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#lucyparsons
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#LucyParsons #MemoriaAnarquista
Un día como hoy, el 7 de marzo de 1942, Lucy Parsons, anarquista, cofundadora del sindicato revolucionario Industrial Workers of the World y defensora de toda la vida de los trabajadores, las personas sin hogar, las mujeres y los afroamericanos, murió en un incendio doméstico.
En lugar de votar a los políticos, Parsons abogaba por la acción directa para cambiar el mundo, aconsejando a los trabajadores:
"Nunca se dejen engañar de que los ricos les permitirán votar para quitarles su riqueza".
Tan peligrosa para las autoridades en la muerte como en la vida, la policía confiscó todos sus documentos y libros.
“What I want is for every dirty, lousy tramp to arm himself with a revolver or knife on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot their owners as they come out.”
This was what Lucy Parsons, then in her 80’s, told a crowd at a May Day rally in Chicago, at the height of the Great Depression. The way folk singer Utah Phillips tells the story, she was the image of everybody’s grandmother, prim and proper, face creased with age, tiny voice, hair tied back in a bun. She died in Chicago, Illinois, on this date in Labor History, March 7, 1942.
Little is known about Lucy Parson’s early life, but various records indicate that she was born to an enslaved African American woman, in Virginia, sometime around 1848-1851. She may also have had indigenous and Mexican ancestry. Some documents record her name as Lucia Gonzalez. In 1863, her family moved to Waco, Texas. There, as a teenager, she married a freedman named Oliver Benton. But she later married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate officer from Waco, who had become a radical Republican after the war. He worked for the Waco Spectator, which criticized the Klan and demanded sociopolitical equality for African Americans. Albert was shot in the leg and threatened with lynching for helping African Americans register to vote. It is unclear whether her initial marriage was ever dissolved, and likely that her second marriage was more of a common-law arrangement, considering the anti-miscegenation laws that existed then.
In 1873, Lucy and Albert moved to Chicago to get away from the racist violence and threats of the KKK. There, they became members of the socialist International Workingmen's Association, and the Knights of Labor, a radical labor union that organized all workers, regardless of race or gender. They had two children in the 1870s, one of whom died from illness at the age of eight. Lucy worked as a seamstress. Albert worked as a printer for the Chicago Times. These were incredibly difficult times for workers. The Long Depression had just begun, one of the worst, and longest, depressions in U.S. history. Jobs were scarce and wages were low. Additionally, bosses were exploiting the Contract Labor Law of 1864 to bring in immigrant workers who they could pay even less than native-born workers.
In 1877, Lucy and Albert Parsons helped organize protests and strikes in Chicago during the Great Upheaval. The police violence against the workers there was intense. One journalist wrote, “The sound of clubs falling on skulls was sickening for the first minute, until one grew accustomed to it. A rioter dropped at every whack, it seemed, for the ground was covered with them.” During the Battle of the Viaduct (July 25, 1877), the police slaughtered thirty workers and injured over one hundred. Albert was fired from his job and blacklisted, because of his revolutionary street corner speeches.
After the Great Upheaval, they both moved away from electoral politics and began to support more radical anarchist activism. Lucy condoned political violence, self-defense against racial violence, and class struggle against religion. Along with Lizzie Swank, and others, she helped found the Chicago Working Women's Union (WWU), which encouraged women workers to unionize and promoted the eight-hour workday.
During the late 1870s and early 1880s, she wrote numerous articles, including "Our Civilization, Is it Worth Saving?" and "The Factory Child. Their Wrongs Portrayed and Their Rescue Demanded." In 1884, she helped edit the radical newspaper The Alarm. She wrote an article for that paper, "To Tramps, the Unemployed, the Disinherited and Miserable," which sold of over 100,000 copies. In that article, she advocated using violence against the bosses. In 1885, she published "Dynamite! The only voice the oppressors of the people can understand," in the Denver Labor Enquirer. During this period, Lucy gave numerous fiery speeches on the shores of Lake Michigan. Hundreds of people routinely attended. Mother Jones thought her speeches advocated too much violence. The Chicago Police Department called her “more dangerous than 1,000 rioters.”
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 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, another anarchist, 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, in their outrage, went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons and August Spies. Lucy toured the country, giving speeches and distributing literature about the men’s innocence. Everywhere she went, she was greeted by police, often being barred entrance to the meeting halls where she was scheduled to speak. She was also arrested numerous times.
