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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

1 Dec

This Day in Labor History: December 1, 1868. A young black former Union soldier named John Henry was among a group of convicts sent from Richmond to West Virginia to blast a railroad tunnel, where he would soon die. Let's talk about the real John Henry!

In the aftermath of the Civil War, southern states had no money to hold prisoners. Contracting them all out, or at least the black ones, to coal companies became very common by the late nineteenth century.

But the first industry to seek free labor from black prisoners was the railroad. Between September 1871 and September 1872, for instance, the Virginia State Penitentiary leased out 380 black prisoners to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, of which 48 died on the job.

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Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

30 Nov

https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/1465695263679340550

Was the Black Bloc part of the Seattle planning in the months leading up to it? What was its relationship with the labor and environmental orgs planning it?

Being a stakeholder requires, you know, solidarity with the other organizations who had done this planning.

https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/1465695263679340550

But for too many of these Black Bloc types, solidarity means "support me when I do whatever I am going to do" not "I am going to do the work to support you."

Anarchists love this kind of shit. But let's look at the 3 biggest anarchist moments in US history--the Haymarket bombing, the Berkman failed assassination attempt on Frick, and the WTO protests.

Each one was anarchists hijacking other labor movements without permission.

Read 4 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

30 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 30, 1999. Protests began in Seattle, Washington against the World Trade Organization. Let's talk about this fascinating moment, how anarchists blew up months of planning by labor, the fascist cop reaction, and what the future could have been!

The WTO meetings offered unions, environmentalists, and various social and economic justice activists from around the world a forum to voice their rejection of the neoliberal free trade agreements of the late 20th century.

These had undermined American unionism, allowed corporations the mobility to flee meaningful labor agreements or environmental restrictions, and thrown millions of farmers and indigenous peoples off their lands as cheap American agricultural goods flooded world markets.

Read 38 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

28 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 28, 1901. A strike among Cuban cigar workers in Tampa, Florida collapsed after workers inspired by the Cuban revolutionary Jose Martí sought to create a cross-racial organization to resist employer oppression and fight for 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 36 tweets

Erik Loomis

@ErikLoomis

26 Nov

This Day in Labor History: November 26, 1931. Cigar factory owners in Ybor City, Florida, initially a company town but by this time a neighborhood in Tampa, banned cigar makers from having people read to workers on the job. The workers struck for their readers!!

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 the Black Code. Designed to recreate slavery, this signified the South’s massive resistance to the freeing of their labor force and the lengths to which it would go to tie workers to a place under white control.

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.

The federal government was woefully unprepared, both in manpower and ideas, for ensuring that the rights of ex-slaves were respected after the war.

Read 32 tweets

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