Mastodawn

Democrats don’t get why they’ve lost most working class voters

https://theconversation.com/democrats-dont-get-why-theyve-lost-most-working-class-voters-282847

> Class-war rhetoric from Democratic candidates jams working-class voters into a prefabricated progressive agenda, an expert on rural and working-class communities argues.
#workingClass #Democrats

MikeDunnAuthor 10h ago

Today in Labor History June 2, 1975: 100 sex workers occupied that Saint-Nizier church in Lyon to protest against police repression. They demanded that all their convictions be reversed. The police evicted them after a week. However, soon after, a judge cancelled their upcoming prison sentences.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #occupation #sexworkers #sexpositive #catholic #church #lyon #sexworkerrights #sexworkiswork #solidarity #directaction

MikeDunnAuthor 10h ago

Today in Labor History June 2, 1945: World War II: The segregated, all-Nisei U.S. 522nd Field Artillery Battalion stopped a death march from Dachau to the Austrian border. As a result, they saved several hundred prisoners. Ironically (and criminally), back in the states, most Nisei (Japanese-Americans) were living in concentration camps.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #WorldWarTwo #concentrationcamps #dachau #antisemitism #AntiAsianHate #racism #fascism #nazis #nisei

MikeDunnAuthor 10h ago

Today in Labor History June 2, 1919: Anarchist Galleanists carried out a series of 9 coordinated bombings across the Eastern United States. They damaged the homes of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, as well as then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They also targeted a number of judges. None of the targeted men died, although a night watchman, a former editor of the Galleanist publication “Cronaca Sovversiva,” did accidentally get killed. The bombs were delivered in packages that included the following note: “War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

The response by Palmer included mass illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. He also carried the nationwide witch hunts known as the Palmer raids in November 1919 and January 1920, arresting 10,000 anarchists, communists, and labor leaders, imprisoning 3,500, and deporting 556, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was founded in response to the raid, by IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Helen Keller, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #bombings #palmerraids #redscare #policebrutality #prison #deportations #fdr #union #communism #EmmaGoldman #alexanderberkman #elizabethgurleyflynn #HelenKeller #IWW #aclu #classwar

MikeDunnAuthor 10h ago

Today in Labor History June 2, 1863: Backed by three gunboats, Harriet Tubman and her force of 300 black soldiers, freed 800 enslaved people in the Combahee River Raid, South Carolina. Furthermore, they set fire to the plantations and destroyed millions of dollars-worth of stores, cotton and homes of the wealthy, without losing a single person. Additionally, it was the only military engagement in American history where a woman, black or white, “led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.” Tubman devised her war strategy after repeatedly penetrating across enemy lines and spying on Confederate troop movements. In the aftermath, Confederate Captain John F. Lay said, “The enemy seems to have been well posted as to the character and capacity of our troops and their small chance of encountering opposition, and to have been well guided by persons thoroughly acquainted with the river and country.” Most Americans know of Tubman’s role in the Underground Railroad. However, she was also a spy for the Union Army. And in the late 1850s, she helped John Brown plan his raid on Harper’s Ferry and recruit supporters for the raid.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #civilwar #harriettubman #slavery #Abolition #undergroundrailroad #johnbrown #liberation #espionage #strongwomen #blm #BlackMastodon

MikeDunnAuthor 10h ago

Today in Labor History June 2, 1780: The Gordon Riots began on this date in England and lasted through June 9. The riots began as a pogrom against Catholics. However, it grew into a mass worker insurrection that included ex-slaves, impressed sailors and debtors, English, Irish, Italians, Germans and Jews. The insurrectionists liberated two thousand prisoners and destroyed every major prison in London, including Newgate, Fleet and The Clink. They wrote on the prison walls, “Freed by the Authority of His Majesty, King Mob." Rioters also destroyed the homes members of the ruling elite, as well as toll houses and the Bank of England. The rich fled the city in terror. Many were robbed and beaten along the way. It was the most destructive protest in the history of London. The military was called in. They slaughtered up to 700 workers. The political context for the insurrection included low wages and inflation due to England’s wars with the U.S., Spain and France, as well as the desire for universal suffrage.

At the time of the Gordon Riots, England was still battling American revolutionaries in North America, and was still in conflict with France and Spain, and would soon be in conflict with the Dutch. They had been in secret negotiations with Spain to try and get them to end support for the United States. But the Spanish pulled back in response to the anti-Catholic nature of the riots, and over concerns that the riots would ultimately bring down the British government. At the time, Britain had no official police force, which parliament believed was a foreign and absolutist entity. The riots changed that, with several now strongly advocating for a police force modeled after the French. Radical journalist and MP John Wilkes lost a great deal of popular support for leading a violent citizens militia against the rioters.

Charles Dickens' novel “Barnaby Rudge” (1841) is set during Gordon Riots. And the film “The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle” has a scene from the Gordon Riots, with the Sex Pistols being hung in effigy. In the late 1960s, there was a Situationist group in the UK that called themselves “King Mob,” which had connections to the activist groups Black Mask and Against Up the Wall Motherfuckers (AKA the Motherfuckers) dadaist/Situationist groups based in New York city. Motherfuckers got their name from an Amiri Baraka poem. Abbie Hoffman referred to them as “the middle-class nightmare.” In 1967, they Motherfuckers forced their way into the Pentagon and flung blood, eggs and stones at US Secretary of State Dean Rusk. In January 1968, they dumped uncollected refuse from the Lower East Side into the fountain at Lincoln Center. They also forced Bill Graham to provide free concert nights at the Fillmore East. At an MC5 show at the Fillmore East, the broke Graham’s nose, which got the MC5 banned from the venue. And in 1969, they cut the fences at Woodstock, allowing thousands to get in for free.