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Our May Day rally was pretty fun. Not much by rally standards for hardened commies (maybe 25 people), but the front group members were STOKED!
Stood in front of the entrance to the Wal-Mart with our "Stand with Baltimore" and "Workers Unite" signs, marched down the street and then went into fast food restaurants handing out leaflets about the right to organize. Kinda anticlimatic as there wasn't even one manager who tried to kick us out of the dozen stores we went through. I'll see if the Carpenter dude made a video yet. Not that it's gonna be that exciting...
No, not yet. Have no idea what happened throughout the rest of the country. Considering going down to Boston for today's Baltimore demo but I'm not sure. My car's in the shop and I'm supposed to go to The Black Goblin's wedding tomorrow which I forgot all about.
To be fair, he only told me about it two weeks ago when we were playing D&D and I was, um, memory-impaired. I'm a terrible friend. :(
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Back to CAJE:
The night before, we met at the anarcho-syndicalist hipster's house to make signs. It was me, Mr. Comrade, the anarcho-syndicalist hipster, an "anarcho-Zionist d#!@" professor, a Lebanese-American working class woman who might be to the left of me and is always inebriated, and a young high school teacher who has just been politicized. The latter was talking with Mr. Comrade about class and workers, etc., when all of a sudden he says, "So, wait a minute. Let's say I'm a worker and I make $20 an hour but the boss makes $100. Doesn't that mean the boss stole $80 from me?" Everyone started laughing and he blushed. "What?" "No, no, it's okay," said Mr. Comrade, "You just figured out the labor theory of value all on your own!"
On the way to the rally, it was me, Mr. Comrade, Lowell carpenter dude, and a different high school teacher in the car. "You know," she says, "Labor has never really been on my radar before" (she has a history in LGBT activism) "but the more I think of it, the more important it seems. And I was thinking, you know what we should really do? We should form one international workers union."
I love my front group!
So what would be the best setting for a socialism-influenced steampunk novella: English coalfield, or the Sundsvall sawmill strike (the first organised strike in Sweden)?
The Sundsvall-strike would feature an antagonist called Curry.
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I'd say sawmills, or some sort of foundry. Middlesborough used to be called 'Ironopolis' - you could probably do something with that, assuming someone hasn't already. Or check out the Plug riots
Our May Day rally was today - not too badly attended, despite the sh*tty weather conditions, and made even more thrilling by our banner collapsing halfway through the march, blame for which can be laid squarely at the door of Cosmo.
Plenty of foundries in Sweden too, for that matter. The football stadium in Sandviken (the northernmost stadium to have hosted the World Cup, incidentally) is called Jernvallen (the Iron Wall) for a reason.
There's your title! :)
Mr. Comrade ripping it up at our May Day rally
Article that quotes our intersectional Nigerian princess front group comrade.
The System Is a Caje!
Class war steampunk novel steam-of-consciousness:
Lowell, MA is an amazing city to stumble through. We were flyering in an area of projects called The Acre. All of the buildings are converted factory barracks from Lowell's mill days. You'll be walking through a courtyard with mothers in hijabs pushing their kids in strollers, kids playing football or what not, and then you'll round a corner and there'll be, for no apparent reason, a free-standing smokestack that reaches up to the sky.
Apparently, it's a great city in which to wander around on acid.
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You might get a bastion of socialism springing up in the petrocracy of Alberta:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/continues+surge+Alberta+says+poll/11024909/s tory.html
May or may not stop some pipelines down south.
It's the return of Comrade Hawkshaw, huzzah!
And how is dear Charlotte? Has it been a year yet? Is she teething? Sleeping through the night? Other baby questions, etc., etc.?
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How are the boils?
running around, causing trouble.
Vive le Galt!
I'm sure the Prince-Consort would have been delightfully horrified if he'd been around to see it.
Went with Mr. Comrade to drop off signs and fliers at the Nigerian princess's apartment who had organized a contigent of CAJE members and friends to go to a die-in at UMass Lowell this afternoon while Mr. Comrade and I are at work. Realized that this was the first event that our front group was going to without any of our commie branch.
[Beams with paternal pride]
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The “primeval force of the black earth,” a young revolutionary fireball with sparkling brown eyes whose natural aroma was of “fresh meadow grasses.”
Try out those lines on your beloved of choice, comrades, and let us know how you get on.
Done. Get back to you on the response.
Done. Get back to you on the response.
It got a "like." Headed down there now to find out if she's more responsive in person.
