#workers v capitalists

[vanishingsydney]

It's election day! The Federal Election comes around every three years in Australia. Voting is compulsory and prevents extreme polarisation. Local born & bred Inner West boy and leader of the Australian Labor Party, Anthony "Albo" Albanese, is expected to be elected as Australia's next leader by the 17.3M folks across the country who have the vote and must use it in this one. He'd be the first Prime Minister ever to hail from this little part of Sydney. With the independent Australian Electoral Commission running the vote, the result is never disputed, ever. Go Albo. Go you good thing! Marrickville and Leichhardt.

#election #australian election #vote #vote the bastards out #albo #scomo #politics #political #workers v capitalists #it's a sign #streetscape #federal election #poll #albanese #prime minister #local boy made good #vote early #corflutes #street posters #yard signs #ephemeral #inner west sydney

[thatquietsong]

The Pullman Strike of 1894, led by the American Railway Union, was one of the greatest strikes in American history. Workers were protesting layoffs, low wages, and the high cost of rent in company towns, and it spanned across more than half the states. It was the first time the federal government intervened and (literally) stomped out a strike by sending 10,000 federal troops, and legislation was enacted to make it harder for strikes to occur in big industries like this going forward. But because capitalists doubled down the way they did, it essentially kickstarted the modern American labor movement, which, as we know, led to historical improvements in the workforce. It directly led to Labor Day becoming a federal holiday. And Eugene Debs, who had led the strike, would go on to win nearly a million votes when running for president in prison on the Socialist Party ticket.

#eugene debs #eugene v. debs #pullman strike #railway #railway workers #strike #history #leftist #radical #socialist #communist #capitalist #capitalism #revolt #revolution #reform #union #working class #rent #living wage #labor day #American history

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

#does this make sense #to do be deleted probably yikes #(takes a swing at a wasp's nest) #like i think ppl have started to just be really quiet when they like something 'problematic' #and im like... u can be like - #girl tswift NEEDS to just TAKE A BUS . LIKE????????????????????? #while also being like. #''she's a lot of fun'' #if ur personal policy is that u don't support her for that reason that's great #but it's like. eating meat??? #like yeah some people won't bc the environment. but the fact i eat meat doesn't mean i hate the earth #like i can say that i think the meat industry is HORRIFIC and also downright cruel to its employees #but like. still enjoy a chicken nugget.... #there are people who choose otherwise. it's okay . we are people. i make like no money. u probably don't either #us fighting about whether or not it's Right To Eat The Chicken Tender just distracts from like. #actually turning your ire on the corporation #i hope it's clear what i'm saying here is like. when we fight each other for Purity Reasons #we are just doing the work of corporations . for free. like they WANT us to be doing this lol #it's the fucking DREAM of the upperclass that now ALL forms of responsibility fall on the individual

[raskies456]

made the mistake of assuming that pointing out the underlying xenophobia of a statement my mom made would get her to re-evaluate the statement instead of, you know, doubling down on the xenophobia ///////:

#456 words #vent sorta #xenophobia #i usually try to avoid talking politics w my mom so it caught me off guard #bc it’s not like she’s conservative in many ways she is further left than I am #she’s the biggest b3rnie Stan in the family #tho considering his foreign trade policy stuff . hmm. #anyway #I usually deflect any sort of politics bc even when we agree she just goes on and on about how everything is awful and it’s v draining #but yeah she was saying how it was bad that foreign shareholders could control the policy of companies in the us and exploit US workers #and that they could use corporations to influence government policy by funding politicians #and I was like. okay but like. these are issues w the power held by corporations in America #the fact that corporations can fund politicians and aren’t taxed for externalities and can exploit workers #is the issue #it doesn’t matter whether the people exploiting the workers or influencing American policies are foreign or American? #anyway. this did not go well #she just doubled down trying to explain why she thought non American capitalists were worse than American capitalists #and I was like oh okay what the fuck #d/on+ r3 bolg #also like. mom. you immigrated here

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Vice surrenders

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in LA with Adam Conover at Vroman's, then on MONDAY in Seattle with Neal Stephenson, then Portland, Phoenix and more!

Vice died the way it lived: being suckered in by smarter predators, even as it trained its own predatory instincts on those more credulous than its own supremely gullible leadership. RIP, we hardly knew ye.

