Today in Labor History August 15, 1918: The American 27th Infantry landed in Vladivostok to join a Japanese-initiated attack against Bolshevist forces. The soldiers suffered from problems with fuel, ammunition, supplies, and food. Their horses, used to temperate climates, couldn’t function in sub-zero Russia. And their water-cooled machine guns froze and became useless. During their 19 months in Siberia, 189 U.S. soldiers died.
Upton Sinclair referenced the Siberian expedition in his novel “Oil!” and blamed capitalist motives for the intervention.
Today in Labor History August 14, 1791: Dutty Boukman led a Vodou ceremony with enslaved people from Saint Domingue plantations that led to the start of the Haitian Revolution, the largest slave uprising since the Spartacist revolt against the Romam empire. Boukman was born in Senegambia. His name, Boukman, came from the English “Book Man,” because he not only knew how to read, but taught other enslaved people how to read. He, and priestess Cécile Fatiman, had led a series of meetings with enslaved people prior to August 14 to organized and plan for the uprising. Boukman was killed by French troops a few months into the revolution. Trinidadian Marxist writer C. L. R. James wrote the best book on the Haitian Revolution: “The Black Jacobins,” (1938). Also, be sure to check out the wonderful music of the contemporary Haitian pop group, Boukman Eksperyans, named for the Haitian revolutionary, Dutty Boukman. A fictionalized version of Boukman plays the title character in Guy Endore's novel “Babouk,” an anti-capitalist parable about the Haitian Revolution.
A 15yo coal miner needs a new home before his alcoholic uncle kills one of his siblings. So, he takes a job with a union leader, who’s also a gangster, while secretly courting his daughter. Now the gang leader, cops and rival gang all want him dead.
Today in Labor History August 11, 1894: Federal troops drove over 1,000 jobless workers from the nation's capital. Led by Charles "Hobo" Kelley, an unemployed activist from California, and Jacob Coxey, they camped in Washington D.C. starting in July. Kelley's Hobo Army included a young journalist named Jack London and a young miner-cowboy named Big Bill Haywood. Frank Baum was an observer of the protest and some say it influenced his Wizard of Oz, with the Scarecrow representing the American farmer, the tin man representing industrial workers and the Cowardly Lion representing William Jennings Bryan, all marching on Washington (Oz) to demand redress from the president (the Wizard). 650 miners, led by a "General" Hogan, captured a Northern Pacific train at Butte, Montana, en route to the protest. The Feds caught up with them at Billings, forcing a surrender, but a few eventually made it to Washington.
I just published the first chapter of my second book in the Below the Heavens series, ZhiXia! It is a direct continuation of the first, with only a very small timeskip in between.
You can find it on Royal Road, under Chapter 27: Mourne, link in bio!
It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.
@bookstodon Damn, just heard the news that Milan Kundera has died. I've recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and loved it. I'm actually currently working on a new video about this #novel. RIP to one of the greats.
Today in Labor History July 5, 1888: Three women were fired from the Bryant & May factory in East London for exposing the appalling working conditions there. Women typically had to work 14-hour days at very low wages and they often suffered debilitating diseases, like Phossy Jaw, from exposure to white phosphorus. The other 1400 women and girl laborers come out in solidarity leading to the “Match Girls' Strike” which was unsuccessful as a strike, but highly effective at generating solidarity and galvanizing the working-class movement. In 1966, Bill Owen and Tony Russell produced a musical about the strike called “The Matchgirls.” Welsh writer Lynette Rees wrote about it in her novel, “The Matchgirl.”