On this day, 15 February 1913, a strike of rubber workers in Akron organised by the Industrial Workers of the World union had grown to 3,500 strikers. Earlier that month 300 mostly non-union workers at Firestone walked out. They turned to the IWW, who helped spread the strike to eventually up to 20,000 workers at multiple firms.
Facing repression and violence from the police, the strike eventually ended a few weeks later with no real concessions.
However within two decades, Akron rubber workers organise themselves solidly and begin to win massive gains with sitdown strikes.
This is our podcast about the IWW at that time: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/05/23/wch-e6-the-industrial-workers-of-the-world-in-the-us-1905-1918/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1350822568436223/?type=3
On this day, 1 April 1939, the Spanish civil war ended, tragically with victory for general Franco and his Nationalist forces. Workers, largely organised in the anarchist CNT and socialist UGT unions, had launched a social revolution in 1936 and beaten back the right-wing military takeover. But after nearly 3 years of intense fighting, the anti-fascist forces were eventually overcome by brute force. While the “democratic allies” of the Republic like the UK blockaded Spain, military aid for the Nationalists from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy poured in. After hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of the remaining anti-fascists had to flee the country to avoid the punitive mass executions which killed tens of thousands. Spanish refugees were interned in concentration camps in France, which then came under Nazi control during German occupation. But large numbers of civil war veterans joined resistance movements, and help liberate France. We give an overview of the conflict in this podcast episode: https://ift.tt/2EwpotX
Pictured: anti-fascist militia fighters https://ift.tt/2FOlP1A
If the straight girls in this scenario leave, gay men aren’t going to magically appear. The bar will just be empty, the bartenders will make less money, and if it keeps up like that for long enough, guess what bar won’t exist anymore? Yeah.
No offense hon but we’ve never needed the straights in order to keep our bars existing.
Gay people ain’t there because straight hoes maxed out capacity so thy can’t get in. No gay bar has suffered because straight people didn’t show up.
Straight people at gay bars are like the porn bots in your notes.
LMAO! Imagine thinking that the only way gay establishments will survive is with the patronage of straight people.
You have to imagine someone in the manufacturing and distribution process noticed this before it got to store shelves, and someone had to make the call “fuck it, we’re not redoing it”.
“In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”
— Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (via philosophybits)
