Rev Left Radio - U.S. Labor History: Militant Unions, Red Scares, and Class Struggle

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

Professor Peter Cole returns to the show, this time to do an overview of labor history in the United States. We discuss the earliest worker movements, the Great Uprising of 1877, the Pullman and Homestead strikes, various coal miner strikes, the Seattle General Strike, the IWW, the intersections of race and class, the impact of the Russian Revolution on American class politics, the first and second Red Scare, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the rise of neoliberalism and its impact on workers, and much more!  Learn more about the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project: https://chicagoraceriot.org/ Follow Peter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/profpetercole Dont forget to check out our previous episodes with Peter on Ben Fletcher, the history of the IWW, and Dockworker Power!    Outro Music: "Revolt Resist Rebel" by The Haymarket Squares ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the show for the fourth time, I believe, Professor of History, Peter Cole. This time he is on to talk about really labor struggles in the United States since its founding, since industrialization in the 1800s, all the way up through neoliberalism and into the present day. So we talk about, you know, the great uprising of 1877, the Haymarket Affair, Pullman and Homestead strikes, as well as mining strikes in the West, et cetera. And then we move into the 20th century, discuss the first and second red scares, how legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act of

1947 impacted unions and labors and, you know, ushered in the era of right to work and entire states embracing that. And we followed the trail all the way through the new neoliberalism period with Reagan and Thatcher and then Clinton with NAFTA, the air traffic controller strikes, and labor discipline more broadly, and just trace the entire history to show how we got where we are today with historic levels of inequality, working class power at an all-time low and widespread suffering and precarity for the U.S. working class in particular. So we cover a lot of fascinating history, and Peter does an amazing job, the fountain of wisdom as he is, of summarizing these events in really fascinating ways and connecting them up with all these other events. So I couldn't have asked for a better guest.

And I didn't get to tell this story. This episode is full of personal stories related to the content, but I didn't get to tell this one, which is just last week, waiting outside of my son's school. pick him up, some other parent walked by and had an IWW shirt on. And I couldn't help myself. I had to reach out and say, hey, I absolutely loved the shirt. I pointed to a wobbly tattoo I have on my arm and we shared a moment of passing solidarity and amusement that two left-wing parents were passing each other at a school in a deep red state, no less. So I thought that was kind of interesting and a beautiful little moment. But without further ado, let's go ahead and get into this conversation with Professor Peter Cole on the long and fascinating labor history in the United

States. Enjoy. Hello, my name is Peter Cole. I'm a professor of history at Western Illinois University in McComb, Illinois. And I like to call myself a labor historian. And I've written a few books on the subject, including one called Doc Worker Power, Race and Activism in Durbin in the San Francisco Bay Area. I recently edited a book called Ben Fletcher, The Life and Times of a Black Wobbley, and I'm also the founder and co-director of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project. Wonderful. And as a long time, Rev. Live listeners will know Peter's been on the episode, I think three times. Is this the fourth? Do you remember all of them? I want to say two, but I think you might be right. It might be three.

Yeah. In any case, a constant guest on RevLeft, and we're always happy to have you. All of our discussions focus broadly around labor history, which is your expertise, and so you've become sort of the de facto labor history professor of RevLeft Radio, which we appreciate. Yes, I need a T-shirt. Yeah, absolutely. No tenure, but you might get a T-shirt out of it. So today we have you back on, and we'll be discussing a pretty deep history of working-class struggles, union formations, certain events, and the inevitable ruling class backlash, primarily, I think, in the U.S., since to cover the topic internationally would require a couple semesters worth of audio. So let's just start in the 19th century, and I just want you to kind of talk about some of the oldest labor struggles in North America, sort of how industrialization spawned them.

and like the first emergence of real class consciousness and organization that you could detect. Yeah, I will try to. For listeners who might get their time line a little sort of confused, it's really in the early to mid-19th century that industrialization comes into being as a concept. Before the 1800s, you know, there really isn't industrialization, right? I mean, there's sort of the beginnings of mass production and various activities, but really it's in the early 1800s in England where industrialization first emerges, but also in the U.S., where we see labor struggles start to emerge almost as soon as workers exist. And so in the United States, in the early 1800s, a few Atlantic Coast port cities start to be the locations where industrial production begins, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia.

And it's really interesting. In the 1820s, we start to see actually workers in various industries, including the building trades, but also shoemakers, people who work on the docks, start to organize informally and formally to make demands. One of the first demands that workers had was for a reduction in work hours to the 10-hour day because most humans had had part of rural economy. for generations. The idea that you work from sun up to sundown was actually quite common. But in cities, and when you're suddenly not working for yourself, but an employee, the idea that you might have to work 14 or 16-hour days is far less attractive. And so in the 1820s, we start to actually see the emergence of what at that time was the 10-hour day movement. So it might be, for example, that you work from, I don't know, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or 6 a.m. to

6 p.m. And workers were demanding a 10-hour day with then an hour for lunch and an hour for breakfast. And so actually the first big strike, the first general strike in the history of the United States emerged in Philadelphia in 1835 where people who unloaded and loaded basically shoveling coal, coal being the most important fuel source for heating, but also for powering new factories, coal shubbers or coal heavers on the river on the west side of Philadelphia, the Skookle went on strike. They were quickly joined by lots of people in the construction trades, carpenters and the like, and upwards of 20,000 people from a variety of different industries went on strike for the 10-hour day and actually won that demand. And that demand actually spread

to other cities in the industrial northeast, including New York and Boston. And then also in that same era, we see the emergence of working class political parties, often very short-lived, but like in New York City, for example, which was surpassed Philadelphia in population and soon economically by the 1820s, 1830s, you see the emergence of working men's parties. That was the term used, working men's parties, right? I mean, of course, at this time, women in no place have any political voice or political rights, but it's noteworthy that it was, you could, it'd be fair to call it something of a class conscious party, right, since they identify themselves as working men in opposition to, say, employers, elites, and the like. So what we've got is in the 1820s and 1830s

in the first cities that see industrialization emerge, we very quickly see workers organizing both on the job, say through strikes. Unions don't really exist very much yet, although there's working class organizations of different sorts, right? And then, politically in the electoral process, right, like where working men, it's only also in that same era that property qualifications on voting get eliminated for white men, because originally in most states there were property qualifications, meaning that you had to have a certain amount of wealth in order to qualify for the vote, which was the norm in England, right? And so essentially democracy, you could say, is expanding in the sense that the voting those who are eligible to vote

has increased dramatically, right? And Americans very much in this, what sometimes is called the early republic, are very mindful of that these are sort of, they consider them as heirs to the American Revolution, but also in opposition to the monarchies of England and of Europe. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. And you said that, you know, industrialization is often thought to have begun in England in the very early 1800s, and then very quickly, almost simultaneously that process happens in its major ex-colonies, the United States as well. So is it pretty safe to say that in the 1820s and 30s is also when England started seeing its first emergencies of proletarian consciousness and organization? Well, yes, although we could even push it back

really to the English Revolution in the 1660s, right? And 1650s where there was the well-organized radical working class, even though that concept, we might not, that sort of term is a little questionable, maybe for that time, but sort of ordinary poor people who are organizing in groups that become famous, a number of different radical groups take off in their name, but like the diggers, the levelers, right? Like, these become punk rock bands, right, in the late 20th century, right? So really, and they behead the king, right? And so there's actually, I had a professor in grad school who said, anytime a king. is beheaded, you know, that's a revolution. And so, like, really, England was the first

country, and it was in England where scheme, for instance, power was first developed, that powered railroads, but also then factories and later ships, right? And so England was the sort of heart of that, and first industrialized textiles, right? It's the first big mass production industry. That's also where the first sort of radical English resistance comes from, right? People who are called, you know, the Luddites, who are often, I think, falsely characterized as being anti-technology. These were workers who had basically powered wounds that were being introduced without their permission or without their consultation. And the effects of the introduction of these power looms was that the amount of work that was increasing, productivity increased,

but wages didn't increase, and the number of workers was decreasing. And so these textile workers, started to destroy some of these looms because they were getting screwed by their bosses introducing new technologies. That became a de facto term, unfortunately, for just being anti-technology. But I always say it's not about being anti-technology. It's about not having the power over that technology so that you get the fruits of your labor and also have a sort of jobs still. And so I think the term Luddite is often misunderstood, even though because people don't appreciate the origination of that. But that was, really working class resistance in very early phase, right, to employers seeking to increase

productivity without increasing wages. And so really what's happening in England and America are similar, right? Both are sort of resistance to emerging industrialization, but also in a capitalist economy where industrialization is being driven by employers, right, who are seeking to extract basically greater profit. You could have industrialization in a non-capitalist economy. I always think it's important to point that out, right? Like the Soviet Union, for better or worse, industrialized, right? They're a very different economic system.

China, in recent generations, has industrialized. And so you don't need capitalism to industrialize, right? Because I think some people falsely assume that you could have to go through that phase. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Honestly, I can't say. But my point is that industrialization is an economic process. that's separate from, you know, who controls the wealth. Right, right, absolutely.

That's a crucial point. And that's a really interesting history. I mean, those are topics like the diggers and the levelers that we haven't covered and even the Luddites. And you're right, that's like colloquially used as just being broadly anti-technological. But the struggles of the Luddites in some ways mirror the rising struggles that workers in the industrialized post-industrial West are already starting to have and will continue to have with automation. artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles. And so that, you know, under a capitalist framework, workers are with new technology or are forced to compete with new technology. Under a different framework, perhaps a socialist one, we could actually use technology to liberate more and more people from the drudgery of certain kinds of work while still redistributing the wealth that is created through those processes.

