Today in Labor History March 25, 1919: Cossack troops murdered 4,000 Jews in the Tetiev pogrom in Ukraine, two-thirds of the Jewish population. They tossed infants into the air and dashed their bodies on the pavement and burned the Jewish quarter to the ground. The Tetiev pogrom would become the prototype of mass murder during the Holocaust. During the Russian Civil War, from 1918 to 1921, there were 1,236 violent attacks against Jews in 524 Ukrainian towns. 30,000-60,000 died in these pogroms. The Ukrainian People's Republic army, Ukrainian warlords, the Red Army and the Polish Army all participated in anti-Jewish pogroms.

Today in Labor History March 21, 1937: Palm Sunday, cops killed 19 unarmed men, women and children marching in a protest in Ponce, Puerto Rico. They injured another 200 civilians. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized the march to commemorate the abolition of slavery in 1873 and to protest the imprisonment of the party’s leaders by the U.S. The police used Thompson submachine guns, rifles and pistols, shooting marchers in the back, during the Ponce Massacre. A commission placed the blame for the massacre on the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. However, no one, including Winship, nor any of the shooters, were ever prosecuted or punished.

Today in Labor History March 21, 1960: South African police opened fire on peaceful black protesters, killing 69 and wounding 180 in the Sharpeville massacre. Many were shot in the back as they fled. Thousands had been out protesting the hated pass laws, when they decided to march on the police station. The town of Sharpeville had high unemployment and poverty. Its residents had been forcibly moved there from the neighboring town of Topville in 1958. Passbooks were used by the Apartheid regime to control the movement of black residents and to enforce segregation.

"The supermarket that was the site of the 2015 #HyperCachermassacre was set on fire in an #arson on Wednesday night, according to #French political leaders.

Paris 20th arrondissement Mayor Éric Pliez said on Instagram that the #arsonist's motives were not yet known, but the attack on the #Massacre site occurred under the context of a sharp increase of #antisemitism."

https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/article-846931#google_vignette

Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported. Many of the more radical communards were followers of Aguste Blanqui. Élisée Reclus was another leader in the commune. Many women participated, like Louise Michel and Joséphine Marchais, including in the armed insurrection. Nathalie Lemel, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian exile, created the Women's Union for the Defence of Paris and Care of the Wounded, demanding gender and wage equality.

Read my complete biograph of Louise Michel here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/louise-michel/

Today in Labor History March 16, 1945: British bombers destroyed ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany in only 20 minutes by, resulting in over 5,000 deaths.

Today in Labor History March 12, 1967: Suharto took power from Sukarno in Indonesia. He ruled Indonesia as an authoritarian, kleptocratic dictator for 31 years, and is widely considered one of the most brutal and corrupt dictators of the 20th century. During that time, he amassed a fortune worth $38 billion. Suharto rose to power under Sukarno during the 1965-1966 genocide. During that ostensibly anti-Communist purge, Suharto’s troops murdered 1-3 million communists, labor activists, peasants and ethnic minorities. During that genocide, he received support military and economic from both the U.S. and the U.K. In 1974, the Suharto regime, with approval of U.S. president Gerald Ford, invaded East Timor, killing over 200,000 Timorese. Another 75,000-200,000 died from starvation and disease. The current Indonesian government is considering awarding him the posthumous honor of National Hero.

Today in Labor History March 7, 1932: Over 3,000 people, led by the United Auto Workers, marched on the main Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Workers on the Ford Hunger March were demanding that laid off colleagues be rehired. They also demanded a slow-down of the assembly lines and an end to the evictions of unemployed workers from their homes. Marchers carried banners saying "Give Us Work," "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor." During the protests, police opened fire with machine guns, killing 4 and injuring 60. A fifth worker died later from his wounds. The Unemployed Council (part of the Communist Party) also supported the march.

Today in Labor History March 5, 1940: Six high-ranking members of the Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, signed an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, cops and military officers. 14,700 of them were prisoners of war. This extrajudicial mass execution was known as the Katyn massacre. Afterwards, the Soviets tried to cover their tracks by blaming the Nazis for the massacre. They continued to deny responsibility until 1990, when the government finally acknowledged and condemned the killings and cover-up.

