Today In Labor History April 11, 1934: Frank Norman, who had the gall to organize ALL citrus workers in the south, regardless of their race, was kidnapped from his home in Florida and murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen, dressed in local sheriff’s uniforms. Despite overwhelming evidence from the union, the case was swept under the rug by state officials, in the pocket of the citrus bosses. In May, 2018, the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO passed a resolution banning fascists and white supremacists from holding any positions of power in their union. In their resolution, they referenced both the murder of Frank Norman, and the recent murder of Heather Heyer, by white supremacists, in Charlottesville.

Magazine article, with picture of klansmen, dressed in hoods and robes, facing off against a room full of African American people, and the headline: Union Organizer murdered by kkk on April 11, 1934.

Covid is no worse than the flu?

I know, I have now led dozens of posts over the past few years with this sarcastic question. But now, with the pandemic officially declared over by the politicians and the majority of the public behaving as though Covid19 is no longer a threat, it seems particularly apropos in light of the reasons for declaring the pandemic over: to get people back to work and back to consuming. Yet, as the data from this study show, Long Covid has had an enormous negative impact on the income and quality of life for millions of Americans, particularly the poor and working class, and particularly for African Americans and women.

*Nearly 1 in 7 working-age adults in the U.S. had experienced Long Covid by the end of 2023
*Socially disadvantaged adults were 152% more likely to suffer from Long Covid
*Groups with higher risk for Long Covid include being Black, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Female, or low income
*In 2022, people with Long Covid lost $211 billion in wages
*In 2023, people with Long Covid lost $218 billion in wages

One reason for the disproportionate effect of Long Covid on marginalized communities, particularly BIPOC and poor people, is that these groups suffer disproportionately from chronically elevated levels of the stress hormone, Cortisol, due to the stress caused by racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty. Elevated Cortisol levels are also associated with increased risk of heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, as well as impaired immune function.

For a really good documentary on the Social Determinants of Health and the relationship between racism and poverty on stress/cortisol levels and negative health outcomes, please see the Unnatural Causes video series

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/studies-1-7-us-working-age-adults-report-long-covid-heaviest-burden-poor

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A

1/3

Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41876/41876-h/41876-h.htm#Page_99

Calls for a general strike in the US are growing. It's important to understand how to organize one, given their key role in overcoming tyrants around the world.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/04/what-would-general-strike-in-the-us-look-like/

Today in Labor History April 10, 1947: FBI agents visited Ronald Reagan (then president of the Screen Actors Guild) and his wife Jane Wyman, accusing them of belonging to a communist front group. To prove his loyalty, Reagan agreed to become a secret informer and went on to have a long and illustrious career as an anti-communist, union-busting, trickle-down asshole.

Today in Labor History April 10, 1997: Exotic dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady, ratified their first-ever union contract. Thus they became the first successfully unionized sex business. (Pacers, in San Diego, had unionized a few years earlier. However, they had an open shop, allowing management to recruit new, non-union employees. Consequently, they were able to decertify the union.) Lusty Lady later became a worker-owned cooperative and a member of NoBAWC (the network of Bay Area Workers Collectives), a program initiated by the Bay Area IWW.

For a great book on the struggle to organize Lusty Lady, please see Jenny Worley’s “Neon Girls: A Stripper’s Education in Protest and Power.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #WorkerCollective #union #NOBAWC #LustyLady #books #author #writer #IWW @bookstadon

Today in Labor History April 10, 1919: Mexican troops ambushed and assassinated Emiliano Zapata, revolutionary indigenous and peasant leader. Zapata’s Rebel Army of the South played a major role in the overthrow of the dictator, Porfirio Diaz, defeating the federal army in the Battle of Cuautla in 1911. Also in 1911, Zapata began implementing the Plan de Ayala, redistributing land in the regions controlled by his army to peasant farmers. However, when former revolutionary Madero took over, he disavowed the Zapatistas, calling them simple bandits. He implemented a scorched earth policy, burning villages and imprisoning survivors in forced labor camps, in his quest to hunt down Zapata. Madero’s successor, Venustiano Carranza, continued his scorched earth policies and finally succeeded in killing Zapata in 1919.

PSL organizers went to the @UAW rally in Detroit and asked workers what they’re striking for.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-V7Ev9hqFGQ

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/nyregion/homeless-shelters-new-york-city.html

Thousands of working people in New York City now live in shelters, unable to afford apartments despite holding down jobs that pay them $50,000 or more.