So, yeah, I think we're going to find interesting parallels to some of those past struggles. We already are and we'll continue to in the face of rising automation. Yeah, I just hate it when people say I'm a lot because they don't like their new iPhone or something like that. And it's like, well, some people, in fact, are suspicious of or hostile to new technologies. I get that. But the key, right, is like when we're thinking about in workplaces and all the examples you gave are wonderful examples of how automation is affecting us today, especially in work places. I think that's the key. Absolutely. All right, well, let's go back to North America, which is our focus, the U.S.,

and let's focus on some specific struggles. And I think a good place to start is the great uprising of 1877. So can you talk about that and sort of lay out how that played out? Yeah, I just was teaching it in my intro U.S. history book. So like, just remember everybody, 1877 is just 12 years after the U.S. Civil War ended, and that it's impossible that everything that came after 1865 is, especially in the immediate years and decades, was deeply colored by that, right? Like, because what was that? That was a war between different regions.

And historians often think of the civil war, really, as an economic war, right? Between those in the South who are trying to hold on to a pre-capitalist system, if you will, of unfree labor, right? and had to great wealth for those who were the owners, right? And then the so-called free wage system or free labor system that was emerging outside of the South, where slavery gradually had been abolished. Although, and so, you know, you might think about the U.S. had two different economies coexisting, but ultimately that they came to blows, and that not surprisingly,

industrial capitalism beat pre-industrial agricultural sort of, sort of plantation economy, right? And so I also point that out because it was not a foreign or sort of unusual to imagine that there could be a war that's really sort of pitting, not just regions, but sort of those with wealth versus those without. So that 12 years later, when the Great Uprising emerges, this looks a lot like the emergence of a new class war. And so in 1877, that was four years into a five-year depression that began in 1873, nicknamed the panic of 1873, even though it lasted for half of the 1870s. The result of that depression, the first since the Civil War, since before the Civil War, was that unemployment rose, businesses diminished. By 1877, actually, the economy was somewhat

recovering, and the railroads, which were the largest corporations in America, in the 1850s and 1860s, railroads emerge as these powerful new technology, but also sort of the businesses, right, the corporations that managed and owned and ran the railroad lines, even though they were publicly financed in their construction, were the most powerful. That's why the Monopoly board game, right, has a railroad on each of the four sides, right? Like, even though nowadays railroads are far less important to our economy. We know the railroads were the most powerful. we also know that actually they had returned to profitability despite being in the Depression because they were paying dividends to their stockholders. Nevertheless, in 1877, the four largest

railroads decided secretly to reduce their workers' wages by 10% simultaneously. Why? Because they could. And so in the sort of the quest for greater profit. And so imagine that just every Friday you get paid and then the next Friday you show up for your pay if you work in the railroads, you get 10% less. Why? Just because. Not surprisingly, people were angry about this. A small group of railroad workers in a small town called Martinsburg, West Virginia, were angry

when they got paid in August of 1877, and basically stopped work, right? Strikes already existed, although they were not common. And there was not a big railroad union at this time. There were some small unions, but they largely had been crushed due to the depression. And so basically, workers went on strike. in one place. And then because railroads, which always have telegraph lines, strung alongside, communication is rapid. And so as word spread, the strike spread. And it's spread throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including on the B&O Railroad, one of those four

Monopoly Board games to Baltimore and Ohio. And so the railroads, essentially the strike spread along the railroad lines to the biggest industrial city in the mid-Atlantic, Baltimore. And there, the governor called out the state militia, which killed approximately a dozen strikers and sympathizers, but that did not prevent the strike from spreading. The U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, only recently elected in what's nicknamed the corrupt bargain of 1877, in what was still probably the most corrupt election in presidential history in the U.S. 1876. Dispatches U.S. troops also. It's the first time a U.S. president had used his military power within the country in order to take sides in a labor dispute, right?

Like not surprisingly, perhaps he chose the bosses, even though, of course, there were far more people who were striking than there were owners, right? And so our president chose capital, if you will, over labor when he wanted to sort of end this dispute using power, right? Military power. Despite that, the strike continued to spread. It spread westward along, again, the railroad line to Pittsburgh, which, was one of the big industrial centers and emerging as the steel capital of the country. And there, the governor called in militia again.

20 people were killed by the militia, the crowd of strikers. And there were many strike sympathizers, people who joined the strike who were not working for the railroads, basically destroyed a lot of Pennsylvania railroad property, which resulted in more militia opening fire. 45 people killed in Pittsburgh in a day of clashes. The strike spread further west to Chicago, which was already the sort of the industrial city of the west, really connecting basically the natural resources of the west to the people and consumers of the east. And there, the Chicago police opened fire in a famous, quote unquote, famous local event called the Battle of the Viaduct in what's now the Pilsen neighborhood on the near southwest side. And the strike spread all the way to San Francisco, which was literally the end of the railroad line. If you're traveling east to west on the first transcontinental rail line, there, unfortunately, white workers invaded the predominantly Chinese neighborhoods and started attacking Chinese people, scapegoating of Chinese being rampant.

And just a few years later, really driven by the white working class of California, the U.S. government will ban future Chinese. immigration, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, right? And so what's happening is you have a national uprising, not coordinated by any union or any organization because they don't exist really, right? But nevertheless, what we're seeing is this uprising in city after city that lasted for upwards of two weeks did not result in actually the sort of return of wages to the previous level, resulted in upwards of 100 people being killed. But also is really the first example of a national protest. test against what, you know, it's honestly can be sort of a little vague. The railroad workers were upset about their wage cuts, obviously. But what's clear is actually a lot of people

were upset about industrialization and how it was proceeding and that people were seeing themselves as being forced into this new system where you're basically a subservient, right, where you're not making much money. And this dream of America as being a place that was different than Europe, right, where ordinary people could live decent lives and be free, literally, but also economically, not just politically, that the fear was that industrialization, as it was emerging, was going to erode that. And so we see this, all these people, right, because it can be hard to define what this great uprising really was about, right? It's not just about this narrow wage demand, right? It's also about really sort of frustration, right? The fact that it's 12 years after the

civil war is also, like I said, important because, like, it is not hard for Americans to imagine another war happening. Maybe this time workers versus bosses instead of, you know, slaveholders versus anti-slavery people, right? It was just a decade prior, right? And some of these people were involved in the grave uprising were very likely in the war, right? You know, in the military. Right. And so that was enormously important. And it basically, what it also does is show us what happens. It predicts what will happen. There will be a series of huge strikes in various industries and various cities, really for the next 30 plus years. Right. Like really, it doesn't stop until the 1930s. But like we're seeing the beginnings of industrialization and the beginnings of a pushback on the part of workers against how it's playing. That is so interesting, and that's a period, that's an event that I actually had no clue about before, you know, preparing for this episode. So that's very interesting. And of course, it's kind of interesting, too, because obviously I live in Omaha, and it's always been a huge railroad town in the Union Pacific has a huge sort of headquarters here.

And a few years ago, there was a wobbly friend of mine who was trying to, I guess, intensify. the union struggle within the Union Pacific Railroad and was actually asking me and a couple of my friends and comrades from like the IWW adjacent left wing circles to apply so that we could get more people into the jobs making an intensification of the union struggle more likely. And so unfortunately I applied and I did not get in, but those struggles very much continue to play out, although in very different ways. and as you said, trains are not as important as they once were, though that might change in the coming decades based on climate change

and transportation and all of that, but it's very interesting. Railroad is just so important, right, for the economy. It's actually the most important industry pretty much in every economy that industrializes. And many workers in railroad's become, in many countries, very active in their labor movements. Some actually have more concerned. conservative politics in which they just want to, you know, enrich their own members' pockets. It's not necessarily bad, but like, you know, very narrow vision, right? Others become quite, you know, radical.

I mean, the most important American labor leader that will emerge, right, is Eugene Debs, who emerges out of the railroad industry in the 1890s, right? And so, and of course, he's not narrow in his vision of what labor and political power might bring. And so, yeah, it's easy to sort of just not think about railroads. Historians and labor historians think about road roads a lot. For sure. Let's go to another event. And this is one I think people will be generally pretty familiar with on the left, especially, which is the hay market affair. And it's a classic event in working class and left wing, specifically anarchist history in the United States. So can you just sort of summarize that event and sort of highlight why

why it was so important. Yeah, it is deeply important. I say to students in my classes sometimes that it was in some ways the most important event in the United States from the reconstruction era, arguably to World War I, right? Like, you know, in that two generations or so, right? Like, because it's showing what in Chicago,

where the Haymarket Affair occurred, Chicago had emerged as the third, then the second biggest city, but also the biggest industrial city in the country and really world, right? It's this huge magnet pulling workers from rural parts of America, like Albert Parsons, a white man from Texas, who had actually fought in the Confederacy, but then became a radical Republican and with his black wife, Lucy Parsons, moves because they can't basically survive in Texas any longer, literally. They moved to Chicago to a place outside of the South where a multiracial couple might live in relative to peace. But it also would pull people from other countries. Chicago in the 19th century had tons of Irish and German immigrants, which were the two largest immigrant groups. And then after the Civil War, as more different European groups come, Chicago will basically get more than the spare share of all those group so that by the turn of the 20th century, really, 90% of Chicagoans are immigrants or the

children of immigrants. So imagine this cauldron of industrial production. All the workers are really basically European immigrants or the children of European immigrants, right? And some of those people are German anarchists, right? Many anarchists, Chicago will become a hub of anarchism in the U.S. And anarchists, as you and your listeners know are well connected. They keep in touch with each other. They often have lived in different places, correspond, right, newspapers or magazines. So Chicago is this huge hub of, even though it's small, it's very active, right, and very involved in working class struggles, right? So too, the labor movement is growing in Chicago, right? And so it's in