For those of you who don't know, Vice was a Canadian media success story. It was founded by a motley clique of hipsters, one of whom – founder of the Proud Boys – has since grown to be one of the world's great fascism influencers. Another perfected the art of getting young people to work "for exposure" even as he built a massive, highly lucrative media empire on their free labor:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/vice-oral-history/

Eventually, Vice transitioned to a string of progressively worsening corporate owners, each more dishonest, predatory – and gullible – than the last. The company was one of the most enthusiastic marks for Facebook's infamous "pivot to video" – in which Mark Zuckerberg destroyed half the media industry by tricking them into thinking that the public was clamoring for video content, based on fraudulent viewing numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video

Vice went all-in on video, spending hundreds of millions to finance Zuckerberg's doomed attempt to conquer Youtube. But unlike other the rubes who got zucked, Vice found greater fools to scam, convincing giant, slow-moving meidia companies that the best way to get in on the Next Big Thing was to shower them with vast sums of string-free money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceland_(Canadian_TV_channel)

And yet, at every turn, through a succession of increasingly incompetent owners who bought the stumbling, declining Vice at fire-sale prices and then proceeded to hack away at the wages and tools its journalists depended on while paying executives salaries so high that they beggared the imagination, Vice's reporters continued to turn out stellar material.

This went on literally until the last moment. The memorial posted by 404 Media rounds up a selection of major stories Vice's beleaguered, precarious writers produced even as Vice's vulture capitalist leadership were pulling the rug out from under them:

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-vices-legacy-and-the-idea-that-the-internet-is-forever/

True to form, those private equity scumbags locked all those workers out of the company's CMS without notice – and then forgot to lock down the podcasting back-end. That allowed a group of Vice veterans – Matthew Gault, Emily Lipstein, Anna Merlan, Tim Marchman and Mack Lamoureux – to gather for a totally unauthorized, tell-all session that they pushed out on an official Vice channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKT4OtDEJRA

It's a hell of a listen. Not only do these Vice veterans have lots of fascinating history to recount, but they also describe the conditions under which those blockbuster stories of Vice's final days were produced. As the "visionary leaders" of the company paid themselves millions, they halted payments to key suppliers, from Lexisnexis to the interview transcription service the writers depended on. Writers paid out of pocket to search PACER court records.

Not only did Vice's reporters do incredible work under terrible and worsening circumstances, but the Vice writers who got out ahead of the total collapse are also doing incredible work. 404 Media is a writer-owned investigative news publisher founded by four Vice escapees – Samantha Cole, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, which is both producing incredible work and sustaining the writers who founded it:

https://www.404media.co/

All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion: whatever problems Vice had, they didn't include "writers don't do productive work" and also didn't include "that work isn't economically viable*. Whatever problems Vice had, they weren't problems with Vice's workers – it was a problem with Vice's bosses.

Which makes Vice's final, ignominious punishment at the hands of those bosses even more brutal, stupid and inexcusable. According to the leaked memos emanating from the company's investors and their millionaire C-suite toadies, the business's new strategy is abandoning their website in order to publish on social media.

This is…I mean, this,..

This is…

Wow.

I mean, wow.

The thing is, the social media business model is a giant rug-pull. They're not even bothering to hide their playbook anymore. For social media, the game is to encourage media companies to become reliant on third parties to reach their audiences. Once that reliance is established, the companies turn down – or even halt – the ability of those media companies to reach their audience altogether. Then, they charge the media companies to reach their audiences:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Now, this wasn't always quite so obvious. Back when Vice was falling for Facebook's "pivot to video," it wasn't completely obvious that the long con was to take your audience hostage and ransom them back to you. But deliberately organizing your business to be reliant on social media barons today? It's like trusting your money to Sam Bankman-Fried…in 2024.

If there was ever a moment when the obvious, catastrophic, imminent risk of trusting Big Tech intermediaries to sit between you and your customers or audience, it was now. This is not the moment to be "social first." This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn't take a Sun Tzu – as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and Tiktok make gambits like "Lucy and the football" look like von Clausewitz.

The most bonkers part of this strategy is that it's coming from private equity bosses, who laud themselves as the great strategists of the 21st century, whose claim on so much of our global capital and resources is derived from their brilliant insight, which allows them to buy "distressed assets" like Vice, "restructure" them to find "efficiencies" and sell them on.

The reality is that PE goons – like other financiers – are basically herding animals. Everyone's hit on the tactic of buying up beloved media companies – from the 150-year-old Popular Science to modern publications like CNet – and then filling them with spammy garbage in the hopes that Google will fail to notice and continue to award them pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The fact that these billionaire brain-geniuses can't figure out how to "turn around" a site whose workers a) produce brilliant, popular, successful work; and b) depart to found successful firms that commercialize that work tells you everything about their ability to spot "a good business opportunity."

