Today in Labor History April 1, 1929: Textile workers struck at the Loray Mill, in Gastonia, N.C. Textile mills started moving from New England, to the South, in the 1890s, to avoid the unions. This escalated after the 1909 Shirtwaist strike (which preceded the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire), the IWW-led Lawrence (1912) and (1913) Patterson strikes, which were led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca. The Gastonia strike was violent and bloody. Dozens of strikers were imprisoned. A pregnant white woman, Ella Mae Wiggins, wrote and performed songs during the strike. She also lived with and organized African American workers, one of the worst crimes a poor white woman could commit in the South. The strike ended soon after goons murdered her. Woody Guthrie called Wiggins the pioneer of the protest ballad and one of the great folk song writers.
Wiley Cash wrote a wonderful novel about Ella Mae Wiggins and the Gastonia strike, “The Last Ballad.” Jess Walter wrote a really great novel about the Spokane free speech fight, featuring Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, called “The Cold Millions.” Other novels about the Gastonia strike include Sherwood Anderson’s, “Beyond Desire,” and Mary Heaton Vorse’s, “Strike!”
Today in Labor History December 24, 1913: Seventy-three people in Calumet, Michigan died in the "Calumet Massacre," including 59 kids. The Western Federation of Miners was having a Christmas party for striking copper miners. About 500 miners and their family members were at the party. Someone yelled "Fire!" and dozens were trampled in the panic. Goons and scabs barred the doors, trapping people inside, exacerbating the injuries. The person who yelled “fire” was never identified, but many strikers believed it was a company guard.
The only way to get where ALL OF US want to go, is through using JOE BIDEN to get to the NEXT STEP. There is NO OTHER WAY. The only other candidate who can win, will make everything you want to see happen merely ACADEMIC. You'll NEVER be able to fight for whatever it is, EVER AGAIN. You won't be able to BE IT, DO IT, TALK ABOUT IT without serious problems. There's NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT.
I always try and remember the inspiring words of #woodyguthrie at these times when it seems like the fascists are winning. They are bound to lose but they can fuck up a lot of lives on the way...
Intéressant. À noter que #WoodyGuthrie n'était pas particulièrement antiraciste mais se présentait surtout comme un antifasciste (contre hitler et les grands propriétaires exploitant et appauvrissant le peuple) et est souvent décrit comme un anarchiste (il a défendu des anars dans ses chansons et s'opposait à l'état).
Funny thing to find in a grocery store … for $2.
Kidding. It was an antique shop in Pomona - which is still open for business 40 years later.
I have a few Be Bop Deluxe albums and some Python; not sure why I would have bought Joan Baez at that time, but there it is in my stacks.
Inside the double sleeve was the receipt, and stuck way in the back was the promised 7" 33 1/3 RPM single that I never noticed in all these years. It has a Woody Guthrie track on it with lyrics that bite. That man knew what was what - in 1961.
56 years ago today, Woody Guthrie, American folk singer-songwriter ("This Land Is Your Land"), peace activist, and father of Arlo, dies of Huntington's disease at 55 #WoodyGuthrie
This week on my podcast, I read my recent @medium column, "Ideas Lying Around: Milton Friedman was a monster, but he wasn’t wrong about this," which I describe a #TheoryOfChange for unrigging markets, addressing the climate emergency, building worker power and fixing the imbalance between news publishers and #BigTech:
Each of these crises is terrible, and each one is an opportunity for ideas lying around to rush into the center currently occupied by Friedman's intellectual descendants.
80 years on, #WoodyGuthrie's 1943 New Year's Resolutions are a hell of a read, and not a day goes by that I don't think of number 19: "Keep hoping machine running."
So, I was looking for this #WoodyGuthrie photo, and I stumbled across this article, a thoughtful, reflective piece about #TheTroubles and #RemembrancePoppies and, in general, the vagaries and vicissitudes of history.