1886 sort of building off earlier generations, right, the ongoing push for the eight-hour day, which emerges in the like 1850s and 1860s. So instead of the 10-hour day, we want the eight-hour day, right? And, you know, on May 1st, 1886 in Chicago, but around the country, hundreds of thousands of workers refuse to go to work in order to try to push their employers to convert to an eight-hour day. Importantly, an eight-hour day at a 10-hour wage, right? And so you don't want a wage cut and a reduction in hours. You actually want both, right? And so when you call for the eight-hour day, there's often implicit in that it will be an hourly wage hype. So on May 1st, Chicago was actually shut down, probably more than 100,000 workers went on strike in America's

biggest industrial city. The reports are that basically the factories weren't quiet. In many places, the strike continued after one day. And so at one factory owned by a family called the McCormick's, which became international harvester, which is one of the largest farm equipment manufacturers, so the industrialization of farm equipment, right, steel plows, but also later tractors, right? Chicago's a hub. They go on strike for the eight-hour day and other things. The police are called in. The police willingly are supplied by the mayor to employers to basically break strikes. And on May 3rd, 1886, yeah, like police kill four strikers. And then that evening, anarchists in Chicago call for a protest the following day, May 4th,

to happen what now would be called the West Loop. at a place called the Haymarket Square, where, as many listeners know, a small group of anarchists and sympathizers showed up. It was a rainy evening. Maybe there were 300 people left when approximately 180 police came into this meeting area and basically ordered everyone to disperse.

The mayor famously had told the police chief in charge, you don't need to sort of destroy this meeting. it's nothing big deal. Nevertheless, the police captain in that district ordered his cops in, and then a bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police, killing eight police, ultimately. The police opened fire on the crowd, not knowing even though who might have thrown the bomb. Ultimately, 16 people were killed, eight civilians, eight police, very possibly, at least some of those people are killed by police bullets, not by the bomb. As we don't know, who threw the bomb, right? Like, although many people have many theories,

or I say hypotheses. And although ultimately eight anarchists were put on trial and found guilty of conspiracy, which is to say that some unknown person had thrown the bomb, but these eight people who all not coincidentally were anarchists, who were heavily involved in the eight-hour movement, were somehow put this other mystery person up to throwing a bomb, right, that killed the police. And then, you know, four of those people were executed by the state the following year,

including Albert Parsons, Fifth, committed suicide in prison rather than at the state. Three of the eight for various reasons weren't immediately executed, but were put into prison, but were later pardoned by the subsequent governor, who cited the sort of malicious ferocity and unfairness of the court system. And in the aftermath of the Haymarket affair, basically meetings and organizing of workers was shut down in Chicago, but also around the country, right? And so there's this huge backlash.

I compare it to 9-11. Like on 9-12, Americans wanted to attack somebody, right? The day after the Haymarket bombing, which the national press blamed on the anarchist, even though, again, there's no evidence that confirms who threw the bomb, right? Like, even though there's suspicions, right? Like, you know, it basically hurt the labor movement. It hurt the largest labor union, which was called the Knights of Labor, right?

It hurt the anarchist movement in the short term, right? Because there was this ferocious police and governmental repression against anarchists, against unions, and the eight-hour day movement will also sort of disappear momentarily because of this huge backlash against those who are believed to be behind the Haymarket affair. right that's a summary one could go in much more depth and but like that's so important for shaping again how different cities and governments responded to organized worker power and of course that one in particular is notorious yeah that's i mean incredibly interesting and you're right we could we could obviously have entire episode on that specific topic itself i had no idea that Lucy Parsons' husband actually originally fought for the Confederacy and sort of had a change

of worldview and paradigm. Do you know what was the impetus for that radical shift in his ideology? You know, I should, but I don't. I mean, basically, you know, in a lot of southern states, former Confederate states, right after the Civil War, there was actually a lot of white working class men and women, right, who joined forces with black people in biracial political organising. Sometimes that was within the Republican Party, which was seen as the Progressive Party then, right? And sometimes it was in other formations, right? And so I don't think it was simply that he fell for a black woman, right? Like, but like that he came to see that what he believed was true was false, right? Like, I mean, he had an epiphany, right, and flipped

radically, right? And then later was sort of further radicalized, right, after he moved to Chicago And Albert Parsons is also famous, right, for being the sort of the most well-known native-born white American anarchist in Chicago and as part of the AMA market since all the other seven had all, were all German immigrants, right? Or actually field in, like one was an English immigrant, I think. But none of them were born in the U.S. And so because in America, but also in maybe some other societies, immigrants have often been sort of blamed for bringing in radical ideas. And anarchism was very much the sort of, what is it, Exhibit A in conservative Americans' minds, right, which is why, of course, anarchists were subsequently banned from immigrating to the U.S. in the 20th century, even though some still came. But, like, you know, anarchism, however it might be misunderstood, and even though there were differences among anarchists' fierce differences, right, became sort of the poster child. of sort of the bogeyman, right? Like, and so you see a lot of political cartoons of, you know, bearded, unshaven,

dark-skinned men carrying a bomb with a fuse, right? That's the sort of classic image, right? And that's because of the haymarket, right? Like that sort of enters the sort of the popular imagination, and then it'll just be repurposed in various ways subsequently, right? But that all sort of takes us, that's Chicago 1886. Yeah, the bomb throwing anarchist. trope. I was going to ask if it came out of the haymarket affair, and certainly it did.

Of course, as you know, there were anarchists who were bomb drivers and who believe that, you know, the, you know, anarchy of the deed, right, that you could, anarchists were successfully assassinating leaders, political leaders in Europe, right, for, you know, including in Russia and other places, right? And so there were attempts, right? an anarchist that might have attempted to sort of kill McKinley, right, although we could debate his politics, right, like that was very much, like you said, the trope in, among mainstream Americans, right, which is to say non-left-wing Americans, I guess. And for those who like to visit Chicago or go to Chicago, you know there's actually a sort of a really large Haymarket

statue near the site of the Haymarket bombing that you can find online and then also the cemetery where the haymarket martyrs were buried just west of the city of chicago both are important pilgrimage sites i think for um radicals um when they visit chicago yeah absolutely i remember in a an early job that i had in my my late teens and 20s it was at a basically like a beverage place but my job was to take kegs to parties and stuff so there's a lot of like heavy lifting and throwing kegs in the back of vans and driving them and I had a much older conservative co-worker, and we would debate politics all the time, and his constant sort of trope that he would say is he would say that I was a left-wing bomb thrower

because of the arguments that I would lob his way on driving out to a party to tap the kegs and stuff. And so it's so funny because the whole idea of a left-wing bomb thrower comes from this Haymarket affair, but at the time neither him nor I was aware that the trope was actually rooted in that history. It was just sort of a colloquialism that he tossed in my way in friendly banter. It just made me think of that, which is interesting. Well, that's a great story. Of course, the average American doesn't know that the Soviet Union was our most important ally during World War II. Exactly.

Exactly. It's a low bottom. Yes. You mentioned that the Haymarket Affair obviously took place in early May, around May Day itself. Was that one of the main impetus to shifting in the United States away from May Day and towards Labor Day? Yes, totally. So, you know, strikes in May, which is to say after winter, which is to say when suddenly, say if you work in building, you might suddenly have more work. So it's actually, you know, if you strike strategically, spring strikes or Mayday strikes would be logical, yeah, to sort of, you don't strike in the winter because there's no work, right? Like you strike in the spring when suddenly there's a demand. So there were actually a few Mayday workers. marches that happened prior to Chicago 1886, like in New York City and I guess 1884 maybe. But then, you know, May Day becomes this important day, May 1st sort of later becomes the

international worker holiday, right? But it was actually another event in the late 19th century, the Pullman strike of 1894, which is also centered in Chicago, that after basically the federal government used the U.S. Army to crush the largest strike in the history of the country. that shut down the rail industry for some days in the summer of 1894, led by Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union. Right after, basically, the crushing of the Pullman strike, Congress unanimously declared a Labor Day holiday and put it on the first Monday in September, right? And so it was obviously like, well, you know, this is what the government just did to workers, but we're going to give you a federal holiday.

But we're not going to put it on May 1st because that already is tainted, if you will, by radicals who declare their own holiday on May 1st, 1886, right? And so in the U.S., we got Labor Day, but radicals continue to celebrate May 1st in the United States. But for reasons that I actually don't know the history of, in country after country in the 20th century, right, Of course, you know, the Soviet Union and leftist countries in the 20th century adopted worker holidays and put it on May 1st. And then it spread. And so I don't know how or precisely when it spread, but in almost every country in the world, there is a Labor Day. In almost every country in the world, it is May 1st, even though that holiday was essentially born in the United States.

But by putting it in September, the true history was essentially disappeared right in front of our eyes. Right. Yeah. And that's why I've always thought that trying to reclaim May Day and for many years, locally, left-wing organizations have come together and have done May Day parades and march through the streets with our red flags and stuff to try to just sort of reassert the international importance of that date here in the U.S. And I guess this is Brett's story time because everything you say brings up stuff that's happened to me. But on the last May Day, it was sort of in the middle of COVID, so we couldn't do the usual meeting. But I did hang a red flag out on my front porch just as a sort of way to memorialize the fact that it was May Day and fully not expecting anybody in my neighborhood to know what that symbol meant. But it's actually how I met my neighbor because a few weeks later, we were out in the street doing lawn work.

