Today in Labor History February 21, 1937: The League of Nations banned foreign nationals from volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Nevertheless, thousands from Britain, the U.S. and other countries came to Spain and joined the Republicans in the fight against Franco and fascism. Altogether, over 59,000 international volunteers supported the anti-fascist cause, along with over 3,000 soviet “technicians.” Roughly 500,000 soldiers and civilians died in the war. The antifascist republican forces lost, leading to a 40-year fascist dictatorship.

One of the battalions of American volunteers was named the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company, after the anarchist IWW member Tom Mooney, who was framed for the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco. It was led by Oliver Law, a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops. Law was from West Texas and had worked as a stevedore. Due to his skill, Law quickly rose in the ranks of the Republican army. However, he died on July 9, 1937, as he led an attack on Mosquito Crest.

You can read more about Mooney here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/19/tom-mooney-and-warren-billings/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #TomMooney #AbrahamLincolnBrigade #SpanishCivilWar #fascism #dictatorship #antifascism #solidarity #civilwar #antifa #civilians #franco #spain #union #republican #blackhistorymonth #IWW #anarchism #communism #tommooney #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History February 21, 1937: The League of Nations banned foreign nationals from volunteering in the Spanish Civil War. Nevertheless, thousands from Britain, the U.S. and other countries came to Spain and joined the Republicans in the fight against Franco and fascism. Altogether, over 59,000 international volunteers supported the anti-fascist cause, along with over 3,000 soviet “technicians.” Roughly 500,000 soldiers and civilians died in the war. The antifascist republican forces lost, leading to a 40-year fascist dictatorship.

One of the battalions of American volunteers was named the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company, after the anarchist IWW member Tom Mooney, who was framed for the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco. It was led by Oliver Law, a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops. Law was from West Texas and had worked as a stevedore. Due to his skill, Law quickly rose in the ranks of the Republican army. However, he died on July 9, 1937, as he led an attack on Mosquito Crest.

You can read more about Mooney here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/19/tom-mooney-and-warren-billings/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #TomMooney #AbrahamLincolnBrigade #SpanishCivilWar #fascism #dictatorship #antifascism #solidarity #civilwar #antifa #civilians #franco #spain #union #republican #blackhistorymonth #IWW #anarchism #communism #tommooney #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History February 21, 1934: Augusto Cesar Sandino, Nicaraguan independence fighter, was assassinated by Somoza’s Nation Guard. While in exile in Mexico during the early 1920s, Sandino participated in strikes led by the IWW. Inspired by the anarcho-syndicalist union, he adopted their red and black logo as the colors for the revolutionary Nicaraguan flag. The Sandinistas, or FSLN, who overthrew the dictator, Anastasio Somoza, in 1979, were named for Sandino.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #sandinistas #sandino #IWW #anarchism #nicaragua #somoza #mexico #strike #Revolutionary #union

Today, in honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the life of Ben Fletcher (April 13, 1890 – 1949), Wobbly and revolutionary. Fletcher joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1912 and became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913. Also in 1913, he led a successful strike of over 10,000 dockers. At that time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. And its main leader in Philadelphia was an African American, Ben Fletcher.

By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the IWW maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. After the 1913 strike, Fletcher travelled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color. In 1918, the state arrested him for treason, sentencing him to ten years, for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years. Fletcher supposedly said to Big Bill Haywood after the trial that the judge had been using “very ungrammatical language. . . His sentences are much too long.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #benfletcher #union #strike #philadelphia #longshore #docker #waterfront #wwi #racism #blackhistorymonth #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History February 19, 1948: Joe Ettor died on this date. Ettor was an IWW union organizer, who helped spearhead the Lawrence Bread & Roses Strike of 1912. "If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put theirs there. With passive resistance, with the workers absolutely refusing to move, lying absolutely silent, they are more powerful than all the weapons and instruments that the other side has for attack." Ettor was active in the 1907 Portland lumber strike, the 1909 McKees Rocks Strike, the Pennsylvania coal strike of 1909-10, and a Brooklyn shoe factory strike in 1910-11.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #joeettor #IWW #union #strike #GeneralStrike #solidarity #sabotage #BreadAndRoses #lawrence #solidarity #capitalism

Today in Labor History February 19, 1912: During the IWW Bread & Roses Strike in Lawrence, MA, 200 police attacked 100 women picketers, knocking them to the ground and beating them. As a result, several pregnant women lost their babies.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #Lawrence #massachusetts #BreadAndRoses #strike #IWW #PoliceBrutality #women #police #union #joeetter #elizabethgurleyflynn

Today in Labor History February 17, 1936: The United Rubber Workers launched a sit-down strike at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio. The United Rubber Workers formed in 1935 in response to the depression, low wages and poor working conditions. The union regularly used the sit-down strike. It was particularly effective on the assembly line because workers who refused to work up the line, prevented anyone down the line from working, even if they hadn’t planned to strike. It also kept the workers on the premises, making it harder to bring in scab workers. The IWW tried to organize the rubber workers in the 1910s. However, vigilantes and martial law crushed their organizing drive.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #strike #akron #ohio #SitdownStrike #vigilantes #policebrutality

Today in Labor History February 17, 1906: The authorities arrested "Big Bill" Haywood and two others on trumped up charges for the murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Stuenenberg. Clarence Darrow successfully defended them, telling jurors, "If at the behest of this mob you should kill Bill Haywood, he is mortal, he will die, but I want to say that a million men will grab up the banner of labor where at the open grave Haywood lays it down . . ." The actual perpetrator was a one-time WFM union member named Harry Orchard, who was also a paid informant for the Cripple Creek Mine Owners' Association.

Haywood and his WFM comrades had been framed by James McParland, an agent for the Pinkertons Detective Agency. This was the same James McParland who framed dozens of Irish coal miners in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, whom he, and the media, had falsely branded as terrorists (Molly Maguires). Ten of them were executed in one day—the 2nd largest mass execution in U.S. history after the 1862 mass execution of 38 Dakota warriors. My novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, is about one of these Irish miners, a teenager named Mike Doyle.

Read more on the Pinkertons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/

Read more on the Molly Maguires here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/13/the-myth-of-the-molly-maguires/

You can get a copy of Anywhere But Schuylkill here:
keplers.com/
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
https://boundtogether.org//
https://www.historiumpress.com/michael-dunn

Or send me $27 via Venmo (@Michael-Dunn-565) and your mailing address, I will send you a signed copy! (Shipping included)

#workingclass #LaborHistory #BigBillHaywood #IWW #WFM #union #strike #mining #socialism #clarencedarrow #pinkertons #mollymaguires #terrorism #racism #irish #books #novel #historicalfiction #writer #author @bookstadon