Votey votey.
Still got a Labour MP (by about 400 votes...). Phew.
On course for another f***ing 5 years of Tory rule.
Sh*t.
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You have my sympathies Limey.
I'm not really sure why this article came across my Facebook feed, but it will be my contribution to commentary on the Britishiznoid elections:
As for me, ditched the CAJE meeting and New Jim Crow reader's circle this weekend to do La Principessa's dishes and attend to some of her other (insatiable) needs. Which are important revolutionary tasks, indeed, comrades, but, in addition to that I will be attending a debate between different factions in her union caucus this afternoon. I hope I don't fall asleep (see comment above about attending to her needs--I'm not young anymore, comrades!).
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Hey comrade. Just got a job with a union, it freakin rocks!
F~&%in' a right, it does.
Let's see:
At the union caucus meeting, I was amused, and other readers of this thread may be as well, to discover that every person there, whether they be a socialist, a liberal or a self-proclaimed "Republican for Bernie Sanders" (bit of a troll that last one) was intimately familiar with the International Socialist Organization (American Cliffites who, IIRC, are no longer affiliated with the Britishiznoid SWP).
In completely other news, Mr. Comrade has been flirting pretty heavily with the Nigerian Princess and it turns out that the latter is a fantasy novel fan. They've been texting each other quotes from Patrick Rothfuss.
Commie nerd love rocks!
MOVE was bombed under the administration of Wilson Goode.
In completely other news, Mr. Comrade has been flirting pretty heavily with the Nigerian Princess and it turns out that the latter is a fantasy novel fan. They've been texting each other quotes from Patrick Rothfuss.
Commie nerd love rocks!
Tangentially Comrade. You've seen my library. If you can haul your proletariat ass down to the Cape you can fill your love machine to the brim with books. Gratis. They've got to go, and I know you will find a good home for them amongst the Nerdshevik horde you travel with.
Let me know via PM if you are interested
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I've been meaning to get in touch, Comrade Curtin. My car should (I stress should) be roadworthy soon and, then, yes, I would like to come down and, vulture-like, take all of your books.
Then I will roll around in them, naked, dreaming of singularities and broadswords...
[Rest of the post redacted for common decency]
For the bombing?
Article from the 20th anniversary
At dawn on that day, with the neighborhood evacuated and 500 police in place, Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor grabbed a bullhorn and announced: "MOVE, this is America! You have to abide by the laws of the United States!"
The police had warrants to arrest the adults on weapons charges. Sambor gave them 15 minutes to surrender. They replied through a bullhorn of their own: "You be sure you call your wives and your family, 'cause you ain't coming home!"
Shortly thereafter, a wild gun battle broke out. In the next 90 minutes, police fired 10,000 rounds of ammunition. And teams of officers, working from adjacent homes, used small explosive charges to try to penetrate the headquarters.
The assault failed. There was no Plan B.
As the hours passed, Sambor and Managing Director Leo A. Brooks, a retired Army brigadier general, came up with what Sambor later called, without irony, "the safest and most conservative plan." That was the bomb, the goal to destroy a makeshift bunker atop the house and blast a hole for tear gas.
From the command post, Brooks telephoned Goode and told him of the idea. The mayor was at City Hall; he had not gone to the scene all day. One reason, he wrote in his 1992 autobiography, was that he had been told that "unknown members of my own police force had targeted me for death."
Goode gave his consent, although he said a few days later that he didn't consider the device a bomb or know about any helicopter: "If . . . someone called on the telephone and said to me, 'We're going to drop a bomb on a house,' would I approve that? The answer is no."
These types of exchanges always make me wonder, though, where you are/were a Democratic Party functionary, Citizen K(e)rensky.
If by "the buck stopped at his desk" you mean "he gave the green light" then we are in agreement.
We are also in agreement that Rizzo deserves to burn in hell.
The Powelton Village shoot out was in '78, though. Mumia was convicted in '82. Don't know if that's what you're thinking of or not.
"MOVE, this is America!"
My old comrades used to say that it was our duty to sear the memory of the MOVE massacre into the consciousness of the American proletariat. Whether or not the MOVE members were good neighbors or "peaceful, innocent victims" (including the five dead kids?) may be an interesting subject for liberal stooges of the plutocracy to discuss among themselves, but that sort of victim-blaming kinda makes me feel ill.
More anniversaries:
One of these past days was the 99th anniversary of the execution of James Connolly, too. No handy link at the moment.