And he mentioned he was like, hey, I saw that you did that red flag. just so you know like he basically came out and said he's on the left as well and he knows that that stands for May Day and you know it's awesome that we did that etc and so now me and him are friends and we talk and we've been over to his house and stuff but it was all centered around the conversation of me hanging the red flag and him knowing what that meant and me being utterly taken aback that he knew what that meant you know so that that's a great story for sure but you mentioned the Pullman strikes so let's go ahead and talk about that You know, moving into the late 19th century, we have the Pullman and Homestead strikes,

as well as some mining strikes out in the West. So you can mostly focus on the former, but if you want to talk about the mining strikes as well, that'd be awesome. Of course. I mean, so what we're seeing, right, is like now industrialization has sort of been around for two, three generations of late 19th century. America continues to rapidly industrialize. It transforms cities and regions.

in the West, what it does is basically industrialization happens in, say, years as opposed to decades, right? And so the huge demand for factories for things like copper, lead, in particular, as well as coal, result in this, the mining industry of many different minerals and metals will explode. There will be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of coal miners and several hundred thousand of hard rock miners, people who don't work in coal. especially in the Rocky Mountain West and in California, right? And so in these places, almost overnight, you go from quote-unquote frontier to large multinational corporations that basically control the towns, right, control the mines, you know, after some prospector finds whatever quickly sells out to some big corporation that has the capital to sort of develop, right?

And so these hard rock miners, right, become some of the most minimal. militant workers, right, many of whom end up forming first local unions and then forming the Western Federation of Miners, which becomes very militant, becomes, you know, I always say that dangerous industries often produce militant workers, but also sort of collective work. No one sort of mines alone, right? And so this collective consciousness, of course, the United Mine Workers of America predominantly coal miners in the east at that time also is emerging, right? But in the West, highly militant, increasingly direct action tactics. So shutting down valleys, like dynamiting the railroad lines, it comes into a valley

to end the ability to bring in scabs, right, if there's workers on strike. Of course, companies use private police, but also have often the governor's state militias to array against them. And so there's a series of battle. that you could call wars, right, in Colorado, in Montana, in Idaho, in the 1890s, in the early 1900s. The Western Federation of Miners will, of course, be the largest union when the Industrial Workers of the World forms in 1905. It will be the WFM that basically will provide some of the key leaders like Vincent St. John, but also Big Bill Haywood. Of course, the IWW was founded in Chicago.

But back in the 1890s, right, when the Western Federation of Miner, are getting going. So to the railroad industry, Chicago is the hub. It is essentially becomes the, as I mentioned, key city that connects up people from the east with food and natural resources from the west, sometimes referred to as nature's metropolis. So railroads and stockyards, right, these huge industries that employ several hundred thousand people in the greater Chicago area, perhaps, you know,

the largest union emerges in the railroad industry called the American Railway Union in 1893. There had been craft unions based on the particular trade. Eugene Debs, I mentioned, was one of those who emerged out of the craft union movement. So you might have 10 different unions in the same company. And other people, including those influenced by the Knights of Labor, which had an industrial model, was saying we should have a single union in the railroads as opposed to 10 unions. Right. And so those who were who were unskilled or lesser skilled, as opposed to the more highly skilled ones, who often wanted to maintain these smaller craft unions, right? Still to this day they exist, right, were forming an industrial alternative, the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, who was born and raised in neighboring Indiana and was sort of American-born to French immigrants. And who became the most well-known labor leader of his time, right? When a depression hits in 1893, basically a lot of people get laid off,

including at the Pullman factory, Pullman manufactured sleeper cars in restaurant and dining cars for railroads, right? Just outside of the city of Chicago, just to the south of the city of Chicago. Now it's actually part of the city, because the city leader annexed Pullman. Workers who were affiliated with the American Railway Union went on strike, and the entire union voted in solidarity to boycott all railroad law, all railroads. railroads that had Pullman cars attached to them would be not worked. And so it was a boycott of Pullman cars. That had the effect of if a Pullman car is, say, five of the cars on a 50 car train were Pullman cars, you don't touch the whole train.

And because Pullman was the dominant producer of rail and sleeper cars, a great pretty much all passenger trains had Pullman cars as part of their lineup. And so when the strike boycott emerges, it means that if you live in Maine, you might boycott Pullman. If you live in New Mexico, you might boycott Pullman. Chicago was the largest hub of railroads and was the strongest center for the union. But this strike essentially, I call it a strike, but officially you might call it a boycott, spread across the country, right? Snarled traffic, right, rail traffic. And railroads literally make the economy go, right? Everything has moved, passengers, raw materials, finish goods by rail. And so centered in Chicago, the ARU had shut down the most important industry and the most important industrial city in the country in the summer

of 1894 peacefully until, of course, the U.S. government decided to take sides with the employers. The railroads were some of the most powerful companies. They had the ear of the attorney general, who used to be an attorney working for the railroad industry. He provided key information saying, if you put U.S. mail on these Pullman cars, and these boycotters don't work these Pullman cars, then you can apply to a federal judge from an injunction because these strikers are interfering with the delivery of the U.S. mail, which is a federal crime. And then the president will call in U.S. troops have an excuse, if you will, to do so. And sure enough, that's what happened. And then in two dozen states across the land, there were clashes between the U.S. Army strikers and their sympathizers. But once the U.S. Army got involved, essentially the strike was broken.

And then a number of the leaders of the American Railway Union, including Gene Debs, were imprisoned in a small county jail about 50 miles northwest of Chicago called Woodstock, Illinois. And then that's where famously Debs had his conversion to socialism, right, because he was hanging out in 1895 in a relatively comfortable prison where he could enter visitors and read, and he and his friends basically hung out and read and then entertained visitors, including a prominent socialist named Victor Berger, a German immigrant who lived in Milwaukee, but who brought him copies of a book by Karl Kowski, who was a famous Czech-German-based socialist and theoretician who was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th century

among leftists in Europe and America. So too, a Scottish trade unionist and the first member of the Labor Party to be elected to parliament, Keir Hardy, who was a Scottish coal miner. He also visited Debs in prison and also brought him and was encouraging him. So essentially, Debs was identified as this incredibly prominent labor leader who could be converted, if you will. And so he comes out of prison and within a few years helps form the Socialist Party of America and becomes then the standard bearer for the socialist for the next 20 years. But, you know, he emerges out of the labor movement.

Yeah. And Pullman is essentially the most important strike that he was associated with, but also was a defeat, right? Like for the workers, right? The American Railway Union was sort of crushed, although not entirely, immediately. And the Pullman company continued to operate non-union for some decades to come as well.

But it shows the energy and essentially, despite these stepbacks, you might say, right? It does not result in the end of labor strikes or labor union organizing. It actually often sort of stimulates further, right, albeit with often sort of some breaks in between. We sort of see an unending wave of strikes and unions organizing in the late 19th into the 20th century. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a crucial point because with the Haymarket Affair and then with the Pullman Strike specifically, you do see this initial failure, but, you know,

obviously any sort of revolutionary militant activity will draw in backlash and reaction. So that's always this push and pull of these events. But later down the road, they ended up facilitating higher levels of struggle, organization, etc. And that happens a lot in left-wing history. I mean, something that jumps to mind is the Easter uprising in Ireland, in which it was, you know, it was an event that took. place without a lot of mass support at the time among regular people that was crushed and was a huge loss, but which galvanized Irish sentiment against English imperial pressure and

occupation and later went on to be the inspiration for the IRA and, you know, battles that took place decades after this initial event. We have an entire episode on that if people are interested. But that is so often the case in in left-wing history, an initial attempt, a defeat, but then a setting of the stage for higher and more militant levels of struggle down the line. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Well, you know, we're sort of leaving the 19th century here, and we're going to move into the 20th. But I do want to touch on this, and this is something that your work really focuses on just broadly, which is this intersection of class and race. And throughout this entire history, you've mentioned, you know, the decades following the Civil War and then

reconstruction, race played a crucial role. Can you talk about how race and class combined or came into conflict during this time broadly? Of course. I mean, that's why so many of us use this term racial capitalism, because racism and capitalism sort of co-emerge and sort of feed on each other in ways and sort of facilitate each other in some ways. You know, African Americans have essentially were the southern working class, right? There were, of course, working class white people in the South, the landless white people too, but arguably the majority of, well, pretty much all black people were working class people in the South, which was where over 90% of black people lived, right, in the 19th century. So we keep that in mind. Black people

had lived in other parts of the country and will gradually start to leave the South for the Northeast, to Midwest. In the West, this is before the World War II initiated great migration. But race is important to understand because it's just a central fault line. America was founded upon white supremacy in some important ways. And so it's not surprising that race becomes a factor in workplace issues. Most importantly, employers will use employers, who we must note, are pretty much all white people and all pretty much white men, will use race as a wedge. And so, Not that working class people don't have some agency. Sometimes it was working class white people who embrace racism.

