Today in Labor History March 29, 1948: Police attacked striking members of the United Financial Employees’ Union and arrested forty-three in the “Battle of Wall Street.” This was the first and only strike in the history of the New York or American Stock Exchanges. #workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #policebrutality #wallstreet #stockexchange #police

Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol were adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,” (made famous by Billie Holiday). The sons maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958. The Modern School movement began in 1901, in Barcelona, Spain, when Francisco Ferrer opened his Escuela Moderna. It was one of the very first Spanish schools to be fully secular, co-educational, and open to all students, regardless of class. His ideas were so popular that 40 more Modern Schools opened in Barcelona in just a few years, while 80 other schools adopted his textbooks. In 1909, there were mass protests and a General Strike against Spanish intervention in Morocco. The state responded with a week of terror and repression, during which they slaughtered over 600 workers and falsely executed Ferrer as an instigator of the protests. His execution led to worldwide protests. Modern Schools started to pop up outside of Spain, inspired by his original Escuela Moderna, including 20 in the U.S. For more on the Modern School movement, read my article:

Michael Dunn

The Modern School Movement - Michael Dunn

Share via: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More (Published in Fifth Estate, Spring 2022) In the wake of the punitive No Child Left Behind and Race to the...

#workingclass #LaborHistory #deathpenalty #execution #rosenbergs #espionage #ussr #soviet #communism #prison #SingSing #obama #strangefruit #anarchism #modernschool #abelmeerepol

With another executive order, Trump has ended collective bargaining rights for >1 million federal workers. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/nx-s1-5343474/trump-collective-bargaining-unions-federal-employees #trump #Unions #unionbusting #collectivebargaining

They'll call you a communist, or a radical leftist, for suggesting that the rich pay their share, let alone any, taxes. But this is actually just a liberal reform. Certainly, better than what we have today, with most of these parasites paying no taxes at all. But wouldn't it be nicer if we rid our bodies and communities of these deadly parasites once and for all? Create a world without bosses or capitalism?

Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck. #workingclass #LaborHistory #memphis #union #strike #racism #MartinLutherKing #assassination #PoliceBrutality #WorkplaceDeaths #police #tennessee #wages

Today in Labor History March 28, 1979: Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, in Pennsylvania, had a level-5 partial meltdown, the worst nuclear power accident in U.S. history, and one of the worst in the world, prior to Chernobyl. TMI operators had not been adequately trained to handle the type of malfunction that led to the meltdown and, consequently, a delay in mitigation efforts. Clean-up began in 1993, at a cost of $2 billion in today’s dollars. Officials concluded that the release of radioactive material from the plant did not raise exposure levels of nearby residents to a level that would increase cancer cases by even one additional case. However, anti-nuclear groups hired their own independent investigators who found that radiation levels in the area were significantly elevated. A peer-reviewed study by Dr. Steven Wing found a significant increase in cancers from 1979-1985 among people living within ten miles of TMI. And in 2009, Dr. Wing said that the amount of radiation released during the accident was likely "thousands of times greater" than the NRC's estimates. In 2024, Bill Gates obtained exclusive rights to the “carbon-free” energy from TMI, once it reopens, to power his Artificial Intelligence farms, starting in 2028. Other Tech Barons are also looking to exploit nuclear power for their energy-hungry AI farms. Data centers currently account for about 1 to 1.5 percent of global electricity use. NVIDIA will be shipping out over 1.5 million AI server units per year by 2027. These servers, alone, would consume at over 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than many small countries use in a year. Yet, the U.S. still has no permanent radioactive waste storage facilities. As of 2023, the U.S. had roughly 88,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors, and all of this is stranded at the reactor sites. Experts expect this number to grow by 2,000 metric tons each year. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai/index.html

Scientific American

The AI Boom Could Use a Shocking Amount of Electricity

Powering artificial intelligence models takes a lot of energy. A new analysis demonstrates just how big the problem could become

Scientific American

Nuclear Waste Is Piling Up. Does the U.S. Have a Plan?

We needs a permanent national nuclear waste disposal site now, before the spent nuclear fuel stored in 35 states becomes unsafe

#workingclass #LaborHistory #radioactive #nuclear #threemileisland #nuclearaccident #radiation #nuclearwaste #artificialintelligence #ai #billgates #chernobyl #cancere #publichealth