Today in Labor History February 4, 1869: Labor leader and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) co-founder William D. "Big Bill" Haywood was born. Haywood started mining at age nine. He became secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in 1900 and co-founded the IWW in 1905. He was a WFM organizer during the Colorado Labor Wars (1903-1904), in which 33 miners were killed. At the IWW’s first convention (1905), he said, “We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working-class from the slave bondage of capitalism. The aims and objects of this organization shall be to put the working-class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.” With the IWW, he came up with the propaganda ploy of sending workers’ kids out of town, for their own safety, during the Lawrence Textile Strike (1912), leading to a media backlash against the mill owners and the ultimate victory for the workers. In 1907, he was falsely charged with the bombing murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, but was acquitted with the counsel of Clarence Darrow. The WFM dismissed him in 1918 because of his radicalism. That same year, the Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (future first commissioner of Major League Baseball) convicted him of violating the Alien and Sedition acts during the first Red Scare for his antiwar activism. They sentenced him to 20 years in prison. However, he jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union, where he died in 1928 from heart failure and alcoholism. His ashes were split between the Kremlin Wall Mausoleum and the Haymarket Martyrs Monument in Chicago. #workingclass #LaborHistory #bigbillhaywood #IWW #wfm #haymarket #kremlin #union #strike #capitalism #antiwar #socialism #soviet #sabotage #soviet #communism #sabotage #generalstrike #mlb #kremlin

However, it's not MAGA, per se, that is the target. It's the entire working class (incl many MAGAs, who are working class) and all marginalized communities, especially trans and immigrant people. And it's probably not just poor people affected by the looting of the treasury. So, is this the beginning of the biggest grift in US history, a corporate looting on the scale of Ferdinand Marcos? And will Melania get to take her shoes when they're finally driven into exile?

US flu continues to surge with 16 new pediatric deaths. Meanwhile, h5n1 bird flu continues to rage, with new outbreaks on poultry farms in 8 states. And the avian version of this is much more deadly than the bovine version. Get the human seasonal flu and h5n1 simultaneously (or if a cow, pig or bird does) and they could swap genes, creating a new deadly pandemic strain of h5n1 that spreads easily between people. Might wanna start masking up again, if you currently aren't. At the very least, it might save you from an unpleasant case of seasonal flu, covid or rsv.

CIDRAP

US flu activity climbs, with more deaths in kids

#birdflu #covid #pandemic #kids #H5N1 #flu #RSV #influenza

Life expectancy in Gaza dropped by nearly 50% during first year of the Israeli genocide. It now has lowest life expectancy of anywhere in the world. Life expectancy for men dropped from 73.6 years to 35.6. For women, it dropped from 77.5 to 47.5. By comparison, in Nigeria, which had had the lowest life expectancy, people live for an average of 54.46 years. However, the authors of the study admit that their estimate is probably very conservative and the real numbers are likely much worse. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02810-1/abstract #gaza #genocide #freepalestine #EndtheOccupation #israel #lifeexpectancy #publichealth

No one is Free until we ALL are free. #transrightsarehumanrights #lgbtq #fascism #antifa #antifascim #transphobia

Today in Labor History January 26. 1682: Benjamin Lay was born in England. Lay emigrated to the Provine of Pennsylvania, in British North America, where he became a radical Quaker activist against slavery, and for the rights of women and animals. He was a prolific writer on abolition and his “All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage” was one of the first abolitionist works published in the 13 Colonies. In an act of protest, he once stood outside a Quaker meeting in the middle of winter, barefoot, and without any coat. When passersby expressed concern for his health, he asked why they were not concerned for the health of the slaves, who were forced to work in the snow dressed as he was. He also once kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily to demonstrate to them how it felt when one’s relatives were stolen and sold. In another act of protest, this time in front of his Quaker brethren, he quoted the Bible saying that all men should be equal under God, and then plunged a sword into a Bible containing a bladder of blood-red pokeberry juice, which spattered over those nearby. He refused to consume any products made from slave labor. He was a vegetarian. He was roughly four feet tall, with a hunchback. He referred to himself as “Little Benjamin.” During the 2012 Occupy Movement, the Occupy encampment in Jenkintown, PA, where Lay was buried, activists renamed the town square as “Benjamin Lay Plaza.” #workingclass #LaborHistory #benjaminlay #slavery #abolition #racism #quakers #civildisobedience #directaction #feminism #animalrights #occupy

ICE raids of janitors in san francisco office buildings https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2025/01/25/immigration-trump-ice-offices-seiu-shorenstein.html #ice #immigration