But when, say, workers organize, employers will try to destroy unions or strikes by bringing in replacement workers, nicknamed scabs. Sometimes those scabs were black. It is important to note that actually most strike breakers in American history were white. right but because racism is such just pivotal fault line right and sort of identity in america white workers see the black strike breakers more than they see the white ones right um and so strike breakers often are associated with black people which is very unfair because like i said most strike breakers were in fact white or european immigrants nevertheless um in the sort of collective imagination of many white unionists in the u.s they see blacks as strikebreakers now that has

multiple effects. In some cases, that results in unions trying to organize black workers, which I would suggest would be the logical and appropriate action. The United Mine Workers of America, coal miners, were among those very imperfectly. But in Ohio, in Alabama, in West Virginia, there are examples of African Americans and European Americans lying in the United Mine Workers for common struggles. And we're actually recording this just days after the 100th anniversary of the Blair Mountain War, right, in West Virginia in 1921. And there were a lot of black coal miners in Southern West Virginia who were active in the labor movement, right? So we want to remember that, right? We also want to remember that most black people who come out of agricultural

backgrounds don't have industrial experience. And so they have to learn, they have to become class conscious, right? They might initially sort of actually be more appreciative of their white boss than their white fellow worker, who, in fact, hires you, right? And so you also then have many white unions that simply don't let black people in because of racism or exclude them from some locals and put them into all black segregated locals, right? And so you have this spectrum in which there are some unions, the most important at that time, the United Mine Workers, that actually are somewhat open to black people, right? You then have other unions that segregate, and then you have many unions, probably the majority,

that simply don't let black people in. So if I'm a black worker in Chicago or Philadelphia, and I'm learning essentially the lay of the land, I quickly learn that actually unions aren't necessarily my friends. Unions are sort of weapons used to keep me out, right? Which may result and sometimes did result in black people, when white people go on strike, being having no problem with breaking that strike, right? Because why should they respect a white union's picket line

when in fact that white union won't include black people, right? And so, you know, I mentioned the Blair Mountain War. Some of you might have seen sort of one of my favorite films, every labor historian's favorite film, Maitwan, by John Sales, which is a fictionalized version of the Blair Mountain War and then the sort of this feuds with the Hatfields and the McCoys, right? And the main black actor in that was the late James Earl Jones

who plays this brilliant character where, who's a pro-union African-American coal miner who was brought in along with other blacks, right, to break the strike of, that was predominantly of sort of hillbillies, right, and sort of Italian immigrants. But then the black people joined the strike too, right, led by James Earl Jones's character. Right. And so you see in that film, like I said, fictionalized, but really a brilliant film shot largely in West Virginia, sort of the racial and ethnic dynamics, right? because you also have all these people who are American immigrants, right?

Like from Italy, from Poland, whatever. They're trying to figure out American race relations to and which side, if you will, they're on and what their identity is, right? Italians weren't necessarily white, right? They had to learn that they were white, right? And so race does all this and more, right? And so it plays out in this era,

in the late 19th and early 20th century, generally white working class people and generally white unions were not, inclusive. Some were. And as you know, much of my work is centered on these sort of radical unions that in fact were what we might call anti-racist. But the great majority of American unions were, didn't include black people, didn't include many immigrants, didn't include women, because they had a different vision, right, which was based on this sort of narrow, racial, gendered, craft-based model of unionism, which had short-term benefits, perhaps, but

had no long-term vision. Yeah, exactly. And we have done an episode on the Battle of Blair Mountain in which we spend a significant amount of time exploring the racial fault lines. So for people that are interested in a deeper dive into that, you can go check it out. And I was actually looking at your past appearances, because we mentioned I didn't know if it was the third or fourth time. And this is actually your fourth time on.

We've had you on for history of the IWW, and then these two other episodes were focused really on this intersection of race and class. We had you on for dock worker power and for the life and times of Ben Fletcher. And so for people that want to hear more about this broad history of unions and class and race, definitely go check those out. And I'll link to them in the show notes so people can find them easier. And I love all those episodes that are really important. But let's go ahead and move forward into the 20th century proper. And I want to start here with the Russian Revolution. What impact did that revolution the first ever attempt to build a worker state have on labor politics and reaction here in the United States?

Yeah, so in 1917, when the Russian Revolution began and then formed the Soviet Union, Americans were people who lived in the United States who were left-wing. We're thrilled, right, as were leftists around the world, right? The fact that they had pulled off in Russia, what people had been talking about for decades in various ways and various countries was so exciting. It's hard to envision, right, like how, and so like the effusive praise, right? So I know the industrial workers of the world sort of well. And so wobbly publications were publishing sort of, you know, beautifully,

praise-filled statements in solidarity with and in support for the Soviet Union, right? This was the future, right? Some of those people who were Russian-born actually moved back to the Soviet Union, but actually so did some non-Russian people from the U.S., but also from other countries, people who are socialists or radical unionists, who wanted to basically help build the Soviet project. And in fact, there were hundreds and thousands of Americans who moved in the 1920s, right, into the 1930s to the Soviet Union, to, as you said, build a worker state in the United States that played out in multiple ways, right? So there was the formation of

multiple different parties that ultimately came together into what we call the Communist Party of the United States, similar to what was happening in other countries where there was the new creation of, because communism is not the same as social, is not the same as anarchism, right? And so you have these different, so communism will become the dominant left-wing tradition in the 1920s and 30s in the U.S., but around the world. Because of the success of the early success of the Russian Revolution in the U.S., that does contribute to the militancy of workers right after World War I,

during and after World War I. Workers were essential to the victory in the war, not just soldiers, but workers. That was very much the term at the time widely used was industrial democracy. We want to bring democracy into our workplaces, which is to say you want to have some power over your conditions of work, maybe who hires you, maybe who controls you. That most dramatically emerges in Seattle in 2019 and January where a strike of shipbuilders, which was a huge industry in Seattle, tens of thousands of shipbuilders go on strike for raises. There was massive inflation during the war.

And so essentially, if your wages hadn't gone up by 50%, you were losing money comparatively to a few years prior, right? That strike spread so that then workers in dozens of other industries in Seattle joined this strike. It became known as the Seattle General Strike. And literally the mayor left the city, the workers on strike formed a shadowed government that ran the city for the better part of a week. And what was coming out of Seattle's general strike, at least some of the workers. people in the Seattle Journal strike is that this is the first shot in the American Bolshevik Revolution. That was also the way many middle class and conservative Americans saw the Seattle General Strike, which would have been a horrible, horrible, terrible thing. And so the mayor actually

requests and receives support from the U.S. President to send in the Marines, literally. And so the Seattle General Strike is broken after a week of largely peaceful shutdown of the city. Right. And that same year was the more strikes, larger strikes, and more total strikes involving upwards of 20% of industrial workers in the U.S. than ever before in U.S. history. So in 1919 was this huge strike wave. Coal miner shut down. Coal, you know, steel workers went on strike, the two most important industrial industries, you can say. Telephone operators, which was heavily female, went on strike. At that time, you actually had to pick up your phone and be connected to the number you wanted to dial. So operators, right, do all the work. If they're not connecting you to

who you want to call, you don't make a call, right? Like the Boston police went on strike. The first time we had an organized force of police who wanted to unionize. That's complicated, but it's noteworthy, right, that it was in 1919 that the Boston police strike was put in. Actually, they were all fired and the governor brought in National Guard to replace those police. And other industries too, textile workers, et cetera. So 1919, part of that was sparked by the Russian Revolution, right? Part of it was sparked by upset over declining wages due to high inflation. Part of it was due to the inspiration that America helped make the world safe for democracy

and now workers wanted more democracy at home. Part of it, again, we can't say quantify any of this, right, like was clearly the inspiration from Europe, right? The Russian Revolution, which also sparked attempts at communist revolutions in Hungary and Germany, that same year. The Mexican Revolution is still ongoing. The Irish Revolution sort of essentially not a communist one, although there's many left-winger involved and leaders in the Irish Revolution for freedom from Britain. So it's a, it is a revolutionary moment, right?

1919 is sort of one of the dynamic years that, you know, along 1968, as an example, in the 20th century of a year of global protest. But in 2019, especially driven by the left. Yeah, that's Seattle General Strike is absolutely fascinating. And the fear of Bolshevism that it's stoked in people is something I didn't know about either. And, you know, we're talking about 1990. and right after during and after World War I. But the influence of the Russian Revolution on the New Deal and a lot of the fears of a

Bolshevik-style revolution in the U.S. driving reforms to try to, you know, release some pressure built up in the American economy. Is that fair to say? I think there's no question, but we do have to sort of keep in mind that there is a decade, literally between and then the sort of the Great Depression, right? And so in the 20s, right, really there's sort of a conservative backlash in the U.S., resulting in the election of a series of one-term Republican conservative presidents who were very laissez-faire, who were very anti-progressive, capital P,

which was the term used at the time. Teddy Roosevelt had been a pre-war-1 Republican progressive who supported, for instance, a number of, well, he supported the mine worker strikes in 1902, the first president to actually speak in sympathy to a strike. So in the 20s, he Coolidge and Hoover and Harding, right? Then, of course, the Great Depression begins. There are huge waves of protests in the early 30s, right, that are pushing the New Deal, if you will. Part of that is very much as the American Communist movement has grown, but also as the Soviet Union has industrialized and become a small but significant force, right?

That I think it is fair to say that the New Deal, as well as what's happening in many European countries, in the 20s and 30s is sort of like countries moving a little left for fear that they're going to move further left. And so like especially that's the explanation after World War II for why most of Central and Western Europe become social democracies

with more robust safety nets. Why are they more generous to their people than the U.S. is, for example, in its partial welfare state? It might be because workers can look eastward to the Soviet Union and go, oh, actually, I want more. right. And so it's always there, right? The existence of the Soviet Union, for all its faults, that's actually one of the problems you might say with the collapse of the Soviet Union after the,

you know, from the 1990s forward, is that there's no sort of country that sort of can check, if you will, the capitalist West. And so like, but back in the 30s, like you said, there's no question that the New Deal is sort of an attempt to capture some of the energy, that's emerging out of these strikes that are huge in the early 30s, but also other social protest movements that include the Communist Party, which is actually helping to lead a lot of the protests in the early 1930s. Predictably, the communists are saying capitalism has failed. The Great Depression is the end of the line for capitalism.

