Buddy Tabor is the greatest American songwriter of the last half-century that you have never heard. Was a guy in Alaska, writing these amazing songs in obscurity before smoking himself into the ground. But we are talking Dylan/Townes level here.
"Black Crow Night" was co-written with Sherman Alexie. The video is made for $5. The song is astounding.
Buddy had some great political songs too. Here's his song about Phil Knight and his evil ilk.
Another of his good political songs.
Buddy wrote this song for his friend Townes Van Zandt.
This is just a really good song.
Anyway, you should check out Buddy's work.
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This Day in Labor History: December 5, 1894. Alabama repealed its child labor law in order to convince Dwight Manufacturing Company, a textile corporation, to move its mill operations from Chicopee, Massachusetts to its state. Let's talk about how the race to the bottom started!
Dwight did this, settling in Gadsden.
This incident is an early incident in the history of capital mobility, a phenomenon that plagues workers today, and also shines a light into how the apparel industry was a pioneer in breaking labor resistance through simply closing up and moving operations to a non-union state
This Day in Labor History: December 4, 1907. Theodore Roosevelt ordered federal troops to the gold mining town of Goldfield, Nevada to bust a strike of workers affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World and Western Federation of Miners. Let's talk TR, unionbuster.
This event shows both the potential of the IWW to win actions and the extent to which the government would participate in crushing what it saw as a radical threat to American institutions.
The Industrial Workers of the World formed in 1905 to organize all the nation’s and even the world’s workers into One Big Union that would bring an end to the oppression of workers. But in its first years, it effectively did nothing at all, riven by internal dissent.
This Day in Labor History: December 2, 1946. The Oakland General Strike begins! Let's talk about the last real general strike in American history!
The Oakland general strike came out of the massive changes to the Bay Area during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Americans moved to San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and other cities to work in wartime industries.
During World War II, the AFL and CIO turned their energies toward defeating the fascist menace of Germany and Japan.
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.
My Civil War class for the spring is full. Always love getting a lot of dudes in a class ready to learn about battles when in fact they are going to learn about slavery and the Black freedom struggle.
Where does this Civil War class begin?
Charlottesville.
Other fun themes of this class include abolitionists engaging in genocide against the tribes and the war methods we love Sherman for in Georgia being used to massacre Native villages in the aftermath.
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.
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.