Today in Labor History May 19, 1989: Trinidadian Marxist historian and journalist C.L.R. James died. James was the author of The Black Jacobins (1938), Breaking a Boundary (1963), numerous articles and essays on class and race antagonism, West Indian self-determination, cricket, Marxism, & aesthetics. In 1933, he published the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government. He was a champion of Pan-Africanism and a member of the Friends of Ethiopia, an organization opposed to fascism and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. He also wrote a play about the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. Paul Robeson starred in the 1936 British production.
Today in Writing History May 7, 1867: Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont was born. His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi (The Peasants), which won him the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. Also in 1924, he published his novel “Revolt,” about a rebellion of farm animals fighting for equality. However, the revolt quickly degenerates into bloody terror. It was a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution. Consequently, the Polish authorities banned it from 1945 to 1989. Reymont’s farm animal rebellion predated Orwell’s by 21 years.
Andrewism's new video on #anarchism is one of the best I've seen. I kept waiting for something to take issue with, but he just doesn't miss. Concise definition of hierarchy and authority, in depth explanation of the anarchist critique of #democracy, ending with an emphasis on a gradualist approach to social #revolution. Even the bits on economics were pretty unobjectionable from my mutualist perspective, which I'm hoping reflects a continuing engagement with market anarchists on the channel.
Straight fire, and for someone who grew up politically during the Breadtube era it feels like I've been waiting for this for 6 years. Definitely adding it to the A list of beginner recommendations alongside To Change Everything, Anarchy Works, and Your Freedom is My Freedom.
Today in Labor History May 2, 1919: Soldiers of the Freikorps murdered Gustav Landauer, anarchist, pacifist, and Education Minister, in the short-lived Bavarian Workers Republic. The Freikorps were right wing veterans of World War I. Many went on to become Nazis. Landauer believed that social change could not be won solely through control of the state or economy, but required a revolution in interpersonal relations. "The community we long for and need, we will find only if we sever ourselves from individuated existence; thus we will at last find, in the innermost core or our hidden being, the most ancient and most universal community: the human race and the cosmos." Landauer’s grandson is the acclaimed film director, Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood). British writer Philip Kerr wrote the novel, “Prussian Blue,” in which Hitler is one of the Freikorps militants who murdered Landauer.
Today in Labor History April, 21, 1913: Andre Soudy and Raymond Callemin, members of the anarchist Bonnot Gang, were executed. Callemin had started the individualist paper "L'anarchie" with author and revolutionary Victor Serge. The Bonnot Gang was a band of French anarchists who tried to fund their movement through robberies in 1911-1912. The Bonnot Gang was unique, not only for their politics, but for their innovative use of technology, too. They were among the first to use cars and automatic rifles to help them steal, technology that even the French police were not using. While many of the gang members were sentenced to death, Serge got five years and eventually went on to participate in (and survive) the Barcelona and Soviet uprisings. Later, while living in exile, Serge wrote The Birth of Our Power, Men in Prison, Conquered City, and Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
We, the Left, need to accept that a tiny Rightwing elite class have sneakily yet determinedly siphoned off the majority of the wealth on this planet into their own pockets.
They "won".
We're seeing dystopian levels of wealth and power inequality.
At the turn of the millennium, I naively hoped for a revolution, because it all seemed so unjust and malevolent even back then. But there was no revolution and things have relentlessly continued to get worse, noticeably so and on all fronts #revolution
#CfP für den "Workshop "Revolution revolutionieren. Walter #Benjamin und die Frage nach #Revolution und #Revolte", der am 24. und 25. Oktober 2024 in Berlin stattfinden wird.
Today In Labor History April 7, 1804: Haitian general, Toussaint Louverture died on this day. He was one of the most prominent members of the Haitian revolution for independence from France. The slave revolt against the French began in 1791 with the call by Dutty Boukman, a vodou priest. Encouraged by the French and American revolutions. Louverture led 100,000 enslaved Haitians in revolt, winning their freedom in 1793. In 1804, Haiti became first free black republic in the world. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti for the next 70 and France extracted millions in restitution, destroying any hope of ever moving out of deep poverty. Louverture was betrayed in the end and died in prison. For a fantastic history of the Haitian Revolution, read “The Black Jacobins,” by C.L.R.James.
So..It’s time for a change…
Raise your voice to the air
It’s time for a change
Revolution is here
This is our song,
our rights now expressed
There’s power in our voice
There’s strength in our words
When the whole world is silent,
Our voice must be heard.
