Today in Labor History September 22, 1947: Norma McCorvey, American activist was born. She was the plaintiff in Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortions in the U.S. She grew up in a poor, working-class family. At the age of ten, she robbed a gas station with a girlfriend and ran away to Oklahoma City, where they were arrested after a maid walked in on them and caught them kissing each other. She was declared a ward of the state and sent to a Catholic boarding school, and then State School for Girls in Gainesville, Texas from age 11 to 15. After that, she lived with her mother’s cousin, who repeated raped her. At 16, she married Woody McCorvey (age 23), but left him after he assaulted her, and not long after gave birth to her first child. After this, she developed a drug and alcohol problem. Her mother kidnapped her baby and reported Norma to the police for “abandoning” her baby. Later, she tricked Norma into signing adoption papers, giving her custody of the child. Later in her life, she became an Evangelical Christian, and then a Roman Catholic, and participated in the anti-abortion movement. However, before she died, she admitted that she had been paid to speak out against abortion. She had also accepted money to renounce her lesbian identity. This video clip is from the satirical film, Citizen Ruth, with Laura Dern portraying a McCorvey-like character. #workingclass #LaborHistory #abortion #choice #RoeVsWade #lgbtq

Today in Labor History September 22, 1934: The United Textile Workers (UTW) strike committee ordered strikers back to work, ending the largest U.S. textile strike to date. Over 400,000 workers participated, mostly women. At least 18 of them died at the hands of militias, vigilantes and police. The strike began in the south and spread up the Eastern Seaboard. The governors of North and South Carolina deputized citizens (i.e., created vigilante squads) during the first week of the strike, issuing shoot-to-kill orders against any picketers who tried to enter a mill. As a result, 14 strikers were murdered in that first week. In the second week of the strike, the governor of Rhode Island mustered the National Guard, who used machine guns against strikers armed with flower pots and headstones they had taken from a nearby cemetery. The National Guard was also deployed in Maine, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In Georgia, strikers were arrested and held without charge, in World War I concentration camps. 34 strike leaders were held incommunicado. #workingclass #LaborHistory #textile #strike #women #feminism #union #policebrutality #police #nationalguard #vigilante #communism

Today in Labor History September 22, 1919: 400,000 steelworkers, in 50 cities, went on strike to protest intolerable working conditions. Union leaders believed that if they could organize the steel workers, it would lead to a massive wave of unionization across the country. Thus began the Great Steel Strike of 1919. The bosses, however, were able to turn public opinion against the workers by calling them Communists and immigrants. They attacked strike organizer William Z. Foster as a revolutionary syndicalist and Wobbly (IWW). They hired Pinkertons, who kicked out any workers who came from out of town to support the strike. And they got local governments to shut down meeting halls on the grounds of health and safety violations. Ultimately, they called upon federal troops, which helped crush the strike after 3½ months, killing several workers, and imprisoning hundreds. However, the leadership of the American Federation of Labor also doomed the strike. Their racist, nativist, and disdainful views toward the increasingly immigrant workforce, and their autocratic strategies, alienated many of the workers. And U.S. Steel’s labor spies within the workforce were quick to exploit and deepen the riffs these attitudes and tactics produced among the workers. #workingclass #LaborHistory #union #steel #strike #IWW #anarchism #communism #immigration #policebrutality #police #racism

Tens of thousands of workers marched throughout Italy today, while a General Strike brought transportation to a halt, and schools & universities were closed, during a nationwide protest to end Italian support for the Genocide in Gaza. If they can do it. Everyone can. Bring down the fascist Israel government and end the Genocide! And we can also do it here, in the U.S., not only to end the Genocide, but to bring down our own fascist government. But here it'll be tougher, Require grassroots and wildcat organizing, since the unions have been blocked from engaging in General Strikes since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act and have, for the most part, shown an unwillingness to support Palestine or resist the Trump administration.

Workers stage massive strike across Italy in support of Gaza – POLITICO

#generalstrike #gaza #freepalestine #italy #workingclass

Trump is the biggest union-buster in U.S. history. More than 1 million federal workers’ collective bargaining rights are at risk https://www.epi.org/blog/trump-is-the-biggest-union-buster-in-u-s-history-more-than-1-million-federal-workers-collective-bargaining-rights-are-at-risk/ #workingclass #union #trump