Tax 'em? Fuck that. Abolish them!

Irish Examiner

Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

Today in Labor History December 10, 1907: The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clashed with animal rights protesters and cops. They had been protesting against a memorial for animals that had been vivisected that animal rights activists had erected. The Brown Dog affair raged for 7 years, from 1903 to 1910. Swedish feminists infiltrated the University of London lectures. There were pitched battles between medical students and the police. The authorities ordered the cops to protect a statue of a dog from irate medical students, known as “anti-doggers.” It led to a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. And, overall, it was a cause célèbre that divided the country. #workingclass #LaborHistory #Riot #animalrights #animalliberation #feminism #police #london #activism #directaction

Today in Labor History December 10, 1906: A year and a half after their founding, the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) launched the first sit-down strike in the U.S. at a General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York after three workers were fired. James Conolly, one of the IWW’s founding members and later martyr during the Easter Rising in Dublin, was supposedly involved in this strike. Their method was later adopted by the labor movement in the 1930s, with the Flint Sit-Down Strike being the most well-known. #workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #SitDownStrike #union #strike #solidarity #directaction #ge #generalelectric #sabotage #anarchism

Today in Labor History December 10, 1896: Alfred Jarry's play, Ubu Roi, premiered in Paris. At the end of the performance, a riot broke out. Many in the audience were confused and outraged by the obscenity and disrespect they felt in the performance. Others, like W. B. Yeats, thought it was revolutionary. Jarry’s work was a precursor to Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd. Ubu Roi is a parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth and parts of Hamlet and King Lear. However, having recently reread the play, I found an uncanny resemblance between Pere Ubu and Donald Trump. Originally conceived as the first in a trilogy satirizing greed, royalty, religion, stupidity and abuse of power by the wealthy. The two other plays were Ubu Cocu (“Ubu Cuckolded”) and Ubu Enchaîné (“Ubu in Chains”). The opening line of Ubu Roi is “Shit!” Characters had names like MacNure and Pissweet. Ubu’s scepter was a shit-smeared toilet brush. Jane Taylor wrote that Ubu “is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification.” Spanish artist Joan Miró used the image of Ubu Roi to satirize the fascist General Francisco Franco in 50 lithographs. #workingclass #LaborHistory #AlfredJarry #surrealism #dada #absurdism #theatre #Riot #shakespeare #writer #author #play [@bookstadon](

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Today in Labor History December 10, 1865: August Spies, anarchist labor organizer and Haymarket martyr was born. As he was led to the gallows (1887), he shouted, "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." In 1883, he was a leader in the Revolutionary Congress, in Pittsburgh, that launched the International Working People's Association in America. On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. to demand the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, Albert and Lucy Parsons led a peaceful demonstration of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue. It was the world’s first May Day/International Workers’ Day demonstration—an event that has been celebrated ever since, by nearly every country in the world, except for the U.S. Two days later, August Spies, addressed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper factory. Chicago Police and Pinkertons attacked the crowd, killing at least one person. On May 4, anarchists organized a demonstration at Haymarket Square to protest that police violence. The police ordered the protesters to disperse. Somebody threw a bomb, which killed at least one cop. The police opened fire, killing another seven workers. Six police also died, likely from “friendly fire” by other cops. The authorities went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons and August Spies. They executed four of them in 1887, including Parsons and Spies. Read more about the Haymarket affair here:

Michael Dunn

Lucy Parsons - Michael Dunn

Lucy Parsons anarchist communist revolutionary

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #AugustSpies #haymarket #EightHourDay #execution #deathpenalty #prison #Revolution

Today in Labor History December 10, 1861: Nguyễn Trung Trực, along with his militia, sunk the French lorcha L'Esperance. Nguyễn Trung Trực was a fisherman who organized and led a guerilla rebellion against French colonial forces in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam in the 1860s. They used snipers to assassinate isolated French soldiers and chased French soldiers around the countryside, attacking military installations that were left undefended. Their intimate knowledge of the territory and their skill in hit-and-run tactics allowed them to inflict substantial casualties on the European troops. #workingclass #LaborHistory #vietnam #mekong #colonialism #france #liberation #independence #guerrilla #NguyễnTrungTrực

Portuguese General Strike set for December 11-12 in response to labor "reforms." The two main trade union confederations, UGT and CGTP, are joining forces for a general strike in protest of the Government’s draft revision of the Labour Code.

idealista/news

General strike in Portugal on 11 December: flight cancellations expected

Portugal’s national trade unions have announced a general strike for Thursday, 11th December, the first time in 12 years.