Way back in the 1980s, when I was in college, we had a tent city on the UC Berkeley campus to protest the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Lots of parallels to what's been happening on campuses recently with the Palestinian solidarity protests, including violent police crack downs.
During this time, author Kurt Vonnegut came to speak in support of the movement, and against Apartheid.
I recently found this amusing clip
of Vonnegut explaining the different types of character arcs a story can have.
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 “conspiracy to murder.”
The strike lasted from April 1 to September 14. It started in response to the “stretch-out” system, where bosses doubled the spinners’ and weavers’ work, while simultaneously lowering their wages. When the women went on strike, the bosses evicted them from their company homes. Masked vigilantes destroyed the union’s 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 “Mill Mother’s Lament,” and “Big Fat Boss and the Workers.” Her music was later covered by Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie, who called her the “pioneer of the protest ballad.” 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 “The Last Ballad,” by Wiley Cash (2017) and “Strike!” by Mary Heaton Vorse (1930).
Going through my social media, it seems like Gaza doesn't even exist.
It's all about student protests and police brutality in US.
In the mean time, the stories of Maas Graves, mass execution of healthcare staff and mutilated bodies of palestinians in Khan Yunis have all but disappeared from the news.
No news about starvation.
No news about murder of aid workers by IDF.
No news of bombing tent cities with fire bombs.
No news of Netanyahu ignoring the peace proposal.
No news that Biden keep sending weapons and money to Netanyahu.
I guess it's good that we see the student protests are spreading, but it should not be forgetting WHY they are protesting and what over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live every day.