Today in Labor History July 9, 1935: The Squeegee Strike began in New York, in protest of the dismissals of six subway car cleaners who refused a work speed-up. All were reinstated and most of the union’s grievances were resolved. It was the first successful strike by the new Transport Workers Union (TWU), created in 1934 by 7 NYC subway workers who belonged to the Irish nationalist organization Clan na Gael. They were inspired by the socialism and trade union work of James Connolly, one of the founding members of the IWW . The TWU was a militant industrial union, organizing all workers in the industry, regardless of skill or job title. The union quickly expanded to include workers in all transport industries, throughout the U.S.
Today in Labor History July 8, 1972: Israeli Mossad assassinated Palestinian writer and PFLP leader Ghassan Kanafani.
Today in Labor History July 8, 1968: A wildcat strike began in Detroit, Michigan against both the Chrysler Corporation and the UAW. At the time, the Dodge Hamtramck plant was 70% black, while the union local was dominated by older Polish-American workers. In response, black workers formed the new Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. The Revolutionary Union Movement quickly spread to other Detroit plants: Ford Revolutionary Union Movement at the Ford River Rouge Plant, and Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement at the Chrysler Eldon Avenue plant. They united in 1969 in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
Today in Labor History July 8, 1898: May Picqueray was born. She was a French anarchist, trade unionist and pacifist, who published the pacifist, anti-militarist periodical Le Réfractaire from 1974 to 1983. In 1921, in response to the silence of the French press on the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, she sent a parcel bomb containing a defensive grenade and leaflets to the American embassy. Her efforts helped mobilize French journalists, without harming any people and only causing damage to material. In 1922, as a delegate of the Metalworkers union, she visited Moscow, where she climbed on a table full of Red Trade Union officials to denounce their having a luxurious banquet while the common people starved. She refused to shake hands with Trotsky because of his responsibility for crushing the Kronstadt rebellion, and his betrayal of Nestor Makhno. During the Spanish Civil War, she helped transport orphans out of the country. During World War II, she helped people escape French concentration camps. She also was a participant in the French uprising of May 1968, participated in anti-nuclear campaigns and supported war resisters.
Today in Labor History July 8, 1876: White Democrats attacked African-American Republicans in the Hamburg massacre, in South Carolina. In an act of voter suppression prior to the 1876 United States presidential election, 100 white members of the Red Shirts, a racist rifle club, attacked black members of the National Guards, torturing and murdering six of them. In the months prior to the 1876 election, whites killed scores of black people in the South. When the election finally occurred, the democrat, Samuel J. Tilden, received 184 uncontested electoral votes, just under the 185 threshold need to win. The Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, had only 165, with four states (Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina) returning disputed slates. Then, in a secret back-room deal, it is presumed that Thomas Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then the largest corporation in the world, orchestrated a compromise in which the Republican would get the presidency. What did the Democrats get in exchange for giving up the presidency, which they quite likely would have won? An end to Reconstruction, with the Republicans agreeing to remove the federal troops from the Southern states, which they had placed there to protect black residents and voters in the wake of the Civil War. This ushered in the era of Jim Crow, with intense suppression of African American voters, Civil Rights, and freedom. There is no written evidence to confirm that the Compromise of 1877 occurred. But if it did, it most likely occurred at the Wormley Hotel, one of the fanciest and most renowned hotels in Washington, D.C., owned by James Wormley, an African American man, and an activist for black Civil Rights.
Today in Labor History July 7, 1992: The New York Court of Appeals ruled that women had the same right as men to go topless in public. Currently, only 33 states truly permit women to go topless (https://gotopless.org/topless-laws), with complete bans still in effect in Utah, Indiana and Tennessee, and ambiguous laws in several other states. “Free the Nipple” is a campaign that challenges the convention that only men are allowed to be topless in public, while it is considered indecent for women to do the same. The campaign was started by filmmaker Lina Esco, who created a documentary of herself walking through New York City topless in 2012.
While it is currently legal for anyone to go topless in Washington, D.C., it is apparently considered disrespectful to flash your nipples at President Biden, at least if you’re nonbinary. In 2023, trans activist Rosa Montoya was invited to participate at the White House Pride event and took off her top. She was subsequently banned from future White House events and eventually issued an apology for behaving in a way that was “unbecoming” of a White House guest, in spite of her behavior being perfectly legal. Perhaps if she was still a teenager Biden would have sniffed her hair?
Meanwhile, in the UK, where, in 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that trans women do not meet the “definition” of women, it is still illegal for women to go topless in public. So, trans activists have been demonstrating topless there, creating a paradox, not to mention a lot of confusion and frustration, for the police and politicians who, under the state’s new definition of gender, cannot arrest them, though they desperately want to.
Today in Labor History July 7, 1931: Construction began on the Hoover dam. 16 workers and camp residents died from heat exhaustion during a single month of construction. Temperatures routinely soared over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Several strikes led to nominal improvements in working conditions. Thousands of men were employed in the highly segregated project. Only 30 African Americans were allowed to work at any given time and Chinese workers were officially excluded. The Wobblies (IWW) tried to organize the men and sent in 11 organizers who were promptly arrested. Eugene Nelson, a Wobbly hobo, writes about it in his wonderful biographical novel, “Break Their Haughty Power.”
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Today in Labor History July 7, 1834: Week-long Anti-Abolitionist Riots began in New York City. White racists were particularly incensed when the Tappan Brothers created the Female Anti-Slavery Society, putting women in the front ranks of the abolitionist movement. They were also offended by the claims that Reverend Cox gave a sermon asserting that Jesus was a “colored” man, and rumors that abolitionists were telling their daughters to marry black men. At times, the rioters controlled entire neighborhoods, attacking homes and businesses of black residents and abolitionist leaders, until it was put down by military force, nearly one week later.
No Kings, No Priests
I was wandering around Bilbao this summer with my son, and my Basque friend A., and we stumbled across this bust of John Adams, which I thought was a very peculiar thing to find in the Basque Country. But when I read the inscription, it said:
“Biscay (Letter IV, a Defence of the constitutions of the government of the USA 1787)…this extraordinary people have preserved their ancient language, genius, laws, government and manners without innovation, longer than any other nation of Europe.”
In 1779, Adams and his sons were on their way to Paris to sign a commercial treaty with Great Britain and to end the Revolutionary War. Weather forced them into the Bay Biscay and they had to travel to Paris by land, stopping first in Bilbao. There he visited the Gardoqui family, which had helped fund the American revolutionaries. Adams was appalled at the incredible poverty he saw through Spain, particularly in comparison with the incredible wealth of the Church, writing “I see nothing but Signs of Poverty and Misery, among the People. A fertile Country, not half cultivated, People ragged and dirty, and the Houses universally nothing but Mire, Smoke, Fleas and Lice. Nothing appears rich but the Churches, nobody fat, but the Clergy.”
The actual quote on his statue in Bilbao leaves out an important context. What he actually said was: “While their neighbours have long since resigned all their pretensions into the hands of kings and priests, this extraordinary people [the Basque] have preserved their ancient language, genius, laws, government, and manners, without innovation, longer than any other nation of Europe.” He went on to say: “It is a republic; and one of the privileges they have most insisted on, is not to have a king.” He was not, however, completely sold, criticizing the fact that the vote was only extended to “… a few noble families, unstained, both by the side of father and mother, by any mixture with Moors, Jews, new converts, penitentiaries of the inquisition, &c.”