Today in Labor History March 23, 1988: Angolan and Cuban forces defeated South Africa in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. The battle started in August, 1987. In addition to Cubans, volunteers from the USSR, Vietnam, the African National Congress and SWAPO joined the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) in the Angolan Civil War. It was the largest battle in Africa since World War II. Several thousand died on both sides, including citizens of South Africa, Cuba, and the USSR

#workingclass #LaborHistory #independence #angola #SouthAfrica #ussr #cuba #africa #CivilWar #socialism #anc #swapo #fapla

Today in Labor History March 23, 1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador gave a speech appealing to the men of the Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing Salvadoran civilians. The next day, they assassinated him, too, while he was celebrating Mass. No one was ever convicted for the crime, the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson had ordered the assassination. At the time, D’Aubuisson was a death squad leader. He later founded the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party. D’Aubuisson, a neo-fascist and an alumnus of the notorious School of the Americas (aka School of the Assassins) in Fort Benning, Georgia, went on to serve as president of the Legislative Assembly, and to run for president, ultimately losing to another brutal right-winger, Jose Napoleon Duarte.

Though he was hailed by supporters of Liberation Theology, Romero’s biographer wrote that he was never interested in that movement, and that he faithfully adhered to Catholic teachings on liberation and a preferential option for the poor. And throughout his life he continued to draw inspiration from Opus Dei. However, after the assassination of his friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande, also in 1977, he became critical of the military. In 1997, Pope John Paul II gave Romero the title of Servant of God, and the church opened a cause for his beatification. Pope Francis canonized him in 2018.

During Romero’s funeral ceremony, smoke bombs exploded on the streets, while unknown assailants, probably government security forces, shot at the mourners from surrounding buildings, including the National Palace. Officially, 31 civilians were killed. However, journalists claimed that it was up to 50 deaths.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #imperialism #DeathSquads #elsalvador #assassination #ArchBishopRomero #romero #schooloftheamericas

Today in Labor History March 23, 1970: President Richard Nixon declared a national emergency and sent 30,000 troops to New York City to serve as scabs to break the first nationwide postal strike.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nixon #scabs #USPS #strike #union

Today in Labor History March 23, 1931: The authorities hanged Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar for killing a deputy superintendent of police during the Indian Independence movement. Singh was a anti-colonial revolutionary, from Punjab, who was inspired by both Bolshevism and anarchism.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #india #execution #prison #BhagatSingh #revolutionary #independence #colonialism #police #anticolonial #independence #communism

Today in Labor History March 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. They were arrested in 3 groups, from Chicago, Sacramento, and Wichita. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial devastated the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later. 4 of those who were convicted died in prison from the Influenza Pandemic.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #communism #anarchism #ussr #soviet #BigBillHaywood #antiwar #FreeSpeech #prison #deportation #RedScare #union #influena #pandemic

Today in Labor History March 23, 1871: Far left workers proclaimed communes in Lyon and Marseilles. The Paris Commune began March 18. Workers, including Cluseret and Mikhail Bakunin and other anarchists and left socialists of the International Workingmen’s Association, had tried to create a commune in Lyon in 1870, as well. Prior to this, Cluseret fought the bourgeois moderates during the 1848 Paris uprising. And in 1860, he joined Garabaldi in his fight for Italian independence. In 1860, when William Sewell made a plea for European generals, he joined Union army with letters of support from Garibaldi, serving as a colonel, commanding troops in Shenandoah Valley. He eventually rose to the rank of general, but eventually quit when he was accused of insubordination for complaining about the abuse of civilians by Union troops. After that, he joined the Irish Republican cause, managing to escape a death sentence by the British. During the Paris Commune, Cluseret served as Minister of War. However, when he refused to arrest Monsignior Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, he was arrested for collusion with the enemy.

Cluseret once said, “the U.S. presents that strange anomaly of enslaved labor in a free nation. Politically free, the worker is socially the capitalists’ serf.”

Marx called him an opportunist and an overambitious babbler.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #civilwar #paris #lyon #Marseille #commune #bakunin #anarchism #cluseret #workers #marx #slavery #Abolition #independence

Today in Labor History March 22, 1972: U.S. Congress sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. It failed. And to this day, women still earn 84% of what men do. One of the exceptions is public education, where teachers’ unions have fought and won the right to collectively bargain salaries based on years of experience, not gender. The first ERA was introduced to Congress in 1923. The 1972 had wide bipartisan support, including by presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, and seemed destined to pass. However, Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women against the amendment, arguing that it would disadvantage housewives, make them eligible for the draft and cause divorcees to lose custody of their children. This killed the ERA in the 1970s. From 2017-2020, several states have ratified the ERA. However, it is uncertain whether these ratifications are legal, since they occurred after the deadlines. Schlafly went on to become a major player in the anti-abortion and anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ rights movements.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #feminism #sexism #EqualRightsAmendment #teachers #unions #collectivebargaining #ERA #phyllisschlafly #homophobia #lgbtq #abortion #choice #equalpay

Today in Labor History March 22, 1943: The Nazi-affiliated Schutzmannschaft Battalion burnt alive everyone from the village of Khatyn, Belarus, near Minsk. They did it in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans. Himmler created Schutzmannschaft police units in 1941. By 1942, they had over 300,000 members. They slaughtered Jews throughout the Baltics, Ukraine and Belarus. They also served as guards at forced labor camps. In total, Nazis and Nazi collaborators slaughtered over 2 million people just in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation. This was nearly 25% of the entire population. Of these, 800,000 were Jews, or about 90% of the Jewish population.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #fascism #genocide #holocaust #antisemitism #jewish #khatyn #belarus #himmler #police #soviet #minsk #belarus #racism

Today in Labor History March 22, 1920: Azeri army soldiers, in collaboration with Azeri civilians, attacked Armenian civilians in Shusha (Nagorno Karabakh) and destroyed the Armenian half of the city. The pogrom continued through March 26. The true death toll may have been well over 20,000. Between 1905 and 1920, there were at least 9 pogroms in the region, against both Armenians and Azeris, with a death toll of at least 57,000, and possibly well over 100,000. At least another 10 pogroms resumed after the fall of the Soviet Union, with hundreds more people slaughtered.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #azeri #armenian #armenia #genocide #azerbaijan #soviet #russia

Today in Labor History March 22, 1886: Mark Twain, who was a lifelong member of the International Typographical Union, gave a speech entitled, “Knights of Labor: The New Dynasty.” In the speech, he commended the Knights’ commitment to fair treatment of all workers, regardless of race or gender. “When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and stevedores, and housepainters, and brakemen, and engineers . . . and factory hands, and all the shop girls, and all the sewing machine women, and all the telegraph operators, in a word, all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power, ...when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains that a Nation has risen.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #KnightsOfLabor #solidarity #union #MarkTwain #writer #author #books #fiction #race #gender @bookstadon