Despite her efforts, and those of other activists fighting to free the Haymarket anarchists, seven were ultimately convicted of killing the cops, even though none of them were present at Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown. Four were executed, in 1887, including Albert Parsons. On the morning of his execution, Lucy brought their children to see him for the last time, but she was arrested and taken to the Chicago Avenue police station, where they strip-searched her for explosives. Albert’s casket was later brought to Lucy’s sewing shop, where over 10,000 people came to pay their respects. 15,000 people attended his funeral. Several years later, the governor of Illinois pardoned all seven men, determining that neither the police, nor the Pinkertons, who testified against them, were reliable witnesses.
After her husband’s execution, Lucy continued her radical organizing, writing, and speeches. In October 1888, she visited London, where she met with the anarchists Peter Kropotkin and William Morris. In the 1890s, she edited and wrote for the newspaper Freedom, A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly. In 1892, Alexander Berkman (an anarchist comrade and lover of Emma Goldman) attempted to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, for his role in the slaughter of striking steel workers, during the Homestead Strike. Lucy published the following in Freedom: "For our part we have only the greatest admiration for a hero like Berkman."
In 1905, Lucy cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, James Connolly, and others. The IWW was, and still is, a revolutionary union, seeking not only better working conditions in the here and now, but the complete abolition of capitalism. The preamble to their constitution states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” They advocate the General Strike and sabotage as two of many means to these ends.
At the founding meeting of the IWW, Lucy said that women were the slaves of slaves. “We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Whenever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them.” She called on the new union to fight for gender equality and to assess underpaid women lower union dues. She also started advocating for nonviolent protest, telling workers that instead of walking off the job, and starving, they should strike, but remain at their worksites, taking control of their bosses’ machinery and property. This was years before Gandhi started leading Indians in nonviolent protest.
Read my entire biography of her here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
“When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.” –Lucy Parsons
See our blog on Lucy Parsons. Parsons was an oirganizer, activist and anarchist. The Chicago police said she was more “dangerous than a thousand rioters.” #LucyParsons.
HistorianSpeaksLucy Parsons, Black Anarchist and Human Rights AdvocateOn 7 March 1942, Lucy Parsons, Black anarchist, co-founder of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union and lifelong advocate for working people, the homeless, and women, died in a house fire.
“What I want is for every dirty, lousy tramp to arm himself with a revolver or knife on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot their owners as they come out.”
-Lucy Parsons
This was what Lucy Parsons, then in her 80’s, told a crowd at a May Day rally in Chicago, at the height of the Great Depression. The way folk singer Utah Phillips tells the story, she was the image of everybody’s grandmother, prim and proper, face creased with age, tiny voice, hair tied back in a bun.
Little is known about Lucy Parson’s early life, but various records indicate that she was born to an enslaved African American woman, in Virginia, sometime around 1848-1851. She may also have had indigenous and Mexican ancestry. Some documents record her name as Lucia Gonzalez. In 1863, her family moved to Waco, Texas. There, as a teenager, she married a freedman named Oliver Benton. But she later married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate officer from Waco, who had become a radical Republican after the war. He worked for the Waco Spectator, which criticized the Klan and demanded sociopolitical equality for African Americans. Vigilantes shot Albert in the leg and threatened to lynch him for helping African Americans register to vote. It is unclear whether her initial marriage was ever dissolved, and likely that her second marriage was more of a common-law arrangement, considering the anti-miscegenation laws that existed then.
In 1873, Lucy and Albert moved to Chicago to get away from the racist violence and threats of the KKK. There, they joined the socialist International Workingmen’s Association, and the Knights of Labor, a radical labor union that organized all workers, regardless of race or gender. They had two children in the 1870s, one of whom died from illness at the age of eight. Lucy worked as a seamstress. Albert worked as a printer for the Chicago Times. These were incredibly difficult times for workers. The Long Depression had just begun, one of the worst, and longest, depressions in U.S. history. Jobs were scarce and wages were low. Additionally, bosses were exploiting the Contract Labor Law of 1864 to bring in immigrant workers who they could pay even less than native-born workers.
Lucy and Albert Parsons helped organize protests and strikes in Chicago during the Great Upheaval. The police violence against the workers there was intense. One journalist wrote, “The sound of clubs falling on skulls was sickening for the first minute, until one grew accustomed to it. A rioter dropped at every whack, it seemed, for the ground was covered with them.” During the Battle of the Viaduct (July 25, 1877), the police slaughtered thirty workers and injured over one hundred. Albert was fired from his job and blacklisted, because of his revolutionary street corner speeches.
