North America
1886: The Bay View Massacre
The little known history of the massacre that occurred in Milwaukee, when 7,000 building workers and 5,000 Polish workers demanded the eight-hour work day.
The deadly stand-off between workers and the National Guard was the culmination of events that began on Saturday May 1, 1886.
A historical marker, pictured above, is located at Russel and Superior on Jones Island in Bay View. It commemorates the Bay View Massacre.
1911-1970s: Unions and workers: limitations and possibilities, by Martin Glaberman
Detroit auto-worker Martin Glaberman analyses the bureaucratisation and decline of the US trade union movement. An interesting article interspersed with historical information and personal reminiscences
Consider these two units of time: 36 seconds, the rest of your life. The job that takes 36 seconds to do that you're going to do for the rest of your life. I don't know a better definition of alienation than that...
1600-1980: Introduction to the United States - Noel Ignatiev
Introduction to the United States: An Autonomist Political History, Noel Ignatiev
PUBLISHER'S INTRODUCTION
Revolutionary Syndicalism in Mexico - John M. Hart
A short history of Mexican anarcho-syndicalism, which dominated the early labour movement prior to and during the Mexican Revolution.
"The Mexican revolutionary syndicalists: their form of organization - anarchosyndicalist; their leadership - artisan and professional; their numbers - 150 000; their goals - the seizure and operation of the means of production and the onset of worldwide proletarian revolution; their means - revolutionary war against capitalism by workers' militias and the general strike."
Jean Seberg - screen icon and Black Panther supporter
Born in Iowa in 1938, Jean Seberg was an iconic actress of the 1960s and 70s whose support for radical politics led to her being hounded by the FBI as part of a wider campaign against the American New Left.
Though she had starred in respected films beforehand (for instance playing Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan), it was not until her role as Patricia, aspiring journalist and American girlfriend of a Parisian thug, in Jean-Luc Godard's new wave cinema classic, Breathless, that Seberg earned her place as a cinematic icon.
Danny Glover - lifelong activist
Lethal Weapon actor Danny Glover has a long history of radicalism, from the opposition to the Vietnam war, through to the Panthers, the Iraq war and anti-racism today.
Born in San Francisco to two postal workers and NAACP activists, Danny Glover went on to study at San Francisco State University where he participated in the longest student strike in US history.
Precarious and pissed off: Lessons from the Montpelier Downtown Workers' Union, 2003-2005
An account and analysis of the Vermont Workers' Center's innovative but ultimately failed attempt to set up a geographically-based union in the state's capital.
By Sean West
Beginnings and Endings
The MOVE bombing, 1985
Historical information about the police bombing of the predominantly black radical lifestlye grouping MOVE, which killed eleven people and left hundreds homeless.
Introduction
MOVE is an organisation formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1972 by John Africa and Donald Glassey - a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a back-to-nature lifestyle and preached against technology.
1983: Leave the slave-driving to us - Chris Fillmer
The 1983 GreyHound BusLines employees strike.
On Dec. 19, 1983, 74% of the Greyhound BusLines employees who belong to the Amalgamated Transit Union voted to accept a contract with Greyhound that amounted to a 15% wage/benefit cut overall.
The Pittsburgh Proclamation of 1883
The proclamation of the 1883 Congress of the anarchist International Working Peoples' Association, taken from the English edition of Freiheit, 27 December 1890, by Johann Joseph Most.
Comrades!
In the Declaration of Independence of the United States we read: "When in a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."
