#JustFinished jPod
I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever worked in IT. Especially, executives and managers.
Also, to anyone who has parents that are incompetent mosters (Incompemonsters TM) and need YOU to fix THEIR problems đ
Today in Labor History June 7, 1929: Striking textile workers battled police in Gastonia, North Carolina, during the Loray Mill Strike. Police Chief O.F. Aderholt was accidentally killed by one of his own officers during a protest march by striking workers. Nevertheless, the authorities arrested six strike leaders. They were all convicted of âconspiracy to murder.â
The strike lasted from April 1 to September 14. It started in response to the âstretch-outâ system, where bosses doubled the spinnersâ and weaversâ work, while simultaneously lowering their wages. When the women went on strike, the bosses evicted them from their company homes. Masked vigilantes destroyed the unionâs headquarters. The NTWU set up a tent city for the workers, with armed guards to protect them from the vigilantes.
One of the main organizers was a poor white woman named Ella May Wiggans. She was a single mother, with nine kids. Rather than living in the tent city, she chose to live in the African American hamlet known as Stumptown. She was instrumental in creating solidarity between black and white workers and rallying them with her music. Some of her songs from the strike were âMill Motherâs Lament,â and âBig Fat Boss and the Workers.â Her music was later covered by Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie, who called her the âpioneer of the protest ballad.â During the strike, vigilantes shot her in the chest. She survived, but later died of whooping cough due to poverty and inadequate medical care.
For really wonderful fictionalized accounts of this strike, read âThe Last Ballad,â by Wiley Cash (2017) and âStrike!â by Mary Heaton Vorse (1930).
Today in Labor History June 1 is the day that U.S. labor law officially allows children under the age of 16 to work up to 8 hours per day between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:00 pm. Time is ticking away, Bosses. Have you signed up sufficient numbers of low-wage tykes to maintain production rates with your downsized adult staffs?
The reality is that child labor laws have always been violated regularly by employers and these violations have been on the rise recently. Additionally, many lawmakers are seeking to weaken existing, poorly enforced laws to make it even easier to exploit children. Over the past year, the number of children employed in violation of labor laws rose by 37%, while lawmakers in at least 10 states passed, or introduced, new laws to roll back the existing rules. Violations include hiring kids to work overnight shifts in meatpacking factories, cleaning razor-sharp blades and using dangerous chemical cleaners on the kills floors for companies like Tyson and Cargill. Particularly vulnerable are migrant youth who have crossed the southern U.S. border from Central America, unaccompanied by parents. https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
Of course, what is happening in the U.S. is small potatoes compared with many other countries, where exploitation of child labor is routine, and often legal. At least 20% of all children in low-income countries are engaged in labor, mostly in agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa it is 25%. Kids are almost always paid far less than adults, increasing the bossesâ profits. They are often more compliant than adults and less likely to form unions and resist workplace abuses and safety violations. Bosses can get them to do dangerous tasks that adults canât, or wonât, do, like unclogging the gears and belts of machinery. This was also the norm in the U.S., well into the 20th century. In my soon novel, âAnywhere But Schuylkill,â the protagonist, Mike Doyle, works as a coal cleaner in the breaker (coal crushing facility) of a coal mine at the age or 13. Many kids began work in the collieries before they were 10. They often were missing limbs and died young from lung disease. However, when the breaker bosses abused them, they would sometimes collectively chuck rocks and coal at them, or walk out, en masse, in wildcat strikes. And when their fathers, who worked in the pits, as laborers and miners, went on strike, they would almost always walk out with them, in solidarity.
Today in Labor History May 18, 1781: Tupac Amaru II was drawn and quartered in Plaza Mayor del Cuzco, Peru. Tupac II had led a large indigenous uprising against the Spanish conquistadors. As a result of his heroic efforts, he became an inspiration to others in the fight for indigenous rights and against colonialism. The uprising began because of âreformsâ by the colonial administration that increased taxes and labor demands on both indigenous and creole populations. However, there was also an ongoing desire to overthrow European rule and restore the pre-conquest Incan empire. And though this would merely replace one feudal power with another, there were also Jacobin and proto-communist elements to the rebellion. Most of the Tupamarista soldiers were poor peasants, artisans and women who saw the uprising as an opportunity to create an egalitarian society, without the cast and class divisions of either the Spanish or Incan feudal systems.