Now is the time to transition to a new economic system. And in the 30s, that wouldn't be as hard to sell, given the sort of the mass of suffering unemployment and poverty that had emerged right in 1930. Yeah, exactly. And it's just worth noting here that, you know, behind these big liberal reforms that liberals even today love to sort of take credit for, like, you know, the New Deal, especially this is like, you know, this is liberalism, this is reformism, it does work. But underneath the surface layer of that history is, of course, being spearheaded and pushed

by militant radicals and revolutionaries and the presence of an antagonistic alternative way of doing things over in the USSR. So the greatest reforms of American liberalism are so often, almost always undergirded by a radical and revolutionary movement that forces the hand of the ruling class. And then only later, once that radical history is largely whitewashed out of the picture, can liberals sit back and claim it as a victim? victory for gradualism in their approach to politics. So I just think that's important to keep in mind. Sure. Yes, totally. So let's move on and talk about the red scares. And there's two, you know, large waves, the first red scare and the second red scare. And I'm just going to combine this into

one question. It's a big one, but you can take it in any direction that you want. Can you just sort of talk about the first and the second red scares and maybe even weave in a mention of the Taft-Hartley act. Of course. So red is the color of the blood we bleed, but it's also the color of the communist flag, right? And so red has often been associated, despite the fact that in modern America, it's become associated with the Republican Party, which is, from what I understand it, simply because some TV networks randomly decided to sort of make Republican states red and Democrats blue on the maps when we're reporting elections. And now we're all stuck with this dumb sort of thing. But like, so, you know, red scare, fear of confidence.

communism, even though now we might be fearful of the Republican Party. So, like, you know, the emergence of radicals during and after War I, including the Soviet Union, but also in the U.S., results in this backlash during and after the war, led by the Wilson administration, who had these new laws called the espionage and sedition acts to use as whips, to use in court, including against the IWW, as well as anarchists, communists, etc. And so in 1918, the wobblies were the first victims, right, where several hundred wobblies were sent, went into federal trials as well as at the state and local level. 1919, after the war's formal end, the red scare is expanded to include anarchists, immersion communists, and others. Many immigrants who have radical politics are rounded up and deported, most famously Emma Goldman and several hundred others are thrown on a ship out of New York City, I think, called the Buford and deported to the Soviet Union. A friend of mine named Kenyon Zimmer is actually writing a collective biography of those who were aboard the Buford, which should be a wonderful future book.

And, you know, simultaneously, all these strikes I mentioned were happening. And so there's also at the local and state levels, employers and governments who often collude. Often the American Federation of Labor sees the government as an ally and will sort of participate sometimes very intentionally in these anti-radical backlash or repression. And, you know, there'll be a series of big strikes into the early 20s, but really then there's a, you might call it a quiet decade, where essentially the first red scare will contain radicalism,

will criminalize dissent, will have deported many people. There will also be a massive change to congressional law that will radically reduce immigration for the night. 50 years, partially because there was this association that it was immigrants who were driving all these strikes. And therefore, we had too many. We need to Americanize. That was the term used immigrants. It's true that many immigrants hadn't even gotten their citizenship papers. And so there was also a big push to Americanize politically, but also figuratively. So that was sort of away some of the effects of the first register was immigration restriction, right, crushing

of unions, destruction largely of the most radical union, the IWW, the Congress are still very small. In the 30s, due to the Great Depression, radical unions emerged, especially in the Congress of industrial organizations. And the CP is very involved in a lot of union activism, but also political activism. And even before World War II, it's in the late 1930s, actually, that the U.S. Congress, conservative, Southern white Democrats, formed the House Un-American Activity Committee, Hughack, which is much better known for his post-World War II life. But before the war, actually, Hughack was investigating the CIA and communists, as well as Harry Bridges, as sort of a CIA leader on the West Coast, who was an Australian immigrant, to try to get him deported.

And, you know, actually at this time, immigration and naturalization was underneath the Department of Labor. It was only a little later that actually it was spun off into a separate federal agency. But the fact that immigration was seen as a workplace labor issue, right, actually speaks volumes about how immigration was seen. Right. Like it was seen as like, we need to bring in workers from other countries to do our work, right? And which isn't wrong necessarily or incorrect, but like that was the Department of Labor literally was in charge. charge of immigration and naturalization until it wasn't. But then, you know, during World War II, despite the fact that the Soviets were our greatest allies, and we provided lots of material assistance to the Soviets who were doing most of the fighting and most of the dying against

the Nazis in Europe. You know, there was a high, a lot of suspicion. The United States actually didn't recognize the Soviet Union when it was formed, and in the 30s actually under President FDR, the U.S. finally recognized the existence of the Soviet Union, similar to the way that America was in denial about the People's Republic of China for 25 years. And, you know, and then, you know, during the war, actually, communists are fierce supporters of the war because U.S. communists are want to support the Soviet Union. Therefore, it was often many communists in many unions who were pushing what was nicknamed the no strike pledge so that we should, we workers, work as much as we can to help win the war. But it is worth noting that many workers were being

worked to death. Many industries suffered a lot of accidents and injuries and deaths due to this high pace. And you were being pressured to work hard because, what, are you not a supporter of the war? And so, communists were very much a part of that. There was actually a lot of wildcats happening in early 40s in war work. Of course, for many people, it's also. an opportunity to simply improve their own lives, right, because there's finally these huge labor shortages after 15 years of suffering. After the war, unfortunately, the Soviet Union and the United States quickly saw themselves as competitors and enemies. Maybe not surprising, although the Cold War didn't have to take the look. It did. There could have been many

different futures where you had a bipolar post-World War II world with two powerful. countries, the U.S. and USSR. But what did emerge was from the U.S. side, right, is that the Soviet Union with our sort of junior partners in Europe, especially the U.K., saw the Soviets as evil, expansionist, and must be contained. You can't go to war with the Soviet Union because they're too powerful, but you can contain them, right? And so there was an effort to, in the U.S., and in Europe at first, right, to basically form a wall, which Churchill nicknamed the Iron Curse, right, like to prevent the further spread west of Soviet power. The Soviets, of course, had come from the East and had liberated all the countries

from Nazi control in Eastern Europe, but then had imposed its will upon these new or newly independent nations like Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. And so in the U.S., there's also a domestic Cold War, right? And a central part of that was in 1947 when Republicans with Democratic allies. But in 1946, Republicans had retaking control of Congress for the first time in a generation and passed Taft-Hartley, nicknamed after the two bill sponsors. And they basically were trying to roll back labor's gains in the law, which was the National Labor Relations Act or the Wagner Act passed in 1935,

which had legalized unions, strikes force employers to collectively to respect unions and bargain with them. But workers had continued to use all sorts of militant tactics, right? Taft-Hartley will basically say that, well, first of all, that a number of tactics that workers had used, including what were nicknamed secondary boycotts, are illegal, meaning that, like, if you're on strike and I see you're on strike, I can't sort of strike you in solidarity, right? I, because my employer is not giving me a problem. I'm striking in solidarity with another workplace action, right? Like many unions had used secondary strikes or had tried to use strikes against companies that were not currently on strike as press against those

that were. And so Taft-Hartley will dramatically restrict the militancy of workers and unions. It also will say that any union that has elected leaders who are members of the Communist Party have to file an affidavit basically saying, we've got communists in our leadership. Many unions were afraid of essentially outing their communists. Some of those people were communists. Communists were a small minority of the total labor union membership, but because communists were more committed to a political ideal, a disproportionate number of communists were organizers, rink and fell activists and leaders in unions, especially in the CIA. And so Taff Hartley was well understood as being a way to basically divide the labor movement by dividing

its far left from the rest. The AFAVAL at that time was happy to sort of support. support such actions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the CIO leadership also embraced or ultimately used this in the same way. So they said to their unions that had more communists, you either get rid of the communists or you're going to get kicked out of the CIO. You also, if you're a union and you aren't filing your affidavits, you can't be legally recognized in any workplace in a union election run by the National Labor Relations Board. And so what happens is that those unions, in say 47, 48, 49 after Taff Hartley has passed that refused to comply with that component of Taff Hartley, then unions and sometimes workers who are being sort of pushed by employers call for decertification of

the left-led unions or new elections for unions that are complying with Taff Hartley. And so what you have is the civil war within the labor movement, particularly with the CIO, where you've got sort of the more right-wing CIA unions led by VUAD. the United Auto Workers led by Victor and Walter Ruther, the Ruther brothers, who are sort of anti-communist social Democrats who used Taff Hartley to go after the left-wing farm equipment workers union. So for instance, in Peoria, not far from where I live, the farm equipment workers, which were led by communists, had organized Caterpillar. But UAW calls for a decertification because FE refuses to comply with Tath Hartley.

And then F.E. loses basically control of that local, right? And later the UAW, shortly thereafter, wins control to represent that 20,000 member factory in the largest corporation in Illinois outside of Chicago. And so that's happening in area after area where you've got this sort of repression from the state, pushed really by Republicans and Southern conservative Democrats. Hoover actually vetoed Tav Hartley, but Congress overrode his veto. And then it starts getting used in various ways, right?

