Today in Labor History May 20, 1938: 500 unemployed workers began a sit-down strike in the Hotel Georgia, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Unemployed men had been drifting to British Columbia during the Depression because of the milder climate and relatively better pay in the forestry camps. In early ’38, the government had cut grants to the provinces. As a result, many of the relief camps shut down and jobs dried up. In response, protesters occupied the Hotel George, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the main post office beginning on May 20. They were led by communist organizers. The owner of the hotel refused to call the cops, fearing major property damage in the melee that would ensue. So, he bribed the men to leave. However, those in the post office and art gallery remained for weeks.
The conflict culminated on Bloody Sunday (June 19), when undercover Mounties brutally beat strikers in their attempt to evict them. 42 people were hospitalized, five of whom were cops. One striker lost an eye. Those who evaded arrest, along with onlookers and supporters on the outside, then marched to the East End, smashing windows. They caused $35,000 damage.
Today in Labor History May 20, 1911: Anarchist Magonistas published a proclamation calling for the peasants to take collective possession of the land in Baja California. They had already defeated government forces there. Members of the IWW traveled south to help them.
Today in Labor History May 19, 1989: Trinidadian Marxist historian and journalist C.L.R. James died. James was the author of The Black Jacobins (1938), Breaking a Boundary (1963), numerous articles and essays on class and race antagonism, West Indian self-determination, cricket, Marxism, & aesthetics. In 1933, he published the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government. He was a champion of Pan-Africanism and a member of the Friends of Ethiopia, an organization opposed to fascism and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. He also wrote a play about the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. Paul Robeson starred in the 1936 British production.
Today in Labor History May 16, 1912: Studs Terkel was born, New York City. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for his book The Good War, a collection of oral histories from World War II. He was born to Russian-Jewish parents. He joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project. This provided him work in radio. He best known for his program, The Studs Terkel Program, which aired on WFMT, Chicago, from 1952-1997. Some of the people he interviewed on this show included: Bob Dylan, Big Bill Broonzy, Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein, Martin Luther King and Tennessee Williams.
Today in Labor History May 15, 1917: The Library Employees’ Union was founded in New York City. It was the first union of public library workers in the United States. One of their main goals was to elevate the low status of women library workers and their miserable salaries. Maud Malone (1873-1951) was a founding member of the union. She was also a militant suffragist and an infamous heckler at presidential campaign speeches.
“As a working class woman from London, England, I have noticed striking parallels between the types of communities that #postgrowth envisages and those of the working class.” @freemoneyday manager @ER_Roberts_ ➡️
Today in Writing History May 11, 1916: Spanish author, fascist and Nobel laureate, Camilo Jose Cela, was born. He was a staunch homophobe and a supporter of Franco, fascist leader of Spain. During the dictatorship, he worked as a censor for the fascist state and as an informer for the secret police.
Today in Writing History May 11, 1880: The Mussel Slough Tragedy occurred on this day in Hanford, California. It was a land between squatters and the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), one of the nation’s most powerful corporations. Former California governor, Leland Stanford, was president of SP. The conflict began as a picnic of settlers and their supporters. However, when word spread that the railroad was actively evicting settlers, a group of twenty left the picnic to confront them. Seven died in the confrontation. A federal Grand Jury indicted seventeen people and five were found guilty of interfering with a federal marshal. The newspapers seized on the event as an example of corporate greed and the excesses of capitalism. Several great historical novels were based on this incident. Frank Norris wrote The Octopus: A Story of California (1901), about the incident. W.C. Morrow’s 1882 novel Blood-Money was also about this tragedy. And May Merrill Miller wrote about it, as well, in her novel, First the Blade (1938).
Today in Writing History May 9, 1946: Ayşe Nur Zarakolu, Turkish author and activist was born on this day. Along with her husband, she cofounded Belge publishing house. She published books on the Armenian Genocide and the human rights of Turkey’s Kurdish population. As a result, the government imprisoned her repeatedly. Amnesty International designated her a prison of conscience.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1972: Four thousand garment workers, mostly Hispanic, struck for union recognition at the Farah Manufacturing Co. in El Paso, Texas.
