From Haymarket to Ludlow from Harlan to Matewan from Mother Jones to you

[Omaha Steve]

http://unionreview.com/haymarket-ludlow-harlan-matewan-mother-jones-you

Submitted by Daveparts on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 3:43pm.

So it has come to this, why must I wake the sleeping? It wasn’t so long ago I was asleep myself. Why must I be the one to tell you what you don’t want to hear? Why must I tell you about how quickly hot red human blood congeals and turns black when mixed with cold pavement or frozen mud? Murderous armies training automatic weapons on women and children, then firing off a few rounds, just for fun.

Not Russia or China or Somalia or Chechnya but in Chicago and Kentucky and Colorado and Michigan. Hundreds died and hundreds more were wounded, but they kept coming because they were fighting for something greater than themselves. They were fighting a more personal revolution, closer to home than Valley Forge or Yorktown they were fighting for personal liberty and personal dignity.

They were not tools, they were not raised to work sunup to sun down hauling coal or sewing shirts so that the few, far removed from the sweatshops and the coal dust could travel to Europe on a lark or throw massive parties where the favors were precious jewels. At River Rouge fireman turned water hoses on demonstrators in sub zero temperatures. The police fired into the crowd at random and killing three and wounding thirteen. In Ludlow the Coal Company put strikers out of company housing during a snowstorm.

They put Mother Jones in jail, for the crime of speaking up. No charges, no lawyers just iron bars and a cold cell. But the miners wouldn’t give in so they called in the state Malita that took orders from the governor who sided with the company. Just for fun they would fire shots into the strikers camps, just for fun. They shot a nine-year-old boy in the head but the press wouldn’t report it. Only after they’d set fire to a family tent and killed nine women and three small children only then would the press begin to take notice.

In Chicago on May 4th 1886 fifteen hundred gathered to support striking railroad workers demanding of all things the outrageous notion of an eight-hour workday. It began to rain and most of the crowd was already gone when police moved in force to disperse the remaining demonstrators. Someone threw a bomb and who that person was was never determined. Police opened fire on the crowd and killed four and wounded over one hundred. Seven policemen were dead and demands for vengeance not justice reigned.

Eight men were arrested and tried, but it was a show trial. No evidence was presented that proved the men had anything to do with the bomb or even knew the bomber. Some one’s got to die and we pick you! Four men were hanged, guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One committed suicide the other three were given long prison terms. They were eventually pardoned because in the words of the governor "on the grounds that the trial had been patently unjust."

FULL story at link.

[annabanana]

1. When it's not properly enshrined in the history books, the memory

fades in very few generations indeed.

We have to break up the textbook monopoly.. among other things.

[dcsmart]

2. K & R