PE – like other mafiosi – only have one business-plan, the "bust out," where you invade a business that produces useful things, force them to pay your chosen suppliers sky-high fees for things they don't need, extract massive fees for your "management" and then walk away from the collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

#pluralistic #vice #motherboard #posse #apps #enshittification #media #chumboxes #botshit #bust outs #news bailouts

[pattern-recognition]

Take a concrete example. Can a Great-Russian Marxist accept the slogan of national, Great-Russian, culture? No, he cannot. Anyone who does that should stand in the ranks of the nationalists, not of the Marxists. Our task is to fight the dominant, Black-Hundred and bourgeois national culture of the Great Russians, and to develop, exclusively in the internationalist spirit and in the closest alliance with the workers of other countries, the rudiments also existing in the history of our democratic and working-class movement. Fight your own Great-Russian landlords and bourgeoisie, fight their ‘culture’ in the name of internationalism, and, in so fighting, ‘adapt’ yourself to the special features of the Purishkeviches and Struves – that is your task, not preaching or tolerating the Slogan of national culture.

The same applies to the most oppressed and persecuted nation – the Jews. Jewish national culture is the slogan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of our enemies. But there are other elements in Jewish culture and in Jewish history as a whole. Of the ten and a half million Jews in the world, somewhat over a half live in Galicia and Russia, backward and semi-barbarous countries, where the Jews are forcibly kept in the status of a caste. The other half lives in the civilised world, and there the Jews do not live as a segregated caste. There the great world-progressive features of Jewish culture stand clearly revealed: its internationalism, its identification with the advanced movements of the epoch (the percentage of Jews in the democratic and proletarian movements is everywhere higher than the percentage of Jews among the population).

Whoever, directly or indirectly, puts forward the slogan of Jewish ‘national culture’ is (whatever his good intentions may be) an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter of all that is outmoded and connected with caste among the Jewish people; he is an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, those Jewish Marxists who mingle with the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and other workers in international Marxist organisations, and make their contribution (both in Russian and in Yiddish) towards creating the international culture of the working-class movement – those Jews, despite the separatism of the Bund, uphold the best traditions of Jewry by fighting the slogan of ‘national culture’.

Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism – these are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world, and express the two policies (nay, the two world outlooks) in the national question. In advocating the slogan of national culture and building up on it an entire plan and practical programme of what they call ‘cultural-national autonomy’, the Bundists are in effect instruments of bourgeois nationalism among the workers.

Lenin, V. I., Critical Remarks on the National Question (1913)

#Lenin

[chaifootsteps]

"Under a pay per second system, the more an animator produces the more money they make. It's rather elegant as it rewards more skilled animators with better compensation and motivates them to work harder thus ensuring production moves at a steady pace. A salary system doesn't have that advantage. Regardless of output, everyone would be paid relatively the same which means there's less incentive to go above and beyond and instead do the bare minimum in terms of efficiency." [emphasis mine]

it's kind of disturbing to see someone make this argument. they're essentially admitting that they think animators do not deserve equal pay or a steady salary. Instead they need the fear of God about earning a living wage being put into them so that they will crunch - or rather, 'go above and beyond', there's a classic capitalist euphemism if ever I saw one - in order to put out as much as possible. (also it ignores that not all shots are the same - more complex shots take more time, but I don't see them suggesting more complex shots should be paid more per second completed?)

Does it not occur to these types that having a steady pay rate produces less stressed workers? And less stressed workers can be relied upon to (in their words) go above and beyond anyway, maybe because people also like fulfillment in their jobs?? That there's no reason to believe they'll do 'the bare minimum' because the employment process exists for the purposes of finding animators who will put their heart into their work?

Back on the pilot someone made a whole video about how they added in a little joke about Freckle being tired after dragging the coffin, because they trusted the studio to reward them for adding a little flavor to their shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5ZDGNRDZN4

Do these people making 'animators need the whip cracking and only care about money' type arguments not realize that a lot of people actually care about their work, and a job well done? And having stable pay actually helps them do more of it, not less? And there are studies showing this exact phenomena across other disciplines??

Sorry to get heated, it just baffles me seeing this kind of pro-crunch pro-capitalist nonsense being peddled. Maybe they're young, maybe they're acting in bad faith. But anyone else who sees this kind of post should know that Lackadaisy fighting to make better standards for animators in indie studios is what we should expect everywhere, including production studios who already have the budget to do better. But it's so noticeable they're trying to staple onto Lackadaisy the attitude that, according to employees, ruined the indie atmosphere at Spindle - the underlying assumption and attitude of that post is that the art and end product matter more than the people

And that needs to change

No, no apologies for getting heated, that one gave me a bumper crop of the creeps. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from a 19th century coal baron, or the manager of an Amazon fulfillment warehouse.

Kudos to Lackadaisy for being the change they want to see in the world.

