Cute meme, but not entirely correct. All forms of capitalism, with or without wage increases, involve paying workers less than the value of their labor. Therefore, in all forms of capitalism, the bosses are stealing the wages from their workers.
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Today in Labor History July 11, 1833: William Keats shot and killed Yagan, an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. Yagan was a major player in the early resistance to British colonial settlement of Western Australia. settlers were after him because he had killed a servant of Archibald Butler, which he did in retaliation when another of Butler’s servants shot at a group of Noongar people who were stealing potatoes and fowls. Officials sent Yagan’s head to London, where it was exhibited in a museum as an "anthropological curiosity." For over a century, the Noongar people asked for repatriation of the head. Yagan's head was finally repatriated and buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Today in Labor History July 11, 1892: Frisco Mine was dynamited by striking Coeur D’Alene miners after they discovered they had been infiltrated by Pinkertons and after one of their members had been shot. The striking miners belonged to the Western Federation of Miners. Prior to this, the mine owners had increased work hours, decreased pay and brought in a bunch of scabs to replace striking workers. Ultimately, over 600 striking miners were imprisoned without charge by the military in order to crush the strike.
You can read my article on the Pinkertons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/?s=pinkerton
Today in Labor History July 11, 1943: The nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army launched a massacre of Poles in Nazi-occupied Eastern Galicia. The attacks, which continued until 1945, targeted mostly women and children, and included rape, dismemberment and immolation. 50,000-100,000 died in the attacks, which were directly linked to the policies of the fascist Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, whose goal was to purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukrainian state. Bandera is considered a hero by many of the Ukrainian nationalist militias that are currently active in the war with Russia, and many of them also subscribe to goal of purging Ukraine of all non-Ukrainians. In 2016, the Parliament of Poland passed a resolution recognizing the massacres as genocide.
Today in Labor History July 11, 1947: Eight black prisoners were killed in Brunswick, Georgia, during the Anguilla Prison Massacre, for refusing to work in a snake infested swamp without boots. The New York Times reported it as a failed prison escape. However, a handwritten note, by one of the survivors, describing what really happened, reached the NAACP. After refusing to dig ditches, barefoot, among poisonous snakes, they were driven back to camp where, the warden, drunk and angry, opened fire on them with a submachine gun. No one was ever convicted of their murder.
I doubt Trump knows this history. Hell, the idiot didn’t even know that English was the official language of Liberia. But this prison sounds eerily similar to Alligator Auschwitz, which is located in the Everglades and surrounded by alligator- and python-infested waters. The first group of prisoners arrived there on July 3, 2025 and have already reported human rights violations like limited access to water, insufficient food, and restrictions on the practice of their religion. Proponents claim the facility is designed to withstand Category 2 hurricanes. However, the facility was built in only eight days and is likely to contain flaws. Furthermore, with the number and severity of storms intensifying due to the Climate Crisis, and the prison’s location in the heart of hurricane country, it could easily experience storms that are much more severe than Category 2.
Today in Labor History July 11, 1947: the Exodus 1947 left France for Palestine carrying 4,500 Jewish Holocaust survivors with no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. The British boarded the ship in international waters and sent the Jews to refugee camps in Europe. Over 100,000 Jews tried to illegally immigrate to Palestine as part of Aliyah Bet. More than half of these immigrant ships were stopped by British patrols, with most of the Jews (roughly 50,000) being sent to internment camps in Cyprus, Palestine, and Mauritius. Over 1,600 of them drowned at sea and only a few thousand reached Palestine. Of the 64 vessels that sailed in the Aliya Bet, Exodus 1947 was the largest, with 4,515 passengers. Many historians believe that the ordeal of the Exodus 1947 played a major role in building international sympathy for the plight of Holocaust survivors and support for a Jewish state in Palestine.
The Jewish paramilitary group, Haganah, bought the Exodus 1947 for Aliyah Bet activities from a wrecking yard precisely because of its dilapidated and dangerous condition. They believed that the British would see the danger to its passengers and allow it through their blockade. However, the British boarded the ship anyway and a battle ensured. An American Jew was clubbed to death. Two passengers died from gunshots and several British sailors were hospitalized. And the passengers were deported. In retaliation, the militant Zionist groups Irgun and Lehi blew up Central Police HQ in Haifa on September 29, 1947. Ten people died and 54 were injured, including 33 Brits, 4 Arab policemen, an Arab woman and a 16-year-old were killed.
Leon Uris wrote about it in his 1958 novel, “Exodus.”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #israel #jewish #palestine #zionism #antisemitism #imperialism #holocaust #immigration #terrorism #fiction #HistoricalFiction #writer #author #nazis #fascism #freepalestine @bookstadon
#Albuquerque’s #Route66 #Motels Are Turning Into #AffordableHousing
Amid the ongoing #housingcrisis, once-#dilapidated #buildings are finding new life as #homes for #immigrants and other #workingclass #NewMexicans.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/albuquerque-motels-affordable-housing/
Reasons to be Cheerful · Albuquerque's Route 66 Motels Are Turning Into Affordable HousingAmid the ongoing housing crisis, once-dilapidated buildings are finding new life as homes for immigrants and other working-class New Mexicans.
