Today in Labor History March 17, 1968: The U.S. Army Chemical Corps killed over 6,000 sheep while illegally testing a nerve gas agent at the Dugway Proving Ground in Skull Valley, Utah. A 1998 report, the by Air Force Press was the "first documented admission" from the Army that a nerve agent killed the sheep at Skull Valley. The incident inspired Stephen King's novel “The Stand.”

#utah #chemicalweapons #wmd #WeaponsOfMassDestruction #nerveagent #army #airforce #literary #stephenking #historicalfiction #books #author #writer #horror @bookstadon

The Indie Beat internet radio has a spoken word channel now! Very cool!

https://theindiebeat.fm/spoken-word/

It has been added to the #roku app and is available (along with all other stations) using any of these apps and devices:
https://www.radio-browser.info/users

If you are a #writer and record your words -- you can easily get them on air and heard by uploading to https://bandwagon.fm and tagging with genre "Spoken"

Mysterious authors' brains. I'm writing a new blog article. My brief: nothing about politics today! We need courage. Then the text takes me by the hand.
I read about a blocked drain and come across tiny seeds. And how is that supposed to become a meaningful text? The text giggles: 'you will see'.

I like it when my texts know more than me.
ed: nearly ready. The grain became the

Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.

The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #breadandroses #policebrutality #union #elizabethgurleyflynn #bigbillhaywood #strike #picket #immigrants #poetry #novel #books #fiction #writer #author #uptonsinclair @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam failed in Los Angeles, California, killing 431 people. It is the second deadliest disaster in California, after the 1906 earthquake, and one of the worst U.S. civil engineering disasters ever. A defective foundation and design flaws caused the failure. Yet, the inquest absolved chief engineer, William Mulholland, of all criminal responsibility, and he continued to earn a salary from the Bureau of Public Works (though his career was effectively ended). The authorities continued to find the remains of victims of the flood until the mid-1950s. Many of the victims were washed out to sea. Some washed ashore as far south as Mexico. Mulholland was also the designer of the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct, which sucks water from the Owens Valley and is a major cause of the depletion of the fragile Mono Lake. As its water levels continues to decline, it threatens the world’s second largest gull rookery, home to up to 50,000 birds. The aqueduct’s construction, and the shady methods Mulholland used to acquire the water rights, led to the California Water Wars between L.A. County and Owens Valley farmers. Many of those same Anglo farmers (or their predecessors) usurped the land from Piute people during the 1863 Owens Valley Indian War, which was precipitated, in part, by the vast loss of human and cattle lives, and the displacements, caused by the Megaflood of 1861, which inundated much of the West, from Idaho and Oregon, down to northern Baja California. The corruption related to the construction of the aqueduct has been portrayed in the film Chinatown, and in the nonfiction book, “Cadillac Desert.”

For more on the Megaflood of 1861, please read my article, “Worse Than the Big One”: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2023/01/04/worse-than-the-big-one-californias-coming-megaflood-2/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #flood #dam #mulholland #monolake #owensvalley #disaster #nativeamerican #indigenous #piute #ecology #chinatown #indianwar #habitatdestruction #books #nonfiction #author #writer #losangeles @bookstadon

THE SLOG.

When you're not inspired—you're just stubborn.

I wrote something on what no one told me about writing a book. But really, it’s about anything worth doing.

https://kristie-de-garis.ghost.io/the-slog-what-no-one-told-me-about-writing-a-book/

Today in Labor History March 11, 1850: French anarchist Clément Duval was born. His theory of individual reclamation, which justified theft, and other crimes, as both educational and legitimate ways to redistribute the wealth, influenced the Illegalists of the 1910s, including Jules Bonnot, of the Bonnot Gang. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #illegalism #prison #deportation #wealth #BonnotGang #papillon #individualism #novel #fiction #writer #author #books @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 9, 1911: Frank Little and other free-speech fighters were released from jail in Fresno, California, where they had been fighting for the right to speak to and organize workers on public streets. Little was a Cherokee miner and IWW union organizer. He helped organize oil workers, timber workers and migrant farm workers in California. He participated in free speech fights in Missoula, Spokane and Fresno, and helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques later used by the Civil Rights movement. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” 1917, he helped organize the Speculator Mine strike in Butte, Montana. Vigilantes broke into his boarding house, dragged him through the streets while tied to the back of a car, and then lynched him from a railroad trestle. Prior to Little’s assassination, Author Dashiell Hammett had been asked by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to murder him. Hammett declined.

