Rank and File Rebellion PDF Download

Author: Dan La Botz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Author: Matthew S. May
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817318062
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Soapbox Rebellion, a new critical history of the free speech fights of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), illustrates how the lively and colorful soapbox culture of the “Wobblies” generated novel forms of class struggle. From 1909 to 1916, thousands of IWW members engaged in dozens of fights for freedom of speech throughout the American West. The volatile spread and circulation of hobo agitation during these fights amounted to nothing less than a soapbox rebellion in which public speech became the principal site of the struggle of the few to exploit the many. While the fights were not always successful, they did produce a novel form of fluid union organization that offers historians, labor activists, and social movement scholars a window into an alternative approach to what it means to belong to a union. Matthew May coins the phrase “Hobo Orator Union” to characterize these collectives. Soapbox Rebellion highlights the methodological obstacles to recovering a workers’ history of public address; closely analyzes the impact of hobo oratorical performances; and discusses the implications of the Wobblies’ free speech fights for understanding grassroots resistance and class struggle today—in an era of the decline of the institutional business union model and workplace contractualism.

Author: Eric Blanc
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788735765
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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An indispensable window into the changing shape of the American working class and American politics Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of “the white working class,” a strike wave—the first in over four decades—rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity. Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics as usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizer, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education—and redrawing the political map of the country at large.

Author: Farrell Dobbs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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"This is the story of the strikes and union organizing drive the men and women of Teamsters Local 574 carried out in Minnesota in 1934, paving the way for the continent-wide rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a fighting social movement. Through hard-fought strike actions, which were in fact organized battles, they made Minneapolis a union town, defeating not only the trucking bosses but strikebreaking efforts of the big-business Citizens Alliance and city, state, and federal governments. They showed in life what workers and their allies on the farms and in the cities can achieve when they're able to count on the leadership they deserve."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Aaron Brenner
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789600898
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Often considered irredeemably conservative, the US working class actually has a rich history of revolt. Rebel Rank and File uncovers the hidden story of insurgency from below against employers and union bureaucrats in the late 1960s and 1970s. From the mid-1960s to 1981, rank-and-file workers in the United States engaged in a level of sustained militancy not seen since the Great Depression and World War II. Millions participated in one of the largest strike waves in US history. There were 5,716 stoppages in 1970 alone, involving more than 3 million workers. Contract rejections, collective insubordination, sabotage, organized slowdowns, and wildcat strikes were the order of the day. Workers targeted much of their activity at union leaders, forming caucuses to fight for more democratic and combative unions that would forcefully resist the mounting offensive from employers that appeared at the end of the postwar economic boom. It was a remarkable era in the history of US class struggle, one rich in lessons for today's labor movement.

Author: Stephen W. Day
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107022150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Based on years of in-depth field research, this book unravels the complexities of the Yemeni state and its domestic politics with a particular focus on the post-1990 years. The central thesis is that Yemen continues to suffer from regional fragmentation which has endured for centuries. En route the book discusses the rise of President Salih, his tribal and family connections, Yemen's civil war in 1994, the war's consequences later in the decade, the spread of radical movements after the US military response to 9/11 and finally developments leading to the historic events of 2011. This book sets a new standard for scholarship on Yemeni politics and it is essential reading for anyone interested in the modern Middle East, the 2011 Arab revolts and twenty-first-century Islamic politics.

Author: United States. Naval War Records Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1146

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Author: Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813066424
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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An innovative global history of the American Civil War, Reckoning with Rebellion compares and contrasts the American experience with other civil and national conflicts that happened at nearly the same time--the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Polish Insurrection of 1863, and China's Taiping Rebellion. Aaron Sheehan-Dean identifies surprising new connections between these historical moments across three continents. Sheehan-Dean shows that insurgents around the globe often relied on irregular warfare and were labeled as criminals, mutineers, or rebels by the dominant powers. He traces commonalities between the United States, British, Russian, and Chinese empires, all large and ambitious states willing to use violence to maintain their authority. These powers were also able to control how these conflicts were described, affecting the way foreigners perceived them and whether they decided to intercede. While the stories of these conflicts are now told separately, Sheehan-Dean argues, the participants understood them in relation to each other. When Union officials condemned secession, they pointed to the violence unleashed by the Indian Rebellion. When Confederates denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant, they did so by comparing him to Tsar Alexander II. Sheehan-Dean demonstrates that the causes and issues of the Civil War were also global problems, revealing the important paradigms at work in the age of nineteenth-century nation-building. A volume in the series Frontiers of the American South, edited by William A. Link

Author: Scott Kurashige
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520294912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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"On July 23, 1967, the eyes of the nation fixed on Detroit as thousands took to the streets to vent their frustrations with white racism, police brutality, and vanishing job prospects in the place that gave rise to the American Dream. For mainstream observers, the "riot" brought about the ruin of a once-great city, and then in 2013, the city's municipal bankruptcy served as a bailout that paved the way for Detroit to finally be rebuilt. Challenging this prevailing view, Scott Kurashige portrays the past half-century as a long "rebellion" the underlying tensions of which continue to haunt the city and the U.S. nation-state. Michigan's scandal-ridden emergency-management regime represents the most concerted effort to quell this rebellion by disenfranchising the majority black citizenry and neutralizing the power of unions. The corporate architects of Detroit's restructuring have championed the creation of a "business-friendly" city where billionaire developers are subsidized to privatize and gentrify downtown while working-class residents are squeezed out by rampant housing evictions, school closures, water shutoffs, toxic pollution, and militarized policing. From the grassroots, however, Detroit has emerged as an international model for survival, resistance, and solidarity through the creation of urban farms, freedom schools, and self-governing communities. A quintessential American story of tragedy and hope, The Fifty-Year Rebellion forces us to look in the mirror and ask, Are we succumbing to authoritarian plutocracy, or can we create a new society rooted in social justice and participatory democracy?"--Provided by publisher.

Author: Bernard Weinstein
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.