Yes, gets at why Trump wants complete control over every source of information: universities free of leftists and pro-Palestinian activists; media networks completely servile to him; Turning Point clubs at every public school; Museums and K12 curriculum completely devoid of all references to any actual U.S. history that makes white Christians look at all bad; erasure of the genocide of Indigenous people; the rehabilitation of slavery from a brutal, oppressive, profitable system, to one that was paternalistic and actually helped black people; insistence that MAGAs are not fascists, but just good old patriotic Christians being oppressed by the Communist Democrats in Chicago, D.C., L.A., and Portland. But even this won't erase the fact that so many of us are struggling just to put food on the table, having to choose between paying rent or buying medicine, watching masked thugs disappear our neighbors, friends and coworkers, watching our tax dollars facilitate a genocide in Gaza, increasing finding ourselves at risk of becoming unemployed for our social media posts. Everyone can see this, feel this, even many of those who had voted for Trump in the first place. Why he's losing so many of his supporters. image
Today in Labor History September 30, 1918: White mobs, aided by federal troops, slaughtered as many as 237 African-American workers in the Elaine Massacre, in Arkansas. The workers had been organizing against the abuses of debt peonage (which still persisted there, nearly 50 years after the Civil War) and tenant farming. National newspapers repeated the lies coming from local officials that it was simply a response to an unprovoked black insurrection. And they prosecuted and convicted over 100 black men, sentencing 12 to death, though those 12 were eventually acquitted, thanks to legal support from the NAACP. The pogrom took place in a part of Arkansas that still had cotton plantations and many formerly enslaved people remained in the state after the Civil War to work as sharecroppers. Black folks outnumbered whites by 10 to 1. Yet the local government had completely disenfranchised black voters and implemented a system of Jim Crow and White Supremacy. The plantations were almost entirely owned by whites, who sold black tenant farmers equipment at inflated prices from their Company Stores and regularly underpaid them for their crops. Many of the black farmers had joined the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. However, the white farmers would routinely disrupt their meetings and refused to recognize them. The union men began stationing armed guards at the doors of the meetings. On September 29, two white men tried to enter without permission. Shots were exchanged. One of the white men was killed. Other whites organized a posse, claiming there was a black insurrection #workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #jimrow #whitesupremacy #civilwar #arkansas #pogrom #union #slavery image
Today in Labor History September 30, 1912: The Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike was in full swing. On this date, 12,000 textile workers walked out of mills to protest the arrests of two leaders of the strike. Police clubbed strikers and arrested many, while the bosses fired 1,500. IWW co-founder Big Bill Haywood threatened another general strike to get the workers reinstated. Strike leaders Arturo Giovannitti and Joe Ettor were eventually acquitted 58 days later. During the strike, IWW organizers Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came up with the plan of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to live with sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, a move that drew widespread sympathy for the strikers. Nearly 300 workers were arrested during the strike; three were killed. After the strike was over, IWW co-founder and socialist candidate for president, Eugene Debs, said "The Victory at Lawrence was the most decisive and far-reaching ever won by organized labor." Several novels have been written against the backdrop of this famous strike: The Cry of the Street (1913), by Mabel Farnum; Fighting for Bread and Roses (2005), by Lynn A. Coleman; Bread and Roses, Too (2006), by Katherine Paterson #workingclass #LaborHistory #BreadAndRoses #union #strike #IWW #massachusetts #bigbillhaywood #generalstrike #police #policebrutality #fiction #novel #historicalfiction #books #author #writer [@bookstadon]( ) image
Today in Labor History September 30, 1892: In the wake of the Homestead Steel Strike, union leaders were prosecuted for the crime of treason for the first time in U.S. history. Henry C. Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, convinced the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to issue warrants for the arrests of every member of the advisory board of the striking steel union for treason against the state. The 29 strike leaders were ultimately charged with plotting "to incite insurrection, rebellion & war against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." During the strike, Pinkerton detectives killed seven workers, who were protesting wage cuts of 18-26%. Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Frick, but failed, and spent many years in prison. He wrote about his imprisonment, and about anarchism, in his “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,” published by Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth Press. Read my article about the Pinkertons here: #workingclass #LaborHistory #carnegie #homestead #steel #strike #union #pinkerton #anarchism #union #treason #rebellion #alexanderberkman #EmmaGoldman #prison #memoir #books #author #writer [@bookstadon]( ) image
CDC reports that last year's influenza season was the deadliest for U.S. kids in 10 years. #publichealth #cdc #influenza #children #mortality
New monument commemorating the anti- Asian Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming. The massacre was led by the The Knights Of Labor, in 1885, a union that accepted women and African Americans, but remained rabidly racist toward Asian immigrant workers. They killed 28 Chinese laborers and destroyed the town's Chinatown. Ironically, the town of Rock Springs is situated in a county which voted 76% for Trump, and which actively collaborates with ICE, yet has celebrated an International Day for over 100 years to commemorate the 55 nationalities whose labor in the coal mines and on the Railroads built the town. https://www.npr.org/2025/09/28/nx-s1-5519752/wyoming-town-erects-new-monument-to-violent-anti-immigrant-history?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us #workingclass #LaborHistory #immigration #ice #trump #racism #Unions #KnightsofLabor
Yes, but the other side of the coin, moving people away from MAGA, Republicans, Christian nationalism, racism and homophobia, and toward a politics of compassion and solidarity, means offering them what they really crave and need, solutions to their economic despair and disempowerment, not more scapegoats and hatred toward marginalized communities. image
Today In Labor History September 29, 1941: Nazi forces, with the aid of the Ukrainian auxiliary police and local Ukrainian collaborators, began the two-day Babi Yar massacre, killing some 33,771 Jews. Other victims included Soviet prisoners of war, communists and Romani people. It was the largest single massacre in the Holocaust up to that date, and the 3rd largest, overall, after the 1941 Odessa massacre (>50,000 victims) and Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland (> 42,000 victims). During the Nazi occupation, up to 150,000 people in total were murdered at Babi Yar. #workingclass #LaborHistory #holocaust #ukraine #nazis #fascism #antisemitism #romani #jewish #massacre #babiyar #soviet #odessa #occupation image
Today In Labor History September 29, 1931: Estevan riot in Saskatchewan, Canada occurred when mounted police attacked striking coal miners, killing four. The miners were fighting for a raise, better working conditions and workplace safety, and an end to the Company Store monopoly. #workingclass #LaborHistory #canada #coal #mining #police #policebrutality #riot #canada image
Today In Labor History September 29, 1921: Lithuanian Jewish anarchist revolutionary Fanya Baron was executed by the Cheka on the personal order of Lenin. Baron spent her early life participating in the Chicago workers' movement and IWW. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, she moved to Ukraine and joined the Makhnovist movement. She was arrested and imprisoned by the Cheka. On July 1, 1921, she broke out of prison with the help of the Underground Anarchists and went to Moscow, where she was aided by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. However, on August 17, 1921, she was discovered and arrested again by the Cheka, tortured, and ultimately executed. When activists protested the repression of Baron and other anarchists, Trotsky said “we do not imprison the real anarchists, but criminals and bandits who cover themselves by claiming to be anarchists."[ #workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #russia #ukraine #nestermakhno #Revolution #prison #IWW #trotsky #Lenin #EmmaGoldman #FanyaBaron #chicago image