One more post, and then I'll re-toot some of the posts from earlier today and last night (yes, we started early). HT to @anubis2814 for this brilliant post!
"Richard Scarry created the most #solarpunk world you can imagine and Its left us feeling frustrated as to what we could have without #capitalism. I don't want a jet pack I want an apple car. #IWW #unions "
Today in Labor History August 7, 1890: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in Concord, New Hampshire. Flynn joined the IWW in 1907, two years after its formation, and quickly became one of their best organizers. She was instrumental in the Patterson Silk Strike (1913). In 1909, during the Spokane Free Speech fight, she chained herself to a lamp post to delay her arrest. Jess Waters portrayed her role in the Spokane struggle in his 2020 novel, “The Cold Millions.” John Updike also fictionalized her in his book, “In the Beauty of the Lilies,” (1996).
Flynn was a socialist early in her life, but later joined the Communist Party USA, rising to its chair in 1961. She was also a founding member of the ACLU, where she played an important role in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. Additionally, she was a feminist activist, fighting for birth control rights and women’s suffrage. In 1934, despite her poor health, she actively supported the West Coast Longshore Strike. She was also a prolific writer, including the 1916 book, “Sabotage: the Conscious Withdrawal of Workers Efficiency.” The famous IWW bard, Joe Hill, wrote the song “Rebel Girl” (1915) for Flynn, and the photograph of a woman, holding a red flag, on the cover of the sheet music, bears a striking resemblance to Flynn.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #eliazabethgurleyflynn #IWW #union #organizing #strike #sabotage #communism #socialism #anarchism #aclu #writer #author #books #fiction #novels @bookstadon
Old Bisbee jail: 2 story brick building with iron bars on the window.
Local IWW headquarters used to be next door (now an empty lot). I asked local historian, and IWW fellow worker, Mike Anderson about it. He said yeh, the location was weird, but the town was incredibly dense (20,000 people squeezed into a few city blocks), and you rented where you could.
During the 1917 strike and deportation, many Wobblies (IWW members) were arrested and jailed here. During more recent restorations, after removing old plaster, they discovered IWW graffiti on the walls.
Many of the men who were kidnapped and deported were taken to Columbus, New Mexico, where Pancho Villa had invaded just the year before (in one of the only times a foreign army invaded US mainland since the War of 1812). They no doubt were hoping that the US army, which was still there, would brutralize the men.
Video as we drive past the tailings of the old Lavender Pit Copper Mine, in operation from 1950-1974. Owned by Phelps Dodge, located between Lowell and Bisbee, Arizona, site of the infamous 1917 kidnapping and deportation of striking IWW copper miners, on the orders of the Phelps Dodge management.
Photo of me in Lowell, Arizona, outside a hat shop, with antique cars on the side of the road, and an old Indian Motorcycles shop.
Now aghost town, Lowell was incorporated into Bisbee, AZ, in 2908. It was settled by Copper miners from Serbia, Finland Montenegro.
July 12, 1917, 1,300 striking IWW copper miners and their supporters were kidnapped from Bisbee, by vigilantes to crush the union. They were forced into cattle cars and illegally deported 200 miles into New Mexico, through desert, without any food or water.
Today in Labor History August 1, 1917: IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched in Butte, Montana. Little was a Cherokee miner and member of the IWW. He went to Butte during the Speculator Mine 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 strike 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. He was also investigated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) because of his ties to socialism.
Read my complete biography of Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/
Read my complete article on the Pinkertons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/
Read my bio of Dashiell Hammett here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/dashiell-hammett/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #racism #indigenous #immigration #mining #freespeech #civildisobedience #civilrights #antiwar #author #books #fiction #writer #novel @bookstadon
New Podcast! "1 August 1938: Hilo massacre" on @Spreaker #hawaii #history #iww
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/1-august-1938-hilo-massacre--67211000
Ground beef just hit $7/lb in the U.S.
Federal minimum wage is still just $7.25/hr, exactly what it was in 2009, when it was already too low to support a family. (FYI: 1st fed min wage law in U.S. came in response to the 1912 IWW Lawrence textile strike, in which 3 workers were killed)
Think about that: 2 hrs labor/day, just to feed your family 1 meal. That's not even counting rent, medical, clothing, utilities, transportation to & from work.
