The Labor and Working-Class History Association - Latest Comments

Re: What would you like to see in the journal, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History?

Julie Greene — Fri, 05 May 2023 09:39:19 -0000

We had a great discussion on April 18--many thanks to all those who came out! If anyone has thoughts about things they'd like to see more of in the journal, feel free to add them here.

Re: From Solidarity to Shock Therapy: The AFL-CIO and the Fall of Soviet Communism

Paul F Cole — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 16:08:34 -0000

Tha American Labor Studies Center (www.labor-studies.org) owns and is restoring tha Kate Mullany House in Troy, New York which is both a National Historic Landmark and National Historic Site (a unit within the National Park System). Plans are in place to create a National Trade Union Women's Memorial on the site. See plan at www.katemullanynhs.org. public support is welcome and encouraged.

Re: The Worlds of American Communism: An Interview with Author Joshua Morris

Wren Elizabeth — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 03:39:40 -0000

Re: A Century of Teacher Organizing: What Can We Learn?

Spectrose — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 03:39:13 -0000

Re: Peterloo and Pedagogy

Jon Baxley — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 03:39:09 -0000

Re: Revolt at John Deere — Ties to a Radical Past

E.B. Farnum — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 19:43:22 -0000

The John Deere company should close down and move to an "Employ at Will/Right to Work State" like Alabama. Go on strike, you can't be fired, but you can be permanently replaced.

Re: Emmett Till & United Packinghouse Workers by Michael Nichter – Free Access til August 1

Peter Zelchenko — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 10:24:49 -0000

I was looking up Ralph Helstein and the United Packinghouse Workers and turned up this gem of history. These are gripping stories about that crucial period in 1955, and how tightly Chicago's labor is tied to the development of the Civil Rights Movement. You can see links from this era through to this day, coming from the leadership that brought us the many changes in Chicago politics in the last 20 years. Obama's own accession would never have happened without the interracial efforts from Bronzeville-Kenwood-Hyde Park-Woodlawn-South Shore and marching on southward as far as Trumbull Park. The more we follow the history, the more the dots connect. This story is a great find!

I suppose I should add that I have two old posts that address Emmett Till from a contemporary local Chicago perspective:

Hyde Park's 60 Years: From Emmett Till to Jabari Dean
Segregation, 2017

Re: NYC’s LGBTQIA Community Has Organized, Against Death, Again

AFMasten — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:01:59 -0000

A good reminder that there are many bases on which we can band together.

Re: Witness to Revolution: Film about Anna Louise Strong still gives insight

proletariatprincess — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 15:18:23 -0000

I would like to see this film. Where can I get it? The article doesn't say...

Re: 40 Years of Working-Class History: The Series and the Field

Chad Pearson — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 15:25:12 -0000

Excellent points. This sentence is especially on the mark, IMHO: "In some examples of the new history of capitalism, workers seem to recede to the vanishing point." Moreover, lots of these HOC folks overuse the word "new." I think you understate this point: "In fact, class and manifestations of class have receded a bit as greater
emphasis has focused on other forms of identity – gender, sexuality,
race." "Receded a bit?" Consider the multiple challenges to labor studies: right-wing politicians, annoying administrators, and countless numbers of liberal academics who continue to make the easily disprovable statement that labor history is simply the history of white men in unions. CP

Re: Beyond the Caravan: Why We Must Protect Workers Covered by TPS

Wayworn Wanderer — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 14:33:34 -0000

How is the working woman or working man helped by an influx of relatively unskilled workers? You've probably given your answer for this somewhere on the site, but I couldn't find it.

Re: Labor’s Day, More or Less?

Red Robbo — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 05:28:13 -0000

When the Labour Movement was young, the first of May was set aside as a day on which the workers of different countries would suspend their labouring and join in mass meetings to send to each other fraternal greetings and expressions of solidarity in the struggle against capitalist oppression. Their value has, however, long since come into question. A contributor to the May 1936 edition of the Socialist Standard wrote: 'for many years now these May Day demonstrations have been held, and the net result of them all is nil, as far as helping the workers out of their difficulties is concerned.' Were that writer alive today, he would likely die of despair: '...marchers have taken to the streets in several cities across Sweden to call for Muslim women's right to work while wearing the hijab.... Protesters....chanted slogans such as crush racism, my hijab is not your business and employment is our right'' (aljezerra.com, 1 May 2017). Today, a large number of workers want a visual sign of their ignorance and submission as well as the right to bear the yoke of wage slavery.