First, by those who are anti-communists, but also within the labor movement. And so the CIO purges famously, it's 11 unions that refuse to basically play with Taft-Hartley. 11 unions, which represent about a million workers, which represented about 25% of its total membership, were just kicked out, right, in 1949. and then later in 55, CIO and AFL will merge into what now we call AFL-CIOs, right? All that is really due to the Cold War, the domestic Cold War, and Taff Hartley, right?

And the ramifications for that are actually also many others. But Taff Hartley basically takes away some of workers' greatest weapons, but also sort of forces more unions, as had the Wagner Act before it, to sort of be more legalistic, in its approach to organizing. Instead of organizing on the work floor, you've got lawyers who are suing

because of grievances in basically NLRB courts, right? And so it diffuses a lot of the power of workers. And so a lot of people see this mid-40s, late-40s sort of period is actually a huge turning point for the worse, where that workers had gained a lot of power from the early 30s into the mid-40s. And then Taff Hartley is a key weapon, used to sort of release employers from Werher power. The last thing I'll say about Taff Hartley is

it gives the president the power to basically end a strike if it's declared a national emergency and then a 80-day, quote-unquote, cooling off period. And so presidents Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, others, Bush actually used it in 2002, will declare one of these cooling off periods, which basically, if you force workers to stop striking, you're taking away their power. Then negotiations continue, but employers basically get two and a half more months, right, of non-strike. And so there's many components to Taft Hartley. I apologize if I've rambled, but also if I've confused people. But, like, it's enormously important.

And that's why actually a lot of labor people in our times call for the repeal of Taft-Hartley. That seems like such an obscure demand, but a lot of labor. weakness within the America's moderate system is because of Taff Hartland. Yeah. Well, I think you did an amazing job covering extensive deep history there and summarizing it for us. I just want to make two points before we move on. One is like there's that social democratic anti-communism that you see time and time again crop up where social Democrats will side with the powers that be and liberals in the ruling class more broadly against communism. I mean, Rosa Luxembourg was killed in, you know, similar circumstances

and to see that there was that presence within unions that was anti-communist, just sort of adds to that, I think is worth noting. But the important thing I wanted to say, and it'll move us into a discussion of neoliberalism, is I often conceptualize the 20th century and these union struggles and labor struggles as this systematic deconstruction on the part of the ruling class of the power of unions. And the first red scare is obviously this brute force, repressive attempt at like suffocating these anarchist and anarchist adjacent union movements. And then with the second red scare and the rise of communism, you have the Taft-Hartley Act and this attempt to de-radicalize through legislation these unions.

to chop off the left revolutionary wing of unions broadly. And then when we move into the neoliberal era with Reagan in the U.S. and Thatcher in the U.K., there's this final attempt to, especially here in the U.S., eradicate union power altogether. So it's like this accelerating attempt on behalf of the bourgeoisie broadly conceived to de-radicalize through different strategies, the unions, and then to actually, you know, de-unionize the working class more broadly. And here we are in the 2020s with historic inequality,

virtually no real American middle class, quote-unquote, that you can conceive of, especially for younger millennials and Gen Ziers, and just a general precariousness and lack of ability for the working class to have any representation whatsoever. And I see it as a large, you know, historical process. So let's like, let's focus on the neoliberal part because, you know, with the rise of neoliberalism, it starts in the 70s, the faintest outlines start to appear in the 70s. But then it was really formalized with Reagan in the 80s and sort of introducing him through way of deconstructing the, what was it, the airplane communicator. Air traffic controller.

Air traffic controller unions, exactly. So can you talk about this period and its attacks on unions and how it has led to the current state of the U.S. working class today? Of course. I mean, so in the 1970s, right, just when a lot of people sort of see the rise of neoliberalism and then expanding in the 80s with, as you said, the election of Reagan and the United States and Thatcher just prior to that in the UK as sort of these UK being one of the largest economies also in the world. Right. It's also important to remember that, you know, organized labor in the U.S. had sort of screwed itself because its leaders and many of its members had actually supported the war in Vietnam, right, like longer than most. And so for a lot of younger people, right, they don't see unions as our allies. They see them as actually big labor, common term, then sort of supporting basically this imperial venture, right? And so many of the social movements of the 60s And the people involved in them didn't see unions as their allies, right? Like, which is unfortunate because many of these people are actually working class people, right? It's not just middle class people who are anti-war and pro-women's rights, even though that might be spun that way, right? Like in the 70s, you know, Richard Nixon president, right, he'll sort of embrace these, some of these ideas, right?

Like including trying to sort of drive a wedge between workers based on race, right? and so the so-called southern strategy, right, where Nixon in 68, but especially in 72, will start to peel off white people who are anti-civil rights. And so force this huge political realignment, which succeeds and then continues to grow so that now if you tell me you're a southern white man, I tell you you're a Republican, because most the great majority are, right? It used to be the reverse, right? it's actually because the Democratic Party changed.

The Democratic Party became more open to racial equality. And so those who were in the Democratic Party who were uncomfortable left over time. Reagan's first campaign stop in 1980 when he's running for president is in the same little small town where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 in the Freedom Summer, right? The fact that he goes there to talk about state's rights in 1980 speaks volumes, right, about its code, right, to which side is he on? Right. And so that also means what we're going to see is that Reagan and the Republicans in particular will use racism and xenophobia, right, to divide and conquer, which is what employers have, of course, used prior to that too. Of course, Reagan, ironically, had been a union member. He was the head of the Screen Actors Guild in the 30s. He will later become a ferocious cold warrior, right, an anti-new dealer. And we'll also, you know, basically collaborate with the FBI to try to get people in his union who he believes to be communist. arrested and imprisoned in the late 1940s, right?

Later will become governor of California and then elected 1980 president. What happens in 1981? Air traffic controllers who are in a union called Patco go on strike. Patco actually had gone on strike before against Nixon or threatened to, and Nixon had sort of basically folded a little. Government, federal workers have the right to be in the union, but they don't have the same rights as private sector workers. for example, they do not have the right to strike, right? And so public sector workers at the state level, it depends on the state, right? But at the federal level, air traffic controllers is, was and still is a, you're actually technically a federal government employee, right? Like they were striking for raises and other demands. It's actually a very hard job to be an air traffic controller.

paid pretty well, but incredible stress, right, on being an air traffic controller, right? And basically, rather than negotiate with the Patco Union, Reagan just fired the entire workforce. Opened, basically brought in in the short-term military air traffic controllers to run the grid, although in the short term, like for several weeks, it sent ripples. I actually happened to be with my parents in England on my first trip overseas as a, like a 12-year-old, right? And we were stuck in London for an extra day, right? Because when Reagan fired the workforce, there was no plan.

It actually just, in the short, for a moment, right, created havoc. Like, Thatcher had actually done something similar, right, in the late 70s and early 80s, where she provoked these strikes, especially in coal mining, to basically destroy the unions in the U.K., right? which had been very much affiliated with labor, the party labor, which had done things like nationalized the railroads, nationalized the health care right after World War II. So Thatcher and Reagan really have to be understood as sort of two peas in a pod, right? Like that they're both pushing the same agenda, this right wing, white, conservative, anti-union, pro-Cold War agenda, right? And after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, many more companies, when strikes were happening, would do the same.

So basically, even though the decline of labor had begun prior to Patco and election of Reagan, in terms of union membership, there had been a beginning of a decline, we see in the 80s a huge decrease in the number of union members and the number of workplaces represented by unions, essentially because corporations took the lead of Reagan. Right. So for approximately 30 plus years, 40 years, unions generally had had a decent deal with the government, right? Like you might say, far from perfect, but, you know, better than previous. Beginning in the 80s, we see a shift. And that, of course, continues to this day, really, where when we look at the decline in union membership, union density, the percent of American workers in unions, right? It's plunged. Right. And so you really see that take off in the 80s, right? And, accelerate. Simultaneous to that, Reagan and the Republican Party was put promoting so-called free trade agreements that basically would make it easier for corporations to move production as well as operations, as well as its capital, to any country. So wishes simply because, right, like to facilitate capitalism. And so that won't actually gain steam. That will gain steam in the 80s. It won't be until the right-wing Democrat Bill Clinton becomes president, right, that he gets what Reagan and Bush had wanted, which was NAFTA, right?

Like with a small minority of Democrats and mostly Republicans, right, he gets that through Congress when he gets it ratified, right? But it was, that's another important part of neoliberalism, right? This idea that states shouldn't essentially regulate corporations, right? And that corporation should have the ability to move humans, ironically, don't have the ability to move freely. But corporations do. like including their production and then they're not taxed, right,

when they then we import their production, what they produce, right? And so that's also an important part of neoliberalism. And Reagan was also central to that, even though it didn't bear fruit, if you will, until Clinton moving the, or pulling the Democratic Party rightward, you could say, succeeds, right? Because Democrats had resisted. It's also a great way to, of course, discipline labor, because if capital can move across borders, workers can't,

you have a factory where workers are starting to unionize the best easiest thing for you to do after NAFTA is just move that factory to a different country or at least use the threat of being able to do that as a way to discipline labor. Thank you. And actually, I have to sort of do a detour and say, another whole huge part of Taft-Hartley, which I forgot to mention, is the creation of right-to-work laws, right, that it basically allowed states to opt out of the Wagner Act. And so what Taft-Hartley partly did was allow non-union states to be bastions, right? And so even before companies moved from, say, the U.S. to Mexico, companies were moving from, say, a more strong union area like Michigan to a rural southern place to, say, produce cars. So that's why the auto industry

essentially moved domestically, right, within the country. So, yeah, they jump. But before that, corporations were doing the same things playing states and cities off each other. And so a friend of named Jefferson Cowley, wrote a great book in the late 90s called Capital Moves. It was about the RCA Corporation, which manufactured radios, the largest manufacturer of radios that produced in Camden, but then moved down to Memphis, where it hoped to get a more pliable workforce and failed, and then moved to Mississippi and then move to northern Mexico, right? And so once NAFTA opens a door, right, and actually before and after, there were, the government

had started to create some treaties that allowed corporations more, quote, flexibility, unquote. but even before that corporations were doing the same damn thing just pitting less unions friendly states with lower wages against those that did have those sorts of more worker friendly regimes yeah so crucial to understand those things if you want to understand the present inequalities and present condition of the of the u.s. working class or just the working class internationally understanding these processes and how they played out and how they were consciously constructed to do certain things on behalf of the interest of the ruling class is crucial to understanding the present conditions all around the world.

