mamot.fr is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Mamot.fr est un serveur Mastodon francophone, géré par La Quadrature du Net.

Server stats:

2.9K
active users

#revolutionary

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

Today in Labor History July 24, 1969: The Gay Liberation Front was founded in New York City less than one month after the Stonewall Riots. Members of the GLF would go on to found other radical queer activist groups like the Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Youth New York, and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and later groups such as ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, Queer Nation, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The GLF had a broad political platform, that was anti-racist and anti-capitalist. They supported various Third World struggles and the Black Panthers. They attacked the nuclear family and traditional gender roles. Some of their earliest direct actions were protests against the negative portrayal of queer people in the media, with an early focus on the homophobia of the Village Voice. Later in 1969, they started publishing their own magazine, “Come Out!”

Today in Labor History July 22, 1877: A General Strike began in St. Louis, as part of the national Great Upheaval wave of wildcat strikes. The St. Louis strike is generally considered the first General Strike in U.S. history. It was organized by the communist Workingman’s Party and the Knights of Labor. In addition to joining in solidarity with striking rail workers, thousands in other trades came out to fight for the 8-hour day and an end to child labor. For nearly a week, workers controlled all functions of society. Black and white workers united, even though the unions were all segregated. At one rally, a black steamboat worker asked the crowd if they would stand behind levee workers, regardless of race. “We will!” they shouted back. Another speaker said, “The people are rising up in their might and declaring they will no longer submit to being oppressed by unproductive capital.”

Whereas most of the worker uprisings that were occurring throughout the U.S. were spontaneous wildcat strikes (as most of the unions were opposed to the great strike), the situation in St. Louis was led by communists and was revolutionary. “There was a time in the history of France when the poor found themselves oppressed to such an extent that forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and hundreds of heads tumbled into the basket. That time may have arrived with us.” A cooper said this to a crowd of 10,000 workers in St. Louis, in July, 1877. He was referring to the Paris Commune, which happened just six years prior. Like the Parisian workers, the Saint Louis strikers openly called for the use of arms, not only to defend themselves against the violence of the militias and police, but for outright revolutionary aims: “All you have to do is to unite on one idea—that workingmen shall rule this country. What man makes, belongs to him, and the workingmen made this country.”

Karl Marx enthusiastically followed events during the Great Strike. He called it “the first uprising against the oligarchy of capital since the Civil War.” He predicted that it would inevitably be suppressed, but might still “be the point of origin for the creation of a serious workers’ party in the United States.” Ironically, many of the Saint Louis activists were followers of Ferdinand Lasalle, whom Marx despised, and who believed that communist revolution could happen through the vote. And some of them, like Albert Currlin, a Workingmen’s Party leader in Saint Louis, were outright racists, who mistrusted the black strikers and refused to work with them, undermining the success of the commune. Ultimately, 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized police (i.e., vigilantes) ended the strike by killing at least 18 people and arresting at least 70.

My novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” is about the coal strike that preceded the Great Upheaval. My work in progress, “Red Hot Summer in the Big Smoke,” opens exactly two weeks prior to the start of the Great Upheaval, with the mass execution of innocent coal miners and union organizers who were framed by the Pinkertons.

You can get my novel from any of these indie retailers:
keplers.com/
greenapplebooks.com/

Or send me $25 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, and I will send you a signed copy!

You can read my complete article on the Great Upheaval here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/

You can read my complete article on the Pinkertons here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #greatupheaval #paris #commune #Revolutionary #communism #saintlouis #pinkertons #GeneralStrike #wildcat #strike #knightsoflabor #workingmensparty #marx #solidarity #books #author #writer #fiction #historicalfiction @bookstadon

Today in Labor History July 10, 1921: Bloody Sunday: Seventeen people died and 200 houses were destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The violence erupted the day before the beginning of a truce that was supposed to end the Irish War of Independence. As the truce approached, police launched a raid against republicans. However, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambushed them, killing an officer. In retaliation, Protestant loyalists attacked Catholic enclaves in west Belfast. As a result, Protestants and Catholics paramilitaries battled each other in the streets. There were also gun battles between Republicans and the police. And police also fired indiscriminately at Catholic civilians. Belfast saw almost 500 people killed from 1920–22 in political and sectarian violence related to the Irish War of Independence.

The Irish War of Independence has been portrayed in the play “The Shadow of a Gunman,” by Seán O'Casey, the 1929 novel, “The Last September,” by Elizabeth Bowen, the 1931 short story, “Guests of the Nation,” by Frank O'Connor and the more recent novels: “Troubles,” by J. G. Farrell (1970), “The Old Jest,” (1979) by Jennifer Johnston, and “The Soldier's Song,” (2010) by Alan Monaghan.