Today in Labor History July 29, 1903: The first delegation from Mother Jones’ March of the Mill Children arrived at Teddy Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. They went there to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor. Roosevelt wouldn’t allow them through the gates. In 1901, the millworkers in Pennsylvania went on strike. Many were young women and girls, demanding to be paid adult wages. At the time, fully one in every six American children was employed, generally at extremely low pay and often under dangerous conditions. Many of the kids had lost fingers or limbs. Mother Jones would go on to cofound the IWW, in 1905.
The march started in Philadelphia, on July 7. During the march, Mother Jones gave her famous “Wail of the Children” speech, which included the following lines:
“After a long and weary march… we are on our way to see President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. We will ask him to recommend the passage of a bill by congress to protect children against the greed of the manufacturer. We want him to hear the wail of the children, who never have a chance to go to school, but work from ten to eleven hours a day in the textile mills of Philadelphia, weaving the carpets that he and you walk on, and the curtains and clothes of the people. In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills, they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone? The trouble is that the fellers in Washington don’t care. I saw them last winter pass three railroad bills in one hour, but when labor cries for aid for the little ones they turn their backs and will not listen to her. I asked a man in prison once how he happened to get there. He had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him that if he had stolen a railroad, he could be a United States Senator.”
In her autobiography, Mother Jones wrote the following about the march: “Every day little children came into Union Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped things, round shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten years of age, the state law prohibited their working before they were twelve years of age.
It wasn’t just in mills, either. Children worked on farms, in factories, as servants in rich people’s homes, pretty much anywhere where they could do the work. They were often chosen over adults because they could be paid much less, and were less likely to demand rights, or to organize a strike. They could also do things with their small hands that adults were often less able to do well, particularly dangerous things, like unclogging gears and conveyor belts. I portray this in my novel, ANYWHERE BUT SCHUYLKILL. My protagonist, Mike Doyle, starts work in the coal breaker at age 12. However, many boys worked in breakers as young as 6. And many of them were missing fingers or hands. Many died young, too, from accidents.
You can get a copy from these indie retailers:
https://www.keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
Or send me $25 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, and I will send you a signed copy!
#workingclass #LaborHistory #childlabor #exploitation #children #motherjones #march #protest #pennsylvania #IWW #strike #union #mikedoyle #anywherebutschuylkill #books #fiction #historicalfiction #author #writer #novel @bookstadon
Today in Labor History July 28, 1917: The Silent Parade took place in New York City, in protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans. Organizers set up the parade to protest the East Saint Louis race riots (May-July 1917), when whites murdered up to 200 African Americans, and caused 6,000 black residents to become homeless. While Woodrow Wilson was entering World War I to “make the world safe for democracy,” black Americans were asking when he’d do the same for them.
The Silent March was organized by a coalition of groups, led by the new NAACP. Up to 15,000 participated. Organizers wanted president Wilson to enact anti-lynching legislation. He refused. Wilson appointed numerous racists to his cabinet and was an outspoken defender of segregation on “scientific” grounds. He was also fond of telling racist jokes. As an academic, prior to his political career, he was an apologist for slavery. And he used his authority to actively prevent admitting African Americans into Princeton as students or faculty. Ironically, one of the primary organizers of the Silent March, W.E.B. DuBois, had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Woodrow Wilson presidential candidacy, calling him a “liberal Southerner,” who would deal fairly with Negros.
The East Saint Louis racist pogrom occurred during one of the largest migrations of black workers from the South to the North. Between 1910 and 1920, half a million African Americans migrated north to Chicago, Saint Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, and other cities. In 1919, there were 38 different racist riots in the U.S., all directed against the black community. The massacre in East Saint Louis began in response to a strike by white employees of the Aluminum Ore Company, after the bosses hired black replacement workers, a common practice of the bosses to divide the working class and weaken unions. Additionally, many of the unions were overtly racist and excluded black workers, including the Aluminum Ore union. To make matters worse, employment agents were going to the South and recruiting African Americans under false pretenses, offering them stable jobs and housing when, in reality, they were being recruited to work as scabs. So, it is likely that many, if not most, of the workers didn’t even know they were being hired as scabs. Regardless, they wouldn’t have been allowed to join the union, either.
