While all eyes are on the Trump/Musk fascist take-over of the U.S. government, their looting and graft, their authoritarian mass arrests and deportations, the U.S. government has been quietly supporting a coup in Ecuador, with virtually no coverage by the U.S. media.

And also with very little media coverage, continued slaughter of Yemeni civilians by the U.S., with airstrikes on Friday killing over 80, in a region already suffering from mass hunger and infectious disease. Why? To gain control over Red Sea shipping routes and to punish Houthis for their support of Palestinians and their resistance to the genocide there.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-04-15/the-trump-effect-and-the-mistakes-of-correismo-hand-daniel-noboa-victory-in-ecuador.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/18/more-than-30-killed-80-injured-in-us-air-strikes-on-yemen-report

Today in Labor History April 20, 2008: Danica Patrick won the Indy 300 Japan, becoming the first woman to win an Indy car race. She also was the first woman first to clinch a pole position in the NASCAR Cup Series and the woman with the most starts, laps led, and top-tens in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Today in Labor History April 20, 1948: United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins while he was eating dinner. It permanently impaired his right arm. He survived and ultimately died in a plane crash in 1970 under suspicious circumstances. Reuther also survived an attempted kidnapping in April, 1938, while his brother Victor was shot and nearly killed by police in 1949. The UAW headquarters was also bombed in 1949. Both Walter and Victor were again nearly killed in a small private plane near Dulles Airport. Despite this history of attempts on his life, virtually no media addressed the possibility that his actual death may have been an assassination.

Today in Labor History April 20, 1914: National Guards opened fire on a mining camp during a strike in Ludlow, Colorado, killing five miners, two women, and twelve children. By the end of the strike, they had killed more than 75 people. The strike involved 10,000 members of the united Mine Workers of America (UMW), 1,200 of whom had been living in the Ludlow tent colony. Many of the “Guards” were actually goons and vigilantes hired by the Ludlow Mine Field owner, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. During the assault, they opened fire on strikers and their families with machine guns and set fire to the camp.

Mining was (and still is) a dangerous job. At the time, Colorado miners were dying on the job at a rate of more than 7 deaths per 1,000 employees. The working conditions were not only unsafe, but terribly unfair, too. Workers were paid by the ton for coal that they extracted, but weren’t paid for so-called “dead work” like shoring up unstable roofs and tunnels. This system encouraged miners to risk their lives by ignoring safety precautions and preparations so that they would have more time to extract and deliver coal. Miners also lived in “company towns” where the boss not only owned their housing and the stores that supplied their food and clothing, but charged inflated prices for these services. Furthermore, the workers were paid in “scrip,” a currency that was valid only in the company towns. So even if workers had a way to get to another store, they had no money to purchase anything. Therefore, much of what the miners earned went back into the pockets of their bosses.

In the wake of the Ludlow Massacre, bands of armed miners attacked mine guards and anti-union establishments. In nearby Trinidad, they openly distributed arms from the UMWA headquarters. Over the next ten days, miners attacked mines, killing or driving off guards and scabs, and setting building on fire. They also fought sporadic skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard. In June of 1914, a number of anarchists decided to seek revenge on Rockefeller. Alexander Berkman (a former lover, and friend, of Emma Goldman) helped plan the assassination at the New York Ferrer Center. This was also the home to the anarchist Modern School, which Berkman helped create. However, the bomb exploded prematurely, killing three anarchists. These events led to infiltration of the school and center by undercover cops.

You can read my complete article on Ludlow and the Colorado Labor Wars here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/the-ludlow-massacre/

And my complete article on the Modern School Movement here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/

Today in Labor History April 19, 1911: More than 6,000 immigrant workers began the Great Furniture Strike in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By the late 1800s, Grand Rapids had become the furniture making capital of the U.S. In 1890, the city had about 90,000 residents, 33,000 of whom were recent immigrants. And 4,000 of them worked in the city’s 85 furniture factories. By 1910, the industry employed over 7,000 workers. Most worked six 10-hour shifts for less than $2 a day, or about $45 in today’s dollars. One of the owners, Harry Widdicomb, tried to drive scabs to his factory, right through the crowd of strikers. They pelted his car with rocks and bricks. Police beat people with clubs and firefighters fought them back with hoses. But by evening, they had busted every window in his factory.

