Today in Labor History June 16, 1836: The London Working Men's Association was formed, launching the Chartist movement. The Chartists took their name from the People's Charter, which demanded universal suffrage for men, regardless of social class. The movement appealed to skilled workers, not the masses of unskilled laborers. They followed the utopian socialism of Robert Owen. The movement lasted from 1838 to 1857. America’s first cop, Allan Pinkerton, creator of the Secret Service & persecutor of the Molly Maguires, was a radical participant in the Chartist movement before becoming the bulldog of capitalists. While the Chartism was primarily a constitutional movement, there was a radical, insurrectionary wing. Pinkerton was a part of this wing. He fought cops, destroyed property, set fires and had to flee the UK in order to avoid imprisonment. You can read my satirical biography of him here: https://marshalllawwriter.com/the-eye-that-never-sleeps/
Today in Labor History June 15, 1950: As part of their Cold War hysteria, the Senate opened an investigation of 3,500 alleged "sex perverts" (i.e., homosexuals) in the federal government, somehow overlooking their cross-dressing darling in the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.
Today in Labor History June 15, 1917: President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act into law. The law targeted leftist, anti-war and labor organizations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was virtually destroyed because of the arrests and deportations of its members. When Eugene Debs spoke against the draft in Canton, Ohio, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He ran for president from prison in 1920, winning nearly 1 million votes (3.4%). The government used the law to arrest anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and depart them to the Soviet Union. They used the law against the Rosenbergs, whom they executed. They also used it against Daniel Ellsberg, whose “Pentagon Papers” were published by the NY Times 51 years ago. The Espionage Act is still on the books and was used recently to prosecute Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
Today in Labor History June 15, 1914: Westinghouse strike, Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Congenial Industrial Union (ACIU) struck against Westinghouse. They were demanding union recognition and protesting against the "scientific management" theories of Frederick Taylor. They also wanted an eight-hour day, reinstatement of fired workers, and higher overtime and holiday rates. Women played a major role in the strike and many of the striking workers were women. Bridget Kenny organized marches and recruited workers to join the ACIU and rose to become one of the main spokespeople for the union. She had been employed by Westinghouse but fired in 1913 for selling union benefit tickets on company grounds. The Pittsburgh Leader, one of the city’s newspapers and one that hired numerous women writers, including Willa Cather, nicknamed Kenny “Joan de Arc.” And the women in this strike provided some of the inspiration for the workingwomen characters in Willa Cather’s short fiction. The Westinghouse plant on Edgewood Avenue was one of three they possessed in the Pittsburgh region, and one of the main sights of strike activity. In late June, the company used armed thugs to intimidate the workers, leading to a violent exchange in which several workers, and the East Pittsburgh police chief, were injured.
Today in Labor History June 14, 2006: Mexican state police attacked 50,000 striking teachers occupying streets Zocalo of Oaxaca. No one died on this date, but over one hundred teachers were hospitalized. It led to mass protests and the occupation of Oaxaca city, led by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Overall, the protests lasted seven months and at least 17 people were killed. The Mexican government used death squads and summary executions, and was accused of violating the Geneva Conventions.
Today in Labor History June 14, 1905: The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied after sailors were shot for complaining about being served maggot-ridden meat. Civilians soon joined the mutineers in revolutionary actions that included the burning of granaries, quays and ships in harbor. The insurrection was part of the 1905 Russian Revolution in which the first soviets were formed. The mutiny was the basis for the seminal film by Sergei Eisenstein, with music scored by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Today in Labor History June 14, 1877: The First American Flag Day was declared by US government (on this 100th anniversary of the flag’s creation). Howard Zinn said, "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
Today in Labor History June 14, 1848: Afro-Cuban revolutionary and guerrilla leader Antonio Maceo was born (1848-1896). Known as the "Titan of Bronze," Maceo helped defeat the Spanish and win Cuban independence. People also called him the “Greater Lion.” He participated in over 500 battles during the Ten Years’ War. He earned the Bronze Titan moniker after surviving numerous gunshot and blade wounds. He rose to the rank of Brigadier General within five years. However, he would have risen more quickly if it weren’t for racism.
Today in Labor History June 13, 1914: A riot erupted at the Miner's Union Day parade in Butte Montana. Frustration and mistrust of the primary union, WFM, had been growing for decades. In 1914, miners were being paid only $3.50 a day, the same as in 1878, despite the fact that the price of copper had more than doubled in that same time period. Also, the WFM failed to get hundreds of Finnish miners reinstated after they were fired en masse, or to call a strike in support of these workers. Dissident union members, led by the IWW, accused WFM members of ballot stuffing and being in the pay of the copper bosses. They destroyed WFM headquarters, burned records and stole $1,600. Cops watched and laughed, but did nothing to stop the rioting. During the riot, acting mayor Frank Curran was pushed out of second-story window. And the home of P.K. Sullivan, a WFM official, was dynamited. Overall, however, the riot was a disaster for all the miners. The bosses exploited the conflict by recognizing no unions, making the Butte mines open shops, without any official union representation, from 1914 to 1934.