#Anonymous #Lackadaisy #actual blog post

[iberiancadre]

Let the bourgeoisie and the pacifists, the generals and the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalists and the philistines, the pious Christians and the knights of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals vent their fury against that revolution. No torrents of abuse, calumnies and lies can enable them to conceal the historic fact that for the first time in hundreds and thousands of years the slaves have replied to a war between slave-owners by openly proclaiming the slogan: “Convert this war between slave-owners for the division of their loot into a war of the slaves of all nations against the slave-owners of all nations.” For the first time in hundreds and thousands of years that slogan has grown from a vague and helpless waiting into a clear and definite political programme, into an effective struggle waged by millions of oppressed people under the leadership of the proletariat; it has grown into the first victory of the proletariat, the first victory in the struggle to abolish war and to unite the workers of all countries against the united bourgeoisie of different nations, against the bourgeoisie that makes peace and war at the expense of the slaves of capital, the wage-workers, the peasants, the working people. This first victory is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships, at the price of unprecedented suffering, accompanied by a series of serious reverses and mistakes on our part. How could a single backward people be expected to frustrate the imperialist wars of the most powerful and most developed countries of the world without sustaining reverses and without committing mistakes! We are not afraid to admit our mistakes and shall examine them dispassionately in order to learn how to correct them. But the fact remains that for the first time in hundreds and thousands of years the promise “to reply” to war between the slave-owners by a revolution of the slaves directed against all the slave-owners has been completely fulfilled—and is being fulfilled despite all difficulties. We have made the start. When, at what date and time, and the proletarians of which nation will complete this process is not important. The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown. Gentlemen, capitalists of all countries, keep up your hypocritical pretence of “defending the fatherland”—the Japanese fatherland against the American, the American against the Japanese, the French against the British, and so forth! Gentlemen, knights of the Second and Two-and a-Half Internationals, pacifist petty bourgeoisie and philistines of the entire world, go on “evading” the question of how to combat imperialist wars by issuing new “Basle Manifestos” (on the model of the Basle Manifesto of 1912). The first Bolshevik revolution has wrested the first hundred million people of this earth from the clutches of imperialist war and the imperialist world. Subsequent revolutions will deliver the rest of mankind from such wars and from such a world.

Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, V. I. Lenin, 1921. via marxists.org

#Lenin #quote

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

(Part 2)

(Part 3)

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Douglas P. Marsh

"The strike was called November 9th, 1903. … The whole state of Colorado was in revolt.” – Mother Jones

It’s well known how, in 1905, the famous “Big” Bill Haywood helped found the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago with Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Eugene V. Debs and others. Fewer know that Colorado – specifically the Colorado Labor Wars – was where Haywood and several other wobbly founders forged bonds of solidarity among miners and learned the pitfalls of business unionism. Or, that it’s where Haywood ran for governor, albeit from inside an Idaho jail cell.

And very few know that Colorado’s most successful strike took place under IWW leadership, during an overlooked surge in the union’s influence between 1927 and 1928.

Western Federation of Miners and the founding of the IWW

Approaching the turn of the 20th century, in the American West’s mining industry, big Capitalists were putting the squeeze on Labor and conditions were increasingly mean. Workers from Idaho, Montana and Colorado began organizing and, in 1893, would form the Western Federation of Miners.

WFM’s initial strikes took place in Colorado, with Cripple Creek’s first miner’s strike of 1894, and after that, in Leadville in 1896-1897. Haywood joined the WFM in 1896 as did another of IWW’s earliest members, Adolphus S. Embree, in 1899.

In Idaho, 1899, mine workers, armed and masked, hijacked a train and blew up mining equipment belonging to operators that refused to sign a WFM contract. The equipment was targeted because it was at the cutting edge in mining technology of the time and thus extremely expensive.

The event terrified bosses on both sides of the national border. At the time, Haywood was also in Idaho, while Embree was farther north in British Columbia, Canada, both mining precious metals. Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg declared martial law, convincing President McKinley to deploy soldiers and detaining over a thousand men in a barn without trial.

By 1903, tensions would erupt into what is now remembered as the Colorado Labor War, where employers brought against workers the most systematic use of violence in U.S. labor history. In the face of brutal suppression, miners executed multiple coordinated direct actions in at least six mining towns throughout the state in 1903 and 1904.

Galvanized in these and other struggles in the region, radical factions within the WFM sent delegates to Chicago in June of 1905 to help found a new organization to compete with the American Federation of Labor in uniting workers from different industries.

The IWW was founded as AFL’s radical alternative – staunchly international and anti-capitalist – fiercely critical of the AFL’s privileging skilled labor and its tolerance of nativist sentiments.

Back in Idaho, Steunenberg was assassinated in a bombing outside his Caldwell residence in late December, 1905.

Colorado and the IWW’s early years

The IWW’s second convention, in 1906, began in open conflict and concluded in schism.

As with many revolutionary organizations, the IWW was internally divided from the outset. Many members drawn from the AFL brought the federation’s reformist tendencies, while WFM dual-carders (workers affiliated with two unions) included members with more conservative beliefs.

