You do not want to miss this epic moment at Avantpop Bookstore!!
6 Authors
Punks. Activism. Music.
The holy trinity!
It's only happening once, reading freaks!
Sun, May 26th, Noon to 3pm
⚡️PUNKS WITH BOOKS⚡️
Reading and Signings with
SIX AUTHORS
🔸️Billy Bragg
🔸️Jason Lamb
🔸️Michelle Cruz-Gonzales
🔸️James Tracy
🔸️Juanita E. Mantz
🔸️Mike Dunn
Books are available for sale at the event, while supplies last
🤘💀📚
Avantpop Bookstore
900 Liberace Ave D102
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Avantpopbooks.com/events
Today in Labor History May 18, 1781: Tupac Amaru II was drawn and quartered in Plaza Mayor del Cuzco, Peru. Tupac II had led a large indigenous uprising against the Spanish conquistadors. As a result of his heroic efforts, he became an inspiration to others in the fight for indigenous rights and against colonialism. The uprising began because of “reforms” by the colonial administration that increased taxes and labor demands on both indigenous and creole populations. However, there was also an ongoing desire to overthrow European rule and restore the pre-conquest Incan empire. And though this would merely replace one feudal power with another, there were also Jacobin and proto-communist elements to the rebellion. Most of the Tupamarista soldiers were poor peasants, artisans and women who saw the uprising as an opportunity to create an egalitarian society, without the cast and class divisions of either the Spanish or Incan feudal systems.
The uprising began with the execution of Spanish colonial Governor Antonio de Arriaga by his own slave, Antonio Oblitas. Tupac Amaru II then made a proclamation claiming to be fighting against the abuses of Spain and for the peace and well-being of Indians, mestizos, mambos, native-born whites and blacks. They then proceeded to march toward Cuzco, killing Spaniards and looting their properties. Everywhere they went, they overthrew the Spanish authority. Tupac’s wife, Michaela Bastidas commanded a battalion of insurgents. Many claimed she was more daring and a superior strategist than her husband.
However, despite their strength and courage, the rebels failed to take Cuzco. The Spaniards brought in reinforcements from Lima. Many creoles abandoned the Inca army and joined the Spanish, fearing for their own safety after seeing the wanton slaughter of Spanish civilians. In the end, Tupac was betrayed by two of his officers and handed over to the Spanish. However, before they killed him, the Spanish forced him to watch them execute his wife, eldest son, uncle, brother-in-law, and several of his captains. They cut out both his wife’s and son’s tongue before hanging them.
As a result of Tupac’s leadership and success against the Spanish, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called “Tupac Amaru (1781).” And Clive Cussler’s book, “Inca Gold,” has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
Today in Labor History May 16, 1912: Studs Terkel was born, New York City. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for his book The Good War, a collection of oral histories from World War II. He was born to Russian-Jewish parents. He joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project. This provided him work in radio. He is best known for his oral histories, and his raido program, The Studs Terkel Program, which aired on WFMT, Chicago, from 1952-1997. Some of the people he interviewed on this show included: Bob Dylan, Big Bill Broonzy, Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein, Martin Luther King and Tennessee Williams.
Today in Writing History May 16, 1906: Margaret Rey was born. Rey was an author an illustrator of children’s books. She cowrote the Curious George books with her husband H.A. Rey. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, she studied art at Bauhaus and later worked in advertising. In 1935, she fled Germany to escape the Nazis, moving to Rio de Janeiro. There she met H.A. Rey, also a German Jew who had fled the Nazis. Many of us remember the Curious George stories fondly. George was a monkey, who was kind of like an adorable little boy. Yet in every one of the stories, he does something naughty that disappoints his “daddy,” (The man in the Yellow Hat), and has to win back his affection doing something dangerous. In one story, he is exploited by a cook and must wash dishes without pay. In another, he is hired as a window washer on a skyscraper. Even his origin story is fraught, with the Yellow Hatted Man kidnapping him from his home in Africa. In this video clip, hear Werner Herzog’s creepy satire on the stories:
Today in Writing History May 13, 1944: Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin was born. Maupin wrote the novels over the course of nearly forty years, (1978-2014). He was one of the first writers to incorporate the AIDS epidemic into his novels.
On July 22, 1916, someone set off a bomb during the pro-war “Preparedness Day” parade in San Francisco. As a result, 10 people died and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on the false testimony of Martin Swanson, a detective with a long history of interfering in San Francisco strikes. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. Swanson maintained constant surveillance and harassment of Mooney and Warren Billings, as well as Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman. Billings and Mooney ultimately served 23 years in prison for a crime they had not committed. Governor Edmund G. Brown pardoned them in 1961.
Billings and Mooney were both anarchists, and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As a young man in San Francisco, Tom Mooney published The Revolt, a socialist newspaper. He was tried and acquitted three times for transporting explosives during the Pacific Gas & Electric strike in 1913. Consequently, the cops already believed he was a bomber, prior to the Preparedness Day parade.
