“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (via quotespile)
On this day, 21 April 1894, a nationwide strike of coal miners in the US against pay cuts began. Despite the United Mine Workers union having only 20,000 members, 145,000 miners walked out, and despite violent repression and facing starvation they held out for weeks and won some concessions. Many miners even rejected the union’s settlement and held out for more but were eventually starved back to work. This is a history of the coal miners’ struggles that year: http://bit.ly/2Vgm5yX
Pictured: a Colorado miners union parade before the strike http://bit.ly/2KSaQJ9
A colossal
sandstone
head of Amenhotep IV ‘Akhenaten’, from Karnak. New Kingdom, Amarna Period, 18th dynasty, reign of Akhenaten, ca. 1353-1336 BC. Now in the Luxor Museum.
On this day, 21 April 2007, 150 garment workers, mostly women, occupied the Mansoura-España textile factory in Egypt against job losses and unpaid wages. Management tried various tricks to break the occupation, even threatening to fabricate prostitution charges against the women workers for sleeping away from home under the same roof as men who are not their husbands. But the workers held out against both bosses and their union, occupying their factory for two months before winning concessions on both job losses and unpaid wages: http://bit.ly/2Ve92ychttp://bit.ly/2L1VKB4