Today in Labor and Writing History July 10, 1925: The Scopes "Monkey Trial" Trial began in Dayton, Tennessee. John T. Scopes was a high school science teacher accused of violating the Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee wrote about it in their play “Inherit the Wind” (1955). However, they said that their play was a response to the McCarthy anticommunist witch hunt and a statement in support of free speech. Ronald Kidd's 2006 novel, “Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial,” was also based on the Scopes Trial. Scopes was defended by labor Clarence Darrow, who had defended Eugene Debs, during the Pullman strike (1893); and Big Bill Haywood against false murder charges (1905); and the McNamara brothers for the false charges in the L.A. Times bombing (1910).
#workingclass #LaborHistory #scopes #evolution #education #teaching #science #clarencedarrow #freespeech #censorship #playwright #theater #historicalfiction #mccarthy #communism #fiction #novel #author #writer @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 and Writing History July 10, 1917: The Jerome Deportation occurred in Arizona. On July 5, IWW workers struck at Phelps Dodge mines, in Jerome, Az. Mine supervisors, along with a hastily formed “Citizens Committee” made up of local business leaders, rounded up and deported over 100 Wobblies (IWW members) to Needles, CA, and told them to never return. Two days later, after seeing how successful they had been in Jerome, they launched an even bigger deportation in Bisbee, Az. This time, they rounded up roughly 2,000 Wobblies from the Phelps Dodge mines in Bisbee, Az, and deported them to New Mexico.
“Bisbee ‘17,” (1999) by Robert Houston, is a historical novel based on the Bisbee deportations. There was also a really interesting film of the same name that came out in 2018. In the film, the town’s inhabitants reenact the events of the Bisbee deportation 100 years later. It also includes interviews with current residents.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #IWW #wobblies #bisbeedeportation #mining #arizona #vigilantes #film #book #novel #writer #author #HistoricalFiction @bookstadon
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.
C'est ultra dur de sortir d'un burn out en tant qu'handicapé, pour revenir dans mon coeur de métier, alors que les "dirigeant.e.s" ne sont pas du tout compétent.e.s et que l'on devrait plutôt parler de dirigeables, du vent..
L'art c'est très utile, mais personnellement cela fait très longtemps que je dessine, que j'écris, etc
Simplement, le monde de l'art, ce n'est pas mon milieu social. #workingclass
I don’t care what people think or say. I stand in solidarity with the @nsf_iaa and share their vision for a free, self-organized workers’ movement in Norway. Even if syndicalists are few, we’re here, and I proudly support their struggle for worker control and direct action.
I identify as a syndicalist because I actually enjoy working, but only when labor is organized by and for the workers themselves. I refuse to accept a world where bosses dictate our lives or where decisions are made above our heads.
Today in Labor History July 9, 1917: Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were sentenced to two years in prison, $10,000 each, and deportation to Soviet Russia for their antiwar efforts and their anarchist activism. Their persecution by the U.S. government was part of the Palmer Raids, or the first anti-communist witch hunt in the U.S., which led to the imprisonment, death and/or deportation of hundreds of anarchists, communists, and labor organizers. The witch hunt decimated the IWW. And it jump-started the career of J. Edgar Hoover, future head of the FBI and persecutor of activist groups under COINTELPRO, who was then the underling of his mentor A. Mitchell Palmer.
Though Berkman and Goldman were both born in Russia, they were also naturalized U.S. citizens. The U.S. also deported anarchist Mollie Steimer in 1922. So, Trump’s threat to strip Zohran Mamdani of his citizenship and have him deported would be nothing new for the U.S. The U.S. has also denaturalized and deported people on the right, including several dozen Nazis in the 1970s-1990s.
Today in Labor History July 9, 1947: The Greek government ordered the arrest of 11,500 people on charges of plotting a Communist revolution. It occurred during the Greek Civil War (1943-1949), between Royalists (supported by the UK and US) and various Communist factions (supported by Yugoslavia and the USSR). It was the first US proxy war against Russia during the Cold War. Well over 200,000 people died and over 1 million were displaced. Nearly 80 years later, the U.S. continues its attempts to usurp Russia’s regional hegemony through another proxy war. This war has a similar number of deaths and refugees, but in only one-third the amount of time. And this time, both nations possess nuclear arsenals large enough to destroy the planet several times over.
Today in Labor History July 9, 1935: The Squeegee Strike began in New York, in protest of the dismissals of six subway car cleaners who refused a work speed-up. All were reinstated and most of the union’s grievances were resolved. It was the first successful strike by the new Transport Workers Union (TWU), created in 1934 by 7 NYC subway workers who belonged to the Irish nationalist organization Clan na Gael. They were inspired by the socialism and trade union work of James Connolly, one of the founding members of the IWW . The TWU was a militant industrial union, organizing all workers in the industry, regardless of skill or job title. The union quickly expanded to include workers in all transport industries, throughout the U.S.
(Let's try this again)
This report on the #LAWildfires has omitted any mention of the #workingclass
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How this video went from France 24 to Democracy is weird!
The #France24 report on the #LaWildfires is like two posts above.
That said, I would suggest watching this vid below because of the rise of #globalfascism.
My problem with this report, is I'm hearing NOTHING about the #workingclass
Six months after Los Angeles wildfires, displaced residents still dealing with trauma • FRANCE 24 - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6z0UIc66bQ
m.youtube.com- YouTubeEnjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.