Today in Labor History April 19, 1913: Modestino Valentino, a bystander, was shot and killed by company detectives during a conflict between IWW strikers and scabs in Patterson, N.J., during the infamous Silk Strike, which the workers ultimately lost on July 28, 1913. During the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood.

Today in Labor History April 19, 1927: The authorities sentenced Hollywood star Mae West to 10 days in jail for obscenity, for her play, “Sex.”

Today in Labor History April 19, 1943: The 50,000 Jews remaining in Warsaw began a desperate and heroic attempt to resist Nazi deportation to extermination camps. Their armed insurgency became known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There had been over 3 million Jews living in Poland prior to the Nazi occupation. The Nazis rounded them up and forced them into crowded ghettos. The Warsaw ghetto had 250,000-300,000 Jews living in abominable conditions. Roughly this same number of Jews were slaughtered at the Treblinka concentration camp within the two months the Nazis started deporting them. The Jews managed to stockpile Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, military uniforms, and even a few pistols and some explosives. However, the resistance was crushed by the Nazis on May 16.

Today in Labor History Today in Labor History April 19, 1943: Albert Hoffman, inventor of LSD, tested his first dose and went for a bike ride. This day is now celebrated as Bicycle Day. “... Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux ...” And from that date forward, working class people could finally afford to go on a trip. Hoffman later went on to isolate psilicyben, the active hallucinogenic ingredient in mushrooms, which he also enjoyed experimenting with.

Sandoz originally marketed the drug as Delysid and sold it in 100 microgram doses. From the late 1940s, through the early 1960s, the drug was legal and numerous psychologists and researchers began experimenting with it as a form of therapy. Many were willing participants in the CIA’s UKUltra mind control experiments, in which LSD was given to people, most of whom without their consent or knowledge. Cary Grant was a frequent and enthusiastic user. As early as the late 1940s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson became enthusiastic about its potential to unleash a new era of peace and expanded consciousness. The founder of Alcoholic Anonymous was also an early user and said that it was far more effective at treating alcoholism than any other treatment he knew of. Researcher John Lily, along with Gregory Bateson, began dosing dolphins in the early 1960s, in experiments connected with the U.S. military, in an attempt to learn to communicate with the animals and deploy them as weapons in the cold war. You can read more about Mead and Bateson’s role in promoting hallucinogens and in collaborating with the military and intelligence communities in Benjamin Breen’s book, Tripping on Utopia.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1977: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was found guilty of murdering two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, he was actually framed by undercover FBI agents who were conducting counterintelligence on the reservation. During the trial, some of the government’s own witnesses testified that Peltier wasn’t even present at the scene of the killings. In 2017, President Obama denied Peltier's application for clemency. He was still in prison in 2025 and his health has deteriored. On June 7, 2022, The UN Human Rights Council's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Peltier’s imprisonment violates the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Biden, as one of his final acts as president, commuted his sentence to indefinite house arrest. In February 2025, he was released and transferred to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1914: IWW workers in Taft, California, continued their strike against Standard Oil. It was the first strike ever against the company. The workers demanded an eight-hour day and a 50-cents raise.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1912: The governor of West Virginia called out the National Guard against striking coal miners. As a result, fifty people were killed. His action marked the beginning of the West Virginia Mine Wars, initiating one of the most violent strikes in the nation's history. Because of their isolation and geography, the West Virginia mine owners were able to dominate the miners more than almost any other employer in the nation. They hired gun thugs from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who routinely murdered miners and evicted their families from the company towns. On April 18, thousands of miners went on strike in Paint Creek, Cabin Creek and in surrounding counties. Many were armed with hunting rifles to defend themselves against the company thugs. Mother Jones and Socialist Party members came to support the miners.