The uprising began with the execution of Spanish colonial Governor Antonio de Arriaga by his own slave, Antonio Oblitas. Tupac Amaru II then made a proclamation claiming to be fighting against the abuses of Spain and for the peace and well-being of Indians, mestizos, mambos, native-born whites and blacks. They then proceeded to march toward Cuzco, killing Spaniards and looting their properties. Everywhere they went, they overthrew the Spanish authority. Tupacâs wife, Michaela Bastidas commanded a battalion of insurgents. Many claimed she was more daring and a superior strategist than her husband.
However, despite their strength and courage, the rebels failed to take Cuzco. The Spaniards brought in reinforcements from Lima. Many creoles abandoned the Inca army and joined the Spanish, fearing for their own safety after seeing the wanton slaughter of Spanish civilians. In the end, Tupac was betrayed by two of his officers and handed over to the Spanish. However, before they killed him, the Spanish forced him to watch them execute his wife, eldest son, uncle, brother-in-law, and several of his captains. They cut out both his wifeâs and sonâs tongue before hanging them.
As a result of Tupacâs leadership and success against the Spanish, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the TĂșpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called âTupac Amaru (1781).â And Clive Cusslerâs book, âInca Gold,â has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
Actually, the "virtual voice" technology is not AI. It's the same sort of text-to-speech system that's existed for decades, just in a more refined form. A considerable amount of time (money) and (human) effort was still required to make hundreds of subtle adjustments too how it reads that particular book, which would be worthless and inapplicable to any other. At the end of the day, it's a tool, used by a human, like a word processor, pagination software, or any sort of audio/video editor. Moreover, if I hadn't used the tool, I would have simply done the narration myself, as I did for the audiobook of my first novel, so the only person who might have potentially lost a job to it was me. đ
Today in Writing History May 9, 1981: Nelson Algren, American novelist and short story writer died. His most famous book was âThe Man With The Golden Arm,â which was made into a film in 1955. He was called the âbard of the down-and-outerâ based on his numerous stories about the poor, beaten down and addicted. Algren was also called a âgut radical.â His heroes included Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. He claims he never joined the Communist Party, but he participated in the John Reed Club and was an honorary co-chair of the âSave Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee.â The FBI surveilled him and had a 500-page dossier on him.
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa, 2024
In this beautiful novel Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.
Today in Labor June 30, 1906: United States Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act in response to Upton Sinclair's novel, âThe Jungle,â which exposed atrocious sanitary conditions in Chicago meat packing industry. Sinclair intended his book not only to bring attention to the public health threat of the squalid working conditions, but also to the racism faced by Chicagoâs largely immigrant meat workers, as well as the corruption of both the politicians and union officials. However, the public was most outraged by the prospect of getting food poisoning from the rotten meat.
AN ARTIST YEARNING FOR TRANSCENDENCE finds an unlikely path toward it in her complicated attraction to an injured ballerina. Lyrical prose both lush and austere traces a many-leveled tale of longing and self-knowledge. B PLUS
I'm thrilled to announce that my novel, "From Terror to Valor: Echoes and Shadows" (ISBN-978-1068638732), is now staged on Kindle for print, for release on September 11th! đ
đ Next up: the Kindle eBook staging, completing its deployment across major digital stores. đ
Labor Fest 2024 is coming to the SF Bay Area this July.
If you're in the Bay Area, July 21, 5-8 pm, please come hear me read from my working-class historical novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill. Signed copies will be available.
Make an evening of it. Or a weekend.
Lots of wonderful speakers and musical and theatrical performances!
And report-backs on organizing efforts among low-wage workers of color.
Today in Labor History June 24, 1525: The Church reconquered the Anabaptist free state of Munster. The Anabaptists had created a sectarian, communal government in Munster, Germany, during the Reformation. They controlled the city from February until June 24, 1525. They were heavily persecuted for their beliefs, which included opposition to participation in the military and civil government. They saw themselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God, and not citizens of any political state. Their beliefs helped radicalize people during Germanyâs Peasant War, a revolt against feudalism and for material equality among all people. Some of the early Anabaptists practiced polygamy and polyamory, as well as the collective ownership of property. The more conservative decedents of the Anabaptists include the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites.
The Munster rebellion has been portrayed in several works of fiction. My all-time favorite is âQ,â (1999) by the autonomist-Marxist Italian writing collective known as Luther Blissett. They currently write under the pen name Wu Ming. Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote an opera about it 1849, Le prophĂšte.