Racism by unions and white workers was not inevitable in those days, and it was certainly counterproductive to the aims of working people of all backgrounds and identities. Consider that in 1920, in rural Mingo County, West Virginia, when the coal bosses brought in African American workers as scabs, the UMWA encouraged them to join the union and the strike, and achieved solidarity between white, native-born workers, African Americans from the South, and Italian immigrants. This is portrayed in John Sayles film, Matewan. And by 1916, thanks largely to the superb organizing of Ben Fletcher, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW, uniting a workforce that was 33% Irish, 33% Polish & Lithuanian, and 33% African American. Fletcher also traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers across race. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American.
Read my biography of Fletcher here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/
Today in Labor History July 26, 1894: President Grover Cleveland created a Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent walkout by the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs. After four months, the commission absolved the strikers and placed the blame entirely on Pullman and the railroads for the conflict. Roughly 250,000 workers participated in the strike. And an estimated 70 workers died, mostly at the hands of cops and soldiers. To appease workers, the government came up with a new holiday, Labor Day, to commemorate the end of the Pullman Strike. However, President Cleveland had other interests in creating the new holiday. Rather than rewarding workers, his goal was to bury the history of the Haymarket Affair and the radical anarchist and socialist history of the labor movement by choosing any day other than May 1 as the new national labor holiday.
On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. to demand the eight-hour workday. It was the world’s first May Day/International Workers’ Day demonstration—an event that has been celebrated ever since, by nearly every country in the world, except for the U.S. Two days later, Chicago Police and Pinkertons attacked protesters, killing at least one person. On May 4, anarchists organized a demonstration at Haymarket Square to protest that police violence. Somebody threw a bomb, which killed at least one cop. The police opened fire, killing another seven workers. Six police also died, likely from “friendly fire” by other cops.
The authorities went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders. They ultimately convicted seven anarchists, even though none of them were present at Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown, and executed four of them in 1887, including Albert Parsons. After her husband’s execution, Lucy Parsons continued her radical organizing, writing, and speeches. In 1905, Lucy cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, James Connolly, and others.
You can read my complete article about the Great Upheaval here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/31/the-great-upheaval/
You can read my biography of Lucy Parsons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
Today in Labor History July 26, 1877: Federal troops killed up to 30 workers at the "Battle of the Viaduct," Chicago, during the Great Upheaval (AKA Great Train Strike). This came after the Workingmen’s Party (affiliated with the First International), organized a rally of six thousand people. At this gathering, a former Confederate Army Officer from Waco, Texas, named Albert Parsons, gave a fiery speech. The events of the Great Upheaval radicalized Parsons and his wife Lucy. In the years following it, they became some of the nation’s leading anarchist organizers. The state executed him in 1887 as one of the Haymarket Martyrs who had been fighting for the eight-hour workday. His widow, Lucy, an African American woman, went on to cofound the radical Industrial Workers of the World, in 1905, along with Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, and others.
The day after Parsons’ speech, protests erupted. Police fired into the crowd, killing three men. The next day, an armed demonstration of 5,000 workers fought the police and soldiers in the Battle of the Viaduct, when they killed as many as 30 more workers and injured over one hundred. One journalist wrote, “The sound of clubs falling on skulls was sickening for the first minute, until one grew accustomed to it. A rioter dropped at every whack, it seemed, for the ground was covered with them.” A judge later found the police guilty of preventing the workers from exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly
The Great Upheaval was a national strike wave involving major uprisings in Martinsburg, WV, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Boston, Reading, PA, New York and many other cities. I write about it in my historical “Great Upheaval Trilogy.” My first book, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” takes place in the years immediately preceding the Great Upheaval. Book II, “Red Hot Summer in the Smoky City,” my current WIP, takes place in Pittsburgh, at the height of the Great Upheaval.
