Listen to Lucinda Williams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdU0tvZfAc
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
The Paterson Strike Pageant, 1913
THE PATERSON STRIKE PAGEANT OF 1913:
https://truthout.org/articles/eric-davins-strike-pageant-chronicles-the-paterson-silk-strike-of-1913/
Monday, July 6, 2020
The Great Uprising of 1877
THE GREAT UPRISING OF JULY, 1877:
On July 22nd, 1877, angry workers burned a large portion of Pittsburgh to the ground. The entire Strip District, from (and including) the Union Depot train station on Grant Street to Lawrenceville, was left a burning ruin.
The burning of Pittsburgh, however, was merely the epicenter of a larger uprising that hot summer month in 1877. Excluding the Civil War itself, the Great Strike of 1877 was the largest insurrection in American history. It was also the biggest instance of labor violence anywhere on earth for the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914.
For two weeks after the burning of Pittsburgh, warfare convulsed America. A general strike closed down St. Louis. The Workingmen’s Party, America’s first socialist party, briefly took charge of the city while the local sheriff made plans to raise a 5,000 man army to fight them. A huge private army of wealthy citizens led by two Civil War generals, one Union and one Confederate, eventually broke that city’s general strike.
In Chicago bloody street battles between the police and striking workers left 30 workers dead, many more wounded. The National Guard killed another ten striking workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Fighting spread from small towns like Altoona, Johnstown, and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York. In New York City police attacked and bloodily dispersed twenty thousand New Yorkers meeting to support the workers.
But wealthy vigilantes, police forces, and National Guard units could not suppress the workers’ rebellion everywhere. Panicked governors and local officials called upon President Rutherford B. Hayes to quell the rebellion with federal troops. In response, President Hayes issued a proclamation of emergency and insurrection, after which he ordered U. S. Army troops to occupy major cities. It was the first significant use of the Army to break a strike in American history.
Previously, the question of slave labor had torn America apart. Now class conflict and incessant small-scale labor wars would tear at the American fabric for decades to come. The Great Strike of 1877 was, therefore, a major turning point in American history. Americans left the Civil War and Reconstruction eras behind and thenceforth fought over the meaning of America in a new era of industrial and corporate capitalism.
On July 22nd, 1877, angry workers burned a large portion of Pittsburgh to the ground. The entire Strip District, from (and including) the Union Depot train station on Grant Street to Lawrenceville, was left a burning ruin.
The burning of Pittsburgh, however, was merely the epicenter of a larger uprising that hot summer month in 1877. Excluding the Civil War itself, the Great Strike of 1877 was the largest insurrection in American history. It was also the biggest instance of labor violence anywhere on earth for the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914.
For two weeks after the burning of Pittsburgh, warfare convulsed America. A general strike closed down St. Louis. The Workingmen’s Party, America’s first socialist party, briefly took charge of the city while the local sheriff made plans to raise a 5,000 man army to fight them. A huge private army of wealthy citizens led by two Civil War generals, one Union and one Confederate, eventually broke that city’s general strike.
In Chicago bloody street battles between the police and striking workers left 30 workers dead, many more wounded. The National Guard killed another ten striking workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Fighting spread from small towns like Altoona, Johnstown, and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York. In New York City police attacked and bloodily dispersed twenty thousand New Yorkers meeting to support the workers.
But wealthy vigilantes, police forces, and National Guard units could not suppress the workers’ rebellion everywhere. Panicked governors and local officials called upon President Rutherford B. Hayes to quell the rebellion with federal troops. In response, President Hayes issued a proclamation of emergency and insurrection, after which he ordered U. S. Army troops to occupy major cities. It was the first significant use of the Army to break a strike in American history.
Previously, the question of slave labor had torn America apart. Now class conflict and incessant small-scale labor wars would tear at the American fabric for decades to come. The Great Strike of 1877 was, therefore, a major turning point in American history. Americans left the Civil War and Reconstruction eras behind and thenceforth fought over the meaning of America in a new era of industrial and corporate capitalism.
Friday, June 26, 2020
The Problem with "Caring" & "Loving" People
THE PROBLEM WITH "CARING" AND "LOVING" PEOPLE:
In the midst of pandemic, with millions of Americans out of work and in the depths of despair, this Republican president continues to reveal the height of his cruelty.
How can anyone who thinks of themselves as "caring" and "loving" people support such a man?
In the midst of pandemic, with millions of Americans out of work and in the depths of despair, this Republican president continues to reveal the height of his cruelty.
How can anyone who thinks of themselves as "caring" and "loving" people support such a man?
It is because these "caring people" care only for people like
themselves. People who aren't like them aren't really "people" at all.
They are the Other. They're a different race, religion, class, sex,
nationality. They don't dress like them. They don't cut their hair like
them. They don't speak like them. Therefore, they are not worthy of care
and concern.
"All men are created equal," the slave master Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. That is, white men like himself. Obviously not his own slaves, obviously not women, as he was talking about "men" being equal. But, if you were a white man, he cared about your political rights and independence.
Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, was, reportedly, a very caring and loving father to his own children.
Hitler like dogs and blonde blue-eyed children. As a youth in Vienna, as a struggling and aspiring artist, Hitler painted roses.
The "loving" and "caring" people who continue to support this cruel and evil man in the White House -- reportedly, about 40% of my fellow Americans -- are people who have de-humanized other people who aren't like them and cast them into the Outer Darkness. Therefore, those outcasts are not worthy of their care and concern.
It's a failure of imagination and a failure of empathy.
"All men are created equal," the slave master Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. That is, white men like himself. Obviously not his own slaves, obviously not women, as he was talking about "men" being equal. But, if you were a white man, he cared about your political rights and independence.
Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, was, reportedly, a very caring and loving father to his own children.
Hitler like dogs and blonde blue-eyed children. As a youth in Vienna, as a struggling and aspiring artist, Hitler painted roses.
The "loving" and "caring" people who continue to support this cruel and evil man in the White House -- reportedly, about 40% of my fellow Americans -- are people who have de-humanized other people who aren't like them and cast them into the Outer Darkness. Therefore, those outcasts are not worthy of their care and concern.
It's a failure of imagination and a failure of empathy.
Women in Weird Tales Magazine
...... extensively cites my work in second paragraph:
See second paragraph.
Thursday, June 18, 2020
The Past is Never Past
The release of the Equal Justice Initiative’s report documenting
southern white supremacist terror and the lynching of at least 2,000 Southern
blacks during the Reconstruction Era highlights the fact that history is not an
eternally objective record of the past. (“Report Documents Over 2,000 Lynchings
in 12-Year Period After Civil War,” New York Times, June 17.) Instead, it is something that is
deliberately constructed, which is what the South did after the Civil War. The
South may have lost the Civil War, but it won the peace. For a hundred years or
more after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the Southern version of
Reconstruction dominated our history books and popular culture. “Reconstruction
was a failure,” that version said. This new report makes clear how political that
constructed history of Reconstruction was. Reconstruction didn’t fail.
Reconstruction was lynched by white supremacy. And that racist legacy is still
with us. As Southern author William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s
not even past.”
Saturday, June 6, 2020
My Letter in the Post-Gazette on the Pandemic & Protests
https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2020/06/05/We-are-not-all-in-this-together-but-we-need-to-be/stories/202006030109
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