“The struggle for control of the organization formed the Second convention into two camps. The majority vote of the convention was in the revolutionary camp. … On the adjournment of the convention the old officials seized the general headquarters, and with the aid of detectives and police held the same, compelling the revolutionists to open up new offices,” – Vincent St. John

A few months after the convention, “Big” Bill Haywood was arrested in Denver at WMF headquarters and transported to Idaho, where he was accused of orchestrating the assassination of former governor Steunenberg. From his Boise jail cell, he won over 16,000 votes for governor of Colorado on the Socialist Party of Colorado ticket while designing WFM posters and reading Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. By the end of 1907, the WFM would cut ties with IWW, Haywood would leave the WFM in 1908.

Dual-carding wobblies were likely involved in continuing labor disputes in Colorado, including the infamous Ludlow Massacre of 1914. The IWW had held free speech rallies in Denver in 1912 and 1913, and A.S. Embree was seen during the long strike (1910-1914) which preceded the massacre and other events of the Colorado Coal War.

In 1916, IWW leadership determined to wage a major campaign, authorizing “an appropriation of $2,000.00 be made for organizing the miners of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Idaho,” (Proceedings of the Tenth Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. Chicago, 1916, page 61). Embree and another wobbly, Frank Little, were two of the external organizers sent to the field. They arrived to find the IWW forgotten to most miners and a united front among bosses and government agencies.

The Mountain West and the Fall of the IWW

“Guns, revolvers, machine guns came to Bisbee as they did to the front in France. ‘Shoot them back into the mines,’ said the bosses,”.

“Then on July 12th, 1,086 strikers and their sympathizers were herded at the point of guns into cattle cars in which cattle had recently been and which had not yet been cleaned out; they were herded into these box cars, especially made ready, and taken into the desert. Here they were left … without food or water to die,”- Mother Jones

The United States entered World War I in the spring of 1917. Early that summer, workers with IWW Local 800, fighting for better conditions in Arizona’s copper mines, were ready for action. A.S. Embree had been organizing miners operating out of Bisbee, with another IWW leader coordinating from Phoenix. Just before the strike, the Phoenix offices were moved to Salt Lake City, and Embree was cut off.

Though over 2,000 workers joined the Bisbee strike, a posse of even more assembled on behalf of the bosses and selected 1,200 deportees to load onto a train, later to be dumped in the desert over a hundred miles away. They were held in Columbus, New Mexico for over two months by federal troops who had been on the hunt for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

It was the largest deportation in U.S. labor history.

After release, A.S. Embree would travel north to copper mine strikes in Butte, Montana where IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched, on August 1, 1917. Little was the second of three early IWW martyrs along with Joe Hill, an IWW songwriter, organizer, and activist executed by firing squad in Utah, in 1915, and Wesley Everest, a former Serviceman and Lumberjack who was lynched by a mob while defending his union hall following the 1919 Seattle General Strike.

Embree had earned a reputation in subsequent strikes in and around Montana as IWW’s “ablest tactician” while also returning to Tucson, Arizona to face down incitement of riot charges over events at Bisbee. He was targeted by federal agents from 1917-1920 who provided evidence to prosecutors in Idaho, where he was sent to state prison from 1921 to 1924 on charges of, so-called, “criminal syndicalism.” 

Disrupting the copper industry during war-time production led in part to the federal government’s overwhelming and devastating attacks on the IWW. These began on September 5, 1917, when state and local forces initiated raids against IWW offices, as well as private residences of the union’s leaders, all across the U.S.

In the end over 150 wobblies were arrested and charged under the then new Espionage Act. IWW co-founder Eugene V. Debs would be arrested in June of 1918 and sent to prison in April 1919 for speaking publicly against the war, “Big Bill” Haywood fled to Russia in 1921, where he would die seven years later at the age of 59.

#iw #useful #our history #organizing

[thelegend2t]

The Jregswap Explanation Post

Hello, it has come to my attention that a lot of people are finding out about this old Jreg AU called Jregswap. And, if you found out about it recently, you don't really have much to go off of for information of it's short lived existence, except for this post which I'm making because of said lack of information)

Before I say the rest I would like to give credit to the main artist of Jregswap, @snalz-artt . Not only did he create the art, without him some of the most important stuff wouldn't have been recovered.

