Posts tagged “Howard Zinn”
First Amendment Protections
Local authorities passed laws to stop them [the IWW] from speaking: the IWW defied these laws. In Missoula, Montana, a lumber and mining area, hundreds of Wobblies arrived by boxcar after some had been prevented from speaking. They were arrested one after another until they clogged the jails and the courts, and finally forced the […]
How many bodies does it take to avoid crisis in your economic system?
Despite the growing evidence of brutality and the work of the Anti-Imperialist League, some of the trade unions in the United States supported the action in the Philippines. The Typographical Union said it liked the idea of annexing more territory because English-language schools in those areas would help the printing trade. The publication of the […]
In the name of the market
In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country: Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. … And just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. … We will not renounce our part in […]
Race and class in the southern US
The laws that took the vote away from blacks – poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications – also often ensured that poor whites would not vote. And the political leaders of the South knew this. At the constitutional convention in Alabama, one of the leaders said he wanted to take away the vote from “all […]
Racism and sexism will fuck your movement
Blacks had tied themselves to the Republican party, the party of Lincoln and civil rights laws. The Democrats were the party of slavery and segregation. As Goodwyn puts it, “in an era of transcendent white prejudice, the curbing of ‘vicious corporate monopoly’ did not carry for black farmers the ring of salvation it had for […]
Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps
J. P. Morgan had started before the war, as the son of a banker who began selling stocks for the railroads for good commissions. During the Civil War he bought five thousand rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal, and sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were […]
Questions for the job creators
In Newark, New Jersey, a rally of several thousand demanded the city give work to the unemployed. And in New York, fifteen thousand people met at Tompkins Square in downtown Manhattan. From there they marched to Wall Street and paraded around the Stock Exchange shouting: “We want work!” 1857. From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History […]