After the Great Upheaval, they both moved away from electoral politics and began to support more radical anarchist activism. Lucy condoned political violence, self-defense against racial violence, and class struggle against religion. Along with Lizzie Swank, and others, she helped found the Chicago Working Women’s Union (WWU), which encouraged women workers to unionize and promoted the eight-hour workday.
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 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, another anarchist, 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, in their outrage, went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons and August Spies. Despite her efforts, and those of other activists fighting to free the Haymarket anarchists, the courts ultimately convicted the seven men of killing the cops, even though none of them were present at Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown. They executed four of them in 1887, including Albert Parsons. On the morning of his execution, Lucy brought their children to see him for the last time. But the police arrested her and strip-searched her for explosives. Albert’s casket was later brought to Lucy’s sewing shop, where over 10,000 people came to pay their respects. 15,000 people attended his funeral. Several years later, the governor of Illinois pardoned all seven men, determining that neither the police, nor the Pinkertons, who testified against them, were reliable witnesses.
You can read my complete biography of Lucy here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
See our blog on Lucy Parsons. Parsons was an oirganizer, activist and anarchist. The Chicago police said she was more “dangerous than a thousand rioters.” #LucyParsons. https://historianspeaks.org/f/lucy-parsons-black-anarchist-and-human-rights-advocate
HistorianSpeaksLucy Parsons, Black Anarchist and Human Rights AdvocateOn 7 March 1942, Lucy Parsons, Black anarchist, co-founder of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World union and lifelong advocate for working people, the homeless, and women, died in a house fire.
Today in Labor History January 17, 1915: Lucy Parsons, anarchist and IWW cofounder, organized and led a hunger march of 1,500 people in Chicago. They carried banners saying, “We want work, not charity,” and “We refuse to starve!” Police attacked them with clubs and shot at them. Amazingly, no one was killed. They also arrested 15, including Parsons, for marching without a permit.
Useless quote for 10 Jan:
"I came to understand how organized governments used their concentrated power to retard progress by their ever-ready means of silencing the voice of discontent if raised in vigorous protest against the machinations of the scheming few …"
Lucy E. Parsons, in "The Principles of Anarchism: A Lecture", published as undated pamphlet c. 1905-1910
Link to source:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lucy-e-parsons-the-principles-of-anarchism
The Anarchist LibraryThe Principles of AnarchismLucy E. Parsons The Principles of Anarchism A Lecture ~1905–1910 A lecture by Lucy Parsons; published in Ahrens, Gale (Ed.). 2004. Lucy Parsons: Freedom,...
Today in Labor History January 2, 1905: A conference of 23 industrial unionists met in Chicago and issued a manifesto calling for an industrial Union Congress to be held in Chicago on June 27—a meeting that would lead to the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World (AKA: IWW or "Wobblies"). The IWW founding members were a veritable who’s who of radical labor leaders: Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, Daniel DeLeon, Vincent St. John, Ralph Chaplin.
The IWW was, and continues to be, a revolutionary union fighting for the abolition of bosses, an end to wage slavery, as well as worker control of the means of production, through organization and education, sabotage, direct action, mutual aid, and the General Strike. Their motto: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. At its height, in the 1910s, the IWW had well over 150,000 members in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. They have always had strong ties to anarchist and socialist movements and been staunchly opposed to imperialist and capitalist wars (No War but Class War). Over the years, dozens of IWW members were murdered by cops, goons and vigilantes. Hundreds were imprisoned and deported. Their offices were burned to the ground. Members were forced to run gauntlets. Some were lynched.
Despite the devastation to the union caused by the Palmer Raids (the first red scare) in the late 1910s, the IWW persisted. In the 1990s and 2000s, they spear-headed the original Starbucks Union Drive. They organized bike messengers, exotic dancers, janitors at queer night clubs, indie publishers, recyclers, food coops and Whole Foods. They were also involved in the 2016 prisoner strike at 20 prisons in the U.S., and in organizing a General Strike in Wisconsin, in 2011, in response to that state’s anti-union legislation and the subsequent occupation of the State House.