The Jregswap Extremes:

Here we have the first Reddit post about the concept, posted by the creator. It shows who the four main extremes would be switched with: Extremes who share many characteristics with them but also characteristics of the opposite quadrant. We have:

The Communo-Capitalist: A communist who believes in the creation of Anarcho-Capitalist Free Cities, where the top 1% would be culled regularly. (Based on this video)

The Homo-Fascist: A fascist who believes very strongly in LGBTQ+ rights. (A Centricide character)

The Anarcho-Fascist: An anarchist with extremely rightist views on cultural homogeny, race and identities in general. (A Centricide character but was also conceived in this video)

The Moneytaker: A radical capitalist who corrupts the state to bend to his will. (Based on this video)

Here's the art of the Swapped Extremes. Again, all art drawn by the person I mentioned at the start.

Here's some art featuring the leader of these extremes, Guevara Jreg. Snalz sent this to me when I asked him to help with this post.

Here's a comic the Jregswap team made. A dub of it was also the first Jregswap video ever made so that's cool.

The Jregswap Centrists:

The centrists in the order of this image are:

The Social Democrat, The Populist, The Centrist, The Neoliberal and The Moderate Conservative.

We never really got to many details on these guys, they seem self-explanatory enough I guess. They also seem to be the ideologies in the most moderate positions of each compass quadrant. Socdem libleft, Populist authleft, Neolib libright and Modcon authright.

None of these characters are based on Jreg characters, except for The Centrist who appeared in The Political Compass Rap at the end.

Here's an image of Socdem buying a non-binary flag from Geuvara.

The Jregswap Wackies:

Here's the image the creator posted on Reddit explaining the wackies of this universe and the accompanying art.

Guntakers origin

Techprims origin

Ecofascist origin

Anarcho-Nazbol origin

Accelerationist origin (As a note, this idea was conceived before Accelerationism made an appearance in Centricide 8)

Here's an image of this AU's Nazbol equivalent, The Bleeding Heart Libertarian. Bleeding Heart Libertarians are economically right but culturally left, this idea was conceived of before Jreg had a Pink Capitalist character.

The Jregswap Overtons:

Here are the moderates, or as they were called in Jregswap, The Overtons!

The (Russian) Reactionary, The Classical Liberal, The Wobblie (Industrial Workers of the World) and the Democratic Confederalist.

Similar to the centrists we never got to much information on these guys, but they are all real movements so whatever.

And here's Wobblie telling you to join a union.

The Jregswap Videos:

JREGSWAP - ''Homophobic Problems'' [Pilot Episode] https://web.archive.org/web/20200628100030/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRi4sjPDRKU&gl=US&hl=en

JREGSWAP: Know Your Ideologies

Sadly, these are all the videos ever made for Jregswap, though creating an entire alternate history scenario is pretty cool I'd say.

I would again like to thank Snalz, without him I wouldn't have a link to the second Jregswap video.

#jregswap #jreg #jreg au #centricide #centricide au

[aristotels]

As a former FS sex worker I immediately assume that the tumblr users comparing it to average wage slavery have no life experience or have never engaged in sex work. Working at McDonald’s is degrading but you don’t have to worry about your customer wrapping their hands around your throat while they’re inside you and squeezing too hard. Or giving you HIV. Or killing you. Or arguing that they won’t pay you at all if they don’t get to cum on your face. Or raping you. Or getting you pregnant.

Like … nobody can convince you that selling nudes would be more degrading than working in fast food because you never ended up *doing* it. You just thought about it for 5 minutes. But sure, tell us how listening to a Karen scream is comparable to a man who outweighs me by 50 kilos forcing his cock in my asshole. Retards.

1) im v sorry you had to go through that

2) the point of that post isnt "omggg we have it WORSE" or whatever, it is that all physical work includes selling your bodies. so many people suffer lasting spinal and other deformities from cleaning, carrying heavy weight, etc.

do you think a 60yo eastern european woman who spent her whole life bent down cleaning the schools for pennies an hour is troubled by "listening to karens"??? her issue is not being able to kneel down anymore. or that work related injuries in factories and all other physical issues that stem from operating heavy machinery without adequate protection and healthcare are same as dealing with an annoyed customer? people regularly lose their fingers and sustain burns and injuries from this.

3) the actual point isnt even how sex work is sooo much easier and cooler it is that its not more degrading by virtue of "selling one's body" when under capitalist exploation all work equals selling your body.

