Today in Labor History June 1, 1916: The predominantly immigrant iron miners of the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, participated in a seemingly spontaneous strike in response to overpriced housing and goods, long hours and poor pay. The group was led by radical Finns who quickly drew the attention and aid of the IWW. Wobbly organizers, including Carlo Tresca, Joe Schmidt, Frank Little, and later Joe Ettor and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, came to help local strike leaders draw up a list of demands which included an 8-hour day, timed from when workers entered the mine until they were outside; a pay-scale based upon the actual hours worked; paydays twice monthly; immediate back-pay for hours worked upon severance; abolition of the Saturday night shift; abolition of the hated contract mining system. In the Contract Mining system, the bosses hired and paid “skilled” miners to do most of the mining. The contract miners then had to hire their own laborers and pay them out of their meagre wages. The contract miners were often native-born people, while the laborers were usually immigrants. This created a racialized two-tiered system that divided the workers and made it harder to organize. The bosses would routinely offer the contract miners a small concession to get them back to work, while offering the even more poorly paid laborers nothing, destroying their solidarity and ending the strike. Flynn would later go on to cofound the American Civil Liberties Union. Tresca would go on to became a leading organizer against both fascism and Stalinism. He was assassinated in 1943, possibly on orders of the Genovese crime family, possibly on orders of Stalin, and possibly Italian fascists. Frank Little, who was Native American, was later murdered by vigilantes during a strike in Butte. You can read my biography of Frank Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/
Today in Labor History May 31, 1927: Fred Trump, father Donald Trump, was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York. The Long Island Daily Press reported that all the arrestees, including Trump, were wearing Klan robes. During his presidential campaign, Journalists asked Donald Trump about his father's arrest. He claimed "it never happened."
@KormaChameleon
The roots of what we now call 'Zionism' can be traced to the early 17th century. Until relatively recently, it was a gentile concept. Jews didn't start using the term in relation to themselves until very late in the 19th century.
Jewish Zionism comes in many forms. The form that spawned Israel dates to that time period.
"It should be pointed out already here that this was a wholly gentile, Christian, white Anglo-Saxon fantasy, in which actual Jews living in the Middle East or elsewhere played no active role." #Palestine #Israel #racism #Zionism #genocide
From 31st May through to 1st June 1921 the Tulsa Massacre took place. Deputized whites killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. 1/2
White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 Black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921.
This assault was met by a brave but unsuccessful armed defence of their community by some Black World War I veterans and others. 2/2
As if any more proof was needed, a former producer for The Apprentice just revealed the depths of Donald Trump’s #racism.
Recently freed from a 20-year nondisclosure agreement,
Bill Pruitt, who worked on the television show that christened Trump as America’s Boss
and arguably shaped the savvy businessman persona that he rode to the presidency in 2016,
told the story of The Apprentice’s early days for the first time for Slate.
Most notably, he recounted a 2004 incident in which Trump refused to hire Kwame Jackson, the Black finalist on the series’s first season. His reason, according to Pruitt?
“I mean, would America buy a n— winning?” Trump reportedly told the show’s producers.
The comment was reportedly caught on tape, though Pruitt said he’s sure the evidence will never be found.
[…] “Nikki Haley shows who she is,” said former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth. “As Israeli bombardment has killed far more Palestinian civilians than combatants, she signs a bomb, ‘Finish them.’ Why not just sign, ‘I favor Israeli war crimes.'”
Today in Labor History May 28, 1912: Fifteen women were fired from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company, in Philadelphia, for dancing the Turkey Trot. They were on their lunch break, but management thought the dance too racy. The Turkey Trot was a fast dance, generally danced by the members of the youth counterculture, to ragtime tunes, like Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. The Vatican denounced the dance. Conservatives tried to get it banned. Some dancers were fined by the courts for “disorderly conduct.” In 1913, a conservative reaction song was produced called the Anti-Ragtime Girl. In 1963, Little Eva (of Locomotion fame) recorded a tribute to the Turkey Trot called Let’s Turkey Trot.
A Virginia-based tech company will pay >$38k in penalties for posting a #discriminatory#job ad that only sought to hire White US citizens, the #Justice Dept announced.
Arthur Grand Technologies Inc, a firm that provides IT services, in March 2023 posted a job ad for a business analyst position on the hiring site Indeed that asked in a bolded note for “Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas,” acc/to a DOJ news release. “Don’t share with candidates,” the ad read in brackets.
"Hamas demands the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest and detention orders against all war criminals, including occupation leaders, officers and soldiers who participated in crimes against the Palestinian people. It also demands the cancellation of all arrest warrants issued against Palestinian resistance leaders, as these warrants violate international conventions and resolutions [Article 51 of the UN Charter].
@NotImpressed
"The zionist regime had always preferred Jews from Europe. Western European Jews were seen as superior to Eastern European Jews, and even within European groups, there was a ranking. Jews lower down on the hierarchy would be used as human shields, strategically settled to protect the core of the colony. This was the fate of many Arab and North African Jews, people that Israel didn’t even want originally, but the shortage of European Jews who could be settled in Palestine after the Holocaust left the zionists little choice." https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/are-israelis-jews-returning-to-jewish-minority-life/ @jeremy_pm@oatmeal@palestine #Palestine #Israel #racism
The roots of what we now call 'Zionism' can be traced to the early 17th century. Until relatively recently, it was a gentile concept. Jews didn't start using the term in relation to themselves until very late in the 19th century. @oatmeal Jewish Zionism comes in many forms. The form that spawned Israel dates to that time period.
"It should be pointed out already here that this was a wholly gentile, Christian, white Anglo-Saxon fantasy, in which actual Jews living in the Middle East or elsewhere played no active role." @palestine @israel #Palestine #Israel #racism #Zionism
"Our society does not have an antisemitism crisis. It doesn’t have a crisis of far left radicalism, Islamist extremism, support for terrorism, or fomenting of dissent by foreign powers."
"... as Howard Zinn said, “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.”"
"The problem is that the freaks who rule over us are not sufficiently afraid of us. The problem is that we have not yet come to the collective realization that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and that we don’t actually need to put up with them doing crazy and evil things right in front of our faces."
Thank you for highlighting the fundamentally racist nature of Israeli Zionism @sng
The fact that other racism exists does not mitigate that.
As for whether Israeli Zionism is Jewish, not all Jews agree:
"... the dismantling of Israel and the liberation of Palestine must also be a Jewish struggle — a struggle that should go far beyond Jews showing solidarity for Palestinians or simply not wanting to be oppressors. “Israeli” is a colonial identity that should be renounced, not just because it harms Palestinians but also because it is deeply anti-Jewish." https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/are-israelis-jews-returning-to-jewish-minority-life/ @djsundog #Israel #Palestine #genocide #protest #Zionism #racism
Today in Labor History May 24, 1856: The Pottawatomie Massacre occurred in Kansas. On May 21 pro-slavery forces sacked Lawrence, Kansas, which had been settled by abolitionist “Free-Staters.” The next day, they attacked Senator Charles Sumner for speaking out against slavery in Kansas. In response, John Brown, and his supporters in the Pottawatomie Rifles, killed five pro-slavery settlers in front of their families. This led to a mini-civil war in Kansas that was a prelude to the national Civil War that would follow a few years later.