As things are unfolding, I am more convinced that so- called AI is a (definitely incompetent) weapon and project to disrupt an already fractured working class.

There's a growing concern in certain sectors for the risk of being replaced by a prompt, with the job market stalled, and with employees asking for AI trainings in order to ensure their continuity (while preventing others).

Taking into consideration the alliance between Sillicon Valley, Palantir, Nick Land, Yarvin and different authoritarian and neoliberal regimes, it is clear that these tools are not only not neutral, but absolutely embedded in their neo-reactionary push for a restoration.

#noai #capitalism #workingclass #fascism

Today in Labor History February 16, 1931: The Harlan County War (AKA Bloody Harlan) began when the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%, leading to a nearly decade-long series of coal strikes, executions, and bombings in Harlan County, Kentucky from 1931-1939. At least 13 coal miners were killed, along with 5 cops and vigilantes working for the coal operators. The bosses also evicted union organizers, and their families, from Company housing. The companies owned every in the entire county. Evicted workers flocked to the three that were independent, particularly Evarts. The scabs were protected by private cops, who were given full police privileges, as well as the right to act with impunity outside the coal properties. The thugs were organized and led by Sheriff Blair.

It was during this strike that Florence Reece composed the famous folk song, “Which Side Are You On?” which has been covered by Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Dropkick Murphys, Natalie Merchant, Ani DiFranco, and Tom Morello, among many others. She wrote the song after Sheriff Blair and his men had come to her house in search of her husband, Sam, one of the union leaders. She was home alone with their seven children. They ransacked the whole house and then remained outside, waiting to shoot him down when he returned. But he didn't come home that night. Afterward she tore a sheet from a calendar on the wall and wrote the words to “Which Side Are You On?” to an old Baptist hymn: “Lay the Lily Low.” Reece also supported a second wave of strikes in the 1970s, as portrayed in the documentary “Harlan County, USA,” in which she performs "Which Side Are You On?."

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #coal #harlancounty #coal #mining #vigilantes #police #police brutality #florencereece #folk #folkmusic #whichsideareyouon #communism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZHfZt4o6c

Today in Labor History February 16, 1963: A British antiwar activist group, called The Spies for Peace, broke into a secret UK government bunker, stole classified documents and published them. These documents revealed that the government was preparing for a thermonuclear war in which they knew the general population would be annihilated, while at the same time building a network of bunkers to protect key government officials. Several people were arrested for the break-in, but none of The Spies were ever identified. The Spies for Peace were associated with the Committee of 100, a Direct Action activist organization formed in 1960 by philosopher, mathematician and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #atomic #bomb #coldwar #anarchism #directaction #civildisobedience #saboatage

Today in Labor History February 16, 1945: The Alaska Equal Rights Act was signed into law. It was the first anti-discrimination law in the U.S. the law prevents and criminalizes discrimination against anyone in public areas based on their race. The law came in response to the struggle of Indigenous Alaskans fighting discrimination. In 1944, Alberta Schenck (Inupiaq) protested segregation by deliberately sitting in the “whites-only” section of a movie theater in Nome, Alaska. The cops arrested her.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #discrimination #indigenous #alaska #civilrights #inupiaq #segregation #cops #police

Today in Labor History February 16, 1934: Thousands of Socialists battled Communists at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. 20 were injured in the melee. The rally was organized to protest the massacre of 1,000 Austrian socialists by the fascist regime of Engelbert Dollfuss. 5,000 members of the Communist Party violently disrupted the meeting to prevent Matthew Woll, of the AFL, and New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, from speaking. Woll was a collaborationist who believed that the most effective strategy for workers was a partnership with the bosses. He was also a staunch anti-communist and worked with the CIA to disrupt leftwing labor organizing in Europe. Some American Communists at that time considered that anyone who wasn’t communist was fascist, including non-communist socialists. On the morning of the rally, the Daily Worker denounced Woll and La Guardia as “open fascist[s]” and urged their Socialist brothers not to let them speak. During the rally, Communists jeered and booed the Socialists, calling them fascists, leading up to the violence.

The next month, five days after the opening of the Dachau concentration camp, the American Jewish Congress held another anti-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. 20,000 attended, plus another 40,000 rallied outside. One of their demands was that President Roosevelt immediately amend the immigration laws to allow German Jews entry into the U.S.

A few years later, 2/20/1939, Nazis held a large rally at Madison Square Garden. Advertised as a “Pro-American Rally,” 20,000 attendees, in Nazi armbands, were greeted with a 30-foot-tall banner of George Washington, flanked by large swastikas. Storm troopers in Nazi uniforms guarded the aisles. Their rhetoric was very similar to that of the participants at Trump’s rally there in 2024. Attendees had picket signs that read “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.” There were speeches about stopping the Jews from taking American jobs. One of the speakers, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, pointed out that American history has always been white supremacist, from the founding of the country by white men, to slavery, the Chinese exclusion act, anti-miscegenation laws, and Jim Crow. They referred to Washington as America’s first fascist. Thousand of anti-fascists demonstrated outside. Both Mayor LaGuardia, and the American Jewish Committee supported the Nazis’ right to hold the rally. LaGuardia said, "If we are for free speech, we have to be for free speech for everybody, and that includes Nazis."

