In 1877, one million workers went on strike and fought police and federal troops in cities across America. The monikers “Great Upheaval” and “Great Railroad Strike” undersell what verged on a second Civil War — this time pitting labor against capital.
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People have always been fighting to make things better, and that fight has never been easy, but has always been just. Kim Kelly's book chronicles the working-class heroes who were pushed to the margins or simply left out of U.S. labor history.
The Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property. We should draw on that memory today for struggles against racism and capitalism.
Karen Sieber tells us of the effort to honor the memory of slain union organizer Ella May Wiggins and the struggle for power by textile workers in the South.
Barring any unforeseen obstacle, the Triangle Fire Memorial will be dedicated on the building where the fire happened on the fire’s 112th anniversary, March 25, 2023. It will be New York City’s first labor memorial.
Murdered by gangsters on a dictator’s orders in 1981, these pathbreaking Filipino labor organizers fought for union democracy.
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Reluctant Reformers addresses what I think of as the tripwire of U.S. politics: race. But it does so by examining how several social movements, including abolition, women’s suffrage, populism, progressivism, labor, the socialist and communist left..
Unlike most of the other struggles of this era, this strike rested on the firm backbone of the women of the mining families and communities who continued the fight when the men were beaten and jailed and the strike near defeat.
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