You can read my complete article about the Great Upheaval here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/31/the-great-upheaval/
You can read my biography of Lucy Parsons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
And you can get my book ANYWHERE BUT SCHUYLKILL from these indie book sellers:
https://www.keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
Or send me $25 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, and I will send you a signed copy!
#workingclass #LaborHistory #chicago #massacre #railroad #GeneralStrike #wildcat #strikewave #IWW #socialism #haymarket #anarchism #lucyparsons #policebrutality #policemurder #fiction #novel #historicalfiction #writer #author #books @bookstadon
Today in Labor History July 22, 1917: The IWW successfully shut down the oil industry in Tampico, Mexico during an oil workers’ strike.
Today in Labor History July 22, 1916: Someone set off a bomb during the pro-war “Preparedness Day” parade in San Francisco. As a result, 10 people died and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on false testimony. Both were pardoned in 1939. Billings and Mooney were both anarchists and members of the IWW. 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 San Francisco paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman.
In 1937, Mooney filed a writ of habeas corpus, providing evidence that his conviction was based on perjured testimony and evidence tampering. Among this evidence was a photograph of him in front of a large, ornate clock, on Market Street, clearly showing the time of the bombing and that he could not have been at the bombing site when it occurred. The Alibi Clock was later moved to downtown Vallejo, twenty-five miles to the northeast of San Francisco. Alibi Bookshop, in Vallejo, is named after this clock. On May 11, 2024, I did a reading there from my working-class historical novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, during the Book Release Party for Roberta Tracy’s, Zig Zag Woman. Her novel takes place at the time of the Los Angeles Times bombing, in 1910, when two other labor leaders, the McNamara brothers, were framed.
In 1931, while they were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, "By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening... Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly."
You can read my complete article on Mooney and Billings here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/19/tom-mooney-and-warren-billings/
You can get Anywhere But Schuylkill here:
https://www.keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
Or send me $25 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, and I will send you a signed copy!
And purchase Zigzag Woman here:
https://www.powells.com/book/zig-zag-woman-9781962465267
#workingclass #LaborHistory #warrenbillings #tommooney #sanfrancisco #bombing #anarchism #union #IWW #labor #alexanderberkman #prison #emmagoldman #playwright #theater #books #writer #author #historicalfiction #novel #author #anywherebutschuylkill #zigzagwoman @bookstadon
Today in Labor History July 21, 1877: 30,000 Chicago workers rallied on Market Street during the Great Upheaval wave of strikes occurring throughout the country. Future anarchist and Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons spoke to the crowd, advocating the use of the ballot to obtain "state control of the means of production," and urged workers to join the communist Workingmen's Party. Parsons was later abducted by armed men who took him to the police where he was interrogated and informed that he had caused the city great trouble. These events helped radicalize him, as well as his wife, Lucy parson, who would go on to cofound the IWW, and moved them both away from electoral politics and directly into radical anarchist activism. Lucy condoned political violence, self-defense against racial violence, and class struggle against religion.
The strike wave started in Martinsburg, W.V., on July 16, and quickly spread along the railroad lines throughout the country. In Chicago, striking workers from numerous industries took to the streets daily. They shut down the railroads, mills, foundries and many other businesses. They carried banners that said "Life by work, or death by fight". One speaker said, "We must rise up in our might, and fight for our rights. Better a thousand of us be shot down in the streets than ten thousand die of starvation."
On July 26, the protesters threw rocks and fired pistols at the cops, who fired back until they ran out of ammo and were forced them to flee. However, they ran into a detachment of reinforcements and federal troops, sent in by President Hayes. This led to the Battle of the Viaduct, resulting in 15-30 dead strikers and dozens wounded. One journalist wrote, “The sound of clubs falling on skulls was sickening for the first minute, until one grew accustomed to it. A rioter dropped at every whack, it seemed, for the ground was covered with them.”
In Pittsburgh, 20 striking railroad workers were killed by state troopers during the Great Upheaval. The second book of my “Great Upheaval” trilogy, “Hot Summer in the Smoky City,” takes place in Pittsburgh during the Great Upheaval. My first book, Anywhere But Schuylkill, takes place just before the Great Upheaval begins.