This is our song #Revolution is set
For the festival of the #oppressed https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=9F_coLFmerg
18 March 1871: French government attempts to seize weapons in Paris that could be used against German occupiers: workers and soldiers resist, beginning conflict that gave birth to the Paris Commune
Today in Labor History March 18, 1918: U.S. authorities arrested Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón under the Espionage Act. They charged him with hindering the American war effort and imprisoned him at Leavenworth, where he died under highly suspicious circumstances. The authorities claimed he died of a "heart attack," but Chicano inmates rioted after his death and killed the prison guard who they believed executed him. Magon published the periodical “Regeneracion” with his brother Jesus, and with Licenciado Antonio Horcasitas. The Magonostas later led a revolution in Baja California during the Mexican Revolution. Many American members of the IWW participated. During the uprising, they conquered and held Tijuana for several days. Lowell Blaisdell writes about it in his now hard to find book, “The Desert Revolution,” (1962). Dos Passos references in his “USA Trilogy.”
Revolutions A Very Short Introduction Second Edition by Jack A. Goldstone
This Very Short Introduction illuminates the revolutionaries, their strategies, their successes and failures, and the ways in which revolutions continue to dominate world events and the popular imagination.
I know publishing articles in It's Going Down is counterproductive to any academic career I want, but I am proud to publish with them. Unlike most academic publishing, their articles come out of (and promote) movement work and are meant to be directly useful in radical struggles.
I think that @igd_news has prompted me to produce some of my best writing:
“We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!”: How Anarcha-Feminists Built Dual Power in Struggles for Reproductive Freedom
Podcast interview: Lessons From the Fight to Protect Abortion Clinics in the 1990s: A Discussion
"On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we talk with both long-time anarchist organizer Suzy Subways and historian Spencer Beswick about how anarchists in the 1990s organized in the face of a deadly far-Right attack on abortion access across the so-called United States." https://itsgoingdown.org/clinic-defense-1990s-abortion/
Anyway, just thinking about how important movement-based institutions/infrastructure like It's Going Down are. I really appreciate the work they do. And I guess that's why they've been banned by the free-speech lovers at Twitter/Facebook/Instagram.
Today in Labor History January 9, 1905: Russia’s “Bloody Sunday” occurred, with soldiers of the Imperial Guard opening fire on unarmed protesters as they marched toward the Winter Palace. They killed as many as 234 people and injured up to 800. They also arrested nearly 7,300 people. The people were demanding better working conditions and pay, an end to the Russo-Japanese War and universal suffrage. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks opposed the march because it lacked revolutionary demands. The public was so outraged by the massacre that uprisings broke out in Moscow, Warsaw, Riga, Vilna and other parts of the empire. Over 400,000 participated in a General Strike. Protests and uprisings continued for months. The backlash was horrific. The authorities killed 15,000 peasants and sent 45,000 into exile. Another 20,000 were seriously injured. Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony is subtitled “The Year 1905.” Maxim Gorky’s novel, “The Life of a Useless Man,” depicts Bloody Sunday.
Today in Labor History January 9, 1905: French anarchist Louise Michel died from wounds after an assassin shot her in the ear. Michel was a leader in the Paris Commune and cofounder of the Women’s Battalion. She also cofounded the journal “Le Libertaire,” with Sebastien Faure. 100,000 mourners attended her funeral. Before the Commune, she was a school teacher. After the Commune, while in prison, she wrote children’s books.
On December 30, 1896, he was walked from his prison in #Intramuros to Bagumbayan (later called: #Luneta and then #RizalPark) in #Manila. It's more or less 2 km by [modern] road.
The main/primary monument for Rizal is located 100m SSE of where he was shot by the #Spaniards.
Today in Labor History December 21, 1911: The Bonnot Gang, a group of anarchist bandits, pulled off one of the first bank robberies known to have used an automobile as a getaway car. They did it in broad daylight, in the midst of a populous Paris district. They were also among the first to use repeating rifles, technology that the French police did not yet have. They successfully robbed several banks before being caught and executed. The gang members were anarchist individualists, of the Max Stirner school. They were connected with the anarchist periodical, “L’Anarchie,” edited by Victor Serge, who later participated in the Russian Revolution. Serge was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and, while in prison, wrote his most famous novel, “Birth of Our Power.” You can read more about the Bonnot Gang in Richard Parry’s book “The Bonnot Gang.”
Unraveling the Mystery of Human Taillessness: A Genetic Perspective ( www.infoterkiniviral.com )
Humans, despite their numerous remarkable traits, lack a feature common to most vertebrates - a tail. The reason behind this absence has long been a