Today in Labor History July 10, 1894: The Pullman Rail Car strike was put down by 14,000 federal and state troops. Over the course of the strike, soldiers killed 70 American Railway Union (ARU) members. Eugene Debs and many others were imprisoned during the strike for violating injunctions. Debs founded the ARU in 1893. The strike began, in May, as a wildcat strike, when George Pullman laid off employees and slashed wages, while maintaining the same high rents for his company housing in the town of Pullman, as well as the excessive rates he charged for gas and water. During the strike, Debs called for a massive boycott against all trains that carried Pullman cars. While many adjacent unions opposed the boycott, including the conservative American Federation of Labor, the boycott nonetheless affected virtually all train transport west of Detroit. Debs also called for a General Strike, which Samuel Gompers and the AFL blocked. At its height, over 200,000 railway workers walked off the job, halting dozens of lines, and workers set fire to buildings, boxcars and coal cars, and derailed locomotives. Clarence Darrow successfully defended Debs in court against conspiracy charges, arguing that it was the railways who met in secret and conspired against their opponents. However, they lost in their Supreme Court trial for violating a federal injunction.

By the 1950s, the town of Pullman had been incorporated into the city of Chicago. Debs became a socialist after the strike, running for president of the U.S. five times on the Socialist Party ticket, twice from prison. In 1905, he cofounded the radical IWW, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood and Irish revolutionary James Connolly. In 1894, President Cleveland designated Labor Day a federal holiday, in order to detract from the more radical May 1st, which honored the Haymarket martyrs and the struggle for the 8-hour day. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the Pullman strike ended, with the enthusiastic support of Gompers and the AFL.

Today in Labor History July 8, 1968: A wildcat strike began in Detroit, Michigan against both the Chrysler Corporation and the UAW. At the time, the Dodge Hamtramck plant was 70% black, while the union local was dominated by older Polish-American workers. In response, black workers formed the new Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. The Revolutionary Union Movement quickly spread to other Detroit plants: Ford Revolutionary Union Movement at the Ford River Rouge Plant, and Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement at the Chrysler Eldon Avenue plant. They united in 1969 in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

Today in Labor History July 6, 1918: Uprising against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR) during the Russian Civil War. One of their goals was to restart the war against Germany, which was helping suppress revolutionary activity in neighboring Ukraine and Finland. They also were frustrated by Bolsheviks’ move away from Revolutionary Socialism and toward “opportunistic service to the state." Maria Spiridonova, who spent years in prison under the Czar, and later under the Bolsheviks, was one of the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. She was also a member of the Shesterka ("Six")—6 women SR terrorists who were sent to Siberia. The failure of the SR Uprising facilitated the Bolsheviks consolidation of power and contributed to their creation of a one-party state in the USSR.

Today in Labor History July 2, 1951: Transgender revolutionary activist Sylvia Rivera was born. Ran away from home at age 11 to avoid abuse and did sex work to survive. As she got older, she became active in the antiwar movement and black liberation struggle, and then with the Gay Liberation Front. Together, with her friend Marsha P Johnson, and others, she co-founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries in 1970. This radical group helped raise funds to rent an apartment to house and support homeless queer youth. Much of that funding came from their sex work. She was very critical of the mainstream, middle-class, cis leadership of the gay rights movement, particularly when the 1986 Gay Rights Bill was passed without mentioning trans people. At the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in New York City, in 1973, Rivera jumped onstage during feminist Jean O'Leary's speech, which disparaged drag queens, and shouted: "Y'all Better Quiet Down! You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!" Today she is known as one of the leaders who made sure there was a T in LGBTQ.

Free Zine from @CrimethInc

#MutualAid, #TheCommons, and the #Revolutionary Abolition of #Capitalism

Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and #Charity

2025

"Much has been made of the distinction between charity and mutual aid. Charity is top-down and unidirectional, while mutual aid is supposed to be horizontal, reciprocal, and participatory. In practice, however, the majority of today’s self-described mutual aid projects remain more or less unidirectional efforts to provide goods and services to those in need.

"This has contributed to a situation in which conventional non-profit organizations are rebranding themselves with the language of 'mutual aid,' while some anarchists have given up on the concept entirely, fed up with a rhetoric that some say amounts to 'mutual aid being good and radical, and charity being bad and conservative.'

"Is there more to the distinction than this? How could we unlock the revolutionary potential of mutual aid?"

You can read the content of this zine online in at the link below:
crimethinc.com/zines/mutual-ai

#TaxTheRich #EatTheRich #CapitalismKills #CapitalismSucks
#GreedKills #Oligarchy #Oligarchs #Oiligarchy #TechBillionaires #CrimethInc
#BillionairesShouldNotExist

CrimethInc.Mutual Aid, the Commons, and the Revolutionary Abolition of CapitalismYou can read the content of this zine online in full here, complete with hyperlinks.