You can get my book here:
https://www.keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
Or send me $25 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, and I will send you a signed copy!
Read my complete article on the Great Upheaval here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/31/the-great-upheaval/
Read my complete article on Lucy Parsons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #GreatUpheaval #railroad #chicago #massacre #children #GeneralStrike #IWW #police #policebrutality #AnywhereButSchuylkill #anarchim #communism #albertparsons #haymarket #novel #books #fiction #historicalfiction #writer #author #wildcat @bookstadon
Today in Labor History July 19, 1979: Sandinista rebels overthrew the Somoza government in Nicaragua, ending the authoritarian 43-year Somoza family dynasty and replacing it with a revolutionary government. They instituted a program of mass literacy, gender equality and access to medical care. However, they also committed many human rights abuses, including the oppression and mass execution of indigenous people. The Sandinistas are named after Augusto Sandino, who led the rebellion against the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s. He was murdered by Somoza senior in 1934, launching the decades-long dictatorship. In the 1920s, Sandino lived in exile, in Mexico, where he was influenced by anti-imperialist, anarchist and communist revolutionaries, including the IWW. The original and modern Sandinista flags were influenced by the IWW’s anarcho-syndicalist red and black colors.
The CIA orchestrated a Civil War between the Sandinistas and the right-wing Contras from 1984-1989. The Contras blew up rural schools and hospitals and routinely carried out rape and torture. In 1983, U.S. Congress passed the Boland Amendment, banning further aid to the Contrals. And in 1984, the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.S. prior support had been in violation of International law. However, even after the Boland Amendment, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by raising money from allies and covertly selling arms to Iran (then engaged in a war with Iraq), and funneling the proceeds to the Contras. In later Congressional hearings, when questioned for 8 hours, Reagan responded that he couldn’t remember at least 124 times, which was sufficient for Congress to absolve him of violating their own law, while National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North took much of the blame.
Today in Labor History July 17, 1913: Seattle’s Potlatch Riots began, when soldiers and sailors brawled with members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) during Seattle’s Potlatch Festival. Alden Blethen, publisher of the "Seattle Times," who hated free speech and feared "radical elements," had been fanning the flames of reaction against the IWW and local activists. He was highly critical of liberal Mayor Cotterill for allowing IWW organizers and anarchists to speak publicly in downtown Seattle. His red-baiting led to violence, as soldiers and sailors ransacked IWW and Socialist headquarters. The riots, which followed were essentially an attempt to suppress free speech and labor organizing, and were a harbinger of the nationwide red scare leading up to and following World War I. In response to the riots, Mayor Cotterill declared an emergency, took control of the police, shut down saloons, banned street speaking and attempted to temporarily shut down the Times.
Today in Labor History July 16, 1916: Carlo Tresca and other IWW strike leaders were arrested on charges of inciting the murder of a deputy. This was during a strike of 30,000 iron-ore mine workers of the Mesabi range in northern Minnesota. Tresca was an Italian-American IWW organizer and newspaper editor. He opposed fascism, Stalinism and mafia-infiltration of unions. He was assassinated in 1943. Some believe the Soviets killed him in retaliation for his criticism of Stalin. The most recent research suggests it was the Bonanno crime family, in response to his criticism of the mafia and Mussolini. Tresca wrote two books. His autobiography was published posthumously in 2003. He also wrote a book in Italian, “L'attentato a Mussolini ovvero il segreto di Pulcinella.”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #carlotresca #mesabi #mining #books #writer #author #stalin #soviet #mafia #fascism #antifascism #mussolini #union @bookstadon
help fund the appeal process, deadline end of july
On June 30, 2025, at least 15 asylum seekers from #Afghanistan were notified that their applications had been rejected. This mass rejection appears to signal a de facto reclassification of Afghanistan as a "safe" country for the first time since its reoccupation by Taliban forces. It marks a further tightening of the #asylum process, in line with the policies of the Republic of #Cyprus, whose government takes pride in its harsh #deportation record and treats condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights as a badge of honour.