Today in Writing History May 9, 1981: Nelson Algren, American novelist and short story writer died. His most famous book was “The Man With The Golden Arm,” which was made into a film in 1955. He was called the “bard of the down-and-outer” based on his numerous stories about the poor, beaten down and addicted. Algren was also called a “gut radical.” His heroes included Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. He claims he never joined the Communist Party, but he participated in the John Reed Club and was an honorary co-chair of the “Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee.” The FBI surveilled him and had a 500-page dossier on him.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1934: Longshoremen began a strike for a union hiring hall and union recognition, ultimately leading to the San Francisco general strike. After World War One, West Coast longshore workers were poorly organized or represented by company unions. The IWW had tried to organize them and had some successes, like in San Pedro, in 1922, but they were ultimately crushed by injunctions, imprisonment, deportation and vigilante violence. While longshoremen lacked a well-organized union, they retained a syndicalist sentiment and militancy. Many Wobblies were still working the docks. On May 9, 1934, longshoremen walked off the job at ports up and down the West Coast, soon to be followed by sailors. Goons shot at strikers in San Pedro. There was also violence in Oakland and San Francisco. Street battles between the cops and strikers continued in San Francisco, heating up on July 3. Things came to a head on Bloody Thursday, July 5, when police shot 3 workers (two of them died). The attack led to a four-day general strike that effectively shut down commerce in San Francisco, despite police violence and attempts to weaken it by national unions.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1907: Big Bill Haywood went on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow defended Haywood and got him acquitted. Steunenberg had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood had been framed by a Pinkerton agent provocateur named James McParland, the same man who infiltrated the Pennsylvania miners’ union in the 1870s and got 20 innocent men executed as Molly Maguires. You can read about that in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” which I hope to have out by end of summer.
Today in Labor History May 8, 1911: The anarchist Magonista army captured Tijuana, with support from IWW members. As result, they now controlled of most of Baja California. During their short revolution, they encouraged the people to take collective possession of the lands, create cooperatives and refuse the establishment of any new government.
Today in Writing History May 7, 1867: Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont was born. His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi (The Peasants), which won him the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. Also in 1924, he published his novel “Revolt,” about a rebellion of farm animals fighting for equality. However, the revolt quickly degenerates into bloody terror. It was a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution. Consequently, the Polish authorities banned it from 1945 to 1989. Reymont’s farm animal rebellion predated Orwell’s by 21 years.
Today in Labor History May 5, 1884: The Knights of Labor struck at Jay Gould’s Union Pacific over wage cuts and won. Because of their success in this strike, their membership rapidly grew. However, when the Knights struck again, in 1886, Gould defeated them and the union quickly started to unravel. 200,000 workers participated in the Great Southwest Train Strike of 1886. Gould hired Pinkertons to infiltrate union and to work as scabs. The Governor of Missouri mustered the National Guards. The Governor of Texas used the National Guards and the Texas Rangers against the strikers. At least ten people died during the strike.
Today in Labor History May 5, 1931: The Infamous Battle of Harlan County, Kentucky occurred. Also known as the Battle of Evarts, the strike began in response to wage cuts implemented in February. On May 5, a scab accosted a union worker, resulting in three deaths. Governor Flem Sampson called in the National Guard, which killed several more union miners. The Harlan County class war was the inspiration for Florence Reece's famous union song "Which Side Are You On?" The strike continued for years, with the miners finally winning in 1940.
May 1, is #MayDay, aka #InternationalWorkersDay, a day celebrated by those who work for a living around the globe. However, the US does not officially recognize International Workers' Day. Why not?
Another version of that #Meme that seems more accurate lately.
Shills for the rich corporate owners help to stoke divisiveness between members of the working classes (including both working-class White men and "others" such as immigrants, LGBTQ people, etc...).
That's why certain politicians and news orgs continually provoke fear and distrust of "others." It keeps the working classes from uniting and demanding better working conditions and higher pay.
Some May Day humor for you courtesy of Frankie Boyle -
“One of the reasons middle class people don’t understand the working class is that they often lie to them during job interviews
When they’re asked,
“Where do you see yourself ideally in five years time?”
They rarely reply,
“Standing in the ruins of this building pissing on your burning skull.”.
May Day is perhaps the only major holiday that was self-created and actualized by a mass movement of the proletariat - the #workingclass, the poor, the too proud to take it & not created by a government, church, or corporate goons.
Historian Eric Hawbsbawm said this
"The priests have their festivals,the Moderates have their festivals. The First of May is the festival of the #workers of the entire world."
Today In Labor History May 1, 1923: Novelist Joseph Heller was born on this day. He published his most famous book, the anti-war satire, Catch-22, in 1961.
Today In Labor History May 1, 1886: The first nationwide General Strike for the 8-hour day occurred in Milwaukee and other U.S. cities. In Chicago, police killed four demonstrators and wounded over 200. This led to the mass meeting a Haymarket Square, where an unknown assailant threw a bomb, killing several cops. The authorities responded by rounding up all the city’s leading anarchists, and a kangaroo court which wrongfully convicted 8 of them, including Albert Parsons, husband of Lucy Parsons, who would go on to cofound the IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, and others. Worldwide protests against the convictions and executions followed. To honor the wrongfully executed anarchists, and their struggle for the 8 hour day, May first has ever since been celebrated as International Workers Day in nearly every country in the world, except the U.S.