Know your Occupy history

[deutsey]

I'm the kind of person who likes to see what's happening now within a larger historical context.

Utah Phillips explained what I mean by that when he said:

“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.”

And:

“I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can't live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn't go anywhere, did it? It's right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it, it would get them in serious trouble. No, that 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975-- what's that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that.”

So I've been thinking about OWS and how the establishment media are so baffled, baffled I tell you, as to what it's (or we are, I should say, since I support OWS) all about. It's as if this kind of thing is some strange or nostalgic carry-over from "The Sixties," that weird aberration from what official history calls "normalcy."

But I can think of a few Occupy-style moments in history that may shed some light on what's happening today and why:

Jesus chasing the money-changers out of the Temple (whether you believe that's historical or not, it's still a major aspect of how the West understands itself)

The Diggers (in 1600's England: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers and in 1960's San Francisco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers_(theater) )

The Paris Commune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune)

The Bonus Army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army)

Resurrection City/Poor People's Campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign)

These are just off the top of my head. What other ones can you think of?

As we're seeing with the Occupy movement, all of these movements met with violent reaction in some form or another. Are there other lessons we can learn from this history?

[ret5hd]

1. MOVE? Black Panthers? IWW?

[PoliticAverse]

2. African Americans occupying the lunch counter at Woolworths...

http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/6-legacy/freedom-struggle-2.html

[deutsey]

3. Good examples. Thanks for responding. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Lessons learned:

The ISSUE of a movement often takes a long time to become resolved.
Then it is degraded/retrograded and has to be re-fought for.


Example:
Women's rights. A long long struggle since 822 BC in Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_rights_%28other_than_voting%29

Civil rights for blacks, in the USA: Since late 1700's abolitionist movements and actions.

[Octafish]

5. The Michigan Copper Strike

EXCERPT...

For anyone interested in the Michigan Copper strike of 1913-14 you would know of the tragedy at the Italian Hall in Calumet, where 73 people, mainly children, died as a result of someone yelling "fire" during a Christmas party. You may have even heard of the murders of Steve Putrich and Alois Tigan who were murdered, after an incident of trespassing across Copper Range property, at their home near Painesdale, known as the "Seeberville Murders".

SOURCE: http://www.pasty.com/copperrange/strike.htm

[deutsey]

6. Reminds me of the Ludlow Massacre...how could I have forgotten that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914.

The deaths occurred after a day-long fight between strikers and the Guard. The massacre resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 25 people; sources vary but all sources include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent.

Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF).

[Octafish]

7. Thank you, Deutsey! Your topic reminds me of Mother Jones...

Legendary Mother Jones Came to Help Striking Utah Coal Miners

Jeffrey D. Nichols
History Blazer, March 1995

Wherever American workers struggled to improve their conditions of labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mary Harris Jones was likely to be there. A tireless champion of workers' rights, Mother Jones, as she was called, was involved in the great railroad strike of 1877, the Haymarket riot of 1896, and the steel strike of 1919. In April 1904 she came to Carbon County, Utah, to assist coal miners in their strike against the Utah Fuel Company.

The Castle Gate coal mine employed so many Italian immigrants that it was known as the "Italian mine." The miners went out on strike in 1903 seeking better wages and hours and recognition of the United Mine Workers union. Mother Jones came to Utah at the behest of the UMW immediately after she was ordered out of the striking mining districts of Colorado by the governor.

Already well-known when she arrived in Helper, Mother Jones quickly garnered attention when she promised to "agitate, educate and aggravate" on behalf of the miners. She told reporters that "...Mormonism is about as good as any of the rest of the religions, as all the churches and preachers are in league with the big thieves and join hands with corporations in oppressing the poor laboring man." The Deseret News sought to discredit her, claiming that she had been a Denver brothel keeper and "an erstwhile fast friend of Kate Flint, one of the pioneer scarlet women of Salt Lake."

CONTINUED...

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/mining_and_railroads/motherjonescametohelpstrikingutahcoalminers.html

Remarkable how things have changed a lot for the better. Right. Right. Right.