In 1937, Mooney filed a writ of habeas corpus, providing evidence that his conviction was based on perjured testimony and evidence tampering. Among this evidence was a photograph of him in front of a large, ornate clock, on Market Street, clearly showing the time of the bombing and that he could not have been at the bombing site when it occurred. He was finally released in 1939. Upon his release, he marched in a huge parade down Market Street. Cops and leaders of the mainstream unions were all forbidden from participating. An honor guard of longshoremen accompanied him carrying their hooks. His case helped establish that convictions based on false evidence violate people’s right to due process.
The Alibi Clock was later moved to downtown Vallejo, twenty-five miles to the northeast of San Francisco. A bookstore in Vallejo is named after this clock. On May 11, 2024, I did a reading there from my working-class historical novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, during the Book Release Party for Roberta Tracy’s, Zig Zag Woman, which takes place at the time of the Los Angeles Times bombing, in 1910, when two other labor leaders, the McNamara brothers, were framed.
In 1931, while Mooney and Billings were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, “By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening… Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly.”
During the Spanish war against fascism (AKA the Spanish Civil War), many Americans volunteered to join the antifascist cause as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades. One of the battalions was named the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company. It was led by Oliver Law, a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops.
Today in Writing History May 10, 1999: Shel Silverstein, American poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, musician, and playwright died on this day. His books have been translated into more than 47 languages and sold over 20 million copies Some of his most famous children’s books include “The Giving Tree,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and “A Light in the Attic.” As a songwriter, he wrote the Johnny Cash hits "A Boy Named Sue" and “25 Minutes to Go,” as well as the Dr. Hook hit, “Freakin’ at the Freakers Ball.” He also composed hits for John Prine, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, and Lester Flatt.
Today in Writing History May 9, 1981: Nelson Algren, American novelist and short story writer died. His most famous book was “The Man With The Golden Arm,” which was made into a film in 1955. He was called the “bard of the down-and-outer” based on his numerous stories about the poor, beaten down and addicted. Algren was also called a “gut radical.” His heroes included Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. He claims he never joined the Communist Party, but he participated in the John Reed Club and was an honorary co-chair of the “Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee.” The FBI surveilled him and had a 500-page dossier on him.
Today in Writing History May 9, 1946: Ayşe Nur Zarakolu, Turkish author and activist was born on this day. Along with her husband, she cofounded Belge publishing house. She published books on the Armenian Genocide and the human rights of Turkey’s Kurdish population. As a result, the government imprisoned her repeatedly. Amnesty International designated her a prison of conscience.
Today in Labor History May 9, 1907: Big Bill Haywood went on trial for murder in the bombing death of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow defended Haywood and got him acquitted. Steunenberg had brutally suppressed the state’s miners. Haywood had been framed by a Pinkerton agent provocateur named James McParland, the same man who infiltrated the Pennsylvania miners’ union in the 1870s and got 20 innocent men executed as Molly Maguires. You can read about that in my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.”
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.
If you're in Vegas for the Punk Rock and Bowling festival this Memorial Day weekend, be sure to stop by Avantpop Books, Sunday, May 26, noon. I'll be reading from my working-class historical novel, "Anywhere But Schuylkill." Billy Bragg will be headlining, with his book, "Roots, Rockers and Radicals."
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 30, 1994: Richard Scarry died. Scarry wrote and illustrated humorous children’s books with elaborate scenes of anthropomorphized animals. Some of his recurring characters were Lowly Worm, Huckle Cat, Mistress Mouse the tow truck driver, and Dingo the reckless driver. His fictional world, Busy Town, is characterized by a strong sense of community and mutual aid. Over the years, he revised his stories in an attempt to eliminate racial and gender stereotypes.
Today in Labor History April 30 1945: Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler committed suicide, in Berlin, after being married for less than 40 hours. Many Nazis were tried, convicted and executed. And literally thousands were secreted into the U.S., given false identities, and put to work as spies, intelligence officers, informants, and rocket scientists in the Cold War. Some of them had even been high-ranking Nazi Party officials, secret police chiefs, and heads of concentration camps. In fact, during the first few years after WWII ended, it was easier to get into the U.S. as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish concentration camp survivor. There were policy makers in Washington who said the Jews shouldn’t be let in because they’re “lazy” and “self-entitled.” For more on this sordid history, read “The Nazis Next Door
How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men,” By Eric Lichtblau.
Today in labor history April 28, 1896: Na Hye-sok was born. She was a South Korean feminist, poet, writer, painter and journalist. She was the first female professional painter and the first feminist writer in Korea. In 1919, the authorities jailed her for participating in the March 1st Movement against Japanese rule in Korea. In 1934, she published an essay called “Divorce Testimony.” In that piece, she wrote about the repression of female sexuality. She also said that her ex-husband couldn’t satisfy her sexually and refused to talk about it with her. And she also promoted the idea of "test marriages," where a couple would live together before marrying to see if they really were compatible. These ideas were considered so scandalous and shocking that her career took a tailspin and never recovered.