[leviathan-supersystem]

so i think i agree with you w liberalism v fascism n stuff (not much one could reasonably disagree with anyway) but something im having trouble with is figuring out a working definition of a fascist govt.? like you look it up and it's mostly just people saying it's complicated and talking about ur-fascism, which is well and good, but what defines the fascist state itself, economically, politically? i think i have an idea of what a liberal state is but fascism is like... i dunno. if lenin wrote a book called 'what fascism is' or something feel free to direct me there i just havent found anywhere good to start

i think it's best to understand fascism (using the term broadly, not just referring to mussolini's italy) as an attempt to synthesize the liberal order with the pre-liberal order to prevent the emergence of a post-liberal order. capitalists, threatened by the rise of communism, blend with the dregs of what remained of the reactionary monarchists, and a faustian bargain was hatched by the capitalists to preserve their power by essentially stripping away the liberalism from capitalism, to create something which maintains the model of private property which liberalism developed, but removes from it any pretense of democracy, individualism, or egalitarianism. antisemitism and anti-masonry are both extremely common features, largely owing to fascism's roots in monarchist reactionary thought and the associated belief that the french revolution was bad and that jews and freemasons were behind it. this also ties into the racism, nationalism, and social traditionalism which are also pretty much a given in fascist ideology.

fascism also tries to peel away support from left-wing socialist movements by appealing to socially conservative workers with a ostensibly populist anti-"elite" message which defines the "elite" in aesthetic culture war or explicitly racial antisemitic terms instead of like, how much money someone has or what their relation to the means of production is, to convince socially conservative workers of the absurd notion that they can team up with wealthy capitalists to stop the "elite".

all this said, fascism exists more in theory than in practice, since most fascist governments don't last very long and most fascist movements don't gain power.

[rollercoasterwords]

hiii so i'm trying to have a "get fucking educated" summer where i tackle a lot of nonfiction and learn about shit. i've seen you recommend some books on ur blog before but do u have any nonfiction books u especialy reccomend that u found super educational/eye opening?? i'm really interested in like prison abolition for example, just not sure where to start

omg get fucking educated summer love that for u <3 and yes of course would love 2 give recs!!

for prison abolition, all my recs are gonna be u.s.-centric as that's where i'm from, so if u are from outside the u.s. + looking to learn abt abolition specifically in ur country then u will perhaps want 2 do a more specific search (+ if i have any mutuals who wanna recommend texts on prison abolition for countries outside the u.s. please do!!). BUT that said i definitely recommend starting with are prisons obsolete? by angela y. davis, and honestly any of davis's writing about prison abolition is great. i also really liked the end of policing by alex s. vitale as like an intro text to prison abolition.

as for nonfiction i've found particularly eye-opening/educational -- there's a ton!! capitalist realism: is there no alternative? by mark fisher has been a favorite this year, and jamie berrout's essays against publishing also felt v eye-opening. i've also really enjoyed whipping girl by julia serano, screw consent by joseph j. fischel, and various andrea long chu writings (the pink, on liking women, females) in terms of texts that have like. really pushed me to think. i've also been reading a lot of marx + engels recently thanks 2 some recs from a mutual (hi laura) + would highly highly recommend--so far i've read socialism: utopian and scientific, principles of communism, wage labour and capital, and value price and profit + if i had to recommend just one of those 2 start with i'd probably say wage labour and capital!

OH and almost forgot - rn i'm reading playing the whore: the work of sex work by melissa gira grant + i'm only abt halfway thru but would HIGHLY recommend it as well--overlaps quite a bit w prison abolition as sex workers are a group that suffer heavily from police violence!!

#and of course if u have any other specific topics ur interested in lmk + im always happy 2 see if i've read anything that i could rec! #ask #book recs

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMRwk8WDd4

So here’s an interesting little cultural artifact.  This song was written in 1931.  In 1931, several things were true.  There was no state of Israel -- the whole area was part of the British Mandate.  The Great Depression had begun, and a lot of people worked in utterly shitty conditions.  There was a serious Socialist movement, with a lot of buy-in from Jews, in Europe and in the United States.  There was also a growing Zionist movement, who believed that Europe wasn’t safe for Jews, and that the Jews really ought to be working to get the British out of the Middle East so that the Jews could establish a country in their ancient homeland.  And the Holocaust had not yet happened.

This is a song of the Bund, a Jewish Socialist party founded in Russia in the 1890s that believed in workers’ rights and in making the West a fairer, more free society where Jews and other minority groups could live in basic equality with social majorities.  Their big thing was Doykeyt, or “Hereness,” a sense that the Jews really should belong wherever they lived.  The Bund opposed Zionism, and thought that the 1930s version was largely a pipe dream that would distract people from making the lives of Jews in the Diaspora better.

History played out.  And the Bundists lost.  A lot of them died in the Holocaust.  And after the war, it turned out that the Communist countries of the Eastern Bloc also didn’t much care for the Bund, because the Bund was Jewish.  It hasn’t completely died -- there are still a few Bundists out there, affiliated with larger international Socialist movements.  But . . . yeah.  The Bund had a legitimate anti-Zionist dream.  And they lost.

They were completely right on many questions of workers’ rights.  They were completely wrong about how willing the non-Jewish nations of Europe would be to have Jews living among them, whether under capitalist or Communist government.  And they paid the biggest price for that error.

