Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…

It is Labor Day -- people died so you could have this day off; for the right to bargain collectively, for the 40-hour week, and paid vacations. People died so that you could enjoy workplace safety and work while maintain at least a semblance of human dignity and living wage. The freedom to work with human dignity, and more, is what is under attack by the conservatives seeking to take us back to a time that never existed and into a neoliberal global slum.

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

-- Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

Not familiar with the history of labor struggles? That’s OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes in the history of Labor struggles, The Ludlow Massacre (click here for a more in-depth treatment), reads like something out of the history of a fascist state -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that the corporate-hired thugs would randomly shoot through the tent colony. The women and children were found dead, huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun (the Death Special, they called it) that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre (April 20^th), the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter was ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why conservatives abhor the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This is true of almost anyone who lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Like us today in the USA, there was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living, to speak out. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when the same forces came for them because there was no one left to speak out against the evil.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Labor Struggles [The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, well-versed in history and a wide range of subjects. I know this sounds like hubris, but it is isn’t, I’m simply claiming a little intellectual curiosity. Which is why I was taken aback one day some years ago when I was entering an NYU building for one of my classes and noticed a large wreath of flowers. There were no words, no plaque, no reason, apparently, for the wreath. When I asked a classmate, she looked at me in surprise, and asked, “You never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?” Actually, I never had heard of that horrific incident.

They say that history repeats itself, but I disagree. I tend to see history as a spiral not a circle (an important distinction). If you want to know where the current conservative Kool-Aid will lead us, then read on. This is the “America” the teatarded want to bring back (h/t Sam Smith)

* * *

-=[ The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire]=-

Those who refuse to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana

Note: My maternal grandmother toiled as a garment worker for decades.

The fire at the Triangle Shirt Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism.

The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement. The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed.

Brunswick Times Record editorial, ME - On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York City. It spread quickly through the factory, which made women’s blouses, known as “shirtwaists,” and occupied the top three floors of the building.

Most of the workers could not escape the flames, since doors leading to the roof were locked and flames prevented workers from descending stairwells or by an elevator that eventually buckled under the heat. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, most of them immigrant women, who either died in the flames or jumped to their deaths from the factory windows.

It was the deadliest industrial disaster in the city’s history, the fourth deadliest in the United States.

The fire, and the acquittal of the two owners in a criminal trial, helped spur factory workers to organize and join labor unions that would advocate for them against sweatshop working conditions, low wages and 50-hour work weeks.

A young woman named Frances Perkins was appointed as the lead investigator of the commission looking into how to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again. The commission took four years to complete its seven-volume report…

Perkins later become the first woman to hold a Cabinet post, serving as secretary of labor for the 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Her mind as well as her heart seared by what she had learned in the Triangle fire investigation, she was the driving force behind most, if not all, of FDR’s “New Deal” reforms. Among them:

The Wagner Act, which gives workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, which established for the first time a minimum wage and gave us the 40-hour work week.

The Social Security Act of 1935, legislation she literally nagged FDR to support, astutely recognizing that the dire conditions of the Great Depression were probably the only way such a sweeping economic security package would gain public support.

* * *

Company executives, showing no concern for the welfare of the women workers, managed to escape by secretly taking a freight elevator where they were rescued. It is said that girls and young women leapt from eighth- and ninth-story windows, their flaming skirts billowing in the wind. It horrified a nation and led to some of the first city, state and federal laws dealing with workers’ safety. It gave a powerful impetus to the fledgling labor movement, greatly strengthening the building of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which two years before the fire had led a three-month strike to focus attention on conditions in workplaces like the Triangle factory.

How easily we forget the sacrifices and victories of our own labor history.

More on the Shirtwaist Fire here

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...

Excavating the Future

¡Hola! Everybody...
The alternative online magazine, Subversify, has published my reflections on Wisconsin (click here). Feel free to go there and comment. The following is somewhat of a follow-up to that article...

* * *

-=[ The Future is Now ]=-

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it.

The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, 'Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.'

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it -- we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people -- for the first time in human history -- could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money -- if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now -- a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

For the past few weeks, regular, working-class people in Wisconsin have been staging mass protests in numbers that dwarf anything the Pee Farters -- with their access to billionaire dollars -- could only dream of. Sustained, mass protests fighting for the right to bargain collectively, arguably one of the main reasons we ever had a middle class of any worth in this country.

Sadly, the “libruhl” media (inexplicably owned by a handful of multinational corporations) has effectively ignored, misinterpreted, or downplayed this moment in history. God forbid some dimwit neocon Medicare recipient farts at a town hall meeting and the same quiescent media will stampede over itself to cover it, dissect its fragrance ad nauseum, and pontificate endlessly on its meaning.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but most of the good industrial jobs have left the country, and the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest Americans have quintupled their net worth, even in the midst of an economic disaster that only a fool would label a recession.

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and we have half the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, medical liabilities bankrupt the rest of us at record levels, one person in ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month.

Even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. companies just had their best quarter... ever. Businesses recorded profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago.

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs... but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have (duh!) but also committed to accumulating more, gets maybe a yawn from the dumb-down, apathetic American voter. In fact, our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Center-right politicians like Obama get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. And there’s no reason to declare class warfare.” It’s pathetic.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that even billionaires like Warren Buffett acknowledge that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire. In fact, Buffett contends, the wealthiest Americans should pay even more in taxes. The people in Wisconsin, representative of the majority of Americans, that bottom 4/5 who are barely keeping afloat, are now fighting this fight and it barely registers a yawn from many of you.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some points the future becomes the present, and the fact that it was once the future doesn’t mean it’s all fucked up once it arrives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization...

Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…
It is on days like today that I miss great Americans like Howard Zinn, who never failed to remind us never to forget…

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

-- James Baldwin (1924–1987)

I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make certain things we take for granted today. Stuff like fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations, for example, are a reality today because people fought for those rights.

That's OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on its history. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation who like to mouth clichés about the “good ole days,” well, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of safety in the workplace leading to disease and death, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and some others, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ shameful response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes, now known as the Ludlow Massacre, reads like something out of a fascist government -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special-- that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes organized labor; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why Corporate Christianity abhors the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This was the example of the Wiemar Republic -- the epitome of Western Civilization. Most of those people weren’t evil, they just didn’t act. There was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living to do anything. So after the butcher, the Jew, the homosexual, and then the teacher were gone, there was no one around to help when they came for them.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions, so that we could have better lives.

Love,

Eddie

Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…
I was watching Rachel Maddow's The Timothy McVeigh Tapes (about the Oklahoma City terrorist bombings) last night, and when they showed the children that were killed, maimed, and harmed, I just started crying...

Most war casualties are innocent women and children. I have a suggestion: form now on anyone proposing aggression as a way out of war should preface their rationale by first saying, “I propose to continue slaughtering innocent women and children because... ” It may not be as convincing as some patriotic bullshit slogan, but at least it's more honest.

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. -- James Baldwin (1924–1987)

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of a conservative orientation who like to mouth clichés about the “good ole days,” and taking their “country back,” well... they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace leading to disease and death, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and some others, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor Movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes, now known as the Ludlow Massacre , reads like something out of the history of a fascist state -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special-- that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that oppose unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why Corporate Christianity abhors the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much disinformation and unreason going around the country today. To stay quiet during times of injustice is to be complicit in its crimes. Read about those that lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Perhaps like you, they had too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living to do anything. So they stood by silently while they came for the butcher, and then the teacher, and finally the neighbor. Eventually, there was no one around to help when injustice knocked on their door.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who sacrificed their lives in the workplace for their convictions, so that we could have better lives.

Love,

Eddie

Labor Struggles

¡Hola! Everybody…
The rabid neocon fanatics and their enablers can call it what they want, but the fact is that some people just aren’t comfortable with the notion of an African-American president.

Period.

It is Labor Day -- people died...

* * *

-=[ The Ludlow Massacre ]=-

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

-- James Baldwin (1924–1987)

I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

That's OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores -- the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers -- would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation who like to mouth clichés about the “good ole days,” well, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace leading to disease and death, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and some others, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes, now known as the Ludlow Massacre, reads like something out of the history of a fascist state -- which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special-- that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why Corporate Christianity abhors the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. Ask anyone that lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they just didn’t act. There was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living to do anything. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when they came for them because everyone had been taken already.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions, so that we could have better lives.

Love,

Eddie