Re: “Oilcan” Ed Sadlowski, 1938-2018: Midwestern Grit

Bill Barry — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:42:10 -0000

Terrific interview by Rosemary

Re: Billy Graham and the Evangelical Origins of Organized Labor

Red Robbo — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 15:37:57 -0000

The author fails to mention Billy was anti-feminist and pro-gay conversion therapy, gave his blessing to every military conflict under every president, from Truman to Bush II, and that his organisation laid off 55 workers in 2011 as income had fallen to a paltry $91.6 million!

This account of Billy's 1954 London crusade provides a more candid summary of his beliefs and concludes:
Yes, religion is still "the opium of the people." even though there are other narcotics for this day and age. Schools still teach prayers before they teach letters, religious observance is still magistrates' criterion of fitness for the care of children. Billy Graham's opium-peddling has had its share of success, and probably will continue to have it. Capitalism makes the world a pretty poor place for most working people, and consequently they are given to grabbing at even remote possibilities of fulfilling their needs. Some buy a shillings worth of hope in the pools, some live vicariously at the films and the speedways, and some "take it to the Lord in prayer." These, however, are the symptoms and not the cure. And while evangelists are on their knees, while the confused seek comfort in a fable which came (in strict rotation) from primitive man watching his shadow to the medicine man with his painted face, to the temples of the ancient East, to Pythagoras, to Plato, to Jesus if he ever lived—the wicked materialists are learning and telling how mankind's sickness may really be cured.
(Socialist Standard, April 1954)

Re: Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

city zen — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 19:52:46 -0000

The first police forces in the US were created in the 18th century. How does this square with your claim that they "were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century..."?

Re: Winning Working-Class Voters with State Level Consumer Protection

Trevor G — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 17:35:42 -0000

Trump did NOT "capture the hearts, minds, aspirations, and votes of working-class men and women". He captured the "hearts, minds, aspirations, and votes" of WHITE working class men and women, as well as white middle class and upper class men and women.

Re: Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

Christopher Jonns — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 11:00:40 -0000

i would love to talk to this guy in person so i could actually emphasize in words how i feel about this P.S i dont like it

Re: How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions: An Arkansas Story

yummyhunny — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 17:24:35 -0000

Holmes, I appreciate your zeal for Bernie, but he's pushing the russiagate lie. When the only fraud in 2016 was in the primary, against his voters.

Time to leave that dumpster fire party.

Re: How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions: An Arkansas Story

yummyhunny — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 17:22:49 -0000

Haven't missed much. Now the democrats are a bunch of xenophobic mcarthyists. Which is fun.

Re: The Origins of Right-to-Work: Vance Muse, Anti-Semitism, and the Maintenance of Jim Crow Labor Relations

Ginny Stogner McDavid — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:22:35 -0000

It's pretty embarrassing the role that Texans' played in creating "right to work" for less. Ughhh!

Re: Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

Snake Plissken — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 18:06:25 -0000

It's true.

Re: Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

Wayworn Wanderer — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 17:01:30 -0000

I like it. Thank you.

Re: How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions: An Arkansas Story

En Sabbah Nur — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 23:00:22 -0000

The Democrats are finished. Anyone with a brain knows they are just the weak link to the GOP...

Re: How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions: An Arkansas Story

TaxiManSteve — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 14:55:45 -0000

Like St. Patrick and the snakes, St. Clinton drove the working-class from the party club ranks... Important because the existence of the working-class embarrassing reminds middle-class touts how short the distance actually is between them and those who work with the hands.

Some Free Trade with you Brie?

Re: The Decline of Faculty Tenure: Less From an Oversupply of PhDs, and More from the Systematic De-Valuation of the PhD as a Credential for College Teaching

Zaidi — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 12:34:11 -0000

Typo: third paragraph; last sentence.