Today in Labor History March 5, 1917: Members of the IWW went on trial in Everett, Washington for the Everett Massacre, which occurred on November 5, 1916. In reality, they were the victims of an assault by a mob of drunken, vigilantes, led by Sheriff McRae. The IWW members had come to support the 5-month long strike by shingle workers. When their boat, the Verona, arrived, the Sheriff asked who their leader was. They replied, “We are all leaders.” Then the vigilantes began firing at their boat. They killed 12 IWW members and 2 of their own, who they accidentally shot in the back. Before the killings, 40 IWW street speakers had been taken by deputies to Beverly Park, where they were brutally beaten and run out of town. In his “USA” trilogy, John Dos Passos mentions Everett as “no place for the working man.” And Jack Kerouac references the Everett Massacre in his novel, “Dharma Bums.”

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Today in Labor History March 1, 1871: The victorious Prussian Army paraded through Paris after the Siege of Paris. Three weeks later, on March 18, radical soldiers from the French National Guard seized control of the city and established the Paris Commune. The workers controlled the city for two months. They abolished child labor and gave workers the right to seize businesses abandoned by the owners. They also dismantled the police and established their own self-policing. The French army quashed the commune beginning on May 21 with the Bloody Week. During that time, they slaughtered up to 20,000 people and arrested over 43,000.

Today in Labor History March 1, 1921: Anarchist and leftwing communist soldiers, sailors and civilians rose up against the Russian Bolsheviks in the Kronstadt uprising. The rebellion, which lasted until March 16, was the last major revolt against the Bolsheviks. It began when they sent delegates to Petrograd in solidarity with strikes going on in that city, and demanded the restoration of civil rights for workers, economic and political freedom for workers and peasants, including free speech, and that soviet councils include anarchists and left socialists. The Bolshevik forces, directed by Trotsky, killed over 1,000 Kronstadt rebels in battle, and executed another 2,100 in the aftermath. As many as 1,400 government troops died in their attempt to quash the rebellion.

Today in Labor History February 28, 2004: Over 2 million Taiwanese formed a 500-kilometer human chain to commemorate the February 28 Incident and massacre.

Today in Labor History February 28, 1947: The Kuomintang government in Taiwan put down an anti-government uprising known as the February 28 Incident. They killed 28,000 civilians. And in the White Terror that followed, the government killed, imprisoned or disappeared 30,000 more. These events helped spark the Taiwanese independence movement.

Today in Labor History February 27, 1973: 300 Oglala Sioux activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) liberated and occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This was the site of the infamous Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890). They occupied the site to protest a campaign of terror against them by the FBI, and corrupt tribal officials, and the tribal thugs knowns as GOONs (Guardians of Oglala Nation). The occupation lasted over 2 months, before being quashed by the U.S. government. 3 Native activists were killed. Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted for their roll, but charges were later dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Today in Labor History February 25, 1986: As a result of ongoing protests, Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos begged President Ronald Reagan for advice. Reagan told him to “cut and cut cleanly.” That evening, Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the nation aboard a U.S. air force plane, after 20 years of rule. He and his family, and an entourage of 90 people (mostly servants), arrived in Hawaii the next day. They brought 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry of unknown value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems, $200,000 in gold bullion, $1 million in Philippine pesos and deposit slips for $124 million in banks in the Cayman Islands. Plus, countless crates of shoes. The Marcos’s hold the Guinness record for the largest ever theft from a government. Their son, Bong Bong Marcos, is the current president of the Philippines. His vice president is Sara Duterte, daughter of the Philippines last president, the violently repressive Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw the assassinations of well over 1,000 street children and alleged drug dealers. Under Ferdinand Marcos, there were over 3,000 documented extrajudicial murders, 35,000 documented victims of torture and tens of thousands of people imprisoned.

Today in Labor History February 25, 1913: The IWW-led silk strike began in Paterson, New Jersey. 25,000 immigrant textile workers walked out when mill owners doubled the size of the looms without increasing staffing or wages. Workers also wanted an 8-hour workday and safer working conditions. Within the first two weeks of the strike, they had brought out workers from all the local mills in a General Strike of weavers and millworkers. Over the course of the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five workers were killed during the 208-day strike. The strike ended in failure on July 28.

Today in Labor History February 24, 1912: The cops beat up women and children during the IWW-led Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Three people died during the strike. Unknown numbers were injured. The police arrested nearly 300 workers during the two-and-a-half-month strike. The authorities framed and arrested IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti for murder.