Read my full bio of Frank Little here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/05/frank-little/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #freespeech #indigenous #nativeamerican #cherokee #franklittle #civilrights #nonviolence #racism #vigilantes #lynching #author #writer #fiction #books @bookstadon

Today in Labor History March 8, 1971: The Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI stole 1,000 documents from the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They later released the documents to newspapers, revealing the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which harassed, imprisoned & murdered US political dissidents. According to Noam Chomsky, 40% of the documents were dedicated to political surveillance. James Ellroy wrote about the burglary in his 2009 novel, “Blood’s a Rover.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #fbi #cointellpro #noamchomsky #jamesellroy #novel #books #writer #author #surveillance #journalism #prison #murder @bookstadon

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.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #everett #massacre #policebrutality #vigilante #strike #union #police #policemurder #FreeSpeech #kerouac #dosassos #hisfic #novel #literature #writer #author #books @bookstadon

If you want to support me as a creator, and also for the work I have done here with #fediblock for example... best thing to do is subscribe to my stuff at https://subscriptions.boricua.style/

There is writing, there is art that no one else sees (or at least for a long time), there are dj sets....This is the best way. I want my work to be seen and also I want to buy my groceries.

It's 1 March!! #MarciaMail is available for both Hamaca and Machete Subscribers

"I think we get lost in the pink lipstick of Wicked or the fetish queer aesthetic of Cabaret, and whilst they might be fabulous, that novella gives us a window into the moment our world is sadly reliving."

https://subscriptions.boricua.style/wicked-cabaret-why-we-need-them-a-ramble/

Today in Labor History February 28, 1887: Clément Duval had his death sentence commuted to life in prison. He was a French anarchist and criminal whose ideas influenced the illegalist movement of the 1910s. The most famous illegalist was Jules Bonot, who orchestrated one of the world’s first bank heist utilizing a getaway car. According to Paul Albert, Duval’s story was the basis for the bestseller Papillon, about multiple escape attempts from Devil’s Island. In October 1886, Duval broke into the mansion of a Parisian socialite, stole 15,000 francs, and accidentally setting the house on fire. His trial drew crowds of supporters and ended in chaos when he was dragged from the court, shouting "Long live anarchy!"

#workingclass #LaborHistory #prison #anarchism #illegalism #papillon #devilsisland #clémentduval #DeathPenalty #julesbonot #bankrobbery #books #novel #fiction #author #writer @bookstadon

We can't just stop, says the #writer Helen Jukes: "If we do, they’re winning."

She talks to Maya Goodfellow about her new #book Mother Animal:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/27/i-was-causing-harm-author-helen-jukes-on-motherhood-and-our-polluted-bodies

#books #reading #writing #environment #bookstodon @bookstodon

Today in Labor History February 27, 1902: John Steinbeck was born on this date in Salinas, California. He wrote numerous novels from the perspective of farmers and working-class people, including “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Tortilla Flats” “Of Mice and Men,” “Cannery Row,” and “East of Eden.” In 1935, he joined the communist League of American Writers. He faced contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. The FBI and the IRS harassed him throughout his career. Yet he wrote glowingly about U.S. troops during the Vietnam War. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962 and the Pulitzer in 1939.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #steinbeck #pulitzer #NobelPrize #strike #union #literature #fiction #fbi #communism #novel #books #author #writer #immigration #poverty @bookstadon

Today in Labor History February 26, 1894: In France, Jean Grave was charged and sentenced to two years in prison for publishing the book “La société mourante et l'anarchie.” However, the trial only served to popularize the book, which was quickly translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Yiddish. Voltairine De Cleyre produced an English translation in 1899. Novelist Octave Mirbeau (“Torture Garden” and “Diary of a Chambermaid”) wrote the preface. Grave was born on October 16, 1854 and died in 1939. He was active in the international anarchist communism movement and was editor Le Révolté, La Révolte and Les Temps Nouveaux, and a number of important anarchist books.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #censorship #freespeech #prison #OctaveMirbeau #JeanGrave #novel #books #author #writer @bookstadon

Hello #mastadon!

I am remaking this to repin. Asking for #fedihelp!

I am a #writer who is also interested in #photography #editing #video and other projects.

I have limited resources on #disability and a #donation would be used only for projects.

My #socialmedia links with #clapper & #youtube are in my about section, and ways to #help.

I was #homeless for a long time.

I am just trying to bring attention to how awful it is, and my experiences, and want to do more.

Thank you

-Jarren