You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Labor Day Monday September 7, 1903
Cripple Creek District, Colorado - Labor Will March 5000 Strong in Occupied District
As state troops continue to pour into the Cripple Creek District, the working men and women have not been deterred from holding their Labor Day Parade in the city of Cripple Creek. It is expected that 5000 will turn out to participate and that 3000 of those will be members of the Western Federation of Miners. Among the marchers will be the Newsboys Union No. 32 from the city of Victor, of which all forty are expected to march in their pure white duck suits.
Many protest meetings have been held in Cripple Creek and Victor, and resolutions have been passed against the military occupation of the strike zone. It has been learned that Mayor French, of Victor, made a formal request to the Governor for troops, and there have been calls for his resignation by the City Council of Victor. Similar meetings have taken place in Cripple Creek.
The District Trades and Labor Assembly met yesterday in Victor and passed strong resolutions condemning Mayor French and Governor Peabody. This Assembly represents all of the various unions of the Cripple Creek District. Mrs. Emma F. Langdon, of the Typographers, states that it would be difficult to describe the strong feeling that exists against the military occupation of the district.
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
Note: Error corrected, the march was in Cripple Creek, not Victor. I apologize for the error.
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Sunday September 7, 1913
Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan - Girl, fourteen, shot in head, not expected to live.
Disturbing stories of violence against the women and children in the Michigan Copper Country Strike Zone are making there way out of the area. A young fourteen-year-old girl was shot in the head when deputies opened fire on a strikers' parade. The girl is Margaret Fazekas. She was shot near the Kearsarge shaft during the Labor Day parade by Sheriff Cruse's armed deputies.She was rushed to the hospital and is not expected to live.
On September 4th, a guardsmen was so enraged by a woman waving a broom and cursing at him that he threatened her:
I'll fix you so that you won't handle a broom anymore!
The guard attempted to tie her to his horse for the purpose of dragging her along the ground. However, his plan was thwarted when more women came running to her aid, pelting the guardsmen with rocks and sticks.
Militiamen routinely ride their horses into the strikers who gather for any reason, and, by this practice, a small child has been injured in Laurium.
But it is for the children that the strike must go on, for as one woman said pointing to her children:
These are the ones we are striking for. You don't want to see them bent and crippled before their time, do you?
Another woman joins the picket lines even though her husband is dead, killed in the mines leaving her with four young children. She said:
Men killed, company pay nothing. Many families get poor by strike, but maybe men win. I hope so.
SOURCES
Rebels on the Range
-by Arthur W Thurner
MI, 1984
Big Annie of Calumet
-by Jerry Stanley
NY, 1996
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Saturday September 7, 2013
From Labor Notes: "A Hundred Arrested Protesting Walmart Firings"
In this article, Alexandra Bradbury gives a good account of protests held in cities across the country on Thursday. This time, no Walmart Workers were actually on strike, but were instead protesting the crack down by Wamart against those who particpated in the June strike. Bradbury continues:
...Walmart fired 20 members of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart)—and disciplined 50 others—for taking part in a week-long strike in June. The company claimed the workers were “no-call, no-shows,” though they made it clear they were striking. “We don’t recognize strikers,” one supervisor told a fired employee in Baker, Louisiana.
Thousands of people participated in Thursday’s protests, according to OUR Walmart, and 100 were arrested—including in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Maryland, Orlando, Los Angeles, and New York.
Bradbury goes on to explain the "strike-first" strategy of OUR Walmart with support from United Food and Commercial Workers. Reading this article and following all the links is a good way to gain an understanding of the strategy behind the short strikes followed by one-day protests.
Walmart considers itself to be unorganizable in the USA, and yet we see the courage and determination of the Walmart strikers and their supporters. Time will tell...but I know where I would place my bet.
Read full article here:
http://www.labornotes.org/...
The Change Walmart Tumbler
-truly inspirational!!
http://changewalmart.tumblr.com/
OUR Walmart
http://forrespect.org/
UFCW
http://www.ufcw.org/
UFCW gives this list of cities where protests were held on Thursday:
Baton Rouge, LA
· Boston, MA
· Chicago, IL
· Cincinnati, OH
· Dallas, TX
· Denver, CO
· Los Angeles, CA
· Miami, FL
· Minneapolis, MN
· New York, NY
· Orlando, FL
· Sacramento, CA
· San Francisco, CA
· Seattle, WA
· Washington, DC
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They'll Never Keep Us Down-Hazel Dickens
Well, we've been shot and we've been jailed,
Lord, it's a sin.
Women and little children stood right by the men.
But we got that union contract that keeps a worker free
And they'll never shoot the Union of me.