The conflict between the two unions went back many years. Two of the WFM’s best organizers, Big Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John, helped cofound the more radical IWW in 1905. Initially, the WFM affiliated with the IWW and became their mining section. However, many WFM didn’t like the radicalness of the IWW and later voted to unaffiliate. In 1908, St. John tried to organize a stealth takeover of the WFM, but failed. In 1911, the WFM affiliated with the conservative American Federation of Labor.
Today in Labor History June 13, 1889: Amadeo Bordiga was born (d1970). Proponent of Council Communism and the Italian Communist Left, as well as a founder of the Italian Communist Party. He was a major influence on the 20th century Ultra Left. He called Stalin "the gravedigger of the revolution." Bordiga was imprisoned twice by Mussolini. Lenin criticized him in his screed, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920).
*Police murders of striking United Fruit workers at New Orleans port June 11, 1913
*CIA orchestrated coup in Guatemala, 1954, leading to decades of Genocide against Mayan people, all on behalf of United Fruit
*Death squad murders in Columbia, on behalf of Chiquita (which used to be called United Fruit)
Today in Labor History June 12, 1967: “Race riots” broke out in Cincinnati, with one death and scores injured after National Guardsmen began patrolling the city with machine guns. That same day, riots also broke out in Tampa, after white cops killed a black man. There were 159 race riots during the so-called Summer of Love, with over 85 deaths. 26 of the deaths occurred in Newark. In every case, the riots were precipitated by violence against black residents, after years of racial profiling by police, red-lining by banks, and political disempowerment.
So far, no. But there is time. And the student protests in support of Palestine, and the union support of them, particularly at the University of California, is a positive sign.
What are the lessons we can learn from the past?
Organizers of Redwood Summer, in the 1990s, had the hubris to make a similar claim, that the actions they were organizing were so radical, would be so effective, that they'd make the radical 60s look like the mundane 50s. To be sure, the 90s were a radical time. We were organizing mass civil disobedience, direct actions and sabotage to end US support of death squads in Central America, to end the death penalty in the U.S., to end nuclear testing, to support immigrants at the southern border, to support LGBTQ rights, and to halt the U.S. war in Iraq. Food Not Bombs were getting arrested for serving free food to the unhoused, while publicizing the U.S. war machine. Homes Not Jails was liberating federally-owned buildings and converting them into squats for the unhoused to live in. And left-wing pirate radio stations were popping up in cities to report on and publicize these efforts. But in the end, the 90s did not make the 60s look like the 50s.
I participated in Redwood Summer (and many of these other movements). It was fun and exciting. But Redwood Summer, in particular, was supposed to be a collaborative effort between radical environmental and labor activists, as well as indigenous rights activists and others. There was a bit of this. A very little bit of it. Worse, there was too much class bigotry and arrogance by the predominantly white, middle class environmental activists, and this alienated the working class timber workers we hoped to unite with over saving the ancient redwood forests from being clear cut by Pacific Lumber.
So, one major lesson is that effective coalitions require real solidarity, which requires listening to others, and authentically nonhierarchical structures, in contrast to the hidden power structures that often evolve in movements, even within so-called anarchist organizations. (A great read on this topic is: "The Tyranny of Structurelessness," by Jo Freeman).
Perhaps the most powerful tool we have is the General Strike. Of course, this tool has been virtually obliterated by the Taft Hartley law, which bans them. Consequently, none of the mainstream unions will ever consider this tactic out of fear that their leadership will be imprisoned, and their war chests will be seized. But that doesn't mean we can't still have a General Strike. Just means it will have to be organized in other ways, outside of mainstream union channels, like word of mouth, social media, wheat pasting posters, stickers, etc. But it also requires good old-fashioned relational organizing: going "door-to-door," talking with colleagues at work, at school, neighbors, family, friends, educating them about the power of this tool. Actually listening to their fears and concerns. Providing support and mutual aid whenever possible. Empowering them. And it will require employed workers, not just students and professional activists. Why? Because if we really want to hurt the bosses, we need to halt profit-making, which is most effectively done by halting production. And while blocking roads and bridges can slow down business as usual for a few hours, getting millions of workers to refuse to work can halt a lot more business for a lot longer. It can literally bring capitalism to its knees. Compel leaders and decision-makers to buckle to our demands. It can even become revolutionary and lead to major social change. But we don't currently have millions of workers who are already radicalized to the point that they will participate in a General Strike, let alone believe that revolutionary social change is possible. So, there's a lot of organizing that still needs to be done. That's a lot of us going out and listening to our colleagues, neighbors, peers, doing the underappreciated, not so glorious, time consuming work of building a movement.