#jewish music

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against WOMEN

In 2022, the US supreme court overturned Roe V Wade, ending a constitutional guarantee to the right to have an abortion, in place for over 50 years. In response, 26 US states are expected to ban abortion in their state. Women who become pregnant in red states, will now have to drive an increased average of over 200 miles to an abortion clinic. Protests erupted in hundreds of US cities, decrying the decision.

US police officers routinely commit sexual assault and rapes: most go unreported, but over 1200 incidents, including over 400 rapes were committed over a 9 year period from 2005-2013.

In the period following WWII, the US capitalist-controlled media, advertising, and consumer products industries propagandized and glorified the ideal of the housewife-consumer, in order to sell products, make labor space for returning soldiers, take advantage of women’s unpaid labor in the home, and to help build a new workforce and potential army to combat the soviet union. This sparked an era of regression with respect to the feminist victories of the previous 50 years, and caused psychological damage and demoralization to an uncountable number of women. Women who remained in the labor force were primarily only allowed in subordinate positions such as secretaries, cleaning women, elementary school teachers, saleswomen, waitresses, and nurses. This is chronicled in the Feminine Mystique.

In September 2020, it was revealed that ICE had performed mass hysterectomies on immigrant women in several detention centers, reminiscent of the long-standing US policy of sterilization of black and brown women.

From the 1880s onward, many US states (27 + Puerto Rico in 1956) operated a system of forced sterilization of women, rooted in white supremacy. The principle targets were the mentally ill, Native Americans, and blacks. For example, in Sunflower County Mississippi, 60% of black women living there were sterilized without their permission. An estimated 3,406 Indian women were sterilized. California eugenicists in 1933 began sending their literature overseas to german scientists and medical workers, sparking the beginnings of Nazi Eugenics. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states, in all likelihood without the perspectives of ethnic minorities. The US enacted a system of forced sterilization in Puerto Rico since its takeover by the US in 1989: a 1965 survey of of Puerto Rican residents found that about one-third of all Puerto Rican mothers, ages 20-49, were sterilized. 148 female prisoners in two California institutions were sterilized between 2006 and 2010 in a supposedly voluntary program, but it was determined that the prisoners did not give consent to the procedures. In Madrigal vs. Quilligan, many unsuspecting women were coerced to sign paperwork to perform sterilization, while others were told that the process could be reversed. None of the women were fluent in English. 10 latina women were sterilized, and the doctor was found innocent.

US elites in the 18th and 19th centuries pushed a narrative of domestic purity, or the cult of true womanhood, for women as a way of pacifying her with a doctrine of “separate but equal”-giving her work equally as important as the man’s, but separate and different. Inside that “equality” there was the fact that the woman did not choose her mate, and once her marriage took place, her life was determined. One girl wrote in 1791: “The die is about to be cast which will probably determine the future happiness or misery of my life…. I have always anticipated the event with a degree of solemnity almost equal to that which will terminate my present existence.” Marriage enchained, and children doubled the chains. One woman, writing in 1813: “The idea of soon giving birth to my third child and the consequent duties I shall he called to discharge distresses me so I feel as if I should sink.”

In 2019, it was discovered that US Border patrol had been protecting rapes and abuse of its own members since the 1990s. In one instance, a trainee was forced to give oral sex to 5 officers, and then raped while she was unconcious. At least 35 instances of rape by officers was found.

In May, 2019, Alabama lawmakers banned abortion in the state, providing no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Those caught performing abortions will face up to 99 years in prison. The bill is part of a larger effort to overturn Roe vs Wade, a long-standing supreme court decision affirming a woman’s right to choose. Alabaman women seeking abortions are now forced to travel across state lines, and hide everything about the procedure from friends and family, in order to avoid legal repercussions from their home state. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal suit against the state.

On November 25, 2017, Yang Song died after falling from a 4th floor balcony during a targeted police raid. Her personal messages revealed that in 2016, she was raped at gunpoint by an undercover police officer, and was subsequently harrassed, threatened with deportation, and then likely murdered by the NYPD.

In the 1830s, The Lowell Mill Girls were female workers who came to work in industrial factories in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution, and who despite living in cramped boarding houses and working from 5am-7pm every day, developed a culture of defiance against the factory owners, and created reform associations, and began strikes in 1834 and 1836.

#radical feminist safe #anti capitalism #socialism #anarchy #leftism #communism #radical feminists do touch #radical feminists do interact #social commentary #radical feminist community #radical feminism #american history #rip twitter #ronald reagan #imperialism #us history #us politics #radical feminists please touch #radical feminists please interact #serious

[faggatini]

“roe v. wade needed to be over turned because every american woman has a duty to produce one able bodied worker!” we are living in dystopia. they do not care about us, they only care that we replace ourselves once we are no longer able to work for capitalist america.

#roe v wade #roe vs. wade