Today in Labor History March 5, 1917: Members of the IWW went on trial in Everett, Washington for the Everett Massacre, which occurred on November 5, 1916. In reality, they were the victims of an assault by a mob of drunken, vigilantes, led by Sheriff McRae. The IWW members had come to support the 5-month long strike by shingle workers. When their boat, the Verona, arrived, the Sheriff asked who their leader was. They replied, “We are all leaders.” Then the vigilantes began firing at their boat. They killed 12 IWW members and 2 of their own, who they accidentally shot in the back. Before the killings, 40 IWW street speakers had been taken by deputies to Beverly Park, where they were brutally beaten and run out of town. In his “USA” trilogy, John Dos Passos mentions Everett as “no place for the working man.” And Jack Kerouac references the Everett Massacre in his novel, “Dharma Bums.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #everett #massacre #policebrutality #vigilante #strike #union #police #policemurder #FreeSpeech #kerouac #dospassos #hisfic #novel #literature #writer #author #books @bookstadon

Today in Labor History August 19, 1916: Strikebreakers attacked and beat picketing IWW strikers in Everett, Washington. The police refused to intervene, claiming it was federal jurisdiction. However, when the strikers retaliated, they arrested the strikers. Vigilante attacks on IWW picketers and speakers escalated and continued for months. In October, vigilantes forced many of the strikers to run a gauntlet, violently beating them in the process. The brutality culminated in the Everett massacre on November 5, when Wobblies (IWW members) sailed over from Seattle to support the strikers. The sheriff called out to them as they docked, “Who is your leader?” And the Wobblies yelled back, “We all are!” The sheriff told them they couldn’t dock. One of the Wobblies said, “Like hell we can’t!” And then a mob of over 200 vigilantes opened fire on them. As a result, seven died and 50 were wounded. John Dos Passos portrays these events in his USA Trilogy.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #washington #everett #vigilante #massacre #policebrutality #police #fiction #historicalfiction #novel #writer #books #author #dospassos @bookstadon

Today in Writing History July 21, 1899: Ernest Hemingway was born. Hemingway was a journalist, novelist and short story writer. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954. Hemingway was famous for his “square, tight” prose, which was influenced by his experience as a journalist and as a soldier. He was an ambulance driver during World War I and he volunteered on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Of his stories, my two personal favorites are “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and “Old Man and the Sea.” I recently watched the documentary “Spanish Earth,” made in 1937, filmed during and about the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway narrated it, along with Orson Welles. He also cowrote the script, along with another favorite writer of mine, John Dos Passos.

https://youtu.be/MT8q6VAyTi8?t=608

#workingclass #LaborHistory #hemingway #dospassos #orsonwelles #spain #civilwar #antifascism #antifa #anarchism #NobelPrize #writing #writer #books #author #fiction #novel @bookstadon

Today in Labor History January 4, 1883: Radical writer and publisher Max Eastman was born. In the 1910s, he edited “The Masses,” one of America's leading socialist periodicals. Contributors included Sherwood Anderson, Amy Lowell, Mabel Dodge Luhan, John Reed, Carl Sandburg and Upton Sinclair. During this period, he advocated for free love and birth control. In 1917, he co-founded “The Liberator” with his sister Crystal Eastman. In that periodical, he published Hellen Keller, John Dos Passos, Hemingway and Cummings. The U.S. government indicted him twice under the Sedition Act. Both times his lawyers got him acquitted. In 1917, he raised money for John Reed, who was in Russia, reporting on the Bolshevik Revolution. He published Reed's articles from Russia, later collected as “Ten Days That Shook the World.” In the early 1920s, Eastman lived in the Soviet Union. He witnessed Stalin’s Great Purge and became highly critical of Stalinism, and then of communism and socialism in general. He moved back to the U.S. and became a staunch anti-communist and an advocate of free market capitalism.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #maxeastman #socialism #sedition #freespeech #russia #communism #soviet #stalin #johnreed #dospassos #helenkeller #writer #author #journalism #books #fiction @bookstadon

Today in Labor History August 19, 1916: Strikebreakers attacked and beat picketing IWW strikers in Everett, Washington. The police refused to intervene, claiming it was federal jurisdiction. However, when the strikers retaliated, they arrested the strikers. Vigilante attacks on IWW picketers and speakers escalated and continued for months. In October, vigilantes forced many of the strikers to run a gauntlet, violently beating them in the process. The brutality culminated in the Everett massacre on November 5, when Wobblies (IWW members) sailed over from Seattle to support the strikers. The sheriff called out to them as they docked, “Who is your leader?” And the Wobblies yelled back, “We all are!” The sheriff told them they couldn’t dock. One of the Wobblies said, “Like hell we can’t!” And then a mob of over 200 vigilantes opened fire on them. As a result, seven died and 50 were wounded. John Dos Passos portrays these events in his USA Trilogy.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #washington #everett #vigilante #massacre #policebrutality #police #fiction #historicalfiction #novel #writer #books #author #dospassos @bookstadon

#Books shipping to new homes this morning.

#BookSelling #bookstodon #MidCentury #DosPassos #satire #USA #ArtBooks #AlfredJensen #ModernArt #CropCircles #phenomenon or is it a #hoax #novel #fiction

Today in Labor History March 5, 1917: Members of the IWW went on trial in Everett, Washington for the Everett Massacre, which occurred on November 5, 1916. In reality, they were the victims of an assault by a mob of drunken, vigilantes, led by Sheriff McRae. The IWW members had come to support the 5-month long strike by shingle workers. When their boat, the Verona, arrived, the Sheriff asked who their leader was. They replied, “We are all leaders.” Then the vigilantes began firing at their boat. They killed 12 IWW members and 2 of their own, who they accidentally shot in the back. Before the killings, 40 IWW street speakers had been taken by deputies to Beverly Park, where they were brutally beaten and run out of town. In his “USA” trilogy, John Dos Passos mentions Everett as “no place for the working man.” And Jack Kerouac references the Everett Massacre in his novel, “Dharma Bums.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #everett #massacre #policebrutality #vigilante #strike #union #police #policemurder #FreeSpeech #kerouac #DosPassos #hisfic #novel #literature #writer #author #books @bookstadon

Today in Labor History August 19, 1916: Strikebreakers attacked and beat picketing IWW strikers in Everett, Washington. The police refused to intervene, claiming it was federal jurisdiction. However, when the strikers retaliated, they arrested the strikers. Vigilante attacks on IWW picketers and speakers escalated and continued for months. In October, vigilantes forced many of the strikers to run a gauntlet, violently beating them in the process. The brutality culminated in the Everett massacre on November 5, when Wobblies (IWW members) sailed over from Seattle to support the strikers. The sheriff called out to them as they docked, “Who is your leader?” And the Wobblies yelled back, “We all are!” The sheriff told them they couldn’t dock. One of the Wobblies said, “Like hell we can’t!” And then a mob of over 200 vigilantes opened fire on them. As a result, seven died and 50 were wounded. John Dos Passos portrays these events in his USA Trilogy.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #washington #vigilante #massacre #PoliceBrutality #police #fiction #HistoricalFiction #novel #writer #books #author #DosPassos @bookstadon

No, people don't change, but they can evolve. And evolution is not always a pretty sight. Tolstoy moved closer to God in his later years, and it crushed him. Gorky had nothing left to write about after the revolution. Dos Passos became a capitalist with a barber's smile and died up in the mountains above me. Celine went crazy and forgot how to laugh.

#CharlesBukowski

#LeoTolstoy #MaximGorky #DosPassos #Celine