Replies

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History December 5, 1928: The Colombian military slaughtered up to 2,000 people in the Banana Massacre. Workers had been on strike against United Fruit Company since November 12. They were participating in a peaceful demonstration, with their wives and children. The Columbian troops set up machine guns on the rooftops near the demonstration and closed off the access streets so no one could escape. The soldiers threw the dead into mass graves or dumped them in the sea. U.S. officials in Colombia had portrayed the workers as communists and subversives and even threatened to invade if the Colombian government didn’t protect United Fruit’s interests. Gabriel García Márquez depicted the massacre in his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” as did Álvaro Cepeda Samudio in his “La Casa Grande.”

United Fruit, which is now called Chiquita, controlled vast quantities of territory in Central America, and the Caribbean, maintained a near monopoly in many of the banana republics in which it operated (e.g., Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica). By 1930, it was the largest employer in Central America and the largest land owner. In 1952, the government of Jacobo Arbenz, in Guatemala, began giving away unused land, owned by United Fruit, to landless peasants. In 1954, the CIA deposed the Arbenz government, leading to decades of brutal dictatorship and genocide of Guatemala’s indigenous population. The head of the CIA at that time was former board member of United Fruit, Allen Dulles, who also oversaw the over throw of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the MK Ultra LSD mind control experiments.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@NoraGottlieb @bookstadon yes, it is. And dole isn't any better.

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@NoraGottlieb @bookstadon
Btw, coincidentally, the scientist who led the MK Ultra mind control experiments for the CIA, as well as developing poisons to assassinate Castro and Lumumba, was named Gotlieb.

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History October 2, 1937: Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the execution of Haitians living in the border region of the Dominican Republic, resulting in the genocidal Parsley massacre of up to 35,000 Haitians. Trujillo was obsessed with race. He’d use pancake make-up to lighten his skin color and hide his Haitian roots. And even so, the wealthy Dominicans still snubbed him for his working-class family origins. One week prior to the massacre, he publicly accepted a gift of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, whose racial theories he clearly embraced. He used racism to distract Dominicans from their poverty, which had been exacerbated by the Great Depression, and by Trujillo’s corrupt rule.

Edwidge Danticat’s historical fiction, “The Farming of Bones,” takes place during the time of the massacre.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@Seltsam @bookstadon

A long, sordid history!

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

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.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@Npars01 @bookstadon

And as a tax shelter

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@hannu_ikonen @bookstadon @jalcine

Best democracy money can buy

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

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.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@ericgjovaag @bookstadon

But i saw it on Wikipedia. So it has to be true!

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@ericgjovaag @bookstadon

I was being facetious

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History September 9, 1828: Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright was born. He is most famous for novels like Anna Karina, and War and Peace. He chose the name for the latter after reading French anarchist Proudhon’s publication called War and Peace. Tolstoy also wrote many short stories, an autobiography and many works of nonfiction. After witnessing a public execution in 1857, he wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." In the 1870s, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which led him to become a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and which he wrote about in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). He also wrote about nonviolent resistance in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wittgenstein. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel prizes in both literature and peace.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@ebrandom @bookstadon

Kinda does look like a cell phone

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

“In the tradition of Upton Sinclair and Jack London, Michael Dunn gives us a gritty portrait of working-class life and activism during one of the most violent eras in U.S. labor history. Anywhere but Schuylkill is a social novel built out of passion and the textures of historical research. It is both a tale of 1870s labor unrest and a tale for the inequalities and injustices of the twenty-first century.”

-Russ Castronovo, author of Beautiful Democracy and Propaganda 1776.

Available on Sep 19, 2023, from all the usual online distributors, or direct from my publisher: http://wix.to/M9gMx11

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@6G @bookstadon

Actually, 20 were hanged. 10 were hanged on the "Day of the Rope," June 21, 1877. Six hanged at Pottsville (James Carroll, James Roarity, Hugh McGehan, James Boyle, Thomas Munley, Thomas Duffy) and four at Mauch Chunk (Edward Kelly, Michael Doyle, Alexander Campbell, John Donahue) https://www.counterpunch.org/2007/06/21/the-day-of-the-rope/

Over the next 2 years, 10 more were executed, including Thomas Fisher, John "Black Jack" Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter McManus, Dennis Donnelly, Martin Bergan, James McDonnell and Charles Sharpe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@6G @bookstadon

But you are right that it was 20 all in 1877.

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History August 30, 1948: Fred Hampton revolutionary activist and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party was born. He founded the antiracist, anti-class Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that included Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. In December 1969, the Chicago police & FBI drugged Hampton, shot him and killed him in his bed during a predawn raid. They sprayed more than 90 gunshots throughout his apartment. They also killed Black Panther Mark Clark and wounded several others. In January 1970, a jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.

Stephen King refers to Hampton in his novel “11/22/63” (2012). In that book, a character suggests that if you could travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, it could have a ripple effect that also prevented Hampton's assassination.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@jalcine @bookstadon

You are probably right. Kennedy wouldn't have ended racism. He certainly wouldn't have ended capitalism. Therefore Hampton would still most likely have been the same sort of activist that he was.

However, King was writing fiction, not nonfiction. It was speculative. I did not use him as a source for anything. Merely mentioned that he wrote this speculative piece.

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History August 28, 1921: The Soviet Red Army dissolved the stateless Anarchist Free Territory, after driving the Black Army out of Ukraine. The anarchist rebel leader, Nester Makhno, barely escaped, and with serious injuries.

The Free Territory within Ukraine, also known as Makhnovia (after Nestor Makhno), lasted from 1918 to 1921. It was a stateless, anarchist society that was defended by Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army (AKA the Black Army). Roughly 7 million people lived in the area. The peasants who lived there refused to pay rent to the landowners and seized the estates and livestock of the church, state and private landowners, setting up local committees to manage them and share them among the various villages and communes of the Free State.

Michael Moorcock’s “A Nomad of the Time Streams” is a steampunk/alternative history novel where Makhno survives into the 1940s.

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@3s25q2ec @bookstadon

Maybe not the word choice he would've used

MikeDunnAuthor, to bookstadon
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

Today in Labor History August 25, 1819: Allan Pinkerton was born. He founded the Pinkerton private police force, whose strike breaking detectives (Pinkertons, or 'Pinks') gave us the word 'fink' as they slaughtered dozens of workers in various labor struggles. Ironically, Pinkerton was a violent, radical leftist as a youth. He fought cops in the streets as a member of the Chartist Movement. He had to flee the UK in order to not be imprisoned and executed. Yet in America, he became the nation’s first super cop. He created the secret service. He foiled an assassination attempt against Lincoln. He fine-tuned the art of spying on activists and planting agents provocateur in their ranks. His agents played a major role in destroying the miners’ union in the 1870s, as portrayed in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.” Later, they assassinated numerous organizers with the IWW and came within inches of successfully getting Big Bill Hayward convicted on trumped up murder charges.

Anywhere But Schuylkill will be out in early September, 2023, from Historium Press: https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/it/michael-dunn

You can read my satirical biography of Pinkerton here: https://marshalllawwriter.com/the-eye-that-never-sleeps/

@bookstadon

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@paul_ipv6 @bookstadon
Nicely done!

MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonberger @bookstadon

Idk. The German etymology does senm to come up more often

Private
MikeDunnAuthor,
@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

@matzeschmidt @bookstadon

Coal miners, strike, violence, but there's where the comparison ends

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • KamenRider
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • KbinCafe
  • Socialism
  • oklahoma
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • All magazines
    •