Today in Labor History June 11, 2002: Earth First! and IWW activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney won $4.4 million in a false-arrest lawsuit against Oakland police and the FBI. They had been arrested for blowing up their own car while they were in it. The jury unanimously found that six of the seven FBI and OPD defendants had deliberately framed Bari and Cherney in an effort to crush Earth First! and chill participation in Redwood Summer.
Today in Labor History June 11, 1925: Drunken company cops attacked mine workers striking against the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO) in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. They rode in on horseback, beating anyone in their way. Then they rode through the school yards, knocking down innocent children, cracking jokes that the miners were at home hiding under their beds. The cops killed 1 coal miner and injured many others, causing a riot in which strikers looted and burned the company stores and drove the police out of town. The government then deployed 2,000 soldiers to suppress the strike, the largest peacetime deployment of the Canadian Army for an internal conflict since the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. Members of the union vowed never to work again on June 11, in honor of Bill Davis, the miner who was killed. Davis Day is now celebrated each year in Cape Breton. Since then, Davis Day has become more of a workers’ memorial day, remembering all those who died in Nova Scotia’s mines, like the 75 men killed in the Springhill mine collapse of 1958, and the 26 non-union miners killed in the Westray explosion of 1992.
Today in Writing History June 10, 1928: Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” was born in Brooklyn, New York. A little boy once sent him a card with a drawing on it. Sendak was so moved he sent the boy another letter with his own personal “Wild Thing” drawn on it. The boy’s mother sent Sendak a thank you note saying that her son loved the card so much he ate it. Sendak considered that one of the highest compliments he ever received. Sendak was an atheist Jew who lost numerous family members in the Holocaust. He was also gay.
Today in Labor History June 10, 1937: The mayor of Monroe, Michigan organized a vigilante mob of 1,400 men armed with baseball bats and teargas to break the picket line at Newton Steel. As a result, eight strikers were injured and hospitalized. The vigilantes also vandalized sixteen of the workers’ cars dumped eight of them into the river. During this same strike wave in the steel industry, there was a Memorial Day Massacre, in Chicago, in which the police beat and shot scores of people, including men and women, killing at least 25. There was also the Women’s Day Massacre, in Youngstown, Ohio, in which 2 workers were killed. 10% of the union at that time was made up of African American workers. Although few women worked in the industry, they played a pivotal role in the strike, walking picket lines with the men, risking life and limb in confrontations with the police.
Today in Labor History June 10, 1960: Thousands of council workers and revolutionary students surrounded the entourage of U.S. Presidential Press Secretary Hagerty at Haneda airport in Tokyo. Hagerty had to be rescued by a US marine helicopter, while the pro-imperialist government of Japan collapsed in embarrassment. President Eisenhower, fearing for his life, cancelled his July visit. The protests were part of the 1959-1960 Anpo (Security Treaty) protests. By June, 1960, hundreds of thousands of protestors were surrounding Japan's National Diet building in Tokyo on nearly a daily basis. At least one protestor was killed.
Today in Labor History June 10, 1971: Mexican police, and paramilitary death squads known as Los Halcones, killed 120 student protesters, including a 14-year-old boy, in the Corpus Christi Massacre, also known as El Halconazo. In 1968, the government had massacred up to 500 of students and bystanders in the Tlatelolco massacre. The Halconazo started with protests at the University of Nuevo Leon, for joint leadership that included students and teachers. When the university implemented the new government, the state government slashed their budget and abolished their autonomy. This led to a strike that spread to the National Autonomous University of Mexico and National Polytechnic Institute. To suppress the strike, the authorities used tankettes, police, riot police, and the death squad, known as Los Halcones, who had been trained by the CIA. Los Halcones first attacked with sticks, but the student fended them off. Then they resorted to high caliber rifles. Police had been ordered to do nothing. When the injured were taken to the hospital, Los Halcones followed and shot them dead in the hospital. Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes about these events in her 2021 novel “Velvet Was the Night.” It is also depicted in the 2018 film Roma.”
Today in Labor History June 9, 2004: Brian Williamson died. He was a Jamaican activist and co-founder of J-FLAG (in 1998), the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays. They run the Stop Murder Music campaign, which fights for the censorship of homophobic lyrics in Jamaican music. They also co-run the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group and OutRage, a direct-action LGBTQ activist group. Williamson was one of the first openly gay public figures in Jamaica. He was murdered in his apartment by an acquaintance, at the age of 58. Police officially ruled it a botched robbery. However, J-FLAG believes it was a homophobic attack. Williamson previously survived a homophobic knife attack and numerous death threats.