#workingclass #LaborHistory #fascism #communism #socialism #Riot #MadisonSquareGarden #newyork #austria #antifa #antifascism #trump #MAGA #nazi

Today in Labor History February 16, 1885: The Knights of Labor struck Jay Gould’s Wabash Railroad when he fired members of their union. The strike tied up the entire line in the Southwest. Members of the union on other railroad lines refused to operate any trains with Wabash cars on it. Gould eventually agreed not to discriminate any more against members of the union. As a result, membership in The Knights of Labor swelled. When they struck again in 1886, at least 10 people were killed. The strike unraveled within a couple of months, leading to the demise of the union.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #KnightsOfLabor #strike #PoliceBrutality #massacre #railroad #solidarity #PoliceMurder #police

Please support a good cause. Don't let #imperialism succeed.

#Capitlist #empires use #blockade #sanctions #embargo to choke the economy of nations that threaten their #unipolar authority. That is #terrosirm #warcrimes and #violence on innocent people.

#WorkingClass #Solidarity and #Socialism is how we win.

#LetCubaLive

https://www.letcubalive.info/donate

“Efficiency in the eyes of people who are attempting to accumulate more wealth, it’s actually not efficiency. It’s about creating a system whereby workers are emiserated and disempowered. What they define as efficiency is really a mechanism to increase profits to the elite at the expense of everyone else.”

-Chris Hedges

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFgIRpGnUJA&t=1169s

#efficiency #neoliberalism #workingclass

A Post-Mortem on the San Francisco Teachers’ Strike of 2026

Everyone is calling the San Francisco Teachers’ strike a victory. And, compared with what the district was trying to shove down their throats, it clearly was: 5% raise over the next 2 years for teachers, 8% for classified workers; fully funded healthcare for workers and dependents; improved protections for immigrant students and Special Education. It was also notable for the massive amount of solidarity and support by students, other unions, and the public.

However, like most strikes, this one was defensive, not progressive. It was a reaction to the bosses’ attempts to worsen compensation and working conditions even further than they had already deteriorated over the past five years. That 5% raise averages out to only a 2.5% per year. This isn’t even enough to compensate for the 2.6-2.9% inflation rate that we’ve had over the past 2 years, let alone enough help workers recover from the price shocks of 2022 and 2023, when inflation was 8-9%, and 4%, respectively; when rents were going up by as much as 20%; when grocery prices increased by 25%; when insurance prices were jumping by this much, or more. Thus, in terms of purchasing power, the 5% raise is actually a de facto pay cut. Even the 8% raise for classified workers doesn’t cover the losses in purchasing power over the past 5 years.

People have argued that the fully funded healthcare, because it erases out-of-pocket expenses that cost some teachers as much as $2,000 per month, amounts to a de facto raise of up to $24,000 per year for workers with children (less for those with no dependents) since they would no longer have to pay those healthcare costs themselves. But SFUSD workers never used to pay anything at all for health insurance. It was fully funded for employees and dependents until recently. So, rather than considering it progress; it would be more accurate to consider it a return to what the workers had just a few years ago. Furthermore, while fully funded healthcare is an extremely valuable benefit for workers (at least in the U.S., where we have no nationalized or single-payer system), it contributes nothing to workers’ pensions, which are based on the highest annual salary teachers have earned in their careers. The 5% raise does, however, contribute the value of their pensions, but nowhere near as much as the 9% that teachers had been asking for. And even that 9%, had they won it, would not have been enough to help them recover from the combined cost of inflation over the past 4 years.

Was the strike worth it? Most definitely! Had they not struck, or if they had lost the strike, conditions would be far worse. But the working-class, as a whole, has lost considerable ground over the past few years. 67% of U.S. citizens are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck. Even some middle-class people are now selling plasma just to be able to make ends meet. At the same time, the wealth of the nation’s 900 billionaires soared by 14% last year to $6.9 trillion. The San Francisco Bay Area, alone, is home to 82 of them—an increase of 14 over the previous year.

In the class war, the rich are clearly winning.

https://blog.theinterviewguys.com/salary-inflation-reality-check/

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/san-francisco-neighborhood-rent-surge-20803152.php

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americans-sell-plasma-inflation-middle-class-expenses-economy-rcna258390

https://www.investopedia.com/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-youre-not-alone-67-percent-of-people-are-in-2025-11812027

https://fortune.com/2025/12/08/how-many-billionaires-does-america-world-have-ubs/

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/the-billionaire-century/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #teachers #schools #classwar #billionaires #oligarchy