The struggle that began today in 1912 continued for decades and included the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, and the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. 10,000-15,000 coal miners battled 3,000 cops, private cops and vigilantes, who were backed by the coal bosses. Up to 100 miners died in the fighting, along with 10-30 Baldwin-Felts detectives and three national guards. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested. One million rounds were fired. And the government bombed striking coal miners by air, using homemade bombs and poison gas left over from World War I. This was the second time the government had used planes to bomb its own citizens within the U.S. (the first was against African American during the Tulsa pogrom, earlier that same year).

You can read my longer article on the West Virginia Mine Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#economy #tariffs #inflation #corporategreed #middleclass #workingclass #NoMoreBillionaires

https://youtu.be/n2hSQcnh7oQ?si=Y-ZVT6eKPFITRbDq

We are living under a #fascist regime. Don't be complicit.

#capitalism leads to
#authoritarian
#fascism

In #dictatorship of the #proleteriat the #workingclass rule for the benefit of all.

We must transition into
#Socialism and
#Communism to be sustainable.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8kiM4aUGoR8

Today in Labor History April 17, 1912: Miners struck at the Lena gold fields in eastern Siberia to protest long hours, appalling working conditions, and starvation wages. Strike leaders were arrested and troops fired on a peaceful strikers’ march, killing over 200. Anger over the mass murder fueled a subsequent wave of strikes across the country.

Today in Labor History April 17, 1996: Brazilian police attacked 2,000 landless peasants, killing 19 and wounding 69. Over 1,000 would be killed in similar protests throughout the 1990s.

Today in Labor History April 17, 2014: Journalist and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on this day. Affectionately known as Gabo, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Two of his most famous books were, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Garcia Marquez was a socialist and an anti-imperialist, and critical of U.S. policy in Latin America.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #GabrielGarciaMarquez #columbia #author #writer #fiction #nobelprize #books #Literature @bookstadon

May Day International Workers' Day celebrations in London, Ontario

Sunday, May 4th, 2025 at noon!

(held on the weekend instead of May 1st to be accessible to more people).

Where: NW corner of Victoria Park (Richmond St & Central Ave)

What: Speakers, rally, info tabling, sharing resources & strategizing!

Endorse or get involved: forestcitysolidarity at riseup.net

Ⓐ.

California's senator Scott Wiener proposed a bill that would've let wildfire victims sue the oil companies for causing the climate crisis.

Guess who teamed up with the Big Oil execs to defeat the bill?

Unions.

Specifically the unions representing oil industry workers. In other words, the workers collaborated with their class enemies: their bosses.

I'm not opposed to unions. I've been a union organizer for decades. But goddamn, these blockheads are acting just like Mr. Block (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Block). They somehow forgot the first rule of labor: the boss is NOT your friend. Be suspicious. Don't trust them. And sure as hell don't collaborate with them to help enrich them even further, especially not on your backs, nor in ways that further destroy the planet.

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.... Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth."
-- preamble to the constitution of the IWW

That last line, added to the original 1905 preamble to the IWW constitution in the late 1980s, might sound a bit vague and "crunchy." But it was an attempt to acknowledge that some types of work simply shouldn't exist. That's not to say those who currently work in those industries (e.g. Fossil fuel extraction) should be thrown under the bus. Everyone should be allowed to do something productive that they enjoy. And everyone should have all the material necessities to live a safe secure and meaningful existence. But saving the planet from climate collapse will certainly require many changes in the types of work that are available. Coal mining, for example, has been on the decline for years because there is so little left in many regions that it's not profitable for the bosses to continue paying miners to mine ît anymore.

In a sane and compassionate world, we'd provide these workers with free Healthcare housing, UBI, and retraining so they could transition to some other productive endeavor. And union leaders would recognize that the interests of their members are much more closely aligned with, and linked to, those of the rest of the working class. (Continued burning of oil will contribute to more climate disasters, more wild fires, and possible the loss of their own members' lives or homes).

https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/04/california-oil-union-climate-bill/

Why are tankies so blind to what they’re doing? How can they worship dictators like the Kim dynasty, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Castro, Maduro, and vanguards like the CPSU?

It doesn’t make sense, if you want the working class to be free, why are you idolizing authoritarian rulers?

What the hell is happening here? This blind devotion and cult-like behavior is downright insane.