When the armada went down, Philip of Spain wept. No one else wept? And the cost, who was it that paid? For every tale, the same questions Questions put by a worker who reads Bertolt Brecht The recent horrors of the mine disaster at Pike river in Aeotorea shows us the truism of the above. [...]
The Bagman has settled into Madrid and preparing himself for an exhaustive MayDay round of celebrations. I’ll keep you up to date on the travels. Or at least pass on the news when I’m updated
May Day is our holiday. It it hasn’t been stripped of its meaning and commercialised by corporate interests. Indeed, the same spirit of struggle that emboldened the marchers in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, where May Day began over a century ago, inflames the spirit of the celebrations here in Melbourne and around the world. All of [...]
Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided America Book Review : A great narrative history Green offers a narrative history of Chicago’s Haymarket bombing in 1886, the infamous trial that followed, and the hanging of subsequently determined innocent men. Chicago was then at the heart [...]
Workers in my city, Melbourne Australia, won the eight hour day in 1856. It was a hard and bloody battle, and a hundred years later, my great grandmother spoke with pride of her father’s involvement. It was a victory that inspired workers around the world. .. and in USA lead to the campaign in Chicago [...]
For almost 70 years, Lucy Parsons fought for the rights of the poor and disenfranchised in the face of an increasingly oppressive industrial economic system. Her radical activism challenged the racist and sexist sentiment in a time when it was assumed that women were biologically determined to stay at home barefoot and pregnant. This division [...]
