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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

28 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 28, 1901. A Cuban cigar workers strike in Tampa collapses. Let's use this to talk about transnational organizing in favor of Cuban nationalism!

Tampa was a small town in the late nineteenth century. But a growing cigar industry began transforming it into a locally important center. The center of cigar production was in an area called Ybor City.

It was founded by a Cuban cigar manufacturer named Vicente Martinez Ybor, who moved production north in the 1880s to avoid the growing tension in Cuba between the Spanish government and nationalists that would eventually lead to American intervention in 1898.

Read 35 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

27 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 27, 1937. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) debuted its play “Pins and Needles,” which would become the longest running musical of the 1930s. Let's talk about the labor feminism of this era!

This cultural form of labor feminism at a time when organized labor was dominated by male workers is a vital and important moment both in the cultural history of work but also in the history of women and work.

The ILG was founded in 1900 and despite conservative leadership, became the union that New York garment workers organized in during the Uprising of the 20,000 in 1909 and the aftermath of the Triangle Fire in 1911.

Read 31 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

26 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 26, 1931. Cigar factory owners in Ybor City, Florida, banned cigar makers from having people read to workers on the job. Workers struck and it's a great example of the loss of worker autonomy on the shop floor. Let's talk about it!

While U.S. economic investment in Cuba had started fairly early in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1860s that the nation saw any significant Cuban migration back to the U.S.

Naturally enough, when that started, much of it was based in Florida, which at the time was a rural economic backwater, as well as to New York. In the Tampa area, Cubans made up much of the workforce of the growing cigar industry.

Read 27 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

25 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 25, 1865. Mississippi created the first Black Code, attempting to reinstitute slavery in all but name. Let's talk about how far southern whites would go to ensure bound Black labor!

First, it's important to remember again that slavery was fundamentally a labor system. That was the point. Yes, it was based on race. But the point was that whites would have non-whites working for them with no rights in perpetuity. Everything else was secondary to that.

The impact of slavery’s end is hard to overestimate. But the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves immediately and the ratification of the 13th Amendment did not take place until well after the war’s end.

Read 32 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

23 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 23, 1903. Colorado governor James Peabody sent the state militia to Cripple Creek to crush a Western Federation of Miners led strike. Let's again talk about the state-corporate alliance that is the biggest reason for labor's struggles!

This all too typical action by the state during the Gilded Age had major repercussions.

It succeeded in ending the strike, but it also led the WFM to lead the movement for a nationwide and even worldwide movement of industrial workers that would challenge a capitalism the miners no longer believed would ever work for them.

Read 36 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

22 Nov

This is very interesting and I think one of the lessons of the 2020 elections is how much white liberalism is the dominant ideology of electoral politics among both liberals AND the left. So often, we aren't even asking the right questions.

nytimes.com/2020/11/20/opi…

So often, whites are so concerned with being "allies" for instance that we reaching with massive ignorance into questions inside of communities about which the dynamics of which they know absolutely nothing.

Just as an example here--the whole "Latinx" thing. Regardless of its merits, white liberals have picked up on it as THE way to talk about this population if we want to be allies. And OK, but when only 3% of the actual population uses it, it's not really reaching out to them.

Read 6 tweets

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