You..ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Monday June 1, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - General Strike of Textile Workers Begins
At least 90,000 textile workers are now out on strike in this city. Of the 600 mills in the city, about 550 are idle. Philadelphia now has more workers out on strike than at any other time in her history. Several thousand workers were already on strike before the textile strike began, and they include: the carriage and wagon builders, and the carpenters along with others working in the building trades. The city could be in for a long hot summer.
SOURCE
The New York Times
-of June 2, 1903
http://select.nytimes.com/...
Sunday June 1, 1913
From The New York Times: "Incendiary Labor Leader Who Terrorized West Virginia"
Thus is Mother Jones described by The Times! Yet, Mother was gracious enough to grant them an interview yesterday. Here are a few quotes from that interview by the indomitable Mother Jones!
Mother Jones on the debt slavery in the South:
The conditions which I found [in the southern cotton mills] appalled me. Not only were the children workers practically enslaved, but this wage slavery extended to adults. It was the 'company store' system in its most aggravated form. It has been bad, at various times, in the coal regions. It never could be worse than it was there in those great southern mills...Those horrors of the toiling infants and the weary mothers struggling for mere bread to keep the life within their bellies. The thralldom of the debt slaves!
Little Cotton Mill Workers
Mother Jones on the little breaker boys:
Ten years ago boys went to labor in the mines while they were still so little that their dinner buckets trailed upon the ground as they proceeded; now they are sent to school. In the fact that they are sent to school lies an argument for labor war in certain circumstances, for they never would have reached the school if the mine workers had not fought to get the right for them.
Mother Jones on the minewowners:
I don't hate employers. What I hate is the cause of labor troubles. I hate no individual. There are those among the mineowners in West Virginia who deserve less hate than pity; they deserve more sympathy than I do, more sympathy than any of the striking miners do, for they are going to be beaten into doing right. The man forced into his righteousness is a sorry spectacle.
SOURCE
The New York Times
-of June 1, 1913
http://select.nytimes.com/...
Saturday June 1, 2013
From Making Change at Walmart: Kalpona Akter will be in Bentonville on June 7th!
Kalpona Akter, a former garment worker from Bangladesh, will join striking Walmart workers and warehouse workers at the company’s annual meeting Friday, June 7 in Bentonville, Arkansas, to call for a change of course by top management....
Akter will meet hundreds of striking Walmart workers, members of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), at the culmination of their week-long “Ride for Respect,” a caravan that has taken workers through nearly 30 cities, in Bentonville for the annual Walmart shareholder meeting. Workers are on strike to protest Walmart’s retaliation against them for speaking out for the company to do better..
Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, has this to say about Wamart and Gap:
After Rana Plaza the conversation has changed and there is more attention than ever before on horrible labor conditions inside the factories that produce clothing for major global brands like Walmart. Unfortunately as other retailers start to take responsibility, Walmart and the Gap continue to turn a blind eye.
Read full press release here
http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/...
This news comes as Walmart announces
another false solution for worker safety in Bangladesh:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Change Walmart on Tumbler
http://changewalmart.tumblr.com/
"We won't give up, we won't back down!"
Follow the #Ride4Respect
https://twitter.com/...
SIGN THIS PETITION
Stand with Walmart Workers/Petition for June 7
http://action.changewalmart.org/...
DONATE
https://donate.changewalmart.org/...
JOIN/PLAN AN EVENT
http://corporateactionnetwork.org/...
Connect with OUR Walmart
http://forrespect.org/
A Change Is Gonna Come
Thanks to all who donated to help bring
Kalpona to Bentonville! Goal exceeded!
http://www.indiegogo.com/...
Solidarity,
JayRaye