Today in Labor History June 9, 1843: Bertha von Suttner was born (d. 1914). She was an Austrian journalist, author, peace activist and Nobel Prize laureate. She was also a friend of Alfred Nobel, who famously told her that there would not be world peace until a weapon was invented that was so deadly it could annihilate countries in seconds. Some say that it was her activism and advocacy that inspired him to include a peace prize as part of his endowment. Von Suttner wrote “Lay Down Your Arms,” an anti-war novel that made her a leading figure in the Austrian peace movement. However, it was also considered a feminist novel for its characters resistance to accepting traditional gender roles. Tolstoy compared her favorably with Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Today in Labor History June 8, 1967: The Israeli military attacked the United States and got away with it. Israeli aircraft and boats attacked the USS Liberty during Israel's "Six Day War," killing 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171. The U.S. government “investigated” the attack and issued a whitewashed report calling it an unfortunate mistake. However, witnesses and critics dispute this claim, calling it a deliberate attack by Israel to silence U.S. criticism of Israel’s war tactics. According to George Ball, undersecretary of state at the time, the attack set the stage for future Israeli policy by sending the message to Israel's leaders “that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of its own citizens and soldiers, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything."
Today in Labor History June 8, 1917: The Granite Mountain/Spectacular Mine disaster killed 168 men in Butte, Montana. It was the deadliest underground mine disaster in U.S. history. Within days, men were walking out of the copper mines all over Butte in protest of the dangerous working conditions. Two weeks later, organizers had created a new union, the Metal Mine Workers’ Union. They immediately petitioned Anaconda, the largest of the mine companies, for union recognition, wage increases and better safety conditions. By the end of June, electricians, boilermakers, blacksmiths and other metal tradesmen had walked off the job in solidarity.
Frank Little, a Cherokee miner and member of the IWW, went to Butte during this strike to help organize the miners. Little had previously helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He had participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” On August 1, 1917, vigilantes broke into the boarding house where he was staying. They dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car and then hanged him from a railroad trestle.
Author Dashiell Hammett had been working in Butte at the time as a striker breaker for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They had tried to get him to murder Little, offering him $5,000, but he refused. He later wrote about the experience in his novel, “Red Harvest.” It supposedly haunted him throughout his life that anyone would think he would do such a thing.
Today in Labor History June 7, 1971: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that clothing with the words "Fuck the Draft" was protected by the First amendment. The Court overturned the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1968, Kiyoshi Kuromiya designed this poster and sent orders by mail. He was arrested by the FBI and charged with sending indecent material through the Post Office. Later that year, after beating the charges, Kuromiya defied the authorities by handing out 2000 of the posters at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The photo is of Detroiter Bill Greenshields was taken at random during a 1967 March on the Pentagon and used by Kuromiya.
There has been no draft in the U.S. since 1973. Ending conscription was one of President Nixon’s campaign promises (not because he opposed conscription or imperialistic wars, but because he wanted to undermine the antiwar protest movement). However, if the U.S. and NATO continue their reckless escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, and their threat to station hundreds of thousands of troops along Russia’s entire western border, from Finland to the Balkans, the mass slaughter could rise to the scale of World War II. And this could force the U.S. and Europe to reimpose the draft, so that they are not forced to replicate Ukraine’s desperate move of sending people over the age of 50 to the front. Indeed, Germany is already considering reimposing conscription because they can’t find enough willing volunteers. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/06/06/germany-is-thinking-about-bringing-back-conscription
Today in Labor History June 7, 1929: Striking textile workers battled police in Gastonia, North Carolina, during the Loray Mill Strike. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt was accidentally killed by one of his own officers during a protest march by striking workers. Nevertheless, the authorities arrested six strike leaders. They were all convicted of “conspiracy to murder.”
The strike lasted from April 1 to September 14. It started in response to the “stretch-out” system, where bosses doubled the spinners’ and weavers’ work, while simultaneously lowering their wages. When the women went on strike, the bosses evicted them from their company homes. Masked vigilantes destroyed the union’s headquarters. The NTWU set up a tent city for the workers, with armed guards to protect them from the vigilantes.
One of the main organizers was a poor white woman named Ella May Wiggans. She was a single mother, with nine kids. Rather than living in the tent city, she chose to live in the African American hamlet known as Stumptown. She was instrumental in creating solidarity between black and white workers and rallying them with her music. Some of her songs from the strike were “Mill Mother’s Lament,” and “Big Fat Boss and the Workers.” Her music was later covered by Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie, who called her the “pioneer of the protest ballad.” During the strike, vigilantes shot her in the chest. She survived, but later died of whooping cough due to poverty and inadequate medical care.
For really wonderful fictionalized accounts of this strike, read “The Last Ballad,” by Wiley Cash (2017) and “Strike!” by Mary Heaton Vorse (1930).