Hieronymous's blog

Oakland Educators Association (OEA) reached a tentative agreement to settle a 7-day strike in Oakland, California last week. Jack Gerson, retired Oakland teacher and former executive board and bargaining team member, gives his account of the dynamics of the walkout.

The following is my personal, subjective account of my experiences in Chicago for two back-to-back gatherings of working class militants and activists from April 5-8, 2018. The first was the Railroad Workers United Convention and the second was the Labor Notes Conference (I apologize in advance for my stream of consciousness digressions and clunky note-taking style).

For May Day 2017 Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union invoked a contractual "stop-work" privilege and refused to work any Bay Area docks in celebration of International Workers Day for the third consecutive year. This speech, originally delivered at the 75th Anniversary of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike at the Marine Firemen’s Hall in San Francisco, was adapted for the rally preceding the May Day march on May 1, 2017.

With the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, protests occurred in at least 370 cities around the world. The following is a subjective account of the Women's Marches that filled the streets of Oakland and San Francisco, California with hundreds of thousands on January 21, 2017.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in Oakland, California. I went to the Oakland Museum of California to see the exhibit "All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50" and it got me to reflect on how the Panthers and other movements of that era affected many radical projects that continued in their legacy.

James Green, labor historian, professor at University of Massachusetts, and writer died June 23, 2016 in Boston. He was the author of the definitive work Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America in 2006. Here's the New York Times obituary.

Grace Lee Boggs, founding member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency (where her party name was Ria Stone), has died at the age of 100 in Detroit. She was born on June 27, 1915 and passed away today, October 5, 2015

I just saw Straight Outta Compton near my home, in a tiny theater that dates back to the silent era (1913) and which has miraculously survived the wrecking ball. It brought up so many vivid memories and thoughts since N.W.A.'s music was kinda the soundtrack of my life as I grew into adulthood and was politicized by events depicted in the film.