And so you did a wonderful job of summarizing that and driving that point home. I think I want to end on a question that sort of looks forward. Do you think that we will see a rise in labor struggles, working class organizations, and even militant union labors, labor unions in the coming years, given how devastated the U.S. working class is currently? Yeah, well, I always say the same thing. Historians, we're still trying to figure out what happened last century. And so I have no better, you know, crystal ball than you do.

Sure. But, you know, we clearly are in the midst in the U.S., but also in many other countries of growing militancy, growing left-wing activism and various sorts, whether it's protesting against Israeli-owned ships in Oakland or Vancouver because of Israeli bombs dropping in Gaza or taking houses in Jerusalem, right? We're seeing it in the growth of radical unions like the IWW, but also even right now, when we're recording, there's more strikes happening than there have been in some time, Numbisco, where there's this multifactory strike happening in multiple cities, right, happening, right?

So we're seeing, it seems like, it has not resulted actually yet in a dramatically increase in the number of union members or the number of workplaces organized by unions. The Amazon, Bessemer, Alabama campaign springs to mind, right, as an example. So we're seeing more activism. You know, right now we haven't yet seen that sort of bear much fruit. We obviously could look at the, you know, electoral process some and see the election of militant working class people like Cory Bush or Ilan Omar as examples, actually, of how this is even playing out within U.S. Congress, right? Like, you know, I do think, like you said, and it's sort of obvious, growing oppression and repression often results in growing activism. And so, like, you know, the massive debt that many people have, student debt and other,

where's frustration, the massive frustration over the climate crisis that we are in results in, you know, protests in northern Minnesota against another pipeline, the line three, right? And so I do think, right, I don't think I'm original, right, I do think that we will see more specific workplace action, right? Both union and sort of in addition to union organizing, right? Because strikes and unions sometimes are overlap, but sometimes are distinct, right? Like, it seems impossible that it won't continue to grow in the short term, in the short and midterm. What will the outcomes be? I really have no idea. But it does seem like that there is, for many people, no alternative, right? Like, so like if COVID and inequality and climate and racism and xenophobia,

like, you know, or, you know, what happens in Texas where suddenly you can be sued for maybe driving someone to get an abortion, right? Like a, I mean, we're in a very sort of dynamic period, but there's clearly more activism happening now than there was 10 years or 20 years ago, including worker activism. Absolutely. And, And more working class or radical ideas are percolating into the more mainstream American consciousness. I think Black Lives Matter movement last summer did a lot to raise people's political and conscious awareness, especially getting young people involved in activism. We saw some beautiful lightning strike moments of labor, like, you know, bus drivers refusing to take Black Lives Matter protesters to jail or, you know, things like that,

which is certainly heartening and hopefully points in a direction that we can continue to go because these radical grassroots movements married to labor and to union working class struggles, I think gives us our best chance at confronting something huge like the climate crisis. For example, some key strikes and some key industries with specifically climate or hinted demands could change the entire game. And we know that, you know, labor going on strike and some key industries shutting down the flow of capital. The capitalism as a system and those who rule over it cannot stand such breaks in the flow of capital. And so that is a choke point that can be taken advantage of in the coming years.

And I just do want to shout out Nabisco workers and any workers that are on strikes right now. And, of course, something we haven't covered yet, although I want to, is the beautiful, protests against line three, and we send our love and solidarity to everybody on the front lines of all of those struggles. Keep it up. Let's end with a plug of your public art project, CRR 19. Can you please tell us a little bit about it and importantly how we can help support it? I appreciate having the chance to connect with your listeners about this. So in 1919 in the city of Chicago, some black kids were swimming on a hot Sunday afternoon in the summer, and crossed an invisible line in the waters of Lake Michigan, resulting in a white

man on the beach throwing rocks at these kids and killing one of them, 17-year-old Eugene Williams. That crime, quote unquote, now we say swimming while black, resulted in crawling racial tensions that already existed blowing up when gangs of young white men invaded the predominantly black neighborhood, creating what still is called the Chicago Race Ride of 1919, 38 people. People were killed, 537 were injured over the course of a week of violence. That event is the worst incident of racial violence in the history of Chicago. No one knows about it. So much of our history is, I don't say forgotten.

I say disappeared, right, because it's subjects that Americans don't want to talk about. White Americans in particular often, right? It also dramatically contributed to the subsequent segregation of the city. And to this day, Chicago was plagued. by residential segregation and is widely known for being segregated, but no one knows how, when, or why. And 1919, we say my partner and I in the project, the so-called origin story, right? I happen to have spent a lot of time in Berlin, where in Germany, there is a huge change in thinking in the last 30 years where now, actually, the great majority of Germans very much

grapple with the history of the Holocaust in ways that an American would be shocked at. We don't talk about slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples the way that Germans talk about the Holocaust all over the place. And there's all sorts of museums and public art that sort of deal with that force people to remember this stuff, right? And one example is called Stupperstainer, which is German for stumbling stones, where a German artist named Bunter Demig in the 90s started to install small brass plaques outside of the homes of Holocaust victims. last known residents. So you're walking on the streets of Berlin or Hamburg, and you come across to metaphorically stumble across a reminder that a Holocaust victim lived here,

and then suddenly, instead of thinking about West for dinner, you're thinking about this troublesome history, right? My idea, I was not the first person to think about it, I'm so impressed by Kuntur Deming, now there's over 80,000 of these markers across European cities that we can import the idea to Chicago 38 people killed. I want to create 38 markers installed at the locations where 38 people were killed

as opposed to where they last lived, right? Dispersed public art to confront a subject that Americans either deny, forget, or don't want to think about. And so the idea is in some way simple. The implementation is actually very complicated. I helped form an organization called the Chicago Race Right of 1919 commemorations. project. I have a co-director, Franklin Posey Gay, who's a friend and brother from another mother who lives in Chicago and native Chicago. We have a wonderful website called ChicagoraceRad.org, where we provide a lot of this history. We actually have given dozens of

presentations in person and virtually about this history and the long-term effects, as well as about our art. We have raised over $75,000 to sort of pay for the art and now have a partner art studio who exists. It's a social justice-oriented art studio that creates glass. So it's a glass-blowing studio. The artists are victims of violence, young people who are victims of violence

who are now creating the art about the history of violence in our city. And we have been working with the city to get them installed, to get permission, and then figure out all the logistical details. So so far, none of these markers exist and none have been installed,

although we are hopeful that 22 will be our year. We also give historic bike tours and gave one to over 300 people around the anniversary of these events in late July, 2021. And we give these tours to others on request. And so we have evolved in various ways to be a public history and public art effort in Chicago to raise awareness about this history through a variety of means, our website, presentations, our bike tours, and then eventually with our public art. So that's what we're doing.

and anyone can visit chicagorasriot.org or follow us on social media at chicago race riot in order to keep up with the project that is absolutely beautiful and amazing and i highly encourage everybody to support it in whatever ways you can if that's having them on to do a presentation or going to the bike tour or just you know letting more people know that this is happening especially if you live in the chicago area it's a wonderful wonderful thing i i really salute you and everybody involved in the project We'll link to it in the show notes as well so people can follow up on that thread and support and help and get the word out any way that you can. Peter, as always, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on. I genuinely learn something,

multiple fascinating things every time I have you on the show. This is your fourth appearance, you know, your fifth, we could maybe do a dive on the diggers and the levelers and the Luddites. I always like to set up future possibilities with you when we end our discussions. But for now,

can you please let listeners know where they can find you and your books online? Oh, well, again, for the project, CR19, Chicago Race Riot.org, I suppose, like my most recent book, Ben Fletcher, PM Press, and my other books were published by the University of Illinois Press, and then one called Wobbies of the World by Pluto Press. And, you know, all these books often go on sale, especially if you buy e-books, although I prefer paperbacks myself. like it's much appreciated. And every now and then I meet someone who heard an interview with me on Rev Left.

And that is such a beautiful thing when I sort of connect with some random person. So please don't hesitate to reach out. Absolutely. That's awesome. And I highly encourage it. All right, Peter. Well, for now, thank you so much for coming on. Wonderful project with the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.

And we'll continue to follow that up. And we'll have you on again soon to talk about another topic. Wonderful. Thank you. We can all see that there's something going on here when they're telling us they're broke and taking all the things that we earned. The ones who cause the best don't get what they deserve. We can all see who is really pulling the last when the men with all the money.

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We'll lose it every time Because we've forgotten how to fight Let's get off our knees and on our feet defend ourselves Let's revolt Let's resist Let's rebel Let's revolt Let's resist

Let's rebel