Today In Labor History April 9, 1948: The Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary slaughtered over 100 Palestinians in the Deir Yassin massacre, near Jerusalem. Many of the victims were women and children. Rape and mutilation were also alleged. It was part of the Nakba and expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine. As news of the massacre spread, it sparked terror among Palestinians throughout the region, convincing many to flee their homes. It also strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to attack, which they did a few weeks later, sparking the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Menachim Begin was leader of the Irgun at the time. He went on to found the Likud Party and he became prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983. Many Arab states produced postage stamps commemorating the massacre. All of them use the image of a map of Palestine with a bloody dagger thrust into it.

Today In Labor History April 9, 1930: The IWW organized the 1700-member crew of the Leviathan, the world’s largest ship. Originally a German passenger ship, the U.S. seized it in 1917, during World War I, when it was docked in New York harbor. The U.S. subsequently used it to transport its troops to Europe. In September, 1918, the Leviathan left New Jersey, filled with men dying from Influenza. Dozens perished from the flu on the passage over.

Today In Labor History April 9, 1918: Members of the anarchist Black Guards confiscated the car of the American ambassador to Russia in Moscow, demanding the release of prisoners in the US. The Black Guards were armed groups of workers that formed after the February Revolution. They were the main military wing of the anarchists. The first Black Guards were created in Ukraine by Maria Nikiforova (Marusia), an anarchist terrorist from the age of 16, who eventually became Deputy leader of the Oleksandrivsk Revolutionary committee. She created the Black Guards to force land reform and redistribution. Similar cells were later created by Nestor Makhno, and she later participated in the anarchist free state of Makhnovia. The last Black Guards were quashed by the Cheka, under orders from Trotsky, on April 11-12, 1918.

Today In Labor History April 8, 1864: The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, banning chattel slavery. However, it permitted a continuation of wage slavery and the forced labor of convicts without pay. And on this date in 1911, 128 convict miners, mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses, were killed by a massive explosion at the Banner coalmine near Birmingham, Alabama. While the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which occurred just two weeks earlier, elicited massive public attention and support for the plight of immigrant women working in sweatshop conditions, the Banner explosion garnered almost no public sympathy, probably due to racism and the fact that they were prisoners.

Today In Labor History April 8, 1935: Oscar Zeta Acosta was born on this day. Acosta was a Chicano lawyer, writer and activist in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). He was good friends with Hunter S. Thompson, who called him “My Samoan Attorney,” in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974. He is assumed dead.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #chicano #OscarZetaOcosta #HunterSThompson #mexico #literature #fiction #writer #books #author #writer #losangeles @bookstadon

Today In Labor History April 8, 1943: The Nazis executed Otto and Elise Hampel for making anti-Nazi postcards and leaving them in public places. Hans Fallada wrote about them in his 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone (Alone in Berlin in the UK). The story was filmed in 2016 as Alone in Berlin.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #berlin #antifa #antifascist #fascism #resistance #hampel #novel #fiction #film #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Today In Labor History April 7, 1870: German-Jewish anarchist and pacifist, Gustav Landauer, was born. He was friends with, and influenced, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He served as the Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction during the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, but was killed when the republic was overthrown. He was also the grandfather of film director, Mike Nichols (The Odd Couple, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate).

Today In Labor History April 7, 1915: Jazz legend, Billie Holiday, was born. She was one of the first to sing Abel Meeropol’s, “Strange Fruit,” and performed the most well-known version of the anti-lynching song. Soon after her first public performance of the song, in 1939, the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics started gunning for her. Harry Anslinger, who was a racist, prohibition zealot, led the assault. He hired a black agent provocateur, Jimmy Fletcher, to befriend her and sell her drugs. And Fletcher conducted her first drug bust.
https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk

Today In Labor History April 7, 1947: The National Federation of Telephone Workers (NFTW) launched the first nationwide strike against AT&T and Bell. 350,000 telephone workers, mostly women switchboard operators, walked off the job. Both the AFL and the CIO supported the strike, hoping to bring the telephone workers into their fold. This support provided extra strike funds to help the workers survive their time off the job. By mid-May, 37 of the 39 member unions had won new contracts with raises. NFTW became the Communications Workers of America later that year.