Today in Labor History June 7, 1971: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that clothing with the words "Fuck the Draft" was protected by the First amendment. The Court overturned the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This, of course, could quickly change under the current far rightwing court. In 1968, Kiyoshi Kuromiya designed this poster and sent orders by mail. He was arrested by the FBI and charged with sending indecent material through the Post Office. Later that year, after beating the charges, Kuromiya defied the authorities by handing out 2000 of the posters at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The photo is of Detroiter Bill Greenshields was taken at random during a 1967 March on the Pentagon and used by Kuromiya. There has been no draft in the U.S. since 1973. Ending conscription was one of President Nixon’s campaign promises (not because he opposed conscription or imperialistic wars, but because he wanted to undermine the antiwar protest movement). However, if NATO continues its reckless escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, and their threat to station hundreds of thousands of troops along Russia’s entire western border, from Finland to the Balkans; or the U.S. attempts to fight Iran with boots on the ground; or the U.S. goes to war with China the mass slaughter could rise to the scale of World War II. And this could force the U.S. and Europe to reimpose the draft, so that they are not forced to replicate Ukraine’s desperate move of sending people over the age of 50 to the front. Indeed, Germany is already considering reimposing conscription because they can’t find enough willing volunteers. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/06/06/germany-is-thinking-about-bringing-back-conscription #workingclass #LaborHistory #antiwar #SCOTUS #freespeech #fuck #firstamendment #peace #dnc #fbi #pentagon #ukraine #russia #NATO #draft #conscription #slaughter #nixon #imperialism #china #iran #taiwan

Today in Labor History June 7, 1929: Striking textile workers battled police in Gastonia, North Carolina, during the Loray Mill Strike. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt was accidentally killed by one of his own officers during a protest march by striking workers. Nevertheless, the authorities arrested six strike leaders. They were all convicted of “conspiracy to murder.” The strike lasted from April 1 to September 14. It started in response to the “stretch-out” system, where bosses doubled the spinners’ and weavers’ work, while simultaneously lowering their wages. When the women went on strike, the bosses evicted them from their company homes. Masked vigilantes destroyed the union’s headquarters. The NTWU set up a tent city for the workers, with armed guards to protect them from the vigilantes. One of the main organizers was a poor white woman named Ella May Wiggans. She was a single mother, with nine kids. Rather than living in the tent city, she chose to live in the African American hamlet known as Stumptown. She was instrumental in creating solidarity between black and white workers and rallying them with her music. Some of her songs from the strike were “Mill Mother’s Lament,” and “Big Fat Boss and the Workers.” Her music was later covered by Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie, who called her the “pioneer of the protest ballad.” During the strike, vigilantes shot her in the chest. She survived, but later died of whooping cough due to poverty and inadequate medical care. For really wonderful fictionalized accounts of this strike, read “The Last Ballad,” by Wiley Cash (2017) and “Strike!” by Mary Heaton Vorse (1930). #workingclass #LaborHistory #EllaMayWiggans #textile #women #feminism #union #communism #vigilante #policebrutality #police #acab #solidarity #folkmusic #laborsongs #racism #poverty #northcarolina #fiction #HistoricalFiction #author #writer #books #novel @npub1wceq...lzu8

Today in Labor History June 7, 1896: Anarchists supposedly set off a bomb during a Corpus Christi parade in Barcelona, Spain. As a result, a dozen people died and thirty were wounded. No one knows who actually set off the bomb, but the government blamed anarchists, who had set off numerous bombs over the previous four years. Consequently, the government went on a witch-hunt, arresting and torturing dozens of anarchists in the infamous Montjuich Prison. However, many leading anarchists denied the accusations and said they would never have set off a deadly bomb in a working-class community like this. They reserved their attacks for members of the ruling class. Nevertheless, the government tried and executed five anarchists, all of whom proclaimed their innocence. They sentenced 67 others to life in prison. Worldwide protests erupted in response. Montjuich Prison was graphically depicted in the opening scene Victor Serge’s epic novel, Birth of Our Power, which he wrote while imprisoned in the Soviet Union for his opposition to Stalin. #workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #spain #barcelona #bombing #prison #torture #VictorSerge #soviet #russia #stalin #writer #author #books #fiction #novel @npub1wceq...lzu8

Today in Labor History June 7, 1892: The authorities arrested Homer Plessy for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train. He lost the resulting court case, the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, which codified segregation and paved the way for Jim Crow. The ruling is commonly known as “separate, but equal,” and was later ruled “unequal” in actuality, in 1954, in Brown v Board of Education. On the one-year anniversary of Plessy’s act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi was forcibly ejected from a train in Pietermaritzberg, South Africa for refusing to vacate a 1st class carriage for a white man, in a similar act of civil disobedience. #workingclass #LaborHistory #plessy #racism #jimcrow #gandhi #southafrica #civildisobedience #directaction #brownvboardofeducation #SCOTUS