You can read more IWW history in the following articles:
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/?s=lucy+parsons
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/19/tom-mooney-and-warren-billings/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/
'let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife & lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich & stab or shoot the owners as they come out. let us kill them without mercy & let it be a war of extermination.' - lucy parsons, 1885
#classWar #tyrannicide #lucyParsons #UHC
Today in Labor History December 1, 1914: The famous labor song, "Solidarity Forever," was written on this date by IWW songwriter and cofounder Ralph Chaplin. He wrote the song for a hunger march to be led by Lucy Parsons in Chicago (on January 17, 1915). The song has been translated into many other languages, including French, German, Polish, Spanish, Swahili and Yiddish. And it is still commonly sung at union gatherings in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The inspiration for the song came from the brutal 1912-1913 Paint Creek-Cabin Creek mining strike, in West Virginia, led by Mother Jones and others. Private cops and vigilantes murdered at least 50 miners and their family members during that strike. Impressed with the solidarity and resolve of the miners, Chaplin began work on the song.
You can enjoy a Utah Phillips cover of the song here: https://youtu.be/OsPOgCPEeKs
And read my biography of Lucy Parsons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
youtu.be- YouTubeEnjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Today in Labor History November 10, 1887: Chicago Haymarket martyr Louis Lingg, 22, “cheated” the state the day before his scheduled execution by committing suicide in his prison cell. He exploded a dynamite cap in his mouth. It took him 6 painful hours to die. Using his own blood, he wrote "Hoch die anarchie!" (Hurrah for anarchy!) on the stones of his cell. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld granted Lingg a posthumous pardon because he, and his 7 codefendants were actually all innocent of the Haymarket bombing. None of them had even been present at Haymarket square when the bomb was thrown. All 8 were, however, anarchists, and were railroaded because of the political beliefs and affiliations.
On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. to demand the eight-hour workday. 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, another anarchist, 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, in their outrage, went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg and August Spies.
Read my article on Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket affair here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
Today in Labor History October 14, 1883: The two-day founding congress of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the Allegheny Turner Hall, marking the beginning of the anarchist-trade union movement in the US. Participants wore red badges and carried red flags. The congress endorsed militant labor organizing, overthrowing the state, and "propaganda by the deed," which included assassinations. Parsons, Spies, Johann Most, and others drafted the Pittsburgh Manifesto at this event. The manifesto called for the overthrow of the ruling class and replacing it with free cooperatives. The manifesto ends with the following line: “Tremble, oppressors of the world! Not far beyond your purblind sight there dawns the scarlet and sable lights of the JUDGEMENT DAY!”
Here are the basic principles called for in the manifesto:
1. Destruction of the existing class rule, by all means, i.e., by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international action.
2. Establishment of a free society based upon co-operative organization of production.
3. Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongering.
4. Organization of education on a secular, scientific, and equal basis for both sexes.
5. Equal rights for all without distinction to sex or race.
6. Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and associations, resting on a federalistic basis.
Preceding the IWPA was the Workingmen’s Party (WPUS), formed in Philadelphia in 1876, which played a major role in the Great Upheaval of 1877, particularly in St. Louis and Chicago. During that strike wave, over 100 workers were slaughtered by cops, Pinkertons and federal troops. Albert and Lucy Parsons were important organizers during that strike. However, the WPUS became dominated by Lasallian socialists, who opposed strikes and direct action, and believed they could vote capitalism away. The Parsons, and many others, were radicalized by the brutality against the Great Upheaval strikers, and subsequently became anarchists. The WPUS ultimately split as a result of the conflict between the anarchists, Marxists, and Lasallians, later becoming the Socialist Labor Party. And the anarchists left to form the IWPA, which helped unite Albert Parsons and August Spies and other anarchists who were later wrongly implicated in the 1886 Haymarket bombing. The subsequent witch hunt for anarchists, and the convictions and executions that followed the Haymarket bombing, effectively destroyed the IWPA.
Read my article on Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket Affair here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
Read my article “The Wide Awakes and the Antebellum Roots of Wokeness” to learn more about the Turner Society and the radical German immigrant abolitionists in the mid- to late 1800s: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/27/the-wide-awakes-and-the-antebellum-roots-of-wokeness/
Today in Labor History October 6, 1969: Shortly before the Days of Rage, the Weather Underground blew up a statue in Haymarket Square, Chicago commemorating the policemen who died in the Haymarket affair of 1886. It was rebuilt in 1970, only to be blown up again by the Weather Underground. After being rebuilt again, Mayor Daley posted a 24-hour armed police guard, at a cost of over $67,000 per year. But it was eventually moved to an enclosed area of Police Headquarters. The statue was erected in 1889. In 1927, on the 41st anniversary of the Haymarket affair, a streetcar jumped its tracks and crashed into the monument because the driver was "sick of seeing that policeman with his arm raised." In 1968, on the 82nd anniversary of the Haymarket affair, activists vandalized it with black paint in protest of police brutality against the antiwar movement.
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, another anarchist, 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. The courts ultimately convicted seven anarchists of killing the cops, even though none of them were present at Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown. They executed four of them in 1887, including Albert Parsons. After her husband’s execution, Lucy continued her radical organizing, writing, and speeches. In 1905, she cofounded the IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, James Conolly and others.
You can read my more about the Haymarket anarchists, Lucy Parsons, and the fight for the 8-hour day here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #haymarket #anarchism #police #policebrutality #policebombing #acab
#chicago #weatherunderground #lucyparsons #eighthourday #lucyparsons #IWW #mayday #internationalworkersday #bombing
![Workers finish installing Gelert's statue of a Chicago policeman in Haymarket Square, 1889. The statue was destroyed by a bomb in 1969 and a replica now stands at the Chicago Police Headquarters. By A[dolph]. Witteman - Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-14452) http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3774.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3424497](https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/261/510/605/939/857/original/202109268d0ccb6e.jpg)
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons
#anarchisme #anarchismechretien #illegalisme #anarchismeexpropriateur
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchisme
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchisme_chr%C3%A9tien
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ill%C3%A9galisme_(anarchisme)
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchisme_expropriateur
fr.m.wikipedia.orgLucy Parsons — Wikipédia
Today in Labor History September 12, 1918: Eugene V. Debs, Labor leader and socialist, was sentenced to 10 years, under the Sedition Act, for opposing World War I. While in jail he received one million votes for president. In the late 1800s, he led several railroad strikes and helped found the American Railway Union. In 1905, he cofounded the IWW, along with Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, James Connolly, and others. He ran for president as a socialist five times in his life.
Today in Labor History July 26, 1877: Federal troops killed 15-30 workers at the "Battle of the Viaduct," Chicago, during the Great Upheaval (AKA Great Train Strike). During the battle, U.S. troops and police attacked about 5,000 workers at Halsted & 16th Street in Chicago. A judge later found the police guilty of preventing the workers from exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly. Future Haymarket anarchist martyrs were involved in the organizing, particularly Albert Parsons, and his wife, future IWW cofounder, Lucy Parsons. The events of this strike radicalized them and they became anarchists soon after.
The Great Upheaval was a national strike wave involving major uprisings in Martinsburg, WV, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Boston, Reading, PA, New York and many other cities. I write about it in my historical “Great Upheaval Trilogy.” My first book, “Anywhere But Schuylkill,” takes place in the years immediately preceding the Great Upheaval and will hopefully be out by the end of this year. Book II, “Red Hot Summer in the Smoky City,” my current WIP, takes place in Pittsburgh, at the height of the Great Upheaval.
You can read my complete article about the Great Upheaval here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/31/the-great-upheaval/
You can read my biography of Lucy Parsons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
And you can get my book from these indie book sellers:
https://www.keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
https://christophersbooks.com/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #chicago #massacre #railroad #generalstrike #wildcat #strikewave #IWW #socialism #haymarket #anarchism #lucyparsons #policebrutality #policemurder #fiction #novel #historicalfiction #writer #author #books @bookstadon
Grupo de Estudos Lucy Parsons
Depois de ler muito a Lucy, vamos ler sobre a Lucy! Em nosso próximo encontro vamos debater os textos “Reflexões sobre o #anarquismo de #LucyParsons” de Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz e “As divergências entre Lucy Parsons e #EmmaGoldman” de @escurecendoanarquismo. Ambos os textos estão no livro “Mais perigosa que mil manifestantes”, publicado por @escurecendoanar
https://bibliotecaterralivre.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/23/grupo-de-estudos-lucy-parsons-6/
#GrupoDeEstudos
bibliotecaterralivre.noblogs.orgGrupo de Estudos Lucy Parsons | Biblioteca Terra Livre
Today in Labor History July 10, 1894: The Pullman Rail Car strike was put down by 14,000 federal and state troops. Over the course of the strike, soldiers killed 70 American Railway Union (ARU) members. Eugene Debs and many others were imprisoned during the strike for violating injunctions. Debs founded the ARU in 1893. The strike began, in May, as a wildcat strike, when George Pullman laid off employees and slashed wages, while maintaining the same high rents for his company housing in the town of Pullman, as well as the excessive rates he charged for gas and water. During the strike, Debs called for a massive boycott against all trains that carried Pullman cars. While many adjacent unions opposed the boycott, including the conservative American Federation of Labor, the boycott nonetheless affected virtually all train transport west of Detroit. Debs also called for a General Strike, which Samuel Gompers and the AFL blocked. At its height, over 200,000 railway workers walked off the job, halting dozens of lines, and workers set fire to buildings, boxcars and coal cars, and derailed locomotives. Clarence Darrow successfully defended Debs in court against conspiracy charges, arguing that it was the railways who met in secret and conspired against their opponents. However, they lost in their Supreme Court trial for violating a federal injunction.
By the 1950s, the town of Pullman had been incorporated into the city of Chicago. Debs became a socialist after the strike, running for president of the U.S. five times on the Socialist Party ticket, twice from prison. In 1905, he cofounded the radical IWW, along with Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood and Irish revolutionary James Connolly. In 1894, President Cleveland designated Labor Day a federal holiday, in order to detract from the more radical May 1st, which honored the Haymarket martyrs and the struggle for the 8-hour day. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the Pullman strike ended, with the enthusiastic support of Gompers and the AFL.
Today in Labor History June 27, 1905: The Industrial Workers of the World (AKA IWW or the Wobblies) was founded at Brand's Hall, in Chicago, Illinois. The IWW was a radical syndicalist labor union, that advocated industrial unionism, with all workers in a particular industry organized in the same union, as opposed by the trade unions typical today. Founding members included Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, Eugene V. Debs, Lucy Parsons, and Mother Jones. The IWW was and is a revolutionary union that sought not only better working conditions in the here and now, but the complete abolition of capitalism. The preamble to their constitution states: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. It also states: Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
They advocate the General Strike and sabotage as two of many means to these ends. However, sabotage to the Wobblies does not necessarily mean bombs and destruction. According to Big Bill Haywood, sabotage is any action that gums up the works, slowing down profits for the bosses. Thus, working to rule and sit-down strikes are forms of sabotage. The IWW is the first union known to have utilized the sit-down strike. They were one of the first and only unions of the early 20th century to organize all workers, regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, language or type of work (e.g., they organized both skilled and unskilled workers). They also were subjected to extreme persecution by the state and by vigilantes working for the corporations. Hundreds were imprisoned or deported. Dozens were assassinated or executed, including Joe Hill, Frank Little, Wessley Everest and Carlo Tresca. And scores were slaughtered in massacres, like in McKees Rock railway strike, PA (1909); Lawrence Textile Strike, MA (1912); San Diego Free Speech Fight, CA (1912); Grabow, LA Lumber Strike (1912); New Orleans, LA banana strike (1913); Patterson, NJ textile strike (1913); Mesabi Range Strike, MN (1916); Everett, WA massacre (1916); Centralia, WA Armistice Day riot (1919) and the Columbine, CO massacre (1921). There was also the Hopland, CA riot (1913), in which the police killed each other, accidentally, and framed Wobblies for it.
There are lots of great books about the IWW artwork and music. The Little Red Songbook. The IWW, Its First 50 Years, by Fred Thompson. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, by Joyce Kornbluth. But there are also tons of fictional accounts of the Wobblies, too. Lots of references in Dos Passos’, USA Trilogy. Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, was influenced by his experience working as a Pinkerton infiltrator of the Wobblies. The recent novel, The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter, has a wonderful portrayal of Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, during the Spokane free speech fight. And tons of classic folk and protest music composed by Wobbly Bards, like Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, Haywire Mac and T-Bone Slim.
To learn more about the IWW and its organizers you can read the following articles I wrote:
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/24/lucy-parsons/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/03/16/the-haywire-mac-story/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/19/tom-mooney-and-warren-billings/
https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #generalstrike #sabotage #bigbillhaywood #freespeech #scabs #pinkertons #eugenedebs #motherjones #lucyparsons #assassination #prison #deportation #anarchism #socialism #books #fiction #folkmusic #author #write @bookstadon
