated 1775 citizens from the area.
As Russia moves closer to Kharkiv, they open the possibility of shelling the city using cheap, regular artillery, so Ukraine is forced to push The invaders back across the border, to keep Kharkiv safe.
@randahl We need to ratchet up real disinscentives on the axis of evil allies who are enabling #Putin and all his armed forces. Countries selling tech to Russia - People's Republic of China, in particular. Countries buying Russia's fossil fuels - PRC and India. Countries selling arms to Russia - North Korea and Iran.
The senate of the University of #Barcelona (UB) approves a motion calling for the university to break all institutional and academic ties with Israel, including centers, research institutes, companies, and other institutions in Israel
At university of South #Florida hunger strikers for #palestine are entering their third week.
The university has instructed medical staff on campus to deny medical care to these students, they don’t all have insurance. Some have been hospitalized.
Through all this, the university continues to say they have zero control over their own money, and won’t meet with strikers.
#BestBuy is caving to threats by #christofascist#Republican investors, and will stop contributing to #LGBTQ non-profit organizations — including blocking their employee resource groups from making donations to those groups.
I just came across this TikTok "#boycott#Kelloggs for their #LetThemEatCereal for dinner" remark", and I love how clear the goal and mechanism to achieve it are: if enough people do this one fairly little thing for a full quarter, the powerful will notice, and can be forced to change their behavior.