Today in Labor History April 10, 1947: FBI agents visited Ronald Reagan (then president of the Screen Actors Guild) and his wife Jane Wyman, accusing them of belonging to a communist front group. To prove his loyalty, Reagan agreed to become a secret informer and went on to have a long and illustrious career as an anti-communist, union-busting, trickle-down asshole.
Today in Labor History April 10, 1997: Exotic dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady, ratified their first-ever union contract. Thus they became the first successfully unionized sex business. (Pacers, in San Diego, had unionized a few years earlier. However, they had an open shop, allowing management to recruit new, non-union employees. Consequently, they were able to decertify the union.) Lusty Lady later became a worker-owned cooperative and a member of NoBAWC (the network of Bay Area Workers Collectives), a program initiated by the Bay Area IWW.
For a great book on the struggle to organize Lusty Lady, please see Jenny Worley’s “Neon Girls: A Stripper’s Education in Protest and Power.”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #WorkerCollective #union #NOBAWC #LustyLady #books #author #writer #IWW @bookstadon
Today in Labor History April 10, 1919: Mexican troops ambushed and assassinated Emiliano Zapata, revolutionary indigenous and peasant leader. Zapata’s Rebel Army of the South played a major role in the overthrow of the dictator, Porfirio Diaz, defeating the federal army in the Battle of Cuautla in 1911. Also in 1911, Zapata began implementing the Plan de Ayala, redistributing land in the regions controlled by his army to peasant farmers. However, when former revolutionary Madero took over, he disavowed the Zapatistas, calling them simple bandits. He implemented a scorched earth policy, burning villages and imprisoning survivors in forced labor camps, in his quest to hunt down Zapata. Madero’s successor, Venustiano Carranza, continued his scorched earth policies and finally succeeded in killing Zapata in 1919.
Today In Labor History April 9, 1948: The Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary slaughtered over 100 Palestinians in the Deir Yassin massacre, near Jerusalem. Many of the victims were women and children. Rape and mutilation were also alleged. It was part of the Nakba and expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine. As news of the massacre spread, it sparked terror among Palestinians throughout the region, convincing many to flee their homes. It also strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to attack, which they did a few weeks later, sparking the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Menachim Begin was leader of the Irgun at the time. He went on to found the Likud Party and he became prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983. Many Arab states produced postage stamps commemorating the massacre. All of them use the image of a map of Palestine with a bloody dagger thrust into it.
Today In Labor History April 9, 1930: The IWW organized the 1700-member crew of the Leviathan, the world’s largest ship. Originally a German passenger ship, the U.S. seized it in 1917, during World War I, when it was docked in New York harbor. The U.S. subsequently used it to transport its troops to Europe. In September, 1918, the Leviathan left New Jersey, filled with men dying from Influenza. Dozens perished from the flu on the passage over.
Today In Labor History April 9, 1918: Members of the anarchist Black Guards confiscated the car of the American ambassador to Russia in Moscow, demanding the release of prisoners in the US. The Black Guards were armed groups of workers that formed after the February Revolution. They were the main military wing of the anarchists. The first Black Guards were created in Ukraine by Maria Nikiforova (Marusia), an anarchist terrorist from the age of 16, who eventually became Deputy leader of the Oleksandrivsk Revolutionary committee. She created the Black Guards to force land reform and redistribution. Similar cells were later created by Nestor Makhno, and she later participated in the anarchist free state of Makhnovia. The last Black Guards were quashed by the Cheka, under orders from Trotsky, on April 11-12, 1918.
Today In Labor History April 8, 1864: The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, banning chattel slavery. However, it permitted a continuation of wage slavery and the forced labor of convicts without pay. And on this date in 1911, 128 convict miners, mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses, were killed by a massive explosion at the Banner coalmine near Birmingham, Alabama. While the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which occurred just two weeks earlier, elicited massive public attention and support for the plight of immigrant women working in sweatshop conditions, the Banner explosion garnered almost no public sympathy, probably due to racism and the fact that they were prisoners.
Today In Labor History April 8, 1935: Oscar Zeta Acosta was born on this day. Acosta was a Chicano lawyer, writer and activist in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). He was good friends with Hunter S. Thompson, who called him “My Samoan Attorney,” in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974. He is assumed dead.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #chicano #OscarZetaOcosta #HunterSThompson #mexico #literature #fiction #writer #books #author #writer #losangeles @bookstadon
Today In Labor History April 8, 1943: The Nazis executed Otto and Elise Hampel for making anti-Nazi postcards and leaving them in public places. Hans Fallada wrote about them in his 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone (Alone in Berlin in the UK). The story was filmed in 2016 as Alone in Berlin.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #berlin #antifa #antifascist #fascism #resistance #hampel #novel #fiction #film #books #author #writer @bookstadon
Nothing helpful to my research in it, sadly, but a truly splendid cover for this Coat Makers Union anniversary journal from 1937. From the YIVO collection.
Today In Labor History April 7, 1870: German-Jewish anarchist and pacifist, Gustav Landauer, was born. He was friends with, and influenced, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He served as the Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction during the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, but was killed when the republic was overthrown. He was also the grandfather of film director, Mike Nichols (The Odd Couple, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate).
Today In Labor History April 7, 1915: Jazz legend, Billie Holiday, was born. She was one of the first to sing Abel Meeropol’s, “Strange Fruit,” and performed the most well-known version of the anti-lynching song. Soon after her first public performance of the song, in 1939, the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics started gunning for her. Harry Anslinger, who was a racist, prohibition zealot, led the assault. He hired a black agent provocateur, Jimmy Fletcher, to befriend her and sell her drugs. And Fletcher conducted her first drug bust.
https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk
Today In Labor History April 7, 1947: The National Federation of Telephone Workers (NFTW) launched the first nationwide strike against AT&T and Bell. 350,000 telephone workers, mostly women switchboard operators, walked off the job. Both the AFL and the CIO supported the strike, hoping to bring the telephone workers into their fold. This support provided extra strike funds to help the workers survive their time off the job. By mid-May, 37 of the 39 member unions had won new contracts with raises. NFTW became the Communications Workers of America later that year.
Today In Labor History April 7, 1933: Prohibition ended for beer. Once again, unions could freely organize workers in the bars and workers could drink freely. As Oscar Wilde said, “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
Today In Labor History April 7, 2020: Folk music legend, John Prine, died of Covid.
Today In Labor History April 7, 1804: Haitian general, Toussaint Louverture died on this day. He was one of the most prominent members of the Haitian revolution for independence from France. The slave revolt against the French began in 1791 with the call by Dutty Boukman, a vodou priest. Encouraged by the French and American revolutions. Louverture led 100,000 enslaved Haitians in revolt, winning their freedom in 1793. In 1804, Haiti became first free black republic in the world. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti for the next 70 and France extracted millions in restitution, destroying any hope of ever moving out of deep poverty. Louverture was betrayed in the end and died in prison. For a fantastic history of the Haitian Revolution, read “The Black Jacobins,” by C.L.R.James.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #toussaintlouverture #haiti #revolution #slavery #racism #boukman #vodou #revolt #independence #BlackMastadon #prison #BlackJacobins #CLRJames #book #writer #author #nonfiction @bookstadon
Today in Labor History April 6, 1905: The Teamsters launched a sympathy strike with clothing cutters in Chicago. The strike started on December 15, 1904, at Montgomery Ward. The company locked out the workers and tried to starve them. The strike quickly spread to other unions. By April 6, 1905, there were 5,000 clothing workers on the picket lines. The teamsters added another 10,000 of their own. The bosses tried to ram through armed wagons full of scabs. The strikers fought back. Things grew increasingly violent. By the time the strike ended in May, twenty-one people were dead, mostly workers.
Today in Labor History April 6, 1919: The Bavarian Soviet Republic was declared. Novelist, B. Traven (Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), served on its Central Council of Workers, Soldiers and Farmers. The socialist republic was quashed a month later by the Freikorps, which included Rudolf Hess and other future members of the Nazi party.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #soviet #socialism #communism #germany #nazis #btraven #fiction #fascism #writer #author #books @bookstadon
Today in Labor History April 6, 1968: Oakland police attacked the Black Panthers headquarters and assassinated Bobby Hutton, an unarmed teenager.
Today in Labor History April 5, 1977: U.S. disability rights activist stormed and occupied the offices of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. They demanded enactment of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which had passed Congress four years prior. The law mandated that no federally funded programs could exclude persons with disabilities and put into place legal protections, and the right to accommodations, for students with disabilities. During the prior four years, HEW director Joseph Califano repeatedly delayed enactment of the law, while regulations were weakened to benefit business interests. During the San Francisco protests, disability rights activists Judith Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen organized a 25-day occupation of the US Federal Building with 150 other activists. Solidarity support from the Black Panthers, allied politicians, and the International Association of Machinists, who provided food, mattresses, wheelchairs, and other equipment, and helped a delegation get to Washington, D.C. The regulations for section 504 were ultimately signed into law on 28 April, 1977.
For a really great documentary on the birth of this movement, please see Crip Camp, A Disability Revolution (2020).
#workingclass #LaborHistory #CivilDisobedience #occupation #directaction #disability #ableism #union #solidarity # #blackpanthers #sanfrancisco #JudithHeumann